Tony Maietta [00:01:09]:
Hello. I'm film historian Tony Maietta.

Brad Shreve [00:01:36]:
And I'm Brad Shreve, who's just a guy who likes movies.

Tony Maietta [00:01:39]:
We discuss movies and television from Hollywood's golden age. We go behind the scenes and share our opinions, too.

Brad Shreve [00:01:46]:
And of course, being the average guy, my opinions are the ones that matter.

Tony Maietta [00:01:51]:
As does your self delusion. Welcome to going Hollywood. Brad, let me ask you a question. How long can you hold your breath? Let me. Do me a favor. Try it now, because I tell you what. I was the underwater swim champ of Meadville, Pennsylvania. I can hold my breath for 2 minutes and 47 seconds.

Tony Maietta [00:02:13]:
Time him, somebody. Time him.

Brad Shreve [00:02:15]:
I'm not even going to try because I cannot hold my breath very long.

Tony Maietta [00:02:18]:
Well, then you know you're not trained to do this like I am. I am trained to do this. Please let me help out. Please.

Brad Shreve [00:02:24]:
Every time I've had surgery, they almost backed out because of my breathing. So. No, I trust you are. You are. You'll be able to swim 30, 35ft.

Tony Maietta [00:02:33]:
What was it in the water? I'm a very skinny lady. I'm a very skinny lady above the water, too. Well, everybody, it's week two of our twin disaster movies. And if you haven't figured it out yet, by that very pithy little opening, we are talking about the Poseidon Adventure from 20th Century Fox in 1972.

Brad Shreve [00:02:59]:
And Tony, I have. Before we begin talking about Poseidon Adventure, I have got to make a clarification about something that was said last week.

Tony Maietta [00:03:07]:
Oh, okay.

Brad Shreve [00:03:08]:
You said it was a movie I picked out and let me. Let me take you back in time. I one day said, you know what? Maybe we should do a month of disaster films. And you were like. Right away you said, oh, that's a great idea.

Tony Maietta [00:03:20]:
So.

Brad Shreve [00:03:21]:
So we started planning, like, what are we going to do? We talked about the different films and we said, we have to do Airport. It was the first. And I preferred Poseidon Adventure, and I think you preferred Towering Inferno. Well, then we decided not to do a whole month. We were like, maybe we won't we weren't sure we were going. Yeah, we weren't even sure we were going to do any. And then I. It was either on the phone or in an email.

Brad Shreve [00:03:42]:
You said, I just watched Airport. Let's do Air Airport. Do you remember that?

Tony Maietta [00:03:51]:
Well, okay.

Brad Shreve [00:03:55]:
And I thought. When you saw that, I thought, oh, it must be a great film. It's been so long since I saw it.

Tony Maietta [00:03:59]:
You may have.

Brad Shreve [00:04:00]:
And then, because when we started this show, you said, I don't want to do movies I don't like because that's not any fun. And I'm like, well, there's lots of shows that do bad movies, but you chose to do a bad movie. Why? Why was that? Because it was the first.

Tony Maietta [00:04:11]:
Okay, wait a minute. I don't. I didn't say I didn't like Airport. I didn't say that it was a bad movie. I said it was a different kind of movie, I don't think. And that's interesting you're bringing this up right now, because my feelings are, even though Airport is called the granddaddy of all disaster films, I really feel this film, the Poseidon Adventure, is the really, the father of disaster films. Don't you think so?

Brad Shreve [00:04:34]:
Yeah, I agree 1000%. This is the real first disaster film that I know about. Think of San Francisco back. I don't know when that was. That was a pretty big disaster film. What, in the 30s or 40s? That was a great film.

Tony Maietta [00:04:46]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Spencer Tracy and Jeanette McDonald and Clark Gable. Yes. However, this is the first one with the All Star. This at the template, the All Star cast Disaster. This one happens, and I timed it. This one happens 30 minutes inside this movie. This ship is upside down.

Tony Maietta [00:05:03]:
So it's. It's pretty quick. You get just enough wonderful exposition. The thing about Airport, and I don't want to rehash what we did last week, but as we said about Airport, it doesn't. It just feels like a drama which just happens to have a saboteur on a plane.

Brad Shreve [00:05:18]:
Yes.

Tony Maietta [00:05:19]:
But it doesn't feel like a disaster movie. This, to me. And also because it was created by someone who became to be known as the master of disaster, Mr. Irwin Allen himself. This really feels like the ultimate grandfather of disaster films.

Brad Shreve [00:05:37]:
And if you look at some of the TV shows that he produced in the 60s, he was the master disaster way before this film came out.

Tony Maietta [00:05:45]:
He was Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space.

Brad Shreve [00:05:50]:
Hey, I loved Lost in Space.

Tony Maietta [00:05:51]:
Land of the Giants.

Brad Shreve [00:05:51]:
Yeah. The Time Machine, which was pretty bad. And, oh, My God. Land of the Giants. Yeah, it was awful.

Tony Maietta [00:05:57]:
Yeah, Irwin Allen was quite a character and I'm excited to talk about him. But I think what I love about the Poseidon Adventure and you know, watching it again, I just. First of all, there are 15 frickin Oscar winners in this film. It's amazing. And depending upon what level of Oscar winner you were, that was when you got dispatched, basically, you know what I mean? But there were also. Not only were there, you know, Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson and Red Buttons and Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine Oscar winners, and also, you know, Sterling Sullivan who wrote the screenplay, it goes on and on and on, the number of Oscar winners. In fact, when Gene Hackman won his Oscar for the French Connection, which happened while they were filming this, they gave him a big cake and they all came together. I don't know.

Tony Maietta [00:06:47]:
There's a famous picture of them all with their Oscars and Gene Hackman with his Oscar. Have you seen that?

Brad Shreve [00:06:52]:
No, I haven't.

Tony Maietta [00:06:53]:
It's a fun picture. It's a fun picture. So, yeah, this, this. If Death on the Nile was a boatload of dames, the Poseidon Adventure is a boatload of Oscar winners. That's probably why it capsized. Too many damn Oscars in this ship.

Brad Shreve [00:07:10]:
And you know, I, I've stated many times I don't like comparing the originals to the remakes. Well, well, we did it with A Star is Born, right? I am going to Talk about the 2006 remake Poseidon here and there because it's not just a comparison of these two movies. It's going to be comparison between disaster films of all and disaster films of new.

Tony Maietta [00:07:31]:
Well, you're on your own with that because. Okay, hold on to your phones. I've never seen the remake.

Brad Shreve [00:07:36]:
Be grateful.

Tony Maietta [00:07:38]:
I kind of am. I kind of am. You know, yes, I am a film historian, but historian is the word in there. I don't. I have no desire to see a new film based on a film that I love so much. And I really do love this film. I was thinking about it, you and I said, I also love Towering Inferno. I go back and forth, but watching this again.

Tony Maietta [00:07:55]:
And the reason I love this film so much is the humor. This film has so much humor. All the humor that's lacking in Airport is in this film. And I think that is. And not only humor, camp. There's so much camp. I was thinking, what is the definition of camp? You know, everyone always wants to know what that is. And here's your answer.

Tony Maietta [00:08:15]:
Stella Stevens and Pamela Sue Martin, swimming in high heels is your definition of camp.

Brad Shreve [00:08:21]:
I was defending them for that because they climbed up a lot of things that would have been hard with bare feet.

Tony Maietta [00:08:26]:
Shelly Winters kicked off her shoes. She did. She was trained to do this. She's trained. She loved the way she does the divers stance. And then she just dives. That's a pretty damn good dive.

Brad Shreve [00:08:37]:
Damn good dive.

Tony Maietta [00:08:38]:
Well, she trained. She trained for two months with a, with a scuba diver to do that scene. And she also, allegedly, Johnny Weissmuller was, was her swimming instructor back in Brooklyn back in the day. But anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. We're getting themselves. So I'm glad we're doing Poseidon Adventure. Brad. I think it's, I think it's a wonderful way to really set the tone for this whole disaster film genre.

Tony Maietta [00:09:03]:
And it's also our last one, our first one, and our last one. And as many people probably know this, maybe they don't, but there were two Oscar wins. This movie was nominated for nine Oscars. Nine. One of which was Shelley Winters as Best supporting Actress. Now, she won the Golden Globe, but she didn't win the Oscar. But it also won Best Song, which is a very, very, very, very overplayed song in the movie. It's called the Song from Poseidon Adventure, which is kind of interesting, but everybody else in the world knows it as the Morning After.

Tony Maietta [00:09:39]:
And of course, the song that everybody Hears was recorded by Maureen McGovern. Maureen McGovern does not sing it in this film. But did you know the song was originally called why Must There Be a Morning After? Not There's Got to Be a Morning After.

