Author: Alex Schmidt
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Warren G. Harding was a bad President and worse person. For example: Harding carried on a fifteen year love affair, with his friendās wife, who was palling around with enemy spiesā¦and that is not the most famous Warren G. Harding affair.
Iām here to talk about that lesser-known affair. But first, hereās the gist of the bigger affair. Married man Warren Gamaliel Harding gets elected President in 1920. Around the year 1915, married U.S. Senator Harding (age 50) starts shtupping Nan Britton (age 19). That continues in the White House ā and I mean IN THE WHITE HOUSE ā until Hardingās death from a heart attack in 1923. A few years later, Britton tells the public about her daughter, born 1919, fathered by Harding. Wow: history! That is some relevant, Clintonian, Trumpian history! You would think more history classes would teach that story. Itās a much more exciting story than āTeapot Domeā.
āTeapot Domeā is the main Warren G. Harding test question answer. Why? Because it was a huge scandalā¦but also because your middle school history teacher couldnāt bring up Nan Britton without recapping sex ed and getting signed permission slips. So if you know anything about President Harding, itās probably āTeapot Domeā. Or as I call it, āThe Most Family-Friendly Story About Warren G. Harding Getting Dome.ā
On to the lesser-known affair. Iāve explored a unique Library Of Congress archive transcribed by the New York Times Magazine regarding President Harding. Because before (and during!) his Britton affair, married guy Warren G. Harding romanced Carrie Fulton Phillips. They hooked up from 1905 to 1920, plus Warrenās sweaty attempt at a follow-up in 1922. As Iām sure youāre aware, those years fall within the era historians call āOld-Timey Times.ā Because they romanced in Old-Timey Times, Harding and Phillips romanced each other through letters. Letters now preserved at the Library of Congress. Stored, catalogued, and treated like artifacts, even though youād think the LOC would have better things to store than secret scribbles where Warren G. Harding nicknames his penis āJerryā.
Surprise: Warren G. Harding nicknamed his penis āJerryā. Occasionally, āMount Jerry.” We know that, now, thanks to Hardingās embarrassing sex letters. Here are a few excerpts:
How did our history teachers AND geography teachers skip this liāl chestnut? Also, great news, the Warren G. Harding Sexy Geography doesnāt end there.
Congratulations to Lake Superior on becoming the heart of a Warren G. Harding code-phrase aboutā¦genitals? I think? And this leads us to a big disagreement between me and the historical establishment. Surprise: I am here to fight with history experts! Again! Because the historical consensus here has a crucial flaw. This is the New York Times Magazineās take on Hardingās nickname maneuvers:
Interesting! Also, wrong. I contend we do Warren G. Harding a huge favor if we act like heās doing secretive code. Read the letters. Thereās no secret. Every passage about āJerryā is openly about Hardingās penis, and every letter is highly sexual. Itās obvious on the page. For example, hereās something Harding writes in the same letter as the Lake Superior bit:
He also writes:
If you spot any āsecretsā in there, youāre a secrets wizard. You have a third eye for clever hidden sex verbiage and Iām astounded by you. All I perceive is a guy straight-up confessing how bad he wants this letterās recipient to do wet, loud Goblin Mode stuff to his gamaliel. And yet, this letter is a supposed prime example of Jerry Code! Because way down that same letter, Warren says this:
Folks: āJerryā is not code. What āJerryā is, is some kind of nickname-play. Harding is hiding nothing. Heās simply *into this*. He does not care if you catch him. Heā¦wants you to catch him? Unclear. Either way, thereās no chaste explanation for any of the Harding letters Iāve read. Lemme give you one more example. Hereās a fuller version of one I quoted early on:
That is Warren G. Harding remembering a sexual encounter from last year, and masturbating to the memory, and then writing that down in a letter. There are no other ways to read this letter! None! If you do try to generate a PG reading, you end up with the following story: Warren G. Harding thought about sex, went home, laid down, thought about sex some more, achieved a clear mental fantasy of his former loverās perfect bodyā¦and then a second guy named Jerry entered the room to discuss that. In detail. With enthusiasm. Thatās the *most plausible* chaste reading of this story. To make this story (a little) less gross you have to claim āJerryā is a real-life Mister Poopy Butthole whoās on round-the-clock retainer to whoosh into any room and chat sex memories with (as of 1913) an obscure former Lieutenant Governor of Ohio. Thatās what youād read, there, if Warren G. Harding is some kind of cryptography genius. But you do not read that. The undecipherable Enigma Machine he aināt.
Why are modern experts dressing up Hardingās letters as clever subterfuge? Is it because we hold a general respect for U.S. Presidents? Is it because professional historians are dorky prudes? I donāt know for sure. All I can do is show you these letters. Letters that are useless as code, and useful as indicators that Warren G. Harding liked to name and personify his penis. He really, really, liked to do that. Which means romance with Warren G. Harding was more awful than we ever couldāve guessed. It mustāve been an endless blather of eager narration, featuring penis personification and weiner world-building, unspooled mid-act by Warren āGigglesā Harding. A barrage of sex talk from a guy who followed up his letterās Mount Jerry passage with an unironic use of the exclamation āGee!ā. For real! Thatās the next word he wrote, after almost calling his penis āMister Everestā. And Iām medium-confident Warrenās imagination went beyond his own hog. Because the New York Times Magazine claims Hardingās ācodeā included nicknames for Carrie Fulton Phillips. Once again, hereās their claim:
To my surprise, the Library of Congress has a whole ānother take on āPoutersonā:
Super different! Yet similar. Because both institutions frame āPoutersonā like itās another deft code word, fueling a private love affair. But I call hooey on that. Thatās bullshit. Because here is that nickname in action:
Folks: you see whatās happening here. Right? Do you detect a pattern? Do you remember all those times Warren G. Harding called his penis āJerryā for his own gratification? I feel like you, Dear Reader, my Dear Grown Adult Reader, can make the same leap I did concerning āMrs. Pouterson.ā She sounds an awful lot like āsheā is a āfemale body part.ā Perhaps a part that can, oh I donāt know, lubricate independently of a person’s feelings. Also, consider the vibe of the word āpoutā. You get it. I donāt need to go on here. Because I can control myself. Unlike the nickname-fueled coitus-rememberer who was our 29th President.
Alsoā¦maybe never mind about all this? Maybe this is none of our business. These were two consenting adults. Maybe theyāre allowed to figure out their (extramarital) sex lives however they saw fit. However: no! I take all of that back! Because on top of all the humongous embarrassments youāve just read, Warren G. Hardingās sex letters prove his affair with Phillips was a U.S. national security crisis of World War One. Surprise: something besides sex enters the picture now. In March 1915, Warren āGettinā It Inā Harding becomes a U.S. Senator. Harding continues to romance Carrie Fulton Phillips. I wonder what else the Library of Congress has to say about herā¦
Hey, New York Times Magazine, any related thoughts here?
