Transcript
Gene Hackman & Yahtzee (Hour 2)
Nite Lite with Pete Schwaba and Greg Bach · Thu May 1, 2025
You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune in to any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
Welcome back to Act 2 here tonight at Nightlight with Peach Waba.
I am Peach Waba.
Conrad is riding shotgun tonight.
And Jim Healy from UW Cinematheque and the Wisconsin Film Festival will be here shortly.
We're going to talk about movies he's seen.
Jim has seen more movies than any of us have put together, most likely.
And he's a blast to talk movies with.
Get into Gene Hackman a little bit, maybe some Michael Mann, some David Lynch, and it'll be fun.
But for right now, we just had our popcorn pick of the week from comedian Dobie Maxwell, who is here on the stream.
He picked the movie Smoky and the Bandit, an excellent choice, Mr. Maxwell.
Glad.
Hope it turns on some people to go watch it again, because it's still funny.
I think it will because I think that's like one of those movies.
I think some people will go back to watch it just to see if it holds up and other people will go back to see if it's just to get those laughs they got when they were a kid.
Very 70s, but it's, if you look through that decade in the CB radio, it's good.
Funny stuff.
So here's my story.
When I first moved to LA, you were out there about that time too.
96, I was there.
When were you there?
Okay.
I think I moved out there in 96 or early 97.
Right around there.
Yeah.
But we got a friend of mine in our building, this guy, Micah Gregory, who's an actor.
He got all these tickets to great stuff around LA.
So he was always offering us tickets to the Hollywood Bowl or this or that.
My wife and I went to see
a writer, and I can't remember his name.
It was just a writer of several TV shows doing a one-man show.
And one of the shows he was hired to do punch-up on was Smoking the Bandit.
And he tells the story on stage.
He was not a great performer, but his stories were phenomenal.
And he said,
All I wanted to do was meet Frank Sinatra.
That's the reason I took the gig.
I gave them some jokes, but I really wanted to meet Sinatra.
So he is in Bert Reynolds' trailer.
They're punching up a couple scenes.
And Bert Reynolds says, invites him to a party later after they wrap that night.
And the guy says, oh, you know what?
I actually want to go over to this bar, because as I understand it, Sinatra goes over there every night after shooting.
I've always wanted to meet Sinatra.
And speaking of the 70s, Bert Reynolds says,
Sinatra's not where the heat's at, baby.
I can't even tell you.
I've never been a huge Bert Reynolds fan, but I'm like, God, what a lame line that is.
Oh,
you're gonna hear that again.
You're gonna hear that again.
I love that.
Anyway, great pick.
Thank you
so
much, dope.
It's been fun having you here as always.
And let's talk about your, you got a comedy special and this is pretty cool.
I never stuck around long enough and stand up.
I don't know if I ever would have had a special, but I'll say this, when I see you guys doing them, it's so great and it must be like such a milestone.
Well, thank you.
It's called dry bar comedy.
It's clean comedy.
Kind of like the Tonight Show used to be, you know, back in our day, because again, I don't judge anybody's comedy.
I'm not a prude, but I think the average person does not want to see filth.
And a lot of times comedy has boiled down to that for a lot of people, not generalizing,
it is.
And a dry bar thing, it's like, they won't have you.
You can't drop any swear words, especially not any F-bombs.
And it's a 25 minute special.
It's a five camera shoot.
It's done in Salt Lake City, Utah, actually Provo.
And it's, they don't pick everybody to do it, but it's one of those things where it's an honor and it takes a while to come out.
So I recorded it last March.
It came out two weeks ago.
Nice.
It's titled Worst Case Scenario.
You can go to drybarcomedy.com, backslash, Dolby Maxwell.
Now, again, I'm not a shill.
It's a paid service, but it's $5.99 a month, but they give you a seven day free trial.
So you can watch a ton of comedians.
It's not just me.
There's a lot of comedians on it.
You don't have to pay anything.
And I think it's like $40 a year.
And if you're a comedy fan and you live in the hinterlands and you can't get to a comedy club, that's a lot of good comedians you can see.
There's hundreds of comedians for $40 a year.
That's not bad.
don't get it out of that, but I'm saying you can still watch it for free.
There's a two minute free clip that you can watch, but it's so funny because I bought myself a jacket, you know, it's 500 bucks.
I never, I don't have to spend that for my entire wardrobe up to date.
I'm thinking, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to go on TV and usually I go to the Goodwill and the leprosy section and I get a sport coat with a Yamaha in the pocket.
You know, it says, you know, Saul Goldscherwitz, but this one's got my name on the inside.
So I treated myself.
