As you watch the screen, your heart begins to beat faster.

There's a fluttering in the pit of your stomach.

Your throat is dry, your palms damp.

Suddenly, a chill runs down your spine.

You clutch the person next to you.

You tell yourself it's only a movie, it's only a movie, but sooner or later, it's time to come home.

Welcome to Film Strip.

I'm Lindsay.

I'm Ron.

And we are happy to welcome back to the show April Riley.

April, say hi to everybody.

Hi, I am not Jay.

I'm.

April.

It's been a while.

Yeah, and I think this is actually the first time you and I have ever actually podcast.

Yeah, Yeah.

So first time, first time for us.

And we are here to talk about The Mothman Prophecies from 2002.

Starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton, Lucinda, Jenny, Alan Bates, and a really great photo of Debra Messing based on the book The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel and directed by Mark Pellington.

So April, the last time you were on the show, you talked about Labyrinth episode 293, February 2021, if anyone wants to dig into the archives for that.

And I hear that even back then you were talking about this movie.

So what's your background with this?

With this movie.

I saw this movie in the theaters when it came out in 2002.

I still have the DVDI watch it on a regular basis.

We're big fans of Mothman in our house.

So my even even my 11 year old daughter has seen the movie.

So we're we're quite frequent viewers of the Mothman Prophecies.

I read the book as well, but I read the book like 20 years ago so I don't remember anything about it.

Cool, Ron, what's what's your background with this one?

Oh I don't like Mothman at all.

This is terrible.

No, my wife is a big fan of Mothman Prophecies and she's a big moth.

She's a big moth head A.

Moth fan.

She's a lamp moth.

She's a moth.

Oh, that's so good.

She's a moth fan.

This is actually her Mothman onesie and her Mothman baby and stuff that I'm.

I'm stealing.

I'm still the Valor over here.

Nice.

But I saw this on home video.

I think like most people did, 'cause I don't remember being a huge hit.

Yeah, home video, one of the many Family Video nights back when that was the thing that people did, and I don't remember it going over very well in the room.

I think people were not super happy that Mothman there wasn't the gutting people or something.

I don't remember.

I had a similar experience Ron.

I watched this.

It was a rental from our local movie Max.

I think my brother and I were the ones that really wanted to see it.

So we got this one and watched it and I remember liking it.

I don't think I've seen it since I was probably in high school or college, which.

But basically I don't think I've seen it since very shortly after it came out, but I remember liking it then.

But sometimes that's a crapshoot, right?

I remembered really liking Crybaby when I was a kid, but turns out that's a really weird ass movie when you watch it as an adult.

So, you know, I rolled the dice and it was good.

I was happy that I at least remembered the timeline.

I did think that I remembered seeing it in high school, and then when I saw that it came out in 2002, I was like, all right, that tracks at least.

At least that was right.

OK, 2002 I might have actually been.

I was working in the video store when this came out.

Was this a popular one in the video store when you were working there or is that where you where like people didn't like it 'cause it wasn't gory enough?

That's where people didn't like it 'cause it wasn't gory enough.

We did watch it as like a family movie night at my aunt and uncle's house and I think every they were just mostly bored with it.

Yeah.

I see that, you know, kind of understandable.

It's not exactly a Ripperoid paste movie, but I don't want to jump into that before we get started officially.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, yeah, it it was the runtime of this is just about two hours, which and we just talked about this I think on one of our last episodes that in my humble opinion, no horror movie.

And I'll add thriller to this since I don't know if this technically falls under the horror umbrella for me, but I don't think they need to be longer than 90 minutes.

So I was a little skeptical.

Had some, you know, there was some gas in it, but I don't know.

April, How often do you watch this movie?

I.

Don't, I don't.

I don't want to say too often watching it to kind of refresh myself for this episode.

I probably watched it about a year and a half ago.

So I would say probably once every one to two years.

We want to usually show it to my kids, but it's the Mothman in the name.

It does a lot of heavy lifting in regards to this movie.

So yeah, I would say probably once every one to two years we watch it.

All right now next question Part 2.

Since you're a semi regular viewer, do you watch it as a Christmas movie?

Because I forgot that that is when it takes place.

This is the funniest part 'cause I, I watched it today and I'd never, this had never occurred to me.

But like I've, I've been a guest on on tis the podcast before several times.

And I'm like, wait a minute, is this a Christmas?

Movie.

Secret Christmas movie.

Yeah, it.

Sounds like this could be movie.

Yeah, because it starts the beginning starts at Christmas, shipping the Christmas party.

The end is at Christmas.

So maybe it's a Christmas movie.

Yeah, when I I was trying to figure out where it started and I used to live right outside of or outside of DC, Not right outside of DC, but I lived in the metro area.

And I said, 'cause I got my husband to watch it with me, that it looked like DC.

And he goes, it's a Christmas movie, it's gotta be in Chicago.

And it's like, oh, maybe it is.

And then it turns out it was in DC, but Chicago totally photo bombed this movie.

Like it has to be in every Christmas movie in some way.

It's selfish city.

I know, I know.

Anyway, well, let's all I'll see if I can.

Get oh, April, yes, before you get out going in April.

If you mentioned this to tis the podcast, please like record Tom's reaction to you Say let's watch Mothman Prophecies as a Christmas movie because I think his head will explode.

And, and like I said, it's it's it's just a little mentioned at the beginning and a little mentioned at the end.

So whether or not it is enough for Christmas to be considered a Christmas movie, that is very debatable.

I think there's I, I think it's, I would count it like they're Christmas presents.

I feel like there's a lot of Christmas, there's no Christmas music.

So if that's hmm.

I feel like Richard Gere.

No, go ahead.

I was going to say, I also know how Christmasy, a movie that ends with, you know, three dozen deaths, might feel to people.

But it ends with one of them not dying.

Yeah, that's, yeah.

I mean, that's a plot.

So that's kind of a feel good thing.

That is, it's a Christmas miracle.

Yeah, after.

And look Richard Gere.

Richard Gere learns the true meaning of Mothman, and that's something that we all need to keep in our hearts for the holiday season.

You know what this this did take me back.

This is not plot relevant.

But watching it again I remember thinking how I feel like all the moms loved Richard Gere right around this time frame.

That late 90s early odds, It was like Richard Gere, George Clooney and Nicolas Cage, like they were the three powerhouse men in Hollywood that all the moms went crazy for.

My mom did anyway.

In that mix.

I don't feel like Tom Cruise was a moms guy.

I feel like Nick Nolte might have been in that mix for a while before he went off the bend.

I don't remember Nick Nolte ever coming up, but I could see it that I was.

So like he was the generation before that 'cause he was like people's sexiest man in like 9493.

So weird to think about, yeah.

It is, especially if you think about Nick Nolte now.

Yeah, even like, not Nick Nolte now, but Nick Nolte.

Five years.

Yeah, yeah.

Not even 10, he fell off a Cliff hard.

Yeah, well, George Clooney was big on ER and that show is just really hot at the time, I think.

I don't know, I remember my mom watching it all the time.

My mom watched it too.

Yeah, yeah.

So Richard Gere, she probably sat down and watched this with myself and my brother when we rented it.

My stepdad probably fell asleep.

If I had to guess, it was a family movie.

Was this like the end of Richard Gere's peak as a as a Hollywood A list guy?

Because he had Doctor T and the women and then this and it felt like those came out pretty close in time to one another.

And neither one of them was like super successful.

I was going to say, would you consider this peak Richard Gere?

I think this is like the the slope like this is like the bridge.

After the first like spanner has given way in the the the first rope snaps and kills CJRFE.

Yeah, well, he was in Chicago the same year, which was a pretty big hit, but yeah, Pretty Woman, everyone really liked him for Pretty Woman, so yeah.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm, good point.

Maybe, maybe this was his other side of the mountain.

This is where he starts going downhill.

Do you think that's why they picked Debra Messing to be his wife in the opening of this?

To to.

Try to recapture that Pretty Woman look.

It's a pretty redhead.

Oh, another redhead.

Oh.

And and the picture they show of her, the the whole thing is like, here's Debra Messing in her boobs.