They go on to say weāre pretty sure she was not personally a spy. But hey, wow! Warren G. Hardingās lover also loved the opposing side in World War One. And she was good friends with Kaiser Wilhelmās spies. Also, wow, does that explain the āJerryā thing? Did Warren use the name āJerryā to subliminally increase the appeal of his penis? By giving it the main British nickname for German soldiers? And then if I use this insight to self-publish a crummy book of Warren G. Harding Subliminal Penis Appeal Tips/Tricks/Treats, could we turn that book into the topic of a 1-900-HOT-DOG column? Maybe! Iād love to dunk on myself in a Mr. Snrub mustache.
Anyway: Carrie Fulton Phillips supported the pre-Nazis. She probably didnāt pass secrets to the Kaiserās agents. Weāre mostly pretty sure she did not commit mid-war treason. And thatās all fine, I guess? Sheās entitled to have opinions, and have friends. Itās not like sheā
Well, okay, as long as it doesnāt impact Hardingās role asā
I mean as long as itās private betweenā
Umā
Wow! Also we have a sense of how much leverage Phillips had here. Because technically, no, she did not get Senator Harding to vote against the U.S. resolution to fight Germany. However: Harding was just one Senator, and the Senate voted 82-6 in favor of war. A pouterson-whipped German asset would vote āyesā just to keep up their cover. And then when Harding ran for President in 1920, the Republican National Committee (great guys) gave Phillips significant money, plus a free tourist vacation to Japan, in exchange for staying quiet. So, yes, her blackmail position was strong. She had Jerry over a barrel. And thatās not the only letter these lovebirds exchanged about money:
If Iām reading that right, Carrie Fulton Phillips blackmailed Warren G. Harding. And then Harding tried to continue that affair, while starting another affair (Britton), and considering funneling cash to Phillips from the U.S. defense industry. Harding did that within two weeks of becoming a Senator. And he did that during the bloody middle of The War To End All Wars. Itās almost impossible to fathom. Itās like a sexy, unsexy, 1920s Iran-Contra. Harding is like a Voltron made of John Edwardses. And if thereās a hero in this story ā which is a Mount Jerry-sized āifā ā if thereās a hero in this story, I gotta say, itās the written word. Letās give it up for the written word. Because nothing else could provide such a powerful time capsule of seemingly boring history guy Warren G. Hardingās grossness.
Alex Schmidt makes Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, which is a good podcast. LISTEN TO IT IMMEDIATELY. Also he taped this episode about The Great Lakes before he discovered Warren G. Hardingās Lake Superior metaphor (thank god).
Categories
Learning Day: Death Train
Death Train is a 1993 movie starring Pierce Brosnan. It is also a flop, a mess, and contains the most evil action Iāve ever seen perpetrated by a movieās āheroes.ā Hereās the trailer.
As you saw, this movie stars Pierce Brosnan AND Patrick Stewart AND Christopher Lee AND a couple other recognizable actors. It also gets called āDetonatorā, in that trailer, because itās a trailer for a VHS tape of Death Train ā a made-for-TV movie they needed to trick people into buying.
Wow: what a box. Iād love to be glowered at by both those guys, from a shelf, in my 1993 media den. Also that box implies a thrilling conflict between Hero Brosnan and Looming Stewart. It would be fun to see those two face off. Now that I think about it, it would be mega-fun to see those two Face/Off. Two steely minds, flipping between having the most or least robust head hair. Follicle/Off ! But no: that is not this movie. You would have heard of that movie. Pierce and Patrick are boring allies in the movie Death Train aka Detonator aka 100 Minutes Of Phone Calls About Central European Rail Systems.
This movie is the perfect honeypot for capturing my attention. Iāve explored not one but two Pierce Brosnan movies for our website here. Why? Because he is my pop culture hero. Why? Because when I was impressionable, he played James Bond four times. As Bond, he imprinted himself on me. Like a mother duck, if that mother duck did one PAIN FACE over and over again and called that acting. That is James Bond, to me. I seek it wherever I can get it. And holy cow, this movie pits Pierce Brosnan against The Man With The Golden Gun (Christopher Lee). Its other main character is Jean-Luc Picard, doing the exact stuff āMā does in Bond movies (phone calls, British accent). And on a meta level, this 1993 movie is a key milestone of the Dalton-to-Brosnan Bond casting timeline. Brosnan almost became Bond in 1986. But Timothy Dalton got the role, made two Bond movies, almost shot a third film in 1990, and didnāt officially quit till 1994. As far as I can tell, hereās what happened next: Pierce Brosnan learned the role was open again around 1991. He spent the next few years re-auditioning, in public, by acting in every similar-ish movie he could find. His first effort toward that was Live Wire: The Movie Where Water Is Bombs. Did that flop? Yes. Did Pierce follow it up by starring in Death Train? Yes. He starred in a TV movie, with a few Bond-shaped elements, based on books by an Ian Fleming-shaped writer, because thatās less embarrassing than self-taping an action scene in Brosnan Manorās backyard and mailing it to the Broccoli family.
See? Action! Somebody else held the camera and everything! Therefore, this is not sad. ALSO: this is astonishingly sad. Because when asked about this film by the media, Pierce did not admit the truth, and say he was angling for Timothy Daltonās casino night cummerbund. Instead, he admitted a whole ānother truth, which is [TONE SHIFT INCOMING] this movie helped him forget his wife died. As you Avid Hotdoggers know, Pierce Brosnan spent the production of 1991ās Live Wire grieving. His wife passed away that year, after a long battle with cancer. (His wife was also a Bond Girl, which is both not relevant and mega-relevant.)
I had to know what Pierce did next. And when he made this movie, the Los Angeles Times did train-pun headlines about Brosnan resuming his career.
Ha! āBack on trackā is right, L.A. Times. Toot toot: all aboard the Freshly Minted Widower Express! Because Death Train is indeed a train film. Itās overwhelmingly a train film. Its highlights are a few train-based action sequences, such as what I screencapped just now. In those sequences, Pierce and others do battle aboard THE DEATH TRAIN ā a small, slow-moving train that contains a nuclear bomb.
This train is the coolest part of the movie and the least-cool part of the movie. On the one hand: action! On the other hand: THE DEATH TRAIN is three cars long, and ordinary-looking as hell. This is an impediment to even the most basic thrilling moments. For example, around the 87-minute mark, thereās a shot of a television screen inside a burning villain lair. The TVās news anchor tells us āthe death train waits, empty!ā, because our heroes defeated the trainās villainous occupants. However, weāre seeing that small train on a tiny TV screen. At that combined scale, THE DEATH TRAIN looks like A LIāL CHOO-CHOO.