Brad Shreve [00:09:53]:
No, I didn't know that. And actually, I was quite surprised watching this. That was a Maureen McGovern, because I remembered that it was.

Tony Maietta [00:09:59]:
No, it wasn't. It was, you know, allegedly sung by Carol Lindley, but it was actually dubbed by a singer named Rene Armand. But, yeah, the song was originally called why Must There Be a Morning After? But the record company thought that was much too depressing. And so it became There's Got to Be a Morning After. But, you know, I, I. Which begs the question, why. Why has there got to be a morning after? You know, there's not a morning after for a lot of people on this ship. There's six people.

Tony Maietta [00:10:26]:
There was a morning after. So that we know of. Obviously, this is a fictional story, but, you know, I'm taking it one step further. So why did you. You wanted to do this film, Brad? What is it about this movie that. That you love that. Made you want to. Want it to be one of our choices for our disaster film little mini festival.

Brad Shreve [00:10:43]:
Because there was a great cast. And not just a great cast, great characters. Characters that I liked. Characters that I hated. The ones I hated, I liked hating.

Tony Maietta [00:10:55]:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve [00:10:56]:
So it wasn't just a disaster. The disaster was great, especially for 1972, when you consider all these were practical effects. Wow.

Tony Maietta [00:11:03]:
Amazing.

Brad Shreve [00:11:04]:
So you have this great disaster film on top of great characters that I cared about whether they lived or died.

Tony Maietta [00:11:11]:
Yeah. Great, great special effects. And you're absolutely right. All done and not done. There's no CGI here, folks. There was no CGI back then. And on a budget of $5 million, that's what's remarkable to me. Incredible special effects.

Tony Maietta [00:11:25]:
And it was $5 million. And we'll talk about the whole budgeting snafu, because that was a whole thing. But I think that, you know, you talked a bit about the characters. Yes. All the humor that's lacking in the characters in Airport is in this film. Most all of these characters are engaging characters. They're funny characters, they're frustrating characters. There's evil characters, there's good characters, but they're characters as opposed to the archetypes we saw in Airport.

Tony Maietta [00:11:54]:
And I think that's what I really enjoy about this. And it only takes them 30 minutes to set up these characters and their stories. It doesn't take them the two hours it takes an Airport to get this movie going. So since we're talking about this, do we want to talk a little bit about the background in Irwin Allen, the master of disaster, and how this all came about?

Brad Shreve [00:12:13]:
Sure. I brought up some of the shows that he did in the 60s. Like you said, we did Lost in Space, which I don't know how much you watched Lost in Space in the first season, especially the first half of the season. First season, the special effects weren't that great. It was the 60s, but it was a damn good show. And then it turned camp. Yes. And.

Brad Shreve [00:12:36]:
And Dr. Smith turned from this very well done evil character, almost too evil, to about the most campy thing that ever happened on television.

Tony Maietta [00:12:45]:
Yes.

Brad Shreve [00:12:46]:
Then you had the Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants. And then this was, as far as I know now, you may know earlier, this, to me, was the first big movie. And then we had the Swiss Family Robinson not long after this, which I loved as a kid. I don't know if it's really a good film, the Swarm, which is one of the worst, but fun worst disaster films with killer bees. Back when everybody Thought killer bees was going to destroy the whole country.

Tony Maietta [00:13:10]:
Big thing. Yeah.

Brad Shreve [00:13:11]:
And sadly, very sadly, he did. Beyond the site, the Poseidon Adventure, which I only watched about half. I couldn't take any more.

Tony Maietta [00:13:19]:
We'll get to it. We'll get to that. Yeah. That's the first. Well, you also forgot the big, big, big, big, big one. The big one in there. This is the Tower Inferno.

Brad Shreve [00:13:26]:
Oh, I thought I did okay. Yeah.

Tony Maietta [00:13:28]:
A movie so big it needed two studios. That is how big the Towering Inferno was. So when you think about it, you think about, here's a movie at one studio for 5 million and it was such a tremendous success that the sequel, if you will, the air quote sequel, the Towering Inferno, the budget was so huge, it was such a big project, they had to. There were two studios who made it. So that. That's kind of interesting. He really exploded or went on and he did. He began as a film and TV producer.

Tony Maietta [00:13:56]:
He worked for 20th Century Fox. But then when they started. When Fox started to downscale after the disaster of Cleopatra, he switched to television. But he always wanted to come back to film. He always wanted to come back to film. And, you know, Irwin Allen, we know it now. It makes sense. He's been compared to P.T.

Tony Maietta [00:14:13]:
barnum, Cecil B. DeMille, because his motto was give me more and make it bigger. I don't necessarily disagree with that. I think that's a pretty good model to have. But he really wanted to move back to film and he found this bestseller he wanted to make into a film. And it's. It was called the Poseidon Adventure and it was written by Paul Gallico. And in the novel.

Tony Maietta [00:14:37]:
Did you know this, Brad? And again, I don't. Are we still doing spoiler alerts? Sometimes I throw one out, sometimes I don't. I don't remember.

Brad Shreve [00:14:45]:
But I. It's hit or miss.

Tony Maietta [00:14:48]:
Who hasn't seen this movie if you haven't seen this movie? Come on. So turn us off if you haven't. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So in the book, the Poseidon Adventure, the ship sinks, it doesn't float, which I think is really interesting. So he purchased the. He purchased the film rights to the book. He made it his next fight. He went to FOX to finance it and they were kind of reluctant and they okayed the budget of 5 million.

Tony Maietta [00:15:13]:
Now, for comparison here, way back when, we had our what's Up Doc? Episode last season. Do you happen to remember what I'm really putting to the test here? Do you remember what the budget for what's Up Doc? Was.

Brad Shreve [00:15:26]:
I don't.

Tony Maietta [00:15:28]:
4 million. Oh, 1 million of which went to the chase. Yeah, I believe so. You, you have a comedy that is budgeted at 4 million and you have a disaster movie which is budgeted at 5. So this is how much, how little, rather Fox believed in this film. But he was determined to do it and he had a cast in mind. Do you know any of these first choices that he had by any chance?

Brad Shreve [00:15:54]:
No, that I don't.

Tony Maietta [00:15:55]:
So he originally wanted. Guess who he wanted to play Reverend Scott. Not too hard to figure out. Think about our last episode. Who do you suppose he wanted to play Bert? It wasn't Dino.

Brad Shreve [00:16:04]:
Bert Lancaster.

Tony Maietta [00:16:06]:
Yeah, to play Bert. I'm sorry, I just gave it away, didn't I?

Brad Shreve [00:16:09]:
But that's all right. I was. That's who I was going to say anyway.

Tony Maietta [00:16:12]:
Yeah, he wanted Burt Lancaster, but Burt Lancaster says, not another piece of crap. No, thank you. Here's one that you, you kind of are lukewarm about. You know who he wanted for the Red Buttons part? He originally wanted Gene Wilder.

Brad Shreve [00:16:25]:
Ah, interesting.

Tony Maietta [00:16:27]:
Maybe he just wanted a ginge. Do you think? He just wanted the ginge. And so since Gene Wilder said no, he went, all right, who's the other ginger actor? Oh, Red Buttons, let's do that. Petula Clark he wanted for the role of Nani, that annoying character, and she said no. So we got Carol Lindley and this is what he did. And this is what kind of set the template for this. And they did it a little bit in Airport too. He looked to older actors who were still very.

Tony Maietta [00:16:54]:
Who were still held in very high esteem. Hello. We said 15 Oscars. Obviously those weren't all actors, but these were. Was a huge Oscar winning cast, but who were on their way down. Gene Hackman was the only air quotes hot actor in this film at that time. This film was made now this was.

Brad Shreve [00:17:11]:
Before the French Connection, right?

Tony Maietta [00:17:13]:
Did. No, the French Connection happened and then this happened. And while he was filming this film, he won the Oscar for French Connection, which is great. You want an actor who's. Who's, while they're making your movie, wins an Oscar because that's immediate. That's another, you know, $20 million in box office.

Brad Shreve [00:17:30]:
And I think you told me that already earlier. But okay, yeah, it.

Tony Maietta [00:17:33]:
That's all right. I don't mind repeating myself. So who else do we have? Do you want to. Do you want to. You want to list off some of these cast members here and I'll tell you a little bit about them once we, once they come up because it's quite. Quite a roster of people here.

Brad Shreve [00:17:46]:
In addition to Gene Hackman, we had Ernest Borgnine, who played Rogo, a police detective. They kind of never really say if he's still a detective or not, but, no, he retired.

Tony Maietta [00:17:56]:
He retired because he and his wife, who we'll get to, are now going around the world.

Brad Shreve [00:18:02]:
Yes.

Tony Maietta [00:18:03]:
On trips.

Brad Shreve [00:18:03]:
Speaking of his wife, Linda Rogo, that was the Stella Stevens, the most delightful, fun loving character in the film.

