This is an eye-heart podcast.
Guarantee human.
Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite on humor me with Robert
Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden Kirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week my guests. SNL's Mikey Day and Headwriters Streeter Side L helped an occupile band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?
We do some retirement homes, those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged, it's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential.
Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having troubles stopping the muscle growth. Listen to superhuman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your
podcasts.
My mother-in-law spent years sabotaging our relationship until karma made her paper it.
Alright, so if you tell me about how we started this story. She moved in for two weeks, lasted five days, left a mess, and then pressed her ear against their bedroom door and burst in screaming. When kicked out to a hotel, she called her son-in-law's workplace, pretending his partner had been rushed to the hospital by ambulance.
Fake the medical emergency, and spoiler that was just the beginning to find out how it ends. Listen to the okay story-time podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, happy Saturday, Chuck here with your Saturday selects in this week. I think it inspired me because recently we did an episode on the movie Roar, the most dangerous
movie ever made supposedly, and so let's go back to November of 2017. The 16th to be exact, to talk about movies being cursed, in this episode that runs at 56 minutes long, can movies be cursed? Please enjoy it right now.
“Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.”
Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, this Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry, my tongue is super big today for some reason, trust, and this is stuff you should know. I know it's like, it sounds like Peter Overby for God's sake, who's that? You know that guy's voice anywhere, he's like an MPR reporter, and like he has me even beat
for the large tongues, candy sucking sound.
Do you remember when we first came out and people would write in and be like, "Till
Josh, stop sucking on candy while he's podcasting." And I'd just be like, "That's my normal voice, man." Thanks a lot. Yeah, appreciate that. But now, now that we're high rollers, they provided me with the private nurse to suction
out the saliva every 30 seconds. Oh my God. And then Jerry has to edit it out. So gross. Gross but true, right?
Like a cursed movie story, true?
“Yeah, do you know what I hate at the dentist besides everything?”
I mean, that was a pretty good segue. I know that I just told him to load over. I hate at the dentist now, you know, you don't have to spit any more because they do have those suction things. But it's still, like I still do the fake swallow, you know how it feels like it builds
up in the back of your mouth. Yeah. So like they'll be in your mouth and you'll just go, "Ooh, what's that?" I hate that. It's funny.
Do you do that? Does everyone do that? Any flex thing? Well, I was not even a gag reflex, it's just the, the hard swallow that it's almost like swallow.
Yeah, the sort of swallow reflex if that's such a thing. Well, you feel like you're going to break your vocal cords or your throat muscles? God, I hate that. I know what you mean. I don't hate it, though.
“I think it's kind of, yeah, not enjoyable, but I don't know.”
And I don't want to talk to you and explain to you to talk back. They can talk, but yeah, you can't be any questions involved. Maybe very torquable questions that you can shrug at. That's it. My last hygienist.
I really didn't care for like it was a personality thing and they have TVs at my dentist that they'll put down in front of you and which is fine, I don't really care. But she would stop and like look and make comments about the news and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Why don't they just, why don't they just let him do his job? I didn't like it. It was really annoying. And then I came back in not too long ago and there was a new hygienist for me and she was awesome.
And on the way out, I was like, by the way, I was like, I won't say your name. I was like, but this new hygienist, I really like a lot. She was like, what about before I was like, I wasn't crazy about her and she went, no one was. And you guys need to tell us that.
And we let her go because we got all these complaints started flooding in.
I was like, well, if you'll bad, like I don't want to get anyone to fire, sure.
But I didn't, there was, she wasn't good. Huh. Is there any way? Was this in Brookhaven? Uh, yeah, is it Brookhaven?
How do you know where my dentist is? Why? I just had an experience in Brookhaven and I'm like, this town is just small enough for that to be possible. Well, I'll go ahead and shout out my dentist.
The great Dr. Darrell Kimchy. She's wonderful. Kimchy? Huh? That's one of my favorite foods.
Oh, but is that your dentist? Uh, no. Okay. But it's possible that we're talking about like a hygienist that gets fired pretty faintly.
Maybe. You know? She's making rounds in Brookhaven. Right. Yeah, Dr. Darrell Kimchy of Atlanta Cosmetics Sports Dentistry.
Wow. That is quite a shout out.
“I think Dr. Kimchy owes us some free Kimchy.”
Maybe. As a thank you. She's sort of a celebrity than she does a lot of the sports people in Atlanta. And the real housewives? Maybe.
But I went in and they have memorabilia everywhere and when the TV show was out
of giving them a poster and they've never put it up.
Oh, no way. That's hilarious. Yeah. Wow. That's great.
It reminds me of the friends when Joey tried to get his headshot up at the, I think it's like the dry cleaner or something. Right. Do it. Man, that is so stuff you should know.
All right. Well, this has got a nice loose start. Indeed, Chuck, but this is a, this is a fun one. But let's begin, shall we? Yeah, this was written by the Grabster.
The article is 10 movies that were supposedly cursed. And Ed goes to great links to point out how there is no way that anything can ever be really cursed. Right.
“I think probably his, a couple of lines where he's like just so stupid.”
