If you liked that one, or even if you didn’t, here’s another story form my days as a projectionist at that college. If you didn’t click the link, the opening line that one of my jobs was “facilitating” film showings. I thought it was a cool way to describe it on my resume, but most of the time it wasn’t all that cool.

There was a 640-seat auditorium in the building where most of the screenings took place, which gave them a certain sense of importance. At the time, students didn’t have easy access to many of the assigned films, so attendance was usually strong.

The real complication was that the Dean of the college was an older gentleman who liked the idea of showing movies on actual film. So the school still owned several 16mm projectors.

Showing a movie on 16mm was a process.

You had to thread the film from the supply reel through the projector gate and onto a second reel in the back known as the take-up reel. As the movie played, the take-up reel collected the film. Afterward, everything had to be rewound onto the original reel so it could be returned to the university film library properly.

This was a lot more serious than forgetting to rewind a video store rental.

Most feature films arrived on three or four reels, each running roughly thirty to forty minutes. That meant using two projectors side by side and switching between them during the movie.

The signal for the switch was what projectionists called a “cigarette burn”—a small white circle that briefly appeared in the upper-right corner of the screen near the end of a reel. Once I learned of this, I could not watch movies the same anymore. I always saw the cigarette burn until theaters started using digital projectors.

Still, if you timed the switch correctly, the general audience never noticed. If you timed it poorly, everyone noticed.

For films longer than two reels, things became trickier.

While projector #2 played reel #2, I had to rewind reel #1, load reel #3 onto projector #1, thread it in the dark, and make sure the lamp and sound were off so I didn’t accidentally blast random frames and noise into a packed auditorium.

It was a juggling act. But when it went well, I felt strangely proud of myself.

The students probably never noticed. But I always did.

These screenings were the hardest part of the job, which is why one of my first requests for the department was a DVD player. Once we got one, I quietly switched most screenings to DVD. I never mentioned that to the Dean. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Besides, this wasn’t film school.

Still, a few titles weren’t available on DVD yet, and one of them returned every year like a tax bill.

It was a special educational cut of Nicholas and Alexandra, the historical epic about the fall of the Russian royal family. The original film ran over three hours, but the university had acquired a shortened version on 16mm for classroom use.

The Social Science department screened it every November. Which meant every November, so did I.

I dreaded those days every year, but one year was worse than the others.

Everything began normally. I set up the two projectors, threaded reel #1, dimmed the lights, and started projector #1.

Then I zoned out for a few minutes, having already seen enough of Nicholas and Alexandra for one lifetime.

When I looked back, I saw the take-up reel wasn’t turning.

Film was pouring onto the floor.

In a frenzy, I tried spinning the reel by hand, but several feet had already piled up around my shoes. Worse, the reel change was only minutes away, which would require both hands.

When the cigarette burn appeared, I let go, shut off projector #1, and started projector #2.

The movie continued.

I then dragged out a third projector and hurriedly loaded reel #3, since projector #1 was clearly finished for the day. Somehow I got it ready in time and made the second reel change without disaster.

Meanwhile, reel #1 lay beside me in a heap like cinematic spaghetti.

When the Russian Revolution finally ended, I dropped to my knees and began winding the tangled film by hand. It had to be rewound properly so it could be shown again the next day. Mostly, though, I wanted to throw it in the trash.

As I sat there wrapped in loose film like a mummy, someone knocked on the projection booth door. It was one of the professors. I expected criticism. Maybe a complaint about a rough transition or a slight delay.

Instead, he looked down at me kneeling in the pile of film and said:

“Matt, that was the best screening we’ve ever had. Thanks.”

Then he closed the door and walked away.

Even though I could have used some help at that moment, it instantly became the best screening I ever had.

I never projected movies at my movie theater job. I never physically pressed play on anyone’s VCR when I worked at Video Showplace. But that day, hundreds of students watched a near-flawless screening because I kept the thing alive through panic, luck, and stubbornness.

A few years later, the film library finally made me a VHS copy of the edited Nicholas and Alexandra, and I never had to run it on 16mm again.

But that time, I facilitated it. And for once, I actually knew exactly what that meant.

Thanks for reading, as always. Please check out my podcast, and if you feel like contributing in ways other than subscribing, you can Buy me a Coffee. Also, feel free to drop me a line or comment if you happen to have old film screening stories.

Keep on keepin’ on.

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Sometime in 1985, my family got cable. I was nine years old, and it felt like the world suddenly got bigger. I don’t know if kids today can fully grasp what a big deal that was. Maybe they could if they went from six streaming services—one of them barely working—to a hundred overnight.

With cable came MTV. And with MTV came professional wrestling.

Wrestling didn’t just entertain me—it imprinted on me. It gave me heroes, villains, and a clear sense of right and wrong. And at the center of all of it was Hulk Hogan, a blond, tanned superhero who seemed invincible and spoke directly to kids like me. For a while, I believed every word of it.

But belief is a funny thing. You don’t always lose it all at once. Sometimes it fades slowly, long before you can explain why.

With MTV came the Rock ’n’ Wrestling Connection, my first real exposure to professional wrestling. It paired Cyndi Lauper with WWF good-guy wrestlers in a battle against the forces of evil - basically, bad guy wrestlers. It all escalated at a Madison Square Garden event called The War to Settle the Score, broadcast on MTV to massive ratings. The main event featured “Rowdy” Roddy Piper challenging WWF Champion Hulk Hogan.

After Piper was disqualified due to outside interference (in reality, Piper refused to let Hogan pin him), he and his ally Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Orndorff continued the beatdown. Lauper tried to intervene, Piper and Orndorff threatened her, and suddenly Mr. T jumped the guardrail and chased them off. That moment set the stage for the first WrestleMania—and created a lifelong wrestling fan in me.

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By that time, Hulk Hogan was the guy. Tanned, blond, and billed as having 24-inch biceps—his “pythons”—he was a real-life superhero who told kids to train, say their prayers, and eat their vitamins, his so-called “three demandments.” Fans ate it up. To his credit, Hogan played the role expertly and helped ignite a wrestling boom unlike anything seen before.

But it hadn’t always been that way.

In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Hogan was a villain, feuding with heroes like Andre the Giant around the world. While working for the then-WWWF, Hogan asked for time off to film Rocky III. WWWF owner Vince McMahon Sr. hated the idea of wrestlers breaking character to appear in movies and refused. Hogan decided to quit and do the movie anyway.

That decision paid off. After the exposure from Rocky III, Hogan could write his own ticket in wrestling. He became the top star in the AWA until Vince McMahon Jr. lured him back with more money and a plan to expand the rechristened WWF nationally using cable television. Hogan was to be the cornerstone. McMahon bought up smaller promotions for their TV timeslots and raided talent from those who refused to sell. The AWA didn’t survive.

For the ensuing years, Hogan ruled wrestling, headlining sellout after sellout—including WrestleMania III against Andre the Giant, still one of the largest indoor crowds in wrestling history (despite WWE’s famously inflated numbers). Hogan faced a rotating cast of villains, but the matches grew painfully formulaic: the comeback, the “Hulk up,” three punches, a boot, a leg drop, maybe a body slam if the opponent was fat, and then the posing. If you’ve ever seen any athlete cup their ear to the crowd, this is where they got it from.

The formula became so ingrained that Vince’s mantra backstage was simple: No matter what happened during the bout, in the end “Hogan must pose.” And why not? The money kept pouring in.

But the cracks were forming—at least for me.

As I entered my teenage years, Hogan’s act felt stale. I gravitated toward the more athletic, less preachy “Macho Man” Randy Savage. So did the WWF. In 1988, Hogan and Savage were put together to form the “Mega-Powers” tag team, and Savage briefly took the top spot while Hogan left to star in No Holds Barred, playing—showing his range—a heroic professional wrestler named Rip Thomas.

The movie flopped. So they brought the film’s villain, Zeus (played by Tiny Lister), into WWF storylines in an attempt to squeeze out more money.

By 1990, Hogan’s act was undeniably tired. He dropped the title to the Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VI—though not without theatrics that suggested he’d be back. He then starred in Suburban Commando, another box-office dud. True to form, by WrestleMania VII, Hogan was champion again, defeating Iraqi sympathizer Sgt. Slaughter in one of the more bizarre and tasteless storylines of the era.

A year later, the cheers were softer. Merch sales dipped. Vince McMahon was under investigation for steroid distribution, and Hogan—39 years old and very much emblematic of the problem—was asked to step away. But when WrestleMania IX struggled to sell tickets, Hogan returned, wasn’t even booked in the main event, and still walked out champion. And yes, at the end of the night, Hogan did pose.

Three months later he was gone again, but this time, Hollywood didn’t want him either. Mr. Nanny bombed. Thunder in Paradise lasted one season. In 1994, Hogan jumped to the rival promotion, WCW, with heavy creative control, brought his friends along, and initially boosted business—until fans started booing the same tired act.

So WCW did the unthinkable in 1996: they turned Hogan heel. Training, prayers, and vitamins were gone. Enter “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan.

It worked—briefly. WCW overtook WWF on the strength of Hogan and the nWo. But Hogan still couldn’t let go of the spotlight. He constantly beat fan favorites, spray-painted them, and even brought back the Ultimate Warrior just to get his win back. He made more forgettable movies. WCW soon spiraled.

By the late ’90s, WWF was pushing fresher stars like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and The Rock, while Hogan felt very obsolete. The old formula no longer worked.

Until nostalgia kicked in.

After Vince McMahon bought WCW in 2001, Hogan was brought back home in early 2002. At WrestleMania X-8, Hogan faced The Rock in a battle of ages—and the crowd lost its mind. Suddenly, it wasn’t “Hogan must pose,” but “Please, Hogan. Please pose.” It was a great moment, and it marked the peak of his late-career run.

Then came the scandal.

In 2015, secretly recorded audio - during a sex tape, mind you - surfaced in which Hogan used racial slurs repeatedly and admitted, “I am racist to a point” in regards to his daughter’s black boyfriend. WWE cut ties immediately. Hogan later sued Gawker for publishing the tape and won $140 million, bankrupting the company in a landmark privacy case. Being racist had never been so profitable.

He apologized, blamed his upbringing, but in 2024, while campaigning for Donald Trump, made racist and sexist remarks about Kamala Harris, asking a crowd of Trump supporters if she was “Indian” and if she should “bodyslam” her. Subtlety was never his strong suit.

That was the last most of us saw of him. Hogan died in July of 2025 of a heart attack following neck surgery. Some speculate complications, or years of steroid use weakening his heart. I’m no doctor, but if I were, I might list the cause of death as bad karma.

When Hogan died, I read a lot of tributes about what he meant to people. How he inspired them. How he was their hero. And I kept wondering why I couldn’t quite access that feeling anymore. Why I couldn’t just like him the way I did when I was twelve.

The truth is, I think I stopped believing in Hulk Hogan long before the sex tape, long before the politics, long before the lawsuits. I didn’t have the language for it yet, but I felt it. The act grew stale. The posing felt empty. The wrestling business always had to bend back toward him. He would fail in Hollywood and just return to his wrestling throne like it was something that he was owed. Even as a kid, something about it didn’t sit right.

So when the rest finally came out—the racism, the ego, the entitlement—it didn’t feel like a betrayal. It felt like confirmation.

That’s the strange thing about idols. We think we abandon them, but sometimes we’re just catching up to what we already knew. Hogan didn’t ruin my childhood. He just stopped being able to hide behind it.

I still enjoy wrestling. I still watch it, forty years later. Hulk Hogan was the doorway, not the destination. Once I walked through it, I didn’t need him anymore.

I guess that’s what growing up actually looks like.

Thanks as always for reading. Please consider liking, sharing and subscribing. And if you really want to help, I have a few demandments of my own: I have a comic that I wrote, an Ebay storefront that sells some wrestling merchandise, and I do a podcast.

Thanks again, bruther!

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Today’s post is about Matt Dursin at 50. Let’s see how fun we can make that movie.

I’ve actually felt old for a long time. When I worked at Boston University, I managed a staff of work-study students who were mostly 19 and 20, and even when I was only a few years older than them in my mid-twenties, I would feel old when they didn’t know a movie reference I made or song lyric that I knew. I always thought that I just knew more stuff when I was their age.

One time, Bob Dylan played a free show near BU, and one of my students asked if he was Jakob Dylan’s dad. That really sucked.

As time went on, and I grew much older than the 19 or 20 year olds that I managed, it still stung when I would discover how little they knew, but I wrote it off as youthful ignorance and just figured they would learn as they got older, like I did.

I still didn’t really feel old until I was in my 30’s and I was seeing a chiropractor for my bad back and a physical therapist for a frozen shoulder (both of them, in fact). I started wearing knee pads when I would go for a run because my knees hurt all the time, and I was taking tons of aspirin to deal with constant body aches. I started losing my hair, which didn’t help matters. I was also drinking a lot, but that probably wasn’t related.

I assumed that would pretty much be my life for the next 40 or so years. Then, I spent my 35th birthday in a hospital bed with a horrible lung infection and thought maybe I should change things up. Over the next few years, I started being a little more conscious of what I was eating, wearing actual running shoes for running and sleeping on a decent mattress. Everything except the drinking. I kept that up.

In my forties, all the jokes I would make about being old were no longer funny, because while 40 isn’t exactly old, it’s no longer all that young. A friend of mine put it perfectly on my 40th birthday: “Halfway home!”

That year, David Bowie died just shy of his 69th birthday, and everyone remarked how young that was. How could I complain about being 40? But I couldn’t help it. I just felt damn old. Tom Brady accumulated more yards and touchdowns in his 40’s than in his 20’s, and won 2 Superbowls, even becoming the oldest Superbowl MVP, and all everyone could talk about was how amazing all that was considering how old he is. And he’s younger than me.

I use Brady as an example because I’m from New England, but it’s everywhere. Actors, athletes, politicians, everyone is either too young or too old. People made fun of Joe Biden because he was too old, and so they voted for a creepy old man who was given a cognitive test just for funsies, and he did better than anyone had ever done ever. Let’s face it, It doesn’t matter what age he is, that guy is out of his tree.

But how can you not focus on it? Commercials for colon cancer screenings, erectile dysfunction, “even “homeowners turning into their parents.” How does one not look at that and say, “Yep, that me?”

But I am 50, and I don’t see a chiropractor anymore, and my shoulders are no longer frozen. I don’t need knee pads when I run, but I mostly bike these days, anyway. I drink less. Way less. I physically feel a lot better at 50 than I did at 40. That’s really all that matters.

