Total Recall

Summary

Unspooled Podcast Summary

Episode: Total Recall

Hosts: Paul Scheer & Amy Nicholson
Date: April 16, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Unspooled dives deep into the 1990 sci-fi action classic, Total Recall, directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Paul and Amy explore not only the film’s wild production history and cultural impact but also its philosophical questions about identity, reality, and the value of memory. The discussion intertwines robust behind-the-scenes stories, literary origins, Verhoeven’s trademark subversive wit, and the film’s haunting relevance to how we construct our realities today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Total Recall? (00:57 – 07:03)

• The episode was inspired by a recent Unspooled viewing of The Truman Show, leading to a broader discussion of realities constructed by outside forces.
• Amy and Paul explain that Total Recall is not just a fan favorite but also lands on the New York Times list of 1000 essential films, cementing its critical legacy.

2. From Philip K. Dick to Schwarzenegger: Film Origins (07:03 – 11:51)

• Original story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick – about a man who learns his mundane life is a fake memory overlaying a secret agent’s real identity. Key difference: in Dick’s story, he stays on Earth and asks for another memory wipe.
• The rights were bought in 1974 by Ronald Shusett, but the film languished in development hell, passing through writers and directors (Dan O’Bannon, David Cronenberg – who wanted William Hurt to star, then Richard Dreyfuss, then Patrick Swayze).
• After producer Dino De Laurentiis's company failed, Arnold Schwarzenegger finally shepherded the project to the screen, taking creative control, choosing director Paul Verhoeven, and starring as “Quaid” (formerly Quail).

Amy Nicholson [09:33]: “Dino De Laurentiis says, absolutely not. This is a story about a normal guy… That is not you. You are not a normal dude.”

3. Production Intricacies & Visual Identity (11:51 – 18:01)

• Filmed in Mexico, Total Recall became either the first or second most expensive film at the time (estimates: $50–80 million).
• Despite its budget, both hosts comment on the film’s perceived “cheapness”: sets feel like recycled TV studios and interiors, yet still ambitious with 35+ sets and elaborate lighting setups.
• Mars’s signature red coloring involved tightly managed practical effects to avoid skin issues, symbolizing a final stand before digital SFX dominance (soon to be overtaken by the Terminator 2 era).

Paul Scheer [14:07]: “It looks cheap as hell… I was watching the final battle sequence… going, I love how cheap and down and dirty this movie looks.”

4. Verhoeven’s Duality – Is Any of This Real? (19:29 – 26:15)

• The hosts stress that Total Recall can be viewed two ways: as Quaid’s “real” journey or as a literal fantasy playing out in his head after a memory implant procedure.
• Verhoeven’s subversive, satirical take is highlighted, with nods to past Unspooled episodes on RoboCop, Starship Troopers, and Basic Instinct.
• Discussion of the film’s message about breaking free from manufactured realities—mirroring both The Truman Show and contemporary anxieties.

Amy Nicholson quoting Michael Wilmington [20:22]: “Viewed as an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, it’s a step forward… As a Verhoeven movie, it’s a step back from RoboCop.”

5. Identity, Memory, and the Philosophy of Action (29:02 – 36:07)

• The core question: Are we our actions or the sum of our memories? The recall procedure lets people “fake” experiences—what does that mean for authenticity?
• Paul and Amy connect this philosophically to current issues around alternative facts and constructed online identities.

Paul Scheer [31:21]: “You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.”

• Discussion about what counts as infidelity or betrayal if it only happens in a constructed memory or dream.

6. Acting, Casting, and Performance Critiques (37:32 – 41:41)

• Both hosts agree Schwarzenegger does not inhabit the emotional complexity of Quaid/Hauser, but his bluntness serves the narrative’s ambiguities.
• Sharon Stone’s performance as Laurie is universally praised for nuance, shifting from loving wife to lethal agent seamlessly.
• Michael Ironside and Ronny Cox are recognized as complex, “everyman” Verhoeven villains—bad for pragmatic, relatable reasons instead of cartoonish evil.

Amy Nicholson [49:19]: “If Arnold Schwarzenegger had one tenth of Sharon Stone’s acting ability… this movie, as cheap and weird and ugly as it is, would be phenomenal.”

7. The “Is It A Dream?” Debate (58:36 – 62:33)

• Examines the film’s ambiguous ending: is Quaid’s adventure a fantasy leading to permanent psychosis, as warned by Dr. Edgemar? Amy believes so, especially given the overt foreshadowing.

Amy Nicholson [61:00]: “That doctor flat out tells him, if you kill me in this dream… you’re gonna get a lobotomy. I think that’s the best scene in the movie, honestly.”

8. Legacy, Meta-Reality, and Modern Relevance (71:29 – 74:58)

• The hosts connect the film’s themes to Instagram/social media reality curation, neural implants, and AI-generated content.
• They reflect that Verhoeven and Dick predicted a world in which the line between fact and fiction, authentic and artificial, is ever harder to draw.

Amy Nicholson [71:29]: “It’s hard to shake the idea that when we are scrolling Instagram, we are living vicariously through other people’s stories and memories… what is that headspace?”

Paul Scheer [74:58]: “Anyone who thinks it’s a dumb Schwarzenegger movie will be surprised… Not a stain on the Verhoeven canon at all.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Paul Scheer [13:39]: “It looks cheap as hell when you tell me this is one of the most expensive films made at the time.”
• Arnold Schwarzenegger (as Quaid) [26:34]: “Laurie, don’t you understand? I feel like I was meant for something more than this. I want to do something with my life. I want to be somebody.”
• Recall Salesman (movie audio) [29:46]: “When you go Recall, you get nothing but first class memories.”
• Paul Scheer [31:21]: “You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.”
• Amy Nicholson [49:19]: “If Arnold Schwarzenegger had one tenth of Sharon Stone’s acting ability, I think this movie… would be phenomenal.”
• Amy Nicholson retelling the Dan Quayle 'potato' incident [44:08]: “Dan Quayle is creating a new reality in this classroom where he’s convincing this kid that a word is spelled wrong… That’s the screwed up part.”
• Paul Scheer [62:33]: “If it was the end of a dream, would it fade to black? But because it’s white, is that like your brain exploded? Like, is that a mental collapse?”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:57: Origin of the episode, and why they chose Total Recall
• 07:03: History from Philip K. Dick’s story to Verhoeven’s film
• 11:51: Budget overlays and production quirks
• 19:29: Verhoeven’s vision and the “two ways” to watch the film
• 26:34: Core question: “Should I be doing something more with my life?”
• 29:02: The philosophy of memory, reality, and personal identity
• 37:32: Schwarzenegger’s performance and acting limitations
• 49:17: Sharon Stone’s standout performance
• 58:36: Is it all a dream? The film’s ambiguous ending
• 71:29: Relevance to the digital age, Instagram, and reality perception

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Tone & Final Thoughts

Paul and Amy’s discussion is lively, inquisitive, and often playful, blending critical insight with pop-culture references and personal anecdotes. They highlight the incredible prescience of both Philip K. Dick and Paul Verhoeven, as well as the surprising emotional and theoretical weight that lurks beneath Total Recall’s gonzo sci-fi surface.

In Paul’s words:

“Anyone who thinks it’s a dumb Schwarzenegger movie will be surprised… Not a stain on the Verhoeven canon at all. If anything, it’s showing that he can play ball with anyone.”

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Next Week’s Teaser

The Devil Wears Prada is up next—Paul’s never seen it, Amy’s ready to contextualize it as another reality-bending story, this time about the fashion world!

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For more details, clips, and extras, check out the Unspooled Substack and their new YouTube page.

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Summary compiled and structured for film buffs, curious listeners, and newcomers alike. Follow Unspooled for more in-depth dives into the greatest films ever made!

Transcript

[Paul Scheer]

The year is 1990.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Now this is the plan. Get your ass to Mars, then go to the Hilton and flash that Brokebaker ID at the desk. That's all there is to it. I'm counting on you, buddy. Don't let me down.

[Paul Scheer]

The film Total Recall.