Kind of. It was edited out. You know, I got the feeling you got to sign this was like, no, guy, you kidding me. Mm-hmm. I want to write about real stuff like satanic panic, but he does love writing about
movies. He's definitely a movie guy. Yeah, especially horror movies and it seems like more than any other movie. Horror movies, they're the variety that tend to be associated with curses more than other types, right?
Or at least a marketing department cooks that up. So yeah, that's definitely part of the course these days, but there was a more innocent gentler time when, when rumors of satan influencing the production of a movie was a legitimate rumor. You know, it wasn't a PR stuff, right?
So like you said, it goes to some trouble to point out what's actually behind the idea of a movie curse that some things are bound to happen on just about any movie track. Oh, yeah. Especially when you stop and consider, especially in the early days, the kind of stuff they were doing with the technology they were working with at the time.
Of course bad things happen on movies, it's of course people died. Yeah. Like, for example, I looked this up, right? There's a 1928 movie called Noah's Ark and they used 600,000 gallons of water to create the flood scene.
One take, they did one take and three extras drowned. One guy who did survive had to have a leg amputated, it was broken so badly because this
this is the flood scene and you needed to basically get it as real as possible.
In that crazy, that is, yeah, especially back in those days, but they didn't care back then. They were just like other just extras who cares. Although John Wayne, it turns out, was an extra on that movie, but he's really obviously, yeah.
And he factors into another curse. He does. He also worked in the special effects department on that movie or prop, sorry, prop. That's like special effects was what he did early CGI. Right.
And he would clap the coconuts together for all the horse scenes. Right. But, oh, I have another one, okay. So this is another movie, years later, they died with their boots on.
“I think it's about the charge of the library, maybe.”
Okay. It was a 1941 movie starring Arrow Flynn, and during this calvary charge that they recreated, three extras in that movie died, just in that one shot, that one scene. One of the guys was thrown from his horse, and he threw his sword away from him, unfortunately
through it ahead of himself, and the sword stuck into the ground, handle first, and he was
impaled on the sword. Wow. This is this happened on a movie set. And it's not just like back in the day either, 1983, the Twilight Zone movie, very finnously, there was a disaster, right?
Yeah, that was very sad, that's when Vic Morrow and two children were chopped up by helicopter blade. Right. Very infamously, it was terrible, terrible tragedy. Yes, Shin Yichan and Micah didn't leave, where the two child actors who were killed.
So things do happen on movie sets, and again, when you stop and think about what they're
Doing, it's often very dangerous.
So what Ed is saying is, when you start to put these things together, and then you get rid of all of the things that don't support your point, you got to curse on your hands. So we start with Poltergeist? Yes.
Poltergeist, that's one where people always list this as a cursed movie, because quite a few
of the actors died sort of unexpectedly after the movie. And then Ed goes on to say very astutely. But it's also a textbook example of why the idea of curses is silly. I mentioned the curses are silly, so over and over. So those first three Poltergeists, 82, 86, and 88, I didn't see the remake to do.
I didn't even know there was one. Yeah, of course there was. They remade it a few years ago. No, I didn't see it. No, I don't think it was very popular.
“But Dominic Dunn, Dominique, excuse me, her father was Dominic Dunn, correct?”
Yeah, and her brother was Griffin Dunn, is Griffin Dunn. Yeah, she was, well, she was murdered. She was murdered by her boyfriend. John Swenney. Yeah, that was a very disturbing case.
Have you ever poked around that case? Yes. Like, the signs were all there. It was one of those things that could have been prevented. And he got away with it for the most part.
He did like three years in prison. And Dominic Dunn, her father, he was there every day for the trial of the man, just crushed by the injustice of the sentence that the guy received. Well, change his life. He became a crusader.
And did, yeah, he, you can read some of the best coverage of high profile murder cases in the pages of Vanity Fair that he, he covered for years and years and years as a direct
result of him basically covering his own daughter's murder's trial.
Yeah, OJ very famously. He covered that. Yes. He did. And he, apparently, the Dunn's spent a great deal of time, basically keeping tabs
on John Swenney for years, and he was a chef for a while. He was. And I even started tracking him down. I just went down the rabbit hole like six or eight months ago on this for some reason. Really?
Yeah. This is one of those big, you know, things where you see something on Facebook and then all of a sudden you go, oh, yeah, and then you go down the rabbit hole.
“And I was, I was trying to find this guy was like, where is he?”
And the last I saw, he was some chef somewhere, I think he had changed his name even. Of course. John Mora, you are, yeah, we'll keep changing that name buddy because it's going to follow you around. Yeah.
And I mean, like, there was no question whether he did it or not. He admitted to it, like, he told this guy who had been in the house at the time in Dominique Dunn's house, rehearsing lines to call the police that he just killed his girlfriend. Yeah. But yeah, he, he was hounded for many years.
And I guess toward the end of his life, Dominique Dunn said, you know what? And I can away from my life, like keeping tabs on this guy and even just, just dropped it. But yeah, there's a lot of people out there who don't like that dude. Yeah.
I would imagine. So, um, so she died by murder, um, then the young girl, and this was like a couple months after Pulitzer Guys came out, right? So it was very close to the action. Yeah.
