Lived It

Snack: Is Britney the new Elvis?

Episode Summary

Over the weekend, Zack Snyder’s Las Vegas zom-romp ‘Army of the Dead’ released its first 15 minutes for a limited time, and it got us thinking about our favourite Las Vegas icons: Britney residencies, Elvis impersonators, and glitter suits galore...

Episode Notes

Diners, tell us your favourite Las Vegas film at @netflixanz on Instagram and Twitter, or tag #thebigfilmbuffet.

Episode Transcription

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Hello, you're listening to The Big Film Buffet and it is your Tuesday snack edition coming into your feed right now, and inspired by the first 15 minutes of Army of the Dead, the latest film from Zack Snyder that is hitting your Netflix stream later this week. And what we're talking about on the podcast today is something that I know that you, Gen Fricker, are very obsessed with. What are we talking about?

Gen Fricker:

We are talking about the city of Vegas as a character in movies. So whenever we see Vegas on screen, maybe it's in movies like the Ocean series, Casino, the Hangover movies, there's certain tropes, there's certain common things we see. We see the big neon lights, we see the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. Usually it's that green, red, white. You see it on key chains and stuff. Flamingos, palm trees, that's what I associate.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Have you ever been to Vegas?

Gen Fricker:

Never been to Vegas. Never made it down there. Have you?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

No, too scared. Far too scared.

Gen Fricker:

Too scared? I'm worried it'll do something to me. I'm worried if I go to Vegas, I'll be married within 20 minutes.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I mean it is called Sin City after all.

Gen Fricker:

Exactamundo, baby.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And you could get swept up into this world of coolness.

Gen Fricker:

Do you know what it is for me? The way Vegas appears on screen, it looks like an adult Disneyland.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, big time.

Gen Fricker:

I love gimmicks.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes, you do.

Gen Fricker:

I love cheesy things and I think I would get absolutely swept away.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think that's my big fear too. It's that world of excess that I very rarely live in. Yes, I love luxuriousness but Vegas is a next level. Anything you want there is the next level. The food's next level, the gaming is next level, the culture is next level, even the lights are next level there. All of that, I feel could draw me in and I'd become a changed man. I could even get married in Vegas.

Gen Fricker:

Exactly.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Those little midnight weddings, like Britney Spears got married to a guy called Jason Alexander. And I only remember that because I always thought she married George Costanza from Seinfeld?

Gen Fricker:

That'd be so good, but she did not.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It's a different Jason Alexander.

Gen Fricker:

But then also for me, I love what people call Vegas spectaculars, when everyone talks about the Britney Spears residency, the Lady Gaga residency, the Cirque du Soleil. I love those big shows. Everything about Vegas to me is big. As you said, it's excess, lots of bright lights, lots of money.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Bright lights, big city.

Gen Fricker:

Exactamundo. And I love the way that comes across in film. There's so many great films that are set in Vegas where Vegas plays its own part, famously the Hangover.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

The Hangover is what I worry Vegas would be for me. I really worry that I would become a Zach Galifianakis in Vegas. I would have a little baby, I'd gone through some craziness, there'd be a tiger in my fricking bathroom, but I think the Hangover movies are such a good personification of finding the humour with the idea of losing yourself to Vegas, because it's often used so much for dramatic effect, like Leaving Las Vegas, the Nicolas Cage, that's the movie he won the Oscar for, and it's this heartbreaking, huge Nicolas Cage performance as he's losing himself to the [inaudible 00:03:31] of drugs and alcohol that are there. And then I know that you're a big fan of those swinging Rat Pack style Oceans 11 movies.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, the originals and the Soderbergh remakes. I love them because they're so stylish, everyone's wearing suits. It's that contrast between the high glamour but then also you've got your humble punters at the pokies. I feel like that's why casinos in general is so weird to me because there's something dark at the heart of it.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, totally.

Gen Fricker:

I think Vegas is, as a character, a really beautiful woman, very primped, and gorgeous, and stuff, but then you realise they've probably done a hit and run.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, there's a dark part in everyone.

Gen Fricker:

Is that too dark?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think that's right though, because my big time Vegas movie is exactly as you described, it's Martin Scorsese's Casino. Have you ever seen that movie?