[Amy Nicholson]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Unspooled.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must sees, and in case you missed, Ems, we have

[Amy Nicholson]

checked off the AFI top 100 and now we are checking off movies from three major the Letterboxd top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDb top 250 and the New York Times 1000 essential films.

[Paul Scheer]

And you know what? We also will be chasing our own curiosity as well. We've gotten into this wormhole of is this life that we're living real? We talked about the Truman show and that led us into a conversation about this Paul Verhoeven classic. So that's what brings us here today. I am Paul Scheer. I am an actor, writer and director. And I have such a clear memory, Amy, of reading the Total Recall novelization, which I thought was the actual text that Total Recall was based on when I was home with chickenpox. And what's so funny is it is based on a book. But I read the novelization of the movie, not the actual book.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, only one of them has a lady with three breasts. Although Philip K. Dick did have women who just, instead of wearing shirts, painted their breasts and changed them different colors from orange to blue. So at least there was that. You literary child. Hi, I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for the Los Angeles Times. And you know, I think I would take that cruise to Saturn that they keep pitching in here. That honestly sounds gorgeous. I don't see the point of wanting to go to Mars. Saturn, show me some rings Take me on a chill ass cruise Sharon Stone can hang. I'm down.

[Paul Scheer]

By the way, did you see that the crew of the Artemis were quoting Project Hail Mary?

[Amy Nicholson]

No. Really?

[Paul Scheer]

Yep. They said amaze, amaze, amaze the way that Rocky did. When they were in that section of

[Amy Nicholson]

the film, they made time to go to the movies before they went into space.

[Paul Scheer]

They were sent a private copy of it to watch with their family. The entire crew was able to watch it because they were training to go in space.

[Amy Nicholson]

That is the cutest thing on the planet. I'm really glad you didn't say one of them just ripped open their shirt and had fake breasts. Three fake breasts. Or four, as was the original design.

[Paul Scheer]

That's when they get a little further in the mission.

[Amy Nicholson]

That's when they definitely go a little

[Paul Scheer]

too far or not far enough. Look, Amy.

[Amy Nicholson]

Amy Hello. Yeah, let's jump into it.

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[Paul Scheer]

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[Amy Nicholson]

Unspooled.

[Paul Scheer]

I'm excited that you chose this film because I haven't thought about this film in such a long time. Like I told you, I, I, this is a big movie for me as a teen, a young teen. Because it was crazy. It was a hard R, but it also was accessible. I don't know. Like I, I looked on letterboxd and I saw that many people had that same kind of connection to this film as a movie that was very much a part of their childhood.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I mean I never saw it. I remember the commercials cause the commercials were very showy. And we will get into how Arnold Schwarzenegger took a hand in shaping what they looked like. I didn't see these until I was in my 20s. We were having a weird co ed slumber party at my friend's parents house. And really what I was focused on was the look of the movie. And also that my friend's mother was a spatula collector and she had like 30 different types of spatulas. Spatulas for every holiday, shaped like bats and pumpkins. That's a separate thing, but it connects in my head to Total Recall.

[Paul Scheer]

I love that. More like a UHF thing. Cause they had a whole spatula city.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, I love uhf.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, me too. A classic one. I do find it interesting that Total Recall has this like long tail, right? We're still talking about it. And this is a movie that almost didn't happen. They were trying to make total recall since 1974 and it took until 1990 to actually make it a reality.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, 1974. That is the year that a guy named Ronald Shusett spends a thousand bucks buying the rights to this Philip K. Dick story. We can remember it for you wholesale. It's a short story. It's about an Earth guy named Quaid. He's got this boring office job, a pretty cold wife. He decides to treat himself to a little memory implantation. As a treat, there's a company called Recall. They will brainwash him into thinking that once upon a time in the past he took a super awesome trip to Mars. But when the guy goes under, it turns out he actually has been to Mars. He wiped that from his memory. His boring life is the fake memory. Which, you know, cool story, bro. Or kind of part of a cool story. Because in Philip K. Dick's version, the guy stays on Earth. He's like, oh my God. And he just asks if he can get his memory wiped again.

[Paul Scheer]

Ooh, that's really dark. Well, Ronald and the screenwriter, Dan O' Brien are like, well, let's add to it and let's make him go to Mars, too. And with all the special effects, that version starts to get very expensive and they can't get the movie made. So what do they do? They write 1979's Alien instead. And that becomes, of course, a monster hit, a cultural phenomenon, and fully launches the career of Ridley Scott, who then goes on to make his Philip K. Deck movie, which is 1982's Blade Runner, which we also did here on the show. Just to put that in perspective, in 1982, the name Philip K. Dick really didn't mean much in Hollywood. No one had ever turned any of his stories into films. But with the success of Blade Runner, now he becomes this hot commodity. But unfortunately, also in 1982, Philip K. Dick dies, broke. And really with no idea that he'll ever be one of the biggest influences in science fiction, in film and literature.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. In fact, we should get to mentioning that Philip K. Dick even inspired last week's movie, Truman show, in part. But for now, back to Total Recall. This script still kicking around. Dino De Laurentiis, he's the producer of Conan the Barbarian. He owns the rights. His Conan star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is very desperate to play the lead.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

For years. You're absolutely right. I mean, for years it has been on my mind. I've read the script the first time in 1984. I could not put the script down. I read it again a second time, and I felt that when I read it the second time, it was even better than the first time. And I just said to myself that I got to get this movie made.

[Amy Nicholson]

And Dino De Laurentiis says, absolutely not. This is a story about a normal guy who thinks he's normal, who thinks he's boring. Super average. That is not you. You are not a normal dude.

[Paul Scheer]

But what if we put him in a plaid shirt? Amy? No one thought about that. No one thought about the plaid shirt. So as they move off Schwarzenegger, David Cronenberg gets attached. Now he wants William Hurt to star. Cronenberg writes a dozen drafts, the first scripts he actually ever wrote on a computer. And he adds all these mutants to it.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, it's Cronenberg. He gotta add some mutants. But the producers are like, this is way too dark. This is way too Philip K. Dick, whoever that guy is. We do not wanna do something like Blade Runner. That was actually a flop. We want to do Raiders of the Lost Ark, Go to Mars. So also, you're going to do this with Richard Dreyfuss.

[Paul Scheer]

What?

[Amy Nicholson]

And also, you should know, don't be too arcy about this. David Lynch's Dune that just came out, that was a huge flop. I don't even think we should waste the money going to Mars.

[Paul Scheer]

Cronenberg quits, the project falls apart. De Laurentiis tries to make it again with Patrick Swayze. By the way, not mad at that. They even start building the sets. And then that company goes bankrupt. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is stoked. And as he wrote in his autobiography, he was pissed off that Dino De Laurentiis told him no. And now it's the late 80s and Arnold is a bigger star. Not Terminator, too huge, but close. And within a day, Arnold convinces the company Caraco to buy the rights. He takes control of all the major pieces. Pick, picking a director. He goes with RoboCop's Paul Verhoeven. And finally, 16 years later, total Recall is getting made with Arnold playing Quayle. Yes, his name originally was Quayle. It turns into Quaid. But it tells the story of a man who doesn't know that he's been to Mars. Sharon Stone is his wife. Rachel Tickington is the rebellious Mars girl of his dreams, literally. Michael Ironside plays the muscle, the heavy, and the the great Ronny Cox as Cohaagen, the corporate boss man of Mars who wants to suppress the rebellion and control the fresh air supply.

[Amy Nicholson]

And yes, it is very expensive. They shoot Total Recall in Mexico to save some money. But thanks in part to its groundbreaking visual effects and also the deal that Arnold made in his contract, now that he has control, it is possibly the second most expensive movie ever made at the time. Some people say first, some people say second. Nobody can even agree on what it costs. Like, the numbers range from 50 million to 80 million. But no matter. Total Recall was the biggest hit of Arnold's career to date. It earned approximately $261 million worldwide. It became the fifth highest grossing film of the year. And actually, you know that memoir that I mentioned that he was like, pissed off at De Laurentison. He used the word pissed off. You know what he called it?