Yeah. She wasn't not in the sequels. Obviously, Heather O'Rourke was the little girl in Pulitzer Guys. And she passed away after, uh, in 1988 after Pulitzer Guys II, uh, was wrapped. And she initially was diagnosed with a flu.
We talked about this in our flu episode a little bit. Yeah. But what she really had was an intestinal blockage and at the tender age of 12, uh, she had a heart attack and sepsis and passed away, super tragic. Yeah.
And, um, so those two dying, so close to the production of the actual movie, she died.
“It was Pulitzer Guys III, I believe, that Heather O'Rourke died after filming.”
They were basically done, um, at get it wrong.
I got it wrong. Oh, man. And then Dominique again died just a couple of months after the first Pulitzer Guys came out. So that's, like, one big hallmark of a movie being curse story is the death that
happened, typically need to happen, either during production or write around production. Right. Okay. So those two are the big ones. But then people say, oh, oh, still not convinced?
Well, listen to this, uh, in Pulitzer Guys II, there was an actor named Will Samson who played, uh, Taylor, the medicine man who helps the family. Yeah. And he is better known for playing chief in one flu over the kukus nest.
Yes.
One of the great characters of all time.
“Um, he died, uh, I guess after filming a few years after filming the year after filming,”
um, in 1987, uh, he died following a heart and lung transplant. Yeah. And he had a, he had a history of health issues. He was a giant man. Yeah.
And, um, so that was, you know, again, tied to the curse. But what can he say about someone who just died sort of a natural causes after a heart and lung transplant? Yeah. I think there's pretty good odds.
Yeah. Um, and then there's, um, Julian Beck who played the scary, scary, scary preacher. Yes. Cain in also in Pulitzer Guys II, and he was creepy. He died, I guess, before Pulitzer Guys II actually came out.
So that would have been close to, um, the production as well.
So it checks those boxes, but he died of stomach cancer, and he apparently had a longstanding issue with battling it as well, um, so you can make the case. It doesn't really count, but are you really trying to make a case, uh, about curse it? Yeah.
Well, let's just talk about him instead about that. Agreed. Okay. What's next? The Wizard of Oz is next.
That's right. 1939. Great, great movie. But, uh, a great movie that was marred by, uh, for such a happy movie. He had some rough stuff going on, because it was in the early days of making movies.
And like he said earlier, back then, those, they didn't know or care as much about safety,
like for instance, the Tin Man, Buddy Epson, yeah, they, they said, all right, we need to
make you look, uh, silver, and so we'll just coat you with aluminum powder, and that stuff was really dangerous. He went to the hospital that irritated his lungs, uh, and he could not even continue in the wrong. So luckily, he survived to go on to play Jed, the dad, and Beverly Hillbillies.
Thank God. But he was out of the Wizard of Oz. He was. So Buddy Epson was replaced by Jack Hailey, and they said, well, we probably shouldn't use that same aluminum powder, so they used an aluminum paste, which didn't get into
his lungs, but to give him a really bad iron infection. Man. Great. So the aluminum, just the Tin Man roll itself had a bunch of problems, but that was just one of many Margaret Hamilton, the wicked witch of the West, she was burned pretty badly
with some of the power techniques from the movie.
“And I think she, she was, she was hospitalized, but she came back and, you know, completed”
work on the movie. Yeah. But she said she wasn't going to do any more firework. Apparently, the trap door that she was standing on the timing of it wasn't, wasn't right.
Yeah. Open up and drop her right before the fireworks went off, but did it simultaneous to the fireworks going off, which is not what you want. No. But it was 1939.
Right. So they were like, whatever. What are you going to do? There's the very famous urban legend, which is not true, but it bears mentioning that one of the munchkin's hanged himself in the background of a scene.
Yeah. And if you just Google image that junk hanged munchkin, Wizard of Oz, it will have a screen cap with a little circle around, I mean, he didn't even look, it just looks like something that is not a tree. In other words, it's not attached to the ground.
Right. It doesn't necessarily look like a hanging munchkin, but apparently there was a bird. Yeah. It doesn't look like a bird to me either, though, like supposedly it's a silhouette of a bird.
And if you watch the, like, a close-up of the video of it, it does sway back and forth above the ground. So, I mean, you can see where people came up with that for sure. Yeah. But that is not the case.
There was no munchkin that just couldn't take it anymore.
“There's actually, there's a really great horror fiction story by I think a guy named Steve”
Nagy called the hanged man of Oz, looking up and reading. It's pretty good. But it's about this dude kind of becoming obsessed with that rumor and seeing it on video and not being able to unsee it and all the stuff that happens after. Wow.
I think it's Steve Nagy. It's definitely called the hanged man of Oz. All right. We'll check that out. Other tragedies in Wizard of Oz, anti-M, Ms. Clara Blandick, she killed herself, aged 81.
Yeah. And she left in her suicide note that she was going on her greatest adventure. Well, that's kind of nice. I guess so. It's about as pleasant as it can get with the suicide note I think.
The Wizard himself, Frank Morgan, he was injured in a car wreck. Just a few months after they released the movie. And then of course Judy Garland had one of the more tragic lives in Hollywood history. Yes. They're making a movie about her soon, I think.