I think that’s the biggest difference. I have come to terms with all of it. I wouldn’t care if I knew a 19 year-old who doesn’t know who Bob Dyan is. I wouldn’t care if they haven’t seen the same movies that I’ve seen. I probably haven’t seen any of their favorites, either. I’m 50. Who am I trying to impress with my film-going resume? I’m just trying to get through the day.

This not caring thing feels great. I highly recommend it. All I really care about now is that I’ve been waiting years to be able to post this:

Thanks for reading. As always, keep on keepin’ on. By the way, that’s a Bob Dylan lyric.

Nez had a very eclectic career outside the Monkees, which as I said, included filmmaking, and in 1988, he was the executive producer of a movie I loved as a kid, even though most of the gags went sailing over my head. The movie was called Tapeheads. Starring John Cusack and Tim Robbins playing owners of a very small, up-and-coming music video company who end up embroiled in a political scandal, all while trying to help their favorite childhood band, the Swanky Modes, get back into the spotlight. Remember, it was the late 80’s, so not only were music videos still a thing, they were THE thing. When I got cable in the mid-80’s, I pleaded with my parents to get the package that included MTV, because it was really the only reason I saw to get cable (My parents were very opposed to paying for HBO or Cinemax because of the late night skin flicks) Everyone was into music videos, but I had never seen a movie about who made them. The funny thing is, I don’t think I’ve even seen another movie about two young guys making music videos.

Tapeheads is very much a product of the time, so while it may seem very dated, it is still very relevant. It’s really a difficult balance between them. Sure, hair and clothing styles change and music videos aren’t really a thing anymore. But with Tapeheads, I feel like the filmmakers were leaning into it, showing the audience how ridiculous this world could be even while they were living in it. I may have missed a lot of the jokes, but even a 12 year-old me living in the late-80’s knew that it was all pretty silly; the record exec whose window washer uses spit to clean the windows, the rapper selling chicken and waffles or the Menudo concert that never really happened.

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The movie is also pretty relevant to today’s world, especially the political aspect. One of the jobs our heroes are hired to record is a fundraiser event for Presidential hopeful Norman Mart. It turns out that Norman has a little thing for dressing up as the fairy godmother while cavorting with women who are not his wife, and recording it for his later pleasure (I assume). During the event, said woman declares that she is going to use that tape to blackmail Norman, and while making her escape, bumps into Robbins, and while they are recovering, she slips her scandalous tape into his bag, confusing it with all the others.

Robbins and Cusack eventually become an overnight success due to a music video they shot becoming a hit, although only because the band died tragically. After meeting their childhood heroes, The Swanky Modes, in a bar, they decide to help revitalize their career by putting on a live concert broadcast. They have to bump Menudo, but hey, it’s show biz.

In the end, Norman Mart and his henchmen end up at the venue and he gets his hand on the sex tape. Robbins offers to play it to make sure it is the correct one, but instead broadcasts it over the air to all the networks that were ready to show the concert. So, Norman Mart’s sexcapades, including his bare behind, are shown all over the country, thus ending his political career. See how easy it could be to get rid of a sleazy politician? No one in particular, of course.

Ok, I’m side-barring here but here are Norman Mart and our President side-by-side. It’s a little uncanny how similar they look, alm ost 30 years before Trump was elected in 2016. Why do we keep electing old, white dudes in this country?

I look at this movie as the more things change, the more they stay the same; a low-budget indie movie from almost 40 years ago that I only discovered because it was produced by a Monkee, which is about two guys who want to make music videos, is more poignant than a lot of movies being made today. The way the two stars luck into fame by botching a video transfer, the aging band that relaunch their careers by playing a big live show, and obviously the politician involved in a sex scandal. At least none of the women he was cavorting with looked underage. In fact, one of them was played by Courtney Love.

That is actually another fun part of the movie. There are cameos by several famous musicians, including Ted Nugent, Weird Al Yankovic and even Nesmith himself. It’s almost a tribute to the music business itself, at least, as it once was.

MTV no longer even shows videos anymore, because reality TV gets better ratings and brings in more ad revenue. There are plenty of other platforms that could show music videos, but you have to go looking for them. It’s a lot harder to discover new artists without Kurt Loder appearing on MTV News to tell me that they are worth watching. But hey, I can watch hours and hours of Catfish if I want

Tapeheads represents a different time, a simpler time, and at least the way it is portrayed by the movie, a much funnier time.

Thanks for reading. We did a podcast on this movie too, so you can listen to that here and consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, or sending a little my way via Buy Me a Coffee.

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The story of The Rock goes back generations in the wrestling business. You may have learned some of this on Young Rock—if you were one of the few people who watched it—but it begins with his grandfather, Samoan High Chief Peter Maivia, who wrestled in Hawaii before touring the world. At one stop, his daughter Ata met and married fellow wrestler Rocky Johnson. From that union came a son: Dwayne.

Dwayne didn’t head straight into wrestling. Instead, he pursued football, even playing defensive tackle for the national champion Miami Hurricanes in 1991. After graduating in 1995, he went undrafted by the NFL but was picked up by the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. Two months later, he was cut. He returned home famously with just seven dollars to his name—a moment he would later commemorate by naming his production company Seven Bucks Entertainment.

Dwayne asked his father for help. Despite misgivings about his son entering the wrestling business, Rocky agreed to train him. After a short period, Rocky reached out to his contacts in the World Wrestling Federation and got Dwayne in the door. By mid-1996, Dwayne was wrestling for the WWF, and by November he made his pay-per-view debut with a major push as a future star under the name Rocky Maivia.

Young male fans, however, didn’t embrace Rocky the way the WWF had hoped. He was soon turned heel, and that’s when things clicked. Freed from the forced smile, Dwayne flourished. He dropped the last name, began referring to himself in the third person, and became simply “The Rock.” He popularized phrases that entered mainstream culture—“SmackDown” even made it into the dictionary. He was so entertaining, his popularity exploded to the point that the company had no choice but to turn him back into a good guy.

By late 1999, Johnson was a multiple-time champion when the WWF’s top-grossing star of all time, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, stepped away for neck surgery. The Rock filled that void and enjoyed one of the most financially successful runs in company history. That popularity opened doors beyond wrestling. After small television roles, he made his film debut in The Mummy Returns (2001), followed by starring roles in The Scorpion King, The Rundown, and Walking Tall. Hollywood saw a ready-made action star—but wrestling wasn’t finished with him yet.

When Johnson took time away to film movies, he often returned as a conquering hero, and fans were ecstatic. But as the absences became more frequent, resentment set in. As I mentioned in my John Cena post, wrestling fans can be possessive. They didn’t like that The Rock wasn’t on TV every week. In August 2002, while defending the WWE Championship against rising star Brock Lesnar, Rock was heavily booed. He left again, but returned in early 2003 for WrestleMania season—this time as a heel. Not just any heel, but a smug, wealthy Hollywood jerk.

He manipulated the audience so effectively, however, that they actually cheered him again. At WrestleMania that year, he retired his longtime rival, Steve Austin, then a month later, he disappeared once more.

Because of the law of diminishing returns, Rock’s appearances grew less impactful. After a 2004 run as a babyface, he shifted to sporadic appearances. He even sued WWE for the rights to use the name “The Rock” in films, eventually dropping it altogether and becoming simply Dwayne Johnson. He starred in action films, comedies, and action movies that are basically comedies, like the Fast & Furious franchise. Over time, he shed the stigma of being a wrestler doing movies and became just a movie star.

In 2011, he returned to begin a two-year storyline with John Cena, WWE’s crossover star at the time. Cena, still a full-time wrestler, had criticized Rock in interviews for coming back for big moments while calling wrestling his home, only to disappear to Hollywood. The two traded barbs, and in 2012 Rock defeated Cena in the main event of WrestleMania in what WWE billed as a “Once in a Lifetime” match. Because this is pro wrestling, they ran it back a year later. This time Cena won, and Rock endorsed him as the face of the company—a symbolic passing of the torch, even though Cena had already held that role for years. It seemed like a clean ending, especially after Rock tore his abdominal and adductor tendons off his pelvis, requiring triple hernia surgery that delayed production of Hercules. Many assumed no studio would risk hiring him if he kept wrestling. In his early 40s, it looked like time to hang up the boots.

Yet he still appears in WWE today, even serving on the company’s Board of Directors—a role that inspired a new character: The Final Boss. He wrestled in the WrestleMania main event in 2024, now such a massive Hollywood star that he dictates his own schedule. As a third-generation wrestler, some say the pull is in his blood. Others echo Cena’s old criticism: that he always says he’s here to stay, only to leave again—or that he comes back for the money and to support a company he’s now financially invested in. For what it’s worth, Cena later apologized—out of character. Once Hollywood came calling, he realized how hard it is to juggle both worlds, even if returning to hear the crowd roar is still thrilling. Maybe it’s okay to never truly walk away.

I know for a fact that sometimes Johnson comes back just for the joy of it. In 2015, my wife bought us tickets to a WWE house show at TD Garden in Boston. A house show has no cameras—just wrestlers performing for the live crowd. The Rock was filming Central Intelligence in Boston, and my wife, who follows him on Instagram, was convinced he’d show up. I, thinking I knew everything about wrestling, gently told her there was virtually no chance. He was busy filming. He doesn’t wrestle anymore. And certainly not without cameras.

She held out hope.

Mid-show, comedy wrestler Bo Dallas was in the ring, preaching his “Bo-Lieve” rhetoric, when suddenly the arena heard: “If ya smelllllll…” Out came Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. After filming all day, he stopped by just to hear the crowd chant his name. He filmed the fans on his phone, hit Bo Dallas with the Rock Bottom and People’s Elbow, and left to a thunderous ovation.

My wife still reminds me she was right—that he showed up just for us.

I think she’s half right.

There were no cameras. No storyline. No real money at stake. He had already filmed all day and didn’t need to be there at all. But he walked through that curtain anyway, just to hear the crowd

Hollywood is easier than taking bumps every night. You’re unlikely to tear an abdominal muscle playing the Tooth Fairy. But there’s no substitute for standing in front of thousands of people who want you there right now.

That’s why he keeps coming back. Not for the money. Not for leverage. Not because he can’t let go.

Because once you’ve heard that roar, you never really stop chasing it.

He’s reached superstardom in both worlds, but there’s only one place where the reaction is immediate, unfiltered, and alive. And whenever he chooses to step back into it, the fans will scream.

They always do.

They always will.

Because he’s The Rock. And we smell what he’s cooking.

Thanks for reading. Drop me a comment if you have a favorite Rock moment oir quote. And be sure to like and subscribe if you haven’t already. We can’t all afford $500 shirts like The Rock can.

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Most movies weren’t like that. Studios assumed people wouldn’t buy tapes outright unless it was a beloved Disney title released for a limited time before going “back in the vault.” So video stores paid $70 to $100 per tape for the privilege of renting them. The logic was that VHS tapes could be copied — a scam I figured out pretty quickly — and studios still needed to afford things like paying Jim Carrey $20 million to talk out of his ass.

I bring this up because I worked one of those video stores, a small hometown shop called Video Showplace. We had a customer who came in every week and asked about upcoming releases. If he liked something, he requested that we order an extra copy for him — at the $70–$100 wholesale price. He paid in literal wads of cash from his dry-cleaning business. When I started there in the mid-’90s, I was told he was basically covering my salary. Over the years, he must have spent thousands on VHS tapes. I sometimes wonder which landfill they’re resting in now.

If you’re under thirty, the whole concept probably sounds absurd: people left their homes, walked into a store, browsed shelves, chose a movie, then returned it a day or two later — rewound, ideally.

At the risk of sounding like Dana Carvey’s grumpy old man on SNL: that’s the way it was, and we loved it.

Well — mostly. The returning part was less beloved. And late fees were just as miserable from behind the counter. I was nineteen, making $5.25 an hour, and it wasn’t fun telling someone who already knew they’d kept Titanic three extra days that they now owed ten dollars. The only upside of being that young was that I could always say, “You’ll have to talk to the manager.” That part, admittedly, was sometimes fun — especially when the manager wasn’t there.

Once, a guy returned a movie late and gave me a sob story about his kids kicking it under the car seat. Against my boss’s orders, I cut his late fee in half. We’re probably talking under twenty bucks. He kept pushing, clearly hoping I would say, “Eh, don’t worry about it. Life happens.” Or maybe even, “Fine! Just shut up!” He paid the half — and a few days later I got called into the owner’s office for a lecture on why we don’t cut late fees. Lesson learned: being the nice guy doesn’t always pay.

Video Showplace wasn’t part of a rental empire. It was a mom-and-pop operation, and the pop — Mike — insisted the only thing separating us from Blockbuster was customer service. He believed people came to us for recommendations and conversation.

One of my coworkers had a strategy to avoid that entirely. No matter the movie, he’d say, “I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard it’s very good.” Some customers caught on and started asking why he even worked there since he apparently never watched movies.

Mike wasn’t wrong, though. Some customers just wanted the hot new release, but others genuinely liked hearing our opinions. As the resident film guy, I loved recommending favorites — even when they didn’t land. I once suggested Pulp Fiction to a customer. When he returned it, he told me he wasn’t a fan because he needed “a good story” and didn’t like “killin’ for the sake of killin’” Then he asked for our porn book.

Yes, that was the other thing separating us from Blockbuster: we rented porn. Nasty, low budget, 80’s (70’s?) porn. I assume, anyway. Honestly, I never rented one. But we have several customers who did, and if you wanted an “adult title,” you’d quietly ask for “the book.” We’d hand over a binder of titles, you’d pick a number, and we’d retrieve the corresponding tape from behind the counter — all stored in plain brown boxes. Occasionally a kid would ask what was in the boxes, and you’d have to invent an answer.

Some customers weren’t picky. “Just grab me any one,” they’d say. I respected that honesty. Each clerk had a method. My coworker who never watched movies just reached back and grabbed whatever box his hand touched. My friend John tried to match titles to personalities (“Hmmm, you look like you might enjoy Backside to the Future.”) I always chose my favorite title: Mean Little Bitches. I never watched it. I just loved the name.

It’s probably even harder now for someone under thirty to imagine renting a porno from a store — and then returning it. We had a regular who came in with a portable oxygen tank, which made those rentals feel risky. Another customer we called the Man-Child looked about twelve. When he asked for “the book,” I laughed — until he showed me his ID. Twenty-one. I apologized. Mostly because I was a little jealous. I wonder if he still looks as youthful all these years later, or if our bad porn aged him.

We had nicknames for our customers — usually the difficult ones. (“The Drooler” was not a favorite.) But there were plenty we genuinely liked. Sometimes we’d rig the weekly drawing so one of them would win and we could chat more. If someone was nice, we’d occasionally hold a new release for them, although that was against store policy. John and I made it a goal to “cross over” socially with certain regulars. We even got invited to a Halloween party once.