That's your actual name.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
He's got my actual name on it and it really, it.
turned out well and it was just two shows and like Carol Burnett used to do that and the second show is when they nailed a good one and then Tim Conway could make Harvey Corman laugh.
Yeah, that's because they had one in the can.
So I had a good one in the can so the second one and they spliced it back and forth.
It really came out well.
I got standing ovation at the end.
I'm not I'm not bragging.
I don't think it was a standing ovation.
Nice.
But you don't turn an audience down when they think it's they like it.
They liked it.
Right.
So the people there could not have been any nicer and the woman that they've done it for like I think
It's eight or nine years now.
It's been out right around there.
And the lady came up to me and made a point to walk across when I was walking out and said, what took him so long to book you?
You're the best guy we've ever had here.
But out of my bragging, I'm just saying, it took a lifetime.
You've been out on the skids.
You know how it is to work.
Comedy's hard.
took that about 40 years as this year I've been doing comedy for 40 years and it took that long to know what to do on stage and off, how to dress, how to treat people.
For example, one of the makeup girl came in between shows and she's touching up my face and she had the wrong tray of makeup and she's got, she's 19 years old.
She's got this look of terror on her face like she got the wrong stuff.
I said, sweetheart, there's nothing you can put on this post that's going to make it look any better.
So whatever you got, just spritz it up and she laughed.
Well, turns out her mother was one of the higher up.
at the production and that got back to her.
So before the second tape and she came over and said, thank you for being nice to my daughter.
It's her job and she's new.
It's like, well, you'd be nice to everybody.
You're a nice guy.
I'm a nice guy.
There's no reason to be a diva or a primadonna or anything like that.
So all, everything came together for that one night and it came out really well.
So you hope that corporate people, if you say, oh, this hot new guy, it got like 55,000 hits in the first couple of weeks it was out.
Boy, this new guy's funny.
It's like, well, thank you.
I'm the world's latest bloomer.
I'm not a new guy.
You know, Rodney hit it late.
Some people hit it late.
But if anybody, if you want to go there, it would really help me out.
And especially if you're in Wisconsin, you listen, it's not filthy.
about like a childhood stuff in this particular one, like just, you know, games.
I kept it pretty innocuous.
But I got a style.
If you've never seen me before, it's very bang, bang, bang.
I talk fast and it just kind of rolls.
It goes on a rift and it took a long time.
And people are like, Oh, I love your style.
I want to come out and see you.
So it's an honor.
It's a privilege.
And thank you for having me on to plug it.
I can't be so
early.
So where can people see you aside from the dry bar?
You just said you have a style if you like your clips have to be on YouTube, I would assume
you got the
yeah, you got the Yahtzee cup joke anywhere?
No, that's hilarious.
Thank you very much for remembering that.
I didn't do it on the dry bar special, but I haven't done it in a while, but I will do that one again.
Do you mind doing it?
Can you tell us the joke?
I don't want to perform your material for you, but
I haven't done it in a while.
But it's just like, you know, I don't have a chance to clean my apartment.
I'm so filthy that I had to get my Yahtzee cup out to find a clean cup to drink out of.
Shake, shake, drink, shake, shake, drink.
You don't take the dice out.
That's great.
You don't take the dice out.
Exactly.
So you just said you've been doing this for 40 years.
Yeah, I can't believe what that time
went.
I think people probably assume, oh, you're an old pro and you are.
But were you nervous?
Talk about like.
your first special, I think maybe it wasn't your first
special, but any
special you do, you're going to be nervous.
How did you deal with that?
Were you like, oh man, I finally got here, now I'm, how did you deal with the nerves?
Well, it got to the point, I lived in Salt Lake City, I had a radio show out there 20 years ago, and that audience is different.
I mean, kids, it's normal to have kids in the audience, and it just is.
So the age range is about 11 to 80.
the other two comics, they tape three comics a night, we do two shows each and there's two different audiences, but they happen to be women from New York.
And it threw them and I can totally see where it would.
They were very nice people and good comedians, but they didn't know how to deal with it.
I had lived there before, so I knew what to do.
And it's been 40 years, it's like the only thing I was nervous about is the plane gonna crash before I get out
I know what I'm
You know, and so the nerves are really gone.
I have other problems in my life.
That's not one of them.
Right.
At this point, I knew exactly what I was going to do.
I knew what I wanted to open with.
Elders talked about that because you have a strong opening, a strong closing.
What you do in between really doesn't matter.
So I had a strong opening and closing and it took 40 years to get there and I nailed
it.
That's fantastic, dude.
I'm happy for you.
Thank
you.