I can't believe they haven't already.
I think they've done it on TV but not a big movie thing I don't think.
“She was basically owned by MGM, like almost the definition of being owned, right?”
She was, like, discovered at age 13, I think in Kansas, actually, at a state fair.
And they said, "Well, we're just going to buy you from your parents, basically."
And they took her and they said, "You can't get fat." So smoke 80 cigarettes a day. Yeah. They basically prescribed her that. They got her on M. Fettamines to keep her going.
They let her have one square meal a day. Terrible. Yeah, really. So she, yeah, it makes a really good point. If there was any real tragedy that came out of the Wizard of Oz, it was Judy Garland's life.
Yeah, absolutely. So she eventually would die by suicide herself on an overdose of barbituates. And, um, I think it's, she had the equivalent of 10 seeking all capsules in her blood.
Yeah, well, man, that's sad.
I want to see that movie. Do you know who's going to play her? Oh, man, I just saw this here today. I can't remember who.
“But I remember thinking, yeah, good casting.”
Oh, okay. Like it wasn't Owen Wilson. It would be pretty. Which troubles come on, good happy. So right, she was 47 years young, by the way, which is far far too young to have lost
Judy Garland. Yeah. You want to take a break? Yeah, and that downer, yes. All right, we'll come back and talk about the man of steel, right, after this.
Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged, it's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.
Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having troubles stopping the muscle growth. Listen to superhuman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
“Do you remember when Diana Ross, double tap little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?”
Oh, when Kyle Hay said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little Kim? Well, you can find out on the look back at a podcast. I'm Sam J.
And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how he survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about cracking the eggs. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack.
I'm down to the talk about crackle day, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have eggs on the table right now.
So, you know what? Well, you're finishing that sentence. Yeah, I don't think there's a more important year for black people.
Really, yeah, for me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history.
Listen to look back at it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast learning the hard way with me, your host and your favorite therapists. Cue games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests.
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Hope you're free, I heart rate you up, search, learn the hard way and listen to that. All right, Chuck. So there's actually a role, Superman that's considered a cursed role. Did you know that? I did know that because I remember as a kid, even though I'm not, you know,
65 years old, I'd like to watch reruns of stuff like Gilligan, Silent and Green Acres and
Peticoat Junction.
Oh, really?
“An embarrassing Peticoat jokes, isn't it good?”
Yeah, I mean, you know, one of those old shows.
They're all great. What about F Trooper? F Trooper. Probably one of my favorites. How about F Trooper?
Yeah, how about F Trooper? Yeah, how about F Trooper? Yeah, how about F Trooper? Yeah, how about F Trooper? Yeah, how about F Trooper?
Yeah, how about F Trooper? Yeah, how about F Trooper? Yeah, how about F Trooper? Yeah, how about F Trooper? Yeah, how about F Trooper?
Yeah, how about F Trooper?
That's where I watched it, and that was the one starring George Reeves as the--not even
very muscular and slightly tubby Superman. Yeah, like that kind of like 50s fit. Which kind of girl chested, chunky, and just weird, like weirdly shaped. Yeah.
“Like, what were the--what kind of exercise were they doing back then?”
Well, I don't think they did exercise back then. Wouldn't that the deal? Oh, is that what it was? Yeah, they were just like, you know, you're going to play Superman. So eat a bunch of steak, right?
Like, buff up a little bit, do some push-ups maybe. So George Reeves--he's George Reeves--he's George Reeves, Christopher Reeve is not plural, singular version, right? Yes. George Reeves became synonymous with Superman, like everybody thought of him as Superman.
He's like, like, he wouldn't be cast in anything else, right? And he had some--he had to put up with quite a bit being known as Superman or recognized as Superman. Apparently, kids would come up and like punch him in the stomach to see if he was made a steel.
There--I looked into it--I learned this years ago from the Uncle John's bathroom reader, and I looked into it and I think it actually may be correct. But at one, like, public appearance, he had to talk a kid out of shooting him. This kid had brought his father's loaded 38 caliber pistol to shoot Superman to see if the bullets really bounced off of him.
And George Reeve got the kid to hand the gun over to like a cop or something, because he told them that sure, of course, the bullet would bounce off of him, but it could ricochet and hurt somebody else who is standing nearby. Yeah. That was in the Ben Affleck movie, Hollywood Land.
Is that right? Is about George Reeves? And that scene was in the movie. Okay. And he does, he blocks her to bed.
Yeah. It's--it's okay. It's not great. But you lost me at Ben Affleck. That's not bad.
But yeah, he talks a kid out of it in the movie and is said exactly what he said, like, of course, Boba, Boba, and then he takes it then he can see him, he's just like, "I've got Jesus." Like, "I almost got shot." Right. Yes.
Yeah. I can't imagine the relief that would wash over you after that. Yeah. Reeves Reeves Reeves. Yeah.
He's the plural. It's tough to keep up with. It is. He had a very sort of sad life, which is in that Hollywood Land movie. He, like you said, he couldn't get other work and he was only known as Superman.