The movie wants us to feel like THE DEATH TRAIN is an unstoppable force of doom. But our eyes remind us THIS SMALL TRAIN could be stopped by any modest obstruction. One stalled truck, one fallen tree, one ambling cow ā any of these impediments couldāve aced out Brosnan to be the filmās real hero. Speaking of heroes, they do not do all that much action in this movie. Most of the film features the (cheaper) thrill of discussions, and planning sessions, inside a Mission Control style office where Patrick Stewart tracks The Death Trainās location.
The VHS cover promises a tense battle between two famous actors. The actual movie is a list of European rail hubs. Itās one actor saying the word āStuttgartā to the other actor one hundred times. This movie feels like that tank chase in GoldenEye, minus the entire chase, replaced by a Shakespearean actor listing each boring strasse und alle which the tankās route incorporated.
This is a movie where all the key crisis points are a set of train junctions in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Slovenia. Thatās because the filmās villains are trying to bring a bomb, by rail, from Germany to Iraq. That is a silly plan. Itās also a failed plan, because the filmās heroes stop the train and seize the bomb in Slovenia. This conclusion accidentally gets foreshadowed by the heroesā command center map, because the map yada-yadas the entire Middle East.
Also: this film involves Slovenia! It bothers to acknowledge the existence of Slovenia. Weird! Iāll bet you have not thought about Slovenia in a while. Most people do not. Yet the climax of this Hollywood movie is set there. Why would they feature Slovenia? For the answer, letās turn back to those yuk-it-up jokesters at the L.A. Times.
Thatās right: they filmed this in an active European war zone. Presumably for budget reasons. If nothing else, it sounds like hotel rooms were not overwhelmed with tourist clientele:
Relatable! Whenever Iām on a business trip, and my hotel is overrun by ragtag freedom fighters, my first reaction is āha ha, wow!ā and my second reaction is to say āworking hard or hardly working? Amirite? Itās cool that Iām saying that because we basically do the same job.ā Thatās what I always say, in hotels, to troops. Anyway, the filmmakers went ahead and wrote their real-life war zone into the fictional script. Probably so they wouldnāt have to set-dress it as a different, cooler place. And Pierce Brosnan brought his remaining family members to the site of that civil war, to hang out, while he filmed a movie where he speaks in two different sets of accents. Surprise: Pierce Brosnan accidentally feels like James McAvoy in Split whenever he talks in this movie. He plays āMike Grahamā, a British guy who is also a U.S. CIA agent and a Kentucky semi-nude motorcycle racer.
Brosnanās character is supposed to be a British person whose accent has shifted after years of living in the United States. Thatās a challenging accent to get right. Brosnan tackles that challenge by speaking with a British accent most of the time, plus a deranged sprinkle of his best guess at a Duke Of Hazzard voice. Itās jarring and also plain confusing, because they did not mic his lines very well, so itās hard to tell what heās saying in general, let alone when he pulls an Uncle Jesse. Also, that garbling might be for the best. Pierce doesnāt say anything great in this movie. When they do let him talk, he wishes he was racing his motorcycle, and he wishes he wasnāt working with A Woman. Because look out: there is one woman in the Hero Squad. Sheās part of the mission because after years of being stuck in an office job, sheās finally asked Patrick Stewart nicely enough for permission to save the world.
The movie then spends whole scenes debating whether its one notable female character should be in the movie. In a heated exchange, Stewart pushes Brosnan to accept her by describing a dizzying array of her skills, Mad Libs style.
To Brosnanās credit, his co-star Alexandra Paul is not super convincing as a Mary Sue mega-genius spy/hero. She is no better than anybody else at stopping that dumb little train. Also, at one point she says the villainās bomb contains āfishtuhbleā material. I think she meant to say “fissible”, or “fissionable”, or any other real word. And the rest of the movie displays similar mastery of what words mean:
Yee-haw to that, General Stewart! Also thatās not even the funniest weird thing Patrick Stewart does in his command center thingy. Because hereās another way this movie is borked: itās got the sloppiest and least lucrative product placement Iāve ever seen. Only two products get āplacedā in this movie. They are a bottle of Pepsiā¦
ā¦and cans of Coca-Cola.
Which isā¦illegal? Or at least breaking a contract? You canāt place competing products in the same movie! Especially if theyāre the most famous rivalry in the history of products! Both companies probably get their money back for that. Also each of them should be furious about how their products get depicted in this movie. Starting with Pepsi: as you saw, Patrick Stewart holds one. What is the context? A grim setback for our heroes. All our main characters watch grainy news footage of the terrorists chucking the corpses of murdered hostages off of the Death Train, as a warning to not get in their way. Itās legitimately grisly. The movie then shows us Heroic Woman being horrified, Heroic Brosnan being Masculine-Horrified, andā¦Patrick Stewart, being pretty calm, enjoying the first snack of the whole movie.
Refreshing! Yum. At least that Pepsi gets consumed normally. Coke gets used for mid-air emergency waterboarding. In Cokeās scene, most of a helicopterās passengers are drinking it.
Then, suddenly, the heroes realize one passenger on the helicopter is a Soviet hardliner whoās been in league with the terrorists this whole time. (Oopsies!) Guns are fired. The pilot takes a bullet, and passes out. Thinking quickly, Protagonist Woman reaches for her can of Cokeā¦
ā¦and sugar-boards the pilot back to consciousness. The pilot hates this more than he hated getting shot. He reacted to the bullet by slumping quietly in his chair. He reacts to this Coke-shower by writhing and shrieking in agony.
Products-wise, thatās all! Those are the two recognizable products in the entire film. It feels less like advertising, and more like each brand exploited political āEqual Timeā laws to purchase an attack ad against their opponent.
Back to the Pepsi room: this odd placement is not the end of the world. Other parts of the movie are literally the end of the world! Remember Patrick Stewartās martial/marshal law speech? He said that to a couple new guys, presented as his teamās new Russian allies. Iāve screencapped those guys below. See if you can spot any clues that the Russian allies might actually be enemies, who harbor Soviet sympathies:
The problem is the untrustworthy shape of their skull bones! Surprise: Iām way into phrenology. Just kidding. I am not into phrenology. I am into flags. And I can tell these guys are anti-democracy and pro-Soviet because ā get this ā they have big Soviet flags on their jackets. This is a movie released two years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet these cartoon Soviet moles proceed to infiltrate the United Nations, and sabotage Pierceās hero team, in support of Russian general Christopher Leeās plan. The plan: bring a nuclear bomb from Germany to Iraq, in a way that inspires Federal Russia to re-militarize and re-Communize.