[Paul Scheer]

What?

[Amy Nicholson]

Total Recall.

[Paul Scheer]

Nailed it. Nailed it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Nailed it. Total Recall also earns two Academy Award nominations. Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing. It loses those. It does get a Special Achievement Oscar for Visual effects. Weird story about that. Visual effects is usually a normal Oscar category with five nominations, one person wins. But that year, no other special effects heavy movie. But Total Recall got the minimum support needed from that branch of the Academy for a nomination in the first Place. Which is kind of weird because it was up against Back to the Future 3, Dick Tracy, Ghost. None of them qualified. So they're like, eh, the best one is Total Recall. We'll just give it the award.

[Paul Scheer]

Wow. Now, the most interesting thing is we did chase our own curiosity to find Total Recall, but it is also on the New York Times 1000 Essential Film List. So, Amy, our curiosity paid off this week. We got a double click here because we were able to do something for the show and something for us.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, thank you, New York Times. I was going to bet $5,000 it wasn't in there and it was.

[Paul Scheer]

All right, here's the thing. I just want to address this before we get into any of the actual movie. It looks cheap as hell when you tell me this is one of the most expensive films made at the time. I was watching the final battle sequence, like where they're just in a room with pillars and going like, oh, I love how cheap and down and dirty this movie looks. Like they must have just shot this for a song.

[Amy Nicholson]

Thank you. I feel the same way. I feel the same way. I'm like, wait, you're telling me that you built over 35 sets in a whole labyrinth that big that you could drive cars from one part of Mars to another part of Mars? But when I watch this movie, I just see you going from one piece, one set to another set. Oh, no. We got in the car again and whoops, we wound up in the exact same area of just like Venusville, prostitute central. Like what? I mean, I think they're going for some sort of banality of the future, which I respect intellectually, but the banality of the future here with like the Jack in the Boxes and the Pepsi ads, it just kind of looks to me, cluttered.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, you know, I agree. And when you say the banality, I'm very curious because this is a movie that also just maxed out production resources. They apparently used every available light source in Mexico City and nearby areas to be able to properly light this film. And this is a movie that is mostly indoors and it has very much like a fluorescent lighting tone to it. I mean, not in the Martian city, but everything kind of leading up to it is very kind of bland.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, if it's doing a Philip K. Dickian thing, it's not following the Blade Runner model of having, like, interesting clothing kind of angles, dark, weird, stormy future. And granted, they went through a lot of ideas of how the future could even look. They're studying this in, I think roughly like the 2880s, so about 100 years ahead of time. At first I thought that they would even make this a version of Los Angeles on Earth, which is, of course, where the film starts. That looked kind of dreamlike and perfect. It was calm. They used solar energy. There were gardens everywhere, people were biking. It would kind of be the, I would say, like the Truman show version of, hey, why don't you just live here and forget that you ever were a cool guy on Mars? But then they tried a weird version of LA that was going to be LA after an earthquake, where all the buildings were giant skyscrapers, but they hung upside down on shock absorbers. So, like, no matter what happened to rattle the earth, they would sway, but they wouldn't fall. That would be amazing. Cannot imagine how expensive this is. This is just like a kind of bland apartment on top of a subway, which in a way feels sort of realistic.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, yeah, they're always inside, except for when he's, like, working his construction

[Amy Nicholson]

gig, which was an office job. But he's like, I gotta show my guns.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, by the way, it makes more sense when you put him in the appropriate job. We don't ask that many questions, you know. I mean, I think it helps, like when he's a sheriff in a small town and is like, I've been here my whole life. No, you haven't.

[Amy Nicholson]

No, you haven't.

[Paul Scheer]

We know that to be true. So this movie does work on that one level. I do wanna call out, though, that where the movie does take some artistic turns. And this is Verhoeven, and this is just simply, visually is that Martian red look. That was something that they really, like, manipulated very precisely because they wanted Mars to look very different, but they also had to make sure that it wouldn't mess with skin tones. So that red that's coming in is really done by an amazing DP and gaffers creating this look that allowed them not to have to fix every face in post.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I feel like in this little window from 90 to 92, we're almost trying to get to absolute zero. The point when Hollywood changed from practical effects to digital effects. Right. We're just here like, Arnie's gonna go from this to Terminator 2. And then we're like, over the line.

[Paul Scheer]

You're right.

[Amy Nicholson]

Which is expensive because it is so practical based.

[Paul Scheer]

And you're seeing these interesting moments that kind of connect the two. Obviously, there are great puppets in this. The. The way that, you know, Watto pops out of the stomach, the way that the Mantis Cab driver appears. I love all that. But then you get to see this other stuff that kind of feels in between really. Right. Like when Arnold takes the elevator up to, you know, put his hand in the velociraptor imprint. In that moment, they, they really like linger on. This shot where you can tell it's like a cutout on a matte painting of an elevator raising. It's like, oh, right. That's this moment where we didn't quite figure out how everything fully worked together. Cause it really does stick out even worse than a film like Star Wars. Like, you can see it's a matte painting.

[Amy Nicholson]

God, it reminded me of that story I told you about how the one time I was in Kazakhstan, they have that gigantic building that's just. It looks like a golf tee, but it's spiky. And if you go all the way up to the top of the elevator, really the only thing there is a pedestal with the handprint that was the former president slash dictator adjacent of Kazakhstan. You know, the guy who just won all the elections with 90% of the vote. Sure. And it's just his handprint up there. And I was like, uh huh, yeah. Everybody thinks that things that are actually symbols of strange futures are cool. Let's just adopt it. Why not?

[Paul Scheer]

Now, we've talked about Verhoeven on this show twice before on Starship Troopers and, and robocop.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, three times. Don't forget Basic Instinct.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh my gosh, you're right. So we've really, we've gone deep in Verhoeven and I love this film because it's a popcorn film, 100%. I think you could put this with Commando or anything else that Schwarzenegger has done up until this point, and it will pay off what those fans want. But where I think this movie is incredibly subversive is is with the messaging of what this movie is talking about. But more importantly, that this movie can be viewed in two different ways. Like we could view this as, this is the trip that Quaid took that he paid for at the beginning of the film, or this is real and that was delivered.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, wait. Or you could view it as two other layers on top of that. Because my favorite review of Total Recall came from Michael Wilmington, who's at the LA Times. He said of Total Recall viewed as an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, it's a step forward. His best vehicle since the Terminator. Viewed as a Verhoeven movie, it's a step back from Robocop.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, that's interesting. I understand that on some level, because I do think this movie is. It's not wearing a message on its sleeve. Right. But I think it is, at its core, talking about a more interesting issue than I think most people are catching on to, which is like, what we talked about last week in the Truman show, this idea of this anxiety of, am I making the right choices? Am I in this world the right way? Or am I a pawn? Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Or what do I do with the fact that I feel like I wake up every day my partner doesn't get me? Is my boring life mine? Am I important? Am I a good person? I mean, that's really. I think, also here at Total Rico, he wants to believe he is a good person, even though, like, no, you used to be a bad guy. He's like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Which is a holdover from the original story.

[Paul Scheer]

Maybe, in a way, what we can say about Verhoeven is this is his transition to hiding the medicine better. So much so that when we get to Starship Troopers, people don't even realize that there's medicine there, and they start to attack it because they don't get it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. One of my friends, actually, we were getting martinis the other day, and he was like, man, when I was listening to your episode on Team America, I wanted you to say, basically, they did with actual puppets what Verhoeven did with human puppets and Starship Troopers. Just say that outright. And I was like, oh, you are completely correct.

[Paul Scheer]

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[Amy Nicholson]

Unschooled.

[Paul Scheer]

I do think that the reason why this movie has staying power and same reason why the Truman show has staying power or you know, even shows like Severance capture our imaginations is because there's an element that we all share of what if I broke out of my reality? Like we put ourselves in our own cages and I don't think that that means that we're unhappy, but we follow the rules of society and these movies say but what if you break them? Like is that good for you? Because we're told no, no, don't break the rules, don't break the rules. And I think that this is a fantasy on so many levels. You don't have to be a hero on Mars, but are we putting ourselves in our own prison?