Pay attention.

To that, yeah.

They showed that picture a lot.

It was great.

It was a it was a great photo that he hung up.

I hope she got paid really well for that picture 'cause like that picture got more screen time than she did.

Yeah.

Yeah, her screenshot, her screen time was, was small but mighty, though.

Like she had some, she had some really powerful acting going on.

There she was.

Yeah, Yeah, she was really good for the part that she was given.

But well, and I mean, that's, that's no slight like on her, right?

Like it's.

Not a reference to her performance.

It's just a the power of her cleavage.

I guess in this movie.

I feel like the only reason she's in that like bikini top is so people are like, why is somebody as handsome as Richard Gere not like still like hung up on his dead wife.

It's been a couple of years.

It's like, oh, OK, those make sense.

I mean, that makes sense.

They were just two crazy kids in love in the city of DC where people are notoriously not attractive.

So she's she's definitely ADC 10.

I I feel like she's a 10 in a lot of places TBH.

She's definitely A10 in a point of view.

She's probably in Point Pleasant.

She's like a 50 for.

Herself.

Well, before we get too deep into the movie or start, you know, talking about other important things, I'll kick it off with a Plot Summary.

We'll see if I can get through it.

Actually it's not that long so I think it'll be fine.

But this movie.

Basically imagine The X-Files if Mulder was replaced by Richard Gere's cheekbones and the monster only communicates via late night robocalls.

That's the Mothman Prophecies.

It's a Moody thriller where ADC reporter named John Klein takes the world's weirdest road trip accidentally fast traveling to Point Pleasant, WV, a town that's basically a paranormal call center with scenic riverviews.

So John's journey starts when his wife Mary crashes the car after seeing something with red eyes and serious wing panache.

While in the hospital, doctors discover that Mary has a rare brain tumor, which ultimately leads to her death.

But what's really important here is that she leaves behind a portfolio of unsettling moth doodles.

Two years later, John decides to head to Richmond at 1:00 AM, about 12 hours or so earlier than necessary for an interview.

And he somehow ends up on the West Virginia, Ohio border, knocking on a stranger's door at 2:30 in the morning with no idea how he got there.

The local cop Connie, played by Laura Linney, who is the human embodiment of Let's Keep It Together, helps him navigate a community reporting light shows, prophetic phone calls, and a Cryptid who's apparently subscribed to everyone's calendar alerts.

Enter Indrid Cold, a voice on the line.

Who knows what's in your pocket, what you wrote on your notepad, and where you'll be before you do.

He or she or it is like Siri if Siri were an eldritch being and also your least favorite telemarketer.

John seeks advice from Alexander Leake, a scholar turned umbrella enthusiast who explains that Mothman isn't here to hurt you.

He's the universe's passive aggressive sticky note, basically saying things like bridge inspection overdue.

As the prophecies ramp up, so does John's obsession.

He tries to stop doom from happening, only to learn that fate doesn't take meetings.

The finale is a tense, waterlogged set on a bridge where time warnings and reality collide, and John discovers that the point of a prophecy might not be stopping the disaster so much as being in the right place to save someone who needs you.

And Laura Linney gets saved right as Christmas happens.

And then did we end to Jingle Bell Rock question mark?

I'd be fine with that.

Yeah, that on.

Christmas song, Yeah.

That'd be a strong close SO.

They're, they're just gonna do a new version of God Rest, ye merry gentle moths.

I'm sorry.

That's the thing.

He knows when you're awake.

That's what we should have done for this, Ron, you and Jay.

Bridge, Wilco laughs.

Ron's going to sing a whole Christmas song for us before this is over.

So the opening house scene where they are house hunting in what I assume is Georgetown, That's they.

He did end up buying that house.

You 2 keep me honest here, correct me if I'm wrong.

Only for like $80,000 or something stupid.

It's disgusting how unexpensive.

Inexpensive.

Like a house in Georgetown.

That one would probably be $5,000,000 right now.

Yeah.

He bought it on a salary working at.

At the Washington Post, Yeah.

But we also we didn't know what she did, so maybe she was a breadwinner.

That's true, and maybe she had a really good insurance policy.

Yeah, she was a Colombian drug Lord.

Maybe she came from money, There are a lot of wealthy people in that area.

She could be an heiress of some kind, but she kind of gave heiress vibes.

That was really cute though.

That opening scene I thought really gelled their whole relationship just before, just before the car accident slash.

Rare brain tumor.

Them being unable to keep their hands off each other while the realtor's like in the next room.

Sure.

Yeah, he's.

Like take a few minutes and.

And the realtor did not seem shocked about finding them in the closet.

That's.

It he got the sale.

Wow.

OK.

Yeah.

Do you think this was, do you think this was the first house he showed them?

I don't.

Know.

Oh, right.

'Cause if it wasn't.

He was, he was, he was quite pushy about it.

He was like, we really need to make an offer now or heard you.

And they're just like, I'll take it like it's a dress off the rack.

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like he this is like House 8 and this is like the 8th house where he's caught them in some sort of broom closet or master bathroom or unfinished basement or crawl space just going at it.

Where the washer and dryer sit.

I mean.

Alcove.

Reading Nook.

Bay window.

It almost opened like, yeah, like it was a a cheap, fun little date for them.

You know, like role-playing, buying this big million something dollar house in Georgetown.

But really, they're just going to find the closet.

That actually that that thought did cross my mind.

I was like, is this was this like just for them to to hook up or were they actually house hunting?

Maybe he only bought the house because she died.

Maybe.

With the insurance.

I got that sweet, sweet insurance money.

We're writing a.

Very different movie.

They also did mention that he bought the dumpster behind Arby's, so you know that's probably part of it too.

I wonder how close to the Exorcist steps it was.

But they are.

They buy a house, they're all excited, they're driving home, they're talking about how great it is, and then bam, she just sees this weird moth thing she thinks and then starts scrapbooking all about it.

Did, yes.

Sorry for the audio listeners, I was pantomiming having the Mothman fly towards the my phone screen camera thing to to to imply the the only appearance of Mothman in this movie.

That isn't sketched out.

Yeah, exactly it.

Does appear.

In a pupil that isn't like a picture.

Oh, that's right, yeah.

Yeah, and he kind of appears in or it kind of appears I want to use the right pronouns.

It kind of appears in that one kids eyeball not as you know what it how it like.

The one that one kid who was making out with his girlfriend and had.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maybe maybe Mothman just like people who are into like crash type make out in car scenarios.

Really, he does have a pattern of people he likes to visit.

Yeah, so they're slobbering on each other in an open house that's not theirs.

Presumably they were just making out in the car driving back.

Yeah, what about the older woman that saw him out her window though?

Oh, she is.

Had a fan engaged in her own activities.

That's fair, that.

Was fair.

She has a long running affair with the the the postman that she's following around secretly and has been for years.

We didn't find out what she was doing when she saw Mock Man right?

That's true.

The Schwann man could have been over.

Did you guys have Schwann growing up?

Like the Schwann's guy?

You'd drive down the street and then you could buy ice cream or frozen pizzas or like.

Yeah, order frozen food to have it delivered.

That I guess maybe Schwann's went out of delivery when HelloFresh came about.

I don't know.

I.

Don't know, I think they're still around.

I haven't seen one in years.

I feel like Omaha Steaks bought them or something.

I don't know, maybe I'm just making things up.

The idea that somebody used to like, knock on your door to sell you meat is a fever dream.

Yeah.

Oh, I remember the Schwan's guy coming like through our neighborhood.

He drove through the neighborhood and he had houses that he would stop at but always bought stuff from him so he would just go to those houses and he drove past ours and my mom sent my brother and I to chase him up the street to make him come back so that.

Like the ice cream?

So that we could buy more.

I don't know, they sold like some kind of kool-aid thing that was basically Crystal Light, but, you know, in the 90s.

And I guess Crystal Light was also in the 90s, but it was a Schwann's version of, you know, 0 calorie Kool-aid stuff and then a cheese ring.

They sold really good food now that I think about.

It what is What is a cheese ring?

Yeah, it's like it's a cheese.

