Michael Crichton - Runaway

0:00 Tell me, Dave, if you could have one robot from any movie or television show, which one would it be. Oh? Man, I was not prepared for this. Okay, this I feel like I got. That's an important question. I needed some prep is. My first thought is the robot from Rocky four, because he's awesome and Stallane never should have taken him out of the director's cut. I also does Kitt count because I might have to count? I might have to. I'll allow it. I didn't think about Kit. I'm going with I'll go with I'll go with Kit from night Rider because it's one thing to have a self driving car, but to have a self driving car where you can kick back and play Pitfall on the Attari twenty six hundred at the same time. Yes, you can't beat that. So I'll go night Rider.

0:48 Awesome. You know I actually sat in Kit when I was a kid. Yeah. Man, I asked my brother and I asked him if he could do his like do a launch over the river that we were saying in front of, and he was like, well, I don't think that's a good idea, right, So that was pretty cool. I thought about this a lot. My first thought was Rosie from The Jetsons. Then I thought maybe I would want a robot with a little narrower scope, so I picked Bamax from Big Here of Six. Okay, going to it'd always be good to have, you know, your own personal healthcare providing robots. He's He's very loving and very nurturing, so I wouldn't mind having him around.

1:34 I'd feel pretty safe around him. I speaking of Rosie, I got definite Rosie vibes in this movie from Lois. But I guess we can get a little bit later. Yes, absolutely Well, as we said on the subject of robots and assistive technology, we're going to discuss a film by Michael Crichton from nineteen eighty four, his underrated classic Runaway. Hello, and welcome to a film by podcast. I'm Amber Lewis, aka the Voice of Reason, and I've taken over hosting duties for this episode and joining me on this glimpse into our possible future is Deaf Dave from the Apples and Oranges podcast.

2:39 Welcome Dave. This is like your third or fourth time in a row. I think, Yeah, I've been doing a lot of these lately, so it's always fun. It seems that whenever nineteen eighty four movie comes around, Jeff thinks of me, and you know that's okay. I mean right, I'll take it. I give him a heart time about eighty six. The truth is eighty six is awesome all the year. Every year of the eighties are awesome. But if I am stuck advocating for nineteen eighty four that is that is not a problem for me at all. I will be glad to stand up for them. So yeah, hashtag best you ever. I'm happy to be out here with you. You know, I'm usually hashtag team member. You earned that reputation with me a couple of years ago with your take I believe it was. It was on ex Caliber versus King Arthur On.

3:29 Yeah, I thank you. You coined the hashtag. Team actually, and then you confirmed your status in my mind with your take on the Muppet Christmas Carol movie. So we'll see if we end up on the same side tonight. I am confident because I heard your Dreamscape episode and the Red Dawn episode just dropped over on Patreon, so I'm looking forward to that one, and I have a feeling we're like minded. Yeah, I've been living in nineteen eighty four for the past few weeks thanks to Jeffin and that is not a problem. I appreciate it. It's always fun, all right. Well, we're going to get into our movie. A little synopsis. Runaway tells the story of an advanced society where most homes have robots that perform everyday menial tasks. Every so often, one malfunctions, and Sergeant Jack Ramsey played by Tom Selleck, an expert in rogue machines, must deal with it. When he and his new partner Karen Thompson played by Cynthia Rhodes, investigate a robot involved homicide, they discover strange computer chips.

4:36 Rather than a mildfunction, someone is programming the robots to kill. The police must find whoever is behind the murder before more harm is done. So, Dave, tell me, like, do you remember where and when, like you first saw this movie. I'm pretty sure that I did not see it in the theater. It may have been on HBO. We did not have HBO at my house, but my friends across the street did. I saw a lot of movies there that might have been it. I mentioned this on the Red Dawn Patron episode that came out this past weekend. But just given Jeff a little bit of a hard time. One of my favorite things about nineteen eighty six was that that was the year we got a blockbuster and I was able to see a lot more movies from nineteen eighty four.

5:23 You can catch up. This might have been a blockbuster night, but I would guess that I probably saw this in eighty five or eighty six, either on HBO or raining it same. My parents actually went on the rare date night to go see this in the theater. And then like we were the first on the block to get a VCR, so either we rented it at one of the you know, little local mom and pop video stores, or we saw it on HBO. But I can remember that, like, we loved Kiss in our house. We loved the makeup and the theatrics, we loved the music. So the kind of big draw was that Gene Simmons was in the movie, which it wouldn't really necessarily say that I think today, but that was that was definitely the hook for us then.

6:18 Now this movie was written and directed by Michael Crichton, but really the draw was Tom Selleck. He had had a role in another criton movie, UH nineteen seventy eight so Coma, and he had been you know, of course Magnum p I for about four years by the time this movie came out, and had famously missed out on playing Indiana Jones due to scheduling on Magnum Pi. He just couldn't get out of filming the show to make the movie. But I feel like Ramsey is a kind of Indian Jones type hero. Like they're both kind of flawed and you know, kind of reluctant. They'll get into the scraps, but they kind of don't necessarily want to.

7:04 They've got their their phobias. What do you think? Yeah, I, while I'm aware that he was almost cast as Tombs as Indiana Jones, I didn't really make the connection to him being that type of character in this movie, although you know, with us being introduced to his kryptonite, right, his fear of heights. Yes, I my mind did consciously go back to Indiana Jones and his fear of snakes, and so I don't know why I didn't put all that together in my head, but yeah, I can see that it's definitely more of an action role than Magnum was. I think. I mean, I know it had some action in thatvesment, we know more of a police drama, and this was this was a little bit different flavor. As far as I can recall, Tom Selleck was just like a comatose body in coma. I don't think he really.