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, yeah, I think it's asking, are you living a full life? Which I think is just a fundamental question that we all think about. You know, there's a conversation early on in this movie between him and his wife, Sharon Stone, where she's trying to empathize with him and trying also to keep his life small.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Laurie, don't you understand? I feel like I was meant for something more than this. I want to do something with my life. I want to be somebody.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

You are somebody. You're the man I love.

[Amy Nicholson]

And then as you're hearing, it gets into that question of every time we say to ourselves, wait, should I be doing something more with our life? There is discouragement around us, even loving discouragement. I mean, it was this wife character that made me want to do Total Recall after two min. Jokes. I was just thinking, oh, man, these blondes, these manipulative blondes, like, keeping lives tidy. But then I actually, you know, I had known that part of like the very basic maybe sort of inspiration of Truman Show a little bit maybe in the back of the head, was that Philip K. Dick had written this novel in 1959 called Time out of Joint. And the story in that is it's a character kind of like the bad Schwarzenegger here. You know, the bad, bad one. The one who's like, I am manipulating this to serve the state, where he was doing bad things for the government and he realized that the colonists, that the underdogs, the rebels were the heroes and he was the bad guy. He couldn't handle the guilt of it. So in this Philip K. Dick version from 1959, he decided to mentally regress to childhood innocence. And the government, to keep him working for them, built this entire town that looked like the 1950s and hired all of these people to play along in costume to keep this guy pretending that he's an innocent kid just sort of living his life doing these occasional, like, lottery kind of games. And it made him think that he was still helping the government.

[Paul Scheer]

Isn't this also at the premise of the John Travolta film the Experts?

[Amy Nicholson]

I've never seen that is it.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, the Experts is one of my favorite. Like, I don't know if it ever came out in the theater, but it came out in 1989 and it, I believe it is like Ari Gross, Kelly Preston and John Travolta. And the idea is like, like, the KGB takes like two New Yorkers to. To like, Russia, to put them in this, like, town to, like, help Russians be better at acting like Americans. I have to rewatch it. But it, but what you just described is it kind of moved to like a 1950s town and then bring, like, rock and roll there and then they, you know, they bring down Russia. I think they bring down Russia.

[Amy Nicholson]

But Philip K. Dick is like, what if you don't break down anything because you actually decide that you like keeping your brain simple?

[Paul Scheer]

Okay.

[Amy Nicholson]

Because that's what's happening here, too. Like, this whole idea, the fundamental premise of Total Recall is that Earth people want to take vacations, but also don't want to take vacations because they have been convinced that going on vacation is a hassle. You have to deal with taxicab drivers, which at first you're like, really? Do you taxicab, Dr. But like, that's a big problem, apparently. It actually really is from what we see in this movie. But, like, what if you just don't bother doing anything and you just pretend that you went on vacation? You buy these packages at Total Recall. You can stay at home, but still tell yourself that you did adventurous things with your life.

[Paul Scheer]

Cost you a little more because it's a deeper implant.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

What's in the two week package?

[Recall Salesman (character voice)]

Well, first of all, Doug, let me tell you. When you go Recall, you get nothing but first class memories.

[Paul Scheer]

Private cabin on the shuttle, deluxe suite at the Hilton, plus all the major

[Recall Salesman (character voice)]

sites, Mount Pyramid, the Grand Canals, and of course, Venusville.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

But how real does it seem?

[Paul Scheer]

As real as any memory in your head.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Come on, don't bullshit me.

[Paul Scheer]

No, I'm telling you, Doug, your brain will not know the difference. And that's guaranteed or your money back.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

What about the guy you lobotomized? Did he get a refund?

[Paul Scheer]

And I think this is, to me, the very interesting part of this film. I could go off for a long time, and I think you would join me in deconstructing the film, the drama with Robert Pattinson and Zendaya. But I do think that there's something interesting here, which is that kind of got me about that movie that's also here, which is, who are we? Right? Because if Hauser's memories are overwritten with Quaid and then Quaid chooses to side with the rebels, then is Quaid just good then? Right? Like, I mean, this idea that, like, your identity is, you know, really in current action. Right? Like, and, you know, it's like you

[Amy Nicholson]

can change the Smart Rebel. Yeah, the Smart Rebel even has a whole line about that right here.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

What do you want Mr. Quaid? The same as you. To remember.

[Paul Scheer]

But why?

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

To be myself again.

[Paul Scheer]

You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.

[Amy Nicholson]

And I love that you're bringing that up, because this is a place that's saying, don't take any action. Just come here and pretend you took action. Come here and pretend you went somewhere. I mean, and I love the way that Philip K. Dick even writes about this in the original story. Like, the language of it is great. The salesman is like, so you want to have gone to Mars.

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

You know, I love the passive of that. And it finds out in the book that it costs just as much as going, but that they say fake going is better than real going because real memories fade and fake ones live forever.

[Paul Scheer]

And I guess the question is, as you recall a memory, do you alter the past? And I think that that's probably more for. Well, I guess it's in the book, the idea that, like, well, now you are who they say you are when you go on this recall trip. Right? Cause they're not fully uploading you. You're telling them, oh, I like this type of vacation. I like this type of woman. Like, you are creating this thing.

[Amy Nicholson]

So in his world, I'm gonna upload you. But they're like, why bother? Why would you want to leave and take yourself with you?

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I guess the question is, in the version that we see in this movie, you know, Schwarzenegger picks a woman that he wants to be with. Now, he is married, so in his memory, he'll be having an affair on his trip to Mars. So is he a cheater?

[Amy Nicholson]

That's a crime, right?

[Paul Scheer]

Exactly. And this is why I'm keeping drama over here. Cause I cannot go down that wormhole. But that is something really interesting. But is he a cheater because he cheated in his dream? Is he a cheater because he. He did this thing that's not real? Like, who is he? Is he a cheater? Because his memory is. It's a very thorny idea.

[Amy Nicholson]

Is he a cheater in his heart? Wasn't there a famous line about that? Was that, like, Princess Diana or something?

[Paul Scheer]

I believe. Didn't. I thought. I was gonna say. I thought Bill Clinton had something about that.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, maybe it was Bill Clinton. Somebody was like, I have not done anything, but perhaps I have strayed in my heart.

[Paul Scheer]

Now that is a good Schwarzenegger. No, but there is something about that. Like, our memories recreate the past. And we've talked about this a lot.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I mean, I Don't know if my boyfriend wanted to go on a fake vacation with you instead of me. Like, let me go on a fake vacation.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, of course, you know, I would love it. But, you know, I get that you'd be angry about it, but I think we also are putting on the side that one of the core things about human beings is the ability to dream, to visualize. And whether that's positive or negative, it doesn't. If we're not acting on it, I think it's okay to have any sort of fantasy. Right. Because we are finding this connection to something. It's the way I keep on going back to this, and I've mentioned a million times on the show, and I'm going to mention it again, but Roger Ebert calling films empathy machines. Like, movies are a chance for us to experience something that we probably wouldn't experience in our life, whether that's being chased by a bad guy with a gun, you know, having an affair with this person that you meet on a train, whatever. It is like you are living vicariously through characters.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, they're waking dreams in a way. Like, I will live this life of being Arnold Schwarzenegger. I will live these ridiculous, endless shootouts of this movie.

[Paul Scheer]

So essentially, the reality that we construct for ourselves, based in the way that we interpret our past or facts, really is true, I think. Not to pull it all the way to this point, but I think it's a natural progression to say alternative facts. Right. That idea of, oh, well, I saw it this way, and for me, that's true. And. And where everybody had such an issue with that and still do is, well, that's not what really happened. But this movie is saying, well, whatever reality you create is true to you. And I think where we get a lot of pushback on alternative facts is then it's a person telling you that their reality is true for you. Where everybody's like, no, no, my reality is true for myself. And that's the. That's the part that you can't quite wrestle with because we're having two people just argue with what is real, but you only would know what's real by being in their brain.

