The Grey NATO – 319 – Film Club Vol. 12 With Stuntman Tom Place
Published on Thu, 20 Feb 2025 06:00:00 -0500
Synopsis
In this episode of The Graynado (#319), hosts James Stacy and Jason Heaton welcome special guest Tom Place, a Hollywood stuntman with over 230 IMDb credits and a passionate watch enthusiast. After discussing recent cold weather conditions and updates about their firefighting t-shirt fundraiser, the episode turns into a Film Club format where each participant picks three movies to discuss. Tom shares fascinating behind-the-scenes stories from his stunt work, including working with Gerard Butler and on Indiana Jones 4. The trio discusses nine films in detail, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Living Daylights, and Jurassic Park, offering insights into both the stunt work and watch appearances in each film.
The episode concludes with their "Final Notes" segment where they share recommendations for straps, podcasts, AI tools, and music. Throughout the episode, Tom provides unique perspectives on the films from his professional experience while also discussing his watch collecting passion, including his ongoing project to recover a lost Rolex from a lake (Expedition 16610) and recent motorcycle adventures in Costa Rica.
Links
Transcript
| Speaker | |
|---|---|
| James Stacy | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Graynado. It's a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 319 and it's proudly brought to you by the always growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you're listening and would like to support the show, please visit thegraynado.com for more details. My name is James Stacy and I'm joined as ever by my friend and co-host Jason Heaton. Jason, how are we doing? Are you buried in snow or not as bad as Toronto? |
| Jason Heaton | Not buried in snow, but man, it is, it is bitterly cold here. I mean, it's, we're getting that side of winter. We've had, I think, you know, I've, I've been trying to calculate in centigrade for, you know, folks. I post occasional stories on Instagram with my frozen beard and it's, um, I think I saw you this morning or yesterday morning, minus 26 centigrade. So. |
| James Stacy | I think that's like, that's where I think Fahrenheit and Senate and centigrade are equal at about negative 24, somewhere around there. |
| Jason Heaton | I think centigrade it was minus 19. So we're still, but yeah, it's, it's close. And anyway, so that's, that's the winter here and you've gotten, you've gotten the snow side of things there. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, ours isn't quite that cold, but we got, and just even for a normal Canadian, I grew up in this part of the world, just a dump in the snow. And I got to say, I got real bitter after about the fourth shovel of the day. My neighbor and I, we always kind of team shovel and he was away, so I was doing his driveway as well, which is really only one more car, but his car wasn't there, so it was the whole driveway. And I was just, man, I was out there like, you know, Yosemite Sam that kind of cartoon swears and kicks the ground. But look, we've got a guest on the line, so we're going to buzz through chitchat so we can get to the guest. I'm super pumped about this episode. The title gives most of it away, but I'm having, I've been thinking about this for the last several days and really just looking forward to this call. So let's get the chitchat, the normal kind of preamble out of the way. Jason, you want to give people the lowdown on the firefighting t-shirt? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, so we've been talking about this on every episode since early January and we'll do it one more time because we have one week left to sell these TGN, the Illustrated Watch firefighting t-shirts that we developed in collaboration with Tony from the Illustrated Watch with all proceeds going directly to the California Fire Foundation. You know, the need is still there. We've had this tremendous outpouring of support for these shirts to the point where we've raised over $10,000, which is pretty amazing, and it's still climbing. It's slowed down a bit, but we figured we would let this run until the end of February, and then kind of let the dust settle, do the tally, and contribute the money directly to California Fire Foundation. Next week are the following as I think when we can kind of announce our final amount but You know if you've been on the fence about getting one of these shirts Don't delay too long. You can go to the great NATO comm slash shop and you'll see it at the top of the shop listing page there So you have till February 28th when we take that down? So if you'd rather donate directly to the California Fire Foundation We always put a link in the show notes during these episodes and you can you can do that and the money goes a little further actually But if you want a t-shirt by all means grab one of those so that's the story with those absolutely |
| James Stacy | Yeah, so you've got, you know, a week or so from the time this episode goes live to to get in on a t-shirt if you want one and please make a donation if you have the cash flow, certainly California could use it and we certainly have a lot of the TGN crew out in that part of the world. So if you needed the download on more of that project, go back a few episodes and there's some longer explanations as we as we launched it. The next one that we've been talking a bunch about, it gets closer every week. I guess that's how time works. April 25th to 27th is the Vancouver Timepiece Show. You can visit timepieceshow.com. I will be there. Jason's attendance is currently up in the air. We might have an update for you next week. we'll see so keep listening but i'll be there we're gonna do an event we're gonna do a hangout we'll probably try and do some sort of a live episode whether it's tgn or maybe even something else who knows yet but we're gonna have a good time it's pretty tough to beat uh spring late spring in vancouver uh bring a jacket of course and maybe an umbrella or you know get one grab one from your hotel it'll almost certainly rain at some point over the weekend but it's going to be really good and visit timepeashow.com to figure out about tickets. They go pretty quickly. I don't know what is left, but refer to the site for that one. And certainly also the full list of the vendors. It's a pretty great list of brands that are gonna be there. All right, with that out of the way, man, can you tell I'm excited? I'm talking quickly. We've got just an A-plus guest on here, a guy that Jason and I have been talking about having on the show for probably about two years. And his name is Tom Place. He's today's guest. And for many of you, Tom does not need an intro. You may know him from his incredible Instagram accounts, his project to recover a long lost Rolex in a very greedy lake, his warm and friendly presence on the TGN Slack, and of course, his work as a real deal working Hollywood stuntman. That last part should give you an idea of why he's on a Film Club episode, because you can remember some of the past Film Club picks, like The Town, Body of Lies, or The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Well, it turns out Tom was in all of those. And with 236 IMDb credits to his name, some of them he's listed as Tim. I can't list them all, but you know what? I'm gonna give it the H. Foley try here, and I'll give you some highlights. So how about Dark Knight Rises, The Irishman, I Am Legend, Poker Face, The Blacklist for 22 episodes. Great show. Mr. Robot, Ray Donovan, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Homeland, another fave, The Night Of. Tom, can you get them to make another season of The Night Of? The Night Of? Oh my gosh, I almost don't remember what that was. Love John Turturro, love Riz Ahmed, great show. Yeah, I didn't even get through the whole list there. The Americans, Birdman, the other guys, The Sopranos, Shooter with Mark Wahlberg. There's a lot of Mark Wahlberg in your list of movies that you've worked on, and really just so much more. Like I said, 230, I listed about 20 there. Tom, this is so much fun. Thank you so much for coming on the show, man. |
| Tom Place | Thank you guys for having me. This is awesome. You guys are literally the first podcast that I ever listened to. I had never listened to anything before. I kept seeing week after week on Hodinkee, you know, the great NATO. And I'm like, oh, these guys are already 70 episodes in. It's it was already nonsense by then, for sure. The first episode I listened to, Jason, you just got your, you were in your honeymoon phase with the Tudor Oyster Prince and James, you're waiting for your Minstop. Oh, the Minstop. Nice. The Minstop. And I was like, oh man, these guys, like they, they do all the things I do. They're into, you know, all the same stuff. I was like, let me go back and listen to the Seiko episode, the Rolex episode. And then I was like, all right, I got to go back to the beginning. And I've listened to your whole catalog, you know, multiple times now. So yeah. Thank you for having me on. |
| James Stacy | So look, Tom, let's establish just a little bit of context here, because I'm really pumped to get into the actual film, the bulk of the film club. You were just in Costa Rica. I want to hear a bit about that as well. But let's start with like a quick bio, give people a little bit background. Obviously, I listed a handful of your work, but you do all sorts of stuff. I think I came to know you through Expedition 16610, which might even have been like Jason saying, you should check out this account. Or it was me telling Jay, it was one of us telling the other one, check out this account, if I remember correctly. But, you know, what's the elevator pitch? Because you've got a bunch of things going, right? |
| Tom Place | Yeah. So, yeah, like you said, I'm a professional stuntman and stunt coordinator. Um, been lit on fire and hit by cars and thrown through windows and thrown downstairs and all that stuff. And I'm, you know, I, uh, I'm into, I'm into dirt biking and, you know, hiking scuba, uh, all that kind of stuff. And, and then watches, um, has been like a lifelong passion. So I'm, I mean, I put my first watch on at like four years old and I'm, I'm 47 now, and I really haven't taken one off since. So it's, it's, uh, I guess you call it like an obsession, but yeah, it's been a lifelong thing. But yeah, yeah. So I don't know, a little bit of everything, I guess that's enough to get us started. |
| Jason Heaton | Well, where did it all begin? I'm curious, like, is stunt work something? I mean, pardon my naivete, but is it something you go to school for? Did you go to school for that? Or did you kind of fall into it through another avenue? |
| Tom Place | So my brother and I went to a stunt school, which you don't have to. Not everybody starts with the stunt school, but we figured, hey, we want to, you know, become stuntmen. Uh, what do we do? And you start Googling and it was like, oh, there you have, you know, stunt schools. I guess we have to go to a stunt school. |
| Jason Heaton | Wait a minute, before you go on, like you decided you wanted to be stuntmen with your brother. That, that alone is an interesting statement. And I'm curious, were you guys the types that were like jumping off the garage roof and that sort of thing? And you've like, you just knew from a young age that that was a cool career? So basically, yeah. I mean, we were, |