Tony Maietta [00:18:10]:
Linda.

Brad Shreve [00:18:12]:
Linda, my favorite character, who I loved and adored. Shelly Winters as Belle Rosen, Grandmother.

Tony Maietta [00:18:20]:
Belle.

Brad Shreve [00:18:20]:
Belle, Grandmother. Going to see her grandchildren for the first time. And Jack Albertson, who I also really enjoy. Manny Rosen is her husband. Then we had Red Buttons as Martin. He was just a single guy on the ship. Roddy McDowell, who is funny after the big success of Planet of the Apes, granted, he had makeup on the whole time that he had kind of a relatively small role for the main cast.

Tony Maietta [00:18:45]:
Roddy, can I tell you how much I love. Go ahead.

Brad Shreve [00:18:48]:
He was a server in the restaurant there on the ship.

Tony Maietta [00:18:52]:
Yeah, he was. He was. I think he was Irish.

Brad Shreve [00:18:54]:
Yep.

Tony Maietta [00:18:54]:
Can I tell you how much I love the fact that we're talking about a film that has Roddy. You know, Roddy was basically every great movie star's best gay boyfriend. I mean, he. Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara, Judy, Lauren Bacall, Debbie Reynolds, Montgomery Clift, they all loved Roddy. And listener, if you have an opportunity, go on YouTube and just type in Roddy McDowell, Summerhouse or Roddy McDowell, Malibu 60s. There are some wonderful footage. Roddy had wonderful Sunday afternoon parties at his Malibu beach house. And there are home movies of it.

Tony Maietta [00:19:31]:
Now there's no sound, but they're so glorious because you're gonna see from 1965, you're gonna see Judy Garland, you're gonna see Rock Hudson, you're gonna see Jane Fonda, Julie Andrews, Natalie Wood. I mean, it's unbelievable. Lauren Bacall. It's just so thrilling for me to. That's my fantasy, to go back to that. To that beach house. And Roddy's adorable, too. But I love the fact that we're talking about a film that has Roddy McDowell, because Roddy McDowell is a great unsung hero of classic Hollywood, in my opinion.

Brad Shreve [00:20:00]:
I agree with you. I agree with you. So to round out the cast, we had the Carol Lindley. I don't know why she didn't win an Oscar. She's one of the best actresses I've ever seen in my life. I just felt sorry throughout the whole film.

Tony Maietta [00:20:15]:
Oh, God. I'm like, what are you going to. But what are you going to do with that part, Nonnie? The name tells. Oh, God. My character's name is Nani.

Brad Shreve [00:20:23]:
And rounding out the cast we have Pamela Sue Martin, Leslie Nielsen, back when he did drama roles. And the most. Most obnoxious child in movie history, Eric Shea as Robin. And I don't. I've never read the novel. I almost certain my dad told me that Robin drowns. Remember the scene where the. He was saved when.

Brad Shreve [00:20:46]:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure my dad said that he drowned at that moment. I'm like, oh, that would have been much better.

Tony Maietta [00:20:52]:
Missed opportunity there. Sterling silver to make him live. Yeah, he's quite annoying. Eric o'. Shea. It's funny. He. He was.

Tony Maietta [00:20:59]:
He would just started doing films. He was in Yours, Mine and Ours, which was a Lucille ball film from 68, which was a big hit. He played one of her kids and he was also in a bunch of TV shows in the 60s and 70s. But, you know, his two brothers voiced the character of Linus in the peanut specials of the 60s. So when you're watching a Peanuts, you think, that sounds like the kid from the Poseidon Adventure. Close. It's his brothers. It's his brothers.

Brad Shreve [00:21:23]:
I knew they did that. I never caught that. The voices were similar. I have to think about. Because Linus was my favorite.

Tony Maietta [00:21:28]:
When you think about Linus a little bit about the. Yeah, but just to swing back on some of these people. Stella Stevens, Dear God. I think this is probably her. The other role she's best known for is the Nutty professor, you know, but she did a lot of TV. She was a playmate of the month in 1960. And it's funny because Irwin Allen asked her if she'd read the book and she said no. And he said, good, because in the book people hate your character and we don't want that.

Tony Maietta [00:21:55]:
We want you to be funny. And Stella Stevens is so funny in this. The relationship between Stella and Ernest Borgnine, who play husband and wife. He was a cop, she was a hooker. And he arrest. He kept arresting her to keep her off the street. And of course they ended up married. So it's very funny.

Tony Maietta [00:22:13]:
It's very combative. It's very, very much what they're doing is a 70s version of Wallace Beery and Gene Harlow in dinner at 8. Now, I don't think you've probably ever seen. Have you ever seen Dinner at Eight, Brad?

Brad Shreve [00:22:25]:
No, I haven't.

Tony Maietta [00:22:26]:
Classic film from 33. We should talk about Dinner at Eight sometime but it's very combative. But it's very funny. She's very much the loudmouth, kind of classless dame, and he's also very classless. But they suddenly have money in dinner day. Very, very similar kind of combative situation. Combative, loving situation. One of my favorite.

Tony Maietta [00:22:49]:
One of my favorite lines is after the ship capsizes and they're all like looking around for each other and she's there with Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine comes up behind her and she turns and she says, where the hell have you been, you? He says, what do you think? Flying around on my ass. They're great together.

Brad Shreve [00:23:09]:
That line made me laugh. I got, I gotta tell you, as I liked. I liked every character. I even liked their characters. But it did get a bit too much.

Tony Maietta [00:23:18]:
Just their relationship.

Brad Shreve [00:23:19]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just chill out just a minute and act like you love each other for at least 30 seconds.

Tony Maietta [00:23:25]:
Well, then she gets dispatched. So I guess as everyone else was tired, like, let's get rid of Stella Stevens. Bye, Stella. This, which is always very sad. A couple of these other actors that you mentioned, I just want to briefly touch on. Of course, we must. The. The incredible, incomparable Shelley Winters as Mrs.

Tony Maietta [00:23:46]:
Rosen. Two time Oscar winner Shelley Winters, also known as Shirley. Shelley, also known as Shirley. That's what the name of her autobiography is. Great, great book, by the way. She won her Oscars for A Patch of Blue and the Diary of Anne Frank. And you know, Shelley, she was kind of a nut job. She was one of the very first group of method actors.

Tony Maietta [00:24:07]:
She was actually good friends with Marilyn Monroe and Debbie Reynolds. Tells very funny stories about dealing with her method ways when they were making that hagsploitation film, what's the Matter With Helen? And it's very funny, very funny stories. But, you know, did you know that Shelley Winters began her career really as. As a sex pot?

Brad Shreve [00:24:28]:
Yes, I've seen the pictures. Because I knew that she and Marilyn were friends. In fact, they were roommates.

Tony Maietta [00:24:33]:
Yeah, yeah, they were. Shelly taught Marilyn the open mouth smile according to Shelley.

Brad Shreve [00:24:38]:
And I also heard she taught her some of the glamour stuff. I don't know if that's true, but you would know more than I do. It's true. But I, I was curious. I had to look up old pictures of them. And she was a knockout.

Tony Maietta [00:24:48]:
She was, she was. But here's what's funny. She found her real success playing these annoying and irritating women who usually end up dead at the end of the movie. Like, you think about a place in the Sun. Lolita, you know, she. This movie, she's. She's very lovable in this film as Mrs. Rosen.

Tony Maietta [00:25:06]:
She's also a real nudge and she's also a real pain in the ass, but she's wonderful. And she did gain 35 pounds to play Mrs. Rosen, and she claimed she was never able to lose it.

Brad Shreve [00:25:17]:
And again, she really never did.

Tony Maietta [00:25:20]:
She didn't. She stayed. She stayed a big woman, really, for the rest of her career. And she worked until, I mean, not that long ago. Remember, she was on Roseanne. She played Roseanne's grandmother. You remember that?

Brad Shreve [00:25:30]:
Yes, she did. Yeah. I barely remember that.

Tony Maietta [00:25:33]:
She. I mean, she had a career. I think one of her last movies was Stepping out with Liza in the 90s. So, I mean, she worked a very long, long time. So I love mentioning. I love that Shelley Winters. We got her here. Jack Albertson, another Oscar winner for one of my favorite movies.

Tony Maietta [00:25:49]:
The subject was roses in 1968. Later, of course, he was in the TV show, which I'm sure we'll never see again, Chico and the Man.

Brad Shreve [00:25:56]:
And I was thinking about Chico and the Man. I loved it when I was younger. I. I don't. I doubt that held up, but it was. It was a lot of fun.

Tony Maietta [00:26:02]:
It was. It was. And Red Buttons, another actor who won an Oscar. Supporting actor, Oscar comic. He's in they Shoot Horses, Don't They? Which is a movie I think you and I are going to talk about soon. I love that film. And of course, we have to talk about Leslie Nielsen, because, I mean, talk about this man. I mean, he was a serious dramatic actor and a leading man.

