Will Jordan - The ScotsCare podcast - Episode 4

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Hello I’m Marcus Railton, and this is the ScotsCare podcast. ScotsCare is the only charity dedicated to helping disadvantaged Scots in London through a range of support including mental health therapy, financial grants, advocacy, sheltered housing for older Scots, job coaching, social events, befriending and support for Children and Families. The charity has been running for 400 years to help break the cycle of poverty experienced by some Scots in London. 

In this series of the ScotsCare podcast I’ll be chatting to celebrities and supporters of the charity that haveforged a life often away from Scotland and about the ups and downs that can bring. With me today is a Scot from Fife, he’s 39 years old and has been writing the hugely successful Ryan Drake spy thriller novels for over a decade. In recent years he’s also become a YouTube celebrity with extremely clever film and TV reviews, that have garnered him nearly one and a half million YouTube subscribers. My guest today is Will Jordan. Hi Will.

Hello.

Thanks for doing this I really appreciate you doing the ScotsCare podcast.

No problem at all, happy to join you.

How does your day start? Is there a school run for you?

Uh yeah, although my wife usually does it so I get to I get to focus on doing work, so yeah my day starts pretty early because I’ve got two greyhounds that usually decide to wake up at like 6 a.m or something, uh yeah so they kind of need taking an hour for walks and all that stuff, it’s the usual stuff.

Oh literally you’ve got Greyhounds? I thought you were referring to your kids as Greyhounds.

No no I do have actual Greyhounds that uh you know they used to be racing dogs and then we adopted them like there’s a lot of them that need re-homing after they they finish their racing careers, so we got a couple yeah.

You know what I’ve read that the the Greyhounds don’t get treated very well after their racing careers are over

No they don’t uh I mean it’s better now at least because there’s a bit of a system for um putting them up to adoption places and then they can find like homes as far family pets but I think you know go back 20, 30 years when their recent careers were over it was pretty much taken out behind the shed and uh yeah that was it for them. They’re doing better now you know and they make great pets like we’ve got like I say a couple of them and they’re just very very chill animals and what is it your kids uh they are 9 and 12. oh almost the exact same as mine my older boy Noah is 13 and my I’ve got a younger boy ref uh who’s nine and I’ve
got a daughter who’s four so there’s a bit of Gap but you know when it’s interesting because I always refer to my boys as wild dogs so when you said the Greyhounds I thought yes that’s right yeah yeah they’re a wild they’re you know dealing with them yeah so my day starts with this skill run as well do your kids get what you do for a living because that’s going to be interesting playground chatter what does your dad do he’s a spy novelist and YouTuber that’s it yeah I think my oldest is at that age you know because he’s in high school where it’s like oh it’s a bit embarrassing that my dad does this stuff so I don’t think he really mentions it uh and that’s that’s fair enough you’re not American and you don’t scream hi guys and play hide and seek on YouTube so that’s it kind of puts you in a niche doesn’t it that is true yeah and you know I always had this I always imagined like oh you know I get to be a YouTuber you know my son’s gonna be well impressed by that and he’s just like yeah you’re too old to Dad you’re not cool I think that’s the problem isn’t it yeah yeah I mean I’m not streaming myself playing fortnite or whatever else so uh yeah I’m just not cool unfortunately that’s it yeah my son Rafe watch I can’t get my head around that he watches a lot of other people playing games which I just you know I don’t want to be a dinosaur I want to get I want to get into his head but I just don’t get that I don’t get well he’s doing that yeah it’s uh yeah I think um entertainment
for kids now is boiling down to the lowest common denominator that’s why you get like you know Tick Tock videos that are like 15 seconds long um and that’s it they just scroll through them you know like one after that I genuinely worry about Noah who’s a smart kids but sometimes his attention span is just like if it’s if you don’t catch him like that it’s gone you know he’s it’s happening to all of them man I mean yeah I think what they’re producing is like 15 second summaries of movies so you don’t even need to watch them it’s like they’ll explain the entire story to you in like 15-20 seconds uh and that’s it it’s like you know asking someone to invest a couple of hours to watch a real the entertaining film is like too much now it’s a stranger yeah I think when was I can’t remember the last time Scotland played England at football and I said to Noah come on we’ll sit down and watch it because he was born he was born and uh just outside London and so he kind of still sees himself as English but wants to be Scottish so we saw we’ll sit down and watch this and he must honestly will he lasted about 15 minutes and then I looked over and his phone was out and it was uh but my kids don’t think I don’t think they get what I do for a living and they certainly don’t think I’m cool and when we had um Duncan