7:50 Had a lot like one scene where he was super charming, is that right? Okay, Yeah, to make you kind of care about the fact that then he ended up and to prove that like he was super healthy too. So it's suspice. Well, I wonder, I wonder how much of that previous working with Crichton informed his casting here. I don't know, but but yeah, you're right, it's definitely definitely a reunion there. This was shot in the summer of eighty four, between during the hiatus between seasons four and five, so he was he was an established primetime television star that everybody knew, so I guess he was. He had said that, you know, his schedule was pretty tight on the show and that he was afraid to say no to any movie because he didn't know how many offers he would be able to get or say yes to. So they were able to work this in in the summer of eighty four.

8:44 It also affected Gene Simmons in his ability to be very involved with Kiss. This This movie was shot between the Kiss albums Lick It Up and Animalize, and he had to not be very involved with Animalized because of this movie. I think. I think Paul Stanley said that Gene crapped out a couple of demos and then left it to me or something like that. So so yeah, they squeezed it in. You know, both guys had had other stuff going on that summer, I mean, you know, during that time, but they were able to make it work. I guess for both their schedules. I don't know enough about Kiss. Did Gene Simmons have did he ever have long hair? Was it always a wig? Did he cut Did he cut his hair for this movie? Did he grow up back in time for the next tour? I don't, I don't. I'm I'm thinking about his hair because he doesn't.

9:35 It doesn't fit his Kiss character, right. I I kind of feel like it was always a wig though, Okay, maybe like at least in the back. I don't know, but I love that we do get one genuine devil Kiss moment from Gene Simmons. They were able to work that little jump scare in at the end, which I thought was just like even when I I can't remember when I as a kid watching this movie and going. Oh, there it is. You know, you say that Celik just missed out on Indiana Jones. There's another well known role that he was offered that he turned down. I don't know if you know about this, but he was offered the role of Mitch Buchanan on Baywatch.

10:18 Oh my gosh, the. Role that went to David Hauselholf. Wow bay Watch without the hoff I don't know. I know, but it became the like the most watched show in the world for a few years. So I don't know. So you could there's a what if you can? You can imagine that a little bit. No, I had never heard that. That is so funny. What could have been? I have one little piece of trivia on Selik. I don't know if you know this. He has a famous high school classmate that graduated with him in the same year. No, Mickey Dolan's from The Monkeys. From the Monkeys. Awesome. I love that. That's so random. He's not the only cast member of this movie to have famous high school classmates.

11:04 I'll name them in a second, I. Guess, oh, yeah, you've got all the juicy bits. So then as his partner, we've got Cynthia Rhodes. And I died when they had to add in that well, I used to be a dancer, but then I hurt my knee. Like not everything part you play has to connect to dance if you're a dancer. But I mean to be fair, she is a fabulous dancer. She had been in Flash Dance and then in the Craptastic Staying Alive. The sequel to Saturday Night Fever. Did buy Yeah, and then.

11:44 Went on, of course to play Penny in Dirty Dancing. But I love her in this. I think she is spectacular. You know, she's playing the part of the the plucky partner. I was about to say rookie, but she's really not a rookie. She's been in she's been working in traffic, so yes. She's been she's got experience on the streets, on the streets. Now she's fighting robots in a skirt and hills. But you know that's okay. Yeah, I think she did a good job, and I thought she was cute and all that. I don't know if we want to get into this later or not. But I thought them getting together romantically in the movie, I just didn't think that was I don't think that was necessary. I mean, I know, you get a little bit of that tension at the house with the kid, you wanted them to be together. That made sense to me, But it still didn't make sense for them to get together the end in my opinion.

12:37 But but I did think that she was she was very good in this you know, you know you say she's mostly known as a dancer, and almost all of her film roles were dancing roles. Yes, but did you know and have you ever heard of the band An Emotion. I probably if you played a song, I would know it. But I can't say I'm familiar with them. But they were around in the mid eighties, and around eighty eight, I think or whatever, Cynthia Rhodes became their lead singer. She was the lead singer of this band, An Emotion. And the only reason I mentioned that is that they had a top ten single called Room to Move that was on My Stepmother is an Alien soundtrack.

13:20 So she ends up there that's fabulous. And like right after that January of eighty nine something like that, she gets married to Richard Marx and she retired. They have three kids together, and she retires from acting to raise her family. She's missus Richard Marx. That blows my mind. Yep. Yeah, he wrote almost that whole debut debut album for her, which is like super romantic. It's sad now because they're no longer together, but. She and she I think was a dancer in some of his music videos. You know, I'll say this. I hope Jason, I think she was in the Rosanna. I was gonna. I want Jason Cole to be listening because she did appear with Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. Yes, she did appear in the Rosanna music video. But Patrick Swayze is not in that video, and Jason insists that he is, but anyway, that's a running joke with him.

14:18 Oh my god. That's yes, she is a dancer in Rosanna too, So that's that's pretty cool. And then rounding out kind of our top cast, we've got playing Bobby Joey Kramer from Flight to the Navigator love that movie, and he's super adorable and he and Tom Selleck are just charming together in their scenes. And then we also get fresh off of Star Trek Christy Ally playing like the totally believable bad girl. Like I was sold the minute she showed up, like, oh yeah, of course you're Jeene Simmon's girlfriend.

15:00 This is a very early role for her. I thought she did a good job. There's all kinds of connections here, you know. He feature film debut was as Lieutenant Savoc in Star Trek two, which co starred Leonard Nimoy. She's most famous and known for Cheers, which she joined in eighty seven, and eighty seven was the year Leonard Nimoy directed both Ted Danson and Tom Selleck in three minut in a Baby, So there's all kinds of connections there. So oh my gosh, it's like six degrees of here'sty Ally. She was also she was in North and South in nineteen eighty five, and Stan Shaw, who's also in this cast, ended up being in North and South Part three or something like that in the nineties, so there's those kind of connections too. And where Cynthia Roose was with John Travolta and Staying Alive in the early part of the eighties.