Tony Maietta [00:26:26]:
He was in Forbidden Planet, Tammy and the Bachelor. But it was this whole deadpan, deeply serious line delivery that made him such a phenomenon in Airplane, in all the Naked Gun movies.

Brad Shreve [00:26:38]:
Yes, yes.

Tony Maietta [00:26:39]:
And you see it in this movie. You know, one of my favorite things is when he. They're looking through the binoculars and they see the wave coming at them, and all he does is say, oh, my.

Brad Shreve [00:26:47]:
God.

Tony Maietta [00:26:50]:
And that's it. Oh, my God. He's done. So, yeah, we have a. We have a great, great cast here. We have. All brought together by Irwin Allen and his director, Ronald Neame. Now, Ronald Neame was an interesting choice.

Tony Maietta [00:27:07]:
He had just directed that great action adventure movie, the prime of Ms. Jean Brody. So you kind of wonder why he chose him. But here's why he chose him. Because Irwin Allen actually directed the action sequences in this film. That was his thing. He wanted Ronald Neame for the acting, for the intimate Acting scenes. And I think he was a really interesting and very good choice.

Brad Shreve [00:27:33]:
Well, yeah, I mean, it shows. It's just. I know this isn't the greatest movie ever made, but there's just. It's just damn enjoyable. I never get tired of watching this film.

Tony Maietta [00:27:43]:
It is enjoyable. It is. It is. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And even though, you know, he only had a budget of 5 million, so he's in pre production for the movie and he's called. And there's a new president at fox because, you know, presidents of movie studios change every six months. There's a new president.

Tony Maietta [00:28:00]:
He was called into the new president's office and he's in. The new president said just matter of factly, oh, by the way, we're canceling your film. And Irwin Allen's like, what? I mean, what. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? So he convinced them to give him half of it. Do you know the story?

Brad Shreve [00:28:17]:
No.

Tony Maietta [00:28:18]:
He had half the budget taken away from him, so he only had 2.5 million to work with. And he thought, I've got to get another 2.5 million. So this is what makes a great producer. This is. We don't have this anymore. This is what these. These great classic film producers did. He left fox.

Tony Maietta [00:28:37]:
He goes across the street to the hillcrest country club, right across the street from fox, and he saw two of his friends there playing gin rummy. And they were producers Sheryl corwin and Steve broidy. All Right, they were two film executives. And he asked them would they guarantee 2.5 million? And they said they would if he left them alone to play jim rummy. They were never even asked to write a check. But based on the guarantee of another 2.5 million, this movie went forward. And can you imagine the return on that investment that was this movie made? How much did this movie make? When all was said and done, Brad.

Brad Shreve [00:29:21]:
I found different numbers on different sites, so I wasn't sure. Now the number I saw was 93 million. And that may have only been that first year. I don't know.

Tony Maietta [00:29:29]:
Well, the numbers I have are. I have. It was 126 million. That's the number I have right now. But regardless, made a lot. That's a huge return on the investment of 2.5 million. That's just a paper investment. They never wrote a check.

Tony Maietta [00:29:44]:
So pretty damn amazing. It's pretty damn amazing. So, yeah. So I think when we want to talk about this movie, we have a little bit of the background here. Do you think we should. How do you want to approach this? Because, you know, you and I have talked before and we don't like being a podcast that gives plot point by plot point. We don't like that. So should we just do it like in order of movie star dispatch, like who gets, who gets killed off first or what do you want to do?

Brad Shreve [00:30:08]:
Well, yes, but first let me just see what the movie's about because this is very, very quick and easy.

Tony Maietta [00:30:12]:
Oh, very important.

Brad Shreve [00:30:14]:
The SS Poseidon, which is an older ship on its final voyage. There is an earthquake under sea near Greece and a giant tsunami crashes into the side of the ship. This is during New Year's Eve, right? When the vast majority of the passengers are in this New Year's Eve party.

Tony Maietta [00:30:33]:
Yes.

Brad Shreve [00:30:33]:
And it knocks the ship upside down. And the ship is floating upside down. And we have our star studded cast who is climbing to the top, which is really the bottom to be saved.

Tony Maietta [00:30:47]:
Up to the bottom. They're climbing up to the bottom.

Brad Shreve [00:30:49]:
Yes.

Tony Maietta [00:30:50]:
I think the tagline for this movie was hell upside down. It's like, oh, yes, it was.

Brad Shreve [00:30:55]:
Yeah, that is a great line.

Tony Maietta [00:30:57]:
Yeah, it is a great line. Is a grim. Yeah. And what I think is so funny about this movie is as it starts, it starts out like it's a true story. They say, you know, yes. At midnight on New Year's Eve and you know, a tsunami. The Poseidon Adventure came up with a tragedy. This is their story.

Tony Maietta [00:31:13]:
It's not a true story. This, you'd be amazing.

Brad Shreve [00:31:16]:
That really bothered me. I mean, I knew it wasn't a true story, but I thought that really throws people off.

Tony Maietta [00:31:21]:
It does. This is their. This is their story. Do you know how many times when I was researching this, how many times? Like when I would go online, you'd see the question, is the Poseidon Adventure a true story or what happened to the people of the Poseidon Adventure? And I'm like, they're fiction. That's what happened to.

Brad Shreve [00:31:39]:
Not to burst anybody's bubble out there. Can this happen? Yes, it can. A ship can go upside down. However, engineers say the chances of people surviving are about one in a billion.

Tony Maietta [00:31:51]:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, come on.

Brad Shreve [00:31:53]:
But who cares? This is a fun movie.

Tony Maietta [00:31:54]:
Well, you know what I love about this film? How we said, like, it's a template for the rest of the disaster films of the 70s with the all Star cast, with the, you know, they're kind of like Walter Mitty ish. I think that's what Irwin Allen's wife Said Walter Mitty syndrome. It's these ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. There's always a bastard in these disasters. There's always somebody who, because they are doing. They want to cut back on money, they want to try to save money or they're under a time crunch. They're the real catalyst for the disaster. And in this film, it's a guy named Linarchos.

Tony Maietta [00:32:27]:
He's the representative of the new owners of the ship, who are going to trash it, by the way. But he just wants to. He's already late. They're three days behind. And so he's paying a wrecking crew in Athens. And that's why he wants to move along. That's why he's like full steam ahead, full steam ahead. Every day is costing me money.

Tony Maietta [00:32:44]:
So he doesn't let Leslie Nielsen, who plays the captain, take on ballast, which would have stabilized the ship more had he been able to do it. And so that's the real reason why the ship capsized. And there's always some bastard who causes these destructions. In Towering Inferno. It's, you know, the, the corners that were cut in the, you know, in the tower. It's just, it's crazy. There's always some prick who's causing these problems.

Brad Shreve [00:33:08]:
And I didn't think that guy was really necessary to the story. It really added nothing, just a little bit attention to, you know, with the captain. But it could have just been an accident. What was funny is because there is, as you said, always these characters in these movies. This guy reminded me almost identical to the attorney in Jurassic Park.

Tony Maietta [00:33:28]:
Yeah, I can kind of see that. I can see that.

Brad Shreve [00:33:30]:
Yeah, the way he stood, the way he talked.

Tony Maietta [00:33:33]:
Yeah, I agree with you.

Brad Shreve [00:33:34]:
I don't wish we could have seen more of a gruesome death with this guy. Like the attorney got gobbled up.

Tony Maietta [00:33:39]:
But yeah, I don't know. I don't think he was necessary either. I mean, I think the fact that you have this 90 foot tall wall of water coming towards you, I mean, you got to suspend your disbelief in some way. So they're kind of gilding the lily here to say, well, the real reason it, ship, it turned over was because they didn't have any ballast. They didn't have a ballast. So it, the ship couldn't stay up, it couldn't stay stabilized. But I don't think you need it. It's just, you know, you got to have, you got to have somebody to blame for this.

Tony Maietta [00:34:05]:
And of course he's, he's one of the first gone once that once that water comes up. Once the water comes up over the. The. The end, not the engine room. What's it called where the captain and the. The crew are.

Brad Shreve [00:34:17]:
I was trying to think of what that's called. It's the ship version of a cockpit.

Tony Maietta [00:34:21]:
All right. There you go.

Brad Shreve [00:34:22]:
I don't know. I come from a whole family of naval people and I can't think of the name.

Tony Maietta [00:34:26]:
Oh, wow, you are. That's pathetic, Brad. I don't feel quite so pathetic. But anyway, he's a goner real quick, as is Leslie. Bye bye, Leslie. You don't worry. You're gonna have a phenomenal career once airplane is made, so. And you're also going to marry Dorothy's bornak on the Golden Girl, so.