So do you have dates coming up, like live dates you want to share with us or any club
dates?
I wish I had had something.
I am on a sports talk station out of Milwaukee.
They want to do some statewide shows.
And it's just, I put a show together called Schlitz Happened, an old Milwaukee blast from the past.
And it's about Wisconsin stuff.
You know, and I want to do that around the area.
It's like, I've had my fill of road.
And I think people laugh just as hard in Krivitz or Rhinelander or Ashland or anywhere like that.
So I want to go around the state and do just local base shows.
My grandma's from Shano, grew up in Milwaukee, All-Star Wrestling.
things like that.
So that's what I like to do.
I like to put it together.
So if anybody listening has a theater or just, you know, 100 seats, if I can get 100 people to come out and pay a fare and buy a chachki or drink it, I can make a good living.
At this particular point, I live like a bug.
I just want to entertain and have fun.
You did a great joke.
This might not even have been part of your act.
It might have just been a line you threw away one night on stage, but you said my car's in really bad shape.
You could see the road while you're driving, which isn't so bad because you could just throw your Taco Bell bags.
I call it sun floors.
That's a concentration.
My feet are cold.
Put them on the muffler.
Shut up.
You are the second comedian that's been on the show in the last two days who's talked about how beautiful they thought Sally Fields was.
Oh, man, at that time.
Mike Schmidt was here last
night.
Yeah, he said the same thing.
I don't think she's ever been mentioned on the show before, and then two nights in a row.
Boom.
Babelicious back in the day and she kind of even it even as forest gumps mama So I can know what I'd take her out to an ice cream social
great great great after too Doby
Maxwell is
here.
He made the popcorn pick of the week.
He's a comedian You can see his Drybar special online.
It's a well worth the look all those specials are great and Doby crushed his so check that out Tell us we got a couple minutes left dope.
Tell us about the monkey in the middle.
You have a book that you wrote
Can people find that somewhere?
What's that about?
You know what, as a special gift to the Peach Wabba listeners, if you send me an email, I will send you a PDF copy for free.
I'll tell you the short version.
It's 380 pages.
I wrote every word, every punctuation mark myself.
My best friend, since we were kids, true story, robbed a bank that he used to work at in Milwaukee.
He robbed it twice.
Same bank.
He tried to blame one of the robberies on me.
Really true.
I had to wear a wire for the government to get him to confess that he did it.
And I sent my best friend to prison for six and a half years.
Oh no.
I'm glad you find that funny.
It's true story.
And the thing is- It's not funny, but it's justice.
He blamed
it on you.
He blamed it on me.
But the second one, he wore a gorilla mask and a tuxedo and helium balloons.
That's why it's called monkey in the middle.
And it was on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal.
It was all over the TV.
And the FBI thought I did it.
They said, that's exactly what a comedian would do.
Put a, put a gorilla mask on, make it funny.
People talked about it.
It was a real big deal at the time.
There's a lot of twists and turns.
There's funny parts to it.
There's not funny parts to it.
And I'll say, you know, people, I'll send you a copy.
99 people out of 100.
They read it and they love it and they'll buy it.
It's at Eckhartspress.com.
It's my producer when I worked at a radio station in Chicago, open his publishing company.
So it's a boutique publisher.
But rather than that, if you don't pay for it, I mean, it's a great story.
I can say it because I didn't make it up.
I just have that.
Everybody's got a best friend.
Who's your best friend when you were a kid?
When I was very young, I kid
you
Billy Amato.
OK, well, Billy Amato robbed the bank and you got to try to blame one on you.
And it's the hardest thing in the world in federal court to testify against your best friend.
But he did it, and I didn't.
And I had to do it.
I'm sorry.
Well, he robbed the bank.
I was just a wheel man.
But so I was abetting.
How much time you get?
I got off of the slap on the wrist, though.
Good.
My way to anything.
So how do we do this?
People email you and you'll send.
Yeah.
Is that OK or email?
I will send you.
I want to make extra work for Conrad.
But it's just my name.
Dolby D. O. B. I. E. Dolby J. Maxwell at gmail.com.
If you send me an email tonight before the sun comes up, I will send you a free PDF.
If you don't like it, there is no obligation.
But send it to
somebody you hate.
No one is not like that.
I'm just saying it's a true story.
But it's 380 pages.
I never considered myself a writer.
But I put that thing together.
It took 20 years before.
or I was okay in my heart to go back there.
It's hard to go back there in your head.
Email him and get the book and check out his Drybar special and watch his Popcorn Pick of the Week, Smoking the Bandit.
Thank you, buddy.
Always fun.
Thank you.
