Selects: Can movies be cursed?

11:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and her brother was Griffin Dunn. Yes. Or is Griffin Dunn.

11:24Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah, she was, well, she was murdered. She was murdered by her boyfriend. John Sweeney. Yeah, and 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.

11:48Chuck Bryant:He did like three years in prison. And Dominic Dunn, her father, he was there every day for the trial of the man and was just crushed by the injustice of the sentence that the guy received. Well, it changed his life. He became a crusader. It did, yeah. You can read some of the best coverage of high-profile murder cases in the pages of Vanity Fair that he covered for years and years and years as a direct result of him basically covering his own daughter's murderous trial.

12:21Josh Clark:Yeah, OJ very famously, he covered that case.

12:24Chuck Bryant:He did. And he apparently the Duns spent a great deal of time basically keeping tabs on John Sweeney for years.

12:34Josh Clark: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 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 trying to find this guy. I was like, where is this guy? Where is he? And the last I saw, he was some chef somewhere. I think he had changed his name even, of course. Yeah, to John Mora, M-A-U-R-A. Yeah, well, keep changing that name, buddy, because it's going to follow you around.

13:08Chuck Bryant: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. But yeah, he was hounded for many years. And I guess toward the end of his life, Dominique Dunn said, you know what? I'm not going to waste my life keeping tabs on this guy anymore. And just dropped it. But yeah, there's a lot of people out there who don't like that dude.

13:38Josh Clark:Yeah, I would imagine so. So she died by murder. then the young girl

13:46Chuck Bryant:and this is like a couple months after Poltergeist

13:48Josh Clark:came out right so it was very close to the production yeah yeah she was not in the sequels obviously Heather O 'Rourke was the little girl in Poltergeist and she passed away after in 1988 after Poltergeist 2 was wrapped and she initially was diagnosed with the flu we talk about this in our flu episode a little bit but what she really had was an intestinal blockage. And at the tender age of 12, she had a heart attack and sepsis and passed away. Super tragic. Yeah.

14:22Chuck Bryant:And so those two dying so close to the production of the actual movie. She died, it was Poltergeist 3, I believe, that Heather O 'Rourke died after filming. They were basically done. Did Ed get it wrong? Ed got it wrong. Oh, man. And then Dominique again died just a couple months after the first Poltergeist came out. So that's like one big hallmark of a movie being cursed story is the deaths that happen typically need to happen either during production or right around production. Okay? So those two are the big ones. But then people say, oh, oh, still not convinced? Well, listen to this. in Poltergeist 2 there was an actor named Will Sampson who played Taylor the medicine man who helps the family.

15:12Chuck Bryant:And he is better known for playing the chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

15:17Josh Clark:Yes.

15:18Chuck Bryant:One of the great characters of all time. He died, I guess, after filming, a few years after filming, the year after filming, in 1987. 1887, he died following a heart and lung transplant.

15:35Josh Clark:Yeah, and he had a history of health issues. He was a giant man.

15:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

15:39Josh Clark:And so that was, you know, again, tied to the curse, but what can you say about someone who just dies sort of of natural-ish causes?

15:48Chuck Bryant:After a heart and lung transplant. I think there's pretty good odds. Yeah. And then there's Julian Beck who played the scary, scary, scary preacher. Yes. Cain, also in Poltergeist 2. Man, he was creepy. He died, I guess, before Poltergeist 2 actually came out. So that would have been close to 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. So you can make the case it doesn't really count, but are you really trying to make a case about curses? Yeah. Let's just talk about him instead. How about that?

16:32Chuck Bryant:Agreed. Okay. What's next?

16:34Josh Clark:The Wizard of Oz is next. That's right. 1939. Great, great movie. But a great movie that was marred by, for such a happy movie, it had some rough stuff going on. Yeah. Because it was in the early days of making movies. And like you said earlier, back then it was, they didn't know or care as much about safety.