Tony Maietta [00:34:42]:
Good for you, Leslie Nielsen. So, yes, the ship gets turned over 30 minutes into this movie. Of course, while they're all singing All Lang's Eye, which I also love, they're flipping upside down. And here's. We talked a little bit about how this. The special effects in this movie were achieved without any kind of computer animation. What they did, you know, what they did to actually get the capsizing of the dining room scene.

Brad Shreve [00:35:11]:
I know that they had it on, for lack of better word, a machine that actually tilted. It didn't go all the way around, but they certainly. At the beginning it was a forklift. It was going up.

Tony Maietta [00:35:21]:
They lifted the side of the set up with a forklift and basically dumped the actors out. That's how they achieved that. There were. There were two sets, of course. There was a set that they turned upside down with a forklift. So. Hello. I mean, you can't get much more elementary than that.

Tony Maietta [00:35:37]:
Pretty genius.

Brad Shreve [00:35:38]:
Yeah.

Tony Maietta [00:35:38]:
And then there was a second set, obviously, of the ship upside down. What it was like after was upside down, but that is such. And nobody got hurt, by the way. This is what's amazing to me. And this is what was really important according to the actors. It was really important to Erwin Allen that nobody get hurt. And this is. This is pretty dangerous.

Tony Maietta [00:35:56]:
Turning your actors upside down to a 45 degree angle and then a 90 degree. Come on.

Brad Shreve [00:36:00]:
Yes.

Tony Maietta [00:36:01]:
Really crazy. But they didn't. They didn't. They did not get hurt. Even the most famous people call it the most famous shot from the Poseidon Adventure. And it's the shot where the character of Terry, who's kind of been putting the moves on Pamela.

Brad Shreve [00:36:16]:
Suicide. I didn't know that's the one who fell through there, but go ahead.

Tony Maietta [00:36:20]:
Yeah, well, he's putting the moves on her and they go and dance on the dance floor and they do. You know, we dance. And then they start doing their own thing, which I think is so funny. It's so 70s. His name is Terry. The character's name is Terry. And the actor's name is Ernie Orsadi. And he used to be a stuntman, and then he was.

Tony Maietta [00:36:37]:
He had segued to just being an actor. And he was really excited because he's like, oh, I actually have a part in this big production as an actor. And then they say to him, we need you to do this stunt. He's like, of course. Of course. That's why you cast me. But it is. He.

Tony Maietta [00:36:52]:
He's the one who's hanging from the table. And there's a big, beautiful. Not. It's not a skylight, but it's. It's a big, beautiful glass light above the ballroom. Yeah. Of the ballroom, which would have been on the ceiling, but now it's below. And he's holding onto the table and he loses his grip and he falls and he smashes right into that light.

Tony Maietta [00:37:11]:
It's a fantastic shot.

Brad Shreve [00:37:13]:
It is. It's. It's. It's classic shot.

Tony Maietta [00:37:15]:
I mean, it is.

Brad Shreve [00:37:16]:
Everybody remembers it.

Tony Maietta [00:37:17]:
Everybody remembers it. Nobody knows that poor guy's name except me. I just told you. So spread the word. People who it was. But he also.

Brad Shreve [00:37:26]:
I gotta say, I don't blame Pamela for checking him. I know she was more into the minister, but, boy, he was. He was rah, rah.

Tony Maietta [00:37:34]:
She's got. I got Dynasty to look forward to later, so let me. But he. He said that there were a lot of visitors on the set that day. There were visitors on the set all the time to see these actors do this stunt, because most of them who are names, did many of their own stunts. Ernest Borgnine said that. He said it was really. You kind of got caught up in the adrenaline of it, and you're, like, doing things that normally you'd be like, I'm not doing that now.

Tony Maietta [00:37:59]:
The only one who didn't. Roddy McDowell, didn't do his real fall because it was too dangerous. But a lot of the other falls, and. Oh, hello. And we all know that that was really Shelley Winters holding her breath for 2 minutes and 45 seconds swimming underwater. So a lot of these actors did their own stunts, and apparently it was quite. Quite something to see.

Brad Shreve [00:38:18]:
Yeah, I remember her on Johnny Carson one day saying. I think she said something like, it took her three months to dry out.

Tony Maietta [00:38:28]:
And she never lost that weight. She never lost that Weight. So, yeah, so they're upside down, and the preacher convinces them that they're upside down. And the only way to get out is to climb up to the bottom of the ship. Because the little boy knows, Robin knows, when he was on his air quotes private tour with one of the first mates, that the. The steel is thinnest at the outer hull. It's only about an inch thick. And so they think that's their only way out, is to climb up to the bottom of the ship and hopefully figure out what to do there.

Brad Shreve [00:39:06]:
The outer hull in the engine room.

Tony Maietta [00:39:08]:
Exactly, Exactly. Yeah. The outer hall in the engine room. So it's funny because we're watching this movie and we're thinking, well, I guess that makes sense. But if you were really in that situation, would you think like that those six actors and. And follow Gene Hackman, or would you stay down with the purser and the preacher and wait for help? That's like the quandary of the Poseidon Adventure.

Brad Shreve [00:39:30]:
I think I would have gone with Gene Hackman because to me, it wouldn't make sense to be waiting upside down on the bottom on the top of the ship, which is really now the bottom of the ship. It just. It seemed like what our cast is doing seems illogical, but it seems even more illogical just to stand there waiting for the ship to sink.

Tony Maietta [00:39:51]:
Yeah, we're talking about logic in a ridiculous scenario, but, yeah, at least Gene.

Brad Shreve [00:39:56]:
Hackman's like, we got a chance. Well, you know, he even says at one point that our odds aren't good, but we get a chance instead of standing down there waiting to drown.

Tony Maietta [00:40:04]:
I would have thought, hmm. How many Oscars do you have? How many Oscars do you have? I think I'm gonna follow the Oscar winners. Thanks. Okay, bye, everybody. But it turned out to be the right choice because the minute. Well, not the minute, but very close to the minute, they all escape up out of the ballroom. It floods with water. So, like, good choice.

Tony Maietta [00:40:26]:
Right decision there. Right decision there. And they begin their slow ascent to the bottom of the ship. And as I said, I don't want to do. I don't want to do plot. Boy, by plot point. I don't remember every room they were in because it's all so convoluted. But that set, looking at that set, when they go through the kitchen and they go through the.

Tony Maietta [00:40:44]:
The. You know, the. The other outer hall, all the. All the places. I guess I didn't go through the outer hall, but when they're going through the ship and the Catacombs of the ship. Do you know that was really based on. Oh, we should probably say that the exterior shots of the. Of the ship were the Queen Mary.

Brad Shreve [00:41:00]:
Yep.

Tony Maietta [00:41:00]:
The beginning scenes were all shot on the Queen Mary. And so the interiors of the sets that were constructed at 20th Century Fox are replicas of actual rooms in the Queen Mary. So there's a scene in the barbershop, remember, where the chairs are upside down and Red Buttons and Carol Lindley are talking about, oh, that's a good way to get your hair cut. My favorite scene is when Robin, the little boy, goes into the bathroom and the urinals are all upside down. And you immediately think, ooh, what's on the floor? What's on the ground now?

Brad Shreve [00:41:30]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Maietta [00:41:31]:
All the water came out. But I love the lighting in those scenes because they're now walking on the ceiling. The lights that are working are lighting upward. So they're all scary looking as hell. Did you notice that? There's one shot of them and they all look like demonic because they're all being lit from below. It's incredible.

Brad Shreve [00:41:50]:
Yeah, it. The whole. You really feel like this is an upside down ship.

Tony Maietta [00:41:54]:
Yes.

Brad Shreve [00:41:55]:
It's so well done. Going back to the purser.

Tony Maietta [00:41:58]:
Yes.

Brad Shreve [00:41:59]:
Before we continue on with these, actually, I got a couple things to say about the purser and the sets. Gene Hackman's character says, because the purser's like, we, you know, we need to stay here. We can go up, which is down to be saved. And Jegan Hackman says, the captain and all that crew are dead. And the purser said, how do you know? Like, how do you know? It doesn't take a genius, purser. But regarding the sets, you know, I can kind of see where this only costs $5 million because most of the sets were small. The ballroom was really the only big set. The rest were small corridors.

Brad Shreve [00:42:41]:
And I'm sure they repeated. All they got to do is change a pipe here and there and they can repeat them over and over again. So when I think about it, it kind of makes sense that that's all. To me, the most expensive part were the big tanks of water and the water flowing. Yeah, most likely.