15:50 Christi Alli would close the eighties with John Travolta in the cinematic masterpiece. Look who's talking? Yes, and you know you mentioned stan Shaw like a deep bench of eighties like supporting cast. We've got GW. Bailey from Police Academy. Anne Marie Martin, who incidentally was also Michael Creighton's wife at the time. She's been in a tennis stuff Michael Paul chan I immediately recognized as Data's dad from the Guinies, Right. That's right, that's another Star Trek connection. Uh. Stan Shaw was Dipper in Rocky so I. Know, Oh my gosh, yes, he was.

16:32 Like yeah, so shout out to Jeff. I know he he's familiar with Dipper, so again a Syvester Stallone again, you know, and he would reunite with Stallone in the nineties for the movie Daylight. So it's stan stan Shaw is just one of those that guys that you that you recognize pretty easily. Guess Joey Kramer, who the flood the Navigator kid? You know, he he's ended up a criminal, he's a he's served time multiple different charges. You're serious. Oh yeah, in real life, Oh my god. In real life he's served time for gun related charges, separately for possession charges, and in twenty sixteen, he robbed a bank. He pled guilty to wearing a disguise to commit a crime and guilty. He pled guilty to bank robbery and served like a couple of years.

17:24 Oh my, I am floored. I thought you were gonna say, like, I just remember him his Flight of the Navigator. I don't even remember like his name or his character's name or anything. But I thought you were gonna say, like, no, he's got this great career as an adult and you just don't recognize him because he's grown up down. Oh horrible. No, he's robbing banks. He went to the dark side. Yeah, which, no one's been able to successfully rob a bank since you know why? I like, why would you even try? I don't know. There is a documentary on his life that came out, so I don't know. Maybe he tells his whole story there. Yeah, so g W. Bailey, I want to mention him. Just I got trivia on him. Oh yes, he's awesome. So obviously not the only police role that he has in nineteen eighty four, right, he's he's the captain in police Academy, you know, the one gonna move it, move it, move it. Interesting enough, Cynthia Rhodes's character is named Karen Thompson. Yes, And in Police Academy, Kim Catroll's character's name is Karen Thompson.

18:27 So. G W. Bailey appeared in two nineteen eighty four movies, both of which had characters named Karen Thompson The Odds. So. GW. Bailey also has a couple of famous high school classmates that he graduated with. G W. Bailey graduated with football coach Jimmy Johnson and singer Janice Joplin. What they could not be two different people? That's hilarious to me. Janis Joplin, Jimmy Johnson, and GW. Bailey all in high school together. That's Texas for you, I guess. And by the way, the voice of Lois's a voice actor by the name of Marilyn Schreffer. She was a Hanna Barbara voice throughout the seventies and eighties. She you know Scooby do Laugh, Olympics, Captain Caveman, you know Fred and Barney, Scooby Doo, Popeye, Thunder of the Barbarian. She's she was a voice actress. She was everywhere, she was everywhere. Yeah, and she's and she's done movies live action movies like this where she just has a voice roll, you know, or she's doing a dr looping and stuff like that.

19:38 But we get her here as lois. But if you grew up, you know, watching Scooby Do Olympics and stuff like that, it may ring some kind of she may. Sound familiar, Like I know Lewis exactly. Just the last guy on the cast that I want to mention it is kind of random. Chris Mulkey. He's one of my favorite bat guys. He in this movie. He plays the dad whose family gets murdered by the robot early on, and then he runs down the street runs away. Yes, he is definitely that guy. Even my son looked up and was like, I know him. I don't know why. Well, he was also in Dreamscape, so I just saw him in Dreamscape, you know, preparing for that episode. But I know him from a brilliant, short lived show in the early nineties called Bakersfield PD. I think maybe his most regular gig was on Twin Peaks. But he's just one of these guys that shows up, you know, in small roles all over the place. I mean, he's never quit working. But anyway, he's one of my favorites. So he's one of those that I know by name.

20:31 So there's christ Yes, all right, So we are going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to take a look into the film's production and some pivotal scenes. All right, we are back and discussing Michael Crichton's nineteen eighty four underrated classic Runaway. The film was written and directed by Michael Crichton, who said that he was deliberately vague about the year the film was set. However, we get a glimpse of Ramsey's driver's license and that showing his birthdate, and we know that he's thirty five, so you can do the math, and the setting is nineteen ninety one, which just blows my mind.

21:16 I love any kind of movie where we're talking about the future and it seems so far away, you know, and then you know, now it's twenty twenty four, and yes, I don't have my high speed rail. I know I need my jetpack and my high speed rail. Yes, you know this. I would consider this a near future movie. It has come out eighty fours at ninety one, and they you know, like that's us doing detective work to figure out ninety one. It was left unspecified in the you know, in the movie, like you said, yes, but you get the sense that it is near future, Like, this isn't a high level of robotics, right, this is very industrial. U. These are non humanoid.

21:58 Yes, it's not you know, androids or anything like that. These are machines, right, that can just do one little extra thing that our machines can't. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's it doesn't seem much different than just machines. But apparently they have some level of intelligence or whatever. But but I think keeping that the level of robotics kind of kind of low, kind of within grasp, very industrial looking like that, it's it gives it some reality. I guess it makes it a little bit more believable. You're not dealing with, you know, with high fantasy, you know, science fiction. This seems grounded.

22:41 This seems like something that cops can be dealing with just in a few years, you know. Yeah, because it does. There is an element of the runaway calls that they first get that is a little bit like cat stuck in a tree kind of level of police work. But I feel like that gives the story room to raise the stakes because you know, you see, this is dangerous for people, like they are handling situations that are putting. The public at risk. But you know, what Luther is doing raises it raises the stakes to a whole another level because he's you know, he's creating situations where people are being murdered.

