The Wicker Man w/ Jonah Ray (HDTGM Matinee)

0:00Nicholas Cage goes to a pagan island run by women to solve a crime of a girl that may or may not exist and definitely not get stung by bees. We saw The Wicker Man, so you know what that means. Now it's time for How Did This Get Made? We're gonna have a good time, celebrate some failure, not just be a hater, cause you know you wonder, How Did This Get Made? Let's follow in the mediocrity of subpar art. Perhaps we'll find the answer to the question, How Did This Get Made? Hello, people of Earth, and welcome to How Did This Get Made, the show where we try to make sense of the movies that make no sense.

0:36We have actually a really big show for you today. Not only are we going to talk about The Wicker Man, but we have a special call-in guest. That's right, the producer and co-writer of Skyline is going to call in and talk a little bit about the movie, answer some of our questions, and we will get to that a little bit later in the episode. We got a lot of show today. As always, I am Paul Scheer, and I am joined by June Diane Raphael and Jason Manzoukas. How are you guys? Hi, Paul. Hello, everybody. What's going on? Nothing much for all of our new listeners here on Earwolf. This is how the show works.

1:07We watch a bad movie. We sit around. We talk about it. That's it. Each week we have a special guest. This week is no different. We have a fantastically, a funtastic. Great guest. You know him from the Nerdist podcast. Please welcome Jonah Ray. Hello. How are you? Good to hear you. It's me, Funtastic Jonah Ray. Fantastic. Don't you ever call me fantastic. I like Funtastic. Well, all right, guys. The Wicker Man. Oh, guys. Where do we start on this movie? I mean... Well, the beginning of the movie, which has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, opens up in this coffee shop, and it's like he's looking at a self-help book on tape, but it's like the weird dialogue that was written in a high school play, like, if I just ate one of them burgers, I'd be in a trance, too.

1:50It's like the bad part of a horror movie, where you just get to the horror part of the movie. And you know that that guy was Aaron Eckhart in... Yeah. Well, it's because it's a Neil deGrasse movie, I assume. I'm like, but it did that thing to me where I was like, oh, it's the guy at the diner with Aaron Eckhart? The first guy, not the cop. No. Not the cop. The guy that pays first and leaves is Aaron Eckhart. Yeah. Oh, wow. And I was like, oh, because it's Aaron Eckhart, I was like, oh, that's part of the movie. It took me a long time to be like, oh, he's not coming back. Yeah, yeah. It's almost like that opening scene was just like, hey, this is what happens when our characters are not in the movie.

2:24It was like, it had nothing to do with anything. Just a small town. Or it's almost like somebody was like, hey, Aaron Eckhart's going to stop by and say hi today. Should we just shoot a scene? Why not? I mean, we've got some wardrobe. What if we just sat in that diner across the street? All right. I love the picture that was on the cover of the Everything's OK. I want to know who that is. Who is that guy? You know, it's someone's friend or dad, you know. I love it because this gesture was so like, I know. I know it's not. It's not. And that only comes back once. One time. Yeah. One time. And then there's like a comedy of errors where it's like, it's called Everything is OK.

2:57All right. well here's i mean basically the movie is starts off with nicholas cage as a motorcycle cop who may or may not be bored with his job i don't know what they were trying to set up there but a girl throws a doll out the window he picks up the doll of a moving car yes yeah yes sorry of a moving car he picks up the doll he pulls over the car and he gives the doll back to the girl who was very rude. Very rude girl. Very precocious girl. You'd think it'd be foreshadowing, but it's not really. Not really. And then she throws the doll back out the window of the car. Nick Cage goes to pick it up, and the car is promptly hit by a giant tractor trailer, and the car explodes.

3:43Killing two people inside. Not killing two people inside. But then not killing two people inside. This is immediately where the movie becomes like absolutely untenable for me because I was like, he's been given like commendations and awards. Yes. For what though? Because he's like, well, they still haven't found the bodies in the car. And they're like, no, the charred car had no bodies in it. So basically he was exploded next to an empty car and got out citations for it. He tried. He got an effort, you know, effort. For what though? By the way, it seemed like he caused the accident. He did. Yes.