Okay! Sure it does. Also, it does not. After defeating the terrorists and capturing The Tiny Death Train, Pierce defuses the nuclear bomb. He does this by cutting color-coded wiresā¦and CUTTING THEM WRONG. In a thrilling three-step phone call, which distractingly involves a young Clarke Peters, multiple people tell Pierce Brosnan he must cut the white wire and then cut the red wire. Thatās the order: white wire, red wire. White wire, red wire. Here are screencaps of what happens next:
Whoops! They wrote a āsequence of colored wiresā sequence, and they filmed the wrong order. So I thought I watched our heroes blow up themselves and Slovenia. Insteadā¦
Oh well. Also, maybe not even the dumbest nuclear bomb in this movie. Itās the smarter bomb, out of two. Because for reasons too dumb to summarize, Christopher Lee has a second atomic device on a plane. Brosnan and Woman pursue and board the Death Plane before it can take off. They also kill Lee. But oh no: Lee already started the trigger. I was extremely looking forward to Brosnan cutting the wrong wires again. But instead, Brosnan fails to cut the wires before the countdown finishes. And then:
Thatās a message from the bomb-maker (Leitzig). The ābombā does not go off. It does play an audio clip of Leitzigās voice saying āWhoever is hearing this, I give you the rest of your life.ā Andā¦thatās all folks! Why? Huh? Donāt think about it. Movie almost over. This bomb message is followed by one shot of Brosnan and Woman being bored, and clothed, even though any Bond movie would have them start porking each other within moments of bomb defusal.
Then they walk into a fog bank and the credits roll.
And thatās the end of the storyā¦for them. It is not the end of the story for the majority of people on that Earth. Because in the world of the movie, the villains were not able to explode any nukes or re-Communize any Russias. But in the process, the heroes of this movie inflicted a psychological terror attack on a massive global audience.
This movieās pace is a big draggy mess. Thereās lots of phone calls, and train rerouting, and reading information off of that old school 1990s printer paper with the perforated edges. Boring! Laggy! And yet, like so many crap movies, it has a few opposite-problem bursts of whipping through stuff too fast. In one burst, the Death Train is set to stop at the nearest podunk Cyrillic-script train station. You see, the Death Train is now global news, because word is out that it carries terrorists and a nuclear bomb. The on-train terrorists, led by the guy who played Jame Gumb in ‘Silence Of The Lambs’, decide to exploit this. They demanded and will receive a personal interview from the lead reporter for āGNNā (a global CNN)…
ā¦and theyāre stopping to pick him up. Within seconds of that demand, the Hero Team is on the scene in Podunksberg with a plan in place. Hero Woman will pose as GNNās camerawoman. Their associate, Zero Personality Version Of āQā, will install a working rifle inside of a working TV camera.
This TV camera only has one bullet, because theyāve decided to keep it functional as a TV camera. Instead of just telling the terrorists theyāre on TV, Hero Woman will film the terrorists with a working camera that delivers live streaming footage to a global audience. That working camera is also a working gun.
Are you able to think through what would happen next? Congratulations: you are wiser than the makers of Death Train. Because the heroes do not think this through! They also do not, oh I donāt know, turn off the camera at any point. They go ahead and get aboard the train, get the terrorist leader on camera, let him talk for a bit, and then point-blank headshot him in front of the planet.
Iāll remember that part of this movie forever. Because in that world, everyone on Earth would remember it forever. They broadcast that live! Globally! And they broadcast it through the murder weapon! Itās a Zapruder Rifle. And that killing would be Kennedy Assassination / September 11th level notorious. Generations would go to therapy for it. Everyone would trade stories of where they were on Terrorist Pink-Mist Camera-Gun Day. Here on Earth Prime, a lot of us know the name of a politician who shot himself on TV, even though he was only a U.S. state treasurer. This movieās heroes broadcasted and inflicted an extreme-close-up brainsplosion to the world. Compared to nuking Slovenia, thatāsā¦alright itās not a nuclear attack, physically. But psychologically, itās [Slovenian word for Chernobyl].
Itās villainy on a level Iāve never seen depicted in these types of movies. The closest parallel I can think of is The Joker using TV broadcasts to turn Gotham insane. Bond movie villains tend to be far more gentlemanly about their threats, murders, lasers, et cetera. But not Death Train. AKA Detonator. AKA the dark revisionist Bond-ish movie tucked into the prologue to Brosnanās Bond run. Itāll stick with me ā but it didnāt stick with Pierce Brosnan. Within one year of making this Pain Face, under a Death Train, during a Brain Assault By Hero Womanā¦
ā¦within one year of that, Pierce got cast as James Bond. One year later, in November 1995, the world received a positive form of brain-bombing from GoldenEye. Which means I can put this chapter of Brosnanās life behind me. I must be done! Thatās gotta be all the ignominy worth covering. Surely Death Train was the end of Pierceās wilderness years of secret Bond auditions..
Okay but, come on, surely there were no other available months, in between Doubtfire and GoldenEye, when Pierce couldāve followed through on that ridiculousā
Okay, wow. Thatās real. Well at least there are no alternate posters for that. At least visually, in cover art and screencap form, my heroās dignity remains fully intactā
Why do I feel funny? And why does my heart feel like it just grew a mustacheā¦
There used to be a sport called āpedestrianismā and it kind of invented modern sports. It got replaced in the 1880s by the rise of other sports, such as bicycle racing and baseball. Both those sports out-competed pedestrianism, because they offered more game elements, such as any game elements whatsoever. What did pedestrianism offer? Walking. Competitive walking. Competitive walking for baffling stretches of time (usually six days). There were also little tents by the track where the guys could sleep, a little bit. Usually less than four hours per night. Andā¦thatās pedestrianism for you! Walking. Walking, in the most deranged ways ever recorded.
Iām a big sports fan. Iām an even bigger fan of sports as a source of entertainment. That is their point! I feel many fans forget this, and get lost in the weeds of āmy team is badā or āmy team keeps losingā or āmy teamās manager fell asleep, on camera, in the middle of a gameās first inning.ā Wow. Yikes! Imagine being a lifelong fan of that sports team. Such as me. But Iām actually laughing about that situation, happily.