It's it's like breaded cheese in a circle, in a ring.

And then in the middle of it, there's a it's kind of like a Stromboli, but just a full circle.

And in the middle, there was a big dish of marinara sauce.

So you would just take the plastic off the top, pop it in the oven, and then it popped out and you had like this delicious cheesy bread that you just dipped in marinara sauce.

So it's kind of like the savory version of like a Danish Kringle.

Yeah, for.

Trader Joe's.

Almost exactly.

Yeah.

Nice, yeah.

All right.

I'm not opposed to that.

It was worth the run.

I thought it was like a wheel of cheese that just had a hole cut in the middle.

Yeah, for that also would have been worth a run, but but no, it was a it was a hot oven baked treat.

OK, well as always I've bogged down the show with my stupid digressions and I apologize, but I'm here to entertain me, not anybody else so.

And that's why that's why this podcast is really going to blow up any day now.

Yeah.

Sure.

We do it for the fans, folks.

We do it for the fan all the.

Cheese ring 3.

Of you, all of our 10s of fans.

That's what we call the cheese ring.

The cheese ring.

So he just, I, I guess he found her sweet little terrifying notebook drawings.

I get just hard left back into it.

Nostalgic.

I don't know.

He kept them I guess when I guess it's not uncommon to just keep everything in someone's after they pass, especially if you were madly deeply in love with them.

But I feel like those drawings would creep me out a little bit.

Maybe as a reporter he was cool with it, I don't know, but he just did he keep those the whole time.

I think so, yeah.

I mean it is like something drawn by hand.

Yeah.

Maybe there's a sentimental value and terrifying art by hand when your loved one passes away.

Yeah, like when my dad died, my mom kept a bunch of his stuff and his slowly like giving it away over the years.

Yeah, yeah, I think that 'cause.

I have a lot of his like and I have a lot of his like hand drawn stuff 'cause he was a, he was a doodler, he wrote songs, he did poems and like art pieces and stuff.

So I've got some of that stuff.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's cool.

This was just, it was crazy how it started out with just a little stick drawing of an Angel and then it got more and more.

It just got darker and darker and darker.

And there was at one point like the face yelling that she had drawn that had was not moth.

Like but it was it.

Was face screaming.

That was pretty terrifying.

I think, yeah.

Settling, I would say.

Now.

And then was the was the Angel pattern also the pattern on the front of his car?

Yeah.

OK, cool.

I thought so.

Well, yeah, that pattern reemerges a couple times 'cause then it shows up on the tree, and then there were a couple other places, I think.

There was one like on the on the grill of his car.

Yeah.

And I think that was after he first got to point pleasant question mark.

It no, it was right after the car accident I think.

OK.

Because he did not get that window fixed for a while in his car.

Like I remember a significant like after she was diagnosed and he's like stressing out in his car and you still see the shadowed window, window that she smashed her head against.

And I'm like, you wanna, you wanna fix that?

Seems like priority.

I'm pretty sure it's illegal to drive around like that.

Yeah, I know it is here.

I know it is for like windshields.

I'm not sure how 'cause it was the the the yeah window, not the windshield itself.

Maybe it's different in, I mean, I feel like in DC especially, you would get pulled over for that in West Virginia or 'cause I grew up, grew up in Southwestern Virginia, so on the border of Virginia and West Virginia.

So we were, they were this West Virginia had a real like it had a real moment in horror in the late 90s, early 2000s 'cause we had Wrong Turn came out, which was filmed in like the next county over from where I lived.

What county?

Greenbrier County, OH.

I That's where my family's from Greenbrier, VA and Buchanan County, Virginia Grundy nice or my family's.

I I've been to Grundy.

My mom worked at Greenbrier Valley Medical Center, so she was a nurse there for a really long time.

And my high school reunions.

Were the first settlers in Buchanan County, Virginia.

They've got a little monument in the cemetery.

That's cool.

Yeah.

My, my high school reunions, I'll take.

The last ones have taken place at the Greenbrier.

So yeah, they give us a nice little block.

I've never been, but the people who go seem to enjoy it.

That's not my thing.

Which is I absolutely relate to this is a good Segway.

I absolutely relate to Richard Gere not wanting to socialize 2 years after his wife's death and just being like, you know what?

I'm just gonna drive to Richmond 12 hours earlier than I need to to employ.

1:00 in the morning.

Peopling right now avoid.

A blind game.

No, that's right.

It was supposed to be a blind date set up.

Oh yeah.

The worker at like was trying to set him up with somebody and he was like, you know what, I'm going to bail and it's 1:00 AM and I'm going to drive to Richmond.

Yeah.

Who does a blind date set up at a Christmas party?

That sounds terrible.

Look, it's the end of cuffing season.

If you haven't already been cuffed, it makes sense, you know.

I mean, it's the point where you're supposed to like uncuff and get rid of the the baggage, right?

Well, I think you still want, I, I think you still want someone to do the whole like, kiss at midnight on New Year's Eve thing.

Probably.

And then get through Valentine's Day.

Yes, and then after Valentine's Day, then you get rid of them before Saint Patrick's Day.

And then you go up.

And you can keep yourself warm.

Yep.

Yeah, and then you go out and vomit green beer in front of your local, Oh, Hurley, he's pub or whatever you got and call it a day.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm pretty sure them's the rules, I think.

I don't know.

Richard Gere.

Let's not pretend that Richard Gere in this movie has ever had a beer.

He's 100% he's only drank wine.

Pro Brandy like aged Brandy.

Cognac, yes.

You think he would?

Do a Scotch.

Oh, he's definitely a Scotch guy.

He's he looks like a kind of, he looks like a guy would be a Scotch guy in real life.

Yeah.

He's so vegetarian I don't know if he would even.

Is he a vegetarian?

Yeah, he's famously like super Buddhist.

So I guess if Buddhists are OK with drinking, he would.

These are like friends with the Dalai Lama.

Yeah, are Buddhist.

Vegan.

They might be vegan but they like invented beer so I think Buddhist Churchill was drinking Buddhist are Buddhist are cool with it.

Well, I'm sure, I'm sure him and the Dalai Lama get ripped on the rigs, but yeah, his whole thing is like he's been A at least a vegetarian for since the 90s.

He was the first like famous Buddhist I knew that wasn't like Jackie Chan or some of you would expect to be Buddhist.

Interesting.

Yeah, it's.

It's really strange I.

Learned something?

New to say I paid too much attention to Richard Gere in my childhood.

He organized.

He organized the whole like free Tibet thing that lasted for years.

I remember hearing about that vaguely, but I don't know that was his Tibet or why they.

Needed.

It was like a giant, like a giant ass concert.

And like he had the Dalai Lama speak for like 80,000 drunk people or some shit.

I don't remember it that well, but I just remember it was his, like pet.

It was like his pet thing back when he was like a big deal.

And you would always see him with like prayer beads on.

Yeah, so he's he at least he was super into it for like 10 or 15 years, so, you know.

For him, I wonder if he's still active in the Free Tibet community.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, sorry, again, another progression because we can't because I'm unwilling to edit video podcasts and and Jay doesn't want to either.

All these depressions get left in where before they would probably have gotten chopped out.

So that's why we were podcasting longer than the movie on the regular with these video feeds.

Yeah, so now everybody gets a little insight into how our podcasts always go.

We just, you know, cut some of it out.

But not now.

Not on video.

Now on video, you get to see Ron's digressions while he's in a onesie.

That's right.

People pay extra.

For that, yeah, like, like last the last video podcast I promoted, I was like, hey, look, you can see me struggling to form words in real time.

Woo Hoo.

And you know.

There's got to be like a only fans in here somewhere.

There's a joke in there.

Oh I I pity the person who would pay for this content.

Well, luckily they don't have to, because we're free wherever podcasts can be found.

Yeah, and here's some free Mothman feat for you.

So you.

Know.

Sickos can have a good time with that, sorry.

Mothman.

Really adorable.

They really are.

It's the cutest, like little stuffed critter that that we own.

It's a squishables.

Yeah.