4:18Yeah. Okay. So that's what he was commended for. He was commended for not getting hit by that Mack truck, I think. And then it's like, then the movie again, it's like, have we started this movie? I'm not sure. Like a cop comes over to his house. This is all just, what am I watching? And he gets this letter from an ex that he reads. It's like a letter. Beautiful calligraphy. I was just going to say, the letter is like from Anne of Green Gables. It is like so insane. Be still my heart. It's nice quill pen writing, I thought. And Nicolas Cage gives one of his best reactions of all time, like reading this letter, his hands are to his head.

4:55The letter basically says, we had a daughter. I didn't tell you, but now she's kidnapped. Come find her. I live on this crazy island. Oh, she doesn't say that we had a daughter. She says, I had a daughter after we left. And that was the strangest storytelling. One of the many reveals that don't make her sense in matter. And then he brings the letter and shows it to his buddy. And his buddy's like, I mean, ignore this, right? I mean, like, who is this? But is she an ex-girlfriend? He goes, no, ex-fiance. And I was like, oh, fuck you. And then he says, he's like, my ex-fiance, we were close. Oh, I'd hope so.

5:28I'd hope you were close before you got engaged to the lady. It was, I feel like for like three quarters of this movie, Neil was secretly giving Nicolas Cage like downers because his performance is like really kind of sleepy. And then the last 30 minutes, I feel like he just gave him like crack cocaine. and was just like, go mental. Everything's crazy. Well, yeah, because it feels like his sleepiness feels like they taped the rehearsals. They were just like, I'm just reading this. I'm just reading this for the first time. He has a blocking rehearsal. Yeah, okay, all right, yeah. And everyone's saying stuff with importance, but I feel like no one really knows what they're saying.

6:05The guy, his buddy, though, is like a comic actor in the middle of a movie that has no comic actors. He's like, oh, the plot thickens. I didn't even know there was a plot. Yeah, he goes, I didn't know you had a pot. He goes, I didn't know either. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they're buddies. Now I'm realizing, so he must have been suffering. Was he suffering from anxiety before this all happened? And then it made it worse? Yeah, because then he was on medication after. He's not suffering. Sweaters. They're wearing comfy sweaters. But is he suffering from anxiety, or does he just have crazy hallucinations? because this whole movie, he's having, like his hallucinations have hallucinations.

6:45He hallucinates that he jumps into the water to find a dead girl. Then he comes back out and then he's like, oh God, that was a bad hallucination. Looks down, finds a dead girl in his lap. Oh, then he wakes up again and he's like, oh, okay, I'm back. No, but he does that reaction where it's like, it's like, it happens all the time where he's like, oh man, again. And he just has to pop a pill immediately. Whenever he has a hallucination, he pops a pill. But you think it's going to be like a pain medication but not like a crazy medication. I feel like the movie, every 15 minutes somebody, or every couple of days somebody would whisper into Neil Buttey, you're like, hey, this is a horror movie?

7:20And he'd be like, oh, fuck, fuck, I'm sorry, sorry. We gotta shoot something kind of scary today. I feel like he would forget, and then be like, waterlog one of the kids and put him in Cage's lap. Let's roll on that. Do it, do it. It really makes those, so Nicolas Cage goes to find this girl who's on this pretty much female-run pagan island that makes honey. Not the island where Wonder Woman is from. No, no, no, different pagans. And he gets on the island by bribing a helicopter pilot who's like, I wouldn't want to, I can't risk my pilot's license. I can't, I can't bring you there, I can't bring you there.

7:58And then Nick Cage is like, how about here,$150? Yeah,$150. And he's like, oh, okay, yeah, sure. Like, that was it? Like, this guy's whole life in contract? 150 bucks. And then like one of the worst green screen flying shots. Oh, just the angle from the outside. Terrible. And it wasn't a helicopter. It was a seaplane. Oh, it was a seaplane. You're right. And now they get to this island run by women. And this is where the movie takes off to full on weird. One of my favorite lines is he arrives on the island. He's like trying to walk. He's trying to get his bearings. And he goes to like the bar or whatever.

8:32And the woman is like, this here is mead. it's one of the pleasures of our island and I was like what? What the fuck is happening? It's the same woman who when he says do you think you can swing it? You mean like the blonde Kathy Bates? Yeah. He goes do you think you can like I need a room for the night do you think you can swing it? And she's like swing it? What is that city talk? Yeah. I was like what? This movie this is like the island of furtive glances to everyone here it's like a lot of close ups on people's eyes going from left to right like ooh. And it's super weird like when he first gets to the island Like, these guys are carrying a bleeding bag.