[Amy Nicholson]

Right, right, right. Or even, as Truman says at the end of it, you were never inside my head. Which I think is really a fundamental concern of Philip K. Dick. I mean, this is a guy who did struggle with episodes. He had a lot of hallucinations. He imagined at some point that he was, I believe, like a very early Christian living in the first century A.D. like a person who was being persecuted. And so he had kind of imaginations of carrying another life with him of second consciousness. And I think that that weighed really heavy on him. And he expressed it in all of these different forms. I mean, you even see in something like Blade Runner, you know, the fundamental question of that movie is if you are a Replicant, but you feel you are alive, if you feel real to yourself in the form that you know, then, yeah, you are justified in saying, do not erase me, even when the world wants to. And in Blade Runner, I feel like part of the flaw of that movie is, you know, Rachel, the main Replicant, is just so robotic and stiff that I don't care if she's human or not. And I find it insane. And everybody doubts that she's like, she could be a Replicant in the first place. Like, obviously, she's so stiff. And I think I wrestle a little bit with that problem here because I think there's so many interesting ideas in Total Recall. And yet Arnold is unable to act any of the layers of them. I mean, really.

[Paul Scheer]

Right. I think he's walking through them.

[Amy Nicholson]

Right.

[Paul Scheer]

It's like walking through a museum that has a lot of great exhibitions and you have to kind of cull some of them down.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Cause when you have a scene that's like Quaid, who thinks he's good, talking to a video screen of a past recorded evil version of himself, you want to see some. Some sort of layers there, some sort of difference, maybe, maybe. But instead you're just kind of like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's what I think.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Wait. If you're listening to this, that means that Quarto is dead and you have led us to him. I knew you wouldn't let me down. Sorry for that. Should have put you through. But hey, what are friends for? I would like to wish you happiness and long life, old buddy. But unfortunately, this is not gonna happen. You see, it's my body I've got there and I want it back. Sorry to be an Indian giver, but I was here first.

[Amy Nicholson]

And on that level, I'm like, yeah, Patrick Swayze. I want to see Patrick Swayze.

[Paul Scheer]

I do. But I also think that there's something about like, his bluntness. Kind of like. It's interesting cause he's not doing that much differently between the two. I don't know if you watched the Colin Farrell version of this Total Recall.

[Amy Nicholson]

I did, and I really just blacked it out. Because every time Colin Farrell does something that doesn't play to his strengths, I get upset.

[Paul Scheer]

I Know, and. But to a certain degree, you could argue that Colin Farrell doing this part would be similar to Patrick Swayze. Right. Having the acting chops to kind of get both sides of it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. I can't remember if he even does that, though, because I feel like when. I don't know if this is true, but I have this impression of Colin Farrell that when he's mad that he's in a movie that is beneath him, he just kind of glowers. I don't know if that's fair, but I don't think he's as good in that Philip K. Dick as he is in Minority Report, which also, weird tie of these two things together. Minority Report, in a way, was kind of positioned as a sequel to Total Recall because you can see the through line of. Here we have these mutant precogs. They can see the future. They're all over Total Recall, and they kind of spill into the idea of, we've rebooted. And now here are some of these people. They've tried to. It's so confusing what they try to do with the Quail character. Quail, Quaid, whatever you want to call him. But, yeah, like, that was. That kind of grew out of their attempts to try to make a failed total recall 2.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I think also we can look at Memento as a good guiding post for somebody wrestling with who they are based on their memories. Right. And how they're lying to themselves. Another movie that we did an episode on just a little while ago, and I think in that film, Guy Pearce is amazing. Like, he's playing all these different layers, but there's something about Schwarzenegger. And I think the way that I'm viewing it in this conversation is, oh, Schwarzenegger is Michael Ironside. He is the brute. He is the dumb guy. He's not Cohaagen. He just came up with an interesting idea on how to bring it down. Right. And in that way, it's way more interesting to me to see a brute plan actually gets subverted by his own ability to care. Right. He's an asshole. He is like, let's smoke a cigar. We did it. We tricked you. I like that version of it because I think when we see him in his plaid shirt, he is like, oh, I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy. But I think there's not much there, right? He's not a guy who's wrestling with this kind of inner turmoil when he is who he originally is.

[Amy Nicholson]

He's not a guy who's questioning what he's doing at all.

[Paul Scheer]

Exactly.

[Amy Nicholson]

But he is a guy who just suspects that everybody, deep down wants to imagine that they're good. Like, it's horrifying, I would think, to be able to face the fact that you are a bad person and were as recently as six weeks ago.

[Paul Scheer]

Right. But the way that we are exposed to the world makes us who we are. And some people work really hard to change the who they've become. Some people work really hard to forget that they ever were a thing. And I think that we can see that, like, shedding of a past so in so many ways and kind of even glorifying a past that doesn't exist. I mean, I'm thinking about what was that author that Oprah put up who wrote the story about being in like a rehab clinic?

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, is that James Frey?

[Paul Scheer]

James Frey, right. Like, you know, he told this story like it was a heightened version of his story. Right. Which was completely false. But also at the same time, you know, I don't know. I'm not defending it, but I just feel like, oh, yeah, it may not check out. It may.

[Amy Nicholson]

I just got a crazy idea. Yeah, okay. I'm so sorry, but on your thought that you're describing right now of reality being constructed by who you're around and what you're in the room.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

I went on the tiniest little detail, like, little detour of the name change between quail and Quaid. Cause it bugged me. And I was like, okay, sure. I bet that this was just Arnold Schwarzenegger being like, I can't be named after a bird that's famous for being scared. I have to be Quaid. I gotta be hard. Right. And then it occurred to me a little later, oh, right. But this is also coming out when the vice president was Dan Quayle. And so you don't wanna have a quail. It's gonna sound too pointed. Blah, blah, blah. And then I remembered the one thing that I know Dan Quayle for. Like, two things. There are two things I remember us having a vice president name Dan Quayle for. It's not fair just how it is. My memories get shaped by Saturday Night Live. But the A, he was like some good looking guy that they thought would appeal to women because men never know what women think is attractive. It's so weird. And two, that he is the vice president who's famous because he couldn't spell the word potato. And I was like, what was that? Like, what on earth happened? How'd that even come up? So yesterday, as I was researching this episode, I went looking for the video of him actually misspelling potato to see what happened. Have you ever watched this video?

[Paul Scheer]

No, but, you know, I'm ready to be. Mind exploded.

[Amy Nicholson]

Tell me.

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Okay.

[Amy Nicholson]

I'm so excited. Okay, so what happens is Dan Quill is in a classroom, right? There's a bunch of kids. They look. I can't guess. Kids. Ages, I don't know.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

10?

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Sure.

[Paul Scheer]

I can't even do it either.

[Amy Nicholson]

I don't know. They look 10. It's a school where they're all in uniforms. I think it's on the East Coast. He's standing by the chalkboard. There's a bunch of men in suits, probably bodyguards, maybe a couple teachers, and a bunch of kids sitting down. Their kids are doing the spelling test. They walk up to the chalkboard, they write a word down, and then they sit down. So a little boy walks up to the chalkboard. He has to spell potato. He writes potato in cursive. Totally nails it. Gets it right and doesn't really even pause. He's like, nailed it. Erases potato, sits down. And then Dan Quill's like, wait, no, no, no, no, no. And he makes him come back up there and makes him write potato again. The kid's very confused. He writes potato again. And then Dan Quail is like, it needs a little thing at the end. And he bullies the kid into adding a cursive E at the end of potato. And now what's really effed up about that is that Dan Quayle is creating a new reality in this classroom where he's convincing this kid that a word is spelled wrong, right? That he's done it wrong, that potato is spelled differently. But what's weird about that is that there are all these men around, like these grownups in suits who probably should know how to spell potato. And yet, because it's Dan Quayle, they're agreeing with Dan Quayle that you don't spell potato with just an O, that you have to add an E. And that's the screwed up part. The kid adds an E, and all these men applaud. And you're like, wait, what? Like just this presence of a vice president convinces the entire room that they're wrong. That's like a reality that really freaked me out when I watched that.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I don't know if you watched Rehearsal, Season two, the Nathan Fielder HBO show.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, hell yeah. But the whole premise, I love that

[Paul Scheer]

weirdo's brain, but the whole premise of that show was that co pilots don't speak up. When the pilot is making a mistake. And that's why a lot of crashes happen. Like this idea of deferring to power.