The job was a strange portal into people’s lives. One regular surprised me when he returned a movie and called it “one for MST,” referencing Mystery Science Theater 3000. I had no idea there was a fellow bad-movie connoisseur hiding in plain sight.

Another couple came in together constantly — one of those pairs who looked oddly alike. One day she came in alone to remove him from the account. Soon after, he returned with a new girl and had to open his own. I think they even asked for the book.

I have another memory of a child who would come in regularly with his parents named Colin. I only knew his name because his Dad would constantly be admonishing him, “Colin, stop bothering the man” when he would ask me questions. One time Colin brought an R-rated movie up to the counter and asked me if it was rated that “because of the lady parts. Because I’ve seen the lady parts.” Honestly, that day, Colin wasn’t bothering me.

I sometimes miss that job. At the time, I complained constantly about customers. Now I see it differently. I loved talking movies, even when my tastes didn’t line up with theirs (one of my favorite movies at the time was Natural Born Killers.) Back then, I took it personally if someone disliked something I loved — or loved something I didn’t. Working that counter cured me of that. People like what they like. You can’t charge them a late fee for it.

There aren’t many places left where you can stand around and argue about movies with strangers for $5.25 an hour. The stores are gone. The tapes are gone. Most of them probably are sitting in the same landfill as that guy’s thousand-dollar VHS collection.

But for a few years, they were ours. And we loved them.

Thanks for reading. If you were forewarded this, maybe because you’re Colin, please subscribe to get all my posts straight to your Inbox. And if you’re a subscriber already, consider becoming a paid subscriber, for less than what I got paid to work at the Showplace. Also, you can check out my podcast, and lend your support by purchasing some nostalgic T-shirts and such from my store here. And remember, “Be kind. Rewind.”

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And those characters were never more fun than in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home—a.k.a. “the one with the whales.”

Whether you were a Trek fan or not, you probably knew this movie. It grossed $133 million, far more than the previous three entries, and remained the highest-grossing Trek film until the J. J. Abrams reboot era. Adjusted for inflation, it would land around $265 million today. For a mid-’80s genre film, that’s serious business."

Much of its success came from how grounded it felt. You didn’t need to know Klingon politics or transporter mechanics. Most of the story unfolds in 1986 San Francisco, as the crew travels back in time to retrieve humpback whales—extinct in their century—to answer an alien probe threatening Earth. It’s a classic fish-out-of-water comedy with light environmental messaging. Yes, it nods to whale hunting and “Save the Whales” culture, but it never gets heavy-handed. Star Trek often used futuristic scenarios to portray contemporary social issues. And to portray the green aliens as the sexiest.

As a ten-year-old, I wasn’t thinking about themes. I just loved watching Kirk and company stumble through the 20th century. Some jokes went over my head—like Kirk telling Gillian he thought Spock “did a little too much LDS.” I knew it was wrong from context, but only later did I appreciate the hippie undertones of Spock’s tunic and headband.

The film also sidesteps the usual time-travel clichés. When McCoy and Scotty hand over the formula for transparent aluminum, McCoy worries they’re altering the future. Scotty shrugs: “Why? How do we know he didn’t invent the thing?” It’s a wink at the audience—and proof the movie never takes its paradoxes too seriously.

Even as a kid, I appreciated the lighter tone and the chemistry. Over forty years, that appreciation has only grown. I love a good space battle as much as anyone—and no one’s kicking Ricardo Montalbán’s Khan out of bed—but director Leonard Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett made a conscious choice: high stakes, no photon torpedoes, no villains. They were right. The box office proved it.

But money isn’t why the film endures. It’s remembered because it’s accessible. I could have taken my mom in 1986 and she would’ve enjoyed it without knowing a thing about Starfleet. We even owned the VHS—a rarity in my house—because it was “priced to sell.” I pretty much wore the tape out. That kind of repeat viewing sinks a movie into your bones.

Years later, when I saw it playing at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, I jumped at the chance, and I asked my friend & fellow podcaster Claynferno if he wanted to go see it with me (In fact, if you’re looking for knowledge of Star Trek, and other nerdy stuff, hit up his Substack.). An arthouse screening of Star Trek is rare, but The Voyage Home feels like it belongs anywhere. The theater was packed. I have a fond memory of buying fruit roll-ups at the concession stand, which was an odd but enjoyable treat from my childhood, and Clay remarking that I was probably eating the same thing the first time I saw the movie in 1986. To paraphrase Terence Mann in Field of Dreams, the memories were so thick, we had to brush them away from oour faces.

Forty years later, I could open Paramount+ and enjoy it just as much as I did on VHS. Some people remember it for the cultural ripple effects—Greenpeace reportedly saw a boost in donations after its release. Others love the humor of future explorers navigating our “primitive” world.

I love it because it captures these characters, even Spock, at their most human—curious, compassionate, funny, and capable. That’s something that resonated when I was ten, resonates now, and probably always will.

Thanks for reading. If you want a little more on The Voyage Home, Clay and I and our fellow space cadet John Hunt covered it back during our pandemic Watch-Along phase of the podcast here. if you want to support my work, you can also check out my revamped eBay storefront here. They may not use money in the 23rd century, but we can all use some in this time period.

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He broke into the business in late-’60s Canada after being expelled from school for carrying a switchblade, which already tells you a lot. He started as a jobber—wrestling shorthand for “the guy who loses”—and eventually landed in the American Wrestling Alliance in Minnesota. There, a happy accident cemented his persona: his friends played him to the ring on bagpipes, the announcer only knew his first name, and “Roddy the Piper” was born.

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Piper wasn’t a big man by wrestling standards, so he compensated with his mouth. He could dismantle opponents on the microphone so effectively that fans believed he belonged across the ring from much larger wrestlers. As a heel, people paid good money just to see him get hit for the things he said and did—sometimes spectacularly so, as with the infamous Jimmy Snuka coconut incident.

That gift made him invaluable to Vince McMahon, who cast Piper as the perfect antagonist to Hulk Hogan during the WWF’s Rock ’n Wrestling expansion with MTV. Piper main-evented the historic first WrestleMania in 1985 alongside Paul Orndorff against Hogan and Mr. T, then boxed Mr. T at WrestleMania 2—a worked match Piper later admitted he wished had been real.

By 1987, Piper was at the peak of his popularity. After returning from a hiatus to thunderous cheers, he seemingly retired following a Hair vs. Hair match against Adrian Adonis at WrestleMania III. (I use “retired” loosely; wrestlers mean it about half the time.) What matters is that night changed his life anyway.

Backstage, Piper met John Carpenter.

Carpenter cast him as the lead in They Live, a slow-burn sci-fi horror film about alien control, subliminal messaging, and a society lulled into compliance. Piper plays Nada, a drifter who discovers special sunglasses that reveal the truth: billboards bark commands, money declares “THIS IS YOUR GOD,” and some people are very much not people.

What’s striking now is how restrained Piper is. This is not Roddy Piper unleashed. He’s quiet, watchful, almost weary—until flashes of his wrestling persona break through, like when he insults an alien’s face “falling into the cheese dip back in 1957,” or delivers a short-arm clothesline that detonated my 13-year-old brain in the theater.

The famous bubble gum line—“I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum”—was reportedly something Piper had written for wrestling promos. Carpenter saw it and knew exactly where it belonged.

And then there’s the fight.

The legendary alleyway brawl between Piper and Keith David—ostensibly about putting on a pair of sunglasses—was expanded because Piper used his wrestling instincts to help David sell it. It’s absurd, brutal, funny, and perfect. Wrestling logic applied to cinema, without winking at the camera.

As a kid, I liked They Live but didn’t quite get why Piper barely talked. Wrestlers in movies usually just play themselves—Jesse Ventura, Hulk Hogan, The Miz, take your pick. As an adult, it’s obvious Carpenter wanted something different. Piper delivers it. He proves he can act without relying on volume.

Despite dozens of later roles, They Live remains the high point of Piper’s acting career. Wrestling always pulled him back—sometimes for money, sometimes for nostalgia. In later years, he spoke openly about the physical toll of the business and the likelihood that he wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy his pension. He died in 2015 at 61.

Even now, Roddy Piper is mostly remembered for being loud—for bagpipes, insults, and bubble gum. That version of him is real, but it’s also incomplete. They Live works precisely because Piper doesn’t play the caricature; he plays a man waking up, and that restraint is what gives the film its weight. It’s proof that he didn’t need wrestling to be interesting—wrestling just happened to find him first. Plenty of wrestlers have crossed into movies, and plenty have played themselves. Piper disappeared into one, showed exactly how much more he was capable of, and then the door quietly closed. That, more than being rowdy, is the legacy that actually matters.

Thanks for reading, as always. Please do all the things to support starving Substackers. And if you want to hear a little more about They Live, my podcast mates and I covered it here:

Now get some bubble gum!

Then I did the thing creative people are always warned not to do (because it’s “a distraction,” apparently): I went down the Kristi Noem rabbit hole.

Who is this person who stood in front of a press corps and tried to justify the killing of a man in cold blood, in front of multiple witnesses who were recording the whole thing on their phones? She came off like someone ordered to toe the company line while quietly praying no one asked a question she couldn’t answer. Not quite a deer in headlights, not as bad as Gregory Bovino—but clearly rattled, and clearly sticking to the script: Pretti was armed and planning to kill people.

Then, after her initial statement about the killing of an American citizen by border patrol agents, she pivoted and asked the room, “Any questions about the storm?”

Just. Wow.

No thanks, Kristi. I’ll check my weather app for that. Your people just killed a man, and I want to know why.

With no investigation and mounting evidence to the contrary, Noem was shoved in front of cameras to defuse a disaster—and she looked like a dope doing it.

So who is she? And how did she end up this high in our government?

According to her Wikipedia page, Kristi Noem was born November 30, 1971, in Watertown, South Dakota, and raised on the family ranch in nearby Hazel. She rose quickly, becoming South Dakota Snow Queen her senior year of high school.

She attended Northern State University the following year—apparently 80% white and 72% affluent, stats that were probably similar in 1990. She didn’t graduate. In March 1994, her father died in a farm accident, and she returned home. That obviously sucks—but her daughter Kassidy was born just weeks later, meaning she was at least eight months pregnant when she left school anyway. Plenty of people don’t graduate on time and finish later, but here’s where it gets odd.

Her Wikipedia page notes that she “added a hunting lodge and restaurant to the family property,” which doesn’t exactly scream financial struggle. It also mentions her four siblings moved back to help expand the family business—honestly, sounds like the pitch for an FX series. Later, Noem claimed her father’s death inspired her political career, particularly her push to repeal the estate tax, which she said caused major financial hardship for her family. Others dispute that. Given the company she keeps now, I’m inclined to believe she exaggerated.

She took classes at Mount Marty College, South Dakota State, and online through the University of South Dakota, finally earning a bachelor’s degree from South Dakota State in 2012—six years after she had already been elected to the South Dakota House of Representatives.

If you live in South Dakota, I apologize for this, but: what the fuck?

Noem won her state House seat in 2006 with 39% of the vote. She served until 2011, sponsoring just 11 bills, including two expanding gun rights. Fast forward, and there she was telling the public that Alex Pretti—a registered gun owner—deserved to die because he was armed. Ironic, no?

In 2011, still working toward that degree, she moved up and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She finally graduated in 2012 after receiving college credit for her time in office, which she counted as an internship—prompting the Washington Post to dub her the nation’s “most powerful intern.”

She served in Congress until 2019 and behaved exactly as you’d expect: opposing abortion, climate change policy, Obamacare, stem cell research, and—let’s be honest—probably non-white people. She supported Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban, which suspended refugee admissions and barred entry from seven Muslim-majority countries.

South Dakota doubled down and elected her governor in 2018, then again in 2022. She actually received more votes than any gubernatorial candidate in state history. Personally, I’ll stick to seeing Mount Rushmore in pictures—I don’t plan on visiting that shithole state.

As governor, she went hard on abortion, even stating she wouldn’t make exceptions for a ten-year-old rape victim who traveled out of state for an abortion. Rape, incest, IVF—none of it passes muster for Kristi. She’s a real peach.

And this isn’t just ideological disagreement—her tenure has been full of controversy. In 2024, several South Dakota Indigenous tribes banned her from their lands, meaning she’s barred from roughly 20% of her own state. And all they wanted was an apology after she falsely claimed Mexican cartels were using tribal lands to traffic drugs. No evidence, of course—but why let facts ruin a good scare tactic?

There’s more: her Trump-style COVID response (South Dakota saw one of the nation’s worst outbreaks in 2020), deploying the National Guard to Texas for border theater, the infamous “Meth. We’re on it.” campaign, and this gem from Wikipedia: at a 2023 NRA forum, Noem bragged that her two-year-old granddaughter owned a shotgun, a rifle, and a “little pony named Sparkles.”

So here’s the point. This is a powerful, elected official—a Trump loyalist clearly punching above her weight class. I mentioned earlier that she wasn’t “traditionally educated,” and while degrees aren’t everything, they’re not nothing either. There are currently 23 members of Congress with only a high school diploma or GED, which honestly bums me out. At least Kristi eventually got her piece of paper.

But education aside, there’s something to be said for life experience. I can’t help but wonder how much she really absorbed growing up on that ranch as a mother in her early 20’s. Not that more schooling or experience would magically turn her into a decent human being—but watching that press conference, especially her breezy pivot to the weather, I couldn’t shake the feeling: this woman has no idea what she’s talking about.

It reminded me of a storyline from the final season of Cheers, where Woody—the lovable hayseed from Indiana—runs for office. Frasier bets Sam that he could put a chimpanzee on the ballot and get 10% of the vote…or better yet, put Woody on and win. The stunt works too well, and Woody ends up elected to Boston City Council.

I can’t help thinking something similar happened with Kristi Noem. Not an actual bet, but a calculation: nice face, “values,” won’t rock the boat. South Dakota voters bought it—for twenty years.

Now, amid scandal and public outrage, Democrats and some Republicans are calling for her removal. And honestly? I hope she’s impeached. It would be a useful lesson: charm and religious buzzwords only take you so far. Eventually, you need an original thought.

And it would be especially funny if Trump hung her out to dry.

Particularly since I’d bet good money they slept together at least once. And if they didn’t, it’s only because she wouldn’t—and that’s exactly why he’d toss her aside now.

Thanks for reading. Sending good vibes to anyone being oppressed by ICE. We’re with you.