Can't wait to do it again.
Also, I need your mailing address.
You gave it to me before.
I have Conrad.
I got something to send you, and you talk about it on the air.
Oh, yeah.
OK, love
it.
Here it is.
No, I'm just kidding.
I'll give it to you.
All right, you got it.
Thanks again, buddy.
Have a great night.
See you soon.
Don't be Maxwell, ladies and gentlemen.
We are coming right back to talk movies with my pal Jim Healy.
And you won't want to miss this because he sees more movies than anybody, than everybody, I think, maybe, put together.
This is Pete Schwabba in Nightlight on the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get
started.
We are in the middle of act two tonight on nightlight with peach fava great to have you with me I think that's the second time I told that Bert Reynolds story because I feel I'm having some deja vu Could
We got some text We got to get to our question of the night folks is what is your favorite or least favorite emoji?
We'll get to your texts very soon
Right now I'm excited to have this next gentleman on the show.
He's been on the show before we've talked some movies Jim Healy literally watches more movies than anybody and I know literally gets used Thrown around a lot haphazardly, but Jim watches more movies than most of us have a right to He is one of the programmers at Cinematheque and the Wisconsin Film Festival and he joins us on the stream from Madison tonight.
Hey buddy Hey, P. How you doing?
How are you?
I'm good
You know so I have to tell this I I thought you were I didn't think you were mad at me Jim because we don't we've never really exchanged harsh words or Tried to date each other's wives or anything like that But I didn't hear back from you when I saw you at one of the parties and I said hey I texted you and I'd love to have you on the show But if it's not if you just don't want to be on the show that's fine.
He said no, I'd love to be on the show
And then you showed me your phone number and I realized I was texting your office phone for two months.
And I rarely hear back from office phones when I text.
So I'm glad we got this worked out and it's great to have you here.
I don't even pick up my office phone when it rings.
Of course it doesn't get any text.
We just saw a statistic tonight that said 65% of the people that get phone calls don't want to answer them.
They're scared of their phones.
So I guess I would put you in that category.
And that's not true that I don't answer it.
I do answer it, but I can tell you right now, I don't know how to dial out on that phone.
So I only use my cell phone to make calls when I'm in my office.
Oh, that's great.
All right, so let's do this.
Before we get into some movie talk, you've seen a lot of stuff.
I've seen a few things I'm anxious to discuss with you, but how did the Wisconsin Film Festival ended about three weeks ago?
Maybe not even.
Right.
Give us a wrap up and if you can Are there any films that you guys showed that people could look forward to seeing maybe that will get like a theatrical release or be available to stream soon?
I'm sure a lot of them will be probably more streaming than than theatrically released, you know, I know For example The surfer the this new Nicholas Cage.
Oh,
showed at our festival.
I didn't see it at the festival.
I missed it.
So I'm going to go check it out this weekend.
I know that's opening.
There's a really nice drama about aging called Familiar Touch, which I saw towards the end of the festival, and that's going to be coming out soon.
Friendship was our opening night film with Paul Rudd and Tim Robinson.
Getting released very very soon from a 24.
So those are, you know, just a few I you know, I didn't I missed the John and Yoko film one to one Yeah, when it was in the festival, but I saw it right after I guess it's kind of coming gone right now, but man, that was that was terrific
Really the documentary assume
Really good directed by Kevin McDonald who?
Started in documentaries and goes back and forth between documentaries that he made the one about
I think he made the one about Whitney Houston a few years ago.
He made Into the Void about mountain climbing and then he'll do then he'll do narrative films like he did The Last King of Scotland which won the Oscar for Forest Whitaker, really good director.
And and this is it's all about John and Yoko.
shortly in the years, the couple of years after the Beatles broke up and their activism during that time and their various art projects and it's just very moving.
And then there's some great concert footage from the one to one concert that they did with, you know, with a bunch of other artists, Stevie Wonders in there, and a bunch of other great performers too.
I don't know if you got a chance to see the movie threesome.
when it played there.
I did see it.
I thought it was fantastic.
And I thought maybe that's something that they would release in theaters because it has Zoe Deutsch.
She's pretty hot right now and a couple other young actors too.
I think that's the plan.
And I've heard great things.
I missed it.
I'm a fan of the director, Chad Hartigan.
Yeah.
In fact, he sent me an email about 10 years ago, maybe more saying,
you know would you would you consider showing my film this is martin bonner it was his first feature and
i ended
up seeing it at sundance and uh and programming it for our festival i can't remember what you're maybe 2014 2015 and it's one of the best debut features of all you know of the last 20 years or so and i and i saw the next film he made too called uh morris from america with craig robinson and that's also a very good film
It was great.