[Amy Nicholson]

Exactly.

[Paul Scheer]

And I do think that this movie is about, you know, this about power, too. You know, like, yeah, the guy is

[Amy Nicholson]

like, if you don't do what I say, I will control the oxygen. I will raise the price of oxygen on Mars. Which is exactly why nobody should go to Mars. When Elon wants us to go to Mars to do whatever he wants us to do for him. Like, are you kidding me? Like, this is exactly what happened. This is what happened every single time a bunch of colonists go to support a rich dude. It happened when we came to America. It happens anywhere. You belong to me. You will do what I want, or else. Terrifying. Do not go to Mars under his watch. That's insane.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I mean, it's so interesting, too, because, you know, Mars in this movie is a corporation and. Right. And they're controlling how you see it. Right? Cause we see it as this vacation destination. You know, we see it in the propaganda, like that clip you played. But then when you see the real version of it, it's this seedy area where people are literally marked and become mutants because they've been kind of bought into this society. And I think as our culture continues to evolve and there's more access to documents or even literally being able to talk to different people in different spaces, we can see, like, oh, what's on the surface doesn't always match up. You know, when you see or hear about the plight of an Amazon worker, you know, that used to be saved for, like, a. Not 60 Minutes, but, like, you know, like a Nightline special where it's like, I worked inside of a meat plant and I had these hidden cameras on, and this is what goes on. You know, we're always trying to feel like, oh, what's being sold to us versus what the reality is. And it's hard. And then you have to make. You have to make your peace with that and decide, like, well, how do I want to be? You know? And that, to me, is a really interesting level this movie has, too, is like, yep, the power in this movie controls everything around you. And they want to. And to keep these people down, they'll do anything. You know, when it would actually just benefit the entire planet to have fresh air.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, exactly. And you see that stack up on all of the different areas in this movie. I mean, I really enjoyed the opening scene when he's, like, hanging out in bed with his lovely wife, Sharon Stone, playing Laurie. And you just see her kind of subtly change the channel from the news over to, like, a beautiful screensaver. She is so good in this movie.

[Paul Scheer]

Sharon Stone, she's fantastic.

[Amy Nicholson]

Phenomenal. The way that she's able to switch from like, I want to kill you and kick you in the nuts to I am your wife, to I want to kill you and kick you in the nuts, like, here.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

Doug, honey, you wouldn't hurt me, would you? Sweetheart, sweetheart, be reasonable. After all, we're married.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Consider that a divorce.

[Amy Nicholson]

If Arnold Schwarzenegger had one tenth of Sharon Stone's acting ability, I think this movie, as cheap and weird and ugly as it is, would be phenomenal. And I say cheap in the visual sense of cheap, not in the literal sense of cheap. Like, she's amazing. It is no wonder to me that Paul Verhoeven finished this movie and was like, I want her to star in my next thing. Basic Instinct. Let's go.

[Paul Scheer]

I agree with you 100%. I love the way that she plays this role. I think it's a really nuanced performance. And it's so interesting that this one role, which I think in many other directors hands, could be a very black and white performance that, like, just a temptress and then a bitch, Right. Is so much more nuanced. And I think he likes interrogating something like that. The fact that she's with Michael Ironside and, like, Michael Ironside has to, like, give up his girlfriend to complete. Like, there's so much going on, and I don't think another director would want to even touch all those elements. Like, why bother? Let's get to the action.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, especially that, for sure. And I love that she cannot just go from, like, sweet to cold. When she turns it back on, you're like, oh, I wanna believe her again. Like, she kind of keeps convincing you. And I found an interview with her right when this movie was coming out, and she is very excited. It's one of the first times she's played, like, a role people will pay attention to. And she seems thrilled to be able to actually show off what she's been doing. She's been hustling around LA for a long time at this point, like a decade.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

I don't have to try to be petite. I could be big, which is fun. And so I went in kind of big, kind of. I could feel like I could be bold, where a lot of times I felt like I had to hold myself down because I didn't want to overwhelm the actor or the people in the room because I have kind of a. I don't know, I'm sort of a full tilt boogie kind of person, you know.

[Amy Nicholson]

And also, by the way, I wonder if part of why Paul Valver really puts some muscle into making this performance great or allowing it to be great is that he has this tick as a director when he's on set of wanting to play every part. Like, everyone who worked on this movie has stories about, like, oh, he was running around showing people how to shoot, going bang, bang, bang. Even Sharon is like, when I have my scenes with Arnie in bed, Paul gets in the bed and he's like, here's how this should go.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

And we worked in the suite. Well, there's a love scene in the movie, a love scene that I have with Arnold. So when we worked on the love scene, we worked on the love scene on the bed. And it was funny because, you know, Paul loves to do the part. He wants to be every part. So Arnold's lying on the bed and he jumps on top of Arnold and he goes. And then, you know, I want you to kiss. I'm like, you know, and I'm watching them over there. It was really funny.

[Paul Scheer]

And that actually even began in the audition process, which I'll tell you about in one second because I also want to highlight Michael Ironside. And we mentioned Ronny Cox as like, the big bad. But these two men, Michael Ironside and Ronny Cox, are not the typical brutes that Schwarzenegger was up against up into this part in his career. Right. These are, I mean, I guess you could say Richard Dawson, but to me, I think they're more thinking more emotionally volatile characters. And apparently for Michael Ironside's audition, now, Michael Ironside was in Robocop, um, like Verhoeven got the camera in his face. He said he literally got on top of him with a camera and pushed him into a place of visible emotional breakdown rather than tough guy, badass. And I love that idea that he saw Michael Ironside's character as this emotionally upset, volatile, like, guy. He's almost too invested. Because I think, if I'm reading it correctly, like, Hauser or Schwarzenegger is his boss and then, you know, and then he's working under Ronny Cox, but then, like, he had to give his girlfriend up to his boss. There's so much going on there. And I think that when you talk about Schwarzenegger's acting being a little bit bland, Ironside's acting is great because you get these, like, little moments of him Just like, flinching and losing control and obsessing over things. And it's not like. It's not hero versus villain. It's not like, I must kill him. It's like, I want. I'm fucking mad. And that's why that moment at the end where he's like, will he remember this? And they're like, no. And he punches him in the face. I'm like, yes. Like, there is something to these frenemies. I think they are frenemies, right? Like, yeah, they're not showing you.

[Amy Nicholson]

They're, like, repetitive. Back when they're at parties together, even, like, jockeying and stuff.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, yeah. Obviously. Then for all we know, Bad Schwarzenegger probably knew Sharon as his girlfriend back in the day. And maybe Michael Ironside was like, I know he looks at my girlfriend occasionally, that I can use this to my advantage. She'll keep him happy for a little bit as long as we need. And you can tell that they're, like, competitive. And what's funny about Verhoeven is I think he really does like casting villains who just look like guys, Right. He doesn't do the swole. He does guys who look like they could wear a suit and be in an office. I think he finds corporation blandness systematic. Average guys, really freaky, which I also do.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes. I mean, it's way more interesting, right?

[Amy Nicholson]

It is. And, I mean, I think it means that, like, the big fights at the end can be a little bit clunky. Like, sure, Arnold's not gonna beat up this guy, whatever. But, like, it is interesting. Although I will say my beloved Bobby Wygantz, you know, who did all the interviews back in the day.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She did give Verhoeven a little bit of grief at the time for saying that the elevator fight against Michael Ironside.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

She thought it was excessive there, and it wasn't excessive. And then I must say, Paul, that a couple of things really seemed excessive to me.

[Recall Salesman (character voice)]

Really?