| Tom Place | We're 18 months apart. So we were five and six years old and we borrowed my dad's video camera, like the big VHS ones you had. And we started making home movies with, you know, G.I. Joe guys. And then that turned into us, you know, filming each other, reenact scenes from Rambo. That was like the first thing that we shot, which, you know, morphed into getting our buddies over. Like when we were in middle school and high school, making our own movies that had actual plots and that had all kinds of chase scenes. And whenever we showed them, like to family and friends, the stunts would get all the big, like, oh my God, what? Like, you guys are nuts. And then it was like, all right, now we're going to start jumping off of roofs. You know, literally we're going to start, we did car transfers where we jumped off of, you know, Ford Explorers into my dad's pickup trucks, all this kind of stuff. Wow. So then we go to college, you know, and then after college, it was like, we've always talked about, movies and, you know, getting into film, what would be the most fun aspect? And we were like, I mean, let's, let's be stunt guys. Like this is what we've been doing our whole lives. Like we, we play rugby, we ride motocross, we've been doing all the fight scenes. We've been doing all this stuff already. Let's, you know, what's, you know, cooler than, you know, being a stunt man. And that's kind of how it was like, let's, let's become stunt men. And yeah, then we found a film school that was, so I went to school in Tampa, Florida. We found a film school in Orlando of all places. And it was six weeks of like intensive training of, I mean, exactly what you think a stunt school is. We were getting hit by cars every day. We were doing high falls every day. We were doing flight scenes, all that kind of stuff for six weeks. And I mean, one of the best times in my life, but it was like the movie Hooper, like every single day. You know, and then after that, it was like, like a starving actor phase, you know, we got into SAG in 2004. But I mean, I probably worked one job in 2004. I worked like two stunt jobs, maybe three in 2005. And I was, you know, pumping gas in my hometown and I would pump gas for girls who I went to high school with. And they'd be like, are you Tom Place? I'm like, yeah, yeah. And they're like, what are you up to? I'm like, I'm going to be in the movies one day, I swear. And they're like, okay, buddy, you know, fill it up regular, you know? But hey, you know, finally made it. I hit 20 years in the business this year. That's great. |
| James Stacy | That's amazing. That's so funny because my mom just brought this up to me recently. When I got a camera, I think off my grandmother maybe, I was probably 10. I also started making movies or recreating favorite scenes from war films, but with the little green army men, like the ones you bought in a barrel. Some of them used to have little parachutes, if you remember those, like Mylar parachutes. And I used to do a ton of that. And then I had three younger brothers and we have several videos of just us throwing like, not like basketballs like stuff lighter than that but still like nerf balls stuff like that at younger brothers it was just like people running around the backyard hitting each other in the face with nerf balls yeah uh it was really a high art form uh we never put it to any use mostly it just caused went until somebody cried and then we got the camera taken away and you know you waited until you got it back to make your next film |
| Jason Heaton | I've always considered an alternate career for you would be like a movie director. Oh, I wish, yeah. Tom could coordinate the stunts, and then I could do something like screenwriting or something like that. I think we could collaborate. I'm sure there's other folks in the Slack or in our listenership that could contribute other elements to it, too. |
| Tom Place | And we've already got the story. We've got depth charge, so we will go like that. |
| Jason Heaton | Let's make it happen. Yeah, I'd love to see James Stacy direct Step Church. |
| James Stacy | That'd be great. Oh man, this gives me so many great ideas. I gotta see if my grandma still has that video camera. |
| Jason Heaton | We might need it. |
| James Stacy | I don't know what our budget is yet. You know, beyond the stunt stuff, which I'm sure we'll get into as we're chatting about the movies, I tried to pick movies that I thought a stuntman would appreciate or have insight on. But I did want to touch in on Expedition 16610. Give us the background on that one, kind of how it started and how it's come, because I find it fascinating, because I've considered, like I've imagined the need to do stuff like that, and you start to think through the challenge, and you're just out there actually doing it, which is, I find, very entertaining. Cool, yeah, cool, cool. |
| Tom Place | I'm glad somebody does. It's pretty nasty down there, but yeah, so I'm 18 years old, and I've been a watch guy, you know, my whole life at this point. My mom and dad were Rolex people. When my dad had some success in the 70s, he bought him and my mom a Rolex. And that was like their one watch for like the next 20 years. So I was always like, you know, one day I have to get a Rolex, like that's the watch. So I was 18 years old and I was a valet, you know, parking attendant. I spent my life savings on a Rolex Submariner. I bought it at Mayer's Jewelers. I didn't have enough for the tech. So I had to ship the watch up to my parents. And I'm like, mom and dad, something's gonna arrive in the mail. You're not gonna be happy about it, but you have to ship it back to me. The only way I could get my hands on this watch. And so six months later, We're up at our cabin. We have a family cabin up in the Adirondacks. And my brother and I, we used to do this thing called power jumping where you go full throttle in the boat and then you dive off and you see who could go at a faster speed and all that. And one of my jumps, I slipped and I caught the clasp on the railing. And I just remember falling backwards and seeing it, you know, just go in the opposite direction. My brand new six months old Rolex. For like a week, I dragged a magnet. I had this big industrial magnet that I dragged for, you know, hours a day for like five days in a row. And I was like, this is hopeless. So I wrote a letter to Rolex, basically just saying, I'm an 18 year old kid. I spent my life savings on one of your watches and I was just swimming in a lake. That's how I, you know, worded it. When the watch popped off my wrists, I don't remember how long, but I got a letter back from them. You know, give us a call here at Rolex USA. I gave him a call. They said, we can't prove that the watch malfunctioned. So we can't just give you a new one, but we'll give you, I think it was like 45% off of a new one when I was ready. You know, I begged everybody for, you know, give me a little bit, you know, I'll pay you guys back, I swear. And then I bought a Rolex GMT Master II, which was a 1996 GMT Master II. And I kind of forgot about the lost sub. I chopped it up to like, I'm never getting this thing. Uh, 2015, I started diving and I was talking with my buddy, Greg, who's a dive master. And he was like, you know, we could find this thing, right? Like, like, you know, where you lost it. Um, it's like 20 to 30 feet deep down there. Like we, we can actually do this. And, uh, you know, that was over like a glass of scotch and that's, you know, kind of how, how the idea started. And then I kind of. Um, really started in 2019. I have, I got a bunch of metal detectors. I practice in my yard, you know, listening for the sound of different metals and all that stuff. I was doing a bunch of training and then we were going to start in 2020. I had like a whole team of guys and then COVID hit. the group effort, you know, kind of went away and I was like, all right, I'm just going to, you know, start doing this on my own. And, um, I mean, I had six months of absolutely no work. So I had, I had all the time in the world and I went up here, you know, to the cabin with my daughters, you know, for basically all six months and just kind of dove every day and, you know, kind of learned, you know, how to search in the muck down there. Uh, there's a lot of rock, but there's a lot of muck where like you're laying in the muck and you're surrounded by the weeds. And there's just like feet of muck below you that you could just reach into. But, um, I have some pretty good metal detectors. I have a lot more invested in metal detectors and the watch even cost me. Yeah. But yeah. So, you know, I didn't get a lot of diving in last summer cause I was busy with work, but, um, yeah, I've got like 39 or 40 hours on the bottom so far, you know, searching, I have like a little grid down there that I'm gridding out and, uh, Uh, one day, you know, I think, uh, I think it's definitely possible, but. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. It feels like a matter of time, right? Yeah. Like a matter of putting in the right number of hours and then a little bit, what, what will in the moment feel like luck, but will have actually been years of preparation and hard work and investment. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Well, if you find it, we want the exclusive story. Yeah. You know what? |
| Tom Place | I think I actually gave you the exclusive rights, uh, Jason, like back in 2020. through, you know, Instagram DM or something like that. I've since had a bunch of, you know, people reach out like, Oh, we want like the exclusive when you find it. But, but now you guys have it. You guys have the exclusive. |
| Jason Heaton | Yes. Well, I think, I mean, I'm just speaking out of turn here, but I think, I think we should, we should have a little TGN summit up at the cabin and we'll all go diving and we'll, you know, we'll just do a group effort. We'll just all. I'm down. I'm down. |
| Tom Place | Sounds amazing. It's gross. It's like going to work. I'm like, oh, I got to go dive again. And yeah, yeah, I basically have to convince myself every time I'm down there that there's not like a sea monster that's going to come grab me. You know, it's it's that's how spooky it is down there. Yeah, definitely. |
| James Stacy | That's great. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm very excited to hear how that goes. And hopefully you get some great dives and hopefully some enjoyable ones here there this summer. Um, look, I think the next one to get to, because we're definitely, we're just minutes away from movies here. But you, you know, about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, I went down and had kind of my first real experience with Costa Rica. I had a solid week of kind of kicking around, did a little diving. And then, I guess about a month ago for you, not quite, uh, you were down in Costa Rica for what looked like a really incredible, uh, like enduro or, or, you know, dirt biking trip. How was that? And what was kind of the impetus there? Have you been before? I've never been to Costa Rica before. |
| Tom Place | Yeah, so I had like two episodes left of Poker Face Season 2. I was the stunt coordinator on that. I was at like the wits end. You know, I was up like 15 pounds. Loads of stress. I was eating poorly. I was not sleeping. Basically, every day my aura ring would tell me like to buy a coffin because this is it. This is like the final day that you're gonna live. And again, my buddy Greg said that he just got in on this motorcycle trip, you know, to Costa Rica. One week touring the country and there was one bike left, you know, do I want in? And I said, yeah, definitely, you know, sign me up. Um, and yeah, we, we flew into San Jose. And then we wanted to do as much off-road as possible. We wanted to stay off of the pavement. And we hit La Fortuna, we hit Tamarindo, Santa Teresa. We hit this cacao farm in Upala. Oh, okay. Which was the middle of the rainforest. We had been riding at night for like three hours already. We were exhausted and we pull up and there's this little factory, this little chocolate factory. It's a cacao farm, so it's a little chocolate factory. And this guy walks out, he's got like a faded military jacket on, he's got an old fedora. He had a 1974 Mark II Speedy on and he's like, my friends are just about to serve dinner, you know, come sit. And I mean, we're soaked, we're filthy, we're nasty. Um, and he's like, come along. And, and I mean, we sat and they just served us what they were making and it was amazing. And he told us, you know, uh, his own motorcycle stories. And then we learned all about chocolate and this, what a cool time. Wow. And what a great way to see a country. because you're immersed in it, like the cold and the heat and the rain and the mud, you know, cows in the road. We got hit by a iguana. One guy hit an iguana who basically bounced off his leg and the iguana was fine. But, you know, almost hitting bulls as you come around turns, there's like bulls in the road and you kind of have to stop short. But this is what an awesome trip. And I tell you the the four by fours down there. um, were the coolest. I mean, that was my favorite part of the whole thing. There were Prados everywhere. They were the old, uh, the old FJ sixties from like the eighties and nineties, uh, the old FJ forties, uh, the guy Breck on slack that does all the marathons. He has like an FJ 40, that guy's a beast. But, uh, they had this, this, this Hyundai Galloper, that I can't even describe it, but it was like the coolest looking old SUV and everything has a snorkel because there are so many water crossings. We're basically riding through them for fun. But where these people like to get to work, they have to afford these rivers, you know, multiple times. But yeah, just what, what a cool place. Love the people, love the country, love being on the bike. Yeah, it was, it was awesome. It was a lot of fun. |