It was very thoughtful.
The characters were fantastic.
We had Ethan Ogilby, the writer on the show, one night.
Ben put me in touch, and Ethan was great.
And I got to talk to him a little bit.
He said, it's fascinating, Jim, because when Ethan was on the show, he said there's a moment in the film of about 30 minutes in where the entire audience gasps.
and nobody sees the twist coming.
So my wheels are turning and I'm watching this and I was sitting with Greg Liana.
We went to see it together and we're sitting there and he's like, has it been 30 minutes yet?
I'm like, I don't think so.
But then that moment happens and it's like, yeah, how did I not see this coming?
But it's just great.
And, you know, he did a great job in the script too.
So that was a fun one.
That's the best one.
You have those moments.
I'm really looking forward to it.
You know, I only program, I don't know, about
25 to 30% of the festival.
Maybe it was even less this year.
And so I saw what I saw and then I saw a few things leading up to the festival that Mike and my king and Ben Reiser had programmed.
And then afterwards I caught up with a couple of things, but I still need to do some catching up.
My new movie viewing numbers are down.
My numbers are kind of up where they usually are, but I've been...
I've been doing a lot of re-watching.
I had this Blu-ray and DVD collection and I had to start getting to them.
A lot of these things are on my shelf, still shrink wrapped.
I've been watching a lot of things I've seen before and enjoying that too.
That's okay too.
I hate when I say to someone, oh yeah, I saw that, but it's like.
20 years ago and I barely remember it.
So you feel like you kind of have to rewatch it.
All right, Jim Healy is my guest.
He joins us from Madison over the stream.
We're going to talk about Gene Hackman.
We'll talk about what Jim is seeing and what he can maybe recommend.
That's all coming up next after Civic Media's news team keeps you informed.
It's Pete Schwabba and Nightlight on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Annie from Watertown says, she's in the 920.
She says, from a gal that's not much of a meat eater.
If I had someone to cook for me, I'd go vegetarian, except BLTs and my mom's barbecue beef sandwiches.
But I love what we in Watertown call tiger meat.
Sort of suspect now without good butcher shops, but sort of suspect now without good butcher shops.
But yes, raw ground beef on rye with onions.
No ma, it wasn't the 27 beers, must have bed.
bad tiger meat.
Oh my God, that sounds just awful.
All right, we are talking movies here.
My pal Jim Healy is here from Madison joining us over the stream.
He is one of the programmers of UW Cinematheque, which is always free, a phenomenal place to watch a movie.
And Jim also, Jim, what is your actual title with the Wisconsin Film Fest these days?
Because I know you kind of segued somewhere, and I don't know if I have it correct.
Yeah, my king's now the artistic director and I'm just a contributing programmer to
the
festival I'm still director of programming of the cinema tech
You know I was in Madison last week for two nights and my shows over at eight and if I had timed it or been there on a better night I just love watching movies at cinema tech you guys booked such great movies.
It's such a great place You just feel like a film purist when you're watching a movie at cinema tech or something about it.
It's great
Well, tomorrow night we have our last regular show of the season.
We're gonna be back in late June for the summer, but we've got a 1925 John Ford silent Western tomorrow
night called
three bad men and we're gonna have David Drazen from Chicago playing live piano with the film.
Oh, I
love that That is so great and that's free, right?
Cinematheque is free to the public
Completely free.
It's so great
Let's jump in and let's talk about what we've seen.
You've seen Sinners and I want to start there because I have not seen Sinners.
The reviews are incredible.
The drop off after week one of the box office like set a record.
It was only 6%.
That's incredible.
What did you think of the film?
You know, I wish I loved it.
I admired it.
I'm really excited that, you know, such a
That's an original film, you know with lots of ideas is you know growing at the box I was clearly people are responding to it essays are being written about it, you know critics love it, but I just you know, I I Just wasn't carried along with it.
You know, it was entertaining enough.
I you know, I wasn't bored with it and and and there are some really really great performances.
I really liked Delroy Lindo a lot but but
You know, it didn't immediately strike me as a masterpiece.
I certainly wasn't, you know, carried along by it, you know, the way I am, certain films that just, you know, really moved me, I guess.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm still going to see it.
I'm curious.
I have to see what the hype is.
You know what I mean?
Like it's just gotten such amazing response from critics and audiences.
So I'm definitely going to see it.
Yeah,
absolutely.
It's the movie of the moment, you know, like it or not.
It's,
you know, right.
It's the thing to say.
What else did you tell me you saw today that I wanted to ask you about?
I have to pull out the texture because I thought I wrote it.
