Kid with a Ray Gun

Whoa, all right. Hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm coming off a high of talking to Michael Miner. Wow, that was crazy. It was so cool. He was so nice. Yeah, he was great. You listeners will get to hear him too, because we're going to have some sound bites from him in this episode. What are we going to talk about, dude? Dude, we're talking about the 1988 film, Deadly Weapon, written and directed by Michael Miner. Deadly Weapon. Like, I was surprised when I watched it. because it reminded me of flight of the navigator which we also covered if you haven't you know listened to our episode on flight of the navigator go check it out i think it was a pretty good one but it reminded me of flight of the navigator and that it's like this 80s sci-fi movie about a kid discovering some technology that makes him better than everyone else right except it's so dark like flight of the navigator is like upbeat happy kid movie this is like this kid's getting

beaten and abused by his evil dad and his dog gets killed in front of him and then he kills his evil dad and then he kills a bunch of other people with his ray gun it's like even fly the navigator when he got the ship he immediately just was like and now i'm gonna get my revenge on nasa but it's just like such a weird tone because like you see the kid discover this fantastic ray gun And you think, oh, this is going to be fun. And it's like, no, he's just going to take hostages. It feels like they were trying to take that kind of 80s fun subgenre of like kid finds thing that gives him superpowers, then it's fun. And Michael Miner was like, OK, I'll do that. But actually, I'm just going to make a movie about like something real, like depression and suicide and like a guy turning to a life of crime. I think that Deadly Weapon is obviously the story of a kid who falls into a life of crime and ultimately ends his life.

And it is disguised as some sort of existential fantasy that isn't even a fantasy. What could it be if not that? Like, they announce it right up front. They say, this is all in the mind of a 15-year-old boy. As much as it is possible, do you think you could give us a quick synopsis of this movie? Young boy likes to pretend that he is a spaceman who came to Earth and is getting bullied. So in his imagination, he, the spaceman, kills everyone on Earth. And lo and behold, one day this boy who fantasizes about killing everyone finds a ray gun, like an actual ray gun that can shoot out, you know, powerful energy blasts and kill anyone. He uses it to kill his abusive dad, and then he uses it to scare away some bullies and win the heart of a equally crazy girl i would say more crazy yeah no she's really into it i mean she's like oh evil ray gun wielding boy i love it um he then uses it to gather up random people

that don't seem to have necessarily wronged him like the sheriff and a priest he brings them to an arcade where he ties them up and starts playing games and several times talks about how he likes the power well yes he likes the power but he also keeps saying he wants to be alone right now anyway eventually the military gets involved because they want this super high-tech weapon back the media gets involved they come in and interview him it all spirals out of control till he eventually kills one of his hostages at this point he kind of breaks down lets everyone go tries to escape military tracks him down they bring his mom in yeah his estranged mom and gets sniped and dies or did he because afterwards there's a news story that says he didn't get killed by a sniper but actually took his own life so we've got a real treat for you today we actually got a hold of the legendary michael minor the creator of robocop

and the writer and creator of deadly weapon we interviewed him and now that we've introduced the movie here's what he had to say about his film deadly weapon i was supposed to direct the second unit for Robocop and Charlie Band, who was one step below Roger Corman and helped get financed films like Reanimator and other really B science fiction and fantasy films. I mean, really a brilliant subgenre that were financed by Charlie would go to the American film market and to a couple of markets in Europe. And he had spent money on a poster. So that was enough at that time to get low-budget financing for the film that was then going to have a script written and be photographed. So there was no movie, but there was a movie poster. So I was in, RoboCop had been greenlit, and they were doing pre-production. And then I went in and pitched to Charlie and his wife, Deborah Dion. They showed me a poster, Deadly Weapon, train crash, bazookas falling out

of a box. And they said, okay, what about if a bunch of bikers found this weapon and then took over a small town and terrorized it? I thought, what if an alienated kid found the gun and he's been bullied and now he suddenly has power, which was sort of semi-autobiographical. So they went for that and i had 1.3 1986 dollars we shot for 30 days actually 20 nights and 10 days in and around la we made deadly weapon and to me the first 30 or 40 minutes until we get to the video arcade worked pretty damn well but i kind of died there as a director because i didn't realize Once you get in four walls, you don't want it to look like Three's Company, you know, or some bad sitcom. And it's much harder to shoot in a confined space, especially with six characters being held hostage, et cetera, et cetera. There are some good themes about power. I mean, I kept trying to keep that stuff in there. I think the reason that it got made was because it was, you know, there were all these pre-sales.