| James Stacy | It's a, it's a really cool place. I had a blast and I agree. Like one of the things that will stand out for me is the trucks that are around. Like, especially once we made it out to like Samara, Nogara area. I'm trying to think of what, like, cause we did, we drove like from San Jose all the way out towards the West. And I remember I said, talked about it when we did the episode last year, but the drive was like double the amount of time that was expected. You know, it was supposed to be like what I thought was like a three hour drive was like seven or eight hours. And. I was definitely like rattling my dad's fillings loose in the back of this Suzuki Vitara. But one, I couldn't believe that we didn't pop a tire. The roads are just... And then at night, I was kind of blown away by just how dark it was in the jungle parts of the road. Just like pitch, genuinely pitch black. Like all you had was the headlight. It's such a cool place. |
| Tom Place | I loved it. Yeah, I'm so glad you had a good time. |
| James Stacy | What sort of bike? |
| Tom Place | It was a KTM Adventure 890R. It was huge. It was a beast. I mean, so much power. It had more road-biased tires, so when you got into the wet clay and all that stuff, it was a little sketchy. I mean, what, uh, I w I was so impressed with, with the motorcycle. Yeah. It was awesome. |
| Jason Heaton | That sounds like an amazing trip. The photos look great. And even, you know, the food and I'm sure. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So fresh. |
| Tom Place | I can't imagine. Yeah. It was all so good. Yeah. The food was amazing. The coffee. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. You know, I realized we've kind of skipped right past a wrist check. Oh, we have. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we probably have a bad time to do that. Yeah. Let's get into it. Well, first of all, Tom, what watch did you wear on the trip? And then you can tell us what watch you're wearing tonight. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. Good idea. |
| Tom Place | So I brought my LHD. I brought that on a NATO strap. I put in the shoulderless spring bars and I put it on a NATO and I wore that for Oh, you know, for the five days. And then I also brought my dad's Seiko that he wore in Vietnam. That was trashed, you know, when I got it, that I had Jack at International Watchworks, you know, fix up for me. So I brought that watch with me. I figured it's been in Vietnam. It's been in Cambodia. Might as well bring it to Costa Rica too. Yeah. But the LHD did the brunt of the lifting. What a great watch. Right? |
| Jason Heaton | It's the best. It's the best. I forgot you had that. I still love the LHD. I think if I were to... Here it comes. |
| James Stacy | Mark it, guys. Mark it. How many episodes till Jason has an LHD? This isn't good for us because there's definitely like... We could go, but we should use some AI and go back over like the Paul Hubbard's complete TGN and see what the delta is between when we mention a watch and when we buy it. Like how many episodes. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, yeah, actually what I should do is just I should I should have a watchmaker flip my fxd And make an uh, lhd fxd that would be perfect. That's kind of fun. |
| James Stacy | That could be cool Anyway, all right. Well, so we've got uh pelagos in costa rica and your dad seiko rad choices, of course Uh, what did you what have you got up at the cabin right now? |
| Tom Place | Uh, right now I'm wearing my, uh, the Chronosport, uh, UDT. Yeah, there you go. Um, that was my, my high school, uh, graduation present to myself back in 1995. Oh man, you're in so deep. I love this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And, uh, yeah, have it on like a little deployant, uh, strap from, uh, from Anchor. That's just been awesome. |
| James Stacy | I mean, I went to wear my, uh, the, the Red Devil Breitling the other day, which is, you know, uh, a Pluton offshoot of the UDT and the battery's definitely dead. Oh no. So I got, I got to order up another one, but that'll give me a chance to check on the membrane for the alarm. Uh, we got some, some very nice people emailed me some, uh, ideas to check on the, the beep for the alarm. And apparently the new battery may mean that the backlight comes back. We'll find out. I'll report back sometime soon. It's like your favorite thing. Backlights and blue. It's so much fun. It'll never get old. Jason, what have you got on for the episode today? |
| Jason Heaton | Well, no big surprise, I've got the crew watch number one, literally number one, 001, our TGN collaboration watch with CWC that we finally divulged on last week's episode. And I've been playing around a lot with straps. Me too. And tonight, I have it on, this might be sacrilege, I have it on, I've got this I call it like a ghost bond strap. It's the one it's it's vertexes Stripey and it's it's sort of a faded gray. It's like two shades of gray with stripes And the hardware says vertex on it, whatever. I'm usually not I'm I'm one of those weird people that I don't like to mix brands like if you have a strap from a specific brand to put it on a watch of a different of a different brand, but I think I think Don from Vertex would approve in this case, and it does look really good on this watch. Yeah, that's great. It does look good, I agree. And this watch, I don't know, I'm guessing your experience is similar, but when we were speccing this watch, and we had the option of a high-accuracy quartz movement, You know, I didn't give that much thought. I love the idea of high accuracy quarts, but I'm also not the kind of person that syncs my watch and keeps track of that sort of stuff. But this is kind of fun because I have been keeping track and it's dead on. I mean, it is hyper accurate and it's so pleasing to me. I just kind of, I don't know if I had my doubts, but it's pretty amazing. |
| James Stacy | It's like reassuring. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. All right. And James, what do you have on tonight? I'm guessing it's something similar to what I have on. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, I'm still wearing the CWC CWN one. I probably will be for like constantly for the next while. I've been switching through kangaroo NATOs, the titanium spec NATO it comes with, standard TGN NATOs. I love, depending on my outfit, but if I'm wearing mostly a muted sort of palette, the kill hubris lizard camo strap is like awesome on it because the watch is so basic like conventional straightforward almost no color so it takes a wild nato pretty excited and you know people were asking we've got some pretty interesting questions like could we do the the pattern on the box which we had commissioned for us by Stay Calm Industries. And could we do that on a NATO? And we maybe have to talk to a few people to see if that's possible. I don't know how much I would wear like a creamsicle orange and tan NATO, but I'd kind of like to know it exists. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | That could be cool. |
| James Stacy | Tom, where do you land on the colorful NATO spectrum? I'm more of the olive drab, uh, grazing coyote. |
| Tom Place | You know what? I, uh, I hate to even say this. You guys are going to hit, you know, delete right now, but I don't like gray NATOs. |
| James Stacy | I mean, it is, it's the most basic of the options, I think. |
| Tom Place | Yeah, you know, brown, um, you know, coyote, uh, uh, you know, aloe drab. Those are like my fave. |
| Jason Heaton | Especially on your LHD. That's what I wore down in CR, yeah. |
| James Stacy | But yeah, and today I've got it on the Bonetto Centurini, the ZD328 rubber NATO. And I head to the Dominican Republic tomorrow. So by the time this episode comes up, I'll be down there. So this will be the spec that I'll take it on. Because I'm not going to do any diving, but I will be snorkeling a fair bit. And... It's a very short trip. We're just trying to get away for a weekend because of how February's been. It's been a very busy month for work and a very cold month. And we're just kind of like, hey, let's, you know, we had plans the last several weekends, Tom, I'm sure you under you understand this world. We plans the last several weekends to go to the cottage. And then you just get there's so much snow that we wouldn't be able to drive to the cottage. Like there's about 400 meters, I'd say of like road that you might want that you would need to like plow with your own tractor. And I didn't, you know, unless I was like really hosting some people up there, I'm not gonna ask our nearby neighbors to, you know, to do that to the road if they were out there with their tractor. And the other sad thing is all my best gear is up there. The A quality dive gear, my oceanic housing. I just keep going, oh, maybe tomorrow the roads will be such that I can drive up, you know, it's a three hour drive there and back. To get it and now I just I finally just says like well, we're taking the b gear and i'm not gonna have underwater photos So it's okay. I'll mostly be sleeping and reading books as the plan for four or five days. So Uh, but yeah, this is this is the thing. I i'm i'm just in love with the watch I mean surprise surprise like we had a hand in making some of these decisions Uh, and it's for me. It's the way it all kind of comes together Uh, it's so light it's so conventional like it's so quiet on your wrist and then it's super accurate the looms pretty great like i can absolutely read it in the middle of the night without needing to charge it which puts it ahead of my explorer 2 for sure probably puts it ahead of my pelagos 39 that sort of thing I'm just super, super happy with it. So we're in the midst, I would say it looks like, I think we're maybe tipping the scales on the Slack with more people having gotten theirs than not, but we're moving through the process. And I mean, CWC is a very small company and they're shipping these by hand, they're setting the bezel by hand, they're setting your time zone by hand, they're doing the final QC, and then the watch will go out. But Jason and I knew we would become customer service reps. for at least a period of time here. And, you know, why not? I can dust off those skills. It's been a little while for me, but, you know, that playbook still exists. So, yeah, just really pumped to see people getting them on the slack. And then, yeah, I spend, you know, a not tiny number of minutes to possible hours a week, just like looking at other single pass straps and being like, what the hell cool would that one be? maybe this is good. I can tell you that as of today, the Garmin UltraFit in 20 millimeter in gray is still sold out on Canada. Oh, yeah. So still waiting on that one. But otherwise, yeah, it's, it's been great. I'm super happy with it. And it really, if you needed an excuse to try the rubber NATO, it really sings on the rubber NATO. It's just really nice. |
