'Crocodile' Dundee: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to another episode of Too Much Information, the
show that brings you the secret histories and little known
facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more.
We are your kings of kriche, your bushmen of banality,

(00:22):
your vegemite sandwiches of very granular facts.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
My name is Jordan run Tog and I'm the ghost
of rod Ansel.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
They don't know what that means yet.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
And you don't get that they will.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Your kids are gonna love it.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, I guess you're not. I guess you're not ready
for rod Ansel, but your kids are gonna love him.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Today, we are looking at Crocodile Dundee, a surprise hit
from down Under when it arrived on American shores in
nineteen eighty six. It since become a cultural phenomenon, with
writer performer Paul Hogan's character, Michael J. Crocodile Dundee becoming
a sort of one man ambassador of a local charm
and natural beauty of Australia or one man's stereotype, depending

(01:07):
on how you view it. The trilogy made Hogan a
star around the world and a legend in his native Australia,
where he's known by the affectionate metonym Hogues. I think
that's how you pronounced it, Hogues as in short for Hogan.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, the way you spelled it, I thought it might
have been Hog's.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
I think it's Hogues.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Side note, he's almost eighty five, Like in my mind,
he's perpetually sleeveless and tan and muscular. He's like he's
getting up there.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I mean, only God can kill in Australian man. Oh,
and like autoerotic asphyxiation.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Oh oh, well.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
We'll get to that too, in excess catching a.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Straw in the it's in Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh, he's starting to catch up with him. He doesn't
look great ay five and yeah, I mean and like
white descended from British stock, spent half his life in
the sun. Face a good face care routine is so
important people. You know, I was really taken them back
by a tweet that went around recently, which is I'm

(02:09):
paraphrasing some of the effective Americans are always so shocked
when they learned how much Australians hate them.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
I didn't see that, and I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I was taken am back, not because of I mean, yes,
I was shocked, but I was also taken him back
because not because I desperately crave the approval of a
bunch of sun burnt racists, because I can get that
if I just go to the South and pretend to
care about football, But it's because of how similar I
feel like Americans and Australians are.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Am I talking to my ass here? Do you feel that?
I have never really thought about that much?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
We're both descended from the same awful British stock.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Well, only one of us are prisoners because it wasn't
Australia originally basically a gunt prison care.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, they don't like talking about that. Well I don't, okay,
But we are also alike in the way that we've
both committed atrocities against the indigenous peoples of our country,
and we're both rowdy and boisterous. I generally love every
Australian I've ever met, actually, you know, like like one
on one interactions. But I am struck by the and
hardly the first person to be so, by the disconnect

(03:13):
between the gregariousness and charm of the people and the
fact that half their country is just a vast screaming
waste land that occasionally issues constantly issues all manner of
fauna that are trying to kill you. And you know
they get a pass for me because of Nick Cave
and ACDC. Oh sure, and the song case sam by

(03:35):
Cold Chisel.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Oh I saw Cold Chisel live. Yeah, okay, yeah, I
can see how hammered. Right. Oh sure, yeah, well wait
which one of us? But yes, I.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Wish it was you. Fair if you were drunker than
a performer at any given thing, I've seriously questioned.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Your health, especially if it was Cold Chisel for.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's also funny that like a third of Paul Hogan's
wiki is about his alleged tax evasion. Oh yeah, no
that I didn't really get into that in here, but
it kind of adds to his mystique, his lore. Well,
it seems like he won like against the government, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, I think he sued the Australian government.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
And he won in certain like he won certain key decisions,
but at the end of the day they were still like,
I'm pretty sure you hid like forty million dollars from
us in a Swiss bank account yep. And he insists
he's done nothing wrong and I'm sure, within the constraints
of creative bookkeeping, he didn't.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
But you know he compared the government to the Taliban,
which I appreciate.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Is that classic Australian tact.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Well, for those of you who haven't seen Crocodile Dundee
in a while, the story begins when New York reporter
sued Charlton journeys to the Southern Hemisphere to interview Mick
Crocodile Dundee, a mysterious hunter who's rumored to have survived
in the wild after having his leg bitten off by
a crocodile before the fi the odds and making it

(05:01):
out of the outback and back to civilization and into
all of our heart, in all of our hearts. However,
when this reporter meets Crocodile Dundee, she discovers that the
story has been exaggerated slightly and he was just maimed
and scarred very badly by said crocodile, a love bite,
as he calls it. But his story is remarkable nonetheless. Apparently,

(05:23):
Dundee was born in a cave in the Northern Territory
and raised by Indigenous Australians. He's unaware of his age
with the Aboriginal elders, telling him only that he was
quote born in the summertime. Prior to the beautiful Reporter's arrival,
he'd never been to a city, equipping cities are crowded, right,
If I went and lived in some city, I'd only

(05:44):
make it worse, which is both logically true and self deprecating. Yeah,
soone the reporter winds up bringing him to New York City,
where hilarity and romance ensues.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm fully admitting that I'm about to steal a bit
from how Sparks on.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
I love the eighties, Okay, go on.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Actually it might have been Michael Ian Black. It was
a It was a slight brunette man who was one
of the most popular talking heads on those shows. And
he was like, I don't think Australians are that confused
by like cars. He just says, a CA, What's a ca?
And it just it also reminds me of like when

(06:24):
in thirty Rock when Jenna is a method to in
character for the Unlicensed Janis Joplin biography and she's in
Jack's office and she's like, hey, man, what is that
iron boot.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
In the sky?

Speaker 2 (06:39):
They had planes in the sixties Jenna. So it's just
it is a funny premise that he's just like I mean,
bidays are, but days are confusing. Yes, the days are confusing.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yes, okay, yeah yeah. Just a quick note, a rare
moment of sincerity here. This episode marks the first and
are sponsored by listeners like you series just like my
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tip jar kofe I'm told as pronounced, which we put
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(07:10):
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and because you, dear listeners, have made this such a
joy and we want to be there for you in

(07:31):
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(07:52):
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It's so unbelievably helpful. The notes are so sweet that, frankly,
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Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, leave us a note, we'll say something. Well, I
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I do, yes, yes, yes, yes, but yeah, it's been
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Thank you so much. It really is.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
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Speaker 1 (08:56):
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Speaker 1 (09:25):
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(09:49):
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Yeah, and if you give us an extra ten bucks,
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(10:25):
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hope he enjoys this one well. From a truly insane
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the plot to the tabloid love triangle that emerged from
the production the Ozzie rock Star who up bring the

(10:45):
movie to the big screen and all the ways it
changed the face of tourism for an entire continent. Here
is everything you didn't know about Crocodile Dundee. It's truth.
What does that mean? I keep seeing that. Don't know.
Oh okay, I don't know anything.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Half my Australian slang just comes from like a single
YouTube video of a guy ranting about Australia. Day.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Oh yeah, that's like their fourth of July.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Right, wasn't the at me country, Get at me country,
get at me country.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Wasn't he succulent Chinese male guy Australian? Or was in
Australia and he was English?

Speaker 2 (11:27):
He did not have an Australian accent. No, he had
like a beautiful like King's English. Or he received pronunciation
boarding school boys in Australia. Sure, why not?

Speaker 1 (11:38):
He just died recently?