23:26 Yeah, you're right. Like the initial calls that he's getting, you know, to go out to the cornfield and stop this runaway robot. I mean it seems like just a piece of farming equipment that needs a little maintenance. I mean, you know, it's like, is that really police work? What don't you call a mechanic? You know, it. Seems that I do love that the lady at the construction site, after she was done dissing the unions, which I'm like, oh, well this is who you are. His part, Thompson says like, can't you just pull the plug? And she's like, oh, it's not in our contract. I don't get paid to do. That, So you guys have to call the cops, right, I don't know.

24:10 I can remember my mom was a paramedic, and like the fire department gets called for everything, so it's it's kind of believable, but. Once you discover, you know, that someone's purposely manufacturing chips that will turn robotic robots homicidal, and now that's a mystery you got to solve. You gotta find that guy. I mean that that definitely becomes police work, you know. Ye absolutely. Still to this day, I always think why was this film unsuccessful at the box office? Like this is a. Fun eighties movie, you know, and then you look at what it was up against, and it came out as the same time as The Terminator Star Trek three and twenty ten, the year we make contact, So like talk about having no chance at.

25:02 All, Well, I mean the bar was high in nineteen eighty four. You know, hashtag best you ever. If you're gonna watch a nineteen eighty four movie about robots behaving badly, it's probably not gonna be Runaway, It's gonna be The Terminator. Yeah. Absolutely. Let's talk about like a pivotal scene in the movie. What for You is like the one scene that really is like the scene for you. The scene that stood out to me, that made the biggest impression on me. Then it's like the one image from this movie that has stayed with me ever since is when we are introduced to the smart bullet, the guided missile smart bullet that can turn corners and chase people down. That was like, holy crap.

25:50 Yeah, shy lens on the camera. Right, which you know, as bullets go, it must have been an extremely slow flying projectile, which is funny. But but yeah, that that to me separated this movie from everything else and stood out in my mind. I thought that was something that was interesting as an adult. You know, as I'm watching this movie, the scene that strikes me is is really kind of a criticism, and that is when he murders Christiality in front of about two hundred people. Oh what a gruesome death too. My god, I know, a knife right in the back of the skull drops her in the water. She's laying out bleeding, and nobody reacts, like, just there are no consequences at all. They there back to eating and you know, and like her death has never dealt with in the story.

26:42 It's just like, oh, so this happens a lot at this restaurant. I mean, yikes, right, it's hard life in the city. Well, kind of piggybacking on your like of the smart bullet. To me, the only scene, if I remember nothing else from this movie is the scene where Thompson gets shot with one of those smart bullets and it does not detonate, it goes into a reform and Ramsey doesn't want to let the robot remove the bullet because the robots are unreliable. They screw up all the time, and. This thing can explode and just take her whole arm off.

27:25 So he goes in and takes that bullet out, and logistics aside, like none of that's very realistic, But the scene of him taking that bullet out is like, I don't breathe the whole time, Like I get lightheaded because I'm so stressed out and tense. Watching that happen. I think it is absolutely like the most intense scene of the whole movie. And I think that's her best scene as an actress. I think that's her best scenes in the movie. I thought she did really well with that, absolutely, and you know that's that's not you know, she's a dancer, right, All her acting roles are dancing roles, and for her to be able to step up and deliver on that scene, I mean, good for her. That was that was you know, good job.

28:12 Yes, they both just sold it like so intensely. But I also this time around did enjoy the chase scene where they're trying to get Kirsty Ali to the restaurant and Luther makes his first attempt at killing her. And he's dropping these. Robots from a hole in the bottom of his car so that they can chase down the police cars that Kirsty Ally's in, And it gave me very captain America's Civil War. I think it was where the winner soldier uses one of those okay kind of technology to blow up Nick Fury's car.

28:53 So, you know, I grew up on the dukes of Hazard and some of my favorite stunt scenes were from that show, where it's usually Luke, you know, bow is the driver. Luke wouldn't be the guy who would climb out on top of the car when it's going down there, right, He would like be jumping into the next vehicle or something. And so in this one where like Tom Selleck, I mean, you know, where Jack Ramsey is opening car doors and straddling the highway and walking into the next car. You know, you're seeing that kind of stunt work. I love that. I mean, that's I've said this on other shows. One reason why I enjoy watching eighties movies so much is you're getting practical stunts. I missed practical stunt work so much and same and clearly you have a something man doing this. He is going from one car to the next as they're going side by side down this road, and I just thought it was very impressive. I didn't know what was about to happen. I thought he was gonna stand there, like when I was a kid, I shared a bedroom with my little brother and we had twin beds, and we'd play this game where I'd stretch out between them like a human bridge, and he'd like walk across me, and usually I'd fall and like have all the wind knocked out me, and I'd be crying.

30:01 But I thought that was I thought Kirsty Ally was about like walk across tom Selle to get to the next car somebo I didn't know what was gonna happen. Yes, I enjoyed that stunt work more than the little explosive remote control cars. But yeah, that was a that was a cool scene. Yeah, absolutely, early on, like a scene that got me. This time was still early in the movie, but we'd already seen them go on one runaway call and deal with this with this machinery at the farm, and we understand that, so, you know, robots are common in this world that we're visiting in this movie, but it's so imperfect that there's an entire division of the police department dedicated to taking care of all these problematic robots.