We
didn't like really like the one to one John and Yoko.
I think we talked about
that.
Right.
I was I saw working
man.
It was working man.
I wanted to ask you about
all working man.
Right.
Now you got you got Jason Statham.
with the director of the beekeeper, which, okay, I loved it.
It's not any great work of art, but as a piece of action, righteous vengeance, filmmaking, I was with it.
And I enjoyed the work.
I enjoyed the work.
I think it's A, working man is the title.
I liked it fine.
It's, I think,
Is it maybe like an old Sylvester Stallone script?
He's credited as writer.
Maybe he
wanted to
do it for himself at some point.
Really not sure.
Maybe it was something he developed for Statham.
But yeah, he's one of the co-writers on it.
And it's got a little bit of a Stallone feel to it.
And again, some righteous vengeance and some not so veiled politics.
But, you know, but also some some interesting politics too.
And, you
know,
it's fun.
It was it did the trick.
It's funny because you mentioned the beekeeper.
Pardon me.
I thought like I.
Both the beekeeper and a working man, they have great villains.
Like you just want these guys to die on screen.
You know, like there's such jerks and stay them as such a good guy.
But the patterns I've noticed in both films are those that we hate the bad guys and the hierarchy.
He has to work his way up through four levels of bad people.
And then.
I don't know why they don't do this though, Jim.
This drives me crazy.
And it could be easily fixed.
They just get sloppy.
Like, you've got all this great action in both Beekeeper and a working man.
And then at the end, he's just, there's a hundred guys shooting at him and they're just missing him.
And he's shooting.
I'm like, this could be fixed so easily.
I don't know why they do that.
Yeah.
Why does it have to be that, you know?
that hyperbolic, I guess.
Right.
Like they had me the whole way.
And now I'm like, and it's the same thing.
I don't know if you saw the movie Drop, but I liked that a lot up until the end.
And then it just got insane, you know.
I liked the trailer.
I wanted to check it out.
I just after the film festival, I stayed away from theaters for a little bit.
And then I started to come back out again, seen a couple of things this last week.
Let's talk about Gene Hackman you mentioned earlier when we texted.
They just discovered his actual cause of death and it was just such a, I mean, I would say it's tragic.
It's too bad he went like that, but he was 95.
He lived an amazing life.
So do you have a favorite Gene Hackman film?
I have several
and
that's hard.
It's really hard to put, you know,
a finger on my favorite, I mean, maybe the best movie he was ever in is The Conversation.
Great film.
And maybe that's his best performance too, I'm not sure, but we've shown The Conversation twice, once at the Cinema Tech and once at the Film Festival, and we could have put it on our schedule for the summer, we just put a very small tribute together.
And I'll give you a little bit of a tease.
of our summer calendar, which won't be announced till the end of this month, but we're going to do a three-film Gene Hackman tribute, and
I'll tell you the
three films we picked.
The first is French Connection 2, which we've shown the French connection before.
His performance in French Connection 2 is extraordinary.
In fact, I think he agreed to do the film of certain conditions of the script we're met.
One is that...
you know, Popeye Doyle gets addicted to the heroin that his nemesis is peddling.
And he has a cold turkey recovery sequence.
And it is just, I think it's a good 10 or 15 minutes of the film.
It's harrowing and disturbing, but also funny and odd and offbeat.
And he's just so, so good.
and really we're seeing.
The other two films we're showing, one is Scarecrow, which is his kind of Buddy Road movie with Al Pacino from 1973.
It's kind of a funny and sad movie about a couple of guys on the road.
Yeah, trying to make a living pursuing their dream of opening a car wash.
I love stuff like that and and the third film is is you know one that he probably Hackman himself probably lumped into that huge group of films he started doing especially in the late 80s all the way up through when he retired in 2000 that were kind of like that seemed like money jobs
But, you know, and some of those turned out to be pretty good movies and some memorable films.
And the one we're going to show is from 1990.
It's a remake of a classic film noir called Narrow Margin, directed by Peter Huyams, with cinematography by Peter Huyams.
He's one of the few directors who does and it's a really great looking action film at a time when
you know action films were kind of at their height you know it's like imagine the budget of a movie like cliffhanger this the lone film right you know it's shared by this this this little two-character movie thriller with Gene Hackman and Anne Archer where he's a he's a cop protecting a witness who he's actually
exposed and he's the one who's put her life in danger and he's trying to help her.
And almost the whole thing takes place on a train where the bad guys have boarded and he's trying to hide her on the train.
And it's a lot of fun.
Well, I saw that in the theater and I'm having trouble remembering it.