Anyway, tears wiped, carrying onward: sports are supposed to be fun! Thatās their point. So donāt sweat one teamās wins and losses. Sweat the bizarre endless ways the entire sport of baseball is cursed/haunted/bonkers, i.e. fun. Or follow the wisdom of the great John Hodgman, and make rediscovering defunct hockey team logos your sport. Or appreciate the brilliance of professional wrestling: a staged drama, with real physical stakes, where fans pick a favorite combatant and yell about them in (ideally) whichever way that makes them happiest. Because itās sports! Itās whatever. Sure, yes, the wrestling belt winners are made up. So is money. So is everything in this charade we call life! And the topic of this column (pedestrianism) is a bounteous font of that perfect sports-as-entertainment experience. Pedestrianism is both a fascinating piece of history, and a rich menu of Sports Heroes to get hyped about. So read on, Dear Hotdogger, and CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER WHO IS A WALKER. Only one of these guys can be your mental favorite ā and every one of these guys is long dead.
Pedestrianism was a sport from the 1860s to the early 1880s. I hope I did not under-emphasize how bizarre it was. Modern endurance athletes run 26.2 miles for part of a day, and then (with a few nutty exceptions) they stop. Pedestrians walked hundreds and hundreds of miles, with almost no breaks, for close to a week. They did this over and over again. And it all happened because of one guy. A guy who became a mega-famous athlete, with his own cigarette sponsorship, despite looking like a walrus granted humanity by a Disney genie.
Edward Payson Weston loved walking long distances. This is partly because he was a New Yorker, but mostly because it was his kink. I am guessing at the kink part. That is also one of the most educated guesses I have ever guessed. According to the BBC, Weston gained national fame by losing a bet on the results of the 1860 Presidential election. The bet: Weston and his friend each picked a candidate. The stakes: the loser had to walk from New York City to Washington DC to view the Presidential inauguration. In this 1860 election bet, Weston selected unpopular niche hate-monster John C. Breckenridge, who finished 3rd in the popular vote, because he ran in a vote-splitting way that everyone knew was doomed nationally. Abraham Lincoln was not the obvious future winner. But Breckenridge was an obvious future loser. Breckenridge was the guy you pick if youāre losing this bet on purpose, for what I argue was Westonās walking-based dom/sub kink.
Weston followed through on this hot-and-heavy bet. He spent 10 entire days hiking to our nationās capital, trailed by national newspaper coverage. Then Weston scheduled competitive walks (!) against other noted walkers (?). The rest was sports history. Westonās endurance stunts became āpedestrianismā, a competitive sport where guys walked for several days in a row. Initially Weston competed against himself, renting out roller rinks, and charging people 10 cents per ticket to watch him walk 100 miles within 24 hours. In todayās world, that entertainment sales pitch would result in no ticket sales, and one dead guy. Back then, that was sports. The dawn of pro sports. Finally: people had a thing to observe! And they wanted more. Weston gave it to them by competing against other people. He and other pedestrians competed in events like āThe Great Six Day Raceā, which was guys walking in a circle for six days, with track-side tents for brief naps in moments of weakness. Weston became one of the stars of that horrible competition, earning nicknames like āThe Wily Wobblerā (due to his gait) and āWeston The Pedestrianā (due to words sort of rhyming). Weston was also a showboat. According to wonderful writer Matthew Algeo, whose book you should buy, Weston competed wearing a cape and a riding crop. He also walked while playing the cornet. That rules. He stacked the cardiovascular task of walking with the cardiovascular mega-task of mini-trumpet. Why did he do that? I have two theories. Either Westonās kink evolved to require toys, or he made a heel turn into cornet-based opponent-taunting. Algeoās theory is the latter.
Speaking of heel turns, Weston pretty much invented the sporting use of performance-enhancing drugs. In 1876, Weston got busted for chewing coca leaves. According to a Google search I am about to regret, coca leaves are the raw ingredient of cocaine. Iām glad I confirmed that. I am excited to say the phrase āone nine hundred hot dogā to an NYPD strike team and their battering ram. Anyway: you should make Weston your favorite pedestrian if you want a bad boy. A guy who says hell yeah, letās bash. Also Weston did not technically break any rules. Coca leaves were not illegal in the freewheeling 1870s. So he got to keep on competing, instead of weeping in the halls of Congress or whatever. Weston also invented the modern athlete maneuver of saying a doctor accidentally prescribed the PEDs, and he was simply too good of a patient. Whatever Westonās reasons, he made huge money as a famous top pedestrian, and died pretty much broke because he blew all that money. He also left behind a thriving sport where athletes had trading cards and sponsorships and similar fame. A sport that benefited from Westonās rivalry withā¦
Daniel OāLeary was a man of his time. A grim, joyless time. Because as much as we all enjoy a wacky fun guy like Weston, with a brass instrument and an alleged-by-me fetish, weāre talking about a sport from the late 1800s. A terrible era. An era when men woke up at dawn, walked to a factory, and put in a long day of contracting cancer and losing fingers in machines. Then they went home, consumed one gallon of liquor and one loaf of bread, and passed out before waking to do it all over again. Nightmare toil, plus mustaches.
Daniel OāLearyās vibe is that exact hell-vibe. According to Matthew Algeo, OāLeary was an Irish immigrant (which was sad, then) from Chicago (which was on fire, then). āHe would walk ramrod straight, upright with his arms moving like pistons.ā Thatās not funā¦except that itās mega-fun as a foil to fun rivals. OāLeary provided the āstern juggernautā vibe we all want from one of out of two athletes. OāLeary did not provide that in the harmless, fictional, Scripts Of Rockys III And IV way. He provided it as his actual personality. Heās like if Kaneās origin story was a newspaper article and police report. Daniel OāLeary was a grim force of pedestrianism. He broke Westonās early records, then battled him head-to-head (foot to foot?), creating a (White) Ali/Frazier slugfest that supercharged the sport. OāLeary also combined perfect heel-toe strides with the novel tactic of clutching corn on the cobs in each hand. He did not consider this fun, and said it was for sweat absorption. He was all about that kind of anti-charm. OāLeary was almost the real version of that The Onion headline where calm basketball great Tim Duncan gets a shoe deal with Florsheim. Daniel OāLearyās real life huge sponsorship deal came from a brand of salt.
Going back to that WWE metaphor: imagine if Kane was real, and stern, and inhumanā¦and also founded the WCW. That describes Daniel OāLeary. After several victories in the first major pedestrianism circuit, OāLeary did the humongous business task of creating his own competing circuit, named after himself. And hey, great news: both circuits had giant shiny championship belts. Precisely like pro wrestling. Where this story is going, [Doc Brown voice] we donāt need metaphors. Here is āThe Astley Beltā, won by OāLeary multiple times:
And hereās āThe OāLeary Beltā, spread on a table next to one of its winners:
Also hey whoās that guy posing with it? And is he Black? Yes! He is a Black Pedestrian namedā
Frank Hart is humongously cool. Might be the easiest pedestrian to make your guy. Rad as hell. For one thing, he earned the nickname āBlack Danā. He earned this by being so good at walking, he reminded people of Daniel OāLeary ā and so good at walking, they called him āBlackā instead of any of Americaās other 1870s words for Black people.