Poe on the podcast and he’s in the new series of the Andor the Star Wars thing oh yeah yeah he plays Sergeant melche in
it and I said to the boys I said look I’m interviewing Sergeant melshi do you know who who he is yeah yeah the guy
from Rogue one the guy from for about 15 seconds they were impressed and then it kind of tipped over into but why is he
talking to you you know dripping and disdain you know one minute you’re up the next Journey
yeah let’s talk about your novels because because you’re not are you even 40 yet you’re a bit of a Powerhouse with
the writing aren’t you I am not quite 40 yet so I’m still Clinging On to my 30s for now I’m enjoying every day of it how
many Ryan drink novels are there ten uh yes no sorry they’re nine Ryan Drake
novels and then my new one which is a standalone but yeah I got my first Drake novel published oh but it was 10 years
ago actually 10 years ago um in June um and so yeah I was only what 28 I
think when I got my first publishing deal so I was pretty lucky you know a lot of people have a longer road to get published but mine was fairly easy did
you get a lot of rejection before then or were you lucky off the bat uh I mean I got a few rejections from Agents and
then found one fairly quick um but the book that we submitted like
my very first one that ultimately didn’t get published which was a bit of a bit of a blow but I went back to the drawing
board you know and um and figured out the things which worked about it and the things which didn’t and raw Redemption
which was my you know the first one that actually got a publishing deal and that was great that was the start of the
journey for me I suppose it’s a lot of work though isn’t it if if you’ve if you’ve done a hundred thousand words or
more and they say well like it we’ll like your style but not this book can you go and do us another hundred
thousand words yeah yeah that is a tough one it’s like hey guess what you’ve just wasted a year
that’s difficult to think of it that way isn’t it yeah like I say I was lucky you know some authors they they produce like
you know five six books before they get published and yeah that must be so destroying well yeah I read that about
Stephen King I think he did that he wrote a whole lot of books before anything got published at all yeah but it’s weird like back then I think when
you’re so hungry to try and get that that step you know to take that next step um you’ve got that determination
um the thought of doing it now and writing a book that doesn’t get published is like oh my God I just couldn’t go through that at this point
in my life but back then it’s different yeah I suppose you know it’s when you’ve got kids and you know you get the
mortgage and stuff it’s you know you have to I don’t know what’s the best word compromise I suppose yeah a little bit yeah it was uh it was a hectic time
back then because I did have uh one kid already and I was working full-time and so I was having to you know do the
writing in the evening you know when other people were just vegging out watching TV I was working
um but yeah that’s the that’s the commitment I suppose you have to put in and you have to find the time somehow
I’m almost fascinated I asked quite a lot of the guests how the the work in Christopher brookmire he he was saying
he’ll write every day there’s hardly a day he doesn’t right and then I was talking to Greg Kane of Hugh and Cry and
he says if he gets up and he doesn’t feel it he won’t go into this he won’t go into the studio because he knows he
can’t sit there for eight or nine hours just kind of flagellating himself you know and making himself feel crap about it and how do you do you have a daily
work a daily word count do you have to go in and do it yeah you you have to the best way I can describe it is just like
putting in the grind and for me I have to keep like a pretty
um fast pace of work when I’m doing a book because if I was one of those writers who just leaves it for you know
a couple of days you know I’m not quite feeling it right now I’ll just I’ll come back to it in a while you know a couple
of days turns into a week which can turn into a month before you know it like the Project’s just dead
and so I just never allow that to happen when I’m writing a book it’s really every day might take one day off per
week or whatever but I don’t really have a word count as such it’s not like oh I have to do 5000 words per day or
whatever it might be uh it’s just whatever feels like you know a satisfactory amount and you know