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, I know, and that's sad RP to that man.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Well. For years, Paul Hogan claimed that his fish out
of Water story of an Australian bushman in the Big
City was inspired by his own first trip to New
York in the early eighties, a time when apparently Australian
accents were relatively uncommon. Despite the fact that Greece had
just come out. Apparently, New Yorkers assumed that Paul was Scottish,

(12:05):
which would have made him the world's tennis Scotsman.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
We are such a dumb people, He.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Apparently really did walk around New York saying good day
to all the New Yorkers, which is a hilarious image
for a city that had recently been terrorized by the
son of Sam. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
I mean it wasn't a great time to be weird
and super friendly in New York.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yes, yes, yes, yes. As Paul Hogan later told the BBC,
I felt like an alien from another planet. Some of
the bushy guys I know would feel even more out
of place. There's a myth that there's a real crocodile Dundee,
but there isn't. Well, Paul, most of Australia would beg
to differ, though Paul Hogan would deny it. Many believe

(12:48):
that the character of Mick Crocodile Dundee was based on
the astonishing true life story of an Australian man named
rod ansel rod had become something of a folk hero
in Australia. After we survived, I have more than seven
weeks on a small island at the mouth of a
crocodile infested river in the remote Northern Territory. The incident

(13:08):
occurred in nineteen seventy seven, when he was sailing down
the Fitzmorris River. To this day, it's unclear exactly why
he was doing this.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
I should do I have a do we have hang on,
I gotta drum up some ambience you can have like
a didgerido in the background.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Let me just just go an outback commercial.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, yes, that's a passable, but that's a kucku barra. No,
it is also part of my new noise project. You
should throw a bunch of reaver on that, Okay.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
To this day, it's unclear why Rod Ansel was on
the river in the first place. He would claim it
was a fishing trip, but as his Wikipedia reads, he
was not specific about his plans, only telling his then
girlfriend Lorraine that he would be back in a few months.
Ansel's motor boat was then capsized and sunk by quote
something big. He would later sensationally claim that it was

(14:07):
a whale, and have also read that it was a crocodile.
It's definitely a crocodile.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
The river is mile I went and checked because I
was like, that sounds implausible, and sure enough, there are
whales around the different coast of Australia, but that river
is so far inland it must have been an idiot
of a whale to get lost, or he was a
bad sailor and he hit nothing and he got that's
also equally like that.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
It's whatever the case. The boat sank and Rod jumped
into a dinghy and salvaged his two eight week old
bull terriers. No idea why he brought two puppies on
this expedition, A rifle, a knife, some canned food and bedding.
The dinghy washed ashore on a small island at the
mouth of the river, and Ansel slept in between the

(14:51):
roots of a tree, just out of reach of crocodiles,
but up close and personal with a brown tree snake
without I mean drinking water. Ansel had to catch wild
cattle and suck their blood to keep them hydrated.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Oh that's normal, that's what the Mongols did.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Okay, Yeah, and this is truly insane. He caught bees
and tied threads to their bodies so he could follow
them to their hives and obtain honey to wide'm nourished.
Isn't that that's insane. At one point, Rod shot a
sixteen foot crocodile whose head he kept as a souvenir.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
They're good eats too, I don't mind, really mind crocodile?

Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, have you had it? What's it taste to day?

Speaker 2 (15:32):
There's a place in my my college town that did
fried crocodile bites. It was like the New Orleans bar.
I've had crocodile jerky, and I don't really like it.
I think you do have to deep I think you
got to just deep fry him. But you know, I
don't defry anything tastes good. What can SHA deep fry
these days?

Speaker 1 (15:46):
Hell? Yeah, brother, that's a NASCAR baby. Rod roamed for
seven weeks. Apparently it was one hundred and twenty miles
from the nearest settlement, and he basically assumed that he
was running out the clock and would die where he was.
But then he stumbled on two Aboriginal stockman and their boss,

(16:06):
who led him to safety, or so he claimed, Grand
of salt, Grain of salt. According to ron Ansell, he
initially intended to downplays ordeal, fearing that his recklessness would
upset his mother. Oh yeah, remember that all? Remember that?

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Oh yeah, I know, I read ahead.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Once the media got ahold of his story, however, it
took on a life of its own. He was dubbed
the modern day Robinson Crusoe. Journalist Robert Milliken would say
of Ansel, he was charming. He seems to have never
worn shoes, even when traveling on aircraft ew and staying
in city hotels. At the height of his fame, the
press went absolutely mad over his story, and no one

(16:47):
seemed to mind that the details grew even more incredible.
Rod would publish a memoir in nineteen eighty entitled to
Fight the Wild, which was always viewed very skeptically by
locals of Australia's rugged top end, and many wondered why
he went fishing alone in such a dangerous area, which
is a great question. Privately, Rod confided to friends that

(17:08):
he wasn't fishing, but he was actually illegally poaching crocodiles,
which would maybe explain a lot of why he was
so cagy about all this.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
He can't poach crocodiles. They're reptiles. They just like grow
from the earth for dinosaurs. Dude, that's that's not poaching.
That's like a fair match between man and beast. It's
not like a white tailed deer. Yeah, I guess if

(17:37):
you have a gun. But you know, still, the.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Man was always good for a quote. Including this gem
which seems designed to remind people that he's Australian. Can
you do an Australian accent? Can you read this? I
can't do it.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
It's so mine just falls apart. But let me see,
let me.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
See if I try try it out here, I'll highlight
it for you.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
All the blokes up in this country you work with,
cattle ringer, his stockmen, bull catches, whatever, all of them
have really narrow shaves all the time. It's getting it's
edging into New Zealand. I can only sustain it for
like a phrase or two. But they never talk about it. No,
that's just offensive. Sorry Stirlians. I think the opinion is
that if you come through in one piece and you're

(18:20):
still alive, then nothing else matters.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Then he says, it's like going out to shoot a kangaroo.
You don't come back and say you missed by half
an inch. He either got him or you didn't. So
that's how I looked at it until the paper got
ahold of the story and that changed a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Very good, very good. Rod Ansell was interviewed by the
legendary British broadcaster Michael Parkinson. Parky to our beloved British listeners.
They'll be very familiar with him. And Ansel attended this
interview barefoot and admitted to sleeping on the floor of
the luxury hotel what the producers had booked him into
because he was more comfortable there. I'm sorry, good care,

(19:00):
come on guy, And he also shared the fact that
he was mystified by the bidet well, the whole sleeping
on the floor thing and the whole bidet confusion or
two details that was surfacing the Crocodile Dundee film. I mean,
say what you will about this Ansel guy. He and
his family would apparently live under a canvas sheet with

(19:21):
no electricity or running water, communicating by radio and cooking
over a campfire. So maybe the bed was a little
too foreign form after all.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah, I feel like you can get away with a
lot of stuff in Australia because people were just like, yeah,
that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Sure, I buy that a ruthlessly practical people.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
It's really funny to me because the there's this Johnny
Cash record I have called minas Hell, which is about
it's like Western ballads, and in the liner notes of it,
he claims to have prepared for this record by let
me see if it knew Johnny Cash sleeping under mesquite
and in gullies, sitting for hours beneath a man's and

(20:04):
nightA bush an ancient Indian burial ground, and breathing the
west wind and hearing the tails. It tells only to
those who listen that he also added that he ate
mesquite beans and squeezed the water from a barrel cactus,
learned how to throw a bowie knife and kill a
jack rabbit at forty yards, and was once saved by
a forest ranger lying flat on my back starving.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
So is that where we get that picture of Johnny
Cash with cake all over his face afterwards? Is that
the aftermath? No?

Speaker 2 (20:33):
But I mean the famous thing about Johnny Cash, it's
so funny, is that I believe this was the same year,
or like within one year of him burning down like
an enormous chunk of California forest and like killing half
the condors that were alive in the world at that point.
And then in court he said, I don't give I
don't give a damn about your filthy, dirty buzzards.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Is that the quote something like that, Yeah, shades of
Charlton Heston and landed of the apes.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
I mean, if anybody's built up like the appropriate sort
of karma to kill half the condors, it's kind of
Johnny Cash, right, Yeah, who else?

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Give it to James Brown? Sure, it's the hardest working
man show business. Let him kill a couple of condors. True, Yeah,
you really would.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Have be funny.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
It was Brian Wilson that would have shut him down
for forever. God, we could we could have been spared
the entirety of the Mike Love era if he had
just killed well, no, I got dark. If he just snapped,
you know, in the right room with the right guy.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Sorry, you know, the Mike Love story about him in
the early seventies where he was just on this our
front of the pod door will remind me of more
of the finer points of this. But he basically like
went on like a juice fast and just like didn't
sleep for days and meditated and then like led. I
believe the police were involved with some kind of high
speed chase and he just completely freaked out. Good for him,

(22:07):
and he blamed it. He blamed it on his quote
tainted Wilson blood because he's Brian Wilson's cousin. That's a
good band name. I might have to use that tainted
Bullson Blood. Yeah, that's your new EP.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah. So it would be logical to assume that this
tailor made for the Zeitgeist story, complete with very specific
elements that would turn up in the film inspired Crocodile Dundee,
But Paul Hogan has never copped to it, which part
of me is like, never let him see you blink.
Pardon is also like a you're bad man, you garbage human,

