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Short Circuit

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About This Episode

In 1986, a lightning strike turned a military robot into one of the most lovable characters of the entire decade. In this Backtrack, we’re plugging into Short Circuit — a movie packed with Cold War anxiety, mall-era futurism, and a robot who just wanted more input. From Johnny 5 to laser cannons and synth-heavy charm, we’re revisiting why this weird little sci-fi comedy still has a pulse forty years later.

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(May contain some explicit language.)

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Show Notes

Transcript

Speaker Transcript
Jon Welcome back Gen X grown up podcast listener to this backtrack edition of the Gen X grown up podcast. I’m John joining me as always, of course, my buddy Mo. Hey, man.
Mo Hey, how’s it going?
Jon Good. You know, it’s not a show without George. Hey, George.
George Hey, how’s it going, everybody?
Jon It’s going well. You know, in 1986, a lightning strike turned a military robot into one of the most lovable characters of the entire decade. In this backtrack, we’re plugging in to Short Circuit, a movie packed with Cold War anxiety, Maul-era futurism, and a robot who just wanted more input.
Jon From Johnny Five to laser cannons and synth-heavy charm, we’re revisiting why this weird little sci-fi comedy still has a pulse 40 years later. And…
Jon George, you, you tease this backtrack at the end of our last regular episode and you might’ve cast some light aspersions on it that we dig deep in these backtracks. And you’re like, i don’t know how deep we could dig into this movie necessarily.
Mo Yeah. Oh, yeah.
George Yeah, that’s true.
Jon it’s a It’s not a super deep movie, but it’s it’s a charming movie. Yeah, I think we all just rewatched it. So we’ll see how deep we can get into Short Circuit in just a few minutes. First, though, it’s time for some fourth listener email.
Jon Fourth listener this time around is a name you’re going to recognize. Uno Clay, longtime listener and supporter, dropped us a line.
Mo ah yeah
Jon The subject line of his email was Thunderdumb. Hmm. Okay.
George Okay.
Jon Uno Clay says, I recently watched the first two Mad Max movies, so naturally I ordered myself a cheap used copy of Thunderdome on Blu-ray.
George Oh, shit.
Jon Oh shit, says George. Spoiler, I only made it about 30 minutes in. I’ve seen the movie many times before, but hadn’t watched it probably a decade.
Mo Hmm.
Jon Unfortunately, Thunderdome was a film that I was shocked to find out is verifiably terrible. It’s just genuinely awful. His words, by the way, I’m reading this. Make sure we’re clear.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
Jon It’s genuinely awful, he says. The dialogue, the music, the acting. I was laughing out loud at the first big Tina Turner scene, and I realized, wow, this is definitively the worst Mad Max film almost unwatchable.
Mo Hmm. going to finish.
George e
Mo going let you finish. I mean, get through the whole thing and then we can talk.
Jon Okay. All right. All right. i i would I see steam coming out of ears. i want to make sure. Okay. Just finish. He goes on to say, I’ve always complained that the first two thirds of the movie is great. And then the stuff with the kids is pretty unwatchable and saccharine, but I never knew how inadvertently camp and cheesy the first part is. The scoring alone was making me cringe.
Jon Ranking the movies.
Mo she
Jon Number two, number one, and number three. So keep up the fun show. Uno Clay in Philly. All right. You’re both biting your lip. Mo, go.
Mo Oh, OK. I will say of the three original Road Warrior movie, this is probably my least favorite of the three. But I didn’t think it was terrible.
Jon Okay.
Mo I thought, you know, it was I thought it was still a good movie.
Jon o
Mo And as far as soundtrack, Tina Turner soundtrack. I mean, I thought it was amazing soundtrack, if anything. And I thought the story was, you know, yeah, it was a little, they said a little campy in some parts.
Mo But I have seen this movie fairly recently and I still really enjoyed it.
Jon There you go. Okay. George, unleash. Release the Kraken.
George I don’t want to because he’s a supporter.
Mo Go, please.
Jon Okay. Release the Kraken nicely.
George Oh yeah, no, that’s not possible with me. So I will say this. Number two is my favorite of the Mad Max films. Full stop.
Mo Warrior.
George I don’t care about the modern ones, the original ones, the second film road warrior in America, Mad Max two everywhere else. That’s the best of those films.
Mo Yeah, probably.
George Number three has far greater production value than any of the other original films. I don’t give a shit what anybody else says.
Mo Yes, for sure.
Jon we know that
George The sets, the costumes, while outlandish, the everything in that film production-wise was better.
Mo Fit, sorta.
George Now, I will admit, the kids are a little tedious at times. I could have done with 10 minutes less kids segment.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Okay.
George The overall storyline is still fun. I love the fact that they bring back a character from the second film without telling you they’re bringing back a character from the second film.
Mo Yeah, he’s just there.
Jon Right? Yeah.
George I think that the world was… opened up compared to the first two films. The first film sets a universe that is very intriguing, but in and of itself looks terrible by the standards of the third film.
George It does not look as good.
Jon Sure.
George The acting in the first film was far weaker than the acting in the other two films.
Jon Sure. Naturally.
George Even if you say Tina Turner isn’t an actress, I still think she pulled that role off.
Mo I agree.
George That all being said, um
George when he said it’s the worst of the Mad Max films, that’s when I was really cringing because like, you’re going to tell me this is worse than the Tom What’s-His-Name bullshit film that I had to sit through?
Mo ah
Jon So, so let let let me just, let me just poke the bear, George.
George aye No.
Jon I edited out some of this email and actually he included ranking the other ones as an aside.
George Jesus Christ.
Jon If you want to include the newer ones. And he still said this one was being dragged behind a go-kart on a chain, like a dog. It’s still the very last of all of them. I’m, I’m paraphrasing, but not by much.
George I mean, I get the reference. That’s a clever reference from the first film.
Mo It was very clever reference.
George I get that. But still, no.
Jon Yes. Yeah.
George ah
Jon Hmm.
George No, no. Furiosa? No, fuck you.
Jon ah Goodness.
George No.
Jon Okay. All right. all right. Before George makes you, makes you demonetize this and stop being a patron.
Mo Agree to disagree.
Jon Uno Clay, 66% of us still love you.
George Oh, my God.
Jon And we’re so happy that you wrote.
George I still love him.
Jon Okay.
George I didn’t say I didn’t love him. i just don’t like his opinion.
Jon okay oh it That’s the thing. People, too many people in the world think if you disagree, it means hate. We can disagree and still love.