It was a low-budget film that didn't have to please anybody but Charlie and Debbie and the foreign financiers. So there was a little bit more narrative freedom. So, yeah, this movie starts out with a caption on the screen. And that caption says, This movie takes place between the hours of midnight on Wednesday and dawn on Friday in the mind of a 15-year-old boy. I just, isn't this the most amazing way you've ever, like, seen a movie star ever? Yes. And then expecting it. Like, it's so simple, but so specific. Yeah. It's extremely specific. It hooks me in, but it also creates an expectation that it immediately reverses. There is no fantasy. And this is not a fantasy film. But it tells us at the beginning, this is a fantasy. Based on that, you think it's about to, like, kick off into, like, the never-ending story or something. Or, like, labyrinth. Right. I think it's telling that the language used from the hours of midnight on Wednesday and

dawn on Friday, I think that's kind of how you would phrase it if like you saw in a news article, it's like these people were held hostages from this time on this date to this time on the other date, right? Like it's a very specific time range. Why else give a range? So, you know, I think that's telling us something right there. Yeah, this kid has got kind of a sad life. He gets bullied. his is kind of oh my gosh this kid has the most depressing life ever everyone hates him everyone oh my gosh it's insane how many people hate him his teachers hate him his his principal like beats him for no reason like his dad kills his dog for no reason because he got mugged and robbed while buying alcohol for his dad which he's not even old enough to do like even if he got to the store he couldn't have bought the alcohol with nothing wouldn't his dad just do it with nothing but coins not even dollar bills yes it's coins

his dad just gives him a bunch or his stepdad gives him a bunch of coins his sister hates him the bullies hate him his priest hates him for unknown reasons as soon as he like asked his priest for help his priest calls someone's like yeah that weird kid who i hate is asking for help it's probably bad news well i mean i think this is a little bit telling likes this boy because i think we're seeing it from his perspective and from his perspective he's a misunderstood uh traveler from another world right like he believes he's an alien of some kind and uh you know he tells himself he is to escape the right yeah whether he really believes it or not. I think he knows he's not. Yeah, so he's at school and they're in creative writing class and they're reading some of their stories. And there's a nerdy boy who reads a story that ends with the line. Now, if you're asking yourself how often fantasy and reality meet, well, only the

master storyteller knows for sure. But like this was the question I was asking myself the entire time watching this movie, especially after it starts with that caption and everything seems to be reality i'm like so what is fantasy well probably the ray gun the gun yeah well i mean the gun's not the ray is right like it was just a gun kid found a gun when we were talking to michael minor i asked him about that scene where the nerd reads that passage about the creator and only the creator knows for sure what happened here's what he had to say you know i love that reading i wish i was smart enough to be going for that but thank you i was i was being much more sort of action tropey so the main character is named zeke i believe zeke robinson so he gets up and he has to read his story that he just wrote and he tells a story about aliens it's about aliens that like start chopping off people's balls like that's the whole story it's like yeah

Some aliens came and they were fighting with the humans. And so the humans couldn't procreate. They started chewing off their scrotums.

It's an amazing story. And this young woman in class named Tracy, who is important later, is so into this story. She loves it. She's like, I want to hear how it ends. It's a really great shot because like the nerdy kid is just rolling his eyes. And there's also another young woman in the front row who's just doing an amazing job of just staring out the window in a trance. she's not paying attention at all i mean to be fair to this kid this story is shocking and attention grabbing but apparently not for this class no because the teacher takes it away says it's disgusting sends him to the principal's office where the principal takes out a paddle like a literal paddle and beats him so we're laughing a whole bunch even though we're talking about something extremely dark but i i need to point out this is the tone of the movie this movie is very silly yeah it's like intentionally funny and campy and silly and yet it is dealing with