So he turned to the booze and was not a happy guy and eventually in June of 1959. He was having a party at his own house, his fiance was selling a party and he said, "I'm going to go upstairs and shoot myself in the head." Yeah. And Ed makes it sound like he was upset about the noise or something like that from the
party. I mean, that may have been the straw, but he was upset about life. I got to, and I got the sense like legitimately depressed, you know, like clinically depressed. Right. I mean, like it's as we get to know more and more about depression, it's so much easier
to look back at like, you know, people who were depressed before, but you just never really
kind of pegged them like that because people didn't know about that kind of thing. Then it's just sad to see how many people suffered like that because no one knew what was
“going on or they just thought it was the blues or you should just snap out of it.”
Yeah. We've never done one on depression, I think we should. Have we not? I don't believe we have me. Well, then we should definitely do that.
We have done one on cats. And then Christopher Reeve played Superman and that is why some say it is a cursed role because he was very sadly injured in a horse riding accident in the mid 90s, which let them paralyze from the neck down and he became very much an inspiration to people because he became an advocate for research and the spinal cord injuries and he went on to direct
and even act some as well after that. And it also points out that after Christopher Reeve died, his wife Dana, who saw him through this whole thing, yeah, she died of cancer like two years afterward. Yeah, I've just, you know, felt so awful for that family and those kids. Yeah, I mean, just to get, like that random to be thrown from a horse and then just be
Paralyzed from the neck down, yeah.
So you put those two together and everyone says well, Superman is a cursed role.
Correct. What would the grabs to say?
“You know, such thing as curious is so stupid.”
The conqueror is a movie that, like we said, John Wayne factored in and this one was definitely, I don't know about cursed, but well, here's the story. It is very unlikely that John Wayne would play Mongolian Genghis Khan. He did though, but it was Hollywood back in the day where they just do it cast white people to play whoever.
Right.
And he played Genghis Khan and they shot the conqueror in Utah less than 150 miles from
the Nevada Test Site, sorry Nevada Test Site, where our own US government set off 11 nuclear detonations above ground the year before, just in the year before. Yeah.
“And that area was crawling with bad stuff, lingering fallout in the dirt and in the”
rocks and everything, it was in the soil and they were just running around in their film and movies. Yeah, I read this really interesting article in the Guardian called Hollywood and the downwinders about the people who lived in that area who suffered tremendously, healthy
problems from the fallout.
The government went to great lengths to cover it up and just assured everybody that there was no danger whatsoever to them, even though they were their houses and school yards were covered in radioactive ash. And so from filming there, when this production came to town and they filmed there, yeah, they were exposed to the same radioactive debris and dust and dirt that these people
who lived in the area were as well. And as a result, supposedly something like 91 out of 220 cast and crew members who worked on location for the movie "The Conqueror" came down with cancer later on in life, which is highly unusual statistically speaking. Yeah, that's like 40 something percent of the crew and years later, and people magazine
in 1980, they actually did a special report on that movie and the cancer connection, like John Wayne, Agnes Morhead, Gene Gerson, Susan Hayward, the director, Dick Powell. They all died of cancer and in that people magazine, Dr. Robert C. Pendleton, he was director of radiological health at the University of Utah said that this would hold up in a court of law that's such an outstanding number of people.
Yeah, and apparently not even just the people who worked on the production, it came to be known that Conqueror came to be known by the way, it's considered one of the best bad movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood, but people who visited the set, battle cancer later in life, too, both of John Wayne's sons who came to visit them, there's a famous picture of him with two of his sons, and a guy using a Geiger counter on set, both of his sons had cancer
later in life, too, but supposedly the family and Dick Powell's son Norman, who's interviewed in that article, I read, they discounted the idea that people got cancer from that test site, they say maybe it was a contributing factor, but these people all smoked heavily eight stake, like eight times a day, and that they had a lot of other risk factors that probably led to it, but it's also entirely possible that they may not have died of cancer
as early had they not filmed at that site? Well, that Dr. Robert Pendleton said, essentially that it's about three times the rate
“of cancer that you would expect, so I think that it definitely contributed.”
It's pretty curious, I want to see it if you ever seen the conqueror, no, I've got to see this, actually pictures of John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Yeah, it's pretty cringy, yeah, super racist, but apparently even if you take all that away, just like the dialogue is awful, like the whole premise of it is he kidnaps a woman in forces or to marry him, and of course romance blossoms as a result, you know, it's
the usual stuff from the '50s. The Omen, yes, this is a good one because this is one of those where it's a movie about the devil, and so all these stories are going to be heightened, right, because it's kind of like poltergeist, like it wouldn't, if this was when Harry Met Sally, and then some of this stuff happened, when Harry Met Sally was cursed with great
Laughs, it was, I love that movie.
movies, yeah, you know, so let's go back to the beginning of this one. Obviously the Omen
“everyone knows was the great movie from 1976 about the anti-Christ taking, well, I guess”
possession you could call it, but it's not like an exercise thing. It basically the anti-Christ
is this little boy, he brings back as a little boy. Yeah, and a bad, bad, naughty little boy, Damian, who dresses like Angus Yonk? Yeah, sure. Okay, so Damian is adopted by Gregory Peck in the movie, and in real life, Gregory Peck's son killed himself, he died by suicide, apparently out of the blue, no suicide note or anything like that. Yeah, and this was before production had started, but after Peck had agreed to do the movie, right, and he still
went ahead and did the movie. He left the US and went to London, and even on the way to London before he even got to London to start shooting something happened to him, right? Yeah, he said
I'm going to get on a plane and fly to London. His plane was struck by lightning, right? And
the producer's plane was struck by lightning. Separately, this is two different, two different planes struck by lightning on the way to start shooting in London. So this cursed thing, it's feeling
“legit this time. This is the one that even Ed got a little shaky on if you ask me. How about this?”