(22:42):
because this made rad Ansel extremely bitter, and he's somewhat
understandably felt entitled to some royalties or at least recognition,
which would never be forthcoming. And after the global success
of the film, Ansel would eventually take Hogan to court
in an attempt to get a piece of the sweet
sweet Dundee cash. So the case was rejected, and then
things went from bad.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
To worse for old Ronnie.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Fame took its predictable toll on his h I'm going
to do the behind the music the music bed shifts
into a minor chord. Fame took its predictable toll on
Ansell's personal life and his marriage soon imploded. By nineteen
ninety two, he was convicted of stealing cattle and assaulting
the owner of a ranch. He moved onto a parcel
of land owned by his new girlfriend, a former tour guide,

(23:27):
where he started growing his own marijuana and injecting speed
with what one outlet describes as a vengeance, leading to
increasingly regular incidents of drug induced psychosis. That's not fair
to drugs, could just be regular psychosis. He became increasingly paranoid,
blaming his problems on a government program culling wild buffalo
to decrease tuberculosis in the cattle industry. Now Ansel had

(23:49):
been hunting wild buffalo for part of his living ever
since he was a teen, and he began to believe
that the police and the government were conspiring against him.
His new girlfriend didn't do much to help. She told
him that her family had been members of a secret
medieval fraternity, and that as a child, she had witnessed
the sacrifice of young girls that were quote brought out
of the woods to be bound, raped and slaughtered. It's

(24:14):
actually pretty plausible, really, if you read some of the
weird shit I do.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, can you elaborate? You know?

Speaker 2 (24:23):
This is that whole David McGowan thing about serial killers
and the elaborate web of international one percent pedophilia that
sprung from it or because of it. I lost the
plot a little on that one, but clearly well both
of these people were on edge as it were, as

(24:44):
it were in the parlance of the times. It got
worse when they saw or claimed to see three bow
hunters dressed in camouflage with night vision goggles near their
bush camp. This and the meth didn't help. I mean,
if you saw.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Three camouflaged bow hunters outside your campground, I would.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Assume they were hunting. Sure, the man was a poacher
and hunter his whole life, and he just sees other
people with better outfits and flips out. But it was
definitely the mat.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
I see people with better outfits and I flip out. Two.
This all ended in tragedy. That's not a great segue
in August nineteen ninety nine, when rod Ansell died in
a drug fueled shootout that left one police officer dead
and other civilians badly wounded.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Hell yeah, it dude's rock that's NASCAR baby.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
In the days leading up to his death, neighbors heard
him ranting that the Freemasons were conspiring to kidnap his
two adult sons. Plausible, okay. Ansel wounded two men in
a shooting spree on the night of August second night,
ninety nine before disappearing into the bush. The incident is
described in riveting detail on a twenty fourteen Herald's Sun

(26:07):
article by Ellie Turner. Ansel fired six shots at a
caravan or RV on Kentish Road. Resident David Hobden jumped
into his truck, armed with his double barrel shoddy and
went to investigate the shootings. He lost an eye when
Ansel put a bullet through the windscreen of his truck.
That's sat. Hobden ran to alert his neighbor, Brian Williams,

(26:28):
who quote.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
No, not that, Brian Williams.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
Who quote waxed wrath at the state of his mate's
face and grabbed a baseball bat.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Some of these people's idioms are baffling to me. I understand, like,
you can wax poetic? How do you wax a noun?
Are we waxing podcast right now? I mean, I guess, yeah,
that makes sense?

Speaker 1 (26:52):
I mean yeah, context clues. Okay, sure, he charged at
Ansel with his baseball bat who was trying to steal
the injured man's truck. I smacked him straight down the
forehead and that's when he blew my hand off. Mister
Williams told police he was going on about stealing his
children and freemasons and being a baby killer. Oh just
he was mad. Mate. Ansel fired shots at Williams's house

(27:16):
and then he ran away, his rifle in one hand
and mister Hobden's shotgun in the other. After he disappeared
into the brush, the police set up a roadblock. The
next day. A man was leaning on a cop car,
it said roadblock quote, chatting to the officers when a
bullet blew a hole the size of a baseball in
his pelvis. He was flung forward, screaming on the ground.

(27:38):
The shots were coming from light scrub behind the roadside.
The cunning fugitive had sneaked through the bush and was
hidden by dappled tree shadows. A veteran policeman named Sergeant
Glen Anthony Houston was struck in the abdomen by a
bullet that ricocheted off the metal door of his police cruiser,
and his bulletproof vest hadn't been fastened properly, and it

(27:58):
struck him on a velcro strap that should have been
covered by a kevlar flap but was not. One of
the odds, it's tiny, like one inch square skill issue.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
And question when you say he disappeared into the brush,
that means you're talking about like scrub, like roadside scrub.
How is that different from the bush as it's the
capital t capital bach.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
It could be one and the same.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
There's no way of knowing.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
I think it's like on the highway through these areas,
it's kind of like the highway's the only thing and
so on either side you've got Yeah, so I think
that was what it was. I think so I think
it's it's one and the same. Yeah, okay, okay, okay, Yeah.
The policeman died later that day, another police the rookie
of the interrupting this life or death story with pedantry

(28:45):
as is our thing? Is it's kind of our that's
kind of the bit.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
I mean, if it happened in Australia, is it really
even true? Did it happen? Like if you die in Australia,
do you die in real life or do you wake
up just in England's.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Ah, this is all very sad. Please love our one
star reviews.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
You know what I would accept that. I would accept
of like rod Ansels, one of his adult sons who
escaped kidnapping by the Freemasons, like gave us a one
star review, I would wear that as a badge of honor.
I'm sorry about your insane father. I love him so much.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Another policeman, the rookie of the pair, who was not
wearing a bulletproof vest, he returned Ansels fire. He would
later say, the only verbal communication I had with the
gunman was when I was reloading the shotgun for the
first time. I called out to him to put his
weapons down. He called back, You're all dead. Hell yah,
making this scene even more like a Michael Bay movie.

(29:47):
This is when troop carriers quote came hurtling down the highway.
The first driver hit the brakes and swerved as he
heard the gunfire. The four wheel drive rolled when the
second car crashed into it, Unable to stop in time.
Ansel got up on one knee and began lining up
the cops who were crawling out of the vehicle. But
this rookie cop, Constable J. D. O'Brien, got a clear shot.

(30:11):
The autopsy showed thirty three bullet wounds and grazes to
Ansell's body, Two were fatal, one shot ripped through his
order he fell face down in the dirt. The real
mystery is the fact that rod Ansel had apparently escaped
the roadblocks by clinging to the back of a train
so metal, which would have essentially allowed him to live

(30:33):
forever in the bush, but instead he came back to
fight the cops. But then again, you gotta have goals.
Then again, this mystery is likely solved by the autopsy,
which showed that he was very high on meth amphetamine.
Rod Ansel was given a full aboriginal burial in Arnheim, Land.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Citation needed.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
A strange sad end to the man who is most
likely the real crocodile dum dee. I love him. What
do you think about that? You know?

Speaker 2 (31:09):
I love him? I mean, you know we have that here,
we have like meth guys doing the same thing.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
But like there's an element of like ruby ridge in
there too with this though.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Oh yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
I'm sort of surprised you hadn't heard of him. This
seems like something that's very much in your wheelhouse.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
No, no, I mean I I, well, the next guy
will talk about I had well, not Paul Hogan, but
the next Australian guy. I don't know, there's such a
self direction to that life story, right Like, this guy
was just like, you're not going to give me money
from you steal my entire personality. You get no money
from that. I reject all of this, you know, and

(31:51):
then goes down to blaze of glory, right like, there's
a reason that we like we still watch you know,
butch Cassidy, Yeah, I was going to say, uh, as
a reason we still watch Bonnie and Clyde, you know.
I mean that's the other thing about Americans and Australians,
you know, we have this rich like anti anti hero
Yeah exactly that, you know, and uh.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Because we are rebel nations sort of, but you know,
don't do math. Yeah yeah, that didn't That didn't help. No,
I'm kind of surprised that Paul Hogan dared to this.
This rod Ansel guy seems like somebody you wouldn't want
to piss off. I'm kind of amazed that he was
he was this. He didn't just settle with them in court,

(32:33):
you know.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
I mean, I'm largely blowing this out of my ass.
But I feel like there's like a similar British like
the like the class system in Australia is similar to
like the way it is in Britain where it's just
like if you like the people in like Sydney and
the cosmopolitan type like look down on these guys as

(32:56):
as you know, like hillbillies.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Essentially.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
I'm sure there's a lot of racial stuff tied into that,
because that was how the Aborigines were living and they
you know, they lived in that area for forty thousand
years a quote.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, is that insane?

