Book Vs Movie: "Top Gun"
Book Vs Movie Podcast
In 1986, a movie entered the popular culture starring Tom Cruise--Top Gun. It was a massively successful hit and San Diegos’ Margo P. as a teenager saw it almost every week that summer which is a thing that teens used to do to pass the time.
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Book Vs Movie "Roxanne" (Screenplay by Steve Martin 1987)
Book Vs Movie Podcast
The Margos are feeling poetic in this play vs movie combo that is a tale of love, bravery, and wit. The original play of Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand in 1897 and has been adapted several times over the last 120 years. Mel Ferrer was the most famous/acclaimed Cyrano in the 1950s but Steve Martin’s C.D. Bales gives his own take on one of the oddest romantic leads we have covered.
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Book Vs Movie "The African Queen"
Book Vs Movie Podcast
We are feeling the heat and humidity of summer in the city so the Margos decided to have some fun and travel to Africa for early 20th Century adventure with The African Queen by C.S. Forester. The book was published in 1935 and Forester was an expert on nautical tales with his Horatio Hornblower novels.
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Book Vs Movie "Blue Crush"
Book Vs Movie Podcast
The Margos are ready to hit the beach with this episode devoted to surfing in Hawaii. In 1998 Susan Orlean penned Life’s Swell in Outside magazine talked about a group of Maui girls who loved to surf and dealt with poverty and sexism to enjoy their passion. That’s pretty much the whole story and in the early 2000s, dozens of magazine articles were turned into movies which is what happened here.
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Book Vs Movie "Total Recall"
Book Vs Movie Podcast
If memory serves, this is the first movie the Margos are covering that stars action star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. This time we are visiting Mars and it is nothing like David Bowie would have enjoyed. 1990’s Total Recall (directed by Paul Verhoeven) is based on the short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by prolific writer Philip K. Dick.
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"Book Vs Movie" American Gangster
Book Vs Movie Podcast
The Margos are heading back to NYC in the gritty 1970s talking about the New York magazine article The Return of Superfly by Mark Jacobson which appeared in their August 14, 2000 issue and was immediately bought as a film property for Imagine Entertainment/Universal Pictures. It took seven years and went through many different hands before Ridley Scott filmed the 2007 movie starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
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Book Vs Movie: "Urban Cowboy"
Book Vs Movie Podcast
The Margos are ready to rock out in cowboy boots after reading the Aaron Latham Esquire magazine article “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy: America’s Search for True Grit” from 1978. He also wrote the “Perfect” article from Rolling Stone which became another John Travolta film. (Travolta is our movie lead here.)
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Book Vs Movie "Like Water for Chocolate" (2020)
Book Vs Movie Podcast
The Margos are ready to talk about “magical realism” in Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel (that later became the 1992 movie of the same name) Like Water for Chocolate. This may sound familiar to long time fans but we originally recorded this topic five years ago and the quality of that show--left much to be desired.
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Book Vs Movie "Gentleman Prefer Blondes"
Book Vs Movie Podcast
The Margos are heading back to the 50s (well, really the 20s if you want to be technical about it!) Gentleman Prefer Blondes was first published in 1925 by Anita Loos in Harper’s Bazaar magazine as a serial. The movie was directed by Howard Hawkes and stars Jane Russell as Dorothy and Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei.
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Book Vs Movie "Saturday Night Fever"
Book Vs Movie Podcast
The Margos are suffering from a case of “Night Fever” and the only sure is taking a deep dive into one of the most successful films of the 1970s--Saturday Night Fever. The film was directed by John Badham and stars John Travolta in his first Academy-Award nominated performance as an actor.
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Book Vs Movie
Total Recall
The Philip K. Dick Short Story Vs the Arnold Schwarzenegger 1990 Film
If memory serves, this is the first movie the Margos are covering that stars action star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. This time we are visiting Mars and it is nothing like David Bowie would have enjoyed. 1990’s Total Recall (directed by Paul Verhoeven) is based on the short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by prolific writer Philip K. Dick.
The short story (first published in 1966 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) follows the story of Douglas Quail and an ordinary, earth-bound man who dreams of going to Mars. He works as a clerk at a boring office job and his wife, Kristen, seems to enjoy making fun of his dreams.
Quail discovers Rekal Incorporated, a company that provides memory implants that takes the place of actual experience. Instead of a fake memory--he actually remembers that he is a secret agent who killed a political operative on Mars and his “real life” is fake.
The movie is much more complicated and the budget of $55 million for 1990 was considered astronomical for the time (it eventually made over $261 million) and was the 5th highest-grossing film in 1990 (Ghost was #1!)
The plot? We try to make sense of it in this episode while enjoying the insane special effects and inane dialog.
Between the short story and film--which did the Margos like better?
In this ep the Margos discuss:
- The bio of Philip K. Dick
- The career of Paul Verhoeven & Schwarzenegger
- The “sleazy & demure” love interest (eye roll)
- Margo’s story about San Diego actress Priscilla Allen (billed as “Fat Lady” in the movie!)
- The cast which includes: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Quaid,) Rachel Ticotin (Melina,) Sharon Stone (Lori,) Ronny Cox (Cohaggen,) Michael Ironside (Richter,) Marshall Bell (Kuato,) Ray Baker (McClane,) and Rosemary Dunsmore (Dr. Lull.)
Clips Featured:
- Total Recall trailer
- “Two Weeks”
- “You Blew My Cover!”
- Arnold yelling
- “Take the pill”
- Music: Soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith The Dream
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Margo D. @BrooklynFitChik www.brooklynfitchick.com brooklynfitchick@gmail.com
Margo P. @ShesNachoMama https://coloniabook.weebly.com/