Mo No. Absolutely.
George Yeah.
Jon That’s the great that’s the great thing about it.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Because we grew up in an era when just that rolls off our back. And we’re okay with that.
George He can have his incorrect opinion and he’s still a good person.
Jon anu And Uno Clay, there you go.
Mo Exactly.
Jon which You’re totally welcome to Thank you, Uno Clay.
Mo is right He has a right to be wrong.
Jon for for writing in, ah tell us what you think about the show and about the films we covered in the show. Fourth listener, if you would like to subject yourself to abuse and write you have your email featured here on the show,
Mo Or share your opinion of the Mad Max movies.
Jon Sure, sure.
Mo Ha ha ha ha
George ah
Jon CounterPoint’s welcome. It’s drop dead easy. Just hit us up at podcast at genxgrownup.com. Read every single one of most of them. Like you know, Clay’s will eventually make this show. All right. With that good business in the rear view mirror, it’s time to jump into this backtrack all about short circuit right after this. Stick around.
Jon We are featuring in this Backtrack episode a film that is now, as of, as you’re listening to this, just about two weeks ago, 40 years old
Mo Jeez.
Jon Short, right? Yeah. Short Circuit was theatrically released in the U.S. and Canada May 9th, 1986 by TriStar Pictures. it it That era, mid-80s, 84, 85, 86, right in there are some movies that…
Jon It’s almost like old TV. Watching it now, as we said, maybe not the depth that we might remember it was back then.
Mo says
Jon Still a cute and fun watch and certainly ah a pivotal kind of film that everybody, like a touchstone, you remember we saw that film. Speaking of which, I thought, as we often do with these sorts of episodes, talking about a particular thing from our youth, I want to do a little roundtable and touch on each one of us here and talk about what are your first memories of this film?
Jon When you first see it? What are your, uh, when you reflect on it, what do you think of it before we dive in and start peeling back the layers? Let me start with you, Mo.
Mo Sure. um I saw it. I see that was 86. So, oh, it was the summer. My first summer back from college. ah So I was finishing my freshman year and me and my brother David pretty much spent the entire summer pretty much seeing every movie that came out.
Jon Hmm. Okay.
Mo You know, it was just our thing to do every weekend was or ah like twice a week. Sometimes you go see different movies. And this is one of the ones that was but since it came out in May, it have been one of the early ones we saw because that’s right, right at the beginning of that summer season.
Mo So that’s that’s where saw it.
Jon Okay.
Mo And I remember we saw it and we were like, it was right.
Jon No, right? Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I don’t i don’t i don’t want my $5 back, right?
Mo no
Jon It’s okay.
Mo Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jon That’s right. right. How about you, George?
George I’m sure that the first time I saw this film would have been a VHS rental. This probably wouldn’t have been one that I would have gone and seen in the theater.
Jon Oh, okay.
George Cause in 86, I would have just gotten my learner’s permit.
Mo Oh, he was gone.
George And so, yeah, I would not have driven to see this film just based on the storyline everything.
Jon Okay.
George Although I remember it being promoted more for the robot than the romantic comedy part of it.
Jon Sure, of course.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George um But I, I think I’m almost positive. I would have saw this as a VHS film. And I just remember thinking when I watched it, that I was far more captivated by the robot, which I’m sure was the intention of the editor than I was by any of the human characters in the film.
Mo she
Jon I don’t know. Ally Sheedy’s never been much cuter than she was in this film, but okay, if you like the robot better, I’ll let you do it.
George Yeah. Is she cute? mean,
Mo ah
Jon Yes. Yes. Definitively. Just like we know what we know about Thunderdome. We know Ally Sheedy is cute. Um,
George I don’t know if we know that.
Jon ah I’m verifying for you. So you do you what I so I’m sure like Mo, I saw this. um So in 86, so I didn’t get my driver’s license till 87. The last year, senior year, this is my junior year of high school. And it was a time when the only thing there was to do was to drive into town and see a movie in the evening. It’s all there was. Right. Because we weren’t we weren’t drinking party people. We would go to the arcade and the mall and the movies. That’s what we did for fun. And I remember seeing this in the theater.
Jon And you mentioned seeing on VHS, George. I know it was in the movie store and it’s one of the cover, like when he’s reaching up on the hill the lightning is hitting him.
George yeah
Mo Lightning.
Jon And I’m like, that cover is on every shelf of every movie movie store. And every time I shut my eyes and think him ah of a VHS rental store. But in reality, I’m not sure if I ever rewatched it after seeing it in the theater.
Jon Not because I didn’t like it, but because you said, Mo, it was fine. It was cute. And it wasn’t like there was some deep stuff you had to reanalyze. Once you see it once, you know what the movie’s about.
Mo pretty much. Yeah.
Jon There’s only a couple of great quotes. And otherwise, it’s just a fun, lighthearted romp kind of a movie. Yeah. Okay.
Mo Yeah.
Jon So ah in case you haven’t seen it, Mo, why don’t you share a quick synopsis of what this film is about?
Mo Sure. I mean, it’s like said, not a heavy movie, but it centers around this experimental military facility that creates these robots that basically we use for combat.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo um One of them, number five, gets struck by lightning. And because of that, it somehow gains sentience. This game’s human like intelligence. Of course, now that it’s intelligent, the first thing he wants to do is escape and and and yeah get the heck out of there.
Jon Get off the military base.
Mo Meets Ali Sheedy. And basically, it’s a movie about that robot sort of learning to be a person, I guess. I’m trying to find a good way of putting it. But as I said, very lighthearted, very, know, a little saccharine, I would say it points to. But again, that was whole point of the movie.
Jon Yep. Yeah. He kind it gains ethics.
George think you just used that word because it was in the in the letter from uno clay yeah you know it it didn’t do poorly at the box office either i mean 40.7 million against a 15 million dollar budget obviously we got a sequel
Jon Whirls.
Jon Hey, if the shoe fits.
Mo I had it on my mind. it had it on my mind. ah That’s good.
Jon Mm.
Jon Mm.
George I’m not going to say we got a good sequel, um but we got a sequel out of it um that brought back at least two of the characters from the original film.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm.
George It was solid. It did solid numbers. It was a success. And… I think because of that, that’s why they brought it to the VHS rental where, you know, it did far larger than that $40.7 million dollars box office.
Jon Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Mo oh yeah.
Jon oh Yeah.
George And that’s the way everything was in the eighties. If it did moderately well in the theater, it was getting a VHS release to recoup even more money and make a bigger profit for those people.