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, and then they threw him into a bunch of
schools and abused him and did bad shit and love
white people.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Two hundred years ago we showed up and yeah, at.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Least it wasn't for something stupid like spices. Yeah, I
got idiot columbus opium, Yeah, opium, And they're just well,
have you ever done opium?

Speaker 1 (33:36):
We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more too much information in just a moment. Wow.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
So Paul Hogan claims that this man was not the
origin of Mick Crocodile Dundee, but Hogan's own origin story
is comparable in some way, Segue. Famously, Hogan had many
jobs over the years, supposedly as many as twenty five,
including boxer, chauffeur and a rigger on the Sydney Harbor Bridge,

(34:17):
which sharp eyed viewers will note is the first image
you see in the opening shot of Crocodile Dundee while
Sue Charleton played by Linda Coleslawski, talks to her editor
slash boyfriend on the phone at the beginning of the film.
Contrary to popular rumor and the lore around Paul is
strong in Australia, he was not a painter on the bridge.

(34:38):
He's been asked about this very many times, and is
quoted to saying, look, if I had been a painter
and you'd turn up every day and said, what color
are we going to do today? Boys, ah, battleship Gray,
I'd have jumped off, jump out of jumped up. Now
it leans to New Zealand. It was all working on
this bridge in nineteen seventy one that the naturally charismatic
and humorous Hogan, then in his early thirties, decided to

(34:59):
try for an amateur talent TV show called New Faces,
which is basically a kind of like American Idol type
show in Australia. Hogan was apparently dared to do this
by his coworkers on the Bridge after observing the whole
shtick of the show was that judges mocked the performers,
and Hogan felt like the judges deserved similar treating, so
he got himself booked on the show by claiming to
be a tap dancing knife thrower, and then he proceeded

(35:22):
to make fun of the judges before, according to Wikipedia,
performing a rudimentary shuffle and throwing the knives onto the floor.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
So I'd be like if somebody went on American Idol
and just mocked Simon Cowell. Yeah, I mean like four Yeah,
it's so cool.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Good for him. Also, like taking the piss with Australians
is just like the like the nat Lingua fraka.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
This all went down so well, and he was invited
back for repeated performances for such highbrow bits as making
a series of jokes before banging two shovels together a
few times. It was really easy to make it back then.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
You had the build. It really killed in the room.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Hogan was soon booked as a regular guest on a
news magazine program called A Current Affair, where He's so
impressed producer John Cornell with his comedic hot takes that
Cornell decided to bring him back as a regular guest commentator.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
It was so easy back then.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
The pair grew close, and John Cornell would become Hogan's
manager and business partner. Cornell was a brilliant marketer. He'd
to build up Hogan's image without overexposing him. He signed
him up to promote two products that would reinforce his
rough hewn, working class image, cigarettes and beer. The beer
ads for Foster, of course, obviously, although I think Victoria

(36:40):
Bitters is like the actual babes got my Winnie Blues,
I'm a vbays Ah, It's got me holding. The ads
became fairly renowned for their Fish out of Water humor,
in which Hogan played an earthy Australian a broad and
cosmopolitan London. The character's most notable line, spoken incredulously a
ballet performance, was Struth has a bloke down there with

(37:03):
no strides on.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
I need to google what struth means.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
It dogged Hogan for years. In another advertisement from the
same Foster series, Hogan's characters approached in London Tube station
by a Japanese tourists who asked, do you know the
way to cock Fosters, which is an admittedly hilariously named
area in North London, to which Hogan replies with a
puzzled look on his face, drink it warm, mate.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Is cocking a beer? It means like, because you're a
cocking drink and sucks.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
You can put it in your mouth like you would
with a dick.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Uh uh tuckle bell Bell.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Paul Hogan John Crnell formed their own production company JP Productions,
John and Paul. There are layers, not like there were
any you know, any other John Paul's that would have
been out there around the time, and in nineteen seventy
three they created a weekly TV sketching variety show called
The Paul Hogan Show.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
It sucks. It's any hill, but but worse.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
It is wildly I mean his first of all not
aged well as an understatement, but it is like some
of the dumbest humor imaginable. I was clicking through a
compilation of it and there was like, there's one where
the whole bit is just that it looks like a
tough looking punk band with chains and stuff and mugging
the camera and then they just start singing like a

(38:21):
quasi effeminate new wave And that's the whole, that's the bit.
But some of the characters, to give you an ex
to give you a maybe I'm not judging it. Maybe
I'm too close to this, you know, And so let's
let's pick it.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Let's put the.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Pantheon of Paul Hogan.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
How deep does it go? How deep does this go?

Speaker 2 (38:39):
I'd like to spotlight some of the characters that Paul
invented on his namesake, his eponymous show. Leo Wanker, an
inept daredevil stuntman, George Fungus, a parody of real life
television journalist George Nigus of the Australian sixty minutes. Super
Dag an aker super hero complete with terry toweling hat

(39:02):
and zinc creamed nose. His powers included the ability to
use his Eskie in innovative ways. Should I explain any
of those terms, Oh, if you're so moved, I mean
I google to come him. Eski is just slang for
a portable cooler that I didn't know because an Eskimo brand.
But oker is like literally according to the Australian National

(39:25):
University is an uncouth, uncultivated or aggressively borish Australian male,
stereotypically Australian in speech and manner, a typical or average
Australian male terry toweling hat.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
You know, I'm not going to touch that one.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Pierce Pierce the Whino, an old drunken Darrow who start
a Darrow Darrow who starred in a series of silent
Benny Hill style Shenanigans. Dong Er, Uh, there were there
were few variations on Donger. He has a big butt, Sorry,

(40:03):
he has a big beer gut, that's the bit. There
was Sergeant Donger, the tough cop with a bionic beer gut,
and Arthur Donger, a character of the suburban beer drunk
Australian male. Next we had Nigel Loveless, a skateboarding eleven
year old almost twelve, which I guess is a bit
in the show. Yeah, yes, the afore mentioned Arthur Donger.

(40:27):
And lastly Luigi, a magician with a thick Italian accent
who spectacularly fails at attempted magic tricks. Occasionally, Luigi would
have an assistant called Maria and When the tricks failed,
Luigi would shount dancer Maria to distract attention. So I
have to assume it was better live in the room.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
In the room, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
When you look at old like Fry and Laurie, some
of that has not aged super well.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
But this is a.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Dog shit yeah yeah yeah. The show would generally end
with Hogan and his bridge painter get up trying to
flip cigarettes into his mouth. So just Pinnacle of Entertainment,
a McLaughlin.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Group, it was not.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
How about this? The Algonquin Round Table was not. The
show did air until nineteen eighty four and was syndicated internationally,
including in the US, where Hogan cannily parlayed his fame
into a gig with the Australian Tourism Board, creating a
series of ads in the nineteen eighties encouraging Americans to
visit the Wonda's Dad Anda and his offer to slip

(41:33):
an extra shrimp on the bobby for you.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
I didn't know that was where that was from, he did,
did I actually, But.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
You said in Australia that they call him prons instead.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yes, yes, in Australia and England and any part of
the British Empire. I think they call him prons well.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
By the mid eighties, Hogan was wildly successful and hiding
large chunks of money from the Australian government. Allegedly he
was vowed. He was voted Australian of the Year in
nineteen eighty five.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Due just loves being Australian man.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
I mean good, Like, yeah, who is his competition, like
mel Gibson ac DC for ten years running? I guess yeah,
it would have been mel Gibson.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, probably not for sure.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Oh yeah, I forgot about mel Gibson being Australian.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Who claims him well? Especially now? Who like what was
he was born here and then raised there or vice versa.
I don't give a shit, I now, I very much do.
I would just google it can come back. Well, I am,
That's what I'm doing right now. He said. Irish citizenship too,
what the hell? Born in Peakskill, New York, Okay, six

(42:38):
of eleventh children Jesus Chrincy Irish uh Irish born mom.
His father was awarded one hundred and forty five thousand
dollars in a work related injury lawsuit against the New
York Central Railroad and soon afterwards, he and his entire
family relocated to Sydney, Australia.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
That's how you do it, get rich off an accident
and move down, skipped down.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Up sticks as the British sticks. Yes. Mel Gibson was
twelve years old at the time. His move to his
grandmother's native Australia was for economic reasons and his father's
expectation that the Australian Defense Forces would reject his eldest
son from the drafts during Vietnam whatever.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Too far in the weeds, I guess Australia claims him.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Seems to be. Yeah, he's got a some kind of
he's got the Order of Australia Honor. So yeah, sure, yeah, okay,
well there we go. How about that? How about that?
So Paul Hogan was like the pre eminent Australian on
the face of the planet in nineteen eighty five, and
so he and his business partner John Cornell wanted to

(43:43):
build on the success of the Paul Hogan TV show
and give Australia an international folk hero that, in Hogan's estimation,
they so richly deserved. And that's how they decided to
make Crocodile Dundee a tale of the trials and tribulations
of a gruff but lovable Australian who visits New York City.