| Jason Heaton | I need to source one of those. I gifted mine to a friend a few years ago, and I haven't had one since. So I think it'd be a great fit for this watch. That's great. |
| James Stacy | Alright, I think that time has come. We're entering the film club. This is volume 12. Those of you who are ardent listeners and don't mind when we entirely deviate away from most of our normal topics to just talk about movies, We'll know that the last time we did this was episode 291. At that point, we kind of said we were shooting at one of these a year. So this one's coming a bit early in February. Obviously, we had a great chance to get Tom between his busy schedule of getting blown up on one show and telling other people how to look good getting hit by a car on another show. or a movie, as I'm sure is at least part of your job. For this one, we'll follow a similar format to a previous film club we did with my brother Tim. We're each going to pick three, not five, otherwise the recording would be quite long. But we're each going to pick three movies. They're not going to be repeats. And the interesting thing, I think this puts us into 112, 113. So like we're approaching 120 movies that will be on the list. And of course, we have somebody on the Slack team I'm now forgetting, but somebody on the Slack runs a letterbox for all of these. So big thank you to that gentleman. I will make sure to have a more specific call out. uh in the show notes but if you want to see the complete list well over 100 films at this point you can see that on the in the show notes on letterboxd uh but look we've each got three obviously we'll let tom kick it off with his first uh tom what's the first movie you'd like to add to the uh the now rather expansive film club yeah you guys didn't make it easy i was looking through your list of uh it's a lot it's a lot of a lot of good ones |
| Tom Place | My first choice was probably the movie that had the biggest impact on what I do for a living. The action and the adventure. And I'm surprised it's not on the list, but it's 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark. The first in the Indiana Jones series. Yes. You know, I don't know how old I was when I first saw it, but I've never stopped watching it since. And just the the gun fights, the fist fights, like just how he fist fights, you know, dragging off the back of a truck, you know, being under the truck. It was just, it's just the coolest. And, you know, that made me want to like live a life of action and adventure. And that's kind of the movie that I credit to, you know, wanting to, you know, make movies and do action stuff in movies. |
| Jason Heaton | That's a great choice and your mention of being under the truck was the first thing that came to mind when you said that. As the stunt guy mentioning that movie, I can just picture that scene and it's so vivid and it's such a great stunt and I don't know when that stunt originated in the world of film anyway but it feels like that must have been early days because now I've seen that Copied or used in other movies since you're that that whole notion of kind of pulling yourself along you know alongside the spinning prop shaft Yeah, yeah great great. |
| James Stacy | I just watched speed on the on the Or the flight home to Geneva, and there's like 15 minutes of that movie that are I? it's a great movie yeah that's a good one but it's not my pick so this is steven spielberg 1981 i'm going to try and do the tagline for each film as we go through this so this is in 1936 archaeologists and adventurers of the u.s government hired indiana jones to find the ark of the covenant before the nazis could obtain its extraordinary powers This is an incredible movie. It's also like, I think it, you know, it's, it's Harrison Ford. And I think Harrison Ford is like an idealized TGN film club guy. Like he's on the Mount Rushmore. We've had a handful of, of Harrison Ford films. I think we might have at least one more in today's picks. And I'm just so thrilled every time I see him in a movie. Like I just grew up obsessed with Fugitive. Maybe Fugitive was to me what Raiders was for you. But I think maybe my parents felt that Raiders was a little intense for a young James. He's a very impressionable young boy. And we'll get to a movie that made a big difference to me when I was very young. But yeah, this is an absolutely amazing movie. And yeah, the under the truck scene is one thing. There's also just a really great oral history for this film in terms of stunt work, because Harrison Ford did most of his own stunts, is my understanding, by all means correct. |
| Tom Place | I'm sure he did a fair amount. |
| James Stacy | Terry Leonard was his stunt double. They say most is meaningless. |
| Tom Place | You know what, when you're talking about Tom Cruise, then most is most. He does them all, you know, but then, yeah, there are other actors who say in interviews that they do all their own stunts and I've seen them in trailers where all their stunt guy does the stunt for them. So it's, you know, whatever, but yeah, I mean, just, this is a great, you know, stunt film. And as a fun side note, so 2007, I'm in my twenties still, I'm only in the business a couple of years and I get called to work on Indiana Jones 4. Huge, you know, this is like, oh my gosh, I've already hit like the life achievement. And then I get in a motorcycle accident two weeks prior and I break my arm, my wrist and my hand. And I'm devastated because I'm going, I'm going to have to tell them that I can't, you know, work on this film. I had a bunch of pins, you know, sticking out of my hand and my wrist. And I begged the doctor, I said, please, I said, don't give me a regular cast. If you could give me a cast that I can remove every morning, and be super careful with. You know, I have to work on this. This is a huge career opportunity. So every day I would go to work, I would take the cast off and I would carry a hoodie over my hand because it had all these pins sticking out of it, which is July 2007. So it's hot and I'm carrying a hoodie like I'm an idiot. But it all worked out. I got to work on the film. And then there was a moment where the first ever iPhone had come out while I was working on that movie. And the Monday after, you know, the only guy, you know, that happened was Spielberg. And he's walking around asking everybody like, hey, do you know how to work an iPhone? And we're like, no man, come on, give us a break. But then all of a sudden he starts playing the indie theme song, like with a bullhorn. And I'm standing next to Indiana Jones. And I still get like the chills when I tell the story. Cause it was just like, I could retire right now. Like, like I've made it, I've done it all. I'm done. You know, this is just like the craziest moment ever. But that's a great story. |
| Jason Heaton | How are we? I mean, James, I don't know if we can top that story. I mean, in all the in the annals of film club, I don't think we can top that. Yeah. |
| James Stacy | I remember the first time I saw this movie, obviously the sequence where they're setting up a big fight scene with the guy with the swords in the bazaar, and then he just shoots him. It's like a perfect piece of comedic timing. There's a little bit of like almost the Marx brothers in the way. And then it turns out, at least again, just in the oral history, which maybe we can't necessarily trust, that I think he'd either hurt his arm or his wrist or was tired. Suggested this as an alternative to a fully choreographed fight sequence. |
| Tom Place | That's what I've heard. |
| James Stacy | So yeah. Yeah, that's what I've heard as well So I don't know watching it this the the stunt that always that I would ask a stunt person about is where he's between The tank and the car or the the truck You know where they're driving along or maybe it's two trucks. |
| Jason Heaton | It's green metal. |
| James Stacy | So maybe maybe it's two trucks that looks so not sped up on film. It looks genuinely scary today as you watch it. You're like, how did they shoot that? How did he not get crushed? It's nutty. Yeah. And that was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great film. Great film. All right. Solid pick. Great way to open it. We're going to be, Jason and I are on the back heel for the rest of the episode. Totally. Yeah. Totally. All right, Jason, you want to go second? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, sure. And I'm just going to jump right in with another Harrison Ford film. This one is only four years after Raiders of the Lost Ark. And man, you're right, James. I mean, Harrison Ford figures strongly in Film Club. And I just watched this one not too long ago. It's Witness from 1985. This was a movie that came out when I was probably a sophomore or junior in high school, and I remember seeing it then, probably in the theater and really liking it. I mean, even even as a teenager, that movie made an impact. I loved Harrison Ford at the time. I mean, he was he was massive at that time anyway, but it's it's just such an interesting movie. It's it's well, James, if you want to read the tagline, if you're if you're. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, let's do it. While protecting an Amish boy who is the sole witness to a brutal murder and his mother, a detective is forced to seek refuge within their community when his own life is threatened. It's a great plot. That's it. There's one sentence and you get the whole thing and you're like, oh, I'm in. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, yeah, it's so good. I love the mix of, you know, the kind of gritty urban cop and then, you know, his, his slow transformation as he as he, you know, well, I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but you know, kind of hides out in this Amish community and, and the boy who plays the witness, the namesake witness is a great actor. I mean, child actors that can be hit and miss. He's great. Kelly McGillis is in this when she was kind of kind of big back in those days, you know, with with Top Gun and with this and Yeah, it was it was just a really well done movie. I mean, we've talked about what was your term, James, for a lot of the Harrison Ford movies? We call it dad, dad, something dad thrillers, dad thrillers. Yeah, I think Witness would be in there for sure. I think so. |
| James Stacy | And it's also like it's Peter Weir is the director. So that's Dead Poets Society is probably one of my other favorites. Master and Commander. Yes. Sneaky good movie if you didn't watch it back in the day. Yeah. He also did The Way Back. I mean, this is a solid, solid director. And I think this is one of his most kind of sleepery films. And I think it's one of those ones where like, yeah, you've seen, you've seen, you know, for goodness sakes, how do I blank on both of the clancy ones? Oh, Jacqueline, you've seen clear present danger. You've seen Patriot Games. You've seen the fugitive. You've obviously seen your your Star Wars or the amazing Indiana Jones movies, and you want to go like a step further. I think this gives you like another layer of depth. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, yeah, totally. |
| James Stacy | He has that professorial element that he plays against in a lot of his roles, whether he's a diplomat or an analyst but not a spy or an archaeologist and not a military guy or something like that. It's great. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and as you're rattling off those names of movies that Harrison Ford's been in, I mean, I don't want to veer too far off a witness here, but like, I think, you know, 81, Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think 82 was, was a Blade Runner, I believe. And then, you know, in the late seventies was all the Star Wars stuff. This is an 85. I mean he had a run and he hasn't stopped. I mean the guy is the guy's incredible He's still doing amazing work today. So yeah, yeah Awesome, that's great. It is shrinking. It's only the best. Yeah. Yeah. |