extremely dark subject matter you know this is written by michael minor so think robocop right like it has a similar tone to robocop in that like horrible horrible things are happening but it kind of makes you giggle right like you're like oh like i shouldn't be laughing at this but Oh yeah, it's definitely got that tone. So yeah, he goes to the store with coins that his dad gave him so that he can buy whiskey and he gets beat up by some bullies. No, they don't just beat him up. They pick him up and then like use him as a jackhammer. Like they hold him by his legs and pound his head into the ground over and over. It's a cartoonish scene. it reminded me of the bullies in it right like these ridiculous out of control bullies which you know going from your perspective on this movie would be how he sees them right like to him they are ridiculous out of control bullies when really they're probably just bullies and then

tracy is kind of like hey don't don't bully him but like she is the girlfriend of one of the bullies and she barely even seems to notice him and then they keep bullying him and just like step on his broken arm and then he comes home and his dad's like you didn't get my whiskey and he's mad and he goes to his room and his dad literally breaks the door down with a bat first his sister is like oh it's too quiet and then takes her boyfriend and like flees zeke's sister and her boyfriend are watching a movie and it's terror vision so here's michael minor's reasoning behind why Terror Vision makes an appearance in his movie Deadly Weapon. That was one of Charlie's films. So we got it for free. And I got a choice of films. I looked at a bunch of clips and that one seemed to resonate the best with what was going on. So it was clearly an in-house gift from the company. When his stepfather comes in,

his boy literally jumps out the window. It just crashes through the window. He just eats himself out the window. He's out of there. It's really good. I just love that scene. Oh, it's so good. No, it's very, very good. Right, right. And then so, of course, earlier in the film, in a river, he found a box that has like a ray gun in it. I believe that he actually just found a gun somewhere. Okay. So he jumps out the window to get his gun. And as he is getting his gun, he accidentally flips on a radio that says a lot of strange things. But one of the things it says is, my mother always told me, don't let anyone push you around. And as we know, Zeke has a very strange relationship with his mother and he's about to stop letting people push him around. So I do believe that radio is in his head, kind of telling him, egging him on. That's interesting. I didn't even notice the radio. Yeah, it says a bunch of

different random things, but I could only pick up like really that one line. So his dad's coming for him. He says, stand back, I'll shoot. His dad doesn't even care. He's just like, hey, watch me kill your dog i'm like geez dude so the the stepdad is like nobody can mess with me monster boy interesting that he calls zeke monster boy he says hell boy the man monster's coming for you i'm on the first step and then zeke is like i'm warning you man and then he goes i'm on the second step as he's stepping forward and zeke says stay back and he says i'm on the third step and um that's of course when zeke shoots him and in what we see this ray gun lights the dad's head on fire and he runs out and the next time we see him he's just a crisp like he's just been burned yes i know michael maynor was very proud of that head lighting on fire thing it was a pretty good stunt but the ray gun never does that later and the ray guns what it does is very inconsistent i believe because

Zeke is clearly making up what it does in his head to kind of protect his psyche from the fact that he's killing people. And he was certainly defending himself from an abusive stepdad. But I do think at this point, he really goes off the rails because he just murdered his stepdad and he knows he's in trouble. Michael Miner had some thoughts on this part of the movie. Here's what he had to say. No, a very good observation. My father was an alcoholic. And so I built out from there. He wasn't abusive. It's not revenge porn, but there are these Ten Commandments, and one of them is, you know, the father crosses a red line when he kills the dog, and the kid is empowered momentarily by this, finding this experimental weapon. He's able to act out something that would normally be repressed, and it spins out of control from there. I think that was part of the touchstone for me that, you know, you keep sympathy with the kid because he's attempting to equalize things just in a not very civilized manner.

While we don't actually see him committing too many crimes in this movie, we do later find out in the news report at the very end that says he committed suicide. They say that he was wanted for murder, vandalism and robbery. And so I think that's a good way of knowing that the things that he does with that gun are not actually what's happening. So he goes to this gas station and meets the bullies again. He shoots a building and the building just explodes, like just a massive explosion. I don't think that's what happened. I think maybe he even shot one of the bullies. I don't know. But he probably just shot up the store, shot some bullets to scare these bullies away. And then they left. Tracy, who was with the bullies, comes up to him and she says, are you okay? Oh my God. I told them to stop. Are you bleeding? Now this line doesn't make any sense because in this scene, they were not bullying him. They did nothing to him.