In the run of this column, Iāve glossed over *exactly* how much money was at stake here. How much money could competitive walkers earn? Well hereās a great example: beyond the national product endorsements these guys racked up, and the giant golden championship belts they seized, pedestrian athletes scored huge prize money. In 1880, pedestrian Frank “Black Dan” Hart won a race at Madison Square Garden by walking 565 miles in a six day period. He won $21,567. Here are three rad things about that sum:
š: In todayās dollars, he won about half a million USD.
š: Despite the humongous racism of 1880 United States society, Frank Hart got to collect those winnings.
š: A big chunk of Hartās $21.5k winnings included a massive sports bet. He bet thousands of dollars on himself, to win. Which was legal! And that legality is kind of better than sports now. Every modern sport bans and shames players for making positive bets on themselves. Or for betting the exact way fans are encouraged to bet. Frank Hart made sports gambling part of his bread and butter, in a way that heightened the drama and embiggened his bank account.
So yes, Frank Hart rules. Frank Hart was also a ring name. He was a Haitian immigrant, born Fred Hichborn, who decided āFrank Hartā was more marketable. Three generations of Canadian wrestlers affirm this to be accurate. So does the English language. āHartā is almost the word āheartā, with a vowel trimmed out for greater speed and power. That makes the last name āHartā brave-sounding and cool. Fred (Frank (Black Dan) Hart) Hichborn was both those things, racking up winnings and cigarette sponsorships and national fame despite being an outspoken Black American in the 1870s.
Modern American pro sports is chock-full of racism. Out-in-the-open racism. Colin Kaepernick got screwed in public, Black NFL veterans got ārace-normedā out of settlement money, Atlanta won last yearās World Series with their crowds doing a hate-speech arm salute. Our leagues are a space where non-white players arenāt welcome to do anything but play. Frank Hart played 142 years ago. He faced at least some of this. For example, during one of his bids to win OāLearyās Belt, somebody near the track handed Hart some soda water. Hart drank it. According to historian Kelly Collins, the soda water was poisoned. Poisoned! It contained a substance that makes you sick. Or more likely, dead. In the 1870s, *food* made you dead more often than not. Let alone poison. The thing Hart consumed. And then overcame, to win that race. Because Hartās response to poison was, in Twitter-speak, “I would simply not die of the poison”. Anyway itās unclear whether that poisoning was racially motivated. Itās also clear Black athletes continue to face constant racially-motivated obstacles. So if thereās anything Iām excited to root for, itās Frank Hart. Because here are public statements from before the big race where he won half a million modern dollars:
Hell yeah! Frank Hart said that, and then did that. He beat fifteen white challengers (plus two non-whites), out-walking all comers in front of a massive crowd at Madison Square Garden. A stadium so famous, most non-sports fans have still heard of it. More about that stadium later. First here areā¦
Folks: Iāve offered you three glorious pedestrians to get into. Also, I appreciate that some of you want somebody more niche. So you can be interesting, and unusual, and so forth. Great. May I suggest:
Charles Rowell ā Mr. Rowellās famous walk was a “trot”. You can see him doing it on the far left of that illustrated group of athletes.
Also perhaps You My Dear Hotdogger are seeking a āhotā athlete to root for. Great news: in his time, Charles Rowell was criticized for his ātoo fineā physique, and its suggestion that he had done ātoo much training.ā Too much! Cool it with the practicing and fitness, Charles! Who do you think you are, a professional athlete? What a funny time. I want to build a time machine, go back to then, and tell Rowellās critics about Dwayne āThe Rockā Johnson’s whole deal. Itāll induce a group cardiac event.
Charles Harriman ā heās the second guy in that lineup above. Allegedly his stride was āmechanicalā. He was also still doing week-long walks with cash prizes for challengers at age 57. What a robot. I love it. I assume he is still alive today, and still walking, bonking face-first into a wall like a forgotten wind-up toy.
Michael Byrne ā in 1880, Michael Byrne won a pedestrianism race against a horse. A horse! He out-walked a horse! Final score: 578 miles to 563. Thatās Michael Byrne for you. I donāt have any further information about him. I do have more information aboutā¦
Betsy Baker ā and sorry folks, this is not the much-belated introduction of a female human competitor. Far as I know there were no female humans in this sport. Betsy Baker was the name of the horse defeated by Michael Byrne. Also I feel she defeated him in the sport of Having Good Sense-ism. Apparently Betsy refused to keep doing pedestrianism on competition day 5 out of 6. Also these guys tried to re-motivate her by feeding her champagne. Which is strange, but less strange than youād think, because this sport had a key role forā¦
Champagne producers ā As recently as the 1870s (the peak of this sport), champagne was considered a sports drink. Fuel for the greatest athletes. Sort of like that scene in Chariots Of Fire where a rich British guy puts champagne on his track hurdles. In pedestrianismās case, the champagne was far sloppier. According to Matthew Algeo, pedestrianismās athletes and trainers (yes they had trainers) considered champagne to be a stimulant (wrong). Pedestrians drank it mid-race (cheers!) to āgive themselves some kind of advantage. The problem was a lot of these guys would drink it by the bottle.ā Wow! I hope nobody impressionable saw star athletes chug champagne as a health beverage. Thatād be terrible. Anyway, go ahead fingers, type the very next chunk of this blog, oh no I see the first few letters, crap crap crapā
Small impressionable children ā crap. Algeo says kids loved this nightmare sport where drunk guys walked in a circle for a week. Kids also spent their pennies on pedestrian trading cards, which were the first sports trading cards (!) and were almost always advertisements for tobacco. On top of that, Algeo says “children would imitate the strides of their favourite pedestrians.ā Which makes me grateful my favorite childhood athlete was a guy who made gravity seem fake, and not a guy competitively failing a field sobriety test. That hyperlink is way better. Itās Michael Jordan highlights. Which reminds me: I havenāt detailed the last superstar of this sport. Because New York City is a character in this tale! In particularā¦
I made this hyperlinked bonus show of my good podcast about Madison Square Garden, because it turns out M.S.G. might be the strangest stadium in modern history. For example, today it is the home of the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers and the Foul Helicopter Menace Billy Joel. It is also called āMadison Square Gardenā even though itās about a one mile drive from the also-famous location āMadison Squareā.