Mo Right.
George So yeah, good, solid financial film. Yeah.
Jon for a lot of studios, that was part of the model. It was no longer, I hope we make it up on the back end, the movie rental stores. They’re planning on that. That’s budgeted.
George Yeah.
Jon They know that money’s coming, which is why it hurts so much when that started to dry up when streaming happened. And anyway, uh, we’ll just have $15 million budget that you said it went, um,
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Yeah.
George Yep. 15 against 40 million box office.
Mo That’s pretty good return.
Jon Now, according to ah a commentary track on the DVD, the robot, ah number five, we know him as Johnny Five. He didn’t name himself that till like the very end, the last scene.
Mo Yeah.
Jon But Johnny Five, number five, whatever.
George Right.
Jon He was the most expensive part of the film. um And he’s not just a robot.
George Sure.
Jon It required several different versions to be made based on what he needed to do. Because they didn’t…
Mo Right.
Jon look like to spoil it for you guys. There wasn’t one robot that went around that did all the things you saw in the movie. Okay. There was actually a number of different top half, bottom half, trucks, arms, all those different things.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon um Almost everything else in the film was pretty cheap and allowed them to allocate the bulk of the budget to the robot, which is probably why it resonated with you, George, because they didn’t scrimp on the robot. They scrimped on some other areas of the film, but not on the robot. That’s where the money went.
Mo Okay. Surprisingly, it actually earned a couple of nominations from ah the Saturn Awards, which is all about science fiction and all that stuff.
Jon Oh, sure.
Mo So maybe it was a light year. No, it wasn’t a light year for science fiction. So, okay. So whatever reason, it got a bunch of nominations there. So didn’t win any, but now there again, like I said, it was it was a solid movie, like George said.
Jon Yeah, right.
George Yeah, I mean, you know, it was it was a different kind of storyline. So I think that’s probably why it was talked about for those awards.
Jon Sure.
George Plus, it was successful. And when it comes to sci-fi films, they weren’t always successful.
Mo Yeah, that’s for sure.
George But ah the film actually got its start after some producers of the film, they distributed an educational video about a robot to various colleges.
Jon Right.
George studying other films with a prominent robot cast like Star Wars, you know, C-3PO and R2-D2 for inspiration, they decided to question human reactions to a living robot on the premise that no one would initially believe it was sentient.
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George So, I mean, that’s kind of the strangest way I’ve ever heard of a movie concept coming to be, but it doesn’t feel odd to me in the middle of nineteen eighty s filmmaking.
George It feels exactly like something that would happen.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
Jon Right. Mm-hmm. Yep. yeah So the the robot, which if you haven’t seen the movie, just if if you don’t want to see the movie, at least go look at the robot because his design is pretty iconic.
Jon I mean, I won’t say like an R2-D2 or a 3PO, but his design is not like anything you’ve seen over and over and over. He’s he’s definitely kind of tank inspired. He’s got these this little triangle tread with a wheel that spins in the back, like he’s some kind of a forklift.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon And then he’s very like a humanoid on the top. He’s got these arms and a big ET-like head and very expressive eyes, the two cameras and everything. It turns out the inspiration for the design of Johnny Five came from a guy named Douglas Trumbull,
Jon had a short name, ShowScan.
Jon Trumbles, ShowScan, blah, blah, blah, blah.
George No, the the short was called Let’s Go.
Jon Let’s go. That’s right.
Mo Yeah, what’s Shosuke then?
Jon Trumbles.
George Yeah. Show Scam was a series, if I remember correctly.
Jon Yeah, I don’t know.
Mo Oh, okay, okay, gotcha.
Jon Okay. All right. Let just say.
George Just read it the way it is, and you’ll be fine.
Jon Okay.
Mo Read what’s on the card, come on!
Jon Damn it. free it
Mo Ha ha ha ha
Jon I wrote this a certain way, actor. Okay. it turns out the inspiration for the design, that iconic design of Johnny Five, came from Douglas Trumbull’s ShowScan short entitled Let’s Go that had a robot named Pal designed by Eric Allard. Steven Spielberg saw that short and told the director to go contact Allard for the robot construction in this film because it was such an interesting design.
Mo Yeah.
George Yep. Mm-hmm.
Mo And actually design itself was done by Sid Mead, who did a lot of the artwork and visual designs for a Blade Runner, which is one of my favorite movies and Tron.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mo So again, they spent all the money on the robot apparently.
Jon There you go.
Jon There you go.
Mo Yeah.
Jon That’s where it all came from. Yep. no We haven’t talked about music yet, and it had a pretty standard score, but there was one song featured super prominently called Who’s Johnny by Eldebarge. And at least twice it was in the film, once on the radio, once when he and Ali Sheedy’s character first meet, and they’re kind of dancing around.
Jon And There was no soundtrack released at the time of this movie. But then some years later, i think it was like 2004 or something, a soundtrack of the film was released with the score.
Jon That song was not present. There was no mention of El DeBarge, even though that was… I think they won awards off of that song. It was huge on on the on the on the charts.
George yeah
Jon And yet when that real soundtrack for the film came out, they were snubbed. Elder Barge did not get featured at all, even though that was the damn movie.
George you know that was licensing stuff that’s all yeah yeah
Jon Oh, of course.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah, they couldn’t get the agreement. Had it been released at the time, they’d already had the agreement baked in, but it was many years later.
Mo Yeah.
George Well, I mean, when you watch the film, you watch all the way through the credits and you see there’s only two songs listed in the soundtrack.
Jon I know. Yeah.
George There’s El DeBarge and then his theme.
Mo Oh, really? didn’t notice that.
George And that’s it. Like the stuff from Saturday Night Fever, which is what I want to talk about next. That’s not even mentioned in there. But there’s a sequence where Johnny Five is dancing while he’s watching Saturday Night Fever on a little television.
Mo she
George And he was imitating John Travolta’s you know iconic dance from that film.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George But that was done as an inside joke because Badham had also directed Saturday Night Fever.
Jon Yep.
George So this guy who honestly I had never heard of, I went and looked up some stuff on him.
Jon um
Mo Yeah.
George He directed quite a few known films. I just had never heard of his name because the films or the stars from those films always were more popular than he was. So you know he got this movie and somebody decided to play a little joke on him and say, well, let’s write a Saturday Night Fever reference into this.
Jon Eh, they eclipse the director. Sure.
Jon Right.
George And he went along with it.
Jon I think we can get the license. We know a guy, right?
Mo Yeah.