Gen Fricker:

Yes.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

That is a big time operatic extravaganza. Really it's his most excessive film and so much of that film is in the production design, capturing Vegas as that Disneyland. I think that's the first time I ever heard it used was in that movie, but you've got Sharon Stone in that film. Her performance playing Robert De Niro's wife who is someone who is Vegas incarnate. I think she is so excitingly terrifying in that movie because she's able to capture all this big energy. You still have these elegant gowns, and these really exciting outfits and costumes, and then all that movie is, oh, she's got a dark past.

Gen Fricker:

Yes, for sure. Another one obviously is the movie of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. To put it as literally as possible, it's Vegas on acid. It's all those lights, and glamour, and money just turning into this monstrous thing, this thing that is trying to kill them and they don't know why.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, and I think that movie captures so well, one thing that is so fascinating about Las Vegas is that it is this city in the middle of the desert. It's just this little oasis hub, this little, shall I say, temptress out in the desert, and it just sits there glowing like this beacon. And it just feels like a fictional world.

Gen Fricker:

It does. It doesn't seem real. It's like when I see New York on screen, I was really surprised when I actually ended up in New York, I was like oh, it really does look like this. Same with Los Angeles. I think there's definitely parts of it that look way more glamorous, but whenever I always watch movies set in LA that were about LA, the freeways, the strip malls, all that stuff, I always like oh yeah, surely it's not just all this, but it kind of is. Whereas Las Vegas, I wonder what I would find.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I feel like, I hate to say it, to podcast schmoes like us, we might not get to experience the Vegas that we see on screen.

Gen Fricker:

What do you mean? We're not big money players?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

We're not big money players. I think we're going to go see Cirque de Solei, we're going to have medium to average seats.

Gen Fricker:

We'll have standing tickets at the back of the room.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

We've got standing tickets to Celine Dion, okay dude. We have to go see a late night comedy show by whoever the next Don Rickles is to die on stage, and we're sitting there while everyone else is gambling, and we're inhaling a fog of smoke slowly dying, like prosciutto being cured, standing around this Las Vegas. We're not going to have the glitz and glamour Vegas.

Gen Fricker:

Prosciutto being cured.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

That's going to be our lungs. Prosciutto cured lungs. I'm probably going to be walking around in that hot heat wearing my little footie shorts and a big tank singlet. I'm not going to be like Robert DeNiro in Casino, wearing an apricot suit with $40,000 sunglasses, and five pinky rings, and gold jewellery.

Gen Fricker:

Are you saying our version of Vegas is basically Kuta in Bali? Are we just drinking bucket margaritas and wearing thong?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think that's who we are when we go to Vegas. We think we're going to be glitz and glamour, but we're fricking spits and stammer because we're nervous talking to people there.

Gen Fricker:

This is poetry, man.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I'm a fricking poet. And guess what? Yeah, I knew about it, okay dude?

Gen Fricker:

I really want to talk to you about one iconic Las Vegas symbol because I know you've got a history with him, Elvis.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh boy, we're talking the King.

Gen Fricker:

There's such a long affiliation of Elvis and Las Vegas. You see it in all the Elvis impersonators who are marrying people, the Las Vegas sign, that really iconic one with the really-

Alexei Toliopoulos:

The Welcome to Las Vegas, Nevada, yeah.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, and it's blue, and red, and white. He's as iconic as that. I feel like that would be you in Vegas.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I would pray so. I love Elvis so much. I love Rat Pack as well, like Frank Sinatra. I had a poster in my room growing up that was Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra hanging out at that sign. That's so weird, a weird little 14-year-old boy, this picture of these old ass men hanging out at a sign.

Gen Fricker:

Which member of the Rat Pack did you most-

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I love Dino.

Gen Fricker:

Really?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I love Dean Martin.

Gen Fricker:

I really would've picked you for a Frank Guy.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think once you get to really know me, Gen, you'll know I'm a Dean Martin guy at heart. He's the funniest.

Gen Fricker:

Really? Is that because that's amore.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

That's because it is in fact amore. It is amore. He's got curly hair. Anyone that I go well, I can almost look like that guy is who I love, but I think as well he captures the humour. He's very funny. Played a drunk, but he was actually never drunk.

