End Credits Show Notes for Wednesday May 16, 2018

It’s not yet time for the End Credits team to ride off into the sunset, but today we get on our horse and ride out for some old-fashioned coming of age drama (with a horse) in Lean of Pete. Before getting there though, we will saddle up and talk about a man and his donkey, and their two decade long journey to the big screen, and then we’ll talk about John, and Bill and Ted, who are all making a comeback to varying degrees.

This Wednesday, May 16, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:

1) Too Big to Fail. Terry Gilliam has been working on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote for 20 years now, so screening the completed film at Cannes later this month had to feel like a moment of tremendous triumph for all involved, right? Not so fast. A former producer on the project tried to undermine Gilliam’s success with a last minute injunction to stop the screening, which is just the latest twist in the drama of Don Quixote, a production so troubled that three documentaries have been made about it. It’s a fascinating tale, and we’ll talk about the latest details.

2) Rambo Vs. Monsters. Last week it was announced that John Rambo was going to return to the big screen in a new adventure next year in which he’ll fight a Mexican drug cartel. Same old, same old for Rambo, but there was once a time when there were much grander ambitions for the war veteran turned killing machine. For instance, how about Rambo fighting an inhuman monster? It almost happened, but while filmmakers swing for the fences, are they betraying the original vision of the character to begin with?

3) Bill & Ted’s Excellent Return? It’s been over 25 years since Bill Preston and Ted Logan piled into a phone booth and went on a time travelling adventure. But since this is an era in which everything old is new again, it seems that the time has come for a middle-aged Bill and Ted to Face the Music, and the reality that they have not accomplished their grand destiny. A lot of people are excited about the prospect, but are we getting too deep into nostalgia porn, and are we capable of digging our way out to something more original?

REVIEW: Lean on Pete (2018). Just another charming movie about a boy and his horse… Is not the tagline for Lean on Pete. Young Charlie is a 15-year-old kid with an absentee mom, a dad in arrested development, no money to speak of, and a lot of free time with nothing to do. So he gets a job at the local track looking after a race horse, and a special bond is formed, but then it all goes wrong. Lean on Pete features complex character work wrapped up in the simple narrative of a boy just trying to find a home, and the horse that gives him the hope to get there.