George Yeah.
George We ended the last segment talking about the director, John Badham, and I just wanted to mention that there was a cute little cameo. There’s a place where Ally Sheedy’s character, Stephanie, gets basically bushwhacked.
George They just ambush her at her door, wanting to talk to her about the robot being at her at her house and everything. And there’s a cameraman on the news crew.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George That’s bad himself.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George He found a way to put himself into the movie, but this guy, he he’s done quite a few things, not to mention the Saturday night fever that we talked about.
Jon I like when they do that. Mm-hmm.
George He’s a solid credential director who’s worked for a lot of years in Hollywood. And I think he did a moderately successful job with this film.
George they’re the I know the the storyline and everything, that the whole script and everything went through a lot of different rewrites and changes and whatnot. I think he did okay with what he was left with. It’s just funny to me that you had somebody like Spielberg trying to get involved by saying, Hey, go find this person for this robot and everything.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George But we didn’t get a Spielberg like film out of this.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George I was, you know, was kind of sad when I learned that.
Jon No.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo And you mentioned.
Jon They tried to have the heart, but the the heart was pretty superficial, as we said.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It’s not a deep movie. is that It’s a robot movie with the…
George It’s artificial. It’s artificial.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It’s artificial. Here we go. Sure. Mm.
Mo And as George mentioned, you know, Ally Sheedy, I mean, 80s movie, Ally Sheedy’s in it.
Jon Oh.
Mo You know, what do you can think?
Jon Oh.
George right
Mo It’s Stephanie Speck.
Jon Oh.
Mo And she plays like this very kind of like idealistic veterinarian who, you know, very easily believes that.
George I don’t think she’s a veterinarian.
Mo Oh, she’s not witness. or She’s just an animal person.
George No, she’s just an animal person who’s rescuing all these down-on-their-luck pets, dogs with three legs, and everything else.
Mo Oh, OK.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah. That’s right.
Jon In fact, i I think she does catering because on the van it says parties catered and bugged me because parties was misspelled.
Mo That’s right.
George Right. It’s her Stephanie Sweets is the van, yeah.
Mo That’s right. That’s right.
Jon It bothered me the whole way through the movie.
Mo Yes. I can see that bothering you.
Jon Yeah.
Mo but But of course, her character was yeah because she’s like the idealistic idealistic one who readily believes he’s intelligent and like a person, like pretty much right off the bat.
Jon Yeah.
George At first, she thinks he’s an alien.
Jon Well, she thought, right.
Mo Oh, yeah. yeah
Jon She thinks he’s an alien. It’s like, are is that you? Are you inside of a machine? Just your brains in a jar in there?
Mo yeah
Jon It’s very cute.
George he
Jon ah Now, and the other big name, of course, Steve Guttenberg. ah He plays Newton Crosby, who is the designer of these military robots.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Now, he actually didn’t want it. It’s a common story, right? We’ve seen this a million times, threads of it. Someone makes some incredible thing. It’s the Oppenheimer story. Like, I want to make energy. Oh, it’s going to be a bomb. You know, oh I made these cool robots. We’re going to use them as a military weapon, right?
Jon He very much doesn’t want to have his inventions be used in the military. And I’d read somewhere that… the character is supposed to be like an anti-social, unlikable kind of guy.
Jon And then they cast Steve Guttenberg, like just a guy whose face makes you smile.
Mo That’s Mm-hmm Cocoon, yeah They know they failed there
Jon he He was in Three Men and a Baby and Police Academy films and comedies.
George yeah
Jon He’s so lovable. Yeah, how could you not like this guy? But you’re supposed to not like him like he’s an awkward, anti-social dude. but
George That was one of the notes that Badham complained about later was that Ali Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg were forced on him by the studio and he had completely different actors in mind for those roles and it would have been a completely different film.
Jon Really?
Jon Right. i can I can see that.
Mo I can see, yeah, absolutely
Jon Yeah, of course. Yep.
Mo So, yeah you know, you’re talking about number five or Johnny five. um It was actually voiced by Tim Blaney, who actually was a really well-known puppeteer and did voices.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo Like he did the voice of ah Pug in Men in Black, the dog, little dog.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo He did the voice there.
George Yep.
Jon Oh!
George The dog. Yeah.
Mo know, he was in Men Black 2. He did puppeteering in like Team America. you know, like said, he’s he’s and
Jon America.
George He did the puppeteering in this.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Oh, yeah, this one as well. You know, he said and looking through it, he’s his career is like still, you know, he went through even through as much as 2021.
George Yeah.
Mo He was still working.
George Yeah.
Jon I appreciated learning that he was on set, as you said, George, doing the puppeteering, but doing the lines.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon So it felt more organic.
Mo hmm.
George Yeah.
Jon Now, you know, every movie has to go back and do some looping and some rerecording of stuff. But by and large, he was there. If he wasn’t carrying the puppet or running the robot, he was there doing the lines with the actors so they could react and and interact with Johnny Five. Because the whole point was he’s gaining sentience.
Jon You want to be able to relate to him. And if they’re just talking to line, somebody just reads a dumb line. And I think helped the actors to, to bring out what heart was, ah was possible from that script to show, Oh, there is somebody there. I’m talking to not just a machine. I’m talking at.
Mo ah Yeah, i kind of like the new movie Hail Mary, the guy said that that’s why they think it worked well is because the puppeteer was doing the voice.
Jon Yeah. Right. The Rocky. yeah
Mo And so they they said that really helped.
Jon So it’s more organic.
George Well, and especially the way that oh Tim Blaney did the puppeteering in this film, he actually, it was one of the early examples of having the harness wrapped around his upper body and arms that would then translate the motion over to the robot in real time.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George So all of that upper body stuff was all done by him.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And then somebody held a little remote control to do the tracks whenever it was the full robot in the different scenes.
Jon Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.
George it was really cool.
Jon Or to move his eyelids or whatever cool little details.
Mo yeah
George Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon Sure. Yeah. I always said there’s no such thing as a bad puppet movie. So this counts. It’s a puppet movie. Yeah.
George ah For me, I think one of the people who kind of stole most of the scenes that he was in was Fisher Stevens as Ben Javatuya, or however you say, he was Crosby’s assistant. um The guy’s not a natural Indian.
George He’s actually Italian. And I knew him from a movie that was before this called The Flamingo Kid with Matt Dillon back in the day.
Jon Oh,
George He was one of Matt Dillon’s friends in that film.
Jon okay.
