We begin our celebration of America's months-long presidential election with the first in a projected bonus series on movies about the US President. In this edition, we look at 1997's Air Force One. Exclusive for Patreon subscribers. Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to at least one full extra episode a month. Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper/posts Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618&fan_landing=true IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper Jack's (Locked) Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_ Jack's Bluesky: @timescarcass.bsky.social Daniel's Bluesky: @danielharper.bsky.social IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1
And the patriotic music swells to introduce us in this bonus episode that we're doing about a movie.
We do that sometimes, bonus episodes about movies.
Daniel, how the bloody hell are you, Mr. President?
I'm doing quite well.
Thank you for addressing me by my proper title.
I'd take a bullet for you.
I'd jump in front of a terrorist bullet for you.
I hope you know that.
I am very aware of that, as you should.
You know your betters when you see one.
I hear you.
So yes, bonus episodes about movies, and I think this might not happen the way we... Because they don't.
We say we're going to do this, and we don't do it, like we promised you a Benjamin Boyce episode, and it never happened.
The idea is that we're going to be doing, at least for the foreseeable future, we're going to be doing bonus episodes about movies about presidents.
And I can't remember how that got... I have a horrible, sneaking, sort of cold, trickling feeling down the back of my neck that that was somehow my idea?
Did I think of that?
I recall this being your idea, that we were going to, like, it was like, oh, well, what do you want to pick?
And we were just kind of vaguely talking.
And you were like, well, it's an election year.
We should just do things about the US presidency.
And so we should just pick movies about the presidency, because you and I have discussed movies like the Oliver Stone, you know, JFK and Nixon are both movies that you and I both quite like for for various reasons.
And we've discussed those in various places.
And I think we like we were talking about doing that.
We were talking about doing that again for for this.
And then It's like, well, let's just do a whole let's just do, you know, for the rest of the year to November or whatever.
I mean, we can just do movies about the US presidency, and that would be a fun little fun little side project.
Also, we both really liked doing.
Uh, primary colors, uh, a couple of years ago.
And so I think we, we kind of had that sort of thing in mind.
Um, I'm not sure how air force one came about.
I'm not sure.
I don't remember suggesting this.
Um, but I, I may, I may be mistaken.
So that's, that's at least how I remember this happening.
Yeah.
I don't remember suggesting air force one either.
It was just one of those things that kind of, it just somehow became a fact that we were doing Air Force One next.
And it was like, oh, OK, when should we do Air Force One?
And I'm like, oh, right.
Yeah, OK, when are we doing Air Force One?
And now we're doing Air Force One.
And that's what we're doing.
So yeah.
On the strength of the movies that we've watched for this series so far, that being Air Force One, I'm feeling that this was a horrible, horrible mistake.
I don't know.
How do you feel about 1997's Air Force One, directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman?
Daniel, what are your thoughts on it?
So I actually saw this theatrically when I was a teenager.
I was 17 years old.
I know I saw it.
I saw this theatrically as well.
Wow.
Yeah.
I have no memory of how, but I did.
I saw this in the cinema.
Yeah, I would have seen this.
I mean, I probably just went with my dad would have wanted to see it on the big screen.
My dad was big, you know, he read all the like Tom Clancy novels and shit, you know, all through my childhood.
And so I think this tickled that bit of fancy, you know, so we didn't go and see a ton of movies, but we did.
I remember distinctly going to see this.
This was released the same weekend as Men in Black, the original Men in Black, which is a movie that is Age much more gracefully than this one has in so many ways.
I know we saw that one opening weekend, so we didn't see this opening weekend.
We would have seen this a couple of, you know, a month later or something.
But yeah, I remember it being pretty effective.
Like at the time, I remember liking it.
I have a weakness for these kinds of, you know, action thrillers of the 90s.
And I liked a lot of them.
You know, again, I was a teenager.
Of course, I was going to get a lot out of this.
And then have not really considered it since.
You know, just never really, never really had a single thought about it.
Rewatched it.
I rewatched it twice for this podcast.
And the first time I rewatched it, I was very...
Like, it's like, wait, this is the movie?
Like, this is crap.
Like, this is just bad.
It's just bad on every level.
And then when I...
Like, I thought, like, oh, this will be...
I don't know you and I have we both listen to at least a bit of the unclear and present danger podcast I think.
Yep.
And that's a podcast very much like about, you know, sort of the films of the post-Cold War era and what they say about the times that they were made in.
Yes.
It's not nearly that description makes it sound really, really interesting.
And I think that the two guys who run it are often interesting separately.
But I don't think that podcast is like it is.
I'll listen to it sometimes.
I listened to an episode today, actually, that did Johnny Mnemonic, which was fun.
But I often find it like just a little bit undercooked for something that like should be much better And this sort of fits into that wheelhouse This is what kind of what I thought we were getting into is this will be a sort of vessel in which to look at sort of mid 90s Paranoia like what was on that?
What was in the zeitgeist of?
the midnight of the political scene in the mid 90s that like this was Such a huge hit that this is this is remembered fondly in certain in certain crowds.
And I think I think I have an angle for that.
I think we can do that.
I will say that rewatching it the second time I was like, I just I want to give this another shake and I did rewatch it late last night before I went to bed.
So I sit up late and watch this movie and I enjoyed it more like knowing that it wasn't going to be as interesting as I was hoping it would be.
Because I was really hoping there was going to be like some meat to this and there's really just no meat to this at all.
And it's just it feels terribly dated.
And I don't know.
I don't know.
I think I'll get into more of that as we as we kind of discuss.
But so what was your experience of this?
Yeah, well, as I say, I did see it at the cinema back in the day.
So I would have been 21.
I suppose.
Yeah, something like that.
20 or 21, depending on exactly when it came out.
It's my birth.
I'm a summer.
I'm a summer baby.
My birthday is in the summer.
So, you know, almost exactly halfway through the year.
This was released in July 25th.
Right, so assuming I saw it quite soon after its release, I was still 20 years old, but only just, all of which is completely irrelevant.
But yeah, so I have no memory of how I came to see it or who I was with.
It would have been one of those, you know, a mate says, let's do something and we walk into the cinema and there it is.
It would have been something like that, I expect.
Yeah, and like you really, I remember watching it and just sort of, okay, that was a film, you know, and never thinking about it again.
Except that it's one of those, like, all these years, I've always kind of had that bit where Harrison Ford kicks Gary Oldman off the back of the plane and he says, get off my plane!
It's always kind of been in my head as like the ultimate moment of Hollywood cheese, you know?
Like, nothing else about the movie I remember at all, except, well, there's a couple of other things that sort of came back to me as I was watching it, which we might get into, because they're about the politics of the piece, which, as you say, is barely even there.
I mean, just to emphasize this point, which political party does our President of the United States He is a member of which political party?
Did you find that out in any way watching this movie?
And I'm afraid that's all you're getting of that, at least for the time being.
If you want to hear the rest of it, you'll have to give myself or Daniel as little as $1 a month on Patreon.
When you do, you'll have access to this episode and all our previous bonus episodes, the entire back catalogue.
