166: Road House (with Sean T. Collins)

Junk Filter

The writer Sean T. Collins joins the pod from Long Island for a deep dive into the original 1989 Road House and the 2024 remake now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Sean’s book Pain Don’t Hurt offered daily meditations on specific elements of Road House for an entire year, and we discuss the many virtues of this eighties classic about Dalton, the second-greatest bouncer in the world (Patrick Swayze) who is hired by the owner of a violent honkytonk bar in Jasper, Missouri to clean up the place, raising the ire of the local crimelord Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) who rules Jasper with an iron fist and an amazing crew of henchmen. Sean has given this movie a great deal of thought over the years and we discuss the ludicrous plot, spectacular performances and classic one-liners.

And we also compare the OG Road House to the new remake with a pumped-up Jake Gyllenhaal as Dalton and UFC fighter Conor McGregor in his screen acting debut as the main henchman, with the action transposed to the Florida Keys. The remake wisely does not try to recreate the original so much as to modernize it, resulting in a film that’s honestly not as bad as fans of the original feared it would be.

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Sean’s writing can be found at seantcollins.com and you can also support his work on Patreon.

Sean’s book Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House is available from Mutual Skies publishing.

All Fucked Up: Erotic Tales from the Road House Expanded Universe - the fanfic zine by Julia Gfrörer, Sean T. Collins and Gretchen Felker-Martin, available on Julia’s Etsy store.

Trailer for Road House (Rowdy Harrington, 1989)

Trailer for Road House (Doug Liman, 2024)