Well, Speaking of critters, this moth man or person thing demon, what is he moth man's like a like a just kind of an apparition Y type of.

It's just kind of like it's.

Other worldly thing.

Yeah, Yeah.

He's considered encrypted.

OK.

Yeah I feel like though Indrid Cold is where you start to get into the creepy stuff cause like Indrid Cold is like the gateway to the men in Black which are also connected to the original like the real Mothman story.

Except, like, the Indrid cold was never really associated with Mothman himself.

It was never like a, you know, kind of a pair.

It was.

It was.

He was his own separate kind of lore, if you will.

So then what?

So is this all from the book?

I have not read the book.

I haven't.

Read the book, like I said in in probably.

Well it's been over 20 years so I don't remember what happened.

I think he does just like he does talk about it because it isn't supposed to be a non fiction book.

So it's not like the movie is based on the book, but not in the sense of of the book is fiction and it's a copy of that.

It's it takes inspiration from it.

So I think it does talk about injured cold and and and his folklore, but not necessarily in the context of of being with the moth man, if you will.

Gotcha.

Like if I remember correctly April injured cold was another guy in West Virginia who got abducted by aliens question mark.

He would see, I think he was considered something like the smiling man that would like show up at people's houses.

He was not a phone call guy, but when he was when he was around, he would show up in people's houses and just he was more men and blackie, but he was he had this weird smile thing.

I from what I remember, I'm not too deep into the lore of Android cold, but I I just know that they he doesn't go with moth man and he was more of, you know, the smiling man and men in black kind of thing that that showed up in weird places and was just overall weird and was never seen again.

That's interesting.

I know he's I know he's technically like a related to alien abductions and I forget the name of the dude who like was like this is my alien for an injured cold.

He's taking me back to his planet.

Oh, etcetera, etcetera.

OK.

And I'm pretty sure he was from Mothman territory, OK.

And I think West Virginia.

Has a pretty big hotbed for.

Yeah, cryptids.

And we knows too.

And what's the other thing that's there?

What?

There's a there's another Cryptid in West Virginia.

Do you know the name?

The flat W monster.

Yes.

Oh, there we go.

Very nice this.

Is actually one of the lanterns from the museum.

There's like one mold that exists that makes those lanterns.

So yeah, I'm big.

In Virginia.

Drifted, I've been all.

There, that's cool.

Yeah the flatwoods monster is another kind of alien ish thing.

Cool and Woodrow Burger is the name of the Indrid Cole friend Woodrow Darenberger.

OK.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure it.

Was going to bother me and I was going to have to wait till we got off the air to look it up 'cause I'm, I'm impatient.

But yeah, it's let's just jump right into West Virginia, shall we?

Yeah, there is.

There is this really interesting scene where he has his car looked at and the guy, the mechanic did not find anything wrong with it.

And he goes, all right, what do I owe you?

And the mechanic says nothing, there was nothing wrong with your car.

And there is this confused look on Richard Gere's face.

And I remember thinking, that is the realist culture shock ever having gone from Southwestern Virginia to DC and then back home.

My dad lives in upstate New York, which is actually a really similar type of space.

It's like a smaller community town with farms and stuff.

And it's, and everyone there is very much like this West Virginia mountain town.

And if nothing's wrong, they're not gonna charge you.

But in DC, like, they just charge you for your time period.

Like the time, the 10 minutes.

Yeah, the 10 minutes that they had to spend figuring out that there was nothing wrong and everybody pays for something.

My question is did he not have to pay for the tow?

Maybe he paid for the tow with cash, I don't know.

That's a good question.

Yeah, or, or maybe they didn't even charge him for the tow 'cause they got up there and dropped the car and it was like, oh, this car is fine.

What's wrong with you?

Yeah, county weird.

Big city weirdo.

Yeah.

It's funny though, Lindsey, because like upstate New York is 1 end of the Appalachians and then Western juniors, like the middle of the Appalachians.

And funny enough, one of my car experiences in college was the radiator hose burst on my Ford Thunderbird.

And he was like, all you going to do is buy the radiator hose for me and I will put it on for you for free.

And that was on the Kentucky side of the Appalachian Mountains.

So they're very nice people.

Yeah.

I say they like I'm not like my.

Family tree.

Isn't one of them.

Yeah, yeah, I was.

I was born in the big city, but my my aunt, my dad and his father, and like all of my family, are from Appalachia, from the foothills on this side of the.

I was going to say, So do all three of us then have some, like, connection to living in or having family lived in the Appalachian Mountains?

Yeah, Look at us.

I've been viewing this movie that takes.

Wait, would they?

Are they technically in the Appalachian Mountains here?

All of West family is considered.

Is it OK?

Pretty.

Much all, yeah, pretty much all of West Virginia is 100%.

Yeah, if you look at a map of what they consider Appalachia, all of every county in West Virginia is considered.

Is.

I think it's the.

I I believe it's the only state that all of it is considered Appalachia.

Yeah, yeah.

That, that's it.

That tracks, Yeah.

They get a bad rap.

So can can we talk a moment about this movie and how it is basically Boggy Creek 2?

The legend continues for the Mothman.

Tell me more about this movie, that of which you speak so on a film strip fame.

In Arkansas, there is this monster called the Boggy Creek Creature, and it's in like the Ozarks of Arkansas, and it's their version of like a Cryptid, right?

And this guy, Charles Pierce, who was a teacher at the University of Arkansas, made this movie Boggy Creek about the Cryptid.

And it was so successful that he made another one in the 80s called Boggy Creek 2.

The legend continues.

And I don't remember a ton about Boggy Creek, the first one, but Boggy Creek 2 is him playing himself, getting a bunch of college students together and then going into the Ozarks to interview people about their experiences with the creature, the Boggy Creek monster.

And it literally is like the same thing we see here, like where we get these flashbacks of these people having their Mothman exposure.

Like that's legit.

That's legitimately what happens in Buggy Creek too.

It's the same thing.

Like he goes and interviews the guy.

Then we cut to like a flashback of the guy, like on the crapper getting scared by the monster or whatever the hell goes on.

And then we cut back to the the smart guy in quotes, in this case, a teacher.

But in, in this, in Buggy Creek's case, a teacher in Moffa Man's case, you know, big City News reporter who's there interviewing the local yokels about their funny monster man and it and it literally plays out the exact same way, except it was like boggy Creek 2 is ridiculous and stupid and this takes it very seriously and also serves as kind of like the precursor to the ring in terms of like ambiance.

Yeah.

Is is Boggy Creek?

Is it is it like supposed to be non fiction like he actually went and interviewed these people or is it like fiction like Mothman where these none of that's real?

It's both.

He took real people's accounts of it and then just fictionalized it with actors.

So he was literally thinking real people stories of like this, this skunk ape type creature.

That's the most likely explanation for it.

It's like the Ozarks version of the Florida skunk game.

Because I know a lot about Kryptons because I have no life.

But it was like, let's just recreate that with some actors and then use those same actors that were doing the the fake documentary part.

We're going to use those for the reenactment.

Yeah, they, I, I, I know some of the stories from the Mothman Prophecies are actual stories from what happened back in the 60s, like the the two teenagers.

I think it was there were a couple of teenagers that were having their fun that are some.

Of the people who.

Yeah, that some of the people who actually saw or reported the Sea Mothman back in the 1960s.

Yeah, it's that same basic idea where they take people's real reports of like I was, you know, running a moonshine still and then some giant critter came out of the woods and knocked over my moonshine still.

Those same kind of like newspaper reports were just fictionalized for this drive in movie basically.

Interesting.

And is this streaming on Toby Ron?

I would assume it is.

Look at it in the depths of.

It's it's not a 2B.

Account.

You can watch, you can watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Buggy Creek 2 on YouTube pretty much wherever you want.

Even if you don't have.

And if it's not on YouTube for whatever reason, I will send it to you because I bought it and I own it.

Awesome.

Yeah, that sounds.

It's the, it's the, it's the very rare, like Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode where I'm like, I could just watch this movie straight, have a great time, but then you add on the jokes, it's even better.

Yeah, kind of like Rocky Horror Picture Show, but yeah, you.