(44:04):
As we touched on earlier, Paul Hogan claims that he
came up with the idea for the film on a
trip to New York, where the culture clash made him
wonder what would be like if a real Aussie hunter
arrived in the Big Apple. To be sure, this was
a deliberate attempt to make a commercial Australian comedy that
would appeal to the American audience, and they took great
pains to ensure that the script wasn't smutty or violent.

(44:28):
John Colonel, I can never say his name, John Cornell,
like the college. That's not how you spell Cornell. Oh
it is. My grandfather went there to.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Please leave that in.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Obviously I didn't go to Cornell. Producer John Cornell would
explain that the target audience for Crocodile Dundee is the
eight to eighty age group quote a demographic like a
double barreled shotgun shoty. Paul Hogan was quoted as saying,
there's a lot about Dundee that we all think we're like.

(45:06):
We meaning Australians, but we're not because we live in Sydney.
He's a mythical outback Australian who does exist in part
the frontiersman who walks through the bush picking up snakes
and throwing them aside, living off the land, who can
ride horses and chop down trees and has that simple, friendly,
laid back philosophy. It's like the image the Americans have

(45:28):
of us, so why not give them one. We've always
been desperately short of folk heroes in this country. Ned
Kelly is pathetic. Some are the bush rangers. Ned Kelly
catches trays from Paul Hogan. Yeah, the script for Crocodile
Dundee was written by Hogan and his manager John Cournell,
who produced the thing himself. This is really they're kept

(45:51):
in house.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Only for him.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Ned Kelly is like a Jesse James kind of figure
in Australia. His Wikipedia page has one of the most
like He looks like a guy who works at a
barber shop in Brooklyn. He's incredible beer.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
He's played by Mick Jagger, right, perfect hair.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
Well, don't hold bad against him, and many people think
his image is mushroomed into this like Robin Hood kind
of situation in Australia. But there are a lot of
people who just say he was like a violent outlaw.
But most importantly to my interests, he is famous for
wearing a homemade suit of armor bulletproof vest in his

(46:37):
last standoff with police was a bulletproof Given that it
was his last stand up with police, I'm guess he
was bet attesting it. He was also a bare knuckle boxer.
He thought a guy over a chestnut mare and one
in twenty rounds. You know, I mean, I'd feel like

(46:59):
somebody to feel like well, I guess you could say
on Dillinger. A lot of people do, but those people
are wrong.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Have you seen a picture of his homemade suit of armor? Yeah,
it's sick. Yeah. I mean I don't see any eye holes,
which I guess would say to reason. I do see
a lot of bullet dance. So I guess it didn't
do that bad.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, yeah, he didn't know, he didn't.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Yeah, yeah, let's try. That's cool though.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
I mean the battle lasted a half an hour wow,
and he was only brought down by two shotgun blasts
to his unprotected legs. He had twenty eight wounds and
then they found him.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
So Ned Kelly was the subject of the first dramatic
feature length film ever, The Story of the Yes, the
Story of the Kelly Gang, in nineteen o six.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Ever, not just in Australia but ever. Ever, that's wild regard.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Well, uh, because it's the seventeen minutes of it that
still survived. But it is u's pretty long fribed in
its it's literally enshrined in UNESCO, which is the United
States Nations Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, for being
the world's first full length narrative feature film. You Paul Hogan,

(48:26):
you don't have that keep Kelly's name out of your mouth.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
So, in short, you disagree with Paul Hogan's assessment that
Ned Kelly was pathetic.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, man, everybody needs folk heroes. And it's also it's
also rich of Paul Hogan to be like, yeah, bad
other guy, this guy who's life I stolen out of
any money for it. That's the guy. I'm the guy,
you man. It's just like somebody bold basically being like
like making a thinly veiled biopic of like Jesse James

(48:58):
and then being like, no, it's not based on him.
I'm sorry. I was from when I went to New York.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Come on. Paul Hogan and his business manager John Cornell
sketched out a ten million dollar budget, which was fairly
modest even for the time. Crocodile Dundy was unusual because
it didn't go through the Australian Film Commission, which usually
supplies financing in exchange for some degree of creative meddling.
Instead of going for a few big investors, they targeted

(49:29):
a lot of small donations for many just like us.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah, it's also a big B movie horror movie crowdfunding situation.
Like Sam Raimi, the initial the rights to the first
Evil Dead, and I believe largely why the Second Evil
Dead is basically a shot for shot remake of the
first one. The rights are disaster because he would they
were just going around to anybody being like, we have
five hundred dollars, you'll be a producers. A lot of

(49:55):
dentists in particular. That was his. That was like one
of the things he's been on record is saying, yeah,
we went to a lot of dentists. They have they
have a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
They have a lot of money in there and they're depressed. Yeah, yeah, huh. Interesting.
In the pre go fund me days, to promote this
project to potential investors, they gave an interview to the
Australian business magazine Ridges. How'd you say that, Rydgeses Rogs.

(50:24):
I mean that just sounds like you're saying it with
an Australian accent, Yeah Rogers. Okay, all right, well there
you go. The articles read how's this for Kisman? The
article is read by Paul Hogan's childhood friend who just
happened to run an investment bank. This bank agreed to
underwrite seven million dollars of this ten million dollar feature.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Sake.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
I know, I know, what is that?

Speaker 2 (50:47):
An eighty five money?

Speaker 1 (50:49):
I would say seven million dollars I would put it
at I'm gonna say prices right rules without going over,
I'm gonna say twenty one million. I know it's Australian dollars.
I don't know if that's Australian dollars though, I don't
really know what that means. It's not a real currency.
They paid in a crocodile meat teeth.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
They say that's the cristis I say.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Eighty five eighty five. Yeah, I'm gonna say it's close
to twenty million today.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Twenty million, eight hundred and eighty six.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Dollars, I said twenty one. So I went over. I
lost my prices, right, rules, I lost, but that's pretty close.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
I didn't guess I abstained.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
How big of you. Hogan and John Cronell each kicked
in six hundred thousand dollars apiece and the rest of
the budget, so some two million dollars would come from
fourteen hundred small investors, one of whom was the frontman
of Australian rock band In Excess, Michael Hutchins. Do you

(51:45):
have anything you'd like to share about Michael.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Hutchins handsome, handsome guy.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's like an Australian Jim Morrison, but.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
In excess, a reportedly great band. That one song is good, Yeah,
I know that one song.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
It's a good song. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
He died cranking it, cranking the hog and the news,
as so many of us have.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
I don't know if that's true, I because I always
assume that. And then before we taped today, I went
and looked that up and the only person who claimed
that was his I believe. I believe A strange girlfriend
at the time, Paula Yates.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Oh yeah, that makes sense, something an X would say.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
But then there was some kind of because she was
dating Bob Geldoff at the time and they had kids together.
There was love triangle and then and what did what
was it drugs? She died of drugs not too long
after talking about her I don't give it.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
He was.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
No they I mean, they just said it could have
been depression and suicide. She said as much when interviewed
by the police, but then later when speaking to some
journalists or news outlet, she changed the story and said
that it was autoerotic asphyxiation. But she's the only one
I think he's claimed that. I think, well, that's sad
and I regret the error. But but we'll never know.