It's like what he wishes she'd said to him last time. Right. Exactly. Like she did not tell them to stop in this scene and she's either lying or I think, yeah, it's, it's possibly what he, I think what he wished that she had done last time when She was just like, don't bully Zeke. Right. So you think in reality, she was like, don't hurt me, please. Yeah. And he heard, I love you. Yeah, I think so, yes. And because when the sheriff comes and tells him to put their hands up, he says, is that you, Zeke Robinson? Dang, boy. What you gone and done now? Possibly implying he'd maybe done stuff like this before. Well, everyone implies that. They keep saying he's a troublemaker, just like his family. And then he shoots his ray gun and says, you put your hands up, Sheriff. And this is when he asks Tracy if she's got a car. And then they get in her car and drive away after he also forces the sheriff in the trunk.

I think this is him taking Tracy hostage and stealing her car. That was a big trunk. How many people did he maximum have in that trunk at one time? Four people. That's what I thought. One of them was like a younger teenager, but two of them were rather large and overweight. Do you think he actually had four people in the trunk or was he just imagining that? I don't think so. There's way too many people in that trunk. I don't think that he had four people in that trunk. Maybe he had three. I'm not sure. He did somehow take people hostage, though. We know that. Maybe he didn't gather them up from around town. Maybe they were just in the arcade when he gets there. I don't know. In the car, Tracy's getting close to him, kind of flirting with him. Tracy's personality throughout this whole movie just changes on a dime. And I think it is whatever Zeke imagines it to be at any given moment, which I think is actually genius, right?

Because so often, you know, women are kind of depicted in movies, especially in the 80s, as being what the guy just wants them to be. But I think in this movie, like, clearly it is only because he's imagining her as what he wants her to be. Right. It's like in The Simpsons when Marge is like, Homer, you're only hearing what you want to hear. And he says, yes, I would like an omelet right about now. What did Homer hear? Homer, would you like an omelet right now? Homer, I would like to make you an omelet right now. Would you like one? There's no natural way to phrase that question that could get the response that he gives. No. So he goes to this church. There's a reverend who is drinking and listening to a recording that says, The general feeling I get when I think about Jesus is that he was just a man. Well, let me tell you a little secret. He was. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I want you to all get down on your knees and repeat after me.

Is this the sin or the sinner? Is this the sin or the sinner? And then he repeats that many times. I kind of think that's part of Zeke's problem. Like this is in his mind. Is this the sin or the sinner? Like, is he just a person who did a bad thing or is he a bad person? No, I get it. I can dig it. So he tells the reverend, I'm in trouble. And then the reverend is like, oh. Immediately, without even wasting a second, he's like, I'm going to go call someone else. Right, yeah. He says, is that you, Zeke Robinson? What kind of trouble are you talking about? And then Zeke's, all he says is, you don't understand. Things are just happening too fast. He keeps saying that. He keeps talking about things happening too fast. What do you think he means by this I think that it's just the way that like he killed his stepdad and now it feels like everything's just snowballing things are just getting worse and worse now he's got hostages

you know he did it himself though it's not like someone's forcing him to do this but after he says things are happening so fast the reverend is like wait wait right there we can work something out why is he saying we can work something out he doesn't know anything at this point according to what we've seen the reverend knows nothing so but then he immediately calls someone on the phone and zeke picks up the phone and we hear their conversation and he says get over here quick herb he's all upset about something and then herb who we later find out is the mayor of the town says damn that edwin robinson who was his stepdad can't even match a scrawny little 15 year old like zeke i'm not sure what that means to me it was implying that zeke told them that he killed his dad and they're like what kind of a guy can't take on like a 15 year old okay like yeah i think that's what i got out of it is that in reality they know that he's a murderer that's kind of

what i got out of it too yeah and the reverend is like you know that and i know that but this boy's off in the head i don't trust him never did and then the mayor is like all right i'll be over there in five minutes wait it was the mayor he called yeah it's this fat guy with glasses who is actually the dad of the nerdy boy who read that other story in class but he calls him mayor throughout the rest of the movie so so he took the mayor there should have been more news people there that one news person like i thought he was overkill no he was underkill oh my god crazy story but tracy does hug him and say hey zeke i love it when you fire the gun yes he does Which, once again, is him just imagining her saying what he would like her to say. So he calls his mom and she's just like, I told you not to call me here. And he's like, no, wait, mom, I'm in serious trouble. She's like, where's Edwin, bastard?