9:07That was crazy. And it's like, it's wiggling around, and they're talking to him like, oh, you're a cop, aren't you? And he goes, what's in the bag? A shark? Like, that was his version. No, the best was the sassy 20s response. Like, it's like, he's all, oh, it helps to look at the picture when you're trying to figure it out. And then they're just like, hmm, huh, oh, you know. But by the way, he keeps on asking everybody on that island if they recognize this picture of Rohan. It's like, there are 12 people on this island. It's a population of 20 people. They're all lying to you. He arrives on the island and immediately treats everyone like they're a hostile witness.

9:42He has, A, no jurisdiction. None. Zero. They keep on telling him that, too. He's like, I'm a cop from the mainland. It's like, you're from California. We're an island off of Washington. This is private property. He has no business being there. It's also like, I just don't understand why he didn't question what the fuck was happening on this island. It's like, this child is the least of our concerns. There's systematic child abuse. Yeah. And potentially, like, there are bigger things happening. Well, look, when he goes to the shark bag, when he goes, what's in the bag? The shark. And they open it for him.

10:13He looks at it. He's like, oh. And then he walks away. They all laugh. They all laugh at him. They laugh at him. But what was in that fucking bag? Embarrassment for Nick Cage. I really wanted him to, I kept on imagining, the movie was a lot more fun for me when I imagined him as the same character from Bad Lieutenant. Oh, yeah. New Orleans. That's exactly what I was thinking, too. Like, this is a prequel to him. Yeah, exactly. This is before he gets really into drugs and really crazy. I also love that he wore that wool suit like every single day on that island. And that terrible hair. Every day he had to get up and put that horrible hair on.

10:44That hair was like jet black. That was a black that does not occur in nature. Now, once again, like these people are being weird to him, but they're not being outright mean to him. And when he does that thing with the mead, he takes the glass of mead and starts banging it on the thing like a gal. I'm like, all right, you're all suspects. I'm interviewing all of you. Like, what? Where did that come from? Have you ever had me, Paul? Oh, it's crazy. It's tough stuff. I just thought, like, I was like, well, of course they want to kill this guy. He's abusing them. I have a clip, actually, from when Nicolas Cage breaks into a schoolhouse to question a teacher and kindergarten students.

11:21It's all the girls from Village of the Dam. Yes. Will you tell us what man represents in his purest form?

11:31Yes. Phallic symbol, phallic symbol. How dare you stand there and frighten my children. Sorry, I'm Edward Malus from California. Oh! I'm a policeman. What? See my badge? Put that back. Put that back. Sorry, you're going to have to bear with me. There you go. You little liars. He's accusing the kids. And you're the biggest liar of them all. I am warning you. You tell me another and I'll rescue myself. That is a promise, Miss Rose. Sister Rose. Of course. Another plant. Rose. Yeah. That is the level of dialogue that you're getting. That is the scene where he interrogates people in a school. Like you said, girls from the Children of the Damned.

12:20And he's calling everybody liars. But what has been cut out of that scene, I mean, I can't believe we didn't keep it in. Shame on us. is the part where he opens a desk and finds a bird. I was going to leave that in, but you can't see it. He opens up a desk, yeah, and it goes, why was that crow in there? It's like, because we were trying to keep it, see how long it would live inside that desk. And he's like, what a terrible assignment.

12:50Everybody's weird. He also erases the blackboard and writes his own name on it. Like, what? I had a fantasy that that island was there just to try and figure out a theorem, like a mathematical theorem that was going to solve world hunger. And they almost had it. He's like, hold on. And he just erases all the work. Well, he writes nothing important. It's just his name. And then he goes and gets the, they say, no, they never heard of this girl. They never heard of this girl. And then he gets the class registry and he sees her name. And it's just a line. And it's beautifully written. Yeah, beautifully written.

13:19And it's just crossed out with one line. But wait, can I ask you guys a question? Because there was something I was not tracking in this movie. For a while, I felt like they were saying she had already been killed the year prior, and that's why the harvest was so bad. And then it was that she was going to be killed now because the harvest was so bad. Somebody explain that to me? I think that there's a rebirth and birth thing. Didn't they have that whole thing where they're like, you die, the celebration of death and rebirth. Yeah. So maybe she was killed and then rebirth, but then they have to kill her again because the harvest is bad.