| James Stacy | Yeah credible. I love that I don't think I don't think there's a bad episode. I'm not sure there's a bad five minutes in shrinking |
| Jason Heaton | Tom, can you hook us up with Harrison Ford as a guest for TGN? |
| Tom Place | Oh man, you know, my only real experience chatting with him was we were in an elevator together when we were working on Indy and I got to talk to him for a couple of minutes and then I just, he felt huge. I mean, I'm 5'11". It was like I was looking up to him like, who is this guy? He's huge. And he's also been photographed with a UDT on. He's had a bunch of cool watches. He's gotta be on, right? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, he was a Bremont guy for a while and I think he wears a Datejust or used to and yeah, a big Breitling guy. He's a pilot. Yeah. |
| James Stacy | This is a good movie. Highly recommend. Great pick. I'm going to kick off my first of the three for this episode with a movie that we've talked quite a bit about in the most recent one because I just introduced it to my daughters. It was the most important thing to me when I was a kid. Before this movie came out, my dad and I read the books. We were big Michael Crichton fans. You know, I was probably six when my dad read me Jurassic Park the first time. And of course, he's just like skipping 50 pages of Chaos Theory and getting back to something that his young kid who just loved dinosaurs and action and SUVs and jungles and all this kind of stuff. And then I remember him going, oh, you know, they're making a movie of it. And I said, oh that's very it was i think it was the first time i cared that like a movie was going to be made about something i knew and uh and i just watched it and watched it and watched it and then you know it came out 1993 in 1994 uh for my birthday might actually been 95 For my birthday, I got myself and a few of my cousins and my parents paid for our tickets to go see it in an IMAX. It was like a thing. I had all the toys. I had the dinosaur with the little rare steak that popped out and you could see his ribs. I still have a Muldoon character. I still have the signature explorer with the damaged roof. man i i just i love jurassic park and to go back and watch it just recently uh not only to re-watch it myself probably for the first time in 15 years but to watch it through the eyes of my kids and to see like special effects from 1993 absolutely blow them away And then at the end, my daughter's like, how did they make that before computers? I'm like, well, they kind of had computers. They're not like, you know. And then we watched a bunch of documentaries on how they how they made the dinosaurs and these. I'd just never seen anything like it. It blew my mind. |
| Jason Heaton | And it holds up really well. I mean, everything from special effects to the plot is very tight. Great premise. I mean, based on a great book. So that's that's half of it. But yeah, really a good pick. That's yeah, that's that's great. I mean, we're we're doing well with our first three here. Yeah. |
| James Stacy | And like, it's also like, it's one of those movies where like, I still say things from this movie. You see some, is it heavy? Yeah, then it's expensive. Put it down. Right? When the kids have the night vision goggles. Spared no expense. I've been saying that since 1993. You know, I just, I love that movie. I think the cast is perfect. I think it caught a bunch of people at really interesting parts of their arc. And then it is one of those things where the special effects are so good, you almost stop to notice them. There's points in this movie, especially if you see it a few times, where you stop thinking about them being the fact that they're dinosaurs in 2003. Because they look so real. They just work. They just look so good. |
| Tom Place | Jurassic Park, man. We actually had a line in this new season of Poker Face that's from Jurassic Park when they go clever, clever girl. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. |
| Tom Place | And I was like, oh, my gosh, they said they reference Jurassic Park. |
| James Stacy | It's also a sneakily good watch movie. There is a couple analog digital watches in there, like I think a Casio and possibly a UDT or something similar. I also think this is like peak movie for like industrial gear. All of the big switches that Ellie Sattler has to throw in the powerhouse on the other side of the park are like every one of those switches looks so expensive. They have incredible flashlights, like big flashlights, and they've got those. I probably still would would kill to have one of the walkie talkies. They looked like the cream of the crop walkie talkie. I just I love everything about this movie. It's great. |
| Jason Heaton | Alright, Tom, you got your second pick lined up? |
| Tom Place | Yeah, okay. For my second pick, I wanted to go with a Bond film. I know we're all Bond fans here, especially you, Jason. My first intro to Bond was when I was 10 and I went to the movie theaters with my parents to see Timothy Dalton's The Living Daylights. He was all I knew of Bond, I mean, basically until Goldeneye, where when I saw how Pierce Brosnan played Bond, I was like, why is he so goofy and silly? He's supposed to be this kind of darker, brooding character, because that's all I knew, Timothy Dalton. The Living Daylights. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's got, you know, chase scenes with with, you know, downhill skiers with machine guns, and you know, cellos, and it's got a sick, I think it's the Aston Martin V8 Volante, maybe one of the coolest cars, you know, still, you know, it's got a great chasing with that. And it's got you know, skiing, you know, skids and missiles. The Q gadgets are great. The guns are great. The plot is, you know, typical James Bond, but just one of my favorite, oh, it's got the, the car, the cargo net fight scene on an airplane. Oh yeah. It's got a little bit of, of absolutely everything. I think both of his Bond movies were great Bond movies, but the Living Daylights is one that I always go back to. And the watch tie-ins was, you, you could barely catch a glimpse of the Bond watch is the Tag Heuer Night Diver, which I think you only barely glimpsed in the beginning of the movie. But the general, I think his name was General Pushkin, wears what's called the Tag Heuer The Airline GMP. I don't know if you've ever seen this watch. I don't think so, no. I had never seen it until I Googled it. And it's a crazy looking watch. All the cities are like listed on the bracelet. It's a super cool tag that I've never seen, you know, anywhere else. It's never come up on all my Instagram. |
| James Stacy | Oh yeah, look at that. That is cool. |
| Tom Place | It's neat. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. So, uh, good. Yeah. |
| Tom Place | Yeah. Right. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. The living daylights. That's, that's number two. |
| James Stacy | I like this one quite a bit. And yeah, I thought Dalton always did a great job. I thought that the, I thought this was also the, his two movies were also really good. Like you mentioned great eras for Bond gadgets where they felt very intentional and almost like almost realistic. Not all not always but like closer than some of the other ones like if I remember correctly This is the one where he's in the vantage and he can fire the two rockets right out of the nose and he like blows a Transport truck out of the way. Yeah, like that's perfect. That's what I want the rockets for. I got to keep going. That's easy Yeah, it's great. It was perfect eighties gadgets. Yeah, it was awesome. So cool |
| Jason Heaton | great pick yeah and it's got one of the one of the better um pre what pre-title credit sequences as well in gibraltar which i i think sets the tone it feels very gritty like i think he's there training with like sas guys or whatever and then the parachute sequence you know Yeah. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. It's great. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And, and then, and then, I mean, let's not overlook the fact that there is a, I mean, this is one of the, it has one of the sneaky and surprisingly numerous depictions of a Land Rover in a Bond film. I mean, there's, there's been many over the years, which you always have to kind of look for, but there's that in Gibraltar where they're careening down this windy road. |
| James Stacy | Oh, that's where he's on top of it. And the guy shooting him through the soft roof. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And a series three military Land Rover. I mean, it's great. And then I think it goes off the edge of a cliff at one point, but. Yeah, no, it's great. And I'm parachuting onto a boat and he's got the night diver on. I mean, this is a great this is a great. |
| Tom Place | Yeah. And you know what? I don't want to I don't want to speak out of turn here, but I think in that opening sequence, there's a guy who looks like Roger Moore and they tell him like, like your time's up and they shoot him. And I it was almost like, yeah, to a new bond, you know, I think. I think I remember that. And then I was like, you know, Googling it. I'm gonna have to look it up. Maybe should have done a little research for it. That's great. That's a really good. That's a good sequence. |
| James Stacy | Obviously, this, like, I don't know this airline GMT, you might have started something of a new obsession this thing's i can't stop i might have to just change the tab go back to peter weir um the the the night diver like that a thousand a thousand pro pro thousand era of the tag heuer i i think those are on the like they're sleepers right now those are cool and they're so they feel so like of a moment that doesn't feel out of place now like especially on like a jubilee style bracelet and they made so many different versions but yeah there's just a very very cool watch that i think feels like it's it's feels more fresh now than it did a few years ago yeah Good one. All right, Jason. |
| Jason Heaton | What you got for your second second one? This is a movie. I also saw recently probably within the past few months and Wasn't even aware of it I'll just I'll just spit it out called warrior as I said from 2011 it is with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton with a very strong supporting role by Nick Nolte who plays their father their their their two brothers Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton's characters and |
| James Stacy | The youngest son of an alcoholic former boxer returns home where he is trained by his father for competition in a mixed martial arts tournament, a path that puts the fighter on a collision course with his estranged older brother. |
| Jason Heaton | I think the MMA, I don't really have much interest in MMA fighting, it just doesn't appeal, but I love Tom Hardy in anything and Edgerton is spectacular. Particularly in this in this movie. Nick Nolte is really solid, you know, he's one of those actors who You know back in the day I mean he had his string of hits and then he kind of Disappeared for a while and kind of was quote-unquote washed up and I think this was such a strong role for him fit him perfectly and I Don't know. There's an intensity to Tom Hardy that you see in most of his films, but in this one in particular he is a I mean, he's a scary guy in this movie. I mean, he has an intensity and this kind of brooding presentation that is just incredible. And then and then paired off against Edgerton. It's Yeah, it's it's a great movie. And it's got a great soundtrack. I actually came to this film Kind of in a backwards way. I'm sure you guys have done this as well where I had heard The closing credits are a song by the national called about today and it's a different version than I've heard before. It's it has more There's more instrumentation to it it kind of builds into the swell at the end that I really liked there's some kind of strings going on and whatever and and I remember hearing that on you know, Spotify or YouTube music or something and I it showed this movie poster cover for the song, and I was like, oh, what's this movie all about? Read about it, love Tom Hardy, love Joel Edgerton, and watched it, and I can't stop recommending it to people. It's really, really good. I feel like this one, I mean, have you guys both seen this movie? |