Did he put you up to this? And he's like, no, wait, mom, things are getting really crazy right now. And she's like, look, Zeke, I can't face it again. I can't face it. Don't call me again. Just an important note that he is estranged from his mother, but he really loves his mother. Like, that seems to be the one true love in his life in this movie is his mom. But she does not want anything to do with him. Right after the scene, he goes up to Tracy, says, Tracy, I'm in trouble. I don't see a way out. And then the very next scene, he pulls up to an arcade and his monologue, his voiceover says, the visitor decided a long time ago not to tell anybody about his secret. But everything's looking pretty cool right now. Yep. All of a sudden, he's like, things are good. The visitor feels good. So maybe he'll tell Tracy, I don't know. He was like trying to reassure himself or something. Yeah, in the previous scene, he was saying things are bad.

Things are really bad. And then he's like, no, things are pretty good. I don't know. You know, he's swinging wildly between different mood swings. And I think it just shows that his mental state is out of whack. Yeah, he's totally unhinged. So he goes, he takes people hostage in the arcade. We do get a lot of scenes of the FBI and the military kind of talking about what they're going to do about this hostage situation. I think that is all imagined. I think that it's possibly realistic in that they may have been saying those things. But I think Zeke is imagining what the cops are talking about outside and how they think they can deal with him. And I think that this is evidenced by the fact that there is one cop who is extremely sympathetic to him. Really, really nice. This movie is different from other movies in that like the top military person in charge of this operation, like the big cop who's supposed to take down the criminal, instead of being like ridiculously over the top, like ready to act and ready to kill, like in most movies, like in Die Hard or, you know, other movies, he's like super sympathetic. He's like, man, it's just a kid. Oh, we got to think of another way. No, we can't do this.

And I think that this is in the kid's mind. I think a lot of times criminals will sort of fashion these stories for themselves of like, well, maybe someday, you know, maybe if the cops kill me, you know, someone will look up my story and someone will feel sympathy for me. Right. They'll know that, you know, I was just a poor, messed up kid kind of thing, which is what this one cop who's sympathetic to him keeps saying. Right. Like it's like his his mom abandoned him. His dad's in jail. So it's around this point that the sheriff starts to kind of like socially engineer him and try and become his buddy. And he's like, yeah, I can really see things from your perspective, Zeke. I know what's going on. Man, this must be tough for you. And then one of the police outside just like shows up out of nowhere and goes hog wild, just starts shooting and shooting and shooting out of nowhere. And he shoots the sheriff by accident. There are a couple times in this movie

where Tracy does something where she takes Zeke's gun and sets it away from him. And I do think that to some extent, perhaps those are actually happening. And again, like she was trying to do that. As we've been told by the movie itself, it's intentionally supposed to be hard for us to know what is fantasy and what is reality. But like she starts dancing with him and sets his gun aside. And then the sheriff tries to get the gun, but the arcade owner stops him. We're led to believe the arcade owner is like a friend of Zeke's. I don't actually think that's true. I think it's because he's just like, dude, don't be a hero, right? Don't go for the gun. If we needed any further proof for the fact that some events in this movie clearly happen out of sync, all of a sudden the bullies just show up at the arcade and go to the arcade. They just show up and kind of like walk in. And walk in. The arcade that the police can't get into and are like pointing snipers at.

The military is surrounded. Right? They just walk in and they just start playing games there. And they say to like the head bully says to Tracy, you're my girl. And she's like, no, I'm not. I am Zeke's girl now. And I mean, obviously that's pure fantasy. The bully asks Zeke, nice piece, referring to the gun. Where'd you get it? He says, I found it in the river, which I think is actually true. And maybe he had found this gun earlier. Like I think this scene at the arcade with the bullies happened before the hostage situation. Like it had to have. And perhaps they did see that he had a gun and they're like, hey, where'd you get it? He's like, I found it in the river. I think the reason that Zeke is flashing back to this moment when he talked to the bullies at the arcade is because he knows he's about to get arrested. And in this moment with the bullies at the arcade, one of the bullies asks him, hey, Zeke,