George But he has gone on to have a really solid career in Hollywood. Matter of fact, one of the last things he had done on television was he was a big integral part in the blacklist series.
Jon Oh, really?
George Uh, so yeah, yeah.
Jon Okay.
George He, he was one of the associates that ended up, I think his character betrayed, uh, James Spader’s character, but yeah, good actor, really solid.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Hmm.
George I kind of wish I saw him in more stuff. And when I went back and rewatch his film, I remembered, oh yeah, that’s Fisher Stevens. Holy shit. Cause they had to do a whole bunch of stuff with him that just crazy to get him to be an Indian in this role.
Jon Right. what You had mentioned that Badham said the studio forced certain actors on him. It wasn’t his choice necessarily.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon And I read this little nugget. You probably knew this already. Stevens reports he was hired to play Ben, and when he was hired, he was not going to be an Indian.
George That’s right.
Jon But then he was fired because Bronson Pinchot came along. they’re like, oh, we want him. And we want him to be like a Balky-esque foreign who has trouble pronouncing things or whatever.
Jon But then Pinchot got Perfect Strangers and had to bail on short circuit. They rehired Fisher Stevens and said, can you play an Indian character who has trouble with English?
Jon And so they actually dyed his hair. He had to wear makeup to look a little darker in order to do this.
George Yep.
George Contacts.
Jon yeah
Mo Yeah, I was reading about the how both the actor and the director completely regret that decision.
Jon Right.
Mo You know, because, know, was the whitewashing, again, like playing, you know, and playing.
Jon Yep.
Jon m
Mo They couldn’t find an Indian character or an Indian actor to play that role kind of thing. um But I said, obviously things are different, but also they had no intention of that at the beginning. It was just something that just sort of it almost seems like it just sort of happened, you know, and they’re like, you’re fine, i’m I’m working, you know, I have a job.
Jon Right. It’s like,
Jon the Okay, why are we doing it?
George You know, i there was an interview that I read about as well that’s come out over in the last, like, 15 years or so. And I think it was with Aziz Ansari. And he was talking to Fisher Stevens specifically about this role.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Yeah.
George And Aziz, or whoever it was that was interviewing him, said he wasn’t mad at him for doing this role because he didn’t try to, you know, like, profit off of it or do it.
George Like, he didn’t… I guess he didn’t do anything that was offensive with the role. Granted, the character did have a lot of quirks and the mispronunciations and the, I, the thing that I found endearing, this is where part of the heart, most of the heart came from Johnny five, but part of the heart of this film came from the Fisher Stevens character to me, whenever he would say a phrase incorrectly or twist the words around in a phrase or something like that, it just lended a little bit of levity in a segment that wasn’t very funny before that.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo yeah
George There were plenty of times when the segments were supposed to be funny, but they weren’t until he came into the scene.
Jon I agree. Like…
Mo That’s true. Yeah.
Jon Yep.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Right. It wasn’t Indian stereotyping. It was English as a second language stereotyping, in my opinion, which what it was.
George True. Yeah.
Jon There wasn’t like, oh, Indians act and behave this way. It wasn’t that necessarily. You know, it was more of a he’s he’s trying to pick up on the colloquialisms. You know, I’m standing here beside myself with disbelief or something, sorts of little things that were cute, like you said.
George Yeah.
Jon And in fact, he has my favorite line in the movie that we’ll talk about later, but we’ll get to that. Uh, let’s see. Austin Pendleton as Dr. Howard Marner. So this is the guy, this is the dickhead.
Jon This is the guy that runs the military, um branch of things.
George I don’t know. He’s not the jerk.
Jon Yes. Everything until the very end, he has just a moment of uplift, but otherwise he’s all about the profit. He doesn’t care about the creative.
George I don’t agree.
Jon We’re in making money on military. We don’t care what you think. ah Now, if you don’t recognize the name Austin Pendleton, you might know him because I had to look him up, go, where do i know this guy from?
George Yep.
Jon He was the stuttering defense attorney from my cousin, Vinny, that got fired when he’s like, I want this guy when Vinny shows up.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
George Yes, he was.
Mo he
Jon Because he seemed okay, and then he got on the, on started in front of the jury, and he’s, ah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, stammering around. was terrible, but he’s the same actor. And he’s the same kind of weaselly guy in this movie, too.
Jon i You disagree? Don’t think he’s like that, George?
George I disagree.
Jon That’s what I saw.
George yeah I mean, no.
Jon Okay.
Mo ah
George So there’s, there are other dickheads in this film as far as characters are concerned. I don’t think he was. I think he is a man trapped in between two realities. Number one, he really wants to do the right thing, but he’s like forced into these situations by the senators and the military people that were at the beginning of the film that you kind of overlook.
George But if you watch the interactions with him and though it’s the only deep part of the movie, if you want to have anything past a three foot shallow end of the pool level, if you pay attention, like there’s a general when they’re doing all of their demonstrations and everything that’s at the party with them. And he’s like, oh yeah, we’re just dropped these people in behind enemy lines. They blow a whole bunch of people up. You drive a nuclear bomb right up the city street of Moscow and everything. Right. Right.
George He didn’t want any of that. He didn’t care about any of that. He was genuinely trying to make something cool. At least that was my impression of the character, but he did.
Jon They did say he used to be a scientist, right? Because he did say, i but he says, I’m not that anymore, right?
George he was, yeah. No, I, yeah.
Jon He’s he’s left that behind.
George And i think that’s the tragedy of his character. If you want to have tragedy in such a shallow film, but
Jon Yep.
Jon all All right. Well, there are other candidates for dicks in this movie, frankly, if you don’t think he was the dick.
George there are, I’ll,
Mo Yeah.
George So the first one is he’s only in a few scenes, but Brian McNamara plays Frank. That’s Stephanie’s abusive ex-boyfriend. The first scene, he’s trying to get her dog who’s three-legged.
George He’s trying to put him in a little carrier that’s got animal experimentation on the side of it. He’s going to sell him, you know, that dog’s worth money.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George ah And then later on, you know, he finds out about Johnny five and there’s a reward. So of course he’s trying to make good on that. He’s a moderate dickhead in the film only because he’s not there very often, but.
George The main dickhead of the film is a man who in the eighties made a living out of playing dickheads in films. And that’s GW Bailey who played captain scroter, the chief of security for Nova. Now GW Bailey was way more famous for being the asshole captain in the police Academy films, except for the police Academy too.
George They replaced him with a different guy who just didn’t do it as well. So they brought him back after that. ah
Jon Gutenberg film, by the way, another film they were in together.