(53:10):
But thankfully before he went there's really no segue. I
can't there's I can't get back to this in a
way that.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Is sucks to man. I mean, I just have to
assume that's true. And you know what, I just did
a whole bit slandering that man, and like, imagine dying
and your ex is like, yeah, he killed himself wanking
it in the noose, and that's lodged in someone's brain
thirty years later forty years later, My god, what a wait?

Speaker 1 (53:41):
What I mean?

Speaker 2 (53:42):
Hey, at least we're talking about him, right, No such
thing as bad publicity.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
We aren't talking about his songs though. Yeah. As a musician,
I'd like to know how you feel about that. Would
you rather be remember for the songs you write or
for the way that you didn't die?

Speaker 2 (53:56):
I mean, does anyone want to be remembered for the
way that they didn't die?

Speaker 1 (54:03):
Is that great? Great? I think I forgot it was.
I mustn't Frankie Boyle. That sounds like Frankie Boyle. It's like,
why would Elvis fake his own death? We're gonna fake
your own death. You could do better than the fake
ash accident exactly. Yeah. Oh, poor Michael Hutchins. Gods and Elvis. Nah. Yes,

(54:28):
Michael Hutchins donated to the metaphorical kickstarter for Crocodile Dundee.
I would have to assume that, like every famous Australian
must have kicked in something for this. Livington John No
Gibson maybe gave something. What are some other big Australians
from the time, the guy from Cold Chisel, half of
a C d C.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Mick Cave, the Bad seeds. Oh yeah, though I think
one of them is German by this time. I forget
when Blick's joined. The Midnight Oil guy, oh sure, or
for sure the bloomin Onion.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
The guy who managed the Beg's okay man, oh no,
oh the beach oh co Oh my god? Yeah, oh man,
I should say that up top. Much respect to the beg's, well,
at least the main DG, the terrifying DG. Handsome. Yeah, whenever,
whenever one of the other begs dies, he grows stronger.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
He's absorbed them into himself. He's like Jim Morris that
he's like one to two of the spirits of the
Native Americans. Probably flew in me. Maybe that's what happens
to the GiB Brothers. Oh god, this is dark. We're
really punching down. I mean, these people were fabulously wealthy
and lived out their dreams and talented. We're banking one
money still alive. We're begging for money from strangers. So

(55:46):
but still, we've ragged on a lot of dead guys
and we'll continue to business as usual in excess.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Michael Hutchins Band You Remember, provided a song for the
soundtrack for Crocodile don the a different world. The movie
also contains a snippet of the song down Under by
Men at Work because it's a movie that's set in Australia,
and I.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Think it was like legally like you had to put
that in, right.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was hoping there'd be an interesting
story about that song, but sadly there is not. I did, however,
learn that the meaning of the refrain where Beard does
flow and men chunder has a meaning I didn't realize.
Apparently to chunder means to vomit. Did you know that? No,
that's a good word.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
The only regional saying I know for vomiting is haver, right,
because that's in the.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Well luck by lucky if more that's Scotland, right.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, yeah, Scotland. But he's like, and if I have her,
I want to be the man who havers at your door.
And he's like, he's talking about pugin right.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
No, it means talking foolishly.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
Haring means talking. Oh god, I'm just striking out on
this episode. All those people gave us money, we're gonna
be like they fell off.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
No, refuse chun do's a good word though. I like it.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Yeah, it's like a relative of John Fogerty Coinning Chuglin.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Oh yeah, what does it mean again? Oh? I don't know?

Speaker 2 (57:08):
My friends and the mad doctors who are Greg Hanson
who runs King Pizza Records in New York, Joshua Park
and Seth Applebaum now killing it with his many tentacled
project Ghostfunk Orchestra.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Who does the theme to our show? Yes?

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Who does the theme song to this very show that
was their slaying for pooping on tour?

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Chugling?

Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yeah, I got chugel.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Oh, there's a certain charm to it.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
The only other mildly interesting story about that Network song
down Under is that in two thousand and nine, a
music publishing company that owns the rights to the Australian
children's song Cucko Barrow sued the down Under songwriters, claiming
that the flute riff copied the children's classic Cuckbarrow sits in.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
The old dumb tree Tree the number really uninteresting lawsuit.
What's your favorite song about Australia? Mine is Tom Traber's
Blues by Tom waitsaltsingh Mathilda.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Oh, Walton Matilda is a great song. I like Waltson
Matilda a lot. I can't say Rolf Harris because he's
been like me too in a major way. But there's
a song called Sunrise which is very pretty, which uses
aboriginal instruments because that was kind of his thing. Yeah,

(58:32):
there's a really good version of Waltson Matilda by Alex Harvey,
the sensational Alex Harvey Band.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Oh, that's a bit of a deep cut. Yeah, there's
a song by it the Pogues called and the band
played Waltzing Matilda, which is it's like a young man
who is in the First World War who like came
from rural Australia and ends up mame spoiler alert, he
ends up maimed in the Gallipoli campaign, which is I

(59:01):
understand it a big sensitive spot for Australians as you
meditate on that. We'll be right back with more too
much information after these messages.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
All right, now, let's move on to the production Crocodile Dundee. Obviously,
Paul Hogan is gonna be the titular character, but for
the role of his love interest, the writer Sue Charlton.
They met with Linda Kozlowski, a Juilliard classmate of Val Kilmer,
who'd appeared on Broadway with Dustin Hoffman in Death of
a Salesman.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
You imagine you go from doing Death of a Salesman
on Broadway to like showing your ass for this Australian
tourist movie. I about that girl on some rough days,
being like, oh yeah in here.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Yeah, she uh was the only American on the set
and a blonde woman.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Good lord. I'm surprised she survived.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Well, she had ed up marrying Paul Hogan, so and
I'm happy she survived. Yeah. Yeah, Not only was she
the only American, but she was the only American living
in a hut in the outpack. For a significant portion
of the production, Crocodile Dundee was filmed on location in
Australia and New York City, and per Travel and Leisure,

(01:00:20):
the outback scenes were shot in the isolated Kakadu National Park,
which is roughly the size of Germany.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Good god, which I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
I'm sure we could pick a state that's like bigger
than Germany to compare the size of the park too.
It's something about being the size of Germany feels very
like impressive, like an achievement.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Yeah, I don't know, it's better than being bigger than France.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
I mean honestly kinda. Yeah, this park was located in
the Northern Territory of Australia. We should have been home
to a uranium mine, which I know it's probably not dangerous,
but it just seems like it is dangerous.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
It's just they killed John Wayne filming in irradiated locations.
Oh well that was that was because they did a
bomb tests there. This is just like mined from uranium. Yeah,
isn't that like plutonium. It's like like like the Russians
drop like one ten thousandth of a milligram into people's
coffee and they die horribly of massive tumors and organ failure.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
But I'm sure that has to be like somehow like
made unstable by combining it with something. And I'm sure
it's when it's like taken out of the earth. All right.
I mean, I'll google it, I'll keep reading. See what
you get. Go go choogle it. Craig Bowles, the Australian
Location scout for Crocodile Dundee, selected the isolated location because, quote,

(01:01:44):
it showcased a part of Australia that I don't think
had been seen and it was inherent and Paul's nature.
He seemed to fit into the landscape perfectly because they
were so far from hotels. However, everyone on the cast
and crew slept in huts left behind by the Pan
Continental Mining Company. Despite the dilapidated condition of the camp,

(01:02:05):
the cast and crew made the best of it, spending
their nights around the campfire, singing songs in a summer
camp like atmosphere.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
Well, the Ranger uranium mine was operational until twenty twenty one,
so they were filming near an active uranium mine.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
I just can't imagine uranium being pulled out of the
earth being dangerous. I feel like we had to do
something to it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Let me just scroll down to safety breaches and controversy. Okay,
the Government of Australia has documented over two hundred environmental
impacts since nineteen seventy nine. Great majority of these were minor,
but oh, here's one. In May two thousand and five,
the company was convicted for breaching environmental guidelines, the first
such prosecution of a mining company in the Northern Territory,

(01:02:51):
relating to accidental radiological exposure to employees radioactively contaminated process
water cools. The Rods Rods had entered into the drinking
water supply. Sure dozens of mine employees were found to
have showered in and consumed water containing four hundred times

(01:03:12):
the legal limit of uranium. Here's another one. A mechanic
in Jabiru opened the engine bay. He was unaware of
the nature of mud and dirt which fell on the floor.
Court testimony said in the following weeks he had swept
material outside of his shed where his children played and
built sand castles in mud contaminated with uranium. Jesus about