sometimes the writing comes easy sometimes it’s more difficult you might um you might just manage to get a couple
of pages done or you might get 10 pages you know you just never quite know how creative you’re going to feel or how
easy the scene is going to be um but yeah like I definitely try to make a while the sun shines and if I’m
on a roll yeah I’ll just keep going until like late at night you know and how much time do you spend in in
research because I know you you know by your own admission you don’t have a military background so I expect you
there’s always something in the back of your mind saying I don’t want to get cut out and I don’t want to look an ass here by getting something wrong you you do
your best I mean I think that’s I guess all that people can ask from you um you’re inevitably going to get things
wrong because like you say if you’re not from a military background there’s just going to be little details that they know that you can’t get from just
reading um but I try my best with it and I’ll do some preliminary research before I start
my book so I’ve got a general outline of the the plot and I can check to make sure the things I’m describing are
somewhat feasible and then as I go through I’ll just find out the things that I need to support a particular
scene like if I’m writing about a particular place or a weapon or a piece of equipment or whatever like okay I’ll
go and research that as as I do it just so I can kind of describe how it functions or or whatever for a long time
you were holding down a full-time job right in the evening and and you had and and at this point you had one child and
then you obviously you’re no full-time writer full-time YouTuber and we’ll come on to the
YouTube stuff in a bit because that’s fascinating and I love it but even even at this point when you were successful
was it still a bit of a leap of faith to say and this is what I’m going to do this is how I I’m going to put food on the table
for the family and I’m not going to take the paycheck from the company anymore and be a full-time writer
it was yeah and um to be honest with you I didn’t really um leave like a paid employment until my
YouTube career took off because the reality of being a writer is that you don’t make a huge amount of money from
it you know if you become the next JK Rowling or Stephen King yeah okay you’re going to be a millionaire but like for
every one of them there’s there’s thousands if not tens of thousands of authors who just are barely getting by
um or don’t even make enough money they have to supplement it with with employment um and for me that was kind of the the
situation I was in at least in the early stage in my writing career you know you get that first
um Advance you know you get your first publishing deal and you think that’s it I’m on the road to fame and success and
uh it doesn’t necessarily work like that you know that you have to
um you have to get your books out there they have to start selling enough copies that you make back your advance and that
you actually start getting royalty paper it’s off it and all of that stuff takes time and yeah like I say it wasn’t until
I really had my YouTube channel take off that I thought right I can’t do three different jobs simultaneously I need to
quit and that’s what got me what we you know got me to where I am now I suppose now
the the YouTube channel is called the critical Drinker and it’s your kind of alter ego and as as we sit here today I
think you’re just shy of one and a half million subscribers but for anyone listening who who doesn’t know can you
kind of give us a crazy of what the who the critical Drinker is and what he does so he’s kind of like my Alter Ego uh in
the sense that he’s a drunken bulliger and Scottish guy who um critiques movies uh and breaks down
the writing of them um and and you know has a bit of a laugh doing it and I guess the thing I find
enjoyable about it is that contrast of what I hope is pretty um intelligent
criticism and um and story breakdowns you know versus a guy who who makes
crude jokes and like laughs and and talks about you know drinking toilet
duck and stuff on a night out um and it’s just it’s a good fun way of presenting what I do you know I think if
you’re going to get into analysis of media and how writing works it can be a bit dry and a bit boring for some people
and so this is just a way of making it more fun and engaging and it it makes it more fun for me to do and so that’s kind
of how the critical Drinker took off and damn yeah once I started doing it it’s uh it just really exploded
yeah the writing will is so clever and articulate and laugh out loud funny and
I think whereas you get things which you watch and you go well there’s a lot of swearing in it and sometimes you swear
but it’s so nuanced or perfectly timed that you it is so really effective but
what I what I like about it what I appreciate about is I think it’s very Scottish because I think there’s loads of sarcasm there’s loads of Scottish