George a Gutenberg film.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George And that’s where they have that relationship.
Jon Yeah.
George And that’s why they played well off of each other in this movie, I think, because they had that history.
Jon Yep.
George And I tell you, I don’t know if anybody in that time period played a better comedic asshole than GW Bailey. He’s just built for that role.
Jon So gung ho. Oh, so gung ho. So company line, the army line. I just, I just, it I giggled every time they said general scroter and did the character Ben one time call him general scrotum or something.
George ah
Mo ah
Jon He had to get to correct him.
George Yeah.
Jon He says it wrong. And I’m like, that’s what I’m be hearing every time I’m hearing it too, Ben. It’s so, I can’t think of another example of just so obviously naming a character to make you have no respect for him, to make him a joke, to make him a punchline.
Mo Yeah.
Jon General Scroder. He even had it. He had the little badge on his thing. I’m like, does it say that it actually says Scroder right on his. Yeah. So that made me chuckle throughout the film.
Jon But that wasn’t my favorite part of the film. When we get back from this break, we’re going to each champion what was our favorite segment from Short Circuit. You don’t want to miss this. Stick around.
Jon as we often do when we’re celebrating a 40 now year old movie, the short circuit is, I just say it that way to make, to make Mo feel, yeah, he feels a certain kind of way.
Mo Yes, I’m saying that. Yeah, let’s stop saying that.
Jon We like to, each of us champion, maybe it’s an album, our favorite track or in a film or series, our favorite episode or our favorite part of it.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon And so we each did select that. And going go first this time. And my favorite part of the film, my favorite, there’s, there’s nothing in it that jumps out at me like, this is the showpiece, you know,
George Yeah, true.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon There’s just a lot of little cute moments.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon And depending on how they strike you is kind of like, what’s your favorite for me? You talked about the the dickhead boyfriend, Frank, right?
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon The part where the he only shows up twice the movie, once when he’s trying to abduct the dog and once when he’s trying to go get the reward for returning in the robot, the $25,000. And when he shows up, a series of events happens and he goes in and Johnny five goes out. And when he comes back outside,
Jon Johnny five has meticulously disassembled Frank’s Pontiac firebird.
George Yep. Mm-hmm.
Jon He even has the Chilton’s manual there. So he can go through and make sure he knows every nut and bolt.
George miss he
Jon And it’s not like trashed. It’s like laid out. Like it’s a model ready to be put together. Everything like shocks are lined up. The tires are stacked. Everything looks beautiful. And then there’s like a little fight that goes on.
Jon That’s funny. And he turns out he can dodge bullets and all that fight.
Mo yeah
Jon And so, All of that is great to me. And plus, right after it is my favorite line of the movie. And it’s said by Ben where Gutenberg’s character says, what do you think about Stephanie? He’s like, oh, I think she’s a virgin or at least used to be.
George Right.
Jon i I had to stop, laugh, rewind, and hear it again. I’d forgotten that was in there. I feel like other people have used that line as a movie quote, and i didn’t know they were quoting this movie. I think it’s so funny.
Jon So the whole section around disassembling Frank’s car, the fight that ensues, and what follows right there.
Mo yes
Jon It’s my favorite little, if I had to watch five minutes the movie, that’s the five minutes I’d watch. Mo, how about you? What’s your favorite?
Mo So I don’t necessarily favor, but one that stuck in my head the most was basically when Johnny five, when he crushes the grasshopper and Alishidi has to explain like what happened exactly.
Jon Okay.
George Oh, yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George Disassemble.
Mo And because up until then he’s like a child, right?
Jon Reassemble.
Mo And the scene was very much like you’re explaining to a child what death is.
Jon Right.
Mo And that it doesn’t come back. Like once you’re dead, it’s gone and it’s over. And it’s, it’s sort of made this movie seem a little bit more, a little darker, I guess for a second there for this one scene when they started talking about it.
Mo But it was definitely something that people can relate to. i thought it was a very relatable scene because I think, especially if you’re a parent, you had those moments with your kid where you have to explain things like that to them that you really don’t want to, but you know, it’s important that they understand it.
Jon Right.
Jon right
Jon He makes that connection because the thing they had already mentioned to him at that point that they might disassemble him.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon And he thought that was fine. He didn’t care. And then he put the dot. He connected the dots. he’s like, wait a minute. Disassemble. Cannot reassemble. Death. Gone. Oh, I don’t want that.
Mo Yeah.
Jon You know, although it is hampered a little bit by the silly jumping robot that just looks so unnatural right before that because he’s trying to be a grasshopper.
Mo Oh, right.
Jon And that special effect.
Mo Oh, that special effect was terrible.
Jon We’re kind of weird. i Yeah.
George I think that was stop motion.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah, it may have been.
George I’m pretty sure.
Jon it may It may have been, yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Or sped up or something.
George Yeah.
Jon I don’t know what they did but
George So John says there’s no bad puppet movie. Apparently he doesn’t like that part of puppeteering, but I think that that’s, I think that that scene is critical to the movie because it’s what informs his motivations of trying to run and hide from Nova throughout the rest of the film and how his character and Stephanie’s character relates to him.
Jon did. You could have a bad puppet scene.
Jon Sure.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George And you talked about, you know, the whole disassemble, reassemble, explaining to a child. There’s another scene that kind of illustrates that a little bit too. When Gutenberg first comes and talks to Johnny five for the very first time, he’s like making fun of the way Johnny five is speaking. And she’s like, I think he speaks very well for a four day old.
Mo Yeah.
Jon yeah
George It just, it’s, it’s illustrating and driving home the point that this is a young sentient child character the
Mo Yeah.
Jon Oh,
Jon shit.
George a devastatingly powerful body, right?
Mo I
George a i All of us have had children and all of us will remember a time, especially because we’re men, when one of those children had those super strong legs and kicked you right in the nuts.
Mo was where you go with that.
George You know, just how powerful a dumb child can be in those moments.
Jon oh
Mo yeah
George And that’s what Johnny five was. Yeah.
Jon Disassemble!
Mo yeah
Jon All right.
George I think for me, my favorite scene though was probably the little robot war three stooges scene when Gutenberg and Ally Sheedy are supposed to talk things out in the little restaurant and Johnny five is kind of off somewhere behind the restaurant and Nova sends the other, ah you know, number one, two, three, and four.
Jon joe Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Although I didn’t, I think it was just one, two, and three, but he sends them all into the woods to go. And Johnny five, just, he basically runs circles around him.