| James Stacy | Yeah, yeah. Back when it came out. I think it was one that got heat checked by... a couple other movies that came out at roughly the same time. Tom, what is the other, the one with Mark Wahlberg? The Boxer? That's not right. Am I thinking of a movie that doesn't, am I conflating two different movies at the same time here? Wasn't there another one about two boxers? |
| Jason Heaton | The Fighter. The Fighter. |
| James Stacy | 2010. So I think it kind of got heat checked by The Fighter, and I think this one didn't get the shine that it maybe deserved. This is interesting. I have an interesting little connective tissue thread to pull out here. Directed by Gavin O'Connor, who was an EP on a show that Tom worked on, The Americans. Did you ever cross paths with Mr. O'Connor? |
| Tom Place | I'm not sure. That was so long ago at this point. |
| James Stacy | I was just clicking around on IMDB and I was like, hey, hey, look at that. I know O'Connor because he did a movie with Ben Affleck a few years back called The Accountant. Oh, I love that movie. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Also a movie that I think got bad timing because I think it would have gotten much more attention. But I don't know. I've watched it a few times. For a little while, it was one of my favorite plane films. It was just always available on Air Canada. Yeah, I like that one. A goodie for sure. yeah the warrior good call all right so for my my second pick uh this is a movie that i actually knew nothing about in its era this is one of those movies that i found out because of the rewatchables where it was on you know in the list as i started to go back over that podcast kind of back catalog and i was like oh the edge it's a movie about some guys lost in the wilderness but there's also like about 10 other layers of plot on top of that but it is such an entertaining movie. It's a little goofy. Let me be fair. It's a little goofy. But I almost picked another movie that I love that has some great stunts called Cliffhanger. Oh, man, I almost picked that. |
| Tom Place | I almost picked that one as well. |
| James Stacy | Dude, Cliffhanger is awesome. And I was like, I think I need to do The Edge before Cliffhanger. just for comfort. The Edge is, I think, really a very uncommon but great movie. It's Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins, and basically they are involved in something of a love triangle with Anthony Hopkins, who plays like a billionaire, and his wife is maybe interested or is actively interested in Alec Baldwin, Alec Baldwin's a photographer, they're working together in like remote Alaska, there's a plane incident, they end up in the woods. And it's, it's just like a fairly interesting if a little bit of its era, story of like outdoor resilience, like you know surviving but at the same time are these two guys going to kill each other even as they try and keep each other alive for their like generalized survival i really like this movie it's one that i've watched uh a few times and it's got a great appearance by one of the more famous bears in the movie industry of that era uh bart the bear who i texted tom earlier as bruce got the name wrong yeah i'm going i don't know i don't know bruce the bear i don't know bruce is the shark and jaws bruce is the shark and jaws oh there it is there is bruce yeah yeah yeah oh and in finding nemo um but yeah bart the bear harold perrineau who i really love every time you see him he just like a good character actor he pops up and stuff uh Anthony Hopkins' wife is played by Elle McPherson. It's a pretty cool cast, but it's, you know, it's one of these movies that, like, starts out with a bunch of people and then, essentially, by the time you hit the second act, you're down to just a couple folks that the movie's going to focus on. And then it has an ending that you're just not ready for. It, to a certain extent, kind of defies logic, but it's still exciting, realistic. Let's not go there, necessarily. But I like this movie. It's, like I said, a little bit goofy, but I really enjoy it. Anthony Hopkins is great in it. This is a great movie, yeah. A great outdoor movie, yeah. Yeah, I didn't let you down with this. Oh, not at all. |
| Tom Place | No, it's great. And I think there's a there's a watch tie in Omega, right? |
| James Stacy | I believe so. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. Yeah. It's a good one. Have you seen this one, Jason? |
| Jason Heaton | I have not seen this one. No, I think I was, you know, I'm kind of picky when it comes to like realism in films. I kind of, I have trouble suspending, you know, my, my sense of reality when it comes to movies. And this one, I think the trailers maybe kind of turned me off a little bit, but then again, good actors and with your endorsement, I'll, I'll definitely have to check it out. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, I mean, this is a director, same guy, Lee Tamahori, who did Die Another Day. So I think that would kind of, it does kind of encapsulate his sort of general aesthetic, where it is, I would say hyper-realistic, but at the same time, like aesthetically, but then at the same time, you know, other things can happen. And he also worked on The Sopranos. What else have we got here? Yeah, I think that's kind of the stuff, XXX State of the Union. So, I mean, it's not all the edge. |
| Jason Heaton | Well, I see, I see that David Mamet wrote it and obviously, you know, he's, he's got, he's got a good long list of credits, uh, accomplishments. |
| James Stacy | So I don't want to be unfair to the edge. I think David Mamet might've been brought in to tune it up. I don't know that he wrote it from, from the ground up. It has the feeling of, of one of the dialogues, very good, but it's also, it has that knife edge cutting. We're like, would you say that to another human being? They would probably look at you like, are you, are you serious? Oh yeah. There's a lot of that kind of stuff. I like this movie. It's fun. Yeah, for sure. |
| Jason Heaton | All right, swinging back around to to the stuntman. |
| Tom Place | All right. Number three, I just kind of realized all my movies are are kind of in the same time frame. There's nothing recent. But so I'm a big Robert Redford fan. Love, you know, three days of the Condor, you know, spy game, which I couldn't pick. Both of these are on the list already. Uh, but this was another movie that I saw with my mom in the theater when I was a kid. Um, and I still watch it, you know, to this day, but it's a sneakers from 1992. They basically play, let's see, Robert Redford heads a group of security experts. They all have shady pasts, and they're hired by these two rogue government agents to find this special decoder box. And it's not quite a spy movie, but it definitely has that kind of spy espionage feel to it. The technology is very dated, but it's dated in like a charming sort of way that we could all remember, you know, when that was, you know, high-tech back then. Redford's as cool as ever. So, he wears this watch for the watch tie-in for the Granado folks out there, which you could tell that it's a Seiko, but I didn't, you know, know the reference. I had to send it to the restorian and his brother, Devin, and I checked with them and they knew immediately what it was, and it was the Seiko 78287049. So whatever that is, but it's a Seiko. But then when they do the closeup, you know, he checks the watch and they cut to a closeup. And because it's, you know, 1992 and they had Tag Heuer in every single movie, it's a tag on his wrist. Weirdly over the cuff. It's like such a weird, you know, second unit insert shot. But yeah, so everybody thinks that he wore a tag in the movie when he actually wore a Seiko for the entire thing, except for that one, you know, one second clip. But just a fun movie. It's got a great cast. Dan Aykroyd. Sydney Poitier, you know, Redford, like I said, River Phoenix. Ben Kingsley. Ben Kingsley, yeah. It's like loaded. And it's just a fun, just a fun movie. And yeah, you know, like I still enjoy watching it to this day. |
| James Stacy | Oh, it was an absolute like classic in the Stacey household growing up. We had this tape from cable on a VHS tape. And I remember as a kid, I remember that sequence when they have this black box and they're like matching terminals on the box to see what it does. And it decodes something classified and they go, wait, try traffic control or whatever. And he like type something in and test it and it decodes that. And they go like, so we have the key to the whole world. It's such a cool scene. It's that, oh, it's Jason Bourne scene. It unlocks this world, and it's so beautifully told. It's apparently my job in this episode to go over directors. This is Phil Alden Robinson, who you would know from Field of Dreams, and Some of All Fears, and at least one episode, I'm sure of, from Band of Brothers. I'm a fan for sure. And yeah, I think this is a great movie. This is a really good one. Sneakers is rad. I gotta be fair, it's been 20 years since I've seen it, so I need to loop back on this for sure. |
| Jason Heaton | I think it's been longer than that for me. I'd forgotten about this movie until I saw it on the list here. I mean, talk about a deep cast. I mean, you know, you were listing off a few names there, but you've got a lot of between these people and, and, um, you know, river Phoenix is in this. I mean, you know, it's just, uh, David Strathairn who's, who's just like, what has he been in lately? That guy was incredible. And he's an incredible actor. Yeah, really good pick. Another one to rewatch. That's what I love about the film club. It resurrects these long forgotten movies in my memory that I just then want to revisit. Because sometimes you get into this drought phase where it's like, OK, I'm only looking at more recent movies. And then we pop up with stuff from the 80s and 90s. And it's, yeah, can't forget about those decades. Good stuff. |
| James Stacy | All right, Tom. Yeah, that's a solid pick. And I just, you know, again, there was definitely weekends in my childhood where we did Jurassic Park and then sneakers for sure. Perfect. That's an absolute winner. So, Jason, what have you got for your third? Oh, this is another great one. Yeah, this is surprising that wasn't already on the list. Kind of like sneakers. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, this is one that I had discovered recently again, um, that I had never seen, um, but watched recently. And, um, you were familiar with this one, James, and we just talked about it recently on an episode, so I don't need to go into too much detail about it, but it's only lovers left alive. Um, Jim Jarmusch film from 2013 with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. And, you know, when I had mentioned this on a recent episode, I said that I'm kind of going through this vampire phase lately. Um, And this falls into that, although I think that undersells it to a certain degree. I think this movie is has very little to do with vampires in the conventional sense that most people think about when they think about a movie. So if that frightens you off from the movie, like, I'm not into horror or anything like that. It's definitely not Twilight. It is not that. It's not a horror movie. Or an interview with the vampire. No. Here's the brief description on IMDb. A depressed musician reunites with his lover. However, their romance, which has already endured several centuries, is disrupted by the arrival of her uncontrollable younger sister. And I mean the younger sister role is is great. Anyway, and this I think it adds this this interesting element to it and a character that I bet a lot of us can Most relate to everybody kind of knows somebody like this but I love that, you know, John Hurt is in this John Hurt has a amazing role in this movie and he's so good anyway, but You know Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. They play these roles. They fit them perfectly it jumps around between Detroit, which is is such an evocative city anyway. And I think, you know, it kind of fits perfectly. And then Tangier in North Africa, and it's, you know, kind of plays between the two locations. And it's just it's a beautifully done movie. Really, really |