Can watch.

Rock on.

Your own, but it's always much funner to go and watch the shadow cast.

Yeah, yeah.

Also the.

Room.

Mm Hmm.

Yeah, I feel the same way about The Room and Rocky Horror.

Like, it's great on its own.

It's great with a comedy track, it's great with a shadow cast.

It's great throwing spoons at the screen and yelling and hooting and having a good time.

Well, so we have a big city guy interviewing some local yokels in both of these movies, but specifically in Mothman, since that's what we're here to talk about.

Connie has Connie, played by Laura Linney, has some funny zingers that kind of put Richard Gere in his place when he goes, oh, did you grow up on a farm?

She goes, yeah, we even had shoes for school and church.

She does mention too we were talking earlier about the UFO guy and she mentions UFOs at one point when she's talking about all the different locals and sharing all these stories with them and she goes, I mean UFOs are one thing but this is totally different.

It's like fair.

Yeah.

Yeah, and the moth made this is the one of the Cryptid tales that has kind of syncretized with other things over the years probably.

And as big, you know, credit to this movie for being more popular than that than I remembered as being part of that.

But like all the UFOs and the men in black and injured cold all kind of like blend together.

And it's not a huge surprise that the that Mafi gets roped up into that because it's just a lot of fun.

It's kind of like how they had that whole thing on.

I would say it was Hulu about these illegal pot farms in the Pacific Northwest where the pot farmers were getting killed by big feet, Bigfoots, bigfoots, big feet.

Multiple big what?

Big 5?

Yeah, big bigfoots, I think.

Bigfoots.

Bigfoots.

Bigfoots sounds better, but big feet is funnier.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

'Cause like if, if you're like I saw big feet, 'cause if you saw multiple bigfoots, I, I just, I don't feel like it carries the same weight as saying I saw bigfoots.

Yeah.

Sasquatches.

Sasqui.

Yeah, the the attack.

Maybe.

Maybe Bigfoot is like deer.

Maybe Bigfoot is also the like multiple version of it in syntax.

That's fair.

I'm I'm OK with that.

Yeah.

Oh, that.

Does make sense, Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, OK.

We're talking about anything but this fucking movie.

I'm sorry.

I don't even.

To know what point where we've like discussed to.

We haven't really gone terribly linearly.

I do have a question though for you both.

It is Mothman trying to be helpful in these scenarios, do we think?

Or yeah or.

Like is it just Mothman is trying to be helpful and it's going horribly wrong because it's not terribly familiar with how humans react to things?

Or is it trying to cause more chaos and just like playing with people?

Maybe, once again, it's just a voyeur.

He's there to watch that bridge collapse and he's there to watch people make out, and he just gets caught along the way, you know?

Yeah.

He's just trying to live his life, you know, live his best life.

But watch.

Watch this reality TV maybe.

And.

Just people keep seeing him and if they would just stop seeing him, he could just go about things.

Yeah, but maybe that's maybe that's how it mixes things up.

You know, just like, let's just pop into but.

Supposedly the lore of Mothman is that he has been seen preceding other disasters, whether or not it's well as well known as the the Bridge collapse.

I've heard he's been Speaking of Chicago.

I've heard he's been seen in Chicago at one point.

So this so he keeps showing up to Gordon Smallwood, played by Will Patton.

He keeps showing up at his house or to him and I, I feel like Indrid.

Cold, not the ball.

Thing Indrid.

Cold yes, he never mentions.

That is, that is a thank you.

That is an important distinction.

Indrid Cold keeps showing up to this man.

But so does Richard Gere, apparently.

Yeah.

Multiple nights.

Yeah, well, I assumed that it was Indrid Cole posing as Richard Gere, because we've established that Indrid can like, mimic voices and things because he calls people and we don't actually call.

But we do see that we've got some kind of time loop going on because he leaves Washington, DC

at 1:00 AM and then shows up at the house at.

2.

30 in the morning and it's like supposed to be like a four to six hour drive.

So we know there's some weird time loop going on, so maybe.

So do we think Richard Gere actually showed up three nights in a row?

I think it's some type of weird time loop thing, yes?

Like kind of just like his right there.

Interesting.

Yeah, I like that.

Well, and we also see that he loses time.

He's like checking his watch and his watch isn't working.

The car's electrical system starts misbehaving and that's why he, like, gets a toad to Point Pleasant.

Like that's all the hallmarks of like alien interference or supernatural interference, I guess.

Yeah, OK.

'Cause all those are like super consistent with like the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction from the 50s, which I, I feel like this movie is just like, let's make a loaf a meatloaf out of every Cryptid story and every alien invasion story.

And just like, all right, so we're going to miss some time.

We're going to have your, your watches and your electrical stuff.

It's going to get all screwed up.

Moss man's going to be there.

A bridge is going to collapse.

We're going to have injured cold.

There's going to be like mass hallucinations.

Because like by the end of the movie, like 30 or 40 people have seen Moth Man or had some sort of like weird experience.

You're going to get like numbers, right?

You're going to get like number of stations, 'cause you're going to get these weird phone calls of people just saying jibber jabber.

You're going to get like the weird electrical feedback and all of your systems, like I feel like they're just like he found like the big book of spooky dookie Urban.

It was like, let's just start like mashing them all together.

Yeah, it felt.

Yeah, it.

Huh.

I didn't think of just the mishmash of UFO things kind of being meatloaf, but you.

Don't know a whole lot about the Mothman sighting before the bridge collapse, and it's not like Mothman was like seen around the bridge or anything like that.

It just happened to be coincidental in terms of when these sightings were reported.

You kind of have to add in, I mean all the fluff to make a movie out of it, but if you're not really familiar with the story to begin with, it doesn't seem that off.

Yeah, I feel like there could have been.

They could have spent a lot more time digging into more of the lore of it than they did with so many other things.

The The empty phone calls and the interviews kind of eventually circled back around, and maybe that was just a nod to the original stories.

The I don't know, I just feel like there was a lot of places where it dragged a little bit.

Because it's not very Mothman heavy.

It's that's why I say like the word Mothman in The Mothman Prophecies does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of what Mothman you actually get in this movie.

Yeah, yeah.

I think 30 minutes could have been cut out of the movie, that is, and put back in as more like historical Laurie things.

That would be my rewriting of it as a completely unaccomplished writer in any way.

That's what I would do.

I.

Would want to see like him digging war into the quote UN quote sightings of Mothman other than just the ones that happened in West Virginia.

Like I know that they want to have the bridge collapse, work the bridge collapse into this thing.

But also I feel like you could have just fudged the timeline a little bit and be like, Oh well, when, I don't know, there was an explosion in the mine in Argentina.

People saw a weird moth creature with big red eyes and like just you've already messed with the timeline 'cause you know, Mothman was not around at the time of car phones.

Let's just fudge it a little bit more and be like, Oh, well, in Three Mile Island in 1978, Mothman was there at the nuclear plant where it melted down.

And they even do it a little bit because they talk about how like 30 Mothman sightings were tied to like, Chernobyl.

Yeah.

But like, do more of that.

Like, let's have Abraham Lincoln see Mothman outside of Ford's Theater, right?

Let's just let's just lean all the way into this like.

But like they did actually introduce a couple of fake disasters in this movie.

Like you have the 99 people in Denver who were killed.

So it's like, why couldn't you have, you know, oh, why couldn't they have seen Mothman around that?

Like the the kind of fake disasters that they made-up for this to tie in a little bit more to really emphasize the Mothman in the Mothman Prophecies.

Yeah.

Dustin Hoffman, Justin.

Justin Mothman.

Justin Hoffman sold the Mothman on the making of Ishtar.

That's.

I I feel like I remember and unreliable.

What are we talking 23 year old memory at this point?

I feel like when I first saw the movie, there was more So the the Will Patton character when he starts going a little crazy and he buys all that black paint and starts like painting his house and then the inside of his house he start the lights turn red.

I feel like when I first saw this movie, that felt like a bigger deal to me.

And I don't know if the version I watched was cut.

Ron, you watched literally the same version that I did.

