Season 2
In Season 2 of Cargo Cult, we explore the great year of 1973 and why it's such an important time, not only in the lives of Jimmy and Justin, but for the great movies, directors and producers of the world.
Jimmy and Justin discuss their favorite holiday movies including a sit down with The Corleones, a shared car with Del and Neal, decorating the tree with Mr. Joshua, after dinner acrimony with King Henry and Eleanor of Aquitane, and a heartfelt national television seasonal toast with Frank and Claire after a live version of A Christmas Carol. Can you name those movies? And, yes, Justin and Jimmy Mac resolve the ultimate seasonal cinematic question in their ultimate episode: Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.
As Joseph Campbell points out, there is a "threshold resistance" to the call to adventure. A decision must be made to head out onto the road, and often it cannot be made until the hero has looked into their soul. That decision is very much on the mind of Justin and Jimmy Mac as they discuss the fateful choice to move to Los Angeles. The penultimate episode of season one, "Refusing The Call" ranges far and wide by discussing city states, the inheritors of Orson Welles, and striking the right balance between pleasing your audience and entertaining yourself. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.
Once more with David Bruckner, Cargo Cult careens not only through Mel Gibson's turn as Max Rockatansky but also into Tom Hardy's take as well with Mad Max: Fury Road. Of course, Tina Turner gets a Thunderdome shout out, but ultimately, this episode celebrates the benefits of a simple plot, the demands of an analog approach to filmmaking, and the story of a 71-year-old man, "who's doing it for real with his team in the middle of a desert". Also, if you want to know what a badass director George Miller actually was, you might wanna read Kyle Buchanan's Blood Sweat and Chrome about the making of Fury Road. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.
Director David Bruckner continues to take the ride, as Cargo Cult races head on into a collision course of a conversation about transportation technology as an adversary. Duel, Maximum Overdrive, Christine, and even John Frankenheimer's Ronin are all part of tradition where anthropomorphized machines overpower the human factor. All of this merges into the beginning of an analysis of George Miller's Mad Max series. Consensus is reached that Stephen King should focus on writing and never direct or act again. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.
Director of the new Hellraiser and The Night House, David Bruckner joins the gang on his birthday to talk antagonists, villians, and some of his cinematic inspirations. Engaging in a wide ranging discussion about the nature of what makes a good "bad guy", Bruckner, who directed Justin in The Signal, focuses on the terror of the unknowable motive trapped inside an antagonist's psychology. Listen for his insightful take on Terminator as a slasher flick. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.
1976's Assault on Precinct 13 is a blueprint for the career of master of horror John Carpenter. Every film he would make afterwards can be found inside it. The director's own version of a Howard Hawks' movie, Assault features a pair of taciturn highly professional heroes, a modern take on the "Hawk's Girl", and a relentless adversary that can only be stopped with enough bullets. Jimmy and Justin also use the discussion to eulogize actor/trucker Darwin Joston who played the role of the great anti-hero Napoleon Wilson. Fame is a matter of luck and timing. Both Carpenter and Joston's careers prove it. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.
From the utterly ridiculous to the positively sublime. Cargo Cult shifts its focus from looking at films of pop culture importance but questionable quality to a movie truly great in all its aspects. Robert Altman's MASH accomplishes the nearly impossible: it manages to be wildly funny while breaking your heart, is deeply humane despite its graphic brutality, and is simultaneously a work of exquisitely crafted art and popular entertainment. The friendships forged on the screen in MASH are so powerful they extend to the viewers themselves. Go on, after watching this, tell us you don't think of Hawkeye, Trapper, and Duke as your friends. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.
After all the explosions, wrecks, and bulging biceps of Convoy, Over the Top, and The Cannonball Run, Justin and Jimmy Mac take an exit ramp for a minor grace note with Daniel Petrie's lovely-if-slight Six Pack. A peak-of-his-stardom Kenny Rogers plays minor-circuit racer Brewster Baker who ends up being a surrogate father to a half dozen orphans. Two of those kids, Anthony Michael Hall and Diane Lane, would parlay those roles into much bigger things. Rising above its made-for-television structure, the movie also captures something of the 1982's zeitgeist that would become Reagan's Morning in America. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.
As much as Jimmy Mac dislikes Over the Top, don't even get him started on The Cannonball Run. Justin rightly points out the gleefully mean spirit of a movie that is cynical without being clever, sloppy without being wild, and not-quite-suited-for-kids despite having the maturity level of one. It covers all the bases of bad. Dean Martin is wasted in one of his final roles and Jackie Chan in one of his first. Roger Ebert got it right when he said, "they didn't even care enough to make a good lousy movie." That being said, actor Jack Elam is a national treasure. Want to hear the full episode? Click here to find it on the SiriusXM App.