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I was dating a woman at the time, Alyssa (not her real name.) She was not what I would call a creative person, but she sure thought her shit didn’t stink, with her 18 earrings (9 in each ear. When she took them out to clean them her ears looked like small colanders) and her tongue piercing, which at the time was a choice. We had been through our rough times but were still hanging on, and when you’re 22, you think the person you’re with is the person you’re going to be with forever.

I was working in a video store at the time while still searching for a job, and sending out screenplays and also entering screenwriting contests because I think someone had told me that was a good way to get noticed in Hollywood. I was coming up empty in all of these endeavors. Because of my dia-bee-tus, I had to find a job that offered health insurance, so “video store clerk” wasn’t going to cut it, but I also figured, “If I sell a screenplay, I’ll be set!” I know now how stupid that seems now but I was 22 and thought I was Tarantino.

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After a pretty crappy interview for a job at some corporate office, I was complaining to Alyssa that there was no way I wanted that job even if they were to hire me (probably for data entry or something terrible.) I still thought I had a shot at selling screenplays, so that was where I wanted to put most of my focus, but she didn’t see it that way. I remember her exact words were: “Why don’t you get a real job?” In my mind, she might as well have added, “Ya bum!” at the end of it.

I should point out that this person had finished exactly a half-semester of college, was working as a cashier at Homegoods, and could barely read. I’m not joking. She once told me that when she is reading a book and she doesn’t understand a word, she just skips it and keeps going. The book she was reading at the time was Practical Magic. If she skipped over words she didn’t know, I estimated she probably read about 60% of it.

I know this all sounds very mean, but she wasn’t really a good person. She had cheated on me a few times and wasn’t at all remorseful about it. I don’t know why I put up with it all, but I guess I was just glad someone would date me.

That September, I took a part-time job at Harvard University, while still working at the video store. Even though it was part-time, I still thought it was cool to be working at a prestigious university. I was also enjoying the hustle and bustle of Harvard Square, which was quite a step up from the suburb where Alyssa lived (and rarely left.) Still, when I told Alyssa that I had taken the job, her response was, “You’re still going to keep looking, right?”

She was really happy for me.

About a month later I received an email from a co-worker at the video store, expressing her attraction for me. I was flummoxed, as nothing like this had ever happened to me. I was seriously considering her “offer,” but figured I’d give Alyssa one more try, for old time’s sake. I remember being in her room and while not explicitly telling her about the email, I posed a kind of “Where are we going?” line of questioning. She gave me a very flippant “We’re fine.” response and went to bed, and I decided that would be that. The next day I broke it off. I tried to remain friends, but a few weeks later she stopped by my house with a new, shorter haircut, and gave me a Ziploc bag with a lock of her hair. Needless to say, the “friends” thing didn’t last much longer.

I’m not saying that she somehow prevented me from becoming a screenwriter with a couple comments, but it didn’t help my self-esteem at all, which was already pretty low. And it certainly pushed us closer to breaking up, so in all honesty, I can’t say it was a bad thing. Even if I had told her that I wished she would have supported my creative side a little more it wouldn’t have mattered. She was just hoping that I would graduate and get a “real job” and make decent money and we would get married and I would take care of her. I mean, she probably shouldn’t have dated a Film major if that was her goal, but I definitely should have broken it off after she cheated on me, so I guess we both made mistakes. I did feel a little bad for ostensibly trading her in for the younger model, but what can I say? The new girl put out.

I actually dated the girl who sent the email, Thea (again, not her real name, but she’d probably figure it out if she reads this) for four years. She did have a creative side, and was actually very smart. She had done some theater work, which was something I had never thought about doing, but at one point in our relationship, I saw that a local troupe was looking for actors for a production of Glengarry, Glen Ross, so I decided to audition. I had no stage experience, but I loved the play, and I figured even if I got a minor part, like “Cop,” I would have considered that a win.

There were only a handful of guys there (which is really all you’d need to put on the play), and the director was a young woman who was probably just figuring her own shit out. Since I was the least experienced actor there, I was asked to read a few lines, mostly the role of Lingk, played by Jonathan Pryce if you have ever seen the movie. But I didn’t play him like Jonathan Pryce. For some reason, I played him like Bob Newhart. If you are not familiar with it, I was given the scene where Ricky Roma, the slick salesman, asks him if he has ever taken a dump that made him feel like he had just slept for 3 days. Now picture Bob Newhart responding to that question:

“Have... Have I ever taken… a dump that…?”

I thought it was gold.

After that, I was given a couple more scenes, with one of the bigger characters, Arronow, the salesman, played by Alan Arkin in the movie, who kind of becomes the cuck after the office is robbed. I decided to whip out my Bob Newhart for him, too, just to give the director a different take. I started to get a vibe that maybe she liked it and I would get at least one of those parts. Like I said, not a lot of guys showed up for the audition, so that also gave me hope that I had a shot. This was only Night One of the auditions, however, so the director asked us all to come back for Night Two, when she would make her casting decisions.

I went home and told Thea about it and told her that I thought I had a good chance at getting a part, unless 50 great actors showed up the second night who couldn’t make it on the first. But I was excited to at least be considered.

She responded, “You know, that’s a pretty big commitment. Rehearsals every night for weeks.”

Well, yeah.

“I’ve done a bunch of plays. We wouldn’t be spending any time together while you were rehearsing,” she said, sadly.

Basically, we talked a little bit more, and eventually I was coerced into not even showing up on the second night of auditions. I think part of her felt like the stage was her thing, and I shouldn’t be intruding. But there was another reason that she didn’t want me to do the play. Thea was also undiagnosed (because she never went to a doctor to diagnose her) bi-polar, and I could be a calming influence. I could also be the cause of some of her outbursts, but hopefully more calming than not. Most of the time, if I wasn’t there, who knows what shit she would get up to? So, even though spending some time apart doing a play may have been a good thing (I mean, I wasn’t moving to another country. It was Community Theater two towns over.), she didn’t see it that way and I was convinced to drop it.

The funny thing is, a couple years later, a production of her favorite play, The Diary of Anne Frank, was holding auditions, and I encouraged her to go. She thought she was too old for the role, and maybe for the same reasons about spending time apart, was not going to audition, but I said this was going to be her only chance and she had to do it. The night before, she gave me her final “No,” and I didn’t push. The next morning, she changed her mind asked me to drive her to the audition, and she got the part.

Now, I’m not saying that not doing a small-town production of Glengarry Glen Ross was the cause of me not making it as a Hollywood screenwriter. It probably wouldn’t have mattered at all if I had done it. But think about this, the director of Diary of Anne Frank was so impressed by Thea’s acting that she cast her in an independent film that she was making. Thea and I spent a few weeks in Indiana that summer filming the thing (which is a whole other post). Obviously, the film didn’t open the door to a screenwriting career, either, but you see how these things happen? Maybe playing James Lingk and “Cop” would have given me the acting bug. Maybe I would have done another play and been cast in a movie. Could that have been the thing that moved me to the next level? Who knows?

The point of this whole history of my life is this; one of the tasks in the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is to pick three enemies of your inner creative genius and write a “horror story” about one of them (Ok, I picked two.) While doing this, I realized that these people, despite their discouraging of my creative endeavors, were not to blame for me not becoming the next Quentin Tarantino. They didn’t physically tie me down and tell me not to write and send out screenplays. Neither of them broke my camera and told me I couldn’t make movies. In fact, I probably wrote way more back then than I do now. The only person to blame is me. I’m not saying I would have sold screenplays if I had a little encouragement from my girlfriends. Millions of people have tried and failed at that. But I could have, and should have, done more creative things back then. Eventually, I did write some comics, but I should have been doing stuff like that all along, except I allowed myself to be led astray, and I have no one to blame but myself for that.

But the comic is probably worth a read (Issue #0 is free!). I also am on a podcast, and that counts as a creative endeavor. Please support those, and if you are so inclined, you could buy me a coffee, or check out the stuff in my Etsy store.

Thanks for reading. And remember, you can’t always blame the enemies of your creativity, but you can break up with them.

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This time I’m going to highlight a different journey. However, one that overlaps with Cena’s, as they were in-ring rivals for a few years as top guys in WWE during the mid-2000’s. This post will cover David Michael Bautista Jr., or just Batista, as he was mostly known in wrestling. Or Drax if you prefer.

By all accounts, Dave had a rough upbringing, growing up in a crime-ridden area of DC in the early 70’s. Reportedly, by the time he was nine, there had been 2 dead bodies in his front yard, and another one not too far away (he didn’t kill them as far as I know, but still… scary.) At that point, his mother (his parents had split by then) moved Dave and his sister out to San Francisco, hoping for a fresh start. At 13, he was getting into trouble, and according to his wikipedia page, he was stealing cars. At 13. That is kind of insane to me, but Batista was obviously bigger than I was at that age. His mother sent him back to DC to live with his father hoping a positive male influence would straighten him out, but by the time he was a senior in high school, his Dad kicked him out of the house and he was living on his own. Fortunately, he had discovered the weight room by that time, so he was getting big and feeling himself. He later credited working out with helping him stay out of trouble. His first job when he was 17 was at Olympus Gym in Falls Church, VA. He also started taking jobs as a nightclub bouncer at that age, which is pretty funny because he couldn’t even legally get in, but he could kick people out.

The money was good, and he had 2 young kids at home to feed, so the next thing Dave knew was that ten years had gone by and he was still working at nightclubs. Things started to take a turn when he was arrested after a fight broke out outside the club he was working at and sentenced to one-year probation. One Christmas, he had to borrow some money to buy presents for his kids, and that was apparently the motivation to do something a little more with his life. So, at 31, he decided to try his hand at pro wrestling. For people who don’t know the answer to the question, “How do I become a pro wrestler?” well, it’s like a lot of other things: you go to school.

At the time, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) had a wrestling school in Georgia called the Power Plant, so Dave enrolled in that. The classes were run by a former preliminary wrestler named Sgt. Buddy Lee Parker (If you ever turned on WCW Saturday Night on TBS in the early 90’s, you probably saw Parker being beat up by a bigger star.), who is listed at 5’8” but that’s probably an exaggeration. Parker ran Batista and his other trainees through the ringer, and told Dave that he would never make it in the wrestling business because he had no coordination. Batista hated him so much that eventually he switched to a different wrestling school, one that was affiliated with the WWE and run by Afa of the legendary Wild Samoans. Side note: WCW had suffered some hard financial times by then and in 2001 was purchased by WWE, so it was definitely the right move. Parker was pretty much never heard from again.

After around six months at the school, Afa thought he was ready to move up and called the WWE talent department, and Batista was sent to Ohio Valley Wrestling and to train with the big boys (and that is no exaggeration. As I pointed out in my Cena post, OVW was flush with future stars.) He was rechristened Leviathan, and his gimmick was to basically be big and scary. To get into character, he bought fangs and a big chain to wear around his neck while he wrestled, which his fellow trainees hated because they would accidentally punch it while they were in the ring with him. Remember, these guys are not supposed to hurt each other.

In May 2002, Batista made his debut on WWE television on an episode of Smackdown as Deacon Batista. He was basically the heavy for another wrestler named Reverend Devon, an evil man of the cloth who preached that everyone needed to repent (I think. I’m going by memory and it was a short-lived gimmick.). Batista’s job was to hold the collection box and basically watch and learn from Devon, who was a veteran. The pairing didn’t last too long, and Batista turned on Devon and beat him in a match, and struck out on his own. By the Spring of 2003, he was put in the top heel group Evolution, teaming with fellow OVW alum Randy Orton, Triple H (current COO of WWE) and the man who would teach him everything about looking and acting like a star, the legendary Ric Flair.

In the group, the young, handsome Orton was supposed to be the breakout star, but behind the scenes, as well as in front of the cameras, support started to grow for Batista. He had a cool, quiet demeanor until he stepped through the ropes, when he would just smash his opponents. The company still tried to push Orton as their top guy throughout most of 2004, but by early 2005, it was clear Batista had taken that spot, and in the main event of Wrestlemania 21, the kid from the ghettos of DC was crowned champion, overthrowing Triple H for the top spot.

Over the next five years, Batista was a major star and multi-time champion in the company, but by 2010, in his early 40’s and racking up injuries (He had a legitimate compressed spinal fracture), he took time away from wrestling to concentrate on acting. He got a few small parts in big projects and big parts in small projects before James Gunn pushed heavily for him to play Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy. Marvel originally had other people in mind, but went with Gunn’s choice, and ultimately decided it was the right one after seeing the finished product. The simple-minded and metaphorically-challenged Drax was the perfect role for big Dave, who had the chops to handle the tragic backstory of the character and the comedic timing to deliver the humorous lines. Drax is also a big-ass, scary alien.

At the time, however, the jury was still out on whether or not Guardians would be a success, or the MCU’s first big flop. With the film scheduled to debut later in the year, Batista returned to the WWE in early 2014, and was pushed as a returning hero. He originally thought WWE would promote the movie while he was appearing on their TV, but since nobody had ever heard of most of the characters, they never even mentioned it. Plus, WWE fans had seen this before, and were not cotton to a guy who had been gone for a couple years immediately being pushed to the top. The fans were instead rallying behind a smaller, hard-working babyface named Danial Bryan, and Batista was booed relentlessly in all of his appearances, even though he was supposed to be the good guy. Dave himself even pushed that he should have returned as a heel, and by March, he was turned, with he and old pal Randy Orton losing to Bryan in the main event of Wrestlemania 30.

Over the next two months, Batista would team with orton and Triple H in the reunited Evolution and drop main events to the up and coming group known as The Shield. By June, Batista, realizing that WWE was not going to hype up Guardians and he would just be losing to everyone, quit the company, citing “creative differences.” By the end of summer, Guardians had become the highest-grossing August release ever, and Dave Bautista, the actor, could pretty much write his own ticket after that. He would go on to appear in several more Marvel films, the James Bond film Spectre, the Dune remakes, Blade Runner: 2049 and many others. He did make a short return to the wrestling ring in 2019 to end his career properly, losing to Triple H in a Career-Ending Match at Wrestlemania 35. Despite age catching up to him (he was 50 by that point), Dave put forth his best effort, but he clearly had outgrown professional wrestling. Still, he wanted to put the final stamp on his extraordinary career and go out on his back, losing to his mentor.

But it certainly was an extraordinary career. Starting in wrestling at that age, he knew he had a small window to succeed, and he worked hard to do just that. When he started feeling the pain of years of taking bumps, he embarked on a new journey, and he was able to bring his experiences in life and in the wrestling business to his roles and became a pretty recognizable star in Hollywood. Although a little less recognizable these days, as he has lost a lot of weight but is leaner than he was as a wrestler. At 56, he says he feels better than ever.