So I don't know if it was cut differently than the original DVD, but I feel like I remember that being a bigger deal, that he was painting an image of the Mothman on the side of his house and basically turning his house into a giant homage to this Mothman.

Am I crazy?

Maybe I'm seeing the Mothman.

I don't know, 'cause I don't remember like I, I feel like in the video store we got a lot of unrated director's cuts where it was just like, well, we filmed this shit, let's put it back into the movie.

OK, Maybe you saw like the.

Unrated, yeah.

Yeah.

That could be it.

They did just.

Today, and I don't.

I mean, it's just I'm going to a paint store but I don't.

They show him going to a paint store and they show some of the black paint on the side of his house.

And then when when Richard Gere goes to his door, the it's when Connie goes to his front door and he opens it and he says he's been asleep the whole time, that he never called, never made the phone call.

When you see inside his house, all the lights inside of his house are red.

So.

And I, and that's what made me think of it was, oh, yeah, we're gonna get a big reveal at some point of him painting a giant Mothman on the side of his house.

And then we never got that.

So I could be misremembering or Ron perhaps I did see some uncut director's video from our local local rental store.

Entirely possible.

I don't remember it that well to be honest.

I mean, why would I remember something from, you know, 24 years ago ish 23 years ago?

Yeah.

I wonder if there's if people and I'd have to look downstairs with my DVD and then Ron, if you've got the DVD, if there's like you know how a lot of the extra features are like deleted scenes or additional endings or additional scenes.

I wonder if there's any features there and like that.

That's true.

And sometimes they have images on the like on the front art for the DVD or the VHS and that don't actually make it into the movie.

That happens all the time, so it could have been something.

I feel like that could definitely be a trailer.

Yeah.

Shot.

Oh, that's right.

That happens all the time too.

Yeah, yeah.

Still kind of went down how I remember it.

I don't maybe are there.

You know what I'm going to stop digging into into the memories that I had of this movie because doesn't really doesn't really matter.

We can only go off of what we've seen.

For.

This particular showing.

Yes, indeed, indeed.

But yeah, I mean, he good old Richard Gere, he really went after when he when they were doing that bit where Indrid Cold was on the phone with him and guessing all of the different things and Richard Gere runs over, shuts the windows and turns all the lights off.

My first thought was like it.

No, what are you doing?

This is a scary thing.

Don't turn all the lights off.

I want all the lights on.

I want to see everything.

Yeah, if I've got a strange person calling me and telling me things about inside the room, I'm not turning all the lights off inside the room.

No.

But I feel like he just thinks that he's looking in through the window.

Yeah, I got that.

But I don't know.

But also, I feel like at a certain point, like, how's he gonna know you put your watch in your shoe even if he's looking at you through, Yeah, 'cause it's, it's under the bed, right?

You can't just see that from the window.

It's not like he's like, I mean, you can see his hot breath on the, the, the window plate, right?

Yeah.

And this isn't exactly an area where you have a bunch of tall buildings that he's, you know, staring through a scope on a rooftop somewhere.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's like that scene in The Jerk where the guy is shooting at Steve Martin and keeps blowing up the cans, but with the Mothman.

Yeah, and the shoe under the bed.

Yes, he hates the shoe.

So he goes he goes looking for these explanations and finds Doctor Alexander Leake, who is a character based off the is it the author of the book of the original book?

I think or maybe he was just in the book, but Doctor Leak is or was at one point the expert in these paranormal type things.

Not even Mothman, just these weird occurrences.

Yeah.

And then he just quits.

Yeah, because his.

Wife left him and his kids stopped talking to him and he lost his job.

Yeah, so I guess technically he didn't quit.

He just, he, he lost his job and spent how many several years in a psychiatric facility?

Four years.

Four years in a psychiatric facility, Do you think he still sees Mothman from time to time?

Does Mothman just go away if you stop thinking about it?

Mothman is the friends you make along the way.

No, I feel like, I feel like it depends on your proximity to natural disasters and your openness towards visitation.

So I feel like he might still be getting like messages from off band, but he's not doing anything about it because he's like, you know what, I've learned a valuable lesson.

And you know, my name is Paul.

Well, because in the beginning, the first Mothman sighting we get isn't a natural disaster, it's that Mary has a brain tumor.

I mean.

And a personal natural disaster.

That's fair, Not wide scale, that's fair.

It's her own.

It's their their their personal natural disaster.

Yeah, that's a fairpoint, but.

So if he's the the the kind of harbinger of doom that they say he is, and he harbinged her doom, it's harbing the word.

Yeah.

Well, I mean the alternative is she just would have died in a couple weeks and they would have found out postmortem.

I feel like there are other symptoms of this.

Yeah.

May have that they may have caught along the way had she not seen Mothman wrecked the car.

Yeah.

Well, he talks about it like when Will Patton goes to and I and I forget the character's name, but Will Patton goes to the neurologist, right?

It's like you.

Hear these voices, you see these visions and they go through a list of like potential, like glioblastoma symptoms.

And the doctors like, no, Will Patton doesn't have any of these.

Yeah, they could think, I think.

And, and Richard Gere is at the doctor with them, you know.

So sometimes when you go for a cancer diagnosis, you bring the guy who showed up at your doorstep 3 nights ago, I guess.

But he's like, Are you sure it's not glowblastoma?

And and like the doctor's like, no, it's not.

Yeah, I have shoes for work and shoes for church.

I was kind of having treated.

It like, yeah, they might be the same pair of shoes, but like then the wife is trying to convince him like you don't have this because the doctor told him you don't have this.

I feel like there was a little bit of Richard Gere thinking the doctor was just this country bumpkin Dr.

that didn't have rows and rows of CT scan brain imaging in front of him.

Definitely didn't go to decade of medical school.

Like the doctor seemed pretty confident, yeah.

But he is still a doctor after.

All.

Yeah, yeah.

And also like, let's not kid ourselves, this doctor has probably treated a lot of black lung.

He's familiar with reading X-rays and seeing weird masses and X-rays.

That's true, yeah.

It's not that huge of a a jump.

Yeah, no, no, yeah.

But I feel like he did kind of get the Are you sure?

And the doctor was like, yeah, idiot.

I'm sure I've.

Seen one diagnosis in one and it's very rare.

1 diagnosis in one person, so clearly another person must have it.

Yeah.

And the doctor's like, look, I know it's West Virginia, but I got my degree from Johns Hopkins.

I'm not enough to.

Be here.

Right.

They're like, what?

The West Virginia doctors are not going to, you know, some rural school where it's farm medicine they actually practice.

They're still going to the same schools that every other doctor goes to.

Yeah, that's funny.

Yeah, the University of West Virginia is still a pretty accomplished university.

Yeah, I have a friend.

Yeah, yes, they might burn couches, but so is the rest of the country now, Yeah.

Cars.

Couches.

Yeah, whatever.

Whatever is convenient.

Easy.

I know the University of Kentucky stole the couch burning thing from West Virginia and started doing it too.

So.

Good for them.

Yeah, frat guys are going to burn stuff regardless.

Climbing bulls, all that good stuff, yeah.

Yeah, if it's not, if it's not going to be burning couches, it's just going to be burning when they pee, you know?

Yeah, anyway, sorry.

University of Kentucky Humor.

Speaking of, do we think Laura Linney and Richard Gere like, you know, became a thing?

Did he like move to West Virginia post movie and.

And and date.

Settled down and.

Yeah, he took over the West Virginia Gazette.

Yeah, if that's the thing.

And.

I'm sure they have a local paper.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he's teaching journalism at F State now.

Oh well, they said they moved to North Carolina.

Yeah, well.

F states, F states in North.

Yeah, I know.

OK.

But I couldn't remember.

I couldn't remember the other school in West Virginia that isn't.

There's one in Morgantown, isn't there?

There's Concord College.

Yeah, Morgantown.

Morgantown's the only one I know.

Marshall.

Marshall, that's it, Yeah.

OK.

And Marshall actually, if I remember correctly from when I was applying for grad school 30 years ago, has a legit, has some legit like study programs in journalism and writing and that kind of thing.