| James Stacy | I think those two places are meant to highlight, much like the main characters, they had a previous era of excellence, and now they're just kind of, not wasting away, but kind of experiencing the malaise that comes after the peak, if you will. I mean, this also has Jeffrey Wright, who might be in most TGN Film Club movies. I'm just thrilled to see Jeffrey Wright, and if I made a movie, Jeffrey Wright would be in it. He would be in Death Charge, if I was able to direct it, for sure. And the late Anton Yelchin. who was in Green Room. I'm sure he's in at least one other TGN Film Club pick from the list. Yeah, killer cast. Really, really like this movie. We talked about it a couple episodes ago, but this is a winner. Especially, I would say this is a really good vampire movie for people like me who don't care about vampire movies at all. yeah definitely no no specific appeal for the genre but uh love the Jarmusch and it's you just always you don't really know what's going to happen from one scene to another it's great and the Jag XJS makes it makes a nice appearance but I mean you know and I it occurred to me as as we started this episode that this isn't exactly a stunt heavy movie I mean Tom as you're well aware and as I think is |
| Jason Heaton | As you've informed me or us or people in the past, stunts are not just the climbing under the truck stuff, it's everything. It can be a small scene where you're inserting a stunt person to do something like run across a room. In that respect, it obviously has stunts in it, but it's not a stunt heavy movie as we think about it. |
| Tom Place | Have you seen this one, Tom? I've never seen this one. I'm just looking at some photos. I don't think they could have picked better actors. They look like they might have been vampires. |
| James Stacy | I mean, look, jury's out on Tilda Swinton. She's not aging at all. Not as she could be. I don't think we've ever picked Constantine, but she has an incredible role in Constantine as the angel Gabriel. uh very strange very good movie that i like a lot i i have a such a soft spot for uh for keanu reeves uh yeah only lovers left alive a winner for sure um all right i'm gonna round out our nine picks for this episode with a movie that i watched definitely probably the day it came out back in 2018 and then kind of wrote it off as being sort of like a B-tier heist crime film. And since then, I've gone back a few times and every time I watch it, it goes up a grade. It's a little goofy. I can't put it in the triple frontiers, the heats, the town, that level, but it's just one below that. And it's got one of my favorite Gerard Butler performances of all time. The movie is from 2018. It's called Den of Thieves. and they just recently released a follow-up, Den of Thieves 2, Pantera. Worth watching if you love this genre of film, but also you probably would be okay if you skipped it. I love this genre of film, so I definitely watched it. I like this movie quite a bit. It's basically, I'll give you the tagline, an elite unit of... The best four starting words. An elite unit of the L.A. County Sheriff Department and the state's most successful bank robbery crew clash as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank. This movie is, I think, quite unexpected. At times, it feels almost like an indie film. Gerard Butler, I'm not sure, is always in the same film as everybody else. He's just doing his own thing, playing Big Nick. I'm a big fan. I like this a lot. It's got, like I said, Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, O'Shea Jackson Jr., 50 Cent carries this movie at times. he's just great uh he has very little to do and when he's on screen you can't you can't not look at him it's it's just a it's a it's a really fun cast the movie is incredibly violent as you might expect uh i like this movie it's fun it has a certain edge to it it and then it has a couple action elements uh and i was you know i sent tom i sent you a youtube clip uh because you said you hadn't seen the film um but it has a couple action elements that were kind of novel to me you know at one point uh there's a there's a scene i don't want to give anything away but there's a scene where the the crime has happened and they're now trying to get away and they get stuck in la traffic and you basically get sort of a love letter to that um border crossing scene in Sicario, where you've got two different people in two different parts of a stack of cars trying to feel each other out and then all hell breaks loose. And they really go hell breaks loose with a pretty gnarly gun. Again, I don't want to give too much away. It's a fun movie. If you're looking for kind of a shoot-em-up action heist film, I think this is a good one. It's got a great opening sequence, again, which feels like kind of a love letter to the first few minutes of Heat. with a robbery at a donut shop. And yeah, I like it. It's a good one. |
| Jason Heaton | I've never seen this one. And Tom, you haven't either, huh? |
| Tom Place | No, I haven't seen it. But after you sent me that scene, James, I definitely have to check it out. I do remember watching that first opening sequence and definitely thinking heat. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big it's a big one of those like international, not a transport truck, but like the same frame that would carry a dump truck. But it's a like a Brinks car or whatever. And it's this highly technical sort of robbery with like a grappling hook and that kind of thing. You know, I'm in and such a sucker. |
| Tom Place | Yeah. So I did. I'm saying before. you know, offline that I worked on a movie with Gerard Butler back in 2009 or 2010. And just like the coolest guy, the most down to earth guy, you know, this is like Mr. 300 and he's just the coolest guy. He would come out to the bars with us after we were done for the day and just get swarmed by women and then disappear for the rest of the night. We'd never see him again. But I'm going to have to check this one out. Yeah. I'm going to have to take a look. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, I look forward to whatever your report is, whether you love it or hate it. Famously, I suggested a movie which Heaton gave a chance and just hated it. Oh, Pig? Which one was that, Pig? Yeah, Pig. It was Pig. I watched it again recently. I stand by it. There's that one scene I wish they had removed, the fight sequence. |
| Tom Place | Yeah, that was just a crazy, like, wait, I don't understand what's happening. |
| James Stacy | The rest of the movie is awesome, I think. yeah but hey that's how it comes you can't like them all we've got 116 others or something for you here yeah but yeah den of thieves it's maybe one of the the the less sort of erudite options uh from from the list these days i know this isn't one you're picking i think this directors did a couple other gerard butler you know action films um but i i think this one came together nicely and i think it has some some merit again if you love the shoot them up heist action sort of genre, which is, you know, my home base. So yeah, there we go. So Tom, you picked 1981s Raiders of the Lost Ark and the 1987s The Living Daylights and finally sneakers a classic from 1992. Just a killer three. That's a great long weekend. You could clear one of those each day and have a pretty good time. Jason, you followed up with 1985's Witness, 2011's Warrior, and then 2013's Only Lovers Left Alive, and I closed out my three with Jurassic Park from 1993, 97's The Edge, and then finally 2018's Den of Thieves. That adds, I think, nine. Pretty solid. Nine movies I'm more than happy to watch, for sure. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. And it's we're in the depths of winter still. And I think I think these nine could just be like a good good week to hole up and just like just cue these up. I mean, this is a great for sure. Just almost do them in chronological order. I'm looking at the years we go from 81 up to 2018 for Den of Thieves. |
| James Stacy | But not a bad spread. We've had some big spreads before. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. We've gone back. We've fixed some old stuff and some really new stuff. |
| James Stacy | But yeah, this is good. Tom, this is really fun. Thanks for coming on and bringing three great movies. |
| Tom Place | Thanks for having me. It's fun. Yeah. |
| James Stacy | Feel like sticking around for some final notes? Keep you for a few more minutes? Let's do it. All right. Amazing. Well, I'm more than happy to have you go first if you'd like to offer up your pick. If you've got more than one, we can find you another slot as we move through it. |
| Tom Place | All right. Yeah, so I've got two. One's a podcast. Great. And one's a strap. I'll start with the strap, since you were saying that you've been going down the strap rabbit hole again. Oh yeah, let me know. All right. It's called Redux StrapCo. I found them a couple years ago. I think they started like 15 years ago, so they've been around. Oh, wow. Okay. It's a husband and wife, you know, business. The guy was a fighter pilot, you know, military veteran. But he makes a great, robust, single pass NATO with very nice titanium hardware. They got some leather, they got some quarter van. He's got some nice stuff. Yeah, this is looking real good. Really does. The nylon strap is a little bit long, which is great for me. It's going to fit over like a seven mil for me. Yeah. Easy. People with a little bit smaller wrist might have to, you know, trim it up a bit, but you know, it's a, it's, you know, nylon. We all know how to do that. So, uh, yeah, that's my first one. I've just been very happy. |
| Jason Heaton | I've got. Look at the synthetic. Do you have the, it looks like a rubber or something. Do you have one of those? |
| Tom Place | I don't have one of the, no, I have, um, uh, I don't even know what they're called anymore. I've had them for a while. They're both nylon. Nylon with titanium hardware the ones I have and then I have a leather one the quarter van The stamped quarter van one. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, you've just cost me a bunch of money tom Dude, this that's the plan. |
| James Stacy | I I don't know if it's supposed to be x therm x term extrm Yeah, hypalon synth strap with titanium hardware. Also, the prices are really reasonable because i'm looking at them in canadian That's a titanium strap with a yeah, this is cool. All right, this is good stuff rdx straps Solid shout out. Order or expect possibly two orders. One to Minneapolis, one to Toronto. This is very cool. Got a paratrooper strap for 57 with titanium hardware. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James Stacy | It's good price. Again, 57 Canadian. That's like 40 bucks. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, and I feel like my, you know, I mentioned earlier that I often don't like to wear straps that mix brands, but I think another one of my strange quirks is I try to match the hardware material with the watch case material as much as I can. And, you know, for some reason wearing, you know, a lot of steel hardware with this like CWN1 watch with the titanium or with the FXD, it just kind of niggles my brain a little bit. So like, I love these titanium options. |