sarcasm in it that’s what I tried to bring in and it’s funny because I had no idea whether Americans would even
understand what I was saying never mind get the humor and stuff but they seem to absolutely love it and great but yeah
there’s there is something unique about that Scottish sense of humor where we do use sarcasm and we do use swearing to
just punctuate or and flavor our language and I think it’s uh yeah a well-placed swear words it’s just like
the seasoning on the dish that you’ve prepared for people so I think it’s great to be able to do that you know
again just not taking it too seriously you know having a bit of fun with it uh I think it works really well and I think
that’s what makes a think generally that’s a Scottish thing but you have to be grounded I watched I don’t know if
you’ve seen it I watched an interview with Gerard Butler recently and he was talking about his success and going back
to saltcoats in Usher and meeting up with his old Pals and they said to um Jerry I want you to know that despite
all this Fame you’ve not changed a bit you’re still a dick yeah and I thought
that’s exactly you know that’s exactly what they would say to you when you went home as a multi-millionaire to your hometown in Scotland yeah I I think so
yeah and I think there’s that difference I guess because you know you make it in places like America and you’re almost
like elevated to a different level of being almost uh whereas over here yeah
you’re you’re just you’re still that same guy that people have known their whole lives
um and yeah like it’s not changed how I get on with my friends or a family or anything like that you know it’s so
that’s good it keeps me grounded I suppose yeah what I like about watching apart from just just enjoying your
interviews what I like about watching the Americans the American people interviewers they are so in awe of your
bluntness and I find oh because Americans are this kind of odds can they can be a slightly insulination they’ve
got guns and violence and pornography and yet they’re Blown Away by your directness
it’s a strange one yeah it’s a strange contradiction um I’ve always noticed in America that they’re unusually formal
with their politeness which is kind of not what you’d expect but you know something as simple as like
um someone holds a door open for you and you say thanks like that would be it for us but like then they usually say oh
you’re welcome on top of that it’s just like an extra layer of formality that you just wouldn’t expect and so
yeah I don’t know they they um have a nice day and how much would you like to tip yeah exactly
I remember I mean I maybe it’s I’m not a mean Scotsman I don’t want to start that stereotype but I remember buying a cup
of coffee in New York from a kind of independent Starbucks I like type place and you know you pay on the iPad and at
the end of it it was like there was a screen that says how much would you like to tip 25 35 I thought whoa I’ve I’ve
not had any real service here I’ve just ordered the takeaway coffee it’s crazy it’s kind of like that you know someone
I’ve been at bars and stuff in America and literally all they’ve done is like open the lid on a on a bottle of beer
for me and it’s like you’re kind of meant to tip them and I just think yeah I would tip weight and stuff in a
restaurant obviously because they have to put in the work but like somebody’s just opened a beer for me I was thinking that’s a bit much but you know again
it’s the culture and like they don’t make much money they have to have tips just to get by so yeah I guess that’s
what you have to do you know it’s just unexpected [Music] Scott’s care
helping to break the cycle of deprivation for Scots in London
do you ever self-censor what you say in your YouTube channel do you ever think I’ve gone too far and then re-cut it or
rewrite it occasionally um YouTube is is getting a little bit
more tight with things um you know one of the ones that was best known
because during the pandemic you really couldn’t talk about coronavirus and like the moment you said that words
um there was a danger that your channel was going to get or at least your video would get demonetized or it would get um
you know de-ranked or something so people wouldn’t see it as much and that’s where I came up with the the unspecified virus of Unknown Origin it
just it became like a pun but then people like really took to it and they’re like yeah it’s quite funny this they knew exactly why I was doing that
and so yeah those are examples and you know there’s certain subjects that I’m not gonna I’m not gonna go into like I
I’m not gonna go into politics or anything like that with my channel and I think people appreciate that because you
know there’s enough people spouting off their political beliefs online they don’t need me adding to the mix so yeah
I just try to focus on the entertainment side of things yeah we are so you know I then I appreciate that it’s you know
it’s a kind of moment of levity in a world going mad watching your stuff and you know we’re surrounded by culture wars and online noise and is that