30:47 And then he comes home and they have their own robot who's alone with the kid, you know, And I was just by the time we get to Lois, which is the name of the domestic robot that has an intelligence, talks and stuff. Yes, it's creepy, Like by the time she's introduced, I'm creeped out by her because I feel like, oh, this is going to go bad. This is a problem. You know, it's only a matter of time before she goes bad. Yeah. Well, and Ramsey has a great explanation. He tells Thompson, you know, she's like, why are the these are supposed to be robots. They're supposed to be you know, machines that don't make mistakes, So why do we even have a division. And he's like, well, they're made by people, and people are flawed, so of course the machines that they make are going to be flawed like that just is logical.

31:33 But I'm gonna pause on that. He does the excellent point, and I think the reason why I think it's such an excellent point is that it's a recurring theme for Michael Crichton. You see that in a lot of his stories. You see it, and whether it's robotics or you know, biotechnology of some sort, or you know science, whether it's West World, dress at Park or anything like that, where you've got brilliant minds creating new things. But these you know, these are still imperfect humans and then they're end up with flaws in their creation and causes problems. So I think I think I see a thematic connection on that point with everything from Westworld to Jurassic Park.

32:17 Yeah, you're absolutely right, and you know, especially Jurassic Park, Like the biggest problem was they thought that they had like outthought every problem, and really what you need to do is plan for when every problem happens, not say, oh, we're preventing problems. You have to say, nope, they're getting out. It's going to happen, and what are we going to do when they do? Right, So similar to this, you know, it's like what's going to happen when you know your coffeemaker turns on you because it's gonna happen. And then Ramsey later on, you know, after he tells Thompson that it only makes sense that these robots would would have be fallible, he then reassures his son, and his son says, you know, is there any chance that like Lois could go crazy and kill us all?

33:07 And he's like, no, we'll be fine. Yeah, there's no way she'll be all right. It's like, mmm, is is she though? So, you know, speaking of Alexa. More than most movies I can think of, this movie and this is a credit to Crichton does a pretty good job of predicting the future, and we see a lot of technology that has come to be true portrayed here in a speculative sense. I made a list. Did you make a list? I've got a list, But you go ahead. All right, tell me if I missed anything. We've got the prototype of a drone. Absolutely, that's the first thing that jumped out of me. Yeah, I mean it is a drone. It's exactly, it's exactly a drone that we have today.

33:51 Alexa, Yes, a ring doorbell, yes, face recognition software, an iPad right, And I don't know that there are century robots, but I don't know that there's not Like I mean, there's definitely motion detectors and you know, very very high tech security systems. So even if it's not like a robot pacing around and zapping you, well. You know, there's also what appears to be, at least functionally the equivalent of social media, because that's what Gene Simmons does is when he's looking for stuff on Jack Ramsey, you know, how to get to him. He's calling up his social profile, He's finding out all about him. You know.

34:41 I feel like that that kind of presages social media. But what's even invisible to us because it's just so automatic, is that none of that's possible without something like the Internet in place, you know, and like that, even just the Internet in general was not a common thing for everybody in nineteen eighty four, so I thought that was pretty. Good to Yeah, I think we had email then, but it was very early day. I mean maybe at high levels in the military and academia, but not everything. Yeah, you know, I don't think so we had home computers. We were just starting to get home computers. I think, well, and then there was also when Luther hacks into the police like phone system and he's watching them on their closed circuit television and everything. He makes the comment like, you can't trace this call because I'm on a mobile phone, right, Like that was unheard of.

35:35 You know. We also I'm wondering about little things like the wireless headsets. I mean, was that was that a thing in eighty four? I don't know they were walking down No. I would say walkie talkie was like a smaller walkie talkie, not the big, huge like military ones. I think having a small one was probably a big deal. We still don't have the heat seeking smart bullets that turn owner, I don't think, I. Mean, thank goodness, and how terrifying, like they can even read the different heat signatures so that they hit the right target. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a little fuzzy science. I don't know if that's if that's really a real thing, but you know, it's a conceit of the movie that everybody's got a unique heat signature that the bullet's going to attract. For some reason, in my head, I was thinking they were somehow like DNA specific, like you could program it a target you go after somebody with that DNA.

36:30 But I don't. Obviously I'm wrong about that. For some reason, that's what I had in my head. I thought it was your fingerprint. I think they call it something like a fingerprint bullet or something like that at one point. And I was like, well, but how would they get that? I don't know. I have seen the Army develop a gun whose barrel can turn ninety degrees and you can shoot from around a corner. No way, I'm not kidding, Oh my heavens. I mean the path of the bullet straight, but you can. Yeah, you can bend the barrel and hide behind a corner. Wow. I don't know how it works, but I've seen I've seen video of it. That's terrifying, straight up. One last thing I wanted to talk about, as far as production goes, how do we feel about the soundtrack.

37:12 This was Jerry Goldsmith's first completely electronic soundtrack, and all I can really say for it is that the movie had just started, the music comes up, and my son popped in from the kitchen and said, Tron, are you Tron? He was very excited. I thought, you can feel about this. I kind of liked it. I thought you're gonna say Jetson's at the opening of the movie. I understand he like incorporated a little bit of the Jetsons themes or chords indies. I read that. I never heard it. Yeah, I'm no good at that. I'm not enough of a musician to be able to tell. I'm not great with recognizing scores. You know. They they tend to disappear in the background for me, and they just they're informing my experience and my emotion whatever. But I'm not usually very conscious of it, except for like the big fat heroic themes that you get, you know, that are always obvious, But as far as like the atmospheric and the emotional stuff, it's usually disappearing in, you know, in the periphery of my awareness. So I don't I usually don't have a lot to say. I'm not I'm not Wayne. I'm not great, right.

38:17 That's why I love Wayne segments because he always opens my eyes to some really good stuff. But I will say this, when our score is really bad, it jumps out, and the worst one I can think of is Lady Hawk. You like Lady Hawk's soundtrack? Yeah, I disagree, I am. Now you need to listen to our Lady Hawk episode. I love Lady Hawk. I love Lady Hawk. It is an awesome movie that is nearly ruined by electronic. That was one thing that we did decide. It is one of those things in the movies where sometimes it's just a you either love it or you hate it, and the people that love it will always love it, and the people that hate it cannot be convinced otherwise.