Out of all the wrestlers who turned to acting, Dave Bautista’s is probably my favorite story. He could have stayed a wrestler and made good money coming back a couple times a year for a big payday, but he decided to apply what he learned as a wrestler to his acting roles. And he doesn’t always play the bodyguard or the scary bad guy. Being Drax showed the world what a wrestler is capable of on the big screen. As of this writing, his IMDB lists 12 upcoming projects. Other than The Rock, he might have the most successful post-wrestling career of them all, and I’d put their careers up ainst each other any day. Maybe in a steel cage!

Thanks again for reading. Please like, share, subscribe, and if you got some money from the holidays, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or just buying me a coffee. I also have stuff for sale on Etsy But hey, times are tough for a lot of folks, so you don’t have to give me money. But if you have some free time, i also do a podcast and we talk about movies on there. We even covered Spectre.

Thanks again. Keep on keeping on.

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First of all, there were 20 written posts here on Dursin’s Dungeon, plus a few videos, all made with my pal (go subscribe to his Substack, too, if you please.) That’s almost 2 a month, so bi-weekly is a decent schedule. If you were hoping for exactly 2 a month, I’ll try to do better next year. I’ve always felt that you gotta write when the muse finds you.

Anwyay, the most viewed post accoridng to Substack stats was this one:

It makes sense because it was from February, but also because it’s a pretty popular movie. I know I like it. We also did a podcast about it, if you’re interested. Which you’re not.

The most Liked post was also one of my favorite movies:

It also had a lot of views, just slightly less than Clue. So, people like comedies and like being reminded of how old these movies are. If you are reading this, I should point out how much we writers enjoy it when you click that little heart. It doesn’t take much effort and doesn’t get us any extra money, but it does send a message that we’re doing ok.

The post that had the most views that weren’t driven by people interested in a movie was this one:

It’s also the only post I shared on LinkedIn, and the only post I name-dropped people that I worked with back then that I really didn’t like. I feel a little bad about that now. It’s the holiday season and I should be spreading good cheer, but I guess I had a lot to get off my chest so… sorry if I offended anyone. You probably feel the same way about me, so we can all agree to disagree. Mostly, I’ll say it was cathartic and leave it at that.

Finally, I don’t like to choose among my children, but this one was probably my personal fave of 2025:

Just a fun romp through my toy-playing youth. Maybe it goes back to the “Clue at 40-Holy Grail at 50” motif, but I enjoyed thinking about those old times. Hopefully you enjoyed it, too, or maybe it brought you back to some good ol’ days.

That’s a wrap on 2025, folks. Thanks so much for reading, liking, subscribing, sharing, etc. I hope you have a happy holiday and a happy New Year.

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The point is, we go back a long way. We even worked together at my first real, paying job when we were seventeen. It was at a family-style restaurant in our town called Grin and Bear It. The place was basically a Chuck E. Cheese clone (maybe “wannabe” would be more accurate), except they replaced the mice with bears. There were games, pizza, screaming kids, and yes, people dressed in bear costumes who entertained said kids, and sometimes got mauled by them. Several of my classmates worked there, as well as Mark, and I think I can say without fear of being mistaken that most of us hated it.

Just imagine a restaurant that almost solely employed 17 year-olds to entertain and cook pizza for small children. And since it was the early 90’s, most of us were paid $5.00 an hour - which was slightly above minimum wage - and were treated rather poorly by the managers, who were pretty stressed out themselves. The reliable employees, Mark and myself included, were constantly asked to work overtime. Not the kind of overtime where you would get paid time and a half or anything. In fact, you would have been considered lucky to take home a free pizza at the end of your shift. So, you can just imagine all of the fucks that we gave.

I started at Grin and Bear It a few weeks after it opened in the Summer of 1992, and for my entire junior year, I pretty much worked every weekend. As one of two busboys in the place, my schedule usually was Friday nights, 5-9 (usually ended up being 10:00), Saturdays, 12-8 (which also usually ended up being 10:00) and Sundays, 12-5 (Sundays were a little slower, so 5:00 was mostly accurate.) And since I was taught to work hard for your money - or I was just a wuss - I never said “No” when I was asked to stay late and close.

Side-but relevant-note: I was only a busboy because I failed so spectacularly in the kitchen. Technically, they only hired kitchen help, party people and a couple guys who primarily wore the bear suits. My friend Brian was a great bear, but he was also a hormonal teenager and would occasionally try to hit on women while in the suit, which oddly worked a few times. Eventually, however, a young mother complained that he was spending more time with her than her kids, and he was removed from the role. There were definitely consequences to that, which I will get to in a moment.

Anyway, at 17, I didn’t really know that life could be better, and since my parents had been pushing for me to get a job for a while before this one came along, I figured this was it. The idea that I should just find something less stressful and annoying didn’t occur to me at all. So I spent my formative junior year working every weekend. The interesting thing was that I basically had no time to spend the money I was making, so I would just deposit my whole check into my savings account, so even only making $5.00 an hour, I actually had more money than I have ever had in my entire life at seventeen.

But that didn’t really make me any happier. Like I said, the managers were pretty stressed and didn’t really know how to treat teenaged employees, (or anyone else for that matter). There was one guy, Frank, who lasted a few months and then I assume moved on to greener pastures. But there was another fellow who was a bit of a problem. I doubt he’ll ever read this, so it wouldn’t be a big deal if I named him, but I’ll just say that if there are any old-school Marvel fans reading this, he looked a lot like this guy, so I’ll just call him Sikorsky:

Now, I didn’t know anything about… anything at that age, so I assumed Sikorsky was an angry, middle-aged man who just lived to boss us around (He was probably in his 30’s, but to me, that was middle-aged.) After Frank left, Sikorsky was the only real manager, so he was the one who worked us to the bone, the one who would bark, “Matt, you’re closing tonight!” at me every week, the one who yelled at me to fix the games when they broke, and worst of all, the one who at the last minute would yell, “Matt, get in the bear!”

If you have been to a restaurant like this, you probably know how it works, but just in case, this is how it went at Grin and Bear It: every birthday party included a certain number of game tokens, some pizzas, and of course, cake. When the cake was served, naturally everyone would gather around the child and sing “Happy Birthday,” including an employee in a bear suit. As you might expect, there were three suits: Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear, none of which were cleaned very often. Some kiddies loved to dance and hug the bear, and some were extremely frightened. Either way, it was Hell for the person in the suit.

Like I said, there were a couple of regular bears, but after Brian was kicked out, and when the other bear wasn’t working, someone had to fill the role. So if I was unlucky enough to walk into the kitchen when it was time to bring the cake out, Sikorsky would see me and bellow for me to put on the suit.

I wish it were anywhere near as cool as that.

I always chose Mama Bear because it was the most comfortable one. Like the story goes, Baby Bear was too small, and Papa Bear too big. In fact, his head was so tall that you didn’t see out of his eyes, but there was a small opening on his neck that you could kind of see out of. But Mama Bear was the right height, so I would put on this smelly pile of hair and then sit in the freezer for a few minutes while they prepped the cake, often grabbing a slice for myself if one was available (this was pre-Diabetes, but maybe even a cause now that I think about it.) Then I would go out and pat the birthday kid on the head and dance around for a few minutes until I could get away without seeming like that was all I wanted to do.

As much as I hated bussing the dirty tables sloppy with half-eaten pizza, and having kids yell at me because the Whack-a-Mole had eaten their token, I despised the bear suit more than anything. I don’t know if anyone has ever had a job as a mascot, or a Disney character, or any kind of job like this, and hated it as much as I did. I’m not sure if it was because I didn’t feel comfortable acting goofy around the kids, or I was afraid I would step on or hurt one of them, or if it was just not the job I was hired for, but I just fucking hated it. I didn’t like this job near the end, but I hated that bear suit.

By the Spring, the staff was mostly tired of the mismanagement and we all signed a petition to have Sikorsky reprimanded for all manner of offenses, possibly even sexual harassment, although I must admit I personally never witnessed anything like that. All I know was he was loud, obnoxious and very cruel to Brian after the whole bear suit-removal debacle. But mostly I just was mad that I was overworked and always had to be the bear. Whatever the reasons, I remember Mark surreptitiously calling me into the basement one night to sign the petition, and it felt like a very grown-up thing to do. Mark and some of my co-workers then took it to the owners of the restaurant, and Sikorsky was promptly fired. The staff was pretty happy, until a couple months later, when Grin and Bear It would close for good. I remember it was Father’s Day 1993. I worked the lunch shift, and then all the employees were invited back after closing for a goodbye shindig. Even though many of my fellow employees were my classmates, a lot of them I never saw again. We weren’t exactly friends, but we all bonded over surviving this terrible job.

The thing is, I’ve worked a lot of jobs over the subsequent 30-plus years, and I don’t think any of them were as bad as Grin & Bear It, but I’m not going to put the blame on anyone. Like I said, I was only the busboy because I was total crap in the kitchen, and I was only told to get in the bear because they needed a warm body. Sikorsky didn’t have it in for me. He might have been annoyed at his current status, managing a kid’s restaurant at that point in his life, probably not making much more than we were, so who can blame him for being angry? I remember him bringing his kids in once, and I was surprised to see him in that context, supporting a family with a job like that. I was also surprised because apparently someone had actually had sex with him at least twice.

But I was a dumb teenager who was being paid to do what he said. Sure, actually scheduling people to close the place every Saturday would have probably made everyone less angry, but I could have just said “No” more often. I could have told him that I had plans, or just made up any old excuse, but for some reason I thought it was important that I stay when asked. Part of it was to help my fellow employees so that they wouldn’t get stuck doing more work. Part of it was because I was raised by hard-workers who instilled in me that you do the job until it is done. Or I was a wuss.

Whatever the reason, I now realize that I still do a lot of these things at my job. Obviously, I’m not asked to wear a bear suit (yet), but I still try to help out people even if it’s not in my job description, or stay late until the job is done, and I still don’t like it, mostly because of my Grin and Bear it experience. Over 30 years later, and if I have to stay 5 minutes later at my job, I get really annoyed. And I still don’t like doing things that are technically outside of my job description. It’s kind of amazing how much I let that job fuck with me mentally. I actually went to ChatGPT for a term to use so i could write a joke about it (One term that stood out to me was “Boundary Trauma,” but that probably doesn’t apply.) and ended up going down a job stress rabbit hole. It was actually an interesting read, although excuse my typos. It’s still only ChatGPT.

We’ve all had crappy jobs, and all we can control is how we handle them. This one will always be my crappiest, but it definitely informed my work ethos and how to tackle certain aspects of every job I’ve had since. So I guess, for that, I can appreciate it. But writing all this, I realized Office Space was right. Work sucks.

Thanks as always for reading. Please like, subscibe, share and consider becoming a paid subscriber. If that’s too much around the holidays, consider donating a bit or two at Buy Me a Coffee. And there is still time to buy gifts from me at my Etsy store or my eBay store. It’s mostly the same stuff, but it’s good stuff. And if I don’t get a chance to write anything for the rest of December, happy holidays to you all.

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In my deleting, I went into a folder titled “Secret Monkey.” I hadn’t thought about The Secret Monkey in ages. For those of you (well, everyone) who don’t know, The Secret Monkey was a comic that my friend John Hunt and I collaborated on about 25 years ago, which was actually my real first stab at comic book self-publishing.

The comic was a satire of old-school Marvel books written by Stan Lee. He was an albino monkey from the future who could talk, and he used his monkey agility and strength to fight crime. He was basically Spider-Man in money-form, and he wore a paper bag over his head as a disguise (hence the “secret” part.)

John was the actual creative force behind the book, as the true artist of the tandem. He would usually send me a plot synopsis and I would type up a script. Then I would send it off to him and he would draw it, ink it, letter it, and color it. In retrospect, I took way too much credit for this endeavor.

We published it online, in a time when digital comics weren’t really a thing. Still, we received quite a bit of positive feedback from those who did read it. We were even mentioned in Wizard Magazine, one of the preeminent publications on the comics industry back then. At the time, I loved telling people that.

Bouyed by that tiny bit of fame, we decided to print some copies and try and make a little money off of it. This obviously proved very hard, but while promoting the comic, John was able to make some waves in the industry and his full-time job to this day is lettering a lot of Manga. So, it was good for something.

But it was good for something else, as well. Personally, it was the most fun I’ve ever had creating something. John and I would frequently get together over breakfast with a spiral notebook and hash out the plots and jokes. We also loved coming up with fun side bits and things to post on the Secret Monkey website. These were things that used to be in the comics of our youth, like ads with super-heroes promoting Twinkies or not to bully each other. We would come up with fake ads, fake letters pages, and fake interviews with ourselves. We really got a charge out of it, and once or twice we even got asked if it was real, which definitely made us chuckle.

As one of these sends-offs to old comics, I tried to duplicate Stan Lee’s old Stan’s Soapbox with a column I called Dursin’s Dungeon (and yes, it’s 25 years later and I am still using that name. So if you thought the name of this Substack was a reference to some kind of sex thing, now you know.) For your reading pleasure, here is my very first Dursin’s Dungeon from about 25 years ago:

“I would like to start by saying that no one here at Turbo Comics is more pleased than I to see The Secret Monkey finally see his first issue. In my eighteen years in the comics industry I have never been so excited for one comic. Let me tell you why.

I work in the basement. Once in awhile, a man dressed in chainmail comes down to give me a slab of raw meat for supper and tells me who is winning the American League Eastern Division. It’s not an easy life, but what is? Anyway, last month, John Hunt came to me and said, “Mike, you’re one of my best writers, and I trust you implicitly.” “Thanks,” I replied, “But I’m Matt.” “Mark, I trust you, so that’s why I’m giving you a plum assignment as a writer on our brand new book. It will be the biggest book to hit the stands since The Death and very quick subsequent Rebirth of Superman. It’s called… (pause)…(more)… The Secret Monkey.”

Well, I was floored. John hadn’t given me a new book to write since I did the comic adaptation of the classic Gregg Head film The Lemon, but I have done my fair share of writing, most recently on The Purple Flower Gang. Don’t fret, though, Aaron “My God” Mihale has taken over the reins on that book, so it won’t lose a step. And, yes, I was made somewhat infamous because I wrote the first Turbo comic to feature full frontal nudity when I penned Phallus, the World’s Hardest Man. So, you may remember me from those rather humble beginnings, but here now is something completely new and different. And, God willing, you’ll all buy it so that maybe I can afford some garnish for my raw steak next week.

So,… yeah.