something you worry about for your kids do you try and monitor the screen time and and you know I I check my son Noah’s
phone and sometimes I feel as if it’s an invasion of his privacy and but other times I I want to know what he’s looking
at here yeah it’s it is a tricky one and you know with with my youngest like he’s
um less interested in like pop culture and stuff so I don’t really have to worry about him he’s just looking for
like you know videos of of uh spaceships or like cars or whatever you know he
just he’s gone to that but uh with my oldest son I suppose he’s of that age where he’s starting to become more aware
of these things and um yeah you kind of just want you hope that they get a balanced view of things because I don’t
I don’t really want them to be swayed too far in either direction like they want to see Arguments for both sides of
things and you know ultimately make up their own mind and just be rational and level-headed
um but yeah like we don’t we don’t let him have any kind of social media as such because we’ve you know we’re all too
aware of like you might say something online just try to be edgy or whatever as as a teenager and you know 10 years
down the line that that tweet gets uncovered or whatever it might be and like suddenly you’re losing your job and like that happens to people now and
um yeah it’s it’s a whole different world they’re growing up in from what we came up in as kids well this this is I
think if I had difficult to account for what I said when I was 25 I would probably never work again in my life
yeah you know I think it’s I read that there was a story about the cricketer and he was said to I can’t remember
whether it’s a racist remark or a homophobic remark or something but it was something stupid and ultimately
forgivable probably and it kind of ruined his life for a while yeah
um you know they talk I guess sometimes about the online hate mobs and stuff like when they cutting on to someone like that like some kind of public
figure who said something a little bit edgy or a little bit inappropriate in his younger days and like they will just
not stop until that person gets fired uh yeah and it like you say it’s got the potential to ruin wives and it’s
yeah it’s kind of a scary world really that you’re yeah it does well let’s let’s talk about movies and TV the last
thing you know I’ve it’s lovely to have you here because there’s things I wanted to talk to you about and ask you about
and see what you thought and the last thing that I watched and loved was succession because every character was
brilliantly Despicable and and made all that much better for me because you know
there’s people like that that actually exist did you like succession I haven’t seen succession unfortunately so yeah
this is as one of the problems of being like a movie critic and stuff is that
um you know people are constantly asking you what did you think about this movie what do you think about this TV show and yeah sometimes you’re like I’ve never
even watched it you know and it’s it’s always it’s always unfortunate but like there’s only so many hours in the day
yeah um for people like me to try and watch new content so that we can review it and yeah you sometimes have to be
picky and the sad reality is sometimes movies or shows get left behind um I
think that’s probably one of them I third but it’s meant to be really good though it’s great and I don’t think Brian Cox was really on my radar and I
always knew he played you know he was in the Bourne series and he played the original Hannibal Lecter yes I don’t
think he was really on my radar until this and I actually went out and bought his autobiography because of succession
and he’s certainly no Diplomat and I ca I couldn’t decide if it was they had a
massive ego or that he’s just got to the point in life when he doesn’t give a monkeys it could be either one yeah um I
mean he’s got a bit of a reputation for playing villains I’ve seen him do that in a lot of movies and he plays them
pretty well yeah he’s a dandonia isn’t he originally all right well we can forgive on that yeah that’s all right
but uh you know we’ve all got our disabilities in life but you know he’s a good actor and yeah I’ve enjoyed him in
a lot of things that he’s been in um yeah talking about villains you know um and and heroes one of one of the
videos you made that kind of stuck in my mind was that the video you made about heroes because I think we
all need Heroes and when I was a kid it was quite clear who and why the heroes
Were Heroes and I think for cancer it’s quite simple you know to save the world they fly the the Spider-Man they have
superpowers and it’s it’s been kind of destroyed and I think you put your finger on it it’s
kind of been homogenized and wokified and and destroyed and I I just
it’s become awfully complicated just to be a hero it’s yeah this is the one of
the most horrible aspects of entertainment for me today is the deconstruction of the traditional hero