Tony Maietta [00:42:55]:
And dangerous. But think about all that fire, fire all over the place, you know, and the water rushing in and the scene where Robin is off exploring and he goes into the bathroom and then he gets kind of lost and pulled behind. And what happened was, was then that Gene Hackman goes and gets him and brings him to the rest and the water starts rushing in and that was another instance where they lifted up the set and. And the water got really, really deep. And Gene Hackman said he had a few moments there where he thought, I'm going under here. This is not. This is not good. But they managed to make it.

Tony Maietta [00:43:28]:
I think they. Yeah, you have to make the set small out of necessity, obviously, because of the budget, but also, I think because of the fact that that's how big those rooms were. They were based on real rooms in.

Brad Shreve [00:43:39]:
The Queen Mary, especially back then. I mean, they're still small today, but back then they were tiny.

Tony Maietta [00:43:44]:
Oh, absolutely. Well, this was an old luxury liner. This wasn't a Princess Cruise. This one. The Love Boat. No. Even though Stella Stevens was later on the Love Boat too, it won the Love Boat. This was an older ship, and those rooms were small and very, very cramped and claustrophobic.

Tony Maietta [00:44:01]:
So I think it's amazing. I also think that these actors. I mean, come on. Not only are most of them doing a lot of their own st. You know, flying around on their asses, like Ernest Borgnine said, but they were filthy. Yeah, they have to get that. You have to go to work, and you weren't. You didn't go to makeup.

Tony Maietta [00:44:17]:
You were made down. You were covered in dirt and water. And can you imagine how uncomfortable that would be to do every single day?

Brad Shreve [00:44:27]:
I didn't think of that until I saw. I. I think it was Jack Albertson who handed Shelley Winters his kerchief or his napkin. And that was the first time I really noticed how filthy she was. Yeah, I'm like, wow, she's really dirty. They all are.

Tony Maietta [00:44:45]:
Yeah. Yeah, they're all sweaty. Yeah. It was incredibly uncomfortable. So you can imagine that director Ronald Neame said they were all though incredibly. And these aren't young people. Okay. I mean, yes, Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson, you know, Gene Hackman was in his mid-40s.

Tony Maietta [00:44:59]:
So. Okay, so these aren't young people. But he said they were all very professional. He said they had, like. There was a breakdown a week. One actor, he said they all had their turn in having a breakdown, and there were 10 of them. So he said one a week, and that's all I really had to deal with. And he said I could deal with that.

Tony Maietta [00:45:17]:
That was fine. But everyone had at least one breakdown. So, as we said, so they begin to climb up, and poor Roddy. Roddy is the first to go because Roddy never won that Supporting actor Oscar. So Roddy is out of there. Roddy has an injured leg. So who do we have here? We should probably say the, the survivors. We've got the rosens, we've got Mrs.

Tony Maietta [00:45:39]:
Mr. And Mrs. Rosen, that's two. Pamela Sin and her brother, that's four. Ernest Borg, nine. And Stella Stevens, that's six. The preacher, seven. Roddy, eight, nine, ten.

Tony Maietta [00:45:54]:
So there are ten. Yeah, Nani and red button. So there's ten red buttons. So Roddy, first one to go, bye bye. Yes, he's out of here. And they continue to climb and they continue to climb up and up and they have all kinds of adventures and then who is the next one to find their unfortunate end? Do you remember?

Brad Shreve [00:46:13]:
I'm trying to think if there's anything, anyone between him and Stella Stevens and.

Tony Maietta [00:46:17]:
No, there's a big one between him and Stella Stevens.

Brad Shreve [00:46:20]:
Oh my God.

Tony Maietta [00:46:21]:
Yes. Shelley Winters, the biggest one of all. Yes, yes. Do you want to, can you set the scene up a little bit about why Shelley Winters meets her untimely? Not untimely, but meets her demise?

Brad Shreve [00:46:34]:
Yeah. As Tony said, Shelly was a big woman. She brings up throughout the whole movie that she call it keeps calling herself fat. And there's even a point in the movie where the character Robin, the little boy kind of compares her, not in a mean way, just trying to help her feel better. Compares her to a 600 pound fish.

Tony Maietta [00:46:54]:
Well, Stella Stevens comes out and calls her a fat ass at one point.

Brad Shreve [00:46:57]:
Well, Stella Stevens called her a fat ass. But this is part where the humor comes in and it's all very believable. That's one thing I like about you said there's humor and there's a lot of it in, but it's not like here's a drama, oh, let's throw something funny in. Yeah, it really is seamless in the storyline.

Tony Maietta [00:47:12]:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve [00:47:12]:
So he refer, he compares it to a 600 pound fish that he had caught at one time and then he, as they're climbing to safety and he says, I'm sorry Mrs. Rosen. And she said for what? And he says, I didn't mean to say that you were like a 600 pound fish. And she goes, all of this and that's what you're worried about? I love that. So anyway, they get to this point where Gene Hackman's character, Reverend Scott, there's debate of whether they're going to continue this, this quest to safety anyway. And he goes, well, let me go find the engine room and I'll come back. Right. So he finds the engine room, he comes back, he says, I've been there, I've been there.

Brad Shreve [00:47:52]:
So when the whole group of Them goes. All of a sudden, a huge section that he had walked through is now underwater.

Tony Maietta [00:47:59]:
Right, right.

Brad Shreve [00:48:00]:
And so he takes a rope and he swims through the water so that the others can climb, hold the rope and pull themselves through. And he gets stuck. And before that happens, Bell Rosen. Shelley Winters is saying, I was a champion in New York, or I think it was New York.

Tony Maietta [00:48:19]:
Yeah. I was a swimming champion underwater swimmer.

Brad Shreve [00:48:21]:
Yeah. And she keeps showing her medal that she won. She's very proud of this medal that she won. And as keeps saying, I'm the best qualified. And he's like, no, no. And he let. He let. She lets him go.

Brad Shreve [00:48:30]:
Well, when they realize that he's caught and trapped, she dives in.

Tony Maietta [00:48:35]:
A beautiful dive. And a beautiful dive.

Brad Shreve [00:48:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she looked like she was in the Olympics.

Tony Maietta [00:48:41]:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve [00:48:41]:
So she swims underwater, and boy, you can tell she was underwater for quite some time. And you could tell that is Shelly Winter swimming through.

Tony Maietta [00:48:48]:
There it is.

Brad Shreve [00:48:50]:
She gets him unhooked from whatever he was trapped on. She takes him to the. To the end where they were able to get back out to get to the engine room. And she has a heart attack.

Tony Maietta [00:49:02]:
Well, she says. But she says her. What is her famous final line, which I'm saying all the time, in the water, I'm a very skinny lady.

Brad Shreve [00:49:12]:
Oh, yes. She says, in the water, I'm a very skinny lady. But then she. She has a heart attack.

Tony Maietta [00:49:17]:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve [00:49:18]:
It's heartbreaking. And she tells the minister to give the medal to her. Tell Jack Albertson to give the medal to their grandson.

Tony Maietta [00:49:27]:
Right.

Brad Shreve [00:49:28]:
And what I really like is that's the point where the minister says, why this woman? And he's screaming to God. Yeah, why this woman? Because she's such a wonderful person.

Tony Maietta [00:49:36]:
He's definitely.

Brad Shreve [00:49:37]:
Absolutely heartbreaking.

Tony Maietta [00:49:39]:
He's definitely a New age minister. Gene Hackman.

Brad Shreve [00:49:41]:
Yes.

Tony Maietta [00:49:41]:
Reverend Scott, in this. Yeah. But what's heartbreaking about that scene is. Yes. And she even says before they dive in, she goes, you know, you've been pulling me along. Please. You've been helping the fat lady. Let me do something.

Tony Maietta [00:49:52]:
Let me do something to help you. You guys have been all helping me, you know, pushing her up that Christmas tree to get her out and pulling her up the plank way. So it's Mrs. Rosen's opportunity to do something. And it's so beautiful because she does it. And she's right. She is the best. She's trained.

Tony Maietta [00:50:08]:
She can do this. And she does it. And she has the famous last line. And then. Oh, and she has a heart Attack. And you're like, oh, Mrs. Rosen. Oh, it's very sad.

Brad Shreve [00:50:19]:
She died a hero.

Tony Maietta [00:50:21]:
She did. But she did give the reverend her little medal to give to Jack Albertson to take to their grandson in Israel, because they've never seen their grandson. He's two years old. They were on their way to see him. Very sad. So she's gone, and they're almost to the engine room. And they get to a certain point where they're outside the engine room, and that's where the. The outer hall were.

Tony Maietta [00:50:44]:
It's only about an inch thick. And they are almost there. However, they have to climb up a scaffolding, and that's when we have to say goodbye. There's an explosion in the ship. Because all during this time, there have been random explosions. Stella Stevens, why you climbing that scaffolding in your high heels? I don't know. Boom. And down goes Linda, Linda, Linda.

