Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
74:26 – 83:08… So they couldn't have any scenes where his character drove. And that's why for the final scene- Mathis is driving. Nora had to drive. Right. So there you go. Apex Mountain. Christian Slater. Yes. I kind of think so. I mean- I think so too. I think he thinks so. I think that he thought it was going to be Robin Hood. You know, I think that that was the next level was being in Young Guns 2, Arkansas, Dave Rudabaugh or whatever he played there. And then being in Robin Hood with Costner. And that was going to be, you're now a blockbuster movie star. And it just kind of never happened. Costner's accent wouldn't let …
The whole segment, as transcribed
And then apparently Christian Slater, his driver's license had been suspended for the second time in two years over DUS. Yikes. So they couldn't have any scenes where his character drove. And that's why for the final scene- Mathis is driving. Nora had to drive. Right. So there you go. Apex Mountain. Christian Slater. Yes. I kind of think so. I mean- I think so too. I think he thinks so. I think that he thought it was going to be Robin Hood. You know, I think that that was the next level was being in Young Guns 2, Arkansas, Dave Rudabaugh or whatever he played there. And then being in Robin Hood with Costner. And that was going to be, you're now a blockbuster movie star. And it just kind of never happened. Costner's accent wouldn't let it happen. No, it did not. But this was the moment when the way that he was treated and shot in Heathers and in this convinced everyone, we were saying convinced us, that this was the next leading man. He wasn't just a character actor. He was a leading man because he had that charisma. And what kind of a movie gives an actor, a young actor, this many monologues just to cook? Well, and then when he's in True Romance, we're like, yes, I fucking told you. I knew it was going to happen. And then it never totally happened. Samantha Mathis, not just her Apex Mountain, but I think we should change the name of Apex Mountain to Nora De Niro Mountain. It's fine with me. Apex Mathis. Or just at least put her face on it. Man, great job by her. Pirate Radio. I think this is the apex. Right? Yeah. This was... There's a movie called Pirate Radio with Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2009. And it was not as good as this. Yeah. So I think you may be right. That's him on a boat off the coast of England, right? Yeah, which apparently those rave era Pirate Radio DJs inspired Alan Moyle to make Pirate Radio a thing in this movie. Right. But I agree. This was its best. My buddy Gus inspired nobody, apparently. It's too bad. He was three years ahead of Hard Harry. This is tough. Apex Mountain. The Pixies? Were they still together in 90? Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. They had 89, 90. So they still had two more records at least. To come out. I mean, this is coming off of Doolittle. So it's pretty big deal. It's right in the range. Is this a bigger Pixies drop than Where Is My Mind in Fight Club? And in every television show since. Sure. I think it is. Just because it's so perfect. Counter argument is that you can actually still watch Fight Club, I guess. Fair. It's viewable. Yeah. I mean, it's Apex Mountain in the sense that this was... Because Pixies were the ultimate that band and that they never got big. But the coolest person you know had the Surfer Rosa tape. And getting to hear it and having some... It was a password of sorts. And this is right at the peak of it. And it introduced them to the most people, but not a ton of people because the movie failed at the box office. So I can see that argument. Where Pixies versus Replacements, which was the bird in magic of the late 80s, beginning of the 90s, where did you guys ride? I'm a Replacements person. Yeah, I was a Replacements person. I was Pixies from where they came from. Can I suggest... There's some Massachusetts ties with them. I think I actually had a couple of high school girl experiences that were wrapped around the Replacements that tied me to them. I was just alluding to my own Nora who gave me that tape. Yeah. Is this Apex Mountain for flipping switches? Because every time he flips a switch in this movie, the sound design is so satisfying. Great point. This guy is essentially like Phil Spector. I think he has more control over sound than our producer Craig does right now. And it's 30 years later. Don't tempt Craig. It's incredible. And it's a warm sound. It's analog. Bill, is this movie Apex Mountain for P.O. boxes? So I had that next. Yes. The answer is yes. Because they take a real dent to P.O. boxes with the Unabomber. Unabomber killed P.O. boxes. Yeah. It's not in the first paragraph