16:56Chuck Bryant:Like, for instance, the tin man, Buddy Epson, they said, all right, we need to make you look silver.

17:03Josh Clark:And so we'll just coat you with aluminum powder. And that stuff was really dangerous. He went to the hospital. It irritated his lungs. And he could not even continue in the role. No.

17:13Chuck Bryant:Luckily, he survived to go on to play Jed, the dad in Beverly Hillbillies. Thank God. But he was out of The Wizard of Oz. He was. So Buddy Epson was replaced by Jack Haley, 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 eye infection. Man. Right, so the aluminum, just the Tin Man role itself had a bunch of problems, but that was just one of many.

17:42Josh Clark:Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West. She was burned pretty badly with some of the pyrotechnics from the movie. and I think she was hospitalized, but she came back and completed work on the movie. Yeah, but she said she wasn't going to do any more firework.

18:00Chuck Bryant:Apparently the trap door that she was standing on, the timing of it wasn't right. Yeah. So it didn't 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.

18:16Josh Clark:39. Right. So they were like, whatever, what are you going to do? Uh, there's the, the very famous urban legend, which is not true, but it bears mentioning that one of the munchkins, uh, hanged himself in the background of a scene. And if you just Google image that junk, uh, hanged munchkin wizard of Oz, it will, it will have a screen cap with a little circle around it. I mean, he doesn't even look, it just looks like something that is not a tree. In other words, just not attached to the ground. Right. It doesn't necessarily look like a hanging munchkin. But apparently there was a bird.

18:51Chuck Bryant: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.

19:06Josh Clark:Yeah, but that is not the case. There was no munchkin that just couldn't take it anymore.

19:11Chuck Bryant: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. Oh, yeah? It's worth 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.

19:34Josh Clark:All right. Well, check that out. Other tragedies in Wizard of Oz. Auntie Em, Miss Clara Blandick she killed herself at age 81 yeah

19:48Chuck Bryant: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

19:59Josh Clark: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. She, 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.

20:24Chuck Bryant:She was basically owned by MGM. Yeah. 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.

20:51Josh Clark:Yeah.

20:52Chuck Bryant:They basically prescribed her that. They got her on amphetamines to keep her going. They let her have one square meal a day. Terrible. Yeah, really. So she, and she, yeah, Ed 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.

21:13Josh Clark:Yeah, absolutely. So she eventually would die by suicide herself on an overdose of barbiturates. And I think it's, she had the equivalent of 10 secanol capsules in her body.

21:30Chuck Bryant:Oh, Lord.

21:30Josh Clark:Yeah.

21:32Chuck Bryant:Wow. Man, that's sad. I want to see that movie. Do you know who's going to play her?

21:37Josh Clark:Oh, man, I just saw this the other day. I can't remember who. But I remember thinking, yeah, good casting. Oh, okay. Like it wasn't Owen Wilson. Right. That'd be pretty bad. Give it to Chobles.

21:51Chuck Bryant:Come on, get happy.

21:53Josh Clark:So she was 47 years young, by the way, which is far, far too young. Sure. To have lost Judy Garland.

21:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

22:00Josh Clark:You want to take a break? Yeah, on that downer, yes. All right, we'll come back and talk about The Man of Steel right after this.

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23:58All right, Chuck.

24:01Chuck Bryant:So there's actually a role, Superman, that's considered a cursed role.

24:07Josh Clark: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 like to watch reruns of stuff like Gilligan's Island and Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. Oh, really? I've never seen Petticoat Junction as a kid. Yeah, I mean, you know, it was one of those old shows. They're all great. What about F Troop? F Troop's probably one of my favorites of all time. Yeah, I watched F Troop. I watched all that stuff. Superman, the name of the show that I watched was called Adventures of Superman, and that was straight up from the 1950s and still in reruns in the mid-70s at least because that's where I watched it, and that was the one starring George Reeves as the not even very muscular and slightly tubby Superman.