The hotel where they stayed, at least where the producer and some other folk stayed, was bombed by the Irish Republican Army. Yeah, helping the London, I don't know about a curse in that case, because the mid-70s, there was a lot of that going on. Yeah, the Irish was bombed and all sorts of stuff back then. Yeah, it was like a restaurant where the crew and the cast went to eat one night.
Yeah, it's they were about to go eat there. So there's actually like all these close calls actually
make it seem like this, this movie production wasn't cursed, but instead was actually being looked out for on high by the dark lord. Right, so like the the crew that were was going to go to dinner, didn't go to dinner. They didn't make it there in time for the bombing. Right, the people who were staying in the hotel when it was bombed weren't there yet. There were a lot of close calls, but there was one close call that really is just mind numbing. I would have
freaked out had I've been one of the people involved the private jet. Yeah, so they chartered a private jet to fly them around London to get some good aerial footage of London. And at the last minute, the charter service switched planes to accommodate a group of Japanese businessmen. Well, the plane that the Japanese businessman took that the crew was supposed to be on crashed on takeoff, actually crashed into a car and killed everybody on board the plane and everybody in
the car crashed into. How about that? And this is like a last minute switch too supposedly. Yeah, those make you think. Yeah, that I mean the cursor no, just knowing that you were that close. So just that I get you. How about this? A worker that was an animal sanctuary where they filmed
“and a worker there was killed by a tiger. Yep. That one I think that would fit. I think that was”
the actual animal Wrangler for the movie was killed. That really. Yeah, which makes it even closer. This is the one though Chuck. You got to take this one home. This is the one that really gets everybody, even though I think it's like a lot of it's made up. Yeah, there was a car crash with John Richardson who was a special effects worker. He'd signed the effects for the Oman, including a very famous decapitation scene toward the yeah, it's very famous. And
I'll thought that was at the beginning. Was it the beginning? I think so. I think it's how it opened if I remember, but it's been a while. Oh, okay. Either way. He was in Holland after working on a movie called a bridge too far. And he was involved in a head on collision in his car and was injured. But his assistant Liz Moore was decapitated and killed in that car wreck. And he claims, and I don't know if this is lower or not, sounds lower. It does sound lower, but he claims
that he awoke from that crash and looked up and those a street sign where they crash. That's at the distance to the next town. And it was the town of Oman, Oman, EN, at a distance of 6, D6, 0.6 kilometers. Bam. Now, is that true? There's no way it's true because I looked up on the internet that sign, trying to find any picture that sign. If that sign existed, there would be so many pictures from tourists taking photos of it on the internet. There's not a single one.
You think from back then, those pictures would still be around? The sign would probably be still
Be around.
the sign down for that reason. Maybe. I guess that's possible, but no picture of it whatsoever.
That no AP photographer went, I gotta get a picture of that sign. Nobody did. There's no existing photo of that sign. Yeah, that's the one that makes me think like me. Although there is a town called Oman and the Netherlands, so it's an entirely possible a crash took place by there. So that checks out. That definitely checks out. So we're going to take a break, everybody. We just decided, but we're going to be right back, so don't worry, because we're going to talk some more
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“All right, we're back as I promised, and we're on the brainstorm, which I think Ed was just”
kind of showing off with this one. Because he even says like, you're not going to find this on many lists of cursed movies. Yeah, I'm not sure I get the curse in this one, but we'll talk about it. Brainstrom was the 1983 sci-fi movie. Most famously known as being the Great Natalie Wood's final film. Right, because she died in real life after the movie, obviously, when she drowned after being out on a boat, one night, partying with her husband Robert Wagner in her co-star
Christopher Walken. Right, under some say, many say mystery circumstances. Yeah, I was reading up about that case, and they apparently have been drinking since at least four in the afternoon, and they made it back to the boat pretty late and they've been drinking through dinner. They were all just pretty, pretty crocked, right? And supposedly Natalie Wood was either afraid of water and/or couldn't swim. Yeah. And for some reason, she had tried to get into a
dinghy that was attached to the boat that they were staying on and probably hit her head and drowned. That's the story. That's the official story, right? But apparently in 2012, it was reopened or her cause of death was changed from accident to undetermined. Yeah, I mean, there were stories
That she and Robert Wagner had been fighting.