By the way, that picture was from an ad I had found and we just thought we needed to put it somewhere because it looked like our character was selling cheap bras (wicked cheap, even). I don’t know why I didn’t incorporate that into the post somehow. A missed opportunity for sure.

The unfortunate thing that I realized reading that old poat is I took myself way too seriously back then, and that version of Dursin’s Dungeon eventually moved away from the fun spoofs and morphed into my own personal blog. Reading those old posts made me kind of sad, knowing how much fun I had initially, and how I then eschewed all that for angry rants about the state of the comics industry, or even just the state of the world. I also eventually dropped the act completely and “came out” as an indie creator trying in vain to sell a comic, rather than someone who had been in the comics industry for “eighteen years.” By the way, I was only about 24 when I wrote that.

We ended up making 14 or so issues of Secret Monkey, but as I said, as time went on and John was getting actual paying gigs in comics, he had less time for side projects. That wasn’t really what spelled the end of it, however. What really did the comic in was my fixation on trying to sell the printed copies and not just writing the thing for the sheer enjoyment of it. It may sound silly, but that is one of the biggest regrets of my life. Probably because it’s kind of a metaphor on where my mental state was at the time; mid-twenties, single, broke, too much time on my hands, and latching on to this comic thing to try and gain some notoriety, maybe a job in comics somehow, and a little satisfaction that I had accomplished something. Also, I was no doubt feeling a little inadequate that John was the real creator of the comic and I just wrote some silly jokes for him, so I thought I needed to at least pull my weight somehow and make a few sales. Not that John ever made me feel that way. It was my neurosis.

I wish I had the perspective back then to really appreciate what I was doing while I was doing it. I wish I had the foresight to see that those fun times creating The Secret Monkey would one day be over, so I should just enjoy the ride. I wish… I had a therapist back then.

Eventually, I did make a comic of my own, which John did some coloring and lettering for, and you can read it here ( issue #0 is free). You can also listen to John and I and our friend Clay on our podcast. And if you want to support this Substack (since none of my comics made much money, hehe), you can become a paid subscriber, or Buy me a Coffee. How about this, since no one has ever done that, if you are the first to donate on Buy me a Coffee, I’ll send you a signed copy of Secret Monkey #1!

I also sell t-shirts and sweatshirts through Printify on eBay here. The holidays are coming, folks!

Thanks for reading. Keep on keepin’ on.

From Suplexes to SAG Cards: Pro Wrestlers Turned Actors

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I’m not going to be writing about a wrestler who took a movie or TV role because they thought it would be fun or needed health insurance (Most wrestlers are considered independent contractors and don’t get insurance from the company they are contracted to. It’s pretty terrible, honestly.) I’m going to be writing about wrestlers who were stars in the ring, and then made a full-time transition to Hollywood, and maybe popped back to wrestling to hear the roar of the crowd or for a money grab (Not faulting them there. I like money, too.)

Before I get into it, I want to make a note right off the bat that may help non-fans understand some facets of some of these posts. Wrestling is a unique phenomenon, and its fans are a rather unconventional lot. First off, people still in 2025 ask the question, “But isn’t it fake?” Crazy, but true. Yes, of course it is scripted and choreographed, and the idea is not to hurt the person you are wrestling. However, most wrestlers are athletes, and they do take a pounding. Many take painkillers, and drugs were rampant in the business back in the day, and many died young. It’s a lot cleaner these days, the schedule is lighter, and there are a lot less concussions and overdoses. However, if a wrestler decides to put less stress on their body by applying their skills in a movie or TV show rather than in the ring, they should be applauded. But it didn’t always work that way, because as I said, wrestling fans are a tad unconventional, and they are also uber-passionate. Back in 2001, when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, at the height of his popularity, took some time away from the ring to play the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns, nobody really minded because he came back to wrestling pretty quick. When he starred in The Scorpion King standalone movie a year later, and there was suddenly buzz in Hollywood about this handsome young stud, wrestling fans booed him upon his return. Part of it was because he had already been cast in yet another movie, so was scheduled for more time off, and yet he continued to claim that the WWE was his “home.” But wrestling fans are possessive and they felt that The Rock was turning his back on them. Basically, they only wanted to watch him wrestle and not do anything else.

And who can blame them?

But The Rock is no dummy. So, in early 2003, he made another return to wrestling (a couple months before Wrestlemania, because that’s where the big payday is), but this time he went with the boos and became a bad guy, or in wrestling parlance, a “heel.” And he was *such* a great heel that the fans started to like him again, which was always one of the pitfalls of being The Rock. Unfortunately, by the summer, he was gone again, and has only made sporadic returns since, always claiming upon each return that he was “home,” but nobody was buying it. Movie-making was easier on his body, made him more money, and was way more fun. Wrestling fans like to think they are in charge by booing or cheering for whoever they like or don’t like, but if the wrestler wants to go make a movie, that’s their choice and nobody can stop them.

I’ll cover more of that when I write a post on The Rock, but for now, that’s the groundwork: wrestlers like wrestling until their body starts to break down and they realize there’s always money in the banana stand. Movies and TV are better, physically and financially, and even wrestling fans have now started to understand that. So, when John Cena did pretty much the same thing a few years ago, fans were a little more forgiving. And as I’ll get to in a bit, a large segment of them already booed him anyway.

The Champ Is Here

In the early 2000’s. The WWF (soon to be rechristened WWE, thanks to the World Wildlife Fund) had a developmental territory called Ohio Valley Wrestling that would hire young wannabe wrestlers and train them to be “superstars.” At that time, OVW was flush with young talent, including names you may know like Brock Lesnar, Dave Batista and John Cena. Since The Rock (as mentioned above) was transitioning out and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s neck was basically a stack of dimes by that point, some of these young guys were going to have to grow up fast. So, a young rookie Cena (25) was brought to the main show on June 27, 2002. Cena had been a bodybuilder who shifted to wrestling when he discovered there was no money in bodybuilding. He wrestled around California a bit, and was soon scooped up by WWE because he had “the look.”

The problem was, he kind of sucked. He had some charisma, which you can’t teach, but he didn’t move vry well in the ring, which you can teach, but he was going to have to learn that in front of live fans on live TV. He was also trotted out there as what they call a “white-meat babyface:” a plucky, young hero who stood up to the heels and sometimes won and sometimes lost, but who always put up a good fight nonetheless. That kind of thing worked in the 70’s and 80’s, but this was 2002 and wrestling fans needed something a little more.

Cena wasn’t learning fast enough and was said to be on the chopping block when WWE head writer Stephanie McMahon, daughter of Vince, overheard Cena on a bus while on a European tour doing some freestyle rapping to entertain his fellow grapplers. She was amused and wondered why they haven’t let this guy do this schtick on TV. Stephanie obviously had some pull, so Cena was immediately repackaged from white-meat babyface to Eminem with muscles. He began dressing in backwards hats, gold chains and throwback sports jerseys, and would rap his way to the ring, making fun of the fans and sports teams of whatever city he was in, and as they say in the wrestling biz, he got “over like Rover.” (In inside wrestling lingo, “over” refers to the amount of fan reaction. If a wrestler or a move gets a lot of cheers or boos, it is considered over. If the fans don’t react at all, that is not over, and that’s cause for concern.) John Cena, the Doctor of Thugonomics, was born.

Cena soon became the next main event star of pro wrestling; the guy they would send to the Today Show or army bases or to visit sick kids (It is not fake wrestling PR that John Cena has the Guinness World Record for granting the most Make-a-Wishes in history, and it’s not even close. He has more than double whoever is in second. Just thought I’d mention that.) Eventually, he dropped the rapper gimmick because it seemed odd for the top guy, and he became John Cena, Fake Marine, having never done a day of military service, but that’s fine. Sgt. Slaughter never did either, and he’s been living that gimmick for 50 years.

Problem was, older males liked the rapper gimmick, and liked Cena when he wasn’t The Chosen One. They liked him when, much like The Rock, he was Their Guy. Nobody tells modern wrestling male fans who they must like, so when Cena would come to the ring, he was met with a chorus of loud boos from male fans. However, kids liked the guy because he was funny and they aren’t cynical and misanthropic like those old grumps, so Cena was also showered with high-pitched screams of joy from his younger fans when he would run to the ring. Either way, Cena worked hard, and sold a lot of merchandise, so despite the outcry from those grumpy older fans, the WWE brass stuck with him as their top star. Eventually, for one of Rock’s comebacks, he was put in matches with Cena as a sort of generational battle (despite Rock only being 5 years older). Cena had criticized Rock for always saying that he was coming home and then leaving after a couple months. The Rock retaliated by making fun of Cena’s brightly-colored t-shirts and ring gear, which consisted of jorts and sneakers.

Eventually, after Cena defeated him in the ring, Rock endorsed John for his hard work, and even the old grumpy fans eventually warmed up to him (and he did learn how to wrestle, so there’s that.)

After a while, Cena started getting the pull towards Hollywood. And not just lame action movies like The Marine or 12 Rounds. He did “real” movies, and he was pretty good. He started wrestling less and doing movies more, and he eventually had to apologize to The Rock on social media, basically saying that he gets it now. But fans wouldn’t boo him (Sometimes they would, but only ironically. Wrestling is very strange.) when he came back because he never lied to them. He would come back when he wanted to wrestle, not because he needed to wrestle. According to Google, the dude is worth north of $80 million. He doesn’t have to take clotheslines if he doesn’t want to.

Still, Cena was in his 40’s and nobody can pin Father Time in the ring. He had a lot of Hollywood commitments, but when he was cast as Peacemaker in The Suicide Squad, and then James Gunn and Warner Brothers gave him a series, all that hustle, loyalty and respect really paid off. (Side note: Gunn originally wrote Peacemaker thinking that he would cast another former wrestler, Dave Batista, who played Drax in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When Dave was unavailable, Cena got the role, and there was much rejoicing.)

Do You Really Wanna Taste It?

I am a huge fan of Peacemaker, and it is mostly because of Cena. As much as I enjoy him in the Fast & Furious movies, I must admit that he’s mostly playing John Cena. In fact, when he would do comedies, they were mostly funny because he was John Cena, a big dude put in funny situations.

I mean, nobody watches those movies for the performances, anyway. But Peacemaker is a different animal. It has the humor and characterization that Gunn brought to the Guardians franchise, plus the R-rating that allows him to express his real inner whack-job. If you haven’t watched it because you don’t dig super-hero stuff, you can put that right to bed. This is a show that, yes, has some messed-up storylines and some gross-out moments, but the characters are so layered and well-written, that I find myself falling in love with them, and I’m not the type of person who usually does that. I will admit that it took two seasons to get there, but that’s the cool thing. I enjoyed the first season enough, and watched the second season for that reason, but it was a slow-burn. By the second season finale, I was singing along to the theme song (which I originally thought was inferior to the first season one. What can I say? They got me.)

Like pro wrestling, a TV series is a unique phenomenon in entertainment. Fans need characters to get behind, like wrestling fans did with John Cena. Fans were apathetic to him at first because all he had was “the look,” but eventually he learned how to wrestle and how to work the crowd, and I think the same principle applies to his Hollywood career, and TV series’ in general. You didn’t watch Breaking Bad at first because Walter White is such a cool guy, and he certainly didn’t have “the look.” But the premise and the writing was so compelling that eventually you grew to love him and the other characters, and you needed to see what would happen to them. It might be blasphemy to compare Breaking Bad to Peacemaker, but personally this is what has happened to me: I grew to like the characters so much that I just had to see what happened to them. And it’s basically the same thing that happened in Cena’s wrestling career. He learned how to act the same way that he learned how to wrestle and talk in the ring, and he became one of the best talkers in the business. He’s not the best actor in Hollywood, but with the help of some good writing and a great ensemble, the guy helped carry a whole show, so that’s something. He apparently also learned Mandarin for fun. The guy just works really hard.

At 48, Cena is retiring from wrestling in a matter of weeks, which is good because you don’t want to hang on too long. I’m more sad that I recently learned that there are currently no plans for a season three of Peacemaker. But that’s ok, too. The character is sure to return as part of Gunn’s DC Extended Universe. And Cena, the man, is sure to hustle on to whatever project he chooses next.

Hopefully another Fast & Furious movie.

Thanks for reading, as always. Don’t forget to subscribe and share, and check out my podcast, and if you want to help keep the lights on, you can donate in small amounts at Buy Me a Coffee or grab a t-shirt or hoodie from my Printify shop.

And as always, keep on keepin’ on.

As a Bruce Springsteen fan, I was looking forward to this for awhile. I mean, whether you are a fan or not, the man has sold over 140 million albums worldwide over a career that has spanned over fifty years. He is a Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famer, an Oscar winner, a Tony winner and a 20-Time Grammy winner. He’s kind of part of the culture. Hollywood has been churning out the Rock biopics over the last several years, with Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman and I’m Not There, so you could say it was just Bruce’s turn. Whatever the reason, someone thought this story needed to be told on the big screen.

I’m just going to say right here that I’m not sure why.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is based on a book by Warren Zanes of the same name, and it covers the period of Bruce’s life after the end of his tour for the double-album The River. After so much financial success from his last couple albums, including Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, he returns home (almost literally. He rents a house pretty close to his childhood home.) with nothing really on his plate creatively, but a record studio chomping at the bit for a new rock n’ roll chart-topper. Bruce lays around his empty house (his family moved to California years earlier) and starts strumming his acoustic. He soon picks up a 4-track recorder and lays down a bunch of songs, most of which end up becoming the album Nebraska, and the rest get pushed off and became Born in the U.S.A. There is a brief insinuation that he would make yet another double-album, but thankfully that did not come to pass.

While he is getting advice from his manager, Jon Landau, and driving around town reminiscing about his father’s alcoholism, he also meets a girl, Faye. He goes on a couple dates with her and is very nice to her daughter, but soon ghosts her. I should point out here that Bruce didn’t date Faye in real life, but she is actually a composite of several women that he knew around this time. She has no real purpose in the movie except to bark at him for running away from his problems when he tells her he’s also moving to California. Other than not returning her calls, he was pretty honest with her, and let’s face it, even at this point in his life, he’s Bruce Springsteen. Did she really think that it was going to work out? But I guess the filmmakers thought he needed a love interest, so…

The movie then decides to portray Bruce as a pretentious artist when he decides that he dosn’t want to record his 4-track songs with the band and he wants to release them as is. No press, no tour, no fun. There are a couple scenes where his producer (played by Marc Maron, playing a spot-on Marc Maron) has to remove background noise and echo to make the tape that Bruce recorded studio-ready. But that conflict resolves itself pretty quickly. The studio head, even though he’s a tad annoyed that he’s not getting another rock album, decides to go with it anyway and that plot thread is sewn up pretty easily. So most of these conflicts don’t end up being conflicts at all, but I guess that’s life as a famous rock star.

