The Swamp

Bottle Rocket (1996)
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson
Starring: Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, James Caan
Running Time: 91 minutes
Budget: $5 million
Box Office: $560,000
Streaming availability: CBS All-Access it appears
On-demand/PPV: $2.99/$3.99 on cable and satellite services
Other availability: Probably the usual rental places like Amazon, Roku, etc.
Start Time: 9 p.m. (movie starts at 9:10 p.m.)

This is one of the first movies I ever remember seeing as a young man thinking "I can't believe some guys just like me made a movie"*. I remember renting it from the local grocery store (which you can tell your kids is how we often rented movies back in the day) at my first post-college apartment working my first post-college job and watched it with my roommate without knowing almost anything about it. We ended up watching it like three times before returning it and would go back and rent it again at least once more (this was also before DVD and when VHS movies were so prohibitive priced that almost no one owned "new" VHS movies.

You can see Wes Anderson touches to be sure -- the soundtrack is almost pitch-perfect and the patter between characters (including several occasions where characters speak so softly they almost can't be heard) is sublime, but it doesn't have any of the set-designing flourishes that would come to (for better or worse) define "a Wes Anderson movie".

If you haven't seen it, you should absolutely consider joining us.

* - white, suburban, working-class, relatively aimless (it sounds like there would be a lot of movies from and aimed at that demographic, but I still don't think it's true even today)

Love this movie. I should be here.

I've been pretty scarce on these, but I might be back on for this one. Only watched it one time, loved it, and don't really know why I haven't come back to it again.

I don't think I've seen it. Maybe started watching senior year of college but found something better to do and never went back... Oops.

Love this movie so much. I'll try and make it.

Realized I can probably do the pause for this movie from memory though I still have to go down and get the DVD yet, so let's pause after the impromptu hotel party. We'll pause with Bob Maplethorpe grabbing his keys from the table.

I've convinced my wife to watch this one with me since she's never seen it. DVD is ready to go!

You're in the army, yes?

I can't do it. I lost my touch.

Did ya ever have a touch to lose, man?

You know there's nothing to steal from my Mom and Craig.

The halfway point I picked is a little before the halfway point of the movie, but I still think it's a good place to pause. It's about 36 minutes in where we're pausing after the "nice little soiree" as Bob puts it with the Mercedes keys being grabbed off of the table (the movie is only about 90 minutes).

We'll start on the Columbia Pictures logo at the beginning.

One of the first things we'll discuss when the movie starts is a not very well-known connection between Slap Shot and Bottle Rocket, for those of you who did Slap Shot with us.

Hey guys, I was really looking forward to this one as it's one of my favorite movies, but waking up three hours early today is catching up with me and I'm about to crash out. Maybe I'll be up again in a few hours to catch part of this.

Starting at 9:10 p.m. ET.

One of the first characters you'll see after the movie starts and you see Luke and Owen Wilson is Dr. Nichols. And here's where the Slap Shot connection comes in. He is played by Ted Dowd, who played on the Johnstown Jets in the "real" Federal League and whose wife wrote the movie Slap Shot. He himself played Ogie Oglethorpe in Slap Shot.

I'm here.

I'm sure you're all very excited.

brian wrote: ↑Thu Jun 25, 2020 8:03 pm Starting at 9:10 p.m. ET.

One of the first characters you'll see after the movie starts and you see Luke and Owen Wilson is Dr. Nichols. And here's where the Slap Shot connection comes in. He is played by Ted Dowd, who played on the Johnstown Jets in the "real" Federal League and whose wife wrote the movie Slap Shot. He himself played Ogie Oglethorpe in Slap Shot.

I think he was originally credited in the actual credits initially as Ogie Oglethorpe, but Anderson had to change it in subsequent DVD releases after SAG made a complaint.

My wife is orange-font enthused. She rarely gives me the benefit of the doubt with these things.

Giff wrote: ↑Thu Jun 25, 2020 8:08 pm My wife is orange-font enthused. She rarely gives me the benefit of the doubt with these things.

Hopefully she'll like it. She probably won't hate it at least.

This movie always makes me feel better when I'm down for whatever reason. It's a sunny ray of a movie.

We are off!

Let's dance.

Mine is in. Need a wife swamp (with a P!) where they compare notes

If I've never said it before, I really don't think Owen and Luke Wilson really look like brothers. And neither of them really looks like their OTHER brother Andrew, who is also in the movie later (he plays FutureMan).

Meant m

This will not be the last time one of Dignan's crazy schemes are went along with for seemingly no reason.

Dignan's notebook here kills me.

The movie tells us almost everything we need to know about Dignan, Anthony and Bob's backgrounds without explicit saying it almost immediately after meeting the three of them.

"Should I play your game?"

It's pretty interesting how much they had to put in location scouting for this movie to compensate for the smaller budget. Many of the interiors clearly look like many other Anderson movies. The semaphore flag wallpaper, for example.

"Your number one strength is that you have a car."

"I really want to be a part of this team. And I'm the only one with a car."

One of my favorite lines in a movie all-time is coming up. When Anthony complains about Grace being disappointed in him and Dignan responds with "What has she ever done with her life that's so great?"

"Does the fact that I'm trying to do it for you do it for you?"

Watch Bob run a stop sign here.

The first time I ever watched this movie what sucked me in for good was Luke Wilson's line reading here of "I try not to be!"

brian wrote: ↑Thu Jun 25, 2020 8:20 pm One of my favorite lines in a movie all-time is coming up. When Anthony complains about Grace being disappointed in him and Dignan responds with "What has she ever done with her life that's so great?"

That got an LOL out of Kelli.

Just terrific delivery of "I try not to be." That earnest smile, selling it so well.

"He's out, you're out too. And I don't think I'm in either! No gang!"

"How's that asshole Bob get a great kitchen?!"

I probably know this movie line for line and there's so many good ones.