Whoops! Huh? Why? It turns out several stadiums have been named āMadison Square Gardenā. The first was near the park. It was this 10,000-seat outdoor sports stadium:
Built in 1879, it hosted major pedestrianism competitions. Those competitions looked like the āWhereās Waldoā nonsense pictured above. A bajillion people bought tickets. So pedestrianism filled and sustained the first version of the most famous stadium in the United States. Pedestrianism built Madison Square Garden! From there, a couple things happened. Bicycle racing replaced pedestrianism as the primary MSG draw, and replaced pedestrianism as the main racing sport in general. Thatās partly because, uh, yikes, whoops, minor detail here: pedestrianism was basically unwatchable? Hereās Matthew Algeo bringing that up late in the game:
Oops! Pedestrianism was a spectator sport that revolted spectators. So it basically vanished by the end of 1881. Bicycle racing became an even bigger draw for MSG, to the point where they installed a velodrome track, and invented a cycling relay race that got so popular, it is called āthe madisonā to this day. That whole change stuns me! A world-famous stadium began with a totally different purpose! Itās like learning Yankee Stadium started out as a cockfighting pit, before somebody flattened and widened the pit for stickball.
Anyway here is the other change that happened: Madison Square Garden #1 got so popular, and made so much money, rich guys decided to build a better one. MSG #2 was such a lavish indoor stadium, it got funded by JP Morgan *and* Andrew Carnegie *and* the Astor family. It was a whole complex, featuring a theater and a bunch of apartments and a restaurant, in a deluxe 32-story tower (the 2nd tallest building in NYC at the time). Most thrillingly, itās probably haunted to this day. MSG #2 got designed by architect and Rich Guy Name-Haver Stanford White. Mister Whiteās hobbies included being rich, living in a suite in MSG2ās tower, and āmadisoningā his penis into other guysā wives. One night, in 1906, that last thing caught up to him. White was dining in Mega-MSGās restaurant. One of Whiteās paramoursā husbands walked into the restaurant and shot him dead. In front of everybody! Twenty years later they demolished the whole building and built a new one many blocks away. Forā¦reasons. Thereās a golden tower there now.
Thatās Madison Square Garden for you: a plutocratic sports-dome with a murder past and a pedestrianist foundation. So thank you, pedestrianism, for sports. Itās a fun thing I goof off about. And thank you for making New York City weird to this very day.
…
Seanbaby and Brockway started 1900HOTDOG as a way to grift government processed meat subsidies, and along the way accidentally assembled the best comedy team in novelty phone number history. This week all articles are free in honor of the fantastic columnists that make this site a place to be treasured and feared in equal measure.
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Punching Day: Live Wire
I love reading this website. It feels like our own private liāl āMidnight Societyā. But instead of sharing tall tales about Neve Campbell battling evil soup, we gather for REAL tales of cursed cultural artifacts. Today, for your approval, I present Live Wire ā a movie about Pierce Brosnan battling evil glasses of water. Water is bombs, in this movie, runtime 85 minutes.
This is cursed beyond its āsilly movieā layer. There is actual, accursed, built-on-a-burial-ground style grimness within this flick. But we gotta start with the bomb-water. This movie depends on you getting interested in the following premise: Euro-terrorists devised a chemical. When the chemical gets added to water, and then mixed with the stomach acids of a person who drank the water, that person will combust. Humongously. Plus thereās a middle step before the explosion, where their eyes turn red and they start wiggling around. Thatās the hook of this movie: a technology where one sip of evil water turns anyone into several tons of dynamite.
I acknowledge that this premise almost works. Conceptually, itās scary that anybody could blow anybody else up with innocent-looking water. But this almost-good idea gains a lot of hilarity in its path from the page to the screen. The screenwriter types āterrorist!ā The resulting movie points its quick cuts and ominous music in the general direction ofā¦a limo driver re-loading drinks.
Or a judge who is thirsty.
Or a clown, with ālemonade.ā
GoldenEye it aināt. And I know what youāre thinking: āPierce Brosnan must have made this crummy movie one million billion years before he was famous.ā That is what you are thinking, right now. I am a psychic. Itās freaky! Anyway, Live Wire was intended as a huge movie. It came out in 1992, and it was supposed to be Pierce Brosnanās Die Hard. You can tell because it copy-pastes a lot of Die Hard. Brosnan plays a tormented Police Guy slash (Estranged) Wife Guy, forced to defeat a Euro-terrorist plot masterminded by a good actor from British dramas. Armed only with his wits, a few guns, and his Black Friend, Pierce McClane re-Wifes his life by impressing her by saving the world.
Live Wire also makes a few key additions to this format:
š Bomb Water (as discussed).
š Brosnanās Police Guy is a Police Bomb Defuser, specifically. (So look out, Bomb Water!)
š Black Friend has his own Robot Best Friend. (Whatever robot youāre imagining, think cheaper.)
š Ron Silver.
Hey, wow: that haircut! Ron Silver plays a United States Senator, with that haircut. That is the most fantastical element of this film ā a film where James Bond and a robot hunt terrorists doing spontaneous human combustions. That coiffure is still the most bonkers element. Live Wire claims Ron Silver could get elected to Congress while sporting the exact hairdo of Lord Farquaad (from Shrek) and Dianne Feinstein (from the United States Senate).
But enough about fictional universe-based Senators. Iām only here because of Pierce Brosnan. Iām a fan! Heās my James Bond and I donāt care who knows it. Heās the whole reason Iāve watched The Kingās Daughter for your benefit. Pierceās life is the doorway to the most cursed, bizarre rabbit hole hidden within Live Wire. But the business side of this movie is cursed too. It failed! Singularly! Live Wire was a wide-release summer tentpole, back when those were things. It was such a non-hit, Pierce Brosnanās Wikipedia page describes a different 1992 Pierce Brosnan movie (The Lawnmower Man) AND a 1992 Pierce Brosnan not-picked-up television pilot, with no mention of this multi-million dollar blockbuster released that same year. And he was famous at the time! One year later, Brosnan villain-starred in Mrs. Doubtfire. One year after that, he got announced as the new James Bond. Which thrills me! That means thousands of people heard the James Bond casting news, and muttered āThat guy from Die Wire?ā, after spit-taking their 1994 Beverage (Fruitopia).
Letās begin the movie. As you know, itās an action/sci-fi film. Those usually begin with thrills. Live Wire, due to Premise Problems, begins with ominous b-roll of water ā and then red water.
Next they present the movieās title. Which is also wet. Wet and steamy.
After that Schlitterbahn of a credit sequence, the movie proceeds to show you dry text. Which Iāve screencapped. Warning: this block of text Iām about to show you will feel gross and out-of-nowhere. It feels that same way in the film.
Reminder: this movie came out in 1992. Question: can a thrown-together Die Hard ripoff cause a real-life terrorist attack, by doing a humongous jinx? Because the World Trade Center got bombed within months of this movieās release. And then attacked again, later, in a way I do not need to hyperlink. Remember when I said this movie is legitimately, nightmarishly cursed? Well oh no, oh god, there are more blocks of text.