Gen Fricker:

Was he?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Dean Martin, he was a teetotaler.

Gen Fricker:

He was the originator of the Roast, right? [crosstalk 00:09:26] comedy roast.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, he loved the roast. He would host those Roasts. He would do comedy with Jerry Lewis. I love that too. But I'm also a big Pres head, dude. I love Elvis, I grew up loving Elvis. Viva Las Vegas, great song. Not a great movie, but it looks cool.

Gen Fricker:

Ann-Margret in that movie, though. Amazing.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, him and Ann-Margret had such cool chemistry. Ann-Margret is so cool in those films. She's got that cool red hair that's beehiving of her head.

Gen Fricker:

And she's always wearing stockings, no pants. So cool.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

One of the coolest actors ever, Ann-Margret, and great voice, great singer, and Elvis is so encapturing everything about Vegas, because he's got those jumpsuits with those encrusted jewels and stuff on them.

Gen Fricker:

Bit sleazy. Bit camp, would we say?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think Elvis is on the camp scale somewhere. Every drag king is inspired by Elvis.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, I feel that. So hyper-masculine that he's camp.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely. It's such a character. When I was a little kid, I so wanted to be Elvis, really. Little Elvis kind of kid, that's what I wanted to be.

Gen Fricker:

Did you sing his songs?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I used to sing his songs, I would sing them to myself, but I also don't know the lyrics to songs so I would just be like (singing) just that by myself.

Gen Fricker:

Which would be haunting to watch as an adult.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

[crosstalk 00:10:56] haunting me. I had to close my eyes to do it then. But I think I had an Elvis crisis. I don't know why. Someone must have said something to me that Elvis wasn't cool, and then we were doing choir for our presentation show in kindergarten, and we're singing the national anthem, and I only knew Elvis' singing. That's what synonymous singing to me was Elvis. I'm singing along to the national anthem with all the other kids, and I'm like (singing).

Gen Fricker:

I love that.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

That's how I'm singing it. And then the teacher's like, "Holy shit, this kid. He's got him, Alexei, you got to come to the front, you got to come to the front, you got to sing. You got to lead the national anthem." And they're like, "You've got a voice of a fricking 75-year-old king." And I got so embarrassed about getting the attention from it that for the rest of it, I just started just lip-synching to everyone else singing, and they're just like, "Yeah, you go back to the back. Go back to the back." And I never sung ever again.

Gen Fricker:

What? So when you hear songs in your head and then you go to sing them in the shower, does the Elvis voice come-

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes.

Gen Fricker:

So that's your singing voice, generally.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

My singing voice is an Elvis impersonation.

Gen Fricker:

Wow.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah.

Gen Fricker:

So any song.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Any song, but I'll tell you-

Gen Fricker:

You make it Elvis.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

... the number one song that I really wish Elvis was alive to have covered, every person I've ever told this, life-changing. Elvis would have crushed a cover of Britney Spears, Toxic.

Gen Fricker:

It's hard to improve on perfection.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

(singing). Like that. (singing).

Gen Fricker:

(singing). Yeah.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, come on, dude. You just killed it.

Gen Fricker:

Okay, yeah. I feel it. I feel it.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And I always say Britney Spears is our generation's Elvis.

Gen Fricker:

You always say that?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I say it every day. I wake up in the morning and go, "Britney, you're our Elvis, and that's why I love you so much." There's actually this awesome Elvis documentary on Netflix right now, it's called The Searcher. It's huge, it's all encompassing, so it's going to cover his Vegas years. I'm living my old life again, watching it.

Gen Fricker:

This Thursday, we are talking zombies, we're talking Vegas, we're talking one of the most hotly anticipated movies of the year.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It's the big one, dude.

Gen Fricker:

Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead. Make sure you join us on Thursday. We're going to deep dive into it. We're going to give you some exclusive insights as well. I'm really excited about this one.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Gen is freaking out. She loves this movie. I love it too, but Gen might be the number one Army of the Dead fan in the world.

Gen Fricker:

I think so. (singing). I sound like Cher.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. (singing).

Gen Fricker:

(singing).