Tony Maietta [00:51:12]:
Erna Borgnine. You took the one thing I loved. And that's where Stella Stevens meets her end. And Ernest Borgnine has a freak out. He freaks out on the minister. He says he's almost. He almost believed him because this entire time he's been telling Gene Hackman, how do you know where you know you're going? Why should we trust you? And he gets to the point where he's just. He almost believes him.

Tony Maietta [00:51:33]:
And then the love of his life, the love of my life dies. And that's when they have their confrontation. And this is the part that really always gets me. And while they're having this confrontation, a steam pipe breaks and is suddenly on. It's hitting. Directly hitting the door, the handle to the door to the engine room. So they can't get in it. The only way to do it is to turn the.

Tony Maietta [00:51:57]:
What do you want to call that wheel handle. But you can't get to it. You have to. Yeah, you have to jump. We're doing, like, hand signals. Like people know what we're doing here. It's a circular handle.

Brad Shreve [00:52:09]:
He had to turn the wheel to turn off the steam.

Tony Maietta [00:52:11]:
To turn off the steam. And the only way to do it is to jump on it. But then you. What are you going to do? You can't go anywhere. There's no ground. So Gene Hackman jumps on it, sacrifices himself, turns off the steam, and then lets go of the handle and falls to his death, too. But before he says that, he has his argument with God. Like after.

Tony Maietta [00:52:34]:
After Mrs. Rosen died. Then he has this argument with, you know what? Take me. Why? Not enough for you, God, not enough Sacrifices. How many did you need? Take me. And so at the end, he's the ultimate hero because his sacrifice allows the rest of them to get to the engine room.

Brad Shreve [00:52:51]:
Yeah. And he adds that we weren't asking to help us, but why are you working against us?

Tony Maietta [00:52:56]:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So they finally get the survivors, get to the engine room, and wouldn't you know it, at that exact moment, they hear noises outside. There just happens to be a rescue team right there at that very moment.

Brad Shreve [00:53:16]:
Yeah, it's. It's kind of ridiculous, but, you know, having people just sitting on the floor hanging out for 30 minutes would be kind of boring. Yeah, you couldn't do that.

Tony Maietta [00:53:23]:
You couldn't do that. You couldn't do that. So, indeed, indeed, they. They make noises. They hit that. They hit the. The metal. And they communicate with the rescue team outside, and they are able to get them out.

Tony Maietta [00:53:34]:
They open up a hole in the bottom of the boat, and they climb out and they fly away. And that is the end of the Poseidon Adventure. But it wasn't the original ending. Do you know what the original ending was, Brad?

Brad Shreve [00:53:46]:
Well, you said the ship sinks.

Tony Maietta [00:53:48]:
In the book. In the book. But in the film, there was a shot of the film of the ship as they were going away. Because the ending's very strange. They just get in this helicopter and fly off. You think all that. And this is the ending we don't get an idea of scope of this.

Brad Shreve [00:54:02]:
And the rescue crew jumps in the helicopter with them. It's like, okay, this is all there is. We're leaving now.

Tony Maietta [00:54:08]:
Okay, bye. Bye. See ya. Done. We got how many? Head count. One, two, three, four, five. Okay. Yeah, let's go.

Tony Maietta [00:54:15]:
They're gone. Well, originally there was a shot of the ship as they were pulling away in the helicopter. And you could see the whole thing. You could see the whole Poseidon upside down. But it was such a bad shot because it was a miniature. And Alan said, please let us go in and reshoot that. And 20th Century Fox would not let them do it. They're like, no, you're done.

Tony Maietta [00:54:35]:
Movie's done. Get out of here. So that's why the movie ends kind of abruptly, because they weren't able to do that grand last shot of the entire ship. But kind of interesting because it also laid the groundwork for the sequel, because the sequel of this film, which we'll talk about beyond the Poseidon Adventure, picks up with the helicopter going away. It's. That's where the old one, first one ends, the second one begins. It's really kind of funny how they work that in there.

Brad Shreve [00:55:02]:
Yeah, I didn't remember that. I. I think I tried to erase that film from my. My mind.

Tony Maietta [00:55:08]:
Well, what happens in beyond the Poseidon Adventure just quickly is the captain of a tugboat spies the helicopter leaving the Poseidon Adventure with the survivors, and he heads up to the shipwreck. Citus claim salvage rights and they enter the ship through the hull opening, and then they come across all kinds of other survivors. So, yeah, it's a real crappy movie. It was a huge bomb. Sally Field, Michael Caine, Telly Savalas, for God's sakes. I think even Shirley Jones was in that with Slim Pickens. So, yeah. So anyway, so this, our movie, the Poseidon Adventure.

Tony Maietta [00:55:39]:
That's the end of the Poseidon Adventure. That's the true story of those survivors. Are they air quotes? True story of these of those survivors. So let's talk a little bit about how the movie did when it was. When it was released.

Brad Shreve [00:55:52]:
Okay, so this movie, it was, as you said before, it was made for 5 million. And how much did you say it earned?

Tony Maietta [00:55:58]:
It earned $126 million.

Brad Shreve [00:56:01]:
Not too shabby. It was just behind the Godfather, of course. Godfather is going to be explosive that year. But it was number two. And, you know, number three was a movie that is so beloved to you, and I was what's up, Doc?

Tony Maietta [00:56:14]:
Yes.

Brad Shreve [00:56:15]:
Followed by Deliverance. The next one just cracks me up. The next one was Deep Throat and then Jeremiah Johnson.

Tony Maietta [00:56:21]:
Oh, God, this is an interesting movies. Nice mix there.

Brad Shreve [00:56:25]:
Yes. But, you know, I looked at the rest of the year, and there weren't that many good movies. The only one other one that I can think of is Cabaret that people like. Other nominees for best picture were the immigrants and Sounder. I'm not familiar with either of those.

Tony Maietta [00:56:42]:
Sounders are wonderful, at least by name. Sound is a wonderful film. Yeah. But I mean, these are the big ones. I mean, it's the year of the Godfather in Cabaret, you know. So the fact that the Poseidon Adventure came in there between the two of them and was number two is pretty. Pretty remarkable.

Brad Shreve [00:56:56]:
Pretty remarkable, but no surprise. It's a fun movie.

Tony Maietta [00:56:59]:
It is a fun movie. It is. It's a fun movie to me. As I said, it really is the first of the disaster films. It's the father of them. Absolutely.

Brad Shreve [00:57:07]:
And on Rotten Tomatoes, it has 81% critic rating and an audience score of 76%, which I'm a little surprised by the audience score, but it's still pretty good. It's still Fresh.

Tony Maietta [00:57:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so much more imaginative than some of the other disaster movies that came after it. I mean, think about. He had $5 million to make this, and it looks phenomenal, which I don't know that Poseidon is quite as phenomenal. Brad, what do you think?

Brad Shreve [00:57:34]:
No, it's terrible.

Tony Maietta [00:57:37]:
I knew you'd give me an honest answer.

Brad Shreve [00:57:39]:
And let me explain why, because, you know, you said airport. It took forever to get to the disaster. Right. This movie shrank it, as you said, Poseidon Adventure, it took almost 30 minutes. It's 28 minutes and 13 seconds. When the. When the wave hits the ship Poseidon in 2006, the wave hits 11 minutes earlier at 17 minutes and 30 seconds. Now, the thing is, 10 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but in movie time, that's huge.

Tony Maietta [00:58:11]:
It is.

Brad Shreve [00:58:11]:
That's huge. Also, this Poseidon Adventure was 1 hour and 57 minutes, whereas the movie Poseidon was 1 hour and 30 minutes, 38 minutes. Now, the reason this is important is we got to know. In that first 28 minutes, we got to know these characters. Characters. We got to know their personalities. We got to know what they did. We got to like them or hate them, whatever it was we're supposed to do with these characters.

Brad Shreve [00:58:37]:
We felt like they mattered to us. They did matter to us. So if somebody was in danger or if somebody died, it mattered. It mattered. Poseidon 2006. Yeah. You didn't give a damn what happened to any of them. Even Richard Dreyfuss, who I liked, just was who I like.

Brad Shreve [00:58:57]:
Not liked in this film. It just. You had this star studded cast again, and with a horrible script, horribly unlikable characters. They use CGI rather than practical effects, and it showed. They were terrible. Granted, the bolts popping and the waves coming in were more believable than the original version, but it was all cgi, so I didn't appreciate it nearly as much as the original did. So here's the deal, especially when it comes to these two films. The budget on the original film was $5 million.

Brad Shreve [00:59:35]:
So adjusted for inflation, that comes out to $38 million. Okay, Poseidon, the new version, one with all CGI, cost 160 million to make.

Tony Maietta [00:59:49]:
Oh, my God.

Brad Shreve [00:59:50]:
And it wasn't even close to as good a film. And here's the thing. The first film earned for its time, it made $80 million. I don't know what that equates to today.