Bruce then drives out West with a friend of his who is never named, and has a mental breakdown, and is told to go to therapy. He does, and we are then shown a title card that says “Ten Months Later…” and Bruce is coming off stage after another epic live performance, and he has a nice chat with his Dad, who tells him he;s proud of him. The movie ends with Bruce walking around Asbury Park, and we are told via more title cards that the album Nebraska made it to #3 on the charts, despite no tour, no press and no fun, and that Bruce continues to battle depression to this day, but does so with “help and hope.”

I literally didn’t know this movie was about mental illness until that moment.

I understand mental illness was treated differently back in the early 80’s, and people, especially rock stars, didn’t go to therapy that often, so good for Bruce Springsteen for taking the plunge. Unfortunately, such a journey is not very cinematic. Also, while it’s cool that he did what he wanted at the height of his popularity and released an acoustic folk album, I don’t know if there was enough of a struggle with that and with his battle with depression to make a movie about it. I honestly, would have rather seen what happened in those ten months that they skipped over than the stuff we got.

I do credit the movie for not just covering Springsteen’s humble beginnings all the way through to his success, because we’ve seen that a hundred times. However, much like the Nebraska album itself, I just don’t think this is the Bruce story that anyone wanted (I guess good on director Scott Cooper for doing it The Bruce Way.) Obviosuly, the album is great, and do yourself the favor of listening to the new re-issue, but in the end, people have to watch a movie, and when we do that, we like to see cool things happen. Maybe if it was all about the issues with his father, or just about the tug-of-war with the record company, or his depression, or even just his girl troubles, that would have been better. But they tried to cram all those problems in and didn’t really give enough time to any of them.

Part of the issue, really, is that there just isn’t a lot of drama here. Springsteen’s estimated net worth is around $750 million, and he is still making new music to this day (such as it is.) . While money isn’t a cure-all, and his battles with depression are very real, and his Dad was an alcoholic who used booze to cope with mental illness, Bruce seems to have risen above it all pretty well. In fact, he’s done so well, and produced so much great stuff that, even as a fan, I have to admit that a lot of his more current music is a little meh. Sometimes, art needs strife. His early stuff when he was really struggling was his absolute best, and not too many people will argue with me on that. I mean, he’s 76 years-old, so I’m not knocking him. He’s had a good run. But I also feel like the Trainspotting Theory applies here:

Maybe a little harsh, but there is some truth to it. Like I said, he did well for himself, and I don’t need a movie to tell me about one period of his life to show me that. But if anything, it may illustrate even more how good he was back then, when he was going through such a rough patch. As Sick Boy says in the clip, “Beautifully fucking illustrated.”

As always, thanks for reading. If you would like to support a starving artist (not a Springsteen-level one), consider becoming a paid subscriber. You can also support the Substack by buying me a coffee, or buying something from my Printify store on eBay.

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Thanks! Keep on keepin’ on!

I put John’s amazing edit to scans of the pages (thankfully, a royalty-free comic) that i found online. The voices were all done by me, John and his wife, Jen. It was kind of a fun experiment, and it would probably be easier to do now, but at the time, it was Windows MovieMaker and a lot of time. But I was pretty proud of it, so I figured I’d post it here. Check it out and thanks, as always for being a subscriber. If you were sent this by someone else, here’s a quick link:

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Jones: Wow. What a view.

Walken: … To a Kill!

I’ll give the original X-Files movie a pass because it worked on a couple levels. For one, everyone just called it “The X-Files movie,” anyway, and it’s entirely possible that they stuck the subtitle on after they wrote the script and it was just a cool line… To a kill!

The other reason the line works is because they kind of were fighting the future. It was 1998, and while the show had been on for five seasons, and was very popular, people didn’t really make movies from TV shows that were currently running. Perhaps the Dawson’s Creek movie (The Wraith of Pacey!) would have made millions, but I guess we’ll never know.

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Show creator Chris Carter wanted to communicate the mythology of the show on a larger scale, which meant a feature film, but he also wanted to tell a story that would entertain fans and non-fans alike. I’m sure the studio thought that was great, too, because it would sell more tickets. I remember seeing it with my brother, who was one of those non-fans, to test if people who didn’t watch the show would like it. He said he did, but he likes everything, so who knows?

It was an interesting idea, because the movie wasn’t just a longer episode of the show. Events happened that would change the direction of future episodes, or at least, call into question some of the elements (Basically, “Does Scully believe in this shit now?”) But they could have just as easily done a longer episode of the show, because The X-Files frequently aired episodes that some back then referred to as “Monster of the Week” episodes, which had nothing to do with the show’s mythology but were great character pieces for Mulder and Scully and their colleagues. Looking back, the MOW episodes are actually some of my favorites (Check out “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” for a good time.) It’s not something you really see anymore, since most series that stream have seasons that are 8-10 episodes long. There’s not a lot of time for fun, character-building. No wonder it took me so long to get into Game of Thrones. There’s a billion people on it and, except for Peter Dinklage, they all kind of look the same.

That’s another cool thing about The X-Files, though; there were only two main characters, so you didn’t need Wikipedia open to figure out who was who (Also, there was no such thing back then.) Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) was The Believer: he was pretty sure his sister had been abducted by aliens when they were kids, and was on a quest to find her. His quest led him to join the FBI, and since he had solved some high-profile cases, he was given his wish to open his own department: The X-Files, whose job it was to investigate the unsolved and unexplainable cases that came alone. Special Agent Dana Scully (the great Gillian Anderson), MD and skeptic, was assigned to The X-Files to essentially debunk Mulder’s work and solve the unsolved cases through logic. In a lot of episodes, she had lines like,“Mulder, that’s not a wolf-man. He just has a rare skin condition and grows a lot of hair and sharpens his teeth.” And then something would happen that would make it ambiguous if guy really was a werewolf.

But the movie was different. First of all, the X-Files had been closed at the end of the previous season, and Mulder and Scully were basic FBI agents (I know. How pedantic.) However, as they had always done, the two agents endeavor to unravel a mystery of wild, experimental bees and some missing firemen (or are they abductees? Ok, they are. I thought I would be cryptic.) Turns out the missing people’s bodies are basically being used as cocoons to grow alien life forms (ALF?) in. And obviously, there are rogue government agencies at work trying to stop Mulder and Scully. You all remember the Cigarette-Smoking Man, right? (Can people even smoke on TV anymore?)

Scully is basically doing all this as a favor to Mulder because, with the X-Files shuttered, she feels like she has been fighting an uphill battle for years and wants to go back to just saving lives in medicine. Unfortunately, she is stung by one of those bees and abducted. And just before she and Mulder were actually going to kiss! In case you weren’t a fan, Mulder and Scully rivaled Ross and Rachel at the time on the “Will They or Won’t They” scale. And since Ross was such a putz, this one was way more compelling.

Mulder, with a little help from his friends and even rogue-r government agents, finds out she and the other abductees have been taken to Antarctica, so he goes to rescue her, armed with a vaccine that will cure her. He finds her in a giant chamber with hundreds of others who have been infected, and because it’s a sci-fi movie, injecting her with the vaccine causes a chain reaction that causes the whole place to start shaking. Mulder carries her outside, and as they begin to run away, the ground beneath them lifts, and they fall along with the ice and snow to the actual ground. As they lay in the snow, exhausted, the giant space ship that they were just in takes off, and Scully actually sees it. Proof that aliens exist! Or maybe it was just those pesky government agents.

Scully is then seen giving a testimony of her ordeal, and the committee before her concludes that without concrete evidence, the FBI can’t investigate further. Scully hands them a vial containing the bee that stung her, and tells them,

“I don’t believe the FBI currently has an investigative unit qualified to pursue the evidence in hand.”

She then goes outside to tell Mulder that she’s back, and it’s basically on to season six. It’s so perfect because, here she was, about to quit the FBI entirely, and now she’s all-in. And the show must go on. Until David Duchovny decided he didn’t want to do it anymore. Even though the show continued for a couple more seasons and there was another movie and then a revival a few years ago, I pretty much call that the end. The network brought in Robert Patrick to be the new star, but not too many shows can creatively survive the exodus of one of the main characters. Maybe they would have been better off if they went the Star Trek route and just did movies.

I believe they would have, because despite what I said about this movie not simply being a long-ass episode of the show, it definitely felt like one, but in a good way. The dialogue and characterization were spot on, despite the creators best efforts to also make the movie accessible to people who have never watched the show. I thought they did a good job, but a funny thing happened after the movie was released. I did some Googling, and the AI overview said season 5 (pre-movie) “was the highest-rated in the show’s history,” averaging 19.8 million viewers per episode, which is pretty amazing. I know it was a different time, but just by comparison, Sunday Night Football last week pulled 23.87 million viewers, and NFL games are considered ratings juggernauts. Meanwhile, Alien: Earth averages 589,000 viewers per episode, and that’s a pretty successful show. Point is, even for 1998, The X-Files was doing pretty well.

However, season 6 of the show saw the average ratings drop to 16.9 million viewers per episode, and according to Google, it began a downward trend for the rest of the series. Now this is AI talking, and Mulder probably wouldn’t cotton to this, but this is what I have to work with:

Season 6 received mixed reactions from fans and critics due to a shift towards a more humorous and lighthearted “monster-of-the-week” format after the production move to Los Angeles. Some episodes, such as “Triangle,” were highly acclaimed, while others were criticized for being too comedic or generic.

Earlier I said that the standalone, MOW episodes were some of my favorites, but I have to agree with Google and wherever they got this information from that moving the production of the show to Los Angeles was the beginning of the end. Obviously, that didn’t have anything to do with the movie, but the whole vibe was different, and it honestly felt like a completely different show. But that’s probably the reason that they didn’t make another movie for another ten years.

Still, I’m glad we got this one, as I have fond memories of seeing it, and watching the show. I know they are streaming now, and maybe some day when I’m retired I’ll watch the series again, but for now, I like to keep it in its time. People toss words like “groundbreaking” and “revolutionary” around a lot, but I think it fits The X-Files. Basically every police or medical procedural show borrows from it, and doesn’t do it nearly as well. I was also the perfect age to enjoy it when it was on, and like Mulder, I cannot fight the future. But I can revel in the past.

Thanks for reading as always. Be sure to check out my other stuff, including my comic and printify shirts on my ebay page. If that’s too much, toss me a buck on Buy me a Coffee. The holidays are coming!

Excelsior!

I have lived in and around Boston for basically my whole life, but Charlestown is not an area that i have spent a lot of time in, so when I first saw this movie, and read that initial card that says “One blue-collar Boston neighborhood has produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere in the world,” I was a little surprised. I did Google this to see if it is true, and this is what the bots spit out:

“While the 2010 movie The Town dramatized Charlestown's history, official statistics from the FBI do not support the claim that it has produced the most bank robbers globally or nationwide. However, Charlestown, Massachusetts, has a well-documented history as a breeding ground for thieves and gangsters, particularly in the late 20th century, with its reputation cemented in local lore and fiction”

Well said, Gemini. So, not only is the statement about the bank robbers not true, but I wouldn’t even call Charlestown a blue-collar neighborhood anymore. A quick look at Zillow reveals that the average home in Charlestown is valued at $984,589, up 1.7% over the past year. Basically, if you live in Charlestown, you might as well rob a bank, because they’re sure as heck-fire robbing you.

Still, like most Boston neighborhoods, there are “townies” who have lived in Charlestown for generations and live in the same houses that their ancestors grew up in. And it is charming in its way, and a rich history is what makes Boston a cool place to live. However, a lot of those old buildings are being torn down and replaced by high-rise condos that are basically put together with LEGOs and yet the rent to live in them for a year is more than I paid to go to college. So yeah, the charm is starting to wane. At least it’s a higher class of criminal living in Charlestown now.

Despite being a lifelong Bostonian-adjacent person, I never developed The Accent. When I was in college, I took a Voice & Articulation class that helped expunge most of it from my system, although somehow “Ah-lington” is still in my vocabulary (instead of “Arlington.”) Still when the casting call went out in 2009 for extras for The Town (long-time readers may remember my post about my experiences as an extra on movies. If not, follow that link if you’re interested. It’s a fun one.), I showed up, in case they needed someone who doesn’t sound like Mayor Quimby in the movie. My friend and I stood in line for awhile, along with scores of Boston residents. This was different for me because this was the only extras casting I went to where I was given a line to read, presumably to test my Boston accent. I knew I didn’t really have one, so I didn't try to fake it, and I figured I had no shot, but I still felt cool. Like I was in the line-up scene in Usual Suspects. I walked in and read the line in my own voice and was done in about ten seconds. My friend took a little longer, pouring over the line, even though he has less of a Boston accent than I do. Since there were plenty of Bostonians there who actually sound like stereotypical Bostonians and not ordinary white guys, we were not called back. At the time, it didn’t bother me, but when I saw the movie, I was a little disappointed. It would have been cool to be in a movie that I actually liked.

The Town was based on a novel by Chuck Hogan called Prince of Thieves, and even though it was not factual, there are definitely elements of truth to it (I once ate at a 99 restaurant in Charlestown that was the site of a famous mob hit). The truth elements expanded after Ben Afflack was hired to direct and star in it. Fresh off directing Gone, Baby, Gone, the studio must have thought, “Who else would we get to direct this?” Well, apparently, Adrian Lyne was originally tapped to direct, but he envisioned a 3-hour, Scorsese-style mob epic, probably with a lot of sex in it, knowing him. The studio decided that people had already seen The Departed, so wanted to try something different. Affleck was looking for a movie that he had some connection to, and did a lot of research on the criminal element in Chucktown (I wonder if he even ate at that 99.) Let’s not forget that Affleck grew up in Cambridge, MA, which is very close to Charlestown geographically, but very far away culturally. So Affleck and his high school buddy, Aaron Stockard, did their homework and the result is a film that feels so real, it even had me believing that Charlestown could be the bank robber capital of the world.

Affleck also stars in the movie as Doug MacRay, one of those notorious thieves of Charlestown, MacRay has lived in The Town his whole life, and was given an interesting back story: he was a former hockey player who was actually drafted to play in the NHL, but he kept getting into fights on the ice, even with his teammates, so he never made it and subsequently got hooked on drugs, since he had nothing better to do after hockey. He kicked the drug habit, and ended up going into the family business of robbing people. His dad, played by Chris Cooper (another Mass native), was serving a life sentence in Walpole Penitentiary for his misdeeds, and although he could get a cushier deal if he played nice with the guards and his fellow inmates, like his son he enjoyed getting in fights. Doug didn’t want to end up like his old man, and was trying for “one last score” so he could get out (It’s a little typical of this kind of movie, but it works here.) Doug is also “searching” for his long lost mother, who he thinks left when he was six years-old, but he later learns that she was just another “toonie” drug addict who had actually overdosed. His Dad basically never bothered to tell him this, because he thought putting up homemade posters with her picture around the neighborhood gave him a raison d’etre.