24:53Chuck Bryant:Yeah, like that kind of like 50s fit. Yeah, kind of barrel-chested. chunky and just weird, like weirdly shaped. Yeah. Like what were they, what kind of exercise were they doing back then?

25:06Josh Clark:Well, I don't think they did exercise back then. Wasn'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. Right. Do some push-ups maybe.

25:19Chuck Bryant:So he, George Reeves, he's George Reeves. Christopher Reeves is not plural. It's a singular version, right? Yes. George Reeves became synonymous with Superman. Everybody thought of him as Superman. Too much. He wouldn't be cast in anything else, right? And he had to put up with quite a bit being known as Superman or recognized as Superman. Apparently, kids would come up and punch him in the stomach to see if he was made of steel. 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 um had to talk a kid out of shooting him like 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 put 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.

26:26Josh Clark:Yeah, that was in the Ben Affleck movie, Hollywoodland. Is that right? It's about George Reeves, and that scene was in the movie.

26:33Chuck Bryant:Okay.

26:35Josh Clark:I have not seen that movie or heard of it. Yeah, it's okay. It's not great. You lost me at Ben Affleck. It's not bad. But yeah, he talks the kid out of it in the movie and said exactly what he said, like, of course, blah, blah, blah. And then he takes it, then you can see him. He's just like, oh, God, Jesus. like I almost got shot. Right.

26:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that was, I can't imagine the relief that would wash over you after that.

27:00Josh Clark:Yeah, so George Reeves. Reeves? Reeves.

27:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he's the plural. It's tough to keep up with.

27:07Josh Clark:It is. He had a very sort of sad life, which is in that Hollywoodland movie. Like you said, he couldn't get other work, and he was only known as Superman, So I think 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 fiancée was throwing a party. And he said, I'm going to go upstairs and shoot myself in the head.

27:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and Ed makes it sound like he was upset about the noise or something like that from the party.

27:41Josh Clark:I mean, that may have been the straw, but he was upset about life. I got you. And I got the sense, like, legitimately depressed, you know, clinically depressed.

27:52Chuck Bryant:Right, yeah. I mean, like, it's, as we get to know more and more about, like, 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. We've never done one on depression. I think we should. Have we not? I don't believe we have, man. Well, then we should definitely do that. We have done one on Cats.

28:34Josh Clark: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 left him paralyzed from the neck down. And he became very much an inspiration to people because he became an advocate for research into spinal cord injuries. And he went on to direct and even act some as well after that.

29:02Chuck Bryant:And Ed 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, man, I 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 grabster say?

29:35Josh Clark:No such thing as curses. 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. Okay. 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 would 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 U.S. government set off 11 nuclear detonations above ground the year before.

30:22Josh Clark:Just in the year before. Yeah, and that area was crawling with bad stuff, lingering fallout in the dirt and in the rocks and like everything. It was in the soil and they were just running around in there filming movies.

30:42Chuck Bryant: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 from health problems from the fallout. And the government went to great lengths to cover it up and just assured everybody that there was no danger whatsoever to them, even though their houses and schoolyards 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.

31:23Chuck Bryant: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.

31:44Josh Clark:Yeah, that's like 40-something percent of the crew. And years later in People Magazine in 1980, they actually did a special report on that movie and the cancer connection. Like John Wayne, Agnes Moorhead, 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.

32:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and apparently not even just the people who worked on the production. It came to be known, The Conqueror came to be known. By the way, it's considered one of the best bad movies of the golden age of Hollywood. one. But people who visited the set battled cancer later in life too. Both of John Wayne's sons who came to visit him, 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 discount the idea that people got cancer from that test site.

33:03Chuck Bryant:They say maybe it was a contributing factor, but these people all smoked heavily, ate steak 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.

33:25Josh Clark:Well, that Dr. Robert Pendleton said, essentially, that this is about three times the rate of cancer that you would expect. Right. I think that it definitely contributed.

33:35Chuck Bryant:It's pretty curious.