I think I saw that when I was in Chicago.
And again, yeah, I saw, I rented a recent movie or maybe it was Free Night Moves from Gene Hackman, which I had seen years and years ago too.
I love those 70s movies.
I just, I can't get enough of them.
And it's funny you say that about the noir, Jim, because when I was a kid, I wanted nothing to do with noir.
Like kid, meaning in college, it's like, get this out, give me cliffhanger, you know?
And now I'm just like obsessed with them.
Jim Healy is my guest.
He is the programmer of Cinematheque in Madison, UW Cinematheque, which is always free.
They have a Gene Hackman series coming up this summer, which will be fun.
I want to ask you something, Jim, a little off topic.
Last night, I had a friend of mine on, and he and I are both humongous fans of William Peterson.
And my two favorite films are To Live and Die of William Peterson, To Live and Die in LA and Manhunter.
Right.
Which
came out about six months apart, if I remember right.
Pretty close, yeah.
It was like two big films for William Peterson, a Chicago stage actor.
The chase scene, William Friedkin directed The French Connection, which has a famous chase scene.
He also directed
To
Live In Diane LA.
Personally, I like To Live In Diane LA better.
Maybe it had to do with where I was in life, whatever, is a more contemporary movie, at least back then.
But how do you rank those chase scenes?
I love the one in To Live In Diane LA.
Right.
Yeah, I do too.
The French Connection is really, it's kind of a very specific thing, right?
He's racing the train.
Like, being in a car, you know, and if you're taking the point of view of Peterson and his partner in the film, like, it's so much more harrowing, right?
Going the wrong way on a major LA freeway.
And so I don't know.
Is one better than the other?
I don't know if I would say so.
The chase and bullet is pretty good too.
And the one at the end of seven ups is pretty great.
There's actually a really good foot chase with Hackman chasing after Fernando Ray at the end of French Connection 2.
But for car chases, yeah, that's living in LA is great.
And it's also, it's very similar to French Connection, right?
It's like the lawmen who are
really, you know, shady and you're kind of maybe a little bit sympathetic with or at least you, you know, you see them as a different type of type of villain than you usually see.
And, and, and they're very they both have very ambiguous endings that kind of just end on a note of, you know, violence and despair.
And, and really, those are great films.
I couldn't believe when I was I was probably 18 when I saw
to live in Diane LA maybe not even I couldn't believe the ending I was like what just happened there like it was but I do these classic movie picks here at Civic Media every week and I to live in Diane LA was like a few weeks ago and I the research I had done showed that Fried can wanted to outdo himself and the chase scene in French connection with to live
Diane LA so Jim this is fun.
Thank you so much buddy.
I'm glad we finally connected and We didn't get to half the stuff.
I wanted to talk about but we'll do it again soon.
I hope
Any time, Pete.
Okay.
Awesome.
Thank you, buddy.
That's Jim Healy, folks.
Check out, well, check out next year's Wisconsin Film Festival, but also Cinematheque right there in Madison.
It's just a great venue to watch a movie, and they bring in such great films, too.
So definitely check that out.
We will be back to wrap this up in just a few couple minutes.
It's Peach Wabba and Nightlight on the Civic Media Radio
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
civicmedia.us.
I am Pete Schwab.
It's tomorrow night on the broadcast.
We will have Milwaukee film critic Matt Miller checking in from the Milwaukee Film Festival.
Mike Clemens will be here.
We'll kind of put a little bull on the draft.
It got to be like yesterday.
I'm like, how do we not talk to Mike about the draft?
So we'll get him on here for a few minutes tomorrow night.
Michael will give us what his experience was like at the draft.
And then it's a Bar Band Friday night.
Terry Barr will be here at 7.35 with some new tunes.
Going out to the text line our question tonight was what is your favorite or least favorite emoji?
And we've had some phenomenal answers Ed from Madison says He sent the devil one with the horn and he says we use this when texting about a particularly trying person in our building Funny that that person probably has no idea.
edgy.
I
that rather that than like, you know kind of cardigan Nothing against cardigans.
I have a couple
Jim from Appleton says favorite emoji.
He's got the smiley face the thinking emoji I like that one too, and then there's the thinking with the monocle That's a great one He's got the hang loose the peace and then the monkeys with their hands over their eyes ears and mouth Well done Jim a lot of thought went into that Tyler from Wisconsin Rapids says I think that may have been the ginger assassin from wasa who attacked your guest That's her style
Yes, she went down to Milwaukee to attack Dobie Maxwell.
Eric from Madison says, the one where the hands are high-fiving, but everyone thinks it's praying.
Oh, that's funny.