Yeah, he could totally be a professor at Marshall WVU.

They're they're colleges in West Virginia and he could teach or the local high school and also and.

He's pretty close though, and he's like right at the Ohio border, so he can just hop across and go to wherever.

I.

Think one of the places he flies into is Columbus.

Yeah.

So like, you know.

When when he was going to she, she was saying something.

Was it during Christmas Eve that she got him a ticket to Columbus?

Or was it when he had to go meet a politician?

Forget what?

It was after he'd met the politician and had blown up his wife.

OK, so it was when she called him to get him to come back so he wasn't alone on Christmas Eve.

She's like, I tried to get you a flight to Charleston, but you'll have to fly to Columbus, which is pretty, I mean, Point Pleasant is probably about an hour and a half from Charleston.

So it was when we we stayed in, we stayed in Charleston when we go to Point Pleasant.

When she called and told him that she got him flight out of Dulles, I was and it was in like an hour, under 2 hours from when she called him.

Like his flight wheels up 145 and it was almost noon.

Genuinely concerned.

I was like he's not gonna make it, he's at Georgetown.

Dulles is a really long way.

But that was back in the day.

No, that was back in 2002.

Depending on like the the pre post 911 kind of thing.

Like before 911, you just walked on in like you could.

I remember lying and my grandparents walk me to the gate and that was that.

No, this was definitely post 911, so he would have had to go through all that security and the shoes off.

There's definitely traffic.

So I was concerned.

I was like, he doesn't have time to pack and luckily I guess the the scripting worked well because you see him just go leave immediately at the door.

He packs nothing.

He brings like his wallet and his keys and that's it.

So that made it believable.

But before that point I was like, he's not going to make it.

He's never going to get there.

But we've already established the time loops are a thing.

That's fair.

That's a good point.

Transportation.

You make an excellent point.

He probably made it in 30 seconds or so.

Yeah.

So if he could travel from YEAH to Point Pleasant in an hour and a half, he made it from Georgetown to Dallas in 30-30 minutes.

For sure.

Yeah, that's the.

Yeah, Mothman just magicked him through airport security.

He.

Blew him.

Yeah, blew him there.

Yeah, no, yeah, he just rolled right out the door.

So glad.

And then he made it.

And then he saved #37 from this collapsing bridge.

Screw everybody else.

Yeah, just for.

Yeah.

Well, although to be fair, he was like running up and down the the road.

Yeah, and everyone.

Yeah, so he probably did save a bunch of people.

Yeah, by like kind of sounding.

The warning though?

Exactly 10.

In real life.

No, because.

Of.

40 In real life, 46 people died and the movie 36 people died.

So let's just pretend that Richard Gere is 10 people.

I like it.

Every town, every.

Small town.

Needs a Richard Gere.

Also like why is everyone in town parked on the bridge at the same time?

Well, they're going.

To the movie and said it was there was traffic like if there was an issue with the traffic light at the other side of the bridge.

And so I know in real life it was rush hour when it collapsed And so they had it's a pretty decent sized bridge because it goes over the I think is it the Ohio.

That's true.

It's the Ohio.

Yeah, yeah, it's a pretty decent sized bridge.

So if you've got a traffic jam sitting on it.

And it was 6:00 on Christmas Eve in the movie.

So if people actually work that day, then rush hour, you know, the rush hour would have been pretty bad because everybody's leaving to go to Christmas.

Eve And I think they established and I think they established that like the chemical plant that everybody probably works at is on the other side of the bridge.

So that kind of makes sense because remember before they he's like thinking back to like disaster on the Ohio and you see the chemical plant and then like they pull the camera forward and or back from the chemical plant and there's the bridge in front of it.

Yeah.

So I feel like everybody at this plant, everybody in this town works at that chemical plant and they're all, they're either on their way to their 2nd shift shit job or they're coming back from their first shift job.

And that's where the that's why there's so many people on the bridge at one time, because it feels like way more people than 36 die.

46 people died in real life.

No, I mean just in the movie it feels like this.

But yeah, 30.

Yeah, 36 and even 46, given the if, if you've seen the bridge in real life and how long it really is, that seems like a very small number actually.

Yeah.

But it also seems like 50 cars fall into the river.

Two.

Yeah, right.

I do want to point that was a really cool shot with all the cars with their headlights on kind of beaming up from the bottom of the river.

No, that whole sequence when the bridge starts to collapse is the best part of the movie.

Yes, I would agree.

Because it looks incredible.

Yeah, yeah.

And then that poor boy who is necking in his car with his now fiance, Yeah, did that that bridge thing look like it came down and went right through his head that.

Was final destination shit?

That's what I thought and then some.

Really bad luck.

So I was getting these Final Destination vibes, and when Laura Linney was #37 I was like, Oh, no, was she supposed to die?

I mean, she's going to die Final Destination style.

At some point, that log truck is going to get her.

Yeah, it's going to happen.

So we're uproots his life, moves to West Virginia, and then loses his second life to a final destination.

Situation and then it's investigated for life insurance fraud.

It's a whole mess.

After his after his girlfriend, Winona Ryder dies of ovarian cancer and Doctor T and the women, he just can't cut it.

He just can't get a break.

All right, there we go.

Hollywood.

We've written your next two Mothman movies.

Easy.

Mothman 2.

That's Revenge of the Logging Truck.

Oh, man.

What?

Yeah, I don't know.

The bridge sequence was really crazy to either of you.

I did not spend time looking into it.

Was that because I don't.

There wasn't much.

I don't think there was a lot in this movie that was done in CGI.

They made a lot work without it.

And so, however they built, the bridge scene held up really well over the course of the last 20, 22 years.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not CGI 'cause I'm pretty sure this predates any like easy to watch good looking CGI.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, 'cause this is like, this is like bad Harry Potter on a broomstick CGI years.

Yeah, I feel like this had to be all like practical effects and that's probably where most of the movies budget went to.

Yeah, yeah.

There aren't a whole lot of effects otherwise.

No, they don't really need.

I mean, they're the couple of Mothman sightings.

The one big one I think was an actual guy in a Mothman costume.

So even that was practical.

Yeah.

I mean, again, it looked good.

It held up.

I wish we got, I wish we got more of the lore.

I wish we got more scenes like the the bridge collapse scene.

That was really, that was really great.

But again, they lived happily ever after for the next however many days.

Until death came back for her.

Yeah.

Although in her dream.

So there's a like she talks about earlier in the movie, she talks about a dream sequence that she had.

She is in this water, surrounded by floating presence and all these weird lights and something.

And she felt like she was dying.

And something tells her wake up #37 wake up kind of where like of them saying.

So she was meant to live?

Right.

Yeah, she wasn't supposed to be.

It was her because they talk a lot about precognition in this movie, and it's her precognition that she was supposed to survive this event.

And then she did.

Yeah.

Yep, Laura Linney is the girl who lived.

Yes, I did wonder.

I I don't, I don't understand that's not some, some of it.

I do.

I don't know the whole the air bubble in the car, like how she and I guess the way it felt.

I had to have this explained to me the way the car fell at an angle, like absolutely a thing that can happen.

It can fall in such a way that there's an air bubble pushed up.

I had no idea.

I was like, that doesn't make any sense.

But you know, I didn't major in science or anything so.

I think it doesn't immediately.

Things don't immediately fill with.

Yeah, but well, the thing was, was that the back window was open, OK, so I was like, well if the whole car was closed up, sure I'd buy it.

But he climbed through the back of the car cuz the window had gotten blown out.

OK, so that's why I wasn't sure why there was still this air pocket in the car, but I guess if it falls at this angle, at this certain force, then yeah, they can create this air pocket.

Back end, back end in, yeah, kind of.

So I guess that would force things towards the front way.

Kind of like a diving bell.

A diving bell is open on the bottom, but you lower it in so that the the bottom part like.

Or like the canoe and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, really.

Like you, Yeah.

Or like even when you put a cup, if you if you put your cup into like a like your sink of water, you still have bubble and it kind of stays.

Science Y'all didn't know we were going to Bill Nye this movie, but here we are.

Both man, how do they work?