(01:03:32):
two mega leaders of potentially polluted water came out in
two thousand and two. Two thousand and seven, water breached
a retention pond. In May twenty ten, it was reported
that a dam may have released millions of leaders into
radioactive water into World Heritage listed wetlands and Kakadu National Park,
home to about five hundred Aboriginal people. In November twenty thirteen,

(01:03:53):
four drums previously used to transport yellow cake were found
in a rural area of Darwin. The company recovered the
drums amid concerns about the tenship spread of radioactive contamination. Yeah, no, guys.
In twenty thirteen, there was an incident at a mine
inside Cockerter National Park with about a million liters of
slurry comprising crushed or and acid believed to have been spilled.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Sure, but aside from that, Missus Lincoln, I just I
can't imagine that like pulling uranium out of the earth now,
I like really want to get to the bottom of this.
Our uranium mine's dangerous. Although the uranium itself is barely radioactive,
the ore which is mind must be regarded as potentially

(01:04:36):
hazardous due to uranium's decay products.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
All right, fine, I biggrudgingly concede this point that I
made a weird wedge issue of all right, look at
you go into bat for mining concerns.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
And you're going to bat for cop killers. Yeah, hell yeah,
that sounds right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
I hope she sees this.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
King Well, it stands to reason that this unforgiving terrain
was teeming with wildlife that the uranium hadn't killed. Fittingly,
there were crocodiles all over the set of Crocodile Dundee,
and an armed guard was hired to protect the production
from what was referred to euphemistically as crocodile interference. I

(01:05:23):
guess it's not really euphemism. I guess it's pretty literal.
It's still great choice of phrase. As Paul Hogan would
later say in his own inimitable fashion, we had guys
up in trees with rifles just in case one crocodile
came along and ruined everything or enhanced everything. Yeah right.
There was also a crocodile wrangler on set. This is

(01:05:45):
presumably because Paul Hogan had planned on using a real
crocodile for close ups during the scene where Sue was
attacked as she was cooling off in the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Water, aforementioned eighties speedo scene.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Ah yes, yes, But ultimately they opted for a forty
five thousand dollar do animatronic crocodile, which proved so lifelike
that someone on the set reported the crew to the
authorities as suspected poachers.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
Hell yeah, movie magic.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
The water buffalo used in the scene where crocodile Dundee
mesmerizes it was in fact real and apparently was a
real diva. Paul Hogan would say that the scene took
hours to shoot. If the buffalo doesn't want to do anything,
it weighs two thousand pounds, and you know it doesn't,
so you have to hang around the Asian buffalo in

(01:06:34):
Australia with the eight feet of horns. That scene took
all day. It's like he said, I'll just sit here
and you can't do anything about it. I've also seen
it sighted in various listicles that the animal was drugged.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
I just want everyone to know that. Jordan title this
New York Bidets and Nights Thank You, said that the
New York scenes were slightly easier to film. Some scenes
were filmed at the Plaza Hotel, but not the ones
where Dundee is mystified by the bidets. There are no
bidets at the Plaza, apparently, something the front desk would
get calls for years asking if they could book the

(01:07:09):
Crocodile Dundee room. Sorry, sir, no can do. There are
no bidets in this establishment. Is that a reference to something?

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
No, let's just really assume that's say, it would.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Be better if you had like a really thick, like honkin'
like Hell's kitchen accent. No bidezz that's the cigar chumping executive.
I'm losing my mind. Funnily enough, the movie though, that's
playing in Crocodile Dundee's hotel suite is the nineteen sixty
five Sam Peckinpah feature Major Dundee starring Charlton Heston. A
little nod there. Do you know that a young Melissa

(01:07:41):
Joan Hart was originally supposed to appear in the film
as the little girl who skins her knee in Central
Park and is miraculously healed by Crocodile. Dundee, I heard
something about that. Sadly the scene was cut.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
They also filmed on location at Vazak's Bar in the
East Village, which was used with The Godfather too, also
in the abandoned lower level of the Ninth Avenue subway
station in Brooklyn for the final scenes of the movie.
And lastly, the damn knife line. Do it with me, now, Jordan,
that's not a knife this now you didn't do it with.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
Me, but you started before.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
One, five, six, seven eight.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
That's not a knife. Yes, nif it's not, it's that
that's a knife.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Well, that's a line undered by Mick Crocodile when he
and Dundee. Dundee, what do you call someone whose name
is crocodile?

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Croc croc. Yeah, it's a crock That Croc's not bad? Yeah,
all right? Is it Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Yes, it's about differently, but sure when he and Sue
are being held at knife point by does it really
even matter?

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
Where are you talking about that? Everyone knows that scene?
Would we bother describing it? However, Ken Shady Shade, one
of the film's writers, didn't think the line was funny
at all, saying it just wasn't funny on paper. He
was wrong. The knife that was used in the scene,
unsurprisingly into many, was not a real one, and it

(01:09:11):
was made of rubber.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
And aluminum aluminium as they say, Yeah, I got good call.
After filming was complete, Paul Hogan's manager, John Cornell flew
to the US to look for a distributor. Per the
New York Times, Paramount snapped up the US distribution rights
of Crocodile Dundee after twentieth Century Fox turned down after
only watching twenty minutes of it. Later, after the first

(01:09:35):
and second Crocodile Dundee movies were huge hits, Cornell gloated
to The New York Times that this Fox executive was
quote extremely rude. I sometimes get pleasure from thinking about
what the look is like on his face at a
time like this at Tracks and their Defense.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
Though an Australian movie wasn't exactly an easy sell in
nineteen eighty six because at the time the biggest Australian
movies were Mad Max and picnict Hanging Rock directed by
Peter Weir. There's a someb genre of exploitation movies called
osploitation from that basically you're kidding, no not. There's two

(01:10:10):
famous ones, in particular, Donald Pleasance is in one of them.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
But what's the like the underlying is it just like
shootouts in the outback?

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Kind of?

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Yeah, So Nicholas Rogue rog who famously directed Performance Manufeld
to Earth and Don't Look Now and The Witches. It's
always so funny that Nicholas Rogue did The Witches the
Rolled All adaptation. There's a film called walk About Witches
about two h white school children who are left defend
for themselves in the Australian outback.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
And then there's another one from the same year called
Wake in Fright and that is basically just about like
one dude hanging out with a bunch of insane like
Australian rednecks. The tagline for this movie is incredible. Have
a drink, mate, have a fight, mate, have a taste
of dust and sweat, mate. There's nothing else out here.

(01:11:08):
That's a truly incredible tagline. And they were both they
were both entered in nineteen seventy one can Film.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
Festival Australian New Wave. Oh my god, what the hell
is this genre? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
And this wake in Freight movie is like it's a
famous cult movie too because the master negative went missing,
so you could only I mean, it was a violent film.
It was like they killed real kangaroos in it, which
is you know, you don't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
The frown on that. Yeah, this a frown tom.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
But it was just like for years it was just
like shittily reproduced prints were the only things that were available.
And the original film and sound parts were rescued in
two thousand and four, so it was re released in
two thousand and nine. But yeah, usploitation, it's a real thing.
Oh razorback, of course we must have to. It's a razorback.
I mean it's about a killer got killer hog. He

(01:12:05):
was crazy about Paul Hogan. He turned down ghost Yeah,
he turned down the Swayze role in Ghosts, and do
you know anything about the movie that he then made
with John Cornell.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
Again, it's like a bad Heaven can.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Wait right, Yeah, it's like an it's an angel exploitation movie.
He like saves a kid from getting hit by van
and then like the rest of the film is like,
oh am I an immortal angel?

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Now?

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
Or was I just drunk? Rod Stewart's in it?

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
Rod Stewart's in that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Oh no, sorry, he no, I'm so sorry. He disguises
himself as Rod Stewart at one point.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Also brought Stuart seems Australian.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Yeah, and Linda Koslowski's in it too, because they were
married by that point. That little husband and wife wife project.
Charlton Heston plays god.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
Oh he just does that a lot. He's getting type cast.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
And it was a critical commercial failure.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
Another set of commercials that Paul Hogan did in the
late nine is another two thousands Subaru Outback.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
I think I remember those. It's outback that back. Yeah.
Did you do any for the Outback Steakhouse?