13:50I don't know. I couldn't figure it out because at a certain point, I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. She's dead already. Yeah. So he's searching for a dead girl. Cool. Okay. And then, nope, she's not dead. Why? Well, who knows? And the mother's just like, that's not her grave. And he's like, okay, I guess I believe you now. Rowan? Rowan? Also, that red sweater showed up in like five different spots. He's always in different conditions. Well, he definitely is having these hallucinations. But then the hallucinations turn out not to be hallucinations because they are real. Like, he is finding the red sweater all over the place.

14:23Like, he is seeing this girl. And I mean, the island is terrible about hiding clues, by the way, too. If they wanted to cover up that this girl was here, when the guy comes to the island, just hide all the clues. There's a lot of brush you can put over things. Basically, everywhere he went, he was like, I've got to find a picture. Oh, here it is. Nothing was ever hidden. And I guess that, I mean, without spoiling the end of the movie, spoiler alert to kill him. That being said, I'm assuming that's the point of it. They want him to find these clues. They want to put him through the next one. I mean, that was the whole movie.

14:55That was the whole thing, though. Who fucking knows? Yeah, like, why are we going through all this trouble? Because just to burn him in the Wicker Man, which, spoiler alert, but that, I mean, that's basically the end. They burn him alive in the Wicker Man. They go, you came here to be burned. Yeah, and you realize, like, the last, you know, 10 years of his life were all set up for this moment, which is crazy. I mean, first of all, I want to go back to one other thing, too, which is about 25 minutes into the movie, they do black and white flashbacks to the first 25 minutes of the movie. Literally, they have a five minute sequence that relives the first 10 minutes of the film.

15:31It's like that crappy friend. It's like, remember when we were at that party? It was great, man. We were just sitting here. Yeah, man. It was great. It was a good time. I love that there's this shit in this movie where Nick Cage it's lost at its worst. When something obvious happens that you should just ask a definitive question about and you simply don't. It's like he's talking to Molly Parker in the school, right? Who's the teacher. Then he walks down the hill and sees Molly Parker again because apparently there's twins everywhere on this island. He sees Molly Parker again. Oh, maybe the little girl was a twin.

16:06I was thinking that there was two of them. There was a bunch of twins and the creepy blind twins. Oh, I didn't like them at all. They weren't any good. Anyway, so he sees Molly Parker again and he goes, hey, wait, didn't I just talk to you? And she's like, no. And he's like, alright. And I'm like, wait, you are literally the worst police officer. You're a police detective. And you are doing the worst job. That's like when he's a bike cop. That's true. He's also not putting anything together. I mean, because you're right. There were twins everywhere he went. All he saw were twins. So, yeah, there's nothing connected.

16:38There's also like Frances Conroy. He talks to Frances Conroy in her house. She's the doctor and photographer. and then two girls in beekeeper outfits show up and like escort her away. It's scary. Nothing. Scary beekeeper outfit. Scary mess. Old timey beekeeper. And instead of following the people, he breaks into her house. I just love that. Hiding behind the bush and running over to her. The worst. Yeah, I also, the back of the scene with the bar when he's like yelling at everybody and then the bee goes and like he slams the mug down on the bee and kills it. She's like, why would you do that? I really like, when I first saw the movie, I was like, they're all bees in human form.

17:12Oh, this is going to be great. Debbie. Nope. Not now. I did love, though, during the End Harvest Festival when they were all in their costumes getting ready to kill the Wicker Man that there were two little girls dressed up as bees. Oh, those were, yeah, no. My girlfriend Deanna, she's like, we have to be those bees for Halloween. That's with them. Like all these elaborate, weird, like carnival costumes and then just like store-bought bee costumes. Yeah, exactly. Two like blind melon bee costumes. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, the whole idea, too, that, I mean, this is the whole rub of the story.

17:42that Nicolas Cage is allergic to bees. Oh, gosh. And he's going to an island where their main output is honey and bees. I like the shot of him putting, like, he has his gun in, and then he gets, like, the little bee allergen stuff. He has an EpiPen with him. And his EpiPen, by the way, is giant. Like, he has, like, a metal box with two, like, it was, like, a comical-sized box of EpiPen. It's like, all right. Well, I feel like they made so many, like, wickedly obvious moves to be like, and here is his bee medicine. You better have this. But he also doesn't travel with his bee medicine. No. The bee medicine stays in the hotel.