33:37Josh Clark:I want to see it. Have you ever seen The Conqueror? No. I've got to see this. I've seen pictures of John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Yeah, it's pretty cringy.

33:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, super racist. But apparently, even if you take all that away, just the dialogue is awful. Like the whole premise of it is he kidnaps a woman and forces her to marry him. And of course, romance blossoms as a result. You know, just the usual stuff from the 50s.

34:04Josh Clark: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 some of this stuff happened. When Harry met Sally was cursed with great laughs. It was. I love that movie. One of the few romantic comedies that were legit good movies. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So let's go back to the beginning of this one. Obviously, the omen everyone knows was the great movie from 1976 about the Antichrist taking – well, I guess possession.

34:49Josh Clark:you could call it, but it's not like an exorcist thing. Basically, the Antichrist is this little boy. He comes back as a little boy.

34:57Chuck Bryant:Yeah, yeah, and a bad, bad, naughty little boy. Damien. Who dresses like Angus Young. Yeah, sure. Okay, so Damien 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. 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 U.S. 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?

35:44Josh Clark:Yeah, he said, I'm going to get on a plane and fly to London. His plane was struck by lightning. And the producer's plane was struck by lightning.

35:51Chuck Bryant:Separately, these are two different planes struck by lightning on the way to start shooting in London. So this curse thing is feeling legit this time.

35:59Josh Clark: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 folks stayed, was bombed by the Irish Republican Army. Yeah, Hilton, the London Hilton. I don't know about a curse in that case because in the mid-70s, there was a lot of that going on. Yeah. The IRA was bombing all sorts of stuff back then. Yeah. So it was—

36:23Chuck Bryant:Like a restaurant where the crew and the cast went to eat one night. Yeah. They were about to go eat there. So there's actually like all these close calls actually make it seem like this movie production wasn't cursed but instead was actually being looked out for on high by the Dark Lord. Right? So, like, the crew that was going to go to dinner didn't go to dinner. They didn't make it there in time for the bombing. 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 been one of the people involved.

37:05Chuck Bryant: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 businessmen 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 it crashed into. How about that? And this is like a last-minute switch, too, supposedly. Yeah, those make you think. Yeah, that, I mean, curse or no, just knowing that you were that close would just, that'd get you.

37:47Josh Clark:How about this? A worker, there was an animal sanctuary where they filmed, and a worker there was killed by a tiger.

37:53Chuck Bryant:Yep. That one, that one fits. I think that was the actual animal wrangler for the movie was killed. Oh, really? Yeah, which makes it even closer. This is the one, though, Chuck. You've got to take this one home. This is the one that really gets everybody, even though I think a lot of it's made up.

38:12Josh Clark:Yeah, there was a car crash with John Richardson, who was a special effects worker. He designed the effects for The Omen. Including a very famous decapitation scene toward the end. Yes, very famous. Oh, I thought that was the beginning. Was it the beginning? I think so. I think that'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 lore or not.

38:51Josh Clark:Sounds lore-ish. It does sound lore-ish, but he claims that he awoke from that crash and looked up and there was a street sign where they crashed that said the distance to the next town. And it was the town of Omen, O-M-N-E-N, at a distance of 66.6 kilometers. Bam. Now, is that true?

39:14Chuck Bryant:There's no way it's true because I looked up on the internet that sign trying to find any picture of 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?

39:31Josh Clark:The sign would probably still be around. Well, see, I think that's the presumption that may not be true. Like they may have taken the sign down for that reason.

39:40Chuck Bryant:Maybe. I guess that's possible. But no picture of it whatsoever. That no AP photographer went, I got to get a picture of that sign. Nobody did. That there's no existing photo of that sign. It does seem hinky, for sure. Yeah, that's the one that makes me think like, meh. Although there is a town called Omen in the Netherlands. So it's 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 about cursed movies.

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42:19Chuck Bryant:All right, we're back, as I promised. And we're on to 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.

