They Remade 'Road House' with Jake Gyllenhaal

Conor McGregor is playing the heavy, and even the director is boycotting the premiere.

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Howdy, gang. The long-gestating Road House remake now has a trailer (it was supposed to star Ronda Rousey for a while, lol!). I did a full write up for it over at GQ.

As you may know, I’m a huge Road House-head. They shot a lot of it where I grew up and I even interviewed the director (and also Julie Michaels, who played the blonde babe). With so much familiarity with the source material, I’m of a few minds on the remake. My first thought is that Road House as a concept and MMA-fighting-as-a-career cannot, should not, exist in the same universe. If “coolers” exist, UFC does not, and vice versa.

Jake Gyllenhaal playing an ex-UFC fighter who is also a “cooler” feels like a hat on a hat. So it goes with most remakes. DUMB PRODUCER VOICE: “Hey, what if we try make cool guy even cooler?”

That being said, I love Jake Gyllenhaal, and Doug Liman, who directed this, can be an incredible action director when he wants to be (American Made, Edge Of Tomorrow, Bourne Identity). I still haven’t entirely forgiven him for Locked Down, but hopefully he’s gotten that out of his system.

Another wrinkle here is that Liman is boycotting the premiere because Amazon, who bought MGM after he signed on, decided to release the film directly to Prime Video, when Liman’s understanding was that it was going to be a theatrical release. I’m on Liman’s side! It’s pretty wild to be in the position of wanting to support the director of a remake you find sacriligious on most levels, simply because he’s fighting against a mega-corporation that’s even worse. But I guess that’s where we are now.

Anyway, I wrote this all up in much greater detail over at GQ, so check that out.

Pod Yourself The Wire is Back!

We just started season five of The Wire on Pod Yourself The Wire. This season is about the newspaper! Grrr, journalism! For episode one, we had on Mike Isaac from the New York Times. Early access is available for Patreon subscribers. It’ll be free if you want to wait for it.

New Frotcast!

I talked #HillaryBarbie and Oscars stuff with Joey Devine and Laremy.