um where you’ve got these these characters that we used to I guess look up to and thought were awesome as kids
and you know instead of just bringing in a new generation of Heroes and letting them retire gracefully it’s like they
can’t do it they have to first humiliate them and break them down and try to imply that you know they were never that
they were that great to begin with you know you need to you need to enjoy our new Heroes that are going to replace
them and it’s a really crappy thing to do as a writer it’s really cheap and
it’s really manipulative and it absolutely boils my blood when it happens like I think we all suffered
through films like The Last Jedi where we saw like Luke Skywalker now just this sad pathetic old man
um you know the what other ones that we’ve had um they’re going to be doing it to Indiana
Jones pretty sure pretty soon um as far as I know they’re even doing it within say the the Marvel movies the
the heroes that we had 10 years ago which you know the actors have kind of retired from their roles and they’ve got
a new Bunch coming in uh now you’re starting to see that that same breaking
down of those those characters you know they’re not uh they they were more complex you know that uh
everyone’s conflicted now everything’s nihilistic no one can really just aspire
to to be in a hero and doing good things because they want to it all has to be like
um you know this this weird um conflicted world you know I don’t think
it’s a great thing for people you know it’s not that every character has to be black and white and strictly good or
strictly evil but there needs to be something at least for people to Aspire to and you’re just not getting it
anymore well I just I you know on a very simple level I for me it doesn’t have to be that complicated you know I I want to
talk to you about villains in a second but you know you talked about Luke Skywalker I was listened to a podcast
with Mark Hamill and he said even he was aware When the Last Jedi script was sent
to him he didn’t think this is the direction that Luke Skywalker would have gone in but obviously went with it um
but yeah for him to become an embittered old man hiding was not the way of the and I don’t want to get into Star Wars
conversation but it’s not the way of the Jedi he would have fought to the end exactly yeah and I think it was just
this this really cynical effort to make him weak so that he could make their new
character look strong and you know if that’s what you’re having to rely on to make your new character look good then
you are a terrible writer and you know that’s that’s what you see so much nowadays they hire
basically people who are useless incompetent hacks who don’t know how to tell a good story and craft good
characters but they get the job because I guess they say the right things or they have the right political alignment or whatever it is uh and they’re now
entrusted with these great characters from previous generations of writers and
they absolutely butcher them going on to villains like I was scared of it when I
was growing up I kind of liked villains you know but my son Rafe he always wants to be the villain he wants to be he
wants to be the dark side when the boys play Star Wars it’s not because he’s a bad kid but sometimes villains are just
a bit more interesting and they’re more fun aren’t they because you don’t have to worry about like you know appealing
to the right sensibilities with a villain you don’t have to worry about making them virtuous they could they
allow everyone to like I guess indulge their inner Dark Side just a little bit um they have to see the error of their
ways and I think that’s that’s the way it’s changing that they have to be kind of reborn in some way now which is just
boring I think what you get now is this weird attempt to to redefine them as as anti-heroes like again it plays into
this sort of nihilistic view that there is no inherent good or evil or whatever and it’s uh you know every character is
just a gray sort of blob you know like the boy one of the worst ones I’ve seen
was when they had that Cruella movie like last year I think it was and they’re trying to recast Cruella Deville
as like some cool uh Punky anti-hero character
um it’s it’s a woman who wanted to murder puppies and turned them into coats from the you know the original 101
Dalmatians yeah you’re not going to reform a character like that I’m sorry that’s not that’s just an out and out
bad person you know but they’re still trying to do this and I don’t understand why do you think it will come out of it
do you think there’s there’s we’re in this kind of loop and we’ll find an equilibrium I read an article in the
guardian the other day saying that the word gardening should be retired because it wasn’t politically correct anymore
and I just yeah I honestly think there’ll come a Tipping Point for most people because I think everyone’s got
like a certain degree of tolerance for this stuff you know we all do and it’s like yo let’s start you let little