Jon He handles them.
George stops them all, pushes their little red button to turn them off as whatever precarious scenario he puts them in.
Jon Yep.
George And then with one little red button, somehow magically programs them to become the three stooges that you see later on in that scene.
Mo That’s the computers work.
George It’s just, I apparently, yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo ah
Jon Don’t you know? Yeah.
George Yeah. He just like his little hands and fingers, like he’s touching a circuit and then he’s pressing a red button. He’s just doing all that. And you see the little flashing lights on the little red circuit board. It’s just funny to me. i I like that.
George It calls back to an earlier scene in the movie when he’s sitting in front of the television, watching the stooges and imitating their voices.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George You see these kinds of things in these coming of age fish out of water stories time and time again. I thought the movie got that part of the film. I thought it did that well.
Jon Yeah, that was a funny segment and and one that I enjoyed. It was very much like, ah okay these military weapon robots, I just made the biggest fools out of them. Right. But it was a moment that was deserved.
Jon It was earned because we see him watching the Three Stooges and they’re almost reenacting that exact scene that he watches.
Mo Oh, yeah. yeah
Jon Right.
George Very close. Yeah. Mm
Jon And we’ve also seen that he has super absorbed pop culture and commercials and movies.
Mo she
Jon He quotes it all the time.
George hmm.
Jon So it would make sense. How do I make fools of these? Well, I have seen and imitated fools that I’ve seen in media that I’ve been quoting all along. So it doesn’t feel like an out of left field unearned.
Jon It was like, oh, that was a good way with good setup and good payoff.
George Yeah.
Jon to show, like you said, he reprogrammed them He definitely handled them physically. And then he wrotepro reprogrammed them and made them idiots in their own bodies, which was, you know, done. Take care of the more weapons that way.
Jon All right. Hey, we get back one more segment to go. We’re going to talk about how this film, we’ll talk about the legacy of this film. It has some sequels. It has some inspiration that is seeped into pop culture.
George Yeah.
Mo  like we often like to do, especially with these movies and records all stuff, you know, we talk about like how it it lives on after its time.
Mo Like what’s its legacy and what doess it come up with?
Jon Sure.
Mo So John, where do you want to start? I’m sorry.
Jon Well, so starting.
Mo you good.
Jon but You’re good.
Mo good
Jon Yeah. Just pitch to me again. I’ll make sure I have the edit.
Mo I’m sorry.
Jon You’re good.
Mo So John, why don’t you kick us off on that?
Jon Yeah. So the year after it came out, came out in 86, no big surprise. A video game was made based on it in 1987. And it was, it was not one that I could have played though. George could have played it. It came out for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and the Amstrad.
Jon And never having played it, I’m like, well, a lot of movie based games are dumb. Let me go look and see. So I went to YouTube and I found some footage of it. And I’m happy to report that just like you expected, it’s dumb.
Jon It looks like Maniac Mansion kind of.
George but
Jon You’re Johnny Five, as you might imagine. You’re just roaming around, opening lockers, looking for keys to get to the next level or whatever. It’s not an action game or anything. in in ah in a movie that was actually pretty action filled with a lot of stunts and good stuff to see.
George Oh.
Jon This is a, a textbook layer of short circuit paint on an otherwise pedestrian game. Uh, but Hey, if you’re a big Johnny five fan, you probably played it.
Jon Uh, if you knew it existed, but, uh, yeah, that was an money success.
Mo Yeah. Well, you know, like said, they have a success in Hollywood. What’s the first thing they’re going to do Make a sequel.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Make a sequel.
Jon Yep.
Mo You know, and so they made a short circuit, two They got back two of the main characters back.
George oh
Mo Not the biggest names, except, well, the robot um um directed by Kenneth Johnson. um I never saw it. I went to look it up. Michael McKean was in it.
George Yeah.
Jon Oh, okay.
Mo which I was like, huh, still not going to see it.
Jon All right.
George Yep.
Mo But it’s nice to know that he was in it.
Jon Right. It’s not enough.
Mo But yeah, and that movie did not do well. Again, had the same budget.
George No.
Mo I think had like a $15 million budget and i don’t think he even made that when it hit the theaters.
George If it made $15, I’d be shocked.
Mo Yeah.
George I mean, it was it was pretty rough.
Mo It was very rough.
Jon ah That was likely one that made more money on the legacy of short circuit in VHS rental than it made in the first place in the theaters, I would bet you so.
Mo Yeah.
George Yeah, it’s one that parents would have rented both of them in tandem for their kids to have over a weekend, not knowing that the second one was arguably terrible.
Mo Oh,
Mo Yeah, that’s yes.
Jon Right. you
Mo Not knowing the was terrible.
Jon You can watch the series. Yep.
George Yeah.
Jon So, um so inspiration. So here’s something that isn’t a direct connection. However, in 1999, a great animated film called The Iron Giant was released.
Mo Oh, amazing.
Jon Tremendous. And it shares a lot of the story points and inspiration from Short Circuit. Both are about a device built to be a weapon that suffers some sort of injury that makes it malfunction, develop awareness and sentience, determine it does not want to be a weapon, very childlike, trying to understand the world around it, and ultimately having having an innocent friend who’s involved in trying to help them explore the world, very, very similar.
Mo he
Jon And I remember when I saw the Iron Giant, it felt familiar.
Mo Yeah. Yes.
Jon And yet I didn’t make the connection then that it was very short circuit. And I’m not saying short circuit is the first to invent this story, but they’re the most memorable. And Iron Giant did it really, really, really well.
Mo yeah
Jon If you had to watch one or the other, I would say watch the Iron Giant because it’s kind of the same story, more heartfelt and just really an animated spectacle.
George um Sure.
George You know, another one that I feel like had some inspiration from this was WALL-E. Now…
Mo Mm-hmm. yeah
George I think that the inspiration comes a lot in the character design.
Jon hmm.
George If you look at Wally’s big eyes with the little flappy eyebrow things, the three tread track, the, the little, the, like the hands that are kind of like three pieces of molded metal, clampy kind of things.
Jon Yes.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Yep.
Jon Like clampy. Yep. Mm-hmm.
George They are spindly arms. even though he’s obviously not as tall as Johnny five, I think that that character and some of his story points, his innocence, you know, his aloneness in the world, because, you know, his hunger to learn things that’s while he’s always collecting the old things he finds in the trash.
George I, I just found that at least parts of Wally and short circuit just kind of, you
Jon Input. Mm-hmm.