killed her. No charges were ever brought. Christopher Walken for his, I think he's never talked
about it publicly if I'm not mistaken. No, he finally did years and years later, and a playboy interview, and he basically said it must have been an accident. There no one knows,
“but she surely was an accident. That's what he said. And that's probably the only thing”
so excited to get ever said anything. Yeah. He said, it's an accident clearly. That was great. That was Christopher Walken with just a hint of John Travolta. Yeah, it's a little trivial to ask. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, that's tied to brainstorm as being a curse, I guess, because they were both in the movie. Even though the Grabstra points out that some people tied this back
to a rubble without a cause curse, because that makes way more sense to me because James Dean and
Salmonio and Natalie Wood, then all died from that movie. Relatively young. She made it the longest. She was in her early 40s, I think she died, but James Dean died very young in a car crash right after rubble without a cause was released, I think. Yeah, and I think wasn't Salmonio murder. He was murdered in 1976 at a pretty young age still. He was stabbed to death in the heart in an alley behind his house. Yeah, so I appeats a man to me. Oh, really? Yeah.
It's a weird. Well, it is, but I mean, we're talking about curses. So, well, I mean, usually the
“pizza maker stabbed, you know what I'm saying? Right. I think this guy was actually a serial killing”
pizza man. Oh, wow. Yeah. I just saw recently as there's a serial killer in like central Florida. I don't know. I hadn't heard anything, but aren't there like at least 50 serial killers operating in any given point in time? I don't know, but I do know that I saw something that I heard that like three murders in the Tampa area were just linked. Oh, man. I think, and that made me think it's been awhile. Yeah, you don't hear about him very often, but as I grow older and wiser,
I'm starting to think like there's a lot more serial killers out there than you would imagine that like human life has very little value to more people than you would hope, you know? Yeah, the darkest thing you can think of. It's pretty dark. The last high profile when I remember is BTK, but surely there's been one since then, right? Yeah, because he was like early 2000s, right? I know, but I can't think of one. I can't either, man. But it's been a long time since,
you know, we've heard of like Jeffrey Dahmer's and me and that was said bunnies and stuff like that. Yeah, thankfully. Sure, the son of Sam's and the Zodiacs. It seems like the 70s and 80s were sort of the time where that was happening more. Yeah, I don't know why maybe it was harder to get away with it. They're easier to get away with it or I don't know who knows. I'm listening to that Heaven's Gate podcast. Have you heard of it? I haven't heard that. No. It's good. It's from our buddy Chris Bannon over at
mid-roll, put it up. And is he hosting it? No, no, Glenn Washington narrates it, but um, I have two three episodes now. It's really good, but it's kind of funny, man, that that's time of the 60s and 70s. It was just, and we talked about it some in our cults episode. It was people just believed more her in trying stuff out like that in UFOs and it was all just kind of in the in the mainstream, right? And it just all seems so um, unbelievable now, but back then it
wasn't just kind of believable at someone might join up with a cult. Well, a lot of people were on grassback. On the grass. Yeah. That's crazy. I got to hear that um, it's good. podcast, man. That's just a fascinating story. But now that means we can't do Heaven's Gate because Bannon did it. Yeah. And then they did, you know, you can't cover in 45 minutes, what they cover in whatever 10 episodes. 10? Sounds about right. I'm not sure. I haven't, I don't think they really
“said all the ones, but it feels like a 10. Let's say 7 to 10. So anyway, can we close on brainstorm?”
Or are we still uh, do we miss something? Uh, yeah, I think. Yeah. I mean, Natalie Woods murderers
or death death. Sorry, his unsolved still in its mystery may always be. I had no idea about that
about Robert Wagner. I just knew Natalie Wood drowned. I never heard anything about it being mysterious. Yeah. It's it's long been mysterious. And well, here's how we'll finish it then. She uh, wasn't even able to finish filming on that movie and they did use a body double to complete some of those scenes. It was a big flop. Yeah. Yes, it was. Okay, Chuck. So for the last one then, we're going to combine two together. All right.
Great.
And both of them were films that were never made or have yet to be made. I guess is a better way
to put it. The first one is a Confederacy of Dunces, the film adaptation of John Kennedy Tools book. I guess novel. Great book. Yeah. I've never read it. Oh, good. I really want to have just never read it for some reason. Yeah. It's a classic classic book in very sadly tool, killed himself in 1969. And the book was not out yet. And part of the reason killed himself is because he could not achieve success as a writer. His mother gets a published.
It wins a Pulitzer Prize in 1981. And posthumously, he became a famous author. Yeah. So people when it first was published in the early 80s, people were like, oh, we got to turn this into a movie. This is a great idea. Great book will be a great movie. And they said, uh, who could who could possibly play the main character? Bulushi. He'd be perfect. Bulushi dies.
“Well, who's next? Let's wait a few years. And let's see. Yeah. Who else could play this main character?”