things slide because it’s like well you know it’s times are changing and certain things are are not acceptable now but I
think when you get to that kind of level yeah where it’s like gardening is racist though or time keeping is racist or math
is racist or this is sexist or this is homophobic uh that there comes a point where normal people just say oh off
you know like I’ve had enough of this garbage I’m not going to listen to this anymore and it’s like gone to the Realms
of parody now um and when it comes to like working that you know I always hate using the word woke in movies because it’s just
it’s overused just like being like sexism and racism is overused so is that
but yeah that Trend in Hollywood I think is coming to an end now because the more
they try and do it in movies the more it pushes audiences away and it was small at first but it’s happening more and
more and you know we had a movie like top gun Maverick which shouldn’t have
succeeded by any standard of measure like a sequel to a film from 35 years ago starring Tom Cruise who’s pushing 60
and yet people loved it because it didn’t have any of that crap in it it
was just a good old-fashioned story of a an aging hero coming back for one last mission one last adventure and it just
it did crazy business it’s like 1.4 billion dollars that’s made worldwide it’s like Tom Cruise’s biggest movie of
all time I’ve not seen it yet this is one that I want to go and see I keep go see it because honestly you’ll love it
it’s like one of the few movies that I genuinely came out of the cinema just feeling great I’ve just had a lot of fun
there it’s been a great film it wasn’t trying to push any stupid messaging it wasn’t trying to tell us that Maverick
was bad because he’s a straight white man or any of that stupid nonsense that divides people uh it was just a good
movie and wow I think it really sent shock waves through the industry I
honestly think they did not expect it to do anywhere near that kind of business and it’s maybe making them rethink
a little bit what they’re doing um I know that Studios like Warner Brothers are absolutely gutting their projects
and their staff because they don’t have the money to keep pushing these these projects that they know are going to fail
um the the biggest example and I I feel bad for the people involved in this but they had a Batgirl movie coming out yeah
that was shot in Glasgow that was shot yes yeah um I I went over to the set to visit the directors and um you know the
super nice guys like they were just really enthusiastic to be making this film it was like one of their first big
movies after doing bad boys three and uh they’ve done it it was in the can they
were in post-production and all of a sudden they just find out through news outlets no less that the film has been
canned uh it’s not coming out and it’s gonna be deleted basically and they even
went into the servers on Warner Brothers and all of their footage they’d shot had been removed so they couldn’t even
Rescue It That Way uh what kind of figure do you put on that well what how much money would that have wasted
that movie cost 90 million dollars to make wow which 90 90 million 90 million
which computer a lot of movies nowadays it’s not that expensive but 90 million dollars is still 90 million dollars but
the the reason for canceling it was if they’d released it they would have had to spend another 100 million dollars
advertising it and the studio had decided basically because it was filled with a
lot of the kind of um intersectional stuff like the the main character back girl had been recast
as a a black woman or black actress they’d found a player they knew it wasn’t going
to play well um and so they decided to cut their losses
um and so it was easier to flush 90 million down the drain than 200 million I suppose
care
well let me ask you about um something that I’ve kind of thought about a lot about films
that I’ve kind of seen as problematic now that probably weren’t seen as problematic in the 80s or in the 90s a
film that I grew up with was the The Breakfast Club and I hear a lot about that you know I I Googled it the other
day because I wanted to talk to you about it and there’s a lot of talk of canceling it completely and I get why
people want it canceled because there’s sexual harassment in it there’s bullying in it but My worry is that you know you
can’t delete the footage of the brexit club surely you can’t throw the baby out with a bad bath water there is there is
something there that makes that an iconic film even though we can’t we can’t tolerate the the bad parts of it
but surely we can’t get rid of something like that I think you you judge movies by the standards of their time and you
know where do you stop with this stuff and yeah I’m trying to think of other examples throughout history where where
um Society started destroying our and destroying books and things like that you know it didn’t end well and I just