Tony Maietta [01:00:02]:
$126 million.

Brad Shreve [01:00:04]:
126 million. Yes, Poseidon. The new one cost 160 million to make, and it grossed 180 million, $20 million. And I'm probably guessing with marketing and everything else, that was a loss.

Tony Maietta [01:00:14]:
Oh, of course it was. Yeah, it was. Yeah. You usually have to double film's budget to kind of get an idea if it was a loss or not. Yeah.

Brad Shreve [01:00:21]:
Yes. So let me take us further back in time with these other films. You had this movie. You had Airport, where we got to know the characters. We had Tower Inferno. We got the setup for quite a while. Earthquake. It was quite a while.

Brad Shreve [01:00:34]:
Granted, neither of us think Earthquake was a very good movie, but it was quite a good setup. You got to know who the characters were and how they interact and what the relationships were before the earthquake hit. Now, with the new Poseidon, you have Greenland. You have mentioned Sharknado, but you have Twister, you have Outbreak Volcano, San Andreas, etc, the Perfect Storm. Well, not the Perfect Storm, but the Day After Tomorrow. Some of these movies are fun, but you're watching because the CGI is fun, and you're watching the. The world be destroyed. But as far as being good movies, they're not.

Brad Shreve [01:01:16]:
They're not like, I love Volcano. It's a fun, stupid movie. But is it a good movie? Oh, my God. Hell no. And you don't know any of the characters. And it's so absurd the way people die. So to me, it's sad what has happened to the disaster films. Very sad, because now it's all about.

Brad Shreve [01:01:34]:
Now it's all about special effects and how are people gonna die?

Tony Maietta [01:01:37]:
You know, it's like everything else, you know, you. It's like people take something, they bastardize it. They take it too far. It's like, no, that's not good enough. We gotta make it better. We gotta make it bigger. We gotta make it, you know, more terrifying. We gotta kill more people.

Tony Maietta [01:01:52]:
You know, and you look at this very. I said this about Airport. It's. And it's a very conservative take. Now, this movie isn't. This movie definitely pushed it far, but it's all so wonderful because they. They did make it bigger. They did make it stronger, but they did the right things.

Tony Maietta [01:02:10]:
They made the right things bigger. They. They gave. They made the characters more interesting. The characters are more. Put more humor into the story. And I don't find a lot of humor in a lot of these new ones. I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, there's some humor here.

Tony Maietta [01:02:22]:
But you're not. Please. It ain't Stella Stevens and Pamela Sue Martin swimming in their high heels or Pam O. Sue Martin. Tearing off her long skirt and having identical red hot pants underneath.

Brad Shreve [01:02:34]:
Yes. That was hysterical.

Tony Maietta [01:02:36]:
I'm like, you were planning for this, weren't you? Weren't you? You know, and the thing about. The thing I find interesting about beyond the Poseidon Adventure is it wasn't Irwin Allen's first idea. In 1973, soon after this film first came out, he proposed a sequel that would have the survivors testifying in a hearing on the disaster in Austria. And because that's where the ship. That's the share. Ship's parent company, Poseidon's parent company was. And while they were on a train to the hearing, the tunnel would collapse and they're trapped. I'm like, that might be a little too much there.

Brad Shreve [01:03:13]:
That sounds like Die Hard kind of.

Tony Maietta [01:03:15]:
Might be a bit too much to put these people through this again. I mean, Jack Albertson would be like, are you guys kidding me? But so. No. So that's why beyond the Poseidon Adventure came along in 79. And you were talking about budgets. It's interesting. So beyond this Poseidon Adventure, which, by the way, was directed by Irwin Allen.

Brad Shreve [01:03:33]:
Yeah.

Tony Maietta [01:03:33]:
Beyond the Poseidon adventure had a $10 million budget. And do you know how much it made?

Brad Shreve [01:03:39]:
I'm gonna guess it lost big time.

Tony Maietta [01:03:42]:
Two million. It made two million.

Brad Shreve [01:03:45]:
Oh, my Lord.

Tony Maietta [01:03:46]:
So, yeah, there weren't going to be any more. Beyond the. Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. That was. That was pretty much it.

Brad Shreve [01:03:52]:
Yeah. And like I said, I couldn't finish watching it. You know, it's. And this was back in the day when you didn't have 600 channels to just flip over to something else. So that was pretty rare for me back in those days. Just say, I give up.

Tony Maietta [01:04:04]:
You're like Michael Caine, Sally Field, Shirley Jones. What were you thinking?

Brad Shreve [01:04:08]:
I know, but no, let me go to the granddaddy of disaster movies that many people think is the best, and that's Titanic. And I want to talk about the comparison between that movie and this movie and where I think these movies go wrong today. So we talked about the side story with the guy that works for the corporation who was saying, don't take on the ballast and.

Tony Maietta [01:04:32]:
Right.

Brad Shreve [01:04:32]:
That's the reason why the ship. You know, that was a side story. That was unnecessary. We both agreed. But it was very quick.

Tony Maietta [01:04:38]:
Right.

Brad Shreve [01:04:39]:
The Titanic was a horrible disaster where hundreds, thousands of people died. So why was it necessary to have a shootout and all this other garbage in the film? That was totally unnecessary. Again, they seem to think that what happened is not enough. Let's make up some Other side story. That is meaningless.

Tony Maietta [01:04:58]:
I know the fact that this unsinkable ship sank isn't enough. Let's have a little shootout. Let's have a little side story.

Brad Shreve [01:05:05]:
And that's why I hate Titanic. There were so many of those things.

Tony Maietta [01:05:08]:
I'm just like, this is the problem with remakes. This is the problem. We had this. I have the same problem with Kenneth Branhall's remakes of Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Is. It's not enough. They got to make it bigger. They got to put more into it. You know, as we said before, suddenly Herr Q.

Tony Maietta [01:05:24]:
Perot becomes a action hero. It's not enough that he's a brilliant criminal mind. You know what I mean? He's got to become an action hero. They gotta gild the lily to the point where the freaking lily falls apart. And that's what I love about this movie. That's what I love about this movie. This is it. This is pure.

Tony Maietta [01:05:40]:
This is, in my mind, the best of all the disaster films. I put Towering Inferno really close, but this one, I think, is at the top.

Brad Shreve [01:05:51]:
Yeah, I totally agree. Let me go back to Titanic, because there's a story behind this. When I lived in Las Vegas, worked there, my corporation moved me there, and it was not long after I was there, I had a breakup. So I was all alone, and I was new there, so I hardly knew anyone at all. Well, I had to have surgery, gallbladder surgery. So I was sent home, and I was home alone with, you know, nothing. No one to talk to. No.

Brad Shreve [01:06:19]:
So fortunately, at that time, before I got cable, the cable company said, you know what? We're gonna be doing work. So we can't guarantee when cable will be up, and we can't guarantee when cable will be down. So everybody in this area gets cable for free this month. So I got it. There were only two movies that played over and over and over again. The Lost in Space remake with Matt LeBlanc. And he looked delicious, but that was about the only thing good about that film. And Titanic and I both are, to me, terrible movies.

Brad Shreve [01:06:52]:
Though I will admit I enjoyed watching Titanic over and over again, only because the special effects and the destinies were phenomenal. But that's all. It would never have. I would not have turned it on otherwise. But it was enjoyable to me. Like, each time I saw something new. As far as effects go.

Tony Maietta [01:07:11]:
Well, Brad, is there anything more you want to say about the Poseidon Adventure or the podcast or anything at all?

Brad Shreve [01:07:17]:
Well, as far as the Poseidon Adventure, goes, if you haven't seen her it's been a while, please watch it. And I actually would suggest you watch Poseidon afterwards, just if you're curious about what I'm talking about and can see how far downhill we've gone when it comes to disaster film. But only if you're that curious because it's not worth it for any other reason as beyond that. I'm just going to say the usual. If you are new listening to our show and this is your first or second a few times, please subscribe so that you'll know the next time that an episode comes out. We try to do it every week. We do a pretty good job of that. If you have been listening to us once again, you've been listening to us for an hour or so, so you must like us pretty well.

Brad Shreve [01:07:55]:
Why don't you go and rate and review the show? Spotify and Apple make it the easiest to do, especially Apple, but very good chance. Whatever app, you're listening to us, you have some way to rate this show.

Tony Maietta [01:08:07]:
That sounds fair. I think that's fair. Well, Brad, I guess there's only one thing left to say but Mrs. Peter Pan, I'm not. So let's not say goodbye. Let's say au revoir.

Brad Shreve [01:08:21]:
No, let's say goodbye.

Tony Maietta [01:08:23]:
Goodbye, everybody.

Brad Shreve [01:08:25]:
And bon voyage.

Tony Maietta [01:08:26]:
Oh, I like that better. That's all, folks.