of his Wikipedia, but it's just a fucking fact. One of the many shitty things about the Unabomber, murdered P.O. boxes. Did you ever have a P.O. box? I actually, I did when I had my old website. When we were selling T-shirts and stuff, I had to get one. It was surprisingly easy. You can see how it went so badly for psychotic people. Did you put on wraparound shades when you went to check it? Like, were you paranoid? I did. The degree the mark was? I did. I actually kind of, you know, when my website that first year when it was like AOL only and, you know, basically by word of mouth, people had to read. This movie was like a movie that really resonated with me. It was like, you're throwing stuff out there. You have no idea if even one person's reading it. And then you get an email from somebody who liked the piece. You're like, oh my God, that person read it. It's very similar to the hard hairy thing when he would get these stupid emails in the P.O. box. He'd be like, oh, or letters. That's what writing for magazines was like. I mean, that's what every experience of trying to express yourself was like pre-internet, right? Like you'd write a review in a, like when we were writing for Spin, we put like an inside joke or a reference to something we cared about in a record review. And you have no idea if anyone got it or liked it or even read it. Also, because the only letters we got at magazines were from prisoners because they had a lot of time to write letters. That's true. We talked about when we did the Silence of the Lambs podcast, we talked about this. Just how in the 90s, you just had no idea with so many things. Where, you know, like the Buffalo Bill, my friends and I, James Gum, we used to have so many jokes about him. And we thought we were the only people with James Gum jokes. We thought this was exclusive to us, this James Gum thing that we had. And then the internet happened. It's like, oh, everyone thought this was funny. Hard Harry's voice harmonizer has a little James Gum to it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Last Apex Mountain, just the pre-nevermind alternative college radio era. I think you could really say 90 was the peak. Because 91, it starts to shift. 90, it's still just completely pure. Yeah. I just wanted to throw that out there. It's pre-grunge, pre-Lollapalooza. Yeah. You couldn't make a soundtrack like this just a few years later. Picking Nets. I had, I mean, we talked about it, but how easy it would have been to figure out Hard Harry's identity. And did he have the dumbest parents on the earth? I think those two questions are related. The moment they hear about this pirate radio kid who goes to high school, the dad is then really like, hey, you know, I did get Mark all that short radio stuff. Like, never, light bulb never goes off. He is in the basement. Like, we have no idea what he's doing. And it's not like the wall rotates, like he's got a hidden shelf like Scooby-Doo. Right. He basically has all this shit sitting out there and is down in his basement and is like, don't even talk to me for hours on end. But the movie also tells on itself because when Nora is there, they're like, we could hear you talking. Once they say that, it's like, our son needs to be institutionalized. They must be drinking a lot of Chablis. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, speaking of talking and voice, the biggest nit for me was related to my other obsession with the phone. The movie tries to hide this from us, but when he's on the phone with people, there's no voice masking. So the people that he calls just hears Christian Slater's voice. And all he has to do is say, answer one thing in English class. And those girls who are pranking him are like, oh, that's you. Done. Yeah. That's what Harry. Done. Yeah. There's a lot of ways he should have been found out. I also think, I just know from experience from my buddy Gus, when he was Chuck Stevens for GCD radio, the pirate radio signal is just not that good. Yeah. You're going to be able, and that's why it's actually pretty authentic. When the weirdo kid is like, this is the best place to get the reception. He must live around here or whatever, but you're just not getting it all over the town in Arizona. There's going to be pockets where you don't get it at all. That they, they kind of come and go from that. And then him being able to be in a car doing a pirate radio show is completely absurd. I don't know what kind of technology. He attaches it to a car battery. It's absurd. Yeah. There's no way. Zero percent chance. What else did you have for picking nets? Um, I think for me, yeah, I think we covered it. For me, it's all related to just how obvious that it's him.
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