ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour (511)

Thank you for joining us today

Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Looney Tunes short, the 1941 A Coy Decoy starring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, directed by Bob Clampett. This short, unedited, seldom airs on television, due to it's offensive depiction of African-Americans



All the books shown at the start of the short use the actual covers they had at the time of the short's release. The Uncle Tom's Cabin cover is an exception as it was used simply for a Federal Housing Association-related visual gag.


SCTV is seeing a resurgence, with the new documentary and Netflix airing the entire series, we here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour have been having a grand old time. Please join us in watching this compilation of their game show clips -



Then find the time to check out SCTV: The Greatest Show You've Never Heard Of on Netflix.
 

We’ve selected another entry from the excellent reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider. Today’s film is the 1995 crime drama, The Usual Suspects, directed by Bryan Singer and starring Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri and Pete Postlethwaite.. We are going to be very careful as not to give away any spoilers.

Gabriel Byrne originally turned down the film, not believing that the filmmakers could pull it off. He was convinced after a sit-down meeting with the writer, Christopher McQuarrie and Bryan Singer, impressed by their enthusiasm and vision. As the start date approached, Byrne backed out. He was undergoing personal issues at the time and unable to leave Los Angeles. Consequently, Singer reshuffled the schedule so that the entire film could be made in the L.A. area over a period of five weeks to accommodate his lead actor.

Kevin Spacey had been so impressed with Bryan Singer's first film, Public Access, that he told him he wanted to be in his next film when he met the young director, after a screening at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival.

Both Stephen Baldwin and Kevin Pollak acknowledge that their long-standing feud began on the set of this film. Though neither actor directly states what caused their animosity towards each other, Pollak does mention that Baldwin, in an attempt to stay in character as McManus, would go around acting tough and sometimes bully the other actors. Baldwin does admit that he was bullying towards Pollak on film (their numerous "standoff" confrontations with each other on screen).

Please find a very comfortable chair, dim the lights, and join us here at the ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour as we watch this gripping thriller: The Usual Suspects.



Bryan Singer described the film as Double Indemnity meets Rashomon, and said that it was made "so you can go back and see all sorts of things you didn't realize were there the first time. You can get it a second time in a way you never could have the first time around." He also compared the film's structure to Citizen Kane (which also contained an interrogator and a subject who is telling a story) and the criminal caper The Anderson Tapes.


Si per infernum pergis, perge!