| James Stacy | This is super cool. Yeah, this is killer. Good pick, man. I love it. All right, I have two. So I'll go next, then we'll do Jason, then we can do another Tom, and then we can close on on a final for me. So first up for me is actually something I realized I've been using basically since a colleague told me about it, but I hadn't talked about it. And it's an AI, I'm kind of dubious about AI, but I'm trying to keep an open mind, especially about ways that it can make certain things a lot easier. And this is called perplexity. And it's an AI search engine that basically you ask it a question, it goes to the internet, it comes back with essentially like a Wikipedia page that's fully sourced. But you can go really granular. Like you can say, what's the difference between a 5513 and a 5512? And it can tell you. And it'll give you lists and each one you can click on and go read the article. But let's say you just wanted to know like, what year did a Rolex switch from a matte to a glossy dial or a glossy to a matte dial? It can probably figure that out. I'm currently in the in the world of Tom, we spoke very briefly the last time we saw each other in New Hope about your GX, because I'm in the market for a three row SUV. And I started to narrow it down to like eight or nine different Toyota products. And I was like, what is the difference between these? And like, dude, you can get so great, like you can give it a list of cars and be like, tell me the difference in dimensions, external and external. And it'll say, this one's the most roomy, but this one's the most roomy in the third row, but this one is the largest to park. It's the coolest. I don't use Google. I use this constantly. It's the default search engine that I'm using, like the main tab I would go into to search on my computer. And I now use the app on my phone as well. Your results may vary. I find this exceedingly useful. |
| Jason Heaton | Hmm. I'll give it a go. It looks interesting. |
| James Stacy | All right, Jason, your turn. What have you got for us? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. So, um, as I've mentioned in the past, I'm a, I'm a big, uh, have been a big fan of the band, the police since way back since my high school days. And, um, I, I've, I consider Stuart Copeland to be like one of the greatest drummers of all time. And he also has this very, Well, here's an interesting backstory. His father was in the CIA and actually was friends with Kim Philby, the famous double agent with the MI6 back in the 60s. But that's a bit of a tangent. But Copeland has this He has a very wry, sort of irreverent way of talking about his time with the police, and he doesn't take himself too seriously. And on top of that, he's just a spectacularly talented drummer. And so I follow him on Instagram, and he was kind of promoting his appearance recently on this platform on YouTube called Drumeo, which you might be familiar with. As the name suggests, it's kind of all about drumming culture and does interviews with well-known drummers and that sort of stuff. And he was on that recently, and there's a particular hour-long video or episode on YouTube called The Police Grooves and Fills Stuart Copeland. And he's sitting there with the host, they're discussing various songs that he performed on over the years with the police, and then he'll just start riffing, just start drumming along as they're playing the track. And then he's kind of explaining as he goes. And it's just mesmerizing to me. I just think he's so good. And as someone who is largely unmusical, particularly when it comes to drumming, I find watching a talented drummer just mesmerizing that, you know, the, the, the coordination, the footwork and, and, you know, he, he uses this huge drum kit that, that just looks so intimidating and he just makes it look not effortless, but, um, yeah, it's, it's just great. So if you're, if you're a fan of, of drummers and of Stuart Copeland in particular, I mean, this is just a great, great video. |
| James Stacy | And is Drumeo like a media platform? Like they have a channel and you could follow it and learn about all sorts of drummers, or it's more like Ultimate Guitar or something like that? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, they do that. And a lot of their stuff is actually paywalled. This one wasn't. But yeah, it is a channel. Kind of like a while back, I think I had a final note with Rick Bito or Beato. I don't know how he pronounces his name, but he does those interviews with well-known musicians. Yeah, I've watched a couple. They're really good. Yeah, but yeah, Drumeo is specifically focused on the drumming lifestyle and drummers. And they had a series of videos with Phil Collins, another great drummer from the kind of similar era. But a lot of that was paywalled that I couldn't access without a subscription. And I'm not quite ready to pony up for that. So I was really pleased to see this Copland one just available. So it's good. |
| James Stacy | Tom, do you drum or play any instruments? |
| Tom Place | Uh, I started playing guitar. No, I'm going to say no. I've, I've attempted. |
| James Stacy | You're like me. You, you, you know, some chords. Yeah. Yeah. |
| Tom Place | I know some chords. I can play like one song. |
| Jason Heaton | You're somewhere between James and me. I know nothing. |
| Tom Place | And James does a lot, a lot more stuff. But, but, uh, yeah, my, my answer is, is no, no. |
| James Stacy | You know, you meet people who are good enough and have the confidence to like learn something and then do it in front of other people. I was good enough to get right up to that line. I had really no business ever doing this. But personally, like mentally, it was a nice healthy hobby. When I did, I felt the same way about piano. But yeah, drumming is one of those things I wish I'd have no natural rhythm, none. It's hopeless. It's probably why I'm not much of a guitar player, to be fair. But yeah, I wish I had it. |
| Jason Heaton | Well, and drumming almost feels separate from other musicianship, doesn't it? It feels like a whole other language. It's the feel, man. Chords and melody and whatever. How do you do all four? Yeah, it's incredible. Anyway, check this out. It's good stuff. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, that's great. Good pick. Alright, Tom, you want to give us your second? |
| Tom Place | Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a quick shout out to the Form and Function podcast. We all know Ken Wick from Arc and Watches, you know, the baddest dude in the watch business. And yeah, James and Philip, we have Philip on the Slack. But it's just a fun, it's not all watches, it's gear, like they just had a full clothing episode. It's... Yeah, that was a good episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, 90, 95% of the podcasts I listen to in my car are TGN. And then there's form and function. And then there's a couple other that I listen to, you know, sporadically. But yeah, I just wanted to give them a quick shout out because I just enjoy, you know, what they're doing. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, I agree. Form and function is great. We love Ken. But the whole that whole team brings just a great show together. And if you want something that I think it complements TGM, but it's an entirely different like perspective. These guys are so dialed. |
| Jason Heaton | I have not heard of this. And I, you know, I know two of these guys. I mean, I met Phil. Phil ran the fan dance incredibly fast last year. Oh yeah, he crushed it. Yeah. And he's also, he's also really into motorcycles. You probably know that, but he's hardcore. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. Great way to fill time for a dog walk. Yeah, for sure. Shout out Ken. You are on the list for people we will be bothering to get on the show ASAP, especially now that we finally crossed the Tom Place River, which is, which is good. Alright, I've got one last one. Not a surprise to anybody who tracks my taste in music, but Bon Iver launched his most recent EP. It is called Everything is Peaceful Love, and I've basically had it on loop since it came out. I can't tell one song, there's five tracks on the album, I can't tell them apart. They kind of blend. There's one that's clearly a hit, and the other four are like, 22 a million style like noise, which I really like. There's some incredible horn work on it. I don't know how many final notes on TGN over the last 300 and however many episodes have been Bon Iver, but it's a number that's escaping zero at an alarming rate. I love this. I'm super thrilled. It will eventually be part of a new album, which I think is called Saber Faber or something like that. Something in that vibe, but yeah, again, if you really like early Bon Iver, I don't think this will work necessarily. I still think give it a chance, but if you're expecting it to be like Skinny Love or stuff like that, it's the more modern vibe that he has. But if you listen to, say, 22 A Million and enjoyed it, this feels like an extension of that. And man, if you need an excuse to warm up a good set of speakers, this is one way to go about it than just the really nicely produced track. That's my second for the week. And look, we got nine movies and five final notes. This is a high value episode, Tom. You're really kind of extending what people are paying for with this free episode. Go big or go home, right? Yeah, right. That's great, man. And we've crested the hour and a half mark. That's impressive. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, we sure did. One of the longer ones. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. When we trim out some of my rambling, we'll hit a rebuttal 120. The other day I cut like seven minutes of me. I don't know why I went on. I was just on like a it wasn't even a rant. I was just rambling. It was coherent. I think like I edited it, but you don't have to cut anything out like we love. |
| Tom Place | the long episodes. I think Jason can attest that sometimes I go for a while. The longer the better. People will love this one. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, I definitely hope people enjoy it. Look, before we get into the absolute final outro here, Tom, just a huge thank you. Not just for coming on the show, but for being part of the crew. showing up to stuff obviously we've hung out at everything from you know Chicago and New Hope and that sort of thing. You know you've been a supporter for a long time and something I haven't talked about but it was months ago you wrote me kind of like a wellness check Very few people in my life do this. Maybe you caught on that I was feeling stressed or whatever and you wrote me and had some nice kind of supportive things to say and you're an absolute sweetheart and you're also a hard-working guy. You're, you know, so deep down the rabbit hole of a lot of things that we all kind of share and love and you have always been kind of a voice of reason. And I always know when my phone dings and it's a message from you, I'm either going to get like a really cool BTS story about something I got wrong on the pod or you're checking in on how workouts are going or something like that. And it's a pleasure to know you as you, but it's also a pleasure just to have you on the show as kind of the Tom Place persona. So thank you so much. Very kind. Thank you. I appreciate that. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. I echo the same. And Tom, you know, you've surprised me by flying out to Minneapolis for my book signing event a couple of years ago and, uh, you've checked in on me as well. And, and yeah, you've always just been, you've given me rides to the wind up in a lake. So, you know, hats off and we'll do it again this summer. |
| Tom Place | We'll do it again. |
| Jason Heaton | If you need a ride, I'm there. I, yeah, we'll do that. Oh, that's right. Cause you couldn't make it last year. |
| Tom Place | No, no. So hopefully this year, yeah, the plan is to road trip out there again, and you'll be able to dive with everybody soon. Awesome. |
| James Stacy | Fantastic. Cool. Well, hey, as always, thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode and maybe even consider supporting the show directly, which could get you a new TGN signed NATO, please visit TheGreyNATO.com. Music throughout is of course, Siesta by JazzArt via the free music archive. |
| Jason Heaton | And we leave you with this quote from Joseph L. Mankiewicz who said, the difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense and life doesn't. |