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

Yes. I guess I can go ahead and say it without ruining it. All right. The arm getting chopped off.

[Recall Salesman (character voice)]

Right? Well, that was based in fact, that was something that. I mean, it's not. I brought that in. And it was based, in fact, on a user experience I nearly had and happily didn't happen to me when I was a kid. When I was 7 or 8, I went into a little elevator which were these things that are turning around. You get in and it turns around. And because I was a kid, I was playing around and put my legs over the side and suddenly There was exactly the same situation that the ceiling was coming and was nearly cutting off my. My legs. And unfortunately, fortunately, part of the ceiling, they had loosened up, so it flipped around my legs. But it was such a gruesome idea that it nearly happened that it obsessed my whole life. And then when I was making this movie and we got to this fight in the elevator, which was in the movie, I suddenly this. This vision of horror, because it is, of course, a vision of horror, came into my mind and I felt compelled to do it.

[Paul Scheer]

I love Bobby Wygantz. Always has the best clips. I also feel like we need to talk about Rachel Tinkerton. It's interesting, right? Because she's this character that's supposed to be the love interest. I found that part of the movie to be the most rushed. Like, they go from, hey, who are you? Oh, yeah, we are. And then they like. There's like one scene where they run through. I mean, there's a lot of running through and things exploding scenes, so much running. And then, I mean, the ending is really. I mean, it's a great third act. It goes hard, but they are running. But they're.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I think the movie gets kind of lame after the halfway point, but yes.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, I can see. I mean, it just becomes like the full on Schwarzenegger action film. But I do think that this moment where then they hook up really quickly, it's like, okay, we gotta sell this. But I do. I love this idea of. In his dream, he sees this, you know, brunette, athletic, sleazy, demure, like whatever he described her as.

[Amy Nicholson]

Sleazy and demure. That's so funny. Sleazy and demure. I love that.

[Paul Scheer]

Sleazy and demure is hilarious. And what I love about that is Verhoven is like interested to show that, yes, she could look that way or you could have your dream about her in that way, but she's way more complicated than that. Right. And again, this movie is constantly putting you in this world of the fantasy versus the reality. The fantasy versus the reality. And. And that to me, I like. I don't know. I think that that's a smart choice as well. Right. Cause she doesn't just see him and is throwing into his arms. I don't know.

[Amy Nicholson]

No, but do you think, where do you fall on the. Is she ever real or is she just a figment of his imagination? Because before I remembered how this film ended in that last little stretch, I thought, man, this is happier than a Paul Verhoeven film usually ends. Everybody's getting what they want. They can breath. People are happy. Really, he's too negative for this. And then I was like, oh, right. There's a very good chance this is possibly all a dream.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, and that's what's so genius about the final shot. Like, the way that the lens flare takes over, like he's coming out of the machine.

[Amy Nicholson]

Right. Or. I don't know if this is true because this is just me basing this on screenshots, but I have seen screenshots that say in the original VHS version of Total Recall, in that shot, it was deliberately framed where you could see that the backdrop was hanging up by a hook and that later on they cropped that tighter. Hmm.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, I love the idea. I love the idea of this movie being about a man who is unsatisfied with his life, who buys a memory of being a hero. And in that memory, he kills his wife. He saves the day. He finds, like, this real love. But the question remains to me is when you wake up out of that, how do you live?

[Amy Nicholson]

I don't think he's waking up. I think I take this scene very seriously.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

All right, let's say you're telling the truth and this is all a dream. Then I could pull his trigger and it won't matter.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

Doug, don't.

[Paul Scheer]

It won't make the slightest difference to me. Doug. But the consequences to you would be devastating. In your mind, I'll be dead. And with no one to guide you out, you'll be stuck in permanent psychosis.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

Doug, let Dr. Edgemar help you.

[Paul Scheer]

The walls of reality will come crashing down. One minute, you'll be the savior of the rebel cause, and the next thing you know, you'll be Cohaagen's bosom buddy. You'll even have fantasy about alien civilizations, as you requested. But in the end, back on Earth, you'll be lobotomized.

[Amy Nicholson]

That doctor flat out tells him, if you kill me in this dream, if it is a dream, you're gonna get a lobotomy. You know what? I think that. I believe that he is telling the truth. And also, I think that's the best scene in the movie, honestly.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

When the doctor and his wife barge in the movie and they're like, honey, you're just dreaming. You're just dreaming. You're just dreaming. That scene has more drama to me than a thousand gun battles.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I mean, I agree. I love that scene. And it does elevate this movie. I think that there's a part of you saying, well, why Are we saying lobotomy so much in this movie? It's definitely a theme, right. So we have to pay attention to it. It's told to him when he's working at a construction site. He brings it up again when he goes in to have the first meeting, you know, and then that's what he's worried about. Right. It's multiple times it's brought up.

[Amy Nicholson]

That's right. His buddy who warns him that he could get a lobotomy is definitely there as a plant. Knowing what's happening, he's probably talking about another agent, and the same thing happened to them.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, and so there's a part of me that goes, all right, so Edgmar does say, hey, you will live the. He wrecks the end of the movie. Right? He just tells you what's gonna happen at the end of the movie. And I guess the ring, save the planet, you know? And I think that there is something like the blue sky on Mars is in the recall monitors. Right? That was something I read. I didn't see it. But then when I was doing research, I was like, oh, wow. And then there's another part of it that goes, well, if it was the end of a dream, would it fade to black? But because it's white, is that like your brain exploded? Like, is that a mental collapse?

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, and if it's Arnie in a mental collapse, could you even tell? That's not fair. That's not fair. That's not fair. Arnie actually did incredibly smart things here. He really hated the first trailer, and he was like, there are no special effects in this. We have to show the special effects and recut it. So it's opened. The trailer is open. He is so tactical with this. The trailers opened with the shot of the woman who was fake him and her head opening up on those little, like, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip. So he could see his face underneath it.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Which I remember those trailers so well, and only now am I thinking, like, wow, Schwarzenegger is just so confident in how to sell a movie that he doesn't even believe in spoilers. He's like, show people something cool. People will come. And actually, now that I think about it, there is something really neat and thematic in selling this movie with that image because her face is cracking open and revealing his face, who is looking more stony than the waxwork. But it is a movie about this.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Open your mind.

[Paul Scheer]

Open your mind. Open your mind.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Open your mind.

[Paul Scheer]

Open your mind.

[Amy Nicholson]

Now that I think about it, I think, like, the designer of the special effects, Rob Botten really was like, this is opening your minds, man. That's what's happening here.

[Paul Scheer]

I love that idea. I also will say that obviously Verhoeven wanted both of these sides to be equally open and weighted. So there wasn't a leaning. It wasn't like the end of Inception where maybe one person knows and the other people don't. Or, you know, it's like this is something he's actively trying to do. But I think if you pick the reality and say, okay, this movie is real, how could you ever be sure again that what you are living is actually you? And that to me is. Is more of a scary sell than being lobotomized. Because at any point you could be taken away from yourself, right? Like, knowing that this is possible. What's to stop it again? Or what's to stop you? I believe you would go into a kind of psychosis, you know, where you couldn't separate reality and fantasy.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, and that to me is scarier.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I think that's totally fair. You know, I think actually maybe part of the. And I'm going to use the word schizophrenia just because this is a movie that even calls it like sort of having. What do they call it, Like a schizoid fit or something?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

I think part of that duality that you're describing, though, maybe comes from, I suspect, the idea that just Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger disagree. Verhoeven is like, this is a dream. And I'm pretty sure Schwarzenegger is like, nah, man, I'm doing this right.

[Paul Scheer]

And I think that that's okay. I think that that's like. I think everybody could approach it differently because Schwarzenegger should think it's real, right? He shouldn't be playing it like a dream.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, honestly, Paul, I think my favorite thing about Arnold's performance just has to be all of his stupid yells. I mean, he just starts the film yelling real stupid. And he just keeps yelling stupid. I want to play the first one just because it's hilarious. Although, honestly, I think that might be tied sound effect wise and score wise, with just the sound of the sleazy nightclub when they go to the sleazy bar. I mean, sleaze, 80s sleaze. How is anybody getting excited listening to this kind of music? I mean, come on. Like, that's music where you just like can't do anything but bite your lip and shake your fist back and forth. What? That's so lame.