Is that a thing?
No, they're
Yeah, they're praying.
No, that's high-fiving.
That's prayers.
I like where he's going with that, though.
That's a new angle.
I never thought of that.
I like the fist bump.
Fist bump is kind of cool.
They're all cool when you first see them.
Yeah, and they release, you know, more emojis
Exactly.
We read Annie's.
We've got, oh, and then AJ from the 608 says, high P and C. Ooh.
That's not right.
Fighting words, AJ.
Conrad is very sensitive about his name.
Hi P and K. I'm sure she'll get right on that.
She says, I don't mind Jason Statham.
He's pretty typecast, but I enjoyed Crank and the Meg was fun.
Oh my God, the Meg was hilarious.
I've been fascinated with Megalodons since I was a kid, like a hundred foot shark.
Are you kidding me?
I have one in my backyard.
A shark?
A hundred foot one, yeah.
It's impressive.
You're a renter.
I trained.
You pulled that out.
You're the next Jason Statham.
Yeah, he's fun.
He's a great action hero.
I'm with you, AJ, for sure.
Statietti says, Pete, Goober's chocolate-covered peanuts are a perfectly good movie snack.
I was starting to like, respect, and giggle with your guest, Dobie Maxwell, until he said he eats raisin that's mixed with Goober's.
That has to be a mortal sin.
I hope Dobie is not Catholic, because if he is, he's going to hell.
Did you know raisinettes have been banned in Europe?
I did not know.
I don't know about the ginger assassin I don't know about raisinettes in Europe.
I don't know what's going on steady Eddie But he says Dobie eats Braunschweiger while watching Smoky and the Bandit I'm sure Smoky and the Bandit are both rolling over in their graves No, no, no puke emoji green face emoji say it ain't so I'm still gonna get Dobie's book because it's free favorite emoji.
Well, we know Eddie's
Eddie's a favorite emoji.
Sunglasses, sunglass smiley face.
It's me, steady Eddie, hee hee hee.
Thank you buddy, that's a great text.
Brian from Milwaukee says, favorite is rolling eyes.
That's the second rolling eyes one we've had.
And Brian says, favorite also is live long and prosper.
I thought that was Spock.
I thought that was like a star.
is, it is a Star Trek thing.
And is that the phrase, live long and prosper?
Admittedly, I'm the only person.
I don't know Lord of the Rings, and I don't know Star Trek.
I knew that sign.
You know, my friends, when we were younger, we'd always be like, some people can't do that.
They can't split, like their fingers down the middle.
I thought it was Mark.
And I could always do it, and they get jealous.
I could do like, you know, all, you know.
Look at that.
Yeah.
Some serious dexterity.
Some serious thing.
They got all the
girls when you were younger.
Hey girls, check this out.
Let's go play Four Square.
Brian from Milwaukee says it's Star Trek.
Yes, thank you, Brian.
Awesome text, everybody.
I'd like to thank all of you for being part of the show.
It's always so much more fun.
I'd like to thank Jim Healy and Dobie Maxwell for his popcorn pick of the week, which was Smokey and the Bandit.
I was texting while I was talking to Jim.
Whenever I have like a movie aficionado on, they always mention films and I've never seen The French Connection 2.
So I texted that.
I didn't want to forget about it.
And when I write stuff on my paper here, I just throw them out and I forget at the end of the show.
So I'm like texting my wife, French connection, prime cuts.
I'm texting her all these movies and she's probably like, what the hell is going on?
Narrow margins.
I got to give that another watch too.
So that was fun.
Do we have time for some Johnny Beener?
Yeah.
This is a clip.
I love Johnny Beener.
I've only gotten to know since I've been doing this show.
He's a great guest and this is a clip of his comedy.
My wife and I are doing our best.
It's hard with kids to get wife time, you know, our idea of going out and having a night out is basically waiting till the kids fall asleep and watching Netflix.
Here's how it works at our house.
One of us picks out the movie and the other one hates their life for 90 minutes.
And then we switch the next week.
That's Johnny Beaner.
Check him out.
He's hilarious.
Tony the trucker from the 608.
Oh, he's up.
Does this guy sleep?
I don't think so.
Tony says, Pete, I stand with Dobie.
Liver worst is awesome.
Best way to get your dog to take a... I can't see that.
Conrad.
Bath?
Pill?
Oh, pill.
Yeah.
Bath.
What's the liver worst at the tub?
Oh, thank you,
Tony, we'll expect to hear from you in about 12 hours, too, buddy.
Thank you, everybody.
On behalf of the lovable producer Conrad, good night,
Wisconsin.
The
national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