hate this idea of you know this thing to pick stuff that we don’t like or that’s not considered acceptable now therefore
it has to cease to exist um you don’t really have the right to do that
um it’s the same with with old movies like Gone With the Wind obviously that depicts um you know the the South and the the
kind of slavery and stuff um it probably depicts these black characters and you’re not particularly
good light by today’s standards but it’s a piece of art that was made in a very different time and I think most people
would be sensible enough to to recognize yeah you know this this isn’t how we live now but this is what was made in
the movie this is how it was depicted um and you should just appreciate it for what it is
um and yeah it’s it’s really most of this stuff comes down to a very small minority of people who make it
their business to be offended by everything um and can’t stand the idea that that people can enjoy stuff that they don’t
like and so their solution is it just has to be destroyed it has to go
um you know you don’t have the same opinion as me well you have to be canceled somehow find something on you
um to get you canceled uh and silence you this is the mentality and it’s a really
dangerous one and I hope that that is something that gets consigned to the
trash can of History soon enough this is why I hope we come out the other side of and start to see sense and start to have
a balance in some way yeah yeah listen before we wrap up can I ask you just a couple of I since you’re a film expert
and there’s something a couple of like questions I want to ask you because the stuff that just baffles me Liam Neeson
do you think he knows he just makes the same movie over and over and over again absolutely look he’s he’s been around
long enough you know uh same with the rock you know Dwayne Johnson he just made just himself in every single movie
uh but it makes a ton of money and so that’s why they do it well we’re sitting
looking for something my wife Becky and I on Netflix and there was another Liam Neeson movie and she said to me what’s that about and I said well probably
somebody’s been kidnapped and he’s either an ex-spy or ex Mafia or something and he has to go and rescue
someone it’s just yeah he must forget what he’s doing I I don’t know if there’s well there’s a little bit of like midlife crisis to it although I say
midlife he’s pretty old now but Liam Neeson was like this weird Late Bloomer is an action star it’s like he did take
it when he was I don’t know pushing 50. yeah and it just re he was reborn as some weird like over the hill action
star that just started doing all these crazy um you know these crazy fight scenes and things
um yeah taking I thought that’s that was kind of like the the template for everything that has been a Liam Neeson
movie since isn’t it basically yeah yeah and then like I say you know you get to that stage maybe you just want an easy
payday yes well why not yeah and then my final one would be Bruce Willis what
happened to Bruce Willis because I love die hard one of the best movies of all time and we watched something recently
and it was it was like he wasn’t even in the same movie it was like the cut in Bruce Willis scenes it was like he
dialed it in that I think that’s exactly what happened because obviously we know now that he’s got this kind of
degenerative condition where he you know he struggles to well process things and remember lines
um you know all that stuff so he’s retired from acting now and you know those it was obviously fun to
meme on him for the last few years of his career because it genuinely just seemed like he did not give a um he
was just there to collect his paycheck um probably appear in the film for about 10 minutes just so they could slap his
face on the cover and say that you know it’s a Bruce Willis movie when it’s not
um and yeah we know now like he was hoping to perform in a limited capacity because he just couldn’t do more than
that which you know it’s a real shame um but there it was but you know he’d been going down that road for quite some time
just doing Lazy you know small performances in low budget action movies just to to make money yeah yeah which I
mean I suppose as he gets older these guys are harder to cast because you know he isn’t John McLean anymore which is
they I love apart from the last one I think yeah there was one really terrible Die Hard wasn’t there but the rest of it
was great there’s been a few yeah basically the first three were great you
know I I know people take a dump on too sometimes but I think hard tube is a really good action movie
um yeah Die Hard 4 was a bit weird and he didn’t really feel like John McLean anymore and then when he did that final
one whereas in Russia or something it was just like a cartoon really yeah I don’t think I got the end of that yes
yeah thank you very much will Jordan for being part of this Scott scare podcast no problem thank you for having me
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