39:01 But you know, I think I love it though. I mean, I love Goldsmith's decision just because you know, he's thinking about the type of story it is, and he's thinking about what's going to best serve the story and serve the setting, and he's willing to take, you know, step out and do something different he's ever done before. So I mean, all that's great, go all in. You know, I don't. I don't. I don't have anything bad to say about it, But I also don't have any specific thoughts about it either. So that just tells me that, you know that he did his job, and I would need Wayne in here to tell me about everything else that makes it good. Same, I agree, all right, we are going to take another quick break and then we'll have some final thoughts, and we'll wrap up our discussion of Runaway, and we are back discussing Michael Creighton's nineteen eighty four underrated classic Runaway.

39:53 Some facts about Michael Crichton. One thing that I just thought was just the crazy, like circular. Kind of story. On his first trip to Universal Studios when they were making the film The Andromeda Strain from his novel, he was given a tour of the studio by this young new director named Steven Spielberg, who twenty years later would go on to direct Jurassic Park. Huh, that's like, is that crazy or that that's crazy? Like here, Stevie, go show this guy era another piece of trivia.

40:36 He has a dinosaur named after him, the Critanosaurus. What is a type of ankliosaur. So the Ancliosaurs were the the guys that had like the armor plated shell and then they had like a tail with like a armor plated ball on it, and that was how they kind of, okay, you know, defended themselves against their predators. So yeah, it's a type of anklis or and it was found in China. Huh, I didn't know that. That's pretty awesome. And he also finally has an MD from Harvard. Yes, and went all the way through med school and did his residency and everything, and then he was like, you know what, the kind of like writing more.

41:22 Yeah, he's he's a scientist and trained as a doctor, never licensed, and he would just be like, I just would rather write or and then he goes, huh, I'd rather direct, and he just ends up falling into these incredible he's just like living life above the rim. I don't know all these incredible things happened to him, you know, it's it's it's it's a wild life story that he's had. I think by the time he was doing some writing while still in school, like he was, he was turning out these uh, these like pot boiler little action novels under a pen name while still going to medical school at Harvard. Okay, but by the time he was done with school and he just he was I think maybe disillusioned with medical field or disillusioned with doctors, and it was just like, I'd rather just write stories. So but but obviously, you know that type of scientific background and just that scientific mind. Obviously he's very intelligent. He's he's also you know, doing a lot of like really serious research and really developing scientific you know, ground like grounding and all of his stories that he tells and you can tell that he's just a it's a smart guy.

42:41 He's highly educated guy. So and that's that's one of the things that that I like about him is that his stories are smart, you know, and you can know that he's he's coming from a reality, from stuff that he's either either knows or he's gone out and learned. So I think that's that's pretty cool. Yeah, funny story. My my dad was the most well read person I've ever met, and he was trying to sell me. You know, we were always trying to find new things to read. You're always running out of stuff to read. And he was. Trying to sell me on Tom Clancy and he was like, it's like Michael Creighton, only like with military. And I'm like, okay, Well, as fascinating as I find the science that Michael Crichton writes about, I do not want to know the exact specifications of a Russian nuclear submarine Like that does not enhance the storytelling for me at all. So Tom Clancy was never gonna be my thing. But Michael Crichton definitely was that's.

43:38 Right too, Amber. I don't know if I'm on team member anymore. Oh, no, Lady Hawk. I love Lady Hawk. I like we're for the movie. I don't like the Lady Hawk soundtrack, and but I do love some Tom Clancy. I was reading all those novels back in the day. Oh boy, But. You're right, it is similar, or your dad was right. It is similar to Crichton in the sense that it's just some very real world research and some very real world ideas that are grounding those stories. You know, you can tell them to come in from from an educated place with all of that, and you can trust it. You can trust the storytelling. Like I said, he left medical school kind of disillusioned, and after leaving medical school he decided to study astral projection or a viewing and clarairvoyance because he believed all of these were real and that the scientific community had dismissed them too easily, and so he spent.

44:27 Well that explains why we have like a random psychic scene in this movie. And it was so casually included and runaway. Well, you need to go see the psychic Okay, yeah. She's in the house right now. I'll have her to your office. What kind of movie are we watching all of a sudden? Yeah, so I thought that was interesting. Like I said, he he was starting to write these little pot boiler and he dismissed them later as just it's just like hack work. But he was writing, under the pen name John Lane, a series of these action paperbacks through the sixties into the early seventies, and like I said, he would go on to kind of dismiss those. And you know, but here's his quote. I have a quote for you. Can I give you a quote?

45:12 Yeah, I have one too. I want to see if we have the same one. I'll die all right, Well that I can hold. I can hold off on the quote if you want me to let me hear it. Okay, it is related to these John Lane stories. That was his pen name. He said. My feeling about the Laying books is that my competition is in flight movies. One can read the books in it, he said. My feeling is that the competition is in flight movies. One can read the books in about an hour and a half and be more satisfactorily amused than watching Doris Day. I mean, that's a good stuff. Awareness, you know, He would go on.

45:56 Yeah. My quote was, I just pulled out the first line of his autobiography, which reads, it's not easy to cut through a human head with a hacksaw. Yikes. And I like, there's so many layers to why he would be saying that. It definitely makes you want to read the rest of the thought about it. I was gonna say, if I opened a book and that was the first sentence, I would be reading more. I would have to know where that was going to go. Right, how are we going with this? The only couple of things I got here is, first of all, in nineteen seventy six, he wrote a screenplay called Eaters of the Dead and they were they put they were putting a deal together, and he was going to direct it, and they were like getting set. They were like, they're in development. They were getting set to shoot it, and then for whatever reason, it fell apart and it never it never took place. And then in the late nineties it fell to John McTiernan and he directed it but renamed it Thirteenth Warrior. And so that's actually based on a story that Crichton did some uncredited like second unit work for, But that was one that was that was supposed to be his movie in the seventies, and it came out at the end of the nineties.