you a minor? He warns Zeke about going to prison, basically. He's like, you know, young kids like you don't last long in prison. And I think it's because clearly what's on Zeke's mind right now, the reason he's remembering this thing that clearly did not happen during a hostage situation is that he's remembering what this bully told him about what happens to people in prison and he doesn't want to go there so do you think there's any deeper meaning behind that question are you a minor yeah we already talked about this with michael minor no no it was a thinly veiled autobiography within the context of the teen genre tropes. As with all writers, everything we write is somewhat autobiographical. We pull from our own lives. Well, one of the reasons I like this movie so much, even though it's absolutely insane and off the wall, is that it has a lot of heart. Like, there were clearly lots of stuff in this movie

that were written from the heart and there's a lot of real emotion there. And I find that interesting. Yeah, definitely. So then the hostages try to escape and he shoots the reverend. He doesn't even try. Like, his brain doesn't make up anything for that one. Like, the Reverend doesn't explode. It's not like... No, he's just got a big hole in him. It's like a slightly exaggerated gunshot wound. Yep. And then there's this stuff with, like, a reporter who comes in and interviews Zeke. Well, and he keeps trying to get people, just random people, to sign this contract. What does that contract say? He's like, it'll make you rich. It'll make me rich. What? Right. Well, and this could also be Zeke imagining, like, a lot of times criminals like to imagine their notoriety in the future, like, oh, movies will be made about me kind of thing, you know, like the Zodiac Killer kind of thing. And that could be him sort of just imagining like, oh,

yeah, this guy wants my life story. He's going to make it into a movie after I'm dead sort of thing. Well, but a reporter did get in to interview him because the tape plays at the end. When the reporter is interviewing him, he says, I'm sick and tired, worried that I ain't got a future. It's a lot of responsibility having all this power. And I haven't decided yet whether I like it or not i mean just a chilling crazy thing for a person holding hostages to say yep so the arcade manager gives him his car i think that this is not necessarily to help zeke but i think it's just to get zeke out of there and this is also around the time when zeke just decides you can go he lets all the hostages go i think he's kind of rethought this situation is like no i gotta get out of here and luckily the arcade manager gives him his car okay so you think that specific scene played out in reverse in real life yes i do because in the movie he says everyone

go and then that guy is like hey i like you so much you can have my car you think it was the other way around where that guy's like zeke you better get out of here you're in trouble here have my car it's okay and then zeke says you know what you're right everyone's free yeah exactly that's Yeah. And I think that further evidence to this is the fact that Tracy's like, I'm coming with you. No, she's not. He realizes he needs some insurance and he's like, you're coming with me. And then while he's talking, he says something that, you know, probably a lot of criminals do, which is, I didn't kill any of those people. They made me. And then he goes through every single person he killed and why he had to do it. He definitely killed them. Here's another weird scene where he kind of gets away with the truck, and then he and Tracy are just laying out under the stars. I'm not 100% sure if any of this happens.

Also, she paints stars on his face with the makeup she stole. Also, at this point, he imagines the law enforcement saying, we'll say he committed suicide. It's just that simple, but they're actually planning on shooting him. Why would they need to say he committed suicide? They don't need to say that. He's a murderer. Also, yeah, and cops shoot people all the time, right? They don't, especially people with guns who have killed people. Yeah, no, like he's a murderer with a gun. They could shoot him and no one would even question it. There'd be no investigation. Then I believe Zeke imagines his mom talking to the head of the FBI and the head of the FBI becomes sort of a father figure who is probably like his real father and definitely a lot like his stepdad because his mom is saying something that no mother would ever say but possibly a son might feel that she would say about him she's like i don't care about my son

i left him with my ex that's exactly how he would feel right like she didn't care about me she left me with her ex yeah and then the fbi guy just smacks her in the face like he just she just smacks her in the face and this is clearly in zeke's mind like no matter how crazy this fbi guy is you're not gonna smack someone in the face but zeke does remember his mom getting smacked in the face a lot, I'm sure. I'm sure that's why she left. One other tiny moment is that the guy in the military who is sympathetic to Zeke, on a computer screen, he's looking at a typed up letter from Zeke's dad in prison to Zeke. And it's like his dad saying things like, oh yeah, physically I'm fine, but, and then it says a bunch of other things. He turns around and says, he's talking about aliens and heaven and God. I know what he's thinking it doesn't make any sense because the letter he was reading was not even something that