George I don’t know. They kind of paralleled each other just a little bit, not nearly to the degree the iron giant does the iron giant might be like a scene for scene ripoff, but done way better.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George Um, this was, I just felt like whoever did Wally at Pixar, I feel like they must’ve been fans of short circuit at some point.
Mo yeah
Jon Yeah. Yeah. Especially the character design and, and most, most especially the expressiveness of the head, right.
George Yep.
Jon With the far set eyes, very ET like, by the way, you know, kind of far set eyes.
George Yep.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Yep.
Jon And then like the little, little like flaps or lenses or fans for eyebrows.
George Yeah.
Jon And then the, uh, uh, what do they call that? The, the, Inside of a lens, whatever, the you know, the the concentric circle, like in the James Aperture.
George The aperture.
Jon Yes, the opening, closing aperture so he can squint a little bit. All those came from the puppet and the robot from a short circuit.
George Yeah.
Jon And Wally took all the best parts of that to make him expressive. Because unlike Johnny Five, Wally doesn’t even get to talk, you know?
Mo Yeah.
George Right.
Jon Yeah, he has everything’s through expression.
George Yeah.
Jon So, yeah, I’d agree.
George Yeah.
Jon Definitely that design.
George Now, here’s the part that’s going to shock fans of our podcast, the way we’ve been talking about this film. There’s actually been a couple of attempts to remake this film in the modern 2000 era.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George So on April 4th, 2008, Variety reported that Dimension Films had acquired the rights to remake the original film. None of that went through. Everybody that was associated with the production ended up dropping out.
George But then… 12 years later, November 13th, 2020, it was announced that Spyglass Media Group is set to remake the film.
Mo Wow.
George Now, it’s still in production. I don’t know if it’s going to move forward or not, because obviously we had a little bit of a problem in 2020.
Jon That can mean anything. Yeah.
George I don’t know if you guys remember, but we were all kind of stuck at home. So that may have slowed the production down a little bit, but I just…
Mo Oh, yeah.
George This is one of those films that didn’t need a sequel, shouldn’t have had a sequel. I don’t know that it needs a remake, but if it gets a remake, I don’t think we’re going to get anything close to what we did. What I hope is that we get the depth that we should have gotten in the original film.
Mo No, I think what’s going to happen is that Johnny Five is going become like, he’s going to murder people or something. You know, he’s going to go berserk and dark version.
Jon The dark version.
George ah We’re going to do like a Megan remake.
Mo Yeah, exactly. You know, Johnny Five is out for blood, you know, or something.
Jon You know, what i I remember hearing about sequel possibilities or not sequel remake possibilities, you know, in the in the I don’t know about the 2020 one. I know about the older one, but unlike a lot of remakes, this is one.
Jon You said didn’t need a sequel, didn’t need to be remade. This is one of those that I’m not mad at a remake of because it’s not hallowed ground. It was a great story that wasn’t executed as well as it probably could have.
Mo No, that’s for sure.
George No, that’s true.
Mo That’s absolutely sure
Jon We know the director didn’t get the people he wanted. We know they didn’t have a huge budget. You know, we know… What it did, it did okay, but it could have been better. It’s one of those that I’m not going to, if it gets a remake, they announce it, see a trailer tomorrow, I’m not going to go, harumph, you’re going to ruin my sacred short circuit.
Mo true. Yeah.
Jon No, going to go, oh, well, let’s see how you do it because the old one was fair.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon It’s not like you’re remaking Star Wars you’re like, you cannot possibly supersede it.
George Right.
Jon You can easily supersede short circuit. You can screw it up a lot of ways. You can make it a horror, like Mo said, there are plenty of ways to make it better, I think.
Mo If I remember correctly, the original script was a little bit darker than what they actually did, right?
George It was.
Mo It was like a more serious…
Jon Oh.
George Yeah. It didn’t get lighthearted until Ally Sheedy and Gutenberg got cast in the role. That’s when they had to change everything.
Jon And then it turned.
Mo Ah… Okay.
Jon Yeah. Cause he’s so likable. right he can’t do bad stuff. So that’s what he said.
George Yeah. Well, and, you know, Ally Sheedy, she had only done the one mildly dark role in The Breakfast Club, but she was just, you know, pop princess kind of stuff at that point.
Mo Yeah.
George So.
Mo It’s like, you need a dark actor. Let’s get Paul Rudd. You know, i mean, it’s just not, it’s just a bad idea.
George right
Jon Do you know the man’s work?
Mo You had to say it again.
Jon Do you have any idea?
George ah
Jon Yeah. yeah Not going to work. All right. So, hey, if you’re working on this film, give us a call. Put us in the writer’s room. We got lots of ways we can help you make it better.
George There you go.
Jon Give us a ring. Gen X Grown Up is happy to help. And I was happy to walk through this now 40 year old film with you guys.
Mo yeah had
Jon And I hope do one more time for Mo. And I hope I hope the fourth listeners enjoyed it as well. Before we leave you, I want to thank a couple of new Patreon supporters. Look, these are folks who listen to the show for free or watch us on YouTube or enjoy our or website content and they that they get with no charge and decide they want to support the arts. They want to support the content, the work that we’re doing to ensure that we can afford to keep doing it and bringing you regular quality stuff.
Jon Brian J. and Kurt K. did what so many have done before.
Mo Hmm.
Jon They opened up their hearts and their wallets. They clicked on over to patreon.com slash Gen X Grownup and set up a small recurring financial pledge that literally keeps the lights on.
Jon It pays to keep… This service that we use to record the podcast active, it pays for all the different software we have to use to edit it and make those things happen. Brian and Kurt, thank you for joining this roster of amazing people.
Jon And by the way, you probably know, maybe it’s why you signed up. As long as you’re at that $5 level or above, you get an advertisement free feed of this show. You can listen to in any, uh, any podcast application.
Jon Uh, you don’t have to listen to all the ads cause you’re already supporting us. We don’t need you to listen again.
Mo since
Jon So. We love you for doing that. So Brian and Kurt, thank you once again. That is going to wrap it up for this backtrack all about Short Circuit. Don’t worry. We’ll be back in two weeks with another backtrack.
Jon Next week, of course, is the regular edition of our show. Until then, I am John. George, thank you so much for being here, man.
George Yes, sir.
Jon Mo, you know I appreciate you, sir.
Mo Always fun, man.
Jon Fourth listener, it’s you all three. Appreciate most of all, though. We can’t wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.
George See you guys.
Mo Take care, everybody.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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