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[Realms of Peril and Glory Narrator]

welcome to the Realms of Peril and Glory. Explore the mechanically magical V vistas of Veil, the paranormal mysteries of liminal London, and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg. Be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Oxventure and no Roles Bard. Search Realms of Peril and Glory to find out more.

[Paul Scheer]

I love this movie. I love that at the end of the day it's Ronny Cox, obviously. We already talked about Michael Ironside and Schwarzenegger kind of dueling, which I buy a little bit more. And I think that they kind of tamp down on his muscularity in this movie. Although the minute fight starts he's like, pop, pop, pop. He's like, he's just breaking necks. I mean, he's ready to go. But Ronny Cox to me is such an interesting character because Ronny Cox is again another alum of RoboCop, but can kind of play multiple sides in a really interesting way. I love when he kicks over the fish tank.

[Amy Nicholson]

I love how those are the fish. And being the 80s, I really hope they scooped some up and put them in water when the scene is over and didn't just say, eh, you know,

[Paul Scheer]

he, I think represents something that is kind of fascinating in the sense that he is not this nice guy, right? He is not a nice guy, but he is somebody that you could trust, right? He has moments where he reveals that he is a monstrous. And I think that if you're looking at him, you want to trust him and what you kind of see is he's just petty. He's not trying to take over the world. He's not a James Bond villain. He's kind of whiny.

[Amy Nicholson]

He wants to go home and eat corn flakes.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, right?

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, is the layers of his character. Do you think this is at all attributable to the fact that I just can't shake the idea that the people running the world right now watch these post apocalyptic dystopian films and were like, this looks like a great idea. We should definitely have robotic Johnny Cars driving on the streets. You know, with my hatred of Waymos, I have to just get in a diss at this absolutely moronic Johnny Cat.

[Paul Scheer]

I love Johnny Cab.

[Amy Nicholson]

Hello, I'm Johnnycat.

[Paul Scheer]

Where can I take you tonight? Drive, Drive. Would you please repeat the destination? Oh, anywhere. Just go, go, please.

[Amy Nicholson]

State street and number.

[Paul Scheer]

Shit.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

Shit.

[Paul Scheer]

I'm not familiar with that address. Would you please repeat that to me? But I do think that, like, the idea of playing with who the bad guys are and what these bad guys are is classic Verhoeven, right? It's companies, corporations. It's what RoboCop was too, you know, that, to me, I think is the most lasting impact that some of these films have. It's like it's coming from inside, right? It's, it's, you know, we're talking about recall, we're talking about all these other, smaller things that we just accept, right? What is the society? What are we accepting? What are we accepting? And I don't know, that to me makes this film stay forever timeless.

[Amy Nicholson]

I agree. I mean, it's hard to shake the idea that when we are scrolling Instagram, we are living vicariously through other people's stories and memories. You know, seeing the world without going anywhere ourself. I mean, gosh, I almost wonder. The thing I think about a lot is, I don't know if you follow this little court of Instagram, but there are so many people who do makeup influencing, who regularly shoot themselves just with a filter anyways to automatically look more pretty. And I always wonder, what is that headspace? Like you have a public brand of a face that's not actually your face. What is that? Right? Am I real or am I not real? Like, who is even being the face of this makeup brand that I think I find to be the most bizarre thing about living in the future of these movies. And what they warned is that a lot of the solutions I thought were coming actually make stuff worse. Like the more we can have pictures and images and things, somehow it's even harder to know what's true.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. And I think that this is, you know, the world that we're going to constantly be living in and fighting for clarity from, which is what I'm seeing real? Is who I'm talking to real? Are my relationships real? There are so many things that we have to navigate now culturally. You can't just take Anything for granted. And maybe that's why these movies start to connect with us more and more, because as a reality of our daily lives, it becomes something that we have to navigate. You know, every part of. There's no one trusted person. Yeah, I think there's a weight to that. I think there's a weight to where everyone's for our, you know, fighting for ourselves, and we have to surround ourselves with our group of mutants to take down the corporate overlords. You know, it's like. And the same way that.

[Amy Nicholson]

What I'd like to be one of your mutants.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, come in, come in, come inside. And I think. But then also, I look at, like, Schwarzenegger on the other side. The bad Schwarzenegger is a part of a mutant group, too. They both think what they're doing is right, and they're both doing it because of the way that they have lived their life or what they have seen there. And I don't know. I loved rewatching this movie. I loved it. And for an hour and 54 minutes, which seems a little bit longer than a typical Schwarzenegger movie, I was like, well, it flew by.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I definitely was like, take away half these bullets. I'm really bored.

[Paul Scheer]

Right, sure.

[Amy Nicholson]

But, yeah, I mean, I'm down for everything. Verhoeven. I just think Verhoeven, he himself is kind of a precog of what's happening in what's about to happen in the world.

[Paul Scheer]

Phil Kiddick, the Jules Verne of our future.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Philip Kiddick is king precog. Like, he died before knowing how right he was going to be about everything. And I almost wonder if he could have handled it, like, what would you do if you saw the future? Just like he did everything that was happening, and then it just came to pass anyways, because people see cool stuff and they're like, that looks rad. I love that truck. Build me a Tesla Cybertruck. Let's do it. I mean, it's so nuts.

[Paul Scheer]

I hope that more people find a chance to rewatch this movie, because I think that anyone who thinks it's a dumb Schwarzenegger movie will be surprised. And I think this is not a blight. This is not even a mark or stain on the Verhoeven canon at all. If anything, I think it's showing that he can play ball with anyone. I mean, to get these themes out with Schwarzenegger there and get these performances out and cast around him in that way. Pretty impressive.

[Amy Nicholson]

It is pretty impressive. And thank you for giving us Sharon Stone.

[Sharon Stone (character voice)]

Doug. Doug, there's something I want you to know. You were the best assignment I ever had. Really?

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

I'm honored.

[Paul Scheer]

Now, Amy, we've been talking about worlds that have been created around you. You know, maybe you're living in a fantasy, but what if you enter into a world where there is a person that will reshape you, recreate your reality? And that world would be the Devil Wears Prada, a movie I've never seen.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, you haven't?

[Paul Scheer]

Never have seen Devil Wears Prada. Devil wears Prada 2, obviously, coming out. And it felt like a good chance to relook at this classic. It is a classic. I mean, I've heard it referenced a million times. I don't know anything about it. Nothing. I'm so excited.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, if you like Michael Ironside as a complicated villain, just wait till you see Miranda Priestly.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, this will be a treat indeed. I am excited to continue to look at the worlds in which we, you know, enter into willingly and obviously like this, unwillingly. Well, we will be talking about that next week, obviously. Follow along on our substack for more information about Total Recall. Maybe some of these clips that we've talked about will be on our page as well as follow us on our brand new YouTube page. Nothing's up yet, but just get that subscribe going right now because we have a bunch of fun stuff lined up. It is YouTube.com spooled unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds and Harry Nelson. Sound engineered by Cory Barton, music by Devin Bryant, episode art by Kim Troxall, show art by Lee Jamison and social media production by Zoe Applebaum. This is a Rome production. See you next week. Bye for now.

[Realms of Peril and Glory Narrator]

Legendary stories, awe inspiring sound and endless adventure. Welcome to the realms of peril and Glory. Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale, the paranormal mysteries of liminal London

[Arnold Schwarzenegger (character voice)]

and

[Realms of Peril and Glory Narrator]

the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg. Fall in love with our core cast or be awed by our incredible guests from familiar shows like Oxventure, three Black Halflings and no Rolls Bard. Ignite your imagination and discover the realms of peril and glory today. Go to realmspod.com or search realms of peril and Glory wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Paul Scheer]

Two 1.

[Glass Cannon Podcast Narrator]

The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs and the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon Podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern on YouTube.com theglasscannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.