Doug has a best friend/brother James Coughlin, played by Jeremy Renner, and not only did his performance net him an Oscar nom, he gets top marks from me as an actor who puts on a Boston accent that doesn’t actually sound comical (The guy is from Modesto, and sounds more authentic than all the actual Boston actors do.) Coughlin is the real criminal of the group, and he doesn’t want to leave the life at all. However, he did a stint in prison for killing someone who was planning to kill Doug, so doesn’t want to go back. Coughlin also has a sister, Krista (Blake Lively), who has a daughter that everyone assumes is Doug’s, although Doug denies it. She clearly loves him, though, but is basically drunk or high all the time, so Doug kind of keeps her at arm’s length (Well, sort of. They do sleep together.)

The real drama comes when Coughlin takes bank employee Claire (Rebecca Hall) hostage on one of their heists to help ensure their escape. After making their getaway, they let her go, by telling her to walk towards Boston Harbor blindfolded until she feels the water on her feet, a’ la Friends of Eddie Coyle. They take her license so they can say “We Know where you live if you talk to the police,” and when they look at it later they discover that she lives in Charlestown, too. Doug takes charge and offers to tail her to see if he can find out what she told the police, and of course he falls for her.

Speaking of the cops, Jon Hamm, in prime Don Draper mode, plays Special Agent Adam Frawley, and in no way does the movie attempt to portray him as anything but the bad guy. When an armored car driver is shot by Doug’s crew, Hamm wants to asphyxiate him just so he can send Doug and his friends away for murder instead of just robbery. He intimidates Claire in an attempt to get her to rat out Doug, and then taps her phone to get intel, when she is actually the victim in his investigation. He also tells Claire that Doug was one of the bank robbers that took her hostage, so that puts the kibosh on that relationship. But maybe the worst thing he does is use Krista and her lovelorn, drug-induced sadness to trap Doug on his next big job by telling her about him and Claire. It’s very middle school in a way, and is a total scumbag thing to do, but it works.

The next big job happens to be robbing Fenway Park, what Pete Postlethwaite’s Florist/mob boss who hires/intimidates the boys into robbing it accurately describes as “the cathedral of Boston.” In one of the most tense robbery scenes that you will see in any heist movie, Doug, Coughlin and their gang break into Fenway the morning after a four-game series with the Yankees, and almost walk out with $3 million. Except, thanks to Krista, Frawley and the Feds are outside. After their friends are taken, MacRay and Coughlin walk out dressed as cops. Only problem with that is Coughlin walks out carrying a huge bag of money, and is easily recognized. Since Coughlin prefers death to prison, and he’s a total psycho, he goes out guns a’blazing, or what Wikipedia describes as “suicide by cop.” MacRay watches him die, but decides to escape in the chaos.

Doug shoots The Florist to cover his tracks, then goes home and gathers up his savings. He calls Claire to see if she is willing to run away with him. He watches her from a hiding spot outside as they talk, and he sees Frawley in her apartment with her. She uses a story she had told him about her dead brother to say he should come by *wink-wink, say no more*, so he realizes that she didn’t sell him out and they are all good again, and he gets on a train out of town. Figuring it out a little too late, Frawley gives her one final parting shot, reminding her that the FBI are a “national organization,” and they will probably catch him sometime.

In the final scene, we see Claire digging in her community garden, where she finds a bag of money, and a tangerine, as Doug had told her earlier that he always thought his Mom had gone to live with his aunt in Tangerine, Florida. Also in the bag was a note, stating that he was sorry for everything, and that she would probably do more good with the money than him. We see that she uses the money to renovate the youth hockey center, naming it after Doug’s mother. We see him in a small house, looking out over the water, presumably in Tangerine, having actually gotten out of Charlestown. You half-expect the Shawshank ending to happen, but Claire probably will never bother taking that trip to Tangerine, seeing as how Doug was kind of a liar.

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There was another ending, though, apparently the one that Affleck wanted. In this alternate ending, as he is making his way to the train station, Doug is stopped by Charlestown street thugs, ones that he and Coughlin had beaten up earlier in the movie for accosting Claire, and apparently had been hired by The Florist in case anything happened to him. Doug tries to buy them off with what little money he has left, but they shoot him dead, with one of the last things he sees being a plane departing Logan Airport, rubbing it in his face that he never got out. It’s a nice twist that calls back to the thugs from earlier in the movie, but also kind of random. I know that Doug probably didn’t deserve a life of quiet dignity after everything bad he had done, and it was a sort of “live by the sword, die by the sword” kind of thing, but still, those guys didn’t really earn the right to kill him. In this instance, the Hollywood ending was somehow the less cliche’ of the two.

Having said all that, even though it is not real, it is the realism that I spoke of earlier that makes this movie resonate. I can’t speak for anyone who doesn’t live around here (maybe they don’t give a crap about any of it), but something about the actual locations helps it hit home. There are Boston movies where the characters live on the North Shore, and then take a trip to Quincy for a two minute conversation just because it's cinematic and looks nice, but in real life, nobody would bother driving all that way just to have a meeting at a quarry. But in The Town, you could definitely see Doug and Claire going from Charlestown to Harvard Square to have lunch, because they’re very close, and that’s where Claire’s bank was. The only real problem I had with the locations part was the car chase through the North End at rush hour and almost no one on the streets. That was just a Tobin Bridge too far.

The characters also make the movie for me. You could say that Doug MacRay is the “Hooker with a Heart of Gold” that you see in a lot of these movies, but the script does a good job with making you see how he got to that point and why he wants to get out of Charlestown so bad, from his imprisoned father to his damaged love interest and psycho killer friend. It’s a lot, but it does help you root for the guy, which is another reason why the alternate ending would have been so much more of a downer. The Town is really a parable for a lot of people like Doug MacRay. Not bank robbers necessarily, but people who have lived in the same places as their parents and grandparents and just never get a chance to see the world. It sometimes takes a lot of money, which you may have to steal, but you can get out if you really want to.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Please like, subscribe, comment and share if you are so inclined. And if you want to go the extra mile, you can buy me a coffee, buy a t-shirt, or buy my comic. Also, like most white males, I have a podcast, so you can listen to that here.

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Now get in your cahh and get outta he-ah, kid.

For those who, like my poker brethren, are not familiar, Benny and Joon are a brother/sister combo who have lived together since their parents were killed in an auto accident when they were young. Joon (Masterson) is “mentally ill,” although her illness is never specifically named, except there is a passing reference that she “sometimes hears voices” and at one point she produces a medical ID card that says, “Supervision required at all Times/Under Medication.” My cursory online research revealed that she may be schizophrenic, but like I said, it’s never specifically mentioned. It was a different time, as they say. Mental Illness was treated very differently back then.

Benny (Quinn) supports them through his car repair shop, but has no real life of his own because of his obligation. Since Joon has been running off various housekeepers and attendants, her doctor suggests Benny place Joon in a group home where she will be cared for and be able to live among her peers (which is what most people in his position would do if this were real life), but Benny says that their living situation has been basically working for 12 years and he sees no reason to change things. At several points, the movie indicates that Benny actually needs Joon as much as she needs him, and looking at it now, not getting her the help she so obviously needs seems like kind of a dick move.

Since he doesn’t want to leave Joon alone for too long, Benny brings her to his afore-mentioned poker game. Benny leaves the table for a bit to lament to his friend, played by Oliver Platt (I forgot how many famous people were in this movie), about the group home idea and how his life is passing him by, so Joon decides to play a hand in his stead. She loses to their friend - on a flush, no less. The pot involved taking their friend’s cousin “off his hands.” The cousin, Sam, played by Johnny Depp, also appears to be on the “mentally ill” side of the spectrum, as Joon saw him earlier sitting in a tree. Upon meeting him, Joon mentions that he’s “out of his tree,” which is a great line but also the only mention of Sam’s possible neurodivergence. Benny initially wants to kick Sam to the curb, but he cleans the house expertly and makes a decent grilled cheese with a clothes iron, so he decides to let him stay as Joon’s newest caretaker. This frees Benny up a little, and he actually goes on a date with Ruthie, the waitress at the local diner and manager of a nearby apartment building (played by Julianne Moore. There really is a lot of famous people in this movie. I don’t even have time to work in William H. Macy's role.) Ruthie invites him in and starts getting a little too cozy, so he excuses himself, saying that his life is “complicated.” She is put-off by this, even though he’s not wrong. And it is a line that everyone has heard before, so really, she should just chill.

One of Sam’s quirks is that he dresses and acts like the stars of old Hollywood (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, et al), and Benny thinks that he can take his routines on the road. When Sam and Joon tell Benny that he can’t go on the road because they are in love, Benny flips and throws Sam out. When Joon protests, he shows her the pamphlet for the group home he is considering, and she in turn flips out on him. Benny goes to Ruthie’s diner to get some tapioca to smooth things over, and Sam returns to see Joon. They decide to pack their bags and catch a bus out of town. However, because of all the stress (I guess), Joon starts hearing the voices and has a psychotic episode on the bus, and is taken to an institution (mental hospital? Looney bin? Whatever they were called then). Upon finding out their plan, Benny is even more angry at Sam, until Sam points out that Benny is just scared to lose Joon.

During a classic 90’s montage set to Joe Cocker’s “Can’t Find my Way Home,” we see Benny walking, while Sam has been taken in by Ruthie. We don’t know how much time has passed, but Benny finally seeks Sam out and together they sneak into the hospital and Benny apologizes to Joon, realizing that he has suppressed her all this time, and it is him who needed her, not the other way around. He tells her that he will give her his blessing if she wants to get an apartment, and that Ruthie has one in her building, so Joon will still be kind of overseen. Joon’s doctor asks what she wants, which is not a question that she had been asked before, I guess, and Joon is hesitant because she doesn’t believe Benny is sincere, until she sees Sam swinging by out the third story window on a window washer’s harness.

The romantic gesture moves her to say that yes, she wants her own apartment and the doctor immediately says that this is all fine and dandy and will draw up the paperwork. The final scene depicts Benny bringing flowers to Ruthie, saying his life is now much less complicated. He also brings flowers to Joon’s apartment, but decides to leave them at the door when he sees Sam and Joon standing by the ironing board, cooking up some grilled cheese. Of course, The Proclaimers “(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles” provides the soundtrack for that lovely, final moment.

Yes, that song. and yeah, I put it in twice. Sue me. It’s the one that taught Americans what “havering” is (basically talking nonsense), is from this movie. And yes, it is way more famous than the movie itself. And yes, The Proclaimers never had to work again. Everyone knows the song, but nobody at my poker game knew much about the movie. My brilliant quote about the slightly-used soap on a rope fell on mostly deaf ears. Why do we suppose that is? Well, I obviously have theories.

Roger Ebert reviewed Benny & Joon and gave it three stars out of four. In his review, he wrote, "The story wants to be about love, but is also about madness, and somehow it weaves the two together with a charm that would probably not be quite so easy in real life.” He should have left out the probably, because there’s no way it would be this easy. Years ago, I dated someone who had mental issues similar to Joon, although I’m not 100% sure because Joon’s illness is never actually named. In fact, Sam asks Benny at one point while they are having a chat (while Benny is showering, which I thought was an odd choice) how sick Joon is, and Benny’s only response is “Really sick.” I know the screenwriter couldn’t just Google different kinds of mental illness back then, but a little research may have added to the story.

Anyway, I won’t get into details, but my ex-girlfriend was, at times (a sizable chunk of the time, really), a handful to say the least, and I finally just couldn’t hack it anymore and had to leave, mostly for my own good. I had moments of guilt for a while, but therapy, and life, finally convinced me that sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I wonder if we could jump ahead in Sam and Joon’s life and see if he ever had his moment of realization.

It’s possible that he did not. Strangely enough, it wasn’t until I watched this movie recently for this post and did a little research that I realized that Sam isn’t necessarily on the spectrum (at least as far as the movie says. He probably is, if this movie treated these things properly), but he is illiterate. When he goes into the video store to apply for a job, he doesn’t get any farther in the application process than his first name. I always thought that he was just awkward, but according to Wikipedia, he can’t actually read or write. He does get the job, so I guess Joon filled it out for him, as she did help him write a letter to his mother earlier. I mean, it’s not a hard job. Even I could do that one.

After Joon is taken into the hospital, Benny confronts Sam and tells him that the reason people laugh at him is because he’s “an idiot.” It’s a remark that really cuts deep because it’s actually true; Sam is kind of an idiot. He’s a nice guy who makes for a good character in a movie, and he would probably have millions of views on TikTok if this were taking place in 2025, but if I knew him in real life, I might think he’s a bit annoying. But maybe he and Joon work because that’s what love is: accepting people’s junk.

Or maybe it only works because the movie is written that way. When I was trying to be a screenwriter in the 90’s, I was told by a few people who read my scripts that I “handled weighty issues lightly.” Which I did. I thought it was mostly because I was young and dumb, but when I think back now, it might have also been because a lot of movies from back then did the same thing, and this one is no different. In fact, it might be worse. It is basically saying that this poor “mentally ill” girl, who wanders into traffic while wearing a scuba mask and carrying a ping pong paddle - and that was on a good day - can now handle living on her own because she found a boyfriend. I know it’s just a rom-com, but that’s definitely handling weighty issues lightly. It’s also a pretty shitty portrayal of neurodivergence.

So, I’m not sure if that’s the reason that nobody at my poker game knew this movie, but if I were betting on it, I’d throw in my soap-on-a-rope on that being the case. It’s actually a fun movie with an amazing cast if you don’t overthink things too much, and Aiden Quinn plays Benny with such understated grace that he is quietly the heart of the movie. No offense to Johnny Depp, because he definitely watched a lot of old movies to prepare, but that’s just homework. Quinn had to portray a person with actual depth and feelings. And they never give awards for that.

Anyway, thanks, as always, for reading. Please like and subscribe, and leave a comment if you remember this movie or have ever won a person in a poker game. If you have won any hands lately, consider buying me a coffee, or checking out my new t-shirt designs on eBay. I usually tell people to check out my stuff on Red Bubble, but I recently started using Printify, which links to my eBay account, so it’s a little more streamlined now. I mean, everyone has used eBay, right?

Thanks again. Keep on keepin’ on.