What a pile of words. Words that accurately capture Americaās political stability and lack of sad bombings. Anyway the film knows itās making you read. Itās losing precious seconds to reel you in. So its next moment is soundtracked with a badass guitar sting. However, this is not the main thing you notice. Because as your ears begin to š¤rockš¤, your eyes are looking at a duck.
A duck! Fun! I know this shot is also a shot of the U.S. Capitol Building, reflected in water (i.e. The Bad Guy). Thatās probably what they storyboarded. But you do not notice what they storyboarded. You notice a big funny white duck dominating the first shot of the whole movie, with the exact musical backing of a WWE entrance.
They probably needed a duck-free shot of this. They definitely didnāt bother spending time and money getting one. This whole movie feels thrown together in that way. With each passing minute, thereās a new jarring liāl whoopsie. Such as this phone call, between two people in the same city. One end is a sunny day and the other end is a rainy night.
Thereās also this thrilling employee management situation, where the Euro-villain kills off his Science Henchman by neck-stabbing him with a pen.
This scene is written so the villain isnāt carrying a pen. Because that would be impossible? So before the murder, he asks Sci-Henchman to lend him a pen.
So if Doctor Science wasnāt carrying a pen, the villainā¦just strangles him? Or if Sci-Doc is carrying a crummy Bic, the villainā¦inks him to death? I know thatās not an important problem. Neither is the duck. Neither is another part of this movie, where Pierce and Black Friend go to a high-security carnival, and the carnival staff put Black Friendās Robot through a metal detector.
This movie DOES NOT HAVE TIME for thinking through that stuff. This is ACTION filmmaking, focused on how HARDCORE the main character is. Pierce Brosnanās Character is so hardcore, he attends carnivals to do two things: interrogate clowns, and whack clownsā noses off when they arenāt quick enough to answer the question āhave you seen any suspicious water?ā
This HARDCORENESS gets-a-rippinā from Pierceās first scene. When we meet him, heās in the middle of defusing a car bomb and ogling a vagina.
Does Pierce defeat this (non-water) bomb? He does. He defeats it so hard, he can barely keep his shirt on.
But wait ā whatās that item electrical-taped to Pierceās ribcage?
An item he tape-rips off of his ribcage? (hardcore!) Itās a set of photos of Pierce and His Wife and His Child (family!).
Pierce sarcastically (hardcore!) lets us know the pictures are his lucky charm (family!) for defusing bombs (hardcore!). One millisecond later, a flip-up sunglasses man enters this active crime scene to serve Pierce a restraining order from His Wife (famcore!).
Pierce spends the rest of the movie battling sinister bombs while battling to get His Wife back. That is his central pair of dramas. Those two threads intersect because Pierce has to solve both problems. Those threads also intersect at His Wifeās vagina. For you see, the Euro-terrorists are targeting United States Senators. Pierceās Wife has moved on to a new relationship with United States Haircut-Senator Ron Silver. In the end, Pierce wins His Wife back, nominally by solving the terrorism. Itās not convincing, in the movie. But it makes more sense than his other strategy for getting her back, which is to show up wherever she is and do Actually Scary Yelling at her.
The movie excuses this yelling by making Pierce a Justifiably Sad Man. He is sad about their daughterās death. Still, Pierce spends basically the entire movie being sad about losing His Wife ā except for each time a person is mid-explosion, and one scene where he Recaptures His Wifeās Vagina. He does this in a candlelit bathtub. She loves this. She also keeps wearing an entire terry cloth bathrobe throughout this tub-lovinā, because there is no hotter pork-sperience than feeling like youāre inside a swim meetās hamper.
This element of the movie is its most accursed elementā¦if you know real life stuff about My Hero, Pierce Brosnan. This is about to get more cursed than you think it will. CURSE WARNING begins now. Because in real life, Pierce Brosnan lost his wife Cassandra Harris to a long battle with cancer. She died in 1991. Here is her photo:
The movie Live Wire came out in 1992. Pierce plays a guy pining for His Wife, who is played by this actor:
Are you noticing what I am noticing about this movie that was filmed in 1991? I am confident somebody noticed. The production of this movie involved a meeting where Pierce had to say āhey by the way, youāre making me re-experience my raw grief.ā And a higher-up replied āwe blew our emergency-switch-actresses budget on the robot.ā I hate it. I hate it so much Iām a little bit obsessed with it. Itās so tragic itās thrilling. Pierce bursts into disjointed yelling in every scene with that gal, and I watched this movie knowing why.
Anyway, bomb stuff. The Euro-terrorists are assassinating Senators with water-combustion bombs, because some Senators blocked a $10 million dollar arms deal. (In 1992, $10 million could hire two good baseball players for one season.) Pierce figures this plot out quickly, yet too slowly. Then he and Ron Silver do a Die Hard in Ron Silverās big house. Pierceās Now-Loved-Up Wife is also there. Pierce gets shot in the chest with a gun, and he keeps acting normal for several minutes until the battleās over. The end of the battle is Euro-villain consuming his own chemical, to blow up the heroes with his own body. He does this because Euro-villain is too suicidally angry to run away, regroup, and slip Pierce a future Bomb Evian.
Pierce chucks the bomb-villain out of the house, and they all leap a safe distance awayā¦
ā¦except for Ron Silver, who gets impaled (Pierce-d?????) by his own spiky rich-guy fence, as justice for his numerous crimes (corruption, fashion, Wife-Thefting).
The movie doesnāt quite know how to end itself from there. So they have Pierce solve another car bomb, while ogling the same ladyās same vagina from the beginning. Also in the middle of this bomb defusal situation, which takes a total of fifteen seconds, he receives a phone call telling him His Wife had Their Baby. Thrilled heās finally solved his childās death by making a replacement, Pierce joyously sprints away, probably to go to the hospital. This is the final shot of the movie (timecode: 1:21:05). And itās filmed with the wobbliest Rising Helicopter Shot Iāve ever experienced.
So there you have it. Much like Albert Camusās Sisyphus, one must imagine Pierce Brosnan happy. Iād like to think he kept on sprinting, for thousands of miles, from Live Wireās Washington D.C. to Mrs. Doubtfireās San Francisco home exterior and nicer craft services table. Sprinting to a better life, where his movies are hits, and his cinematic romantic interests are not cast for maximum widower-torment. Pierce seems nice. He seems like a guy who just wants to be a good husband and also a good friend and co-worker. He got past this film. And thatās my wish for all of us: the luck to land a great next job, coming on the heels of an intensely shitty job, awaiting us beyond the frame of that wobbly helicopter shot.