42:30Josh Clark:Yeah, I'm not sure I get the curse in this one, but we'll talk about it. Brainstorm 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, and her co-star, Christopher Walken.

42:58Chuck Bryant:Right.

42:58Josh Clark:Under some say, many say, mysterious circumstances.

43:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I was reading up about that case, and they apparently had been drinking since at least four in the afternoon, and they made it back to the boat pretty late, and they'd been drinking through dinner. They were all just 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.

43:48Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean there were stories that she and Robert Wagner had been fighting. The captain, even many years later, said that he actually 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.

44:04Chuck Bryant:No, he finally did, years and years later, in a Playboy interview, and he basically said it must have been an accident. No one knows, but surely it was an accident.

44:14Josh Clark:That was what he said. And that's probably the only thing he said, because I didn't think he ever said anything. Yeah. he said it's an accident clearly that was great

44:31Chuck Bryant:because that was that was Christopher Walken with just a hint of John Travolta yeah it was

44:37Josh Clark:a little Travolta-esque 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 Grabster points out that some people tie this back to a Rebel Without a Cause curse because— That makes way more sense to me. Yeah, because James Dean and Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood then all died from that movie.

44:59Chuck Bryant:Relatively young. She made it the longest. She was in her early 40s, I think, when she died. But James Dean died very young in a car crash right after Rebel Without a Cause was released, I think. Yeah, and I think when Sal Mineo murdered? 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. By a pizza man. Oh, really? Yeah. Huh. That's a little weird. Well, it is. But, I mean, we're talking about curses, so. Well, I mean, usually the pizza man gets stabbed. You know what I'm saying? Right. I think this guy was actually a serial killing pizza man.

45:39Josh Clark:Oh, wow.

45:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I just saw recently, is there 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 at any given point in time?

45:51Josh Clark: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 a while.

46:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah, you don't hear about them 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? Isn't that the darkest thing you can think of? It's pretty dark.

46:24Josh Clark:The last high profile one 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 Dahmers and Ted Bundy's and stuff like that.

46:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

46:43Josh Clark:Thankfully. Sure. The Son of Sam's and the Zodiac's. It seems like the 70s and 80s were sort of the time where that was happening more.

46:51Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I don't know why. Maybe it was harder to get away with it or easier to get away with it or who knows.

46:59Josh Clark:I'm listening to that Heaven's Gate podcast. Have you heard that yet? I haven't heard that. No. It's good. It's from our buddy Chris Bannon over at Midroll. Put it out. Is he hosting it? No, no, no. Glenn Washington narrates it. But I'm through three episodes now. It's really good. But it's kind of funny, man, that that 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 in trying stuff out like that and UFOs. And it was all just kind of in the in the mainstream. Right. And it just all seems so unbelievable now. But back then it wasn't it was kind of believable that someone might join up with a cult.

47:40Chuck Bryant:Well, a lot of people were on grass back then. Yeah, on the grass. Yeah. That's crazy. I got to hear that podcast, man. That's just a fascinating story.

47:51Josh Clark: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 don't think they released it all at once, but it feels like a 10. Let's say 7 to 10. so anyway can we close on Brainstorm or are we still did we miss something

48:14Chuck Bryant:yeah I think yeah I mean Natalie Wood's murder or death death sorry is unsolved still and it's a mystery it may always be I had no idea about that about Robert Wagner I just knew Natalie Wood drowned I'd never heard anything about it being mysterious yeah

48:31Josh Clark:it's long been mysterious and well here's how we'll finish it then she wasn't even able to finish filming on that movie, and they did use a body double to complete some of those scenes.

48:42Chuck Bryant:And 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 idea. Strangely, they are almost the same story, but with two different films. 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 Toole's book, I guess novel. Great book. Yeah, I've never read it. So good. I really want to, I've just never read it for some reason.

49:18Josh Clark:Yeah, it's a classic, classic book, and very sadly, Toole killed himself in 1969, and the book was not out yet. And part of the reason he killed himself is because he could not achieve success as a writer. His mother gets it published. It wins a Pulitzer Prize in 1981. and posthumously he became a famous author.

49:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So people, when it first was published in the early 80s, people were like, oh, we've got to turn this into a movie. This is a great idea. A great book will be a great movie. And they said, who can possibly play the main character? Belushi. He'd be perfect. Belushi dies. Well, who's next? Let's wait a few years and let's see. Who else could play this main character? John Candy. John Candy died. Okay, all right, everybody. Let's just take a breather. We'll 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.

50:20Chuck Bryant:So a confederacy of dunces just kept getting put off and 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?

50:33Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah, and if you haven't gathered by hearing the people cast as Ignatius Riley, he was a heavy man in the book. So obviously Belushi, Candy, and Farley were all big dudes, and they all died. So finally they go to Farrell, and they're like, well, he's in shape, and we can bulk him up, 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's set in New Orleans, so they would have shot there.

51:14Josh Clark:He was murdered. And Hurricane Katrina came along to wipe out a lot of where the film would be shot. 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, neat. So they're doing a biopic on him with... Owen Wilson. Thomas Mann. No. Thomas Mann playing Tool. Who's he? He's an actor. Right, obviously. But what has he been in? The thing that I saw him in was a movie out a couple years ago called Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.

51:58Josh Clark:Oh, okay. It's a good little indie film. He's good. So he's playing Tool. and then I think Susan Sarandon plays his mom and Diane Kruger's in it as well.

52:07Chuck Bryant:And Susan Sarandon's going to totally try to date him too, I'll bet. Why would you say that? Oh, she likes younger dudes. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Well, maybe I have a shot. She likes young hipster dudes. No, way younger than you, my friend. Maybe not. Good for her. I love Susan Sarandon. Oh, yeah, more power to her. I think she's great. But she is totally going to try to date Thomas Mann. All right. Well, good for him too then. Sure. I'm not being judgy. No, I know. Okay. So then that's a confederacy of dunces, right? Yes. There's another script out there called Atuk that has virtually the same story to it, right?

52:47Chuck Bryant:But the story is totally different, but the curse story is virtually the same. Right. With Atuk, 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 Belushi was scheduled to play the main character, right? That's right. Well, what happened to John Belushi? 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 Sam Kinison.

53:39Josh Clark:Yes. And Sam Kinison, they were actually going to make the movie. It was happening. And Sam Kinison kind of destroyed that because he wanted to be really heavily involved in the script where he writes and the direction of the film. He wanted creative control. He battled with the studio. I think there may have even been lawsuits going on. 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. On purpose.

54:12Chuck Bryant:And they said, oh, yeah, we're going to sue you. And he said, oh, yeah. 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. Isn't that 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.

54:37Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure.

54:38Chuck Bryant: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 listener mail.

55:00Josh Clark: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 U.S. election, listening to the news and current affairs has become a health hazard for me. I also have two youngest children, 11 and 9, and 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 podcast has been a true joy.

55:40Josh Clark:I love how enthusiastic and optimistic you both are about everything, and your curiosity is truly infectious. That is so nice. Isn't it? Yeah. You are so gloriously accepting of different ideas and cultures. and I've even adopted Chuck's I Don't Want to Yuck Someone Else's Yum, which, by the way, Bridget, I did not make that up.

55:57Chuck Bryant:No, that was another listener who sent that one.

55:59Josh Clark:But we love to say it.

56:00Chuck Bryant:For sure.

56:01Josh Clark:And I'm glad you've adopted that. But I love the podcast so much, I've gotten my husband and kids into it as well. My husband is a radio ham. We listened to your episode on ham 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 is 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?

56:31Josh Clark:Awesome, man. Chuck, you're the guy.

56:33Chuck Bryant:You're the guy. They're your passes, too. All right, cool. Well, thank you. I'm just giving 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, you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast. at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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58:33Chuck Bryant:Call 1-800-GRAINGER, visit grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.