47:11 The other thing that I thought was cool was, you know he had done he had done Great Train Robbery with Sean Connery, I think, like in seventy eight, and around nineteen eighty he pitched doing what was basically what he called a modern day King Solomon's minds adventure movie, and it was gonna star Sean Connery, and so like everybody was interested, there were stars lining up, there was a bidding war for the film rights. He was going to write the book and all this stuff, like they were putting this whole deal together, and it fell apart also, and it never It never took place then, but would later see life in the nineties as the movie Congo, directed by Frank Marshall. So that his King, his modern day King Solomon's Mind's idea that he was gonna have Sean Connery in became Congo in nineteen ninety five. Oh wow.

48:04 And then to wrap that up, Sean Connery's final film role was as Alan Quartermain in the League of Gentleman Extraordinary Gentleman, a movie so bad that it may Son Conry Gatar. He's like, I'm out, I'm done. I'm gonna go play golf in the Bahamas. Oh my good, all these connections. This guy look like you said, he had his finger in just about everything, but he didn't really direct a ton of movies. So as we're kind of closing out this episode, we asked the question, if someone was unfamiliar with this director, which three films would you suggest that they watch? So I did tell you before we started that I fluffed the rules a little bit and branched out just slightly from the directing because I haven't seen all the movies that he's directed, and there are many to choose from.

49:04 So what is on your list? What would you have someone watch? So I would start with Westworld. So that came out in the early seventies, and it's the idea of robots going rogue. Uh and it's in a theme park, so there's a couple of recurring crighton tropes already showing itself in West World. I think, you know, you get your you get your bad science movie with Como, you get your bad robot movie run Away, and then you apply both of those to theme park settings and you get Westworld. In Jurassic Park. So so, uh yeah, West World. You know you're Brenner Josh Brolin and and it's kind of creepy.

49:46 I guess maybe it's a horror movie. I don't know, but it's a it's a science fixing movie with the dark edge. You know, they this tourist attraction that uses robotics and then they kind of go evil and then you have to like fight for your life. So to me, it's it's fun and it was a big hit, and it spawned sequels in a franchise and all that kind of stuff. So I'll definitely start with West World. Do you want to go back and forth to give you let's go. Let's go back and forth. My first choice was Coma. I absolutely love this movie. We did. It was part of our discussion over on Docking Bay. I think it was like our top seven of the seventies or something like that. But it's Jean villeve Bougeot and Michael Douglas and it's a medical mystery. You have people perfectly healthy people, you know. Tom Selleck pops up as a guy who's just having a knee reconstruction surgery and ends up falling into a coma and and never wakes up.

50:49 And so yeah, that movie. That movie creaked me out. That movie is so creepy. Yes, it is very creepy, but I love it because it's a rare instance of a woman in a medical field. You know, this is seventy eight, that was still kind of new territory, and she's very like career oriented. You know, she is not coming home and making Michael Douglas dinner. She's like, you make your own. You know, I worked all day, and she is, you know, kind of the leader of our story. So it's it's got a great female protagonist and a really creepy medical mystery for you to solve. It was actually based on a Robin Cook novel, which you know, it feels like it could have been a criton original story, Like it feels like a critoned story, but it also obviously feels like a Robin Cook story too, so you kind of see how he would be a natural choice to direct an adaptation of one of Cook's books.

51:47 So but yeah, that movie, that whole premise of that movie and the reveal in that movie, all of that just like preyed on my worst fears about surgery in general, Like I'm never going to the hospital again. Yeah, yeah, that was you. Are not putting me under? Which you remember two? Well, I had coma as my second one, so awesome. Yeah, you were back on our like. Minded So the third one I'll mention is the Great Train Robbery, which have you seen that one? Like when I was a kid. I need to rewatch it. I need to find where it's available to us. Came out in seventy eight. It stars Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland and it's a heist movie in England.

52:33 And a true story, you know. Yeah, And it's based on a historical fact. There was an actual Great Train robbery in eighteen fifty five that Crichton learned about while he was traveling Europe, you know, as you do when Michael Crichton. And said, I'm just gonna, you know, write a story back. Yeah, And so he he delved into this and he studied the real world story of what had happened, and he wrote a novel based on it. And the novel was a more serious tone. It was more of a straightforward accounting, I guess, or a dramatization of it. The movie tries to be a little lighter, tries to be a little more farcical, and I don't know if they pulled that off, but it was fun seeing a heist.

53:15 I love heist movies. I'm a sucker for heist movies, right same. I love the planning, Yeah, I love all the planning. I love seeing all right, here is all the security measures are impossible to beat, yes, and here's how we're gonna beat them, right and uh and then of course something has to go wrong and they got improvised and on. No, but I love I'm a sucker for that, that whole formula. I love heist movies. I don't think i'd ever seen one that was done like this and set in the eighteen fifties and in England, and it was, it was, it was. It was a fun and seeing Southerland and Connery working together. So I would recommend that. I thought that was honestly, that may I don't know. Coma's pretty good.

53:55 I think Coma and Great Train Robbery are Crichton's best. That's work. I think I think they're both. I think they're both better than Runaway. Well. I'm definitely putting Great Train Robbery on my to do list. My number two. Choice was Runaway. I just I love this movie. I think it's fabulous. And then my third choice, like I said, I cheated a little because it's my episode and I can, and I chose The Andromeda Strain, which was based on Michael Crichton's book and he did co write the screenplay, but he did not direct it. But this was my first introduction to his work. And you know, you talk about coma making like a real significant mark on your psyche, this movie absolutely like hit me hard, really just yeah, just the idea of you know, again, another medical mystery.