Mothman the sun means.

And what you need to know, well, gosh, we've just gotten through so much material tonight on some of it was even on the actual movie, right?

Yeah.

We're there, I guess.

The only thing we didn't really talk about, and maybe because it's not super notable, were the score or any of the music in the movie.

I have no notes on that.

It didn't really stand out to me, but I don't know if either of you have anything that you had.

I was wondering earlier today because I had thought when I was watching it today again, I had thought I heard the beginning of like an actual song and then it and, and so it kind of is like I was like, is there a soundtrack to this?

But then I never heard the song.

So it was like maybe I was maybe it was in my head.

So but I did no, I for a brief second.

Is there a soundtrack to this thing?

I had the same like mental image April of like, that's clearly a pop song they started and then they cut away from it really quickly, right?

And, and that's why because I, I know some of the movies or a lot of movies around that time had really good soundtracks.

I like, I know the Crow did like Romeo and Juliet.

And so I just for that split second, I was like, is there a soundtrack to this that that kind of falls along the lines of those, but there there is not.

Yes, they're like a A Mothman movie theme song by Silvergear on this.

Thing.

9 inch.

Nails that would bump this up a popcorn rating for me if that were true, I think.

But alas, well.

I guess get me closer to boss.

I was trying to think of if are there any like light themed bands from the 90s that would that would fit into a moth man and I was like no I, I I'm going nowhere.

There is.

I don't know.

Smashing Pumpkins could probably pull something off.

Didn't the cranberry was it?

Yeah.

Who did the the one of them wrote a James Bond theme song that was really good.

I think it was Smashing Pumpkins now I can't remember.

I think are you thinking of Chris Cornell from Soundgarden?

No, no for that.

But I do like him too.

Chris Cornell did 1, Madonna did one.

I'm trying to backtrack towards the 90s.

It would keep thinking of the Mission Impossible 3 soundtrack with Limp Bizkit and then Mission Impossible 2 Limp Bizkit, Mission Impossible three, Metallica.

Oh, Limp Bizkit did do that.

That wasn't it.

Take a look around that they did.

Yeah.

Yeah, and when I saw them last year or two years ago at Louder Than Life, they played that song.

OK, didn't go louder than life this year.

I didn't go this year because I couldn't afford it.

OK, I didn't love it.

I wasn't in love with any of the bands.

I mean, there are lots of bands I would have loved to have seen, but not for that price.

OK, yeah, I know Sleep Token played Louder Than Life, I think the day before they played the Greensboro, NC show.

So because I had met somebody at Greensboro Show that had gone to Louder Than Life in Kentucky and then drove to Greensboro, NC overnight to see them again the next day.

I mean, all you got to do is follow the tour bus and then sleep behind the tour bus.

And to dig myself out of The Smashing Pumpkins hole, they did have a song called Theme from James Bond, which was not actually used as a theme for James Bond.

So not totally crazy, right?

But.

Just a little bit.

It's easy to be confused because when you title a theme of James Bond, Yeah.

And that's all you see in your head.

Sure.

Yeah.

And I'm pretty sure I remember back when music videos were a thing, they had a they had one.

But you know what?

Neither here nor there.

So I think at this point, we can safely say it's time to give our popcorn ratings.

So April, as the guest on our show for tonight, the guest of honor, let's start with you.

Please give us your popcorn rating for Mothman Prophecies.

What is the scale that I'm working with?

Here the scale is great question.

The scale is any size popcorn you would get in a movie theater.

You can do any add insurance.

You want extra butter, salt, Ronsten M&M's.

We've done chocolate syrup.

It can get as crazy as you want.

We've added sodas to it.

I mean, there's no real rules, but just on a no, we'll call it a a movie theater concession stand rating scale.

Like extra small through extra large and you could just kind of add like.

Standard scale, yeah.

It's bright, it's stale, it's good.

I would give this a medium popcorn with extra butter and probably I I would probably get the medium combo and and and get the cherry coke with it.

I wouldn't upgrade to a large or refillable or the the specialty popcorn bucket, but I would go solid medium.

Cherry Coke does kick kick it up a notch.

Me like that.

Ron, what about you all?

Right.

So there's a lot of good things about this movie that we didn't talk about, like the 15 minutes of Will Patton, who's great.

Richard Gere is actually really good.

This I didn't remember him being like no worthy actor in any sense of the word, but he's pretty good.

Laura Laney's does a lot of the heavy lifting, I think in their particular scenes.

You know, this movie, like I described it earlier, I was like, it kind of feels like the spiritual ancestor to the ring in terms of a stylistic.

Like this movie is going to be slow and atmospheric and there's going to be weird shit happening.

And it's as much a detective story.

Try to explain the weirdness as it is like a monster flick, right?

But that said, it's pretty good and it's a better than I remember.

I don't know if I've really seen this anytime within the last like 10 years, but it was worth watching again.

And this is one of those movies where I feel like the real story, specifically the injured and cold stuff, will be more interesting than the movie.

But I'm going to join April in the media popcorn club.

Media popcorn Dexter butter sounds about right.

There's there's a good vibes it it's not an enthralling watch.

You're not going to like to be on the edge of your seat, but there's enough like weird kind of creepiness to give it a little bit of that.

Like David Lynch, like behind the surface of this town of relatively nice people, there's some weird shit happening, but not quite to that degree and not quite to that level of being like super entertaining as David Lynch shit tends to be for me.

So I'm going to go with the medium popcorn.

What do you think, Lindsay?

I am going to join you both in the medium popcorn with a few less a few less toppings inside items.

I think I really wanted more of the actual lore from it.

I think it lasted too long for the type of movie they really they really indulged themselves and and a few things that I think probably could have been cut.

But overall it it was a good movie.

The like Ron just touched on the acting in it was was solid and we talked about how good that bridge scene held up.

So I'm, I, I would give it a solid, a solid medium popcorn, which is what I, what the popcorn rating was in my head before we started talking about it.

And sometimes that sways to one side or the other.

So I'm pleased that it, it's still kind of held true to my original feeling.

And it's been a good, I would say close to 1920 years since I've seen this movie.

So it, it was still good.

It took me back.

It was nostalgic and it's, it was an easy like gateway thriller movie that I could watch with my husband, who normally doesn't like stuff like this.

So I, I, I was able to rope him into watching it with me.

So if you have someone who's like horror or thriller curious, as I think Kendall calls it, this is actually a pretty good movie to kind of sit them down for because it's pretty interesting, but not too in your face.

So yeah, medium popcorn is is my rating.

So before we close out officially April, is there anything you're excited about that you're working on that you'd like to share with our 10s of fans listening and or watching?

So I am actually not a huge movie person.

I'm a book.

I'm a book girlie.

So I, I mean, I do have my personal, it's actually a joint like book themed Instagram account called Bedrock and Bookmarks that kind of nods to me being a geologist and the fact that I like books.

So I mean, you can usually find me reading a book like right here.

I have what I'm currently reading as I was waiting for this to start.

I'm like going through.

So yeah, I'm a book girlie.

You know, if anybody wants to check if, if anybody else is a book person and they want to check that out, that's what I usually got going on.

You can usually find me reading.

Awesome.

Ron, are you working on anything you'd like to share with the folks?

I have a line on some stuff, and when I get some stuff actually written, when I get the time to write it and possibly get a computer to write it on, I will let you guys know.

But I finally found a place that will let me publish my piece on whether or not a cab includes RoboCop, and I'm very excited about that.

Well, we will look for that and share when that comes out.

And with that everyone listening and or watching.

You can find and follow us on social media at Filmstrip Pod.

We share announcements about upcoming shows as well as other fun content.

And don't forget to subscribe and share the show.

Bonus points if you leave us a positive review.

It makes us feel real good about ourselves.

Until next time, thank you for listening to Filmstrip.

Thank you for listening to Filmstrip.

You can find more episodes on our website, filmstrippodcast.com.

The Filmstrip theme music is produced and performed by Frozen Lake 121.

All content used or discussed in these podcast episodes is the property of the respective owners and used under the Fair Use Act, Section 5O4C2, Title 17.