zeke wrote no he wasn't and his dad wasn't talking about any of those things certainly was not i think that this is zeke's mind getting really confused and just putting stuff together like oh maybe after i'm dead they'll understand me maybe they'll read some of my letters that my dad sent me they'll read some of my writings they'll they'll know what i was why i did what i did you know he's trying to find a little hope for himself at this point he puts the gun to his head like he's gonna kill himself right and then his mother shows up and he says it's the mothership which i think is actually pretty cool part of the movie i do think that he actually does kill himself right there i think that he as he's killing himself he has this sort of wish fulfillment hero fantasy where his mom shows up he gets in the car with his mom the fbi guy is yelling at his mom he's like stop yelling at my mom and then he shoots the fbi guy so he's like kind of redeemed himself in a way for being

a killer now he's a hero he saved his mom which is probably something he wanted to do his whole life seeing his mom get abused and but i don't think any of that actually happens and then there's kind of a thing where like the guy who's sympathetic to him tries to save him but he gets sniped by the police anyway i think he just killed himself yeah uh that the end of the movie we get a the news report that says a young boy who committed robbery vandalism and murder took his own life and then they show the the clip my last evidence is just that this was supposed to be originally a sequel to a film called laser blast about a kid who finds like a wrist mounted laser that kind of turns him evil like but like into an actual monster like his face changes and um and he starts like killing people so like star kid but evil and but like laser blast sounds kind of like the name that this movie maybe should have had like oh it's a fantasy about a kid who finds a

weapon you know gives them powers right but instead this was called deadly weapon which is you know we associate that with the phrase assault with a deadly weapon right it clearly they were trying to totally ground this oh it's you know fantasy but no really this is reality all this essentially really happened but just in a different way than what we saw we're never going to be quite sure what was real and what was fake but uh we can certainly be sure that this kid was a crazy murderer who took his own life well i really uh was pushing for kid with a ray gun that would have been a good title too because it was pre-sold as deadly weapon i don't think that charlie had the flexibility to uh turn it over to the the the pre-sales people with a different title i mean i don't know everything that happened but yeah i mean that those were basically most of my interpretations on it but i just i love the way it is utterly silly but utterly depressing at the

same time and that's just a tone that you don't get very often and i love it whenever i find it so i'm very happy that i i found this film thank you yeah i got kind of spoiled by the freedom i I mean, there were not, there was not a studio overreach, you know, especially these days. The studios are very calculated. There are a lot of gatekeepers. It's much harder to have narrative freedom these days, unfortunately. All right. Well, what do you think? I think that it's a good theory because, like I said at the beginning of this episode, I don't see any other way to interpret this movie. So I'll give it to you. Plus, it's clever. It's fun. Like you said, it takes this horrible, depressing situation and kind of makes it funny a little bit. Damn, I love that reading, man. Leaf, that's really a lot of fun. I'm glad you got all those things out of it. I appreciate it. I absolutely loved it. It was fun to watch.

And I think it did a great job of that. And I love the tone. And Michael Miner is a genius, man. He's an amazing filmmaker. He's amazing. his social satire his his comedy everything he does it's great so before we ended our interview with michael minor i asked him if he had anything any projects cooking up that he wanted to tell us about or anything that he wanted to promote and here's what he had to say um i've got a couple of things that i've been working very hard on one of them is called smart mouse and i've worked on that for over six years. It's a streaming series about a woman working off a felony whistleblowing crime who accidentally discovers that some intelligence in the web, inside the internet, is manipulating things and causing accidents. And as she digs further, she realizes that it's a super artificial intelligence, which has achieved consciousness. And I have a pilot. I've got 10 episodes outlined.

I have a director and a producer attached. And we're just getting ready to try to cast it. We haven't set it up anywhere yet, but it's called Smart Mouse. And the other one is called Escape from Hell. And it's New Year's Eve in a crematorium like Die Hard in a high rise where a special forces guy has to fake his own death to try to escape being killed. And he wakes up on a slab about to be cut up and have his body parts sold off. And he fights his way to freedom against a group of mercenaries who are sent in to kill him. And I wrote the first draft of that over five years ago. It's called Escape from Hell. You know, I may be old and I've lost a step, but I'm still trying. Yeah, that's great. I mean, that's great because I love your work. Please keep making stuff for me to watch. Definitely Torvald and I will be there for whatever the next Michael Miner film is that comes out. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I mean, other than that, thanks for tuning in.

Thanks for listening. Music was provided by Christine. Everyone out there listening to this great podcast, just remember, the popcorn is not real.