54:57 This one has a little bit of an extraterrestrial right twist to it, and finding out that there are places like you know, because I was a kid when I saw this, so finding out that there were places like the CDC and you Samred where you have to go through these layers of protocol as you deal with more and more infectious and deadly pathogens to get down to this super secure area where they're studying whatever this thing is and trying to figure out, you know, how to stop it and keep it from spreading and contain it.

55:38 And the whole thing to me was just completely fascinating and just always kind of defined in my head when you say, Michael Criton, that's immediately the first thing I think of, and the. Horror, the fear is that much more convincing because of how grounded all of the logic feels, you know, like it feels very realistic that this is something that can be happening. Yes, so you know that again, coming from that hard science background informing the story does a lot, you know, to to heighten the horror of of of what you're talking about. So yeah, because it's so simple. It's just like a satellite returns to Earth and it has a pathogen on it, like yeah, and you don't know what it out there, what you could pick up, I mean, and.

56:26 You don't know what scary things the military is working on down in their secret sub base, right Yeah, So yeah, I'm with you. There's a there's a horror. I don't know if everybody sees these as horror stories, but I see both Androma Strain and Coma as horror stories because they're preying on my fears and they and they seem so real with how you know again, all the researches. Well and even run Away, like you know, there's a a D movie parallel with maximum overdrive, where you know, the sheenes you know, come to life and attack us. All I mean, at this. Point, you know they're not there's a little bit we touch on AI, but they're not really you know, self aware, and they're not really you know, trying to take their own.

57:16 Control. But there is sort of that. You know, it's very easy to give personality to these objects that we use every day, you know, I know, in my computer glitches at work, I'm like, come on, a little buddy, work for me. Recognize that printer. You know it's there, all right? So final thoughts do we recommend seeing this film? I'm gonna throw you a curveball here. I don't think I could recommend this freely to everybody. This is not one that's near the top of my list. I enjoy this movie. I do enjoy it, but I enjoy it a little bit ironically, like I think it's it's a guilty pleasure. I put it in the guilty pleasure category.

58:02 I'm never fully convinced by the stakes. I think. I think maybe it comes down to these robots don't seem very scary to me. I mean, they're all very small and you can kind of kick them around. And yeah, like even the spiders, which are like creepy as heck, Like why nobody is stepping on them or kicking them out of the way or Yeah, they. Just don't seem like they'd be a huge problem, you know, And I feel like the actors are having to work really hard to sell the idea that these little bitty robots are so dangerous or you know, and even like the elevator fight, it I don't know, it's and you know, a lot of this also, let's be honest. You know, Gene Simmons is a great rock star, yes, but you know, he didn't have a movie career really take off. Uh you know, he was in he was in an episode of Mimy Vice. After this, he was in Wanted Dead or Alive. But I you know, his acting is a little bit one note in this and uh yeah, and I thought he was really over the top in that climatic scene. So I don't know, the movie never totally.

59:10 Yeah, the ending does kind of like fizzles. As great as and as much fun as the rest of the movie is, the ending's just kind of like and we're done. Yeah. I never quite understood why these little machines required police officers when it seems like you can just call a mechanic and the robots being so small it was. Hard all have an off switch. Like yeah, I mean, so it was you know, it's good seeing the tent. It was more The reason I enjoy this movie has a list to do with science fiction and more to do with just being like an action cop kind of movie. And it's good, you know, you know that part's good, but it's it just doesn't crank up very high for me, especially when you compare it to some of the other big movies that were coming at around the time. So I'm a little bit underwhelmed, But I do put it in a guilty pleasure category.

1:00:02 If I'm gonna recommend it, I'm recommending it with an asterisk by it. Yeah. I feel the same way. I would put this with one of those movies where I say, like, okay, we're doing all we're doing a robot weekend, you know, like what's out of the box that we can watch because we've already watched Terminair like twenty times, or putting it with something like Dreamscape, which is a. Great fun movie, but like neither one are like the highest of the high qualities, you know. So it's like, well, these are two fun kind of scary, you know, double feature kind of thing. So see, we're back on track. We're we like minded again.

1:00:43 All right, we brought it back around. Okay, all right, listeners, What did you think of Runaway? Have you seen it? Is it a guilty pleasure? Does it have fun memories? Did you watch it and say, wow, that's not the movie I watched when I was ten? Or did we get it wrong? Is it a great movie? Let us know what you think on social media. We are on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Check out wwwfilmbypodcast dot com for film and TV articles and our entire library streaming free. You can also write to us at a. Film by podcast at gmail dot com with your questions, comments and concerns. We may just read your response on the show and send you some film by swag. I'd like to thank you Jef Dave for being on this episode with me.

1:01:30 I had a great time. Well, thank you very much for having me. It's always a joy to come on a film Biden, no matter who's hosting, even if it's Jeff. You know, even if it's Jeff, it. Doesn't understand the greatness of nineteen eighty four. Well, we're gonna wame over one movie at a time. We'll work on them. Yeah, check me out. I did Apples and Oranges early this year with my son. It's a limited run where we stepped through the decade of the sixties, comparing the discographies of the Beatles and the Beach Boys in a series of one b one matchups. And so if you're a fan of either one of those bands, or if you want to learn more about either one of those check it out Apples and Oranges. And I've set up a public page called deaf Dave on Facebook. If you've been wants to join me there, I'd be glad to build that up. It's dot com slash the deaf Dave just public page. I'll come hang out with Me on one awesome And to all of you listening to the show, following us on social media, and subscribing to our Patreon, we thank you.