18:21He does travel with his tapes, though. Yeah, yeah. He does travel with his tapes. And that's what they want. That was the craziest moment. The morning that he woke up in that hotel lodge place, he looks downstairs over the banister and those two fucking creepy twins start talking in unison. And his response is, who moved my everything okay tapes? He was really worried about who took it. And why did they take his audio book? Why did they take him? In the grand scheme of everything. Take his gun. Take his gun away from him. Well, maybe that would make him feel safer. One of the best moments, though, is toward the end when Sister Rose is, I think she purchased him on her bicycle.

18:57He gets so mad at her and he wants that bike. He's like, get off the bike. He pulls a gun at a woman. He pulls a gun on her. To get off a bicycle. To take her bike. Step away from the bicycle. Which was a callback to Con Air. Step away from the bunny rabbit. Oh my God. That's amazing. One of my favorite things is anytime Nicolas Cage was anywhere and heard a sound, he would think it was his daughter. Yeah. Rowan. Rowan. Rowan. And it's just like. Who he has no connection with. He's on a fucking island with trees and birds and animals. And I mean, also he loves to get information, but cut people off at the same time.

19:31He's like, just tell me what I need to know. And it's like, okay, well, listen. Okay. Where's the thing? I'll tell you. Now we all go over here. No, Gary, shut up. Where do you go? Like he's always gutting them off in the middle of what they're saying. I love the bike riding. Every time he was on a bike, me and Deanna would just crack up. He's on like an old school bike. And you don't even see when he originally gets the bike. No, he just shows up. He shows up on a bike. Can we also talk about his love interest who looks like Fiona Apple. Yeah. And they met 10 years ago, which means that she was like in her early 20s.

20:01If not younger. She's a child. And Nicolas Cage is just like, oh, 10 years ago. like they met and she they have the most awkward kissing okay that was so upsetting there was that it's like mormons mormon making out yeah there was also him being like what happened you know like he wants to talk about how she left him at the altar or whatever her daughter is missing like yeah there are things that are more important right now than her giving you an excuse as to why she left. What about the tongue-less men? Yeah. Yeah, there were so many other bigger things going on on this island, but and he was only concerned with the very basis of it.

20:43Like, why don't you call in some backup? I mean, first of all, he doesn't have a phone that works, which is the other. Well, they didn't get reception, man. Yeah, they don't get reception. I'm just afraid. But this is one of the scenes. He finds the doll that was thrown out the window earlier in the movie. He digs through a grave and then finds that doll again, but the face is slightly burnt off of it. And also he thinks at this point the girl was burned to death, maybe. Maybe, right. So she was burned with the doll. She will, or she will be burned to death because Molly Parker's like, she'll burn to death.

21:14And he was like, what did you say? And she said, she'll, she'll, she, she burns to death. I, uh, ur, and she's like, uh. Pulling at her collar. Yeah, like really, like really obvious. She's right behind me. I'm sorry to backtrack. Can someone explain to me the wordplay of The Day of Tomorrow? Oh, I wrote that down. I don't know. I don't understand that. He was like, what happens the day after tomorrow? It's like, oh, in two days? Yeah, nothing. No, no, I mean tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow. It was like there was some weird ass work. And then take me with you. Oh, yeah. Lily Sobieski. All right, well, this is a clip of him trying to get some information about the burnt doll from his girlfriend.

21:50This is where the movie became amazing. Yeah, at this point, it kicks in here in the third act where it goes bonkers. Here you go. How'd it get burned? How did you burn? How did you burn? How did you burn? I don't know. Kill me. Can we just play it again? Just because I need to hear this. How did you burn? How did you burn? How did you burn? I don't know. Kill me. Wait a second. Is he talking to the Fiona Apple woman? Oh, my God. I forgot about that. Oh, my shit. You don't know where she's coming from the entire time. The entire time, you're like, is she just really bad at covering up the conspiracy?

22:29Is she happy that he's going to die? Is she sad? You have no idea. No idea. My favorite part is when he gets, he's interrogating someone and like, and they're doing gardening and some bugs fly into his face. So he's like asking her questions and a bug flies into his eyes. Like, oh, that's foreshadowing. Yeah. That's foreshadowing. I love that it's the middle of the day. He finally is talking to Ellen Burstyn who runs the place, right? Yes. She's looking beautiful. Radiant. Looking gorgeous. Radiant until she's wearing like football faces. No, it was like her. I was like, is she like playing? Is she like cheering on like fucking Utah or something?