John Kennedy. Don carried a John Kennedy died. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Everybody. Let's just take a breather. Wait a year or two. Who's the next guy who's going to play this? I got it. This young up-and-comer named Chris Farley. Yeah. Chris Farley died. So a Confederacy of Dunces just kept getting
put off and off, right? And then finally, Will Ferrell steps in. And it looks like it's going to
happen because Will Ferrell is obviously indestructible, right? Yeah. And if you, if you haven't gathered by hearing the people cast as Ignatius Riley, he was a heavy man in the book. So obviously Bulushi Candy and Farley were all big dudes. Mm-hmm. And they all died. So finally, they've got to Ferrell and they're like, "Well, he's in shape and we can bulk him up." Right? Maybe use some special effects. I have no idea. But at least he's probably not going to drop dead of a heart attack or
“something. Right. He was a safe bet. Yeah. But that didn't happen either. I think it was sort of”
in turnaround forever. It took a long time in development. And eventually, the head of the Louisiana
State Film Commission, it said in New Orleans so they would shot there. He was murdered and her
cane Katrina came along to wipe out a lot of where the film would be shot. Right. And so I think that kind of just helped to put it on indefinite hold at the very least. Right. But they are, I just saw, I was looking this up, see if it was back on track. And I saw there's a movie called The Butterfly and the Typewriter about John Kennedy tool. Oh, Nick. So they're doing a biopic on him with, oh, and Wilson. Thomas Man. No. Thomas Man playing tool. Who's he? He's an actor. Right. Obviously,
but what has he been? The thing that I saw him in was a movie out a couple of years ago called me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Oh, okay. It's a good little indie film. So he's, he's good. So
“he's playing tool. And then I think Susan Seran in places mom. Oh, yeah. And Dying Kruger sent”
it as well. So Anne Susan Seran is going to totally try to date him to all bet. Why would you say that? Oh, she likes younger dudes. That really? Oh, yeah. Oh, maybe have a shot. She likes young hipster dudes. No way younger than you, my friend. Maybe not. Good for her. I love Susan Seran. So, oh, yeah, more power to her. I think she's great. But she is totally going to try to date Thomas Man. All right. We'll get for him to then. Sure. I'm not being judging. No, I know.
Okay. So then that's a confederacy of Dunces, right? Yes. There's another script out there called a took that has virtually the same story to it, right? But the story is totally different. But the curse story is is virtually the same. Right. With a took, it's like a fish out of water movie about an Inuit man who comes to New York and has to make his way in the big city, right? Yes. That script was early on. It was optioned and John Balushi was scheduled to play the main character,
right? Well, what happened to John Balushi? He died. So who was up next, Chuck? John Candy. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Okay. Well, John Candy passed. God rest his soul. Who was after John Candy? Chris Farley. That's right. Chris Farley. And so the narrative to this curse story takes a huge sudden turn when the next person up after Chris Farley is same Kinnison. Yes. And Sam Kinnison, they were actually, I mean, they're actually going to make the movie.
It was happening. And Sam Kinnison kind of destroyed that because he wanted to, he wanted to be really heavily involved in the scriptory rights, the direction of the film. He wanted creative control.
He battled with the studio.
And he eventually got to the point where he was like, you know what? If I'm going to,
if you're not going to give me creative control, I'll be in your movie and I'll suck on purpose. I'm purpose. And they said, oh, yeah, we're going to sue you. And he said, oh, yeah. All right. And then he died in a car wreck. Yeah. Before anything could happen as a result. So I took for the moment died with him again. In the bizarre, it is. The idea that those two things crossed
“over like that, that one obviously it's not a curse, but I think that it's pretty interesting at”
the very least. Yeah, for sure. Well, if you guys want to know more about movie curses, just go start watching movies and ask people, is this one cursed? And then if they say, no,
go watch another one and ask about that. And then eventually, someone will say, yes, this one's
cursed. And then ask them the story behind it. And in the meantime, since I said all that, it's time for listen and now. I'm going to call this just a very kind email from a kind Aussie. Nice. Hey guys, discovered your show a couple of months ago. And I reckon I have listened to two or three podcasts a day since then. Awesome. I absolutely love you guys. And to say that your show is addictive would be an understatement. Until very recently, I was a news junkie. I live in Melbourne,
Australia, and would listen to radio national at every opportunity. But since Brexit and the recent
“US election, listening to the news and current affairs has become a health hazard for me. I also have”
two youngest children 11 and 9 having grown up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud myself.
I don't want to subject my kids to the same fear. So finding your podcasts has been a true joy. I love how enthusiastic and optimistic you both are about everything. And your curiosity is truly infectious. It's so nice. Isn't it? Yeah. You are so gloriously accepting of different ideas and cultures that have even adopted trucks. I don't want to yuck someone else's young, which by the way, Bridget, I did not make that up. No, that was another listener who said about it. But we love to say it.
For sure. And I'm glad you've adopted that. But I love the podcast so much. I've got my husband and kids into it as well. And my husband is a radio ham. You'll listen to your episode on hand radio together. He was impressed with your efforts. Keep it up guys. And thank you for all the joy and information you brought to my life. Cheers. That's from Bridget Foster in Melbourne. Cheers with some fosters. And I tell you what Bridget we're coming to Melbourne in September of next year for
shows. Yep. And you write in with a friendly reminder. And you and your family can get on the old guest list. How about that? Awesome. Man, Chuck, you're the guy. You're the guy. Your past is too. All right, cool. Well, thank you to them out. Thanks a lot, Bridget. It was Bridget and family, right? Yeah, Bridget with
“a D. Bridget. Thank you for writing in. And if you want to get in touch with us like Bridget did,”
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