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
Not yet? No rules, I mean there's there's time yet.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Yes, Well, I don't know. He's eighty five. Get him
on the horn, Paul, Paul it's your cousin, it's your
there's one element of Australian culture you have not cashed
in on yet. Me oh, Paul, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
Yeah, he really took it to the bank man.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Yeah. I mean, when you're Australian of the Year, you
can kind of like you just write your own ticket.
Like imagine if you were voted American of the Year,
Like there's really nowhere.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Else to go at that point. Yeah, who would be
American of the Year currently? Yeah, pass, I abstain it
was your pick, Brian Wilson.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
American of the Year. American of the Year is.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Lorraine Warren dead? Yeah, she's dead and in hell.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Right she's dead and no one killed her, so you
can't pick that person.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
Roger Corman died too, I know, I know, I don't know, man,
I'm going to close the books on this. No good
Americans left. Oh oh, David Byrne, David Burrn' still alive.
She might be Scottish though, right, He's another one of
those dual citizenship weirdos. Just pick one, man, just commit
to it, or go the place with healthcare and leave

(01:14:27):
us alone. It really feels unfair that they get like
European grade quality of life and then they just get
to come over here and just like, I don't make
art with that as like a fallback. Jesse the Body Ventura, Okay, yeah,
he turned into a real hippie lately, right June that.
Jesse the Body Ventura tried to unionize the WWF wrestlers

(01:14:49):
back in the nineties and Paul Hogan or Paul Hogan,
here's a Hogan connection for you. Jesse the Body Ventura
tried to unionize the WWF at one point, and Hulk
Hogan added him out to Vince McMahon.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
It sucks, yeah he does. And he killed Gawker.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
Yeah, I remember the Iron Chic when he was still alive.
His Twitter account was like solely all caps, things like
hul Cogan is a dumb son of a bitch.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Well back to the movie, which you recall is called
Crocodile Dundee. After some American test screenings, Paramount made a
special international cut of Crocodile Dundee. A similar thing was
done to the German made Never Ending Story, basically to
make the movie dumber. Seven minutes of Crocodile Dundee was
cut to quote speed up the pace to the taste

(01:15:43):
of the American consumer. As reported by The New York Times,
most of the cut screen time came from the first
half of the film, when Mick Crocodile Dundee showed Sue
Charlton around the outback of Australia.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
Lose the gangage. What is the show? Ad'll Killia, Ad'll Killia?
That won'll just paralyze you. Over there's a horizon and
there's a few of those blokes were killed, the descendants.
They'd been on his land forty thousand years, and then
we came here. Fancy of Falster's out I could see

(01:16:19):
why no one wanted that committed the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
They also dropped scenes that contain too much Australian slang
because they fear that American audiences wouldn't be able to follow.
Hell yeah, and they cut some f bombs to ensure
a PG rating, which is probably why I was allowed
to see this. Is probably the last time I saw
this when I was like PG movie age. Hilariously, Paramount
added quotation marks around Crocodile on the posters of the

(01:16:44):
movie and the title card so that Americans would understand
that this was a man's nickname and not a movie
about a crocodile.

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):
Would be so much better for us about a crocodile,
like free Willy, but with a crocodile, or like Gentle
with a crocodile.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
That was in the in the Flipper remake in the nineties,
right he was with who is the kid in that?
Was that Elijah Wood? It was was Paul Hugan and
Elijah Wood. I can't believe I pulled that out. That's cute,
I know it is.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
I forgot about how far racist Australia was, Like all
these stories that are about like from like the past
four years where they like finally got around to changing
the place of a name. Well, because I remember seeing
this thing like ten years.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
Ago that was like.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
Places called Murdering Creek, skull Hole, and the Leap, which
are all references to frontier violence against the Aborigines.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
The Leap, I don't even want to know they.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Probably they were obviously throwing them off it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
I can't believe that shit.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
And this is all these all these search results are
from like the last six seven years. What did you
say it until then racist place names in Australia.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
I hope you're enjoying this film Crocodile Dundee hit Australian
cinemas on April twenty fourth, nineteen eighty six, and made
its American debut that September. Paul Hogan had high hopes,
telling cinema papers on the eve of the film's release,
I expected to gross millions of dollars around the world,
and I'm planning for it to be Australia's first proper movie.

(01:18:23):
I don't think we have one yet, not a real
general public, successful, entertaining movie.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Do you think he was taking the pass?

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
I mean, name one an independent Australian movie, or not
even independent on Australian movie, are you? It is still
the biggest domestic hit in Australian movie history.

Speaker 2 (01:18:44):
Oh this is extra funny that ned Kelly Gang movie
in nineteen oh six was produced in Australia. Oh yeah,
Also fun Mad Max Road Warrior, Yeah okay, Also the
aforementioned picnicd Hanging Rock, which that wasn't a hit though
on this that wasn't a blockbuster Mcroucodother than it became

(01:19:05):
the second highest grossing film of nineteen eighty six in
the United States, behind only Top Gun, earning one hundred
and seventy five million dollars in the US, so much
of which was hidden from the Australian government like.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
It ultimately made thirty seven point three times the production
budget in world box office numbers of ten million dollars.
That means that it would have made three hundred and
seventy three million dollars worldwide. That's crazy. Joe.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
Melbourne had one of the first ever film studios and
it was operated by the Salvation Army between eighteen ninety
seven and nineteen ten.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Why were they making movies?

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
Well, whatever the case, mad is, Australia has like a
rich history of cinema. He was All Hogan nineteen eighty
five s and I'm I'll hope it'll be the best
Australian movie I.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
Have, first first hit, first proper movie. Oh he did
say proper movie. Okay, Well he earned an Oscar nomination.
Check that Outgan John Cornell and writer Ken Shady were
nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. They

(01:20:16):
lost to Witty Allen for Hannah and Her Sisters.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
The first Australian film that won an Oscar was a
documentary and it was won in nineteen forty two. Australia's
first oscar. The fuck is this guy talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
But you know what he means something the rival top Gun. Well.
Hogan lost an Oscar, but he did win a Golden
Globe for Best Actor for a Comedy Motion Picture. This
is just nuts. It just just speaks of what a
phenomenon he was. Paul Hogan co hosted the Oscars in
nineteen eighty seven alongside Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
Did he do it in the vest?

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
And hating there were no sleeves? This man is not Yeah,
there's never worn sleeves. He also did a turn on
SNL as the host. Okay. The New York Times called
Crocodile Dundee quote the movie phenomenon of the year, describing
it as quote a sort of sweet tempered, common sensical.
Rambo would always say that he was a little disturbed

(01:21:16):
that Americans saw his character as a combination of Chuck
Norris and Sylvester Stallone breaker Morant. Come on, what is that?
I don't know what Australian film.

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
Not to mention Gallipoli. Sorry, I'm not over that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Get this. Director. Igmar Bergman owned the copy of Crocodile
Dundee on VHS.

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
Dude, that's up there with uh is it Chairman Mao
having Bruce Lee Movies privately episode?

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
Oh we actually know. I do remember that now. I
mean it's kind of like Osama bin Laden's film, Like
what was on his hard drive? I thought it was porn.
That was like a porn but it was also like, wait,
there's a TV special bin Laden's hard Drive in twenty
twenty and it's on Disney Plus. OA. Now I need

(01:22:10):
to find this hang on, No, I found I found it.
They honest hard drive were found cars Chicken Little and
Ice Age, Don of the Dinosaurs, and an awful lot
of pornography, yes, and documentaries about himself, including the two
thousand and eight comedy documentary Aware in the World as

(01:22:31):
Osama bin Laden and books on popular conspiracy theories about
nine to eleven.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Oh hell yeah. Americannians were already dimly familiar with Paul
Hogan due to all of the work he did for
the Australian Tourism Board, which he apparently did pro bono
just in the name of Ozsie Pride.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
He's the top Australian, He's the Australian of the Year.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Seventeen years running. The success of Crocodile Dundee revolutionized tourism
in Australia, seeing how it was basically one giant advertisement
for how awesome they are. In twenty sixteen, Peter Hook
not that one, but the communications manager at Kakadoo Tourism
told Travel and Leisure in eighty six Australians hadn't even
been to Kakadu, let alone Americans. Basically, Kakadoo is a

(01:23:15):
mining area. Uranium was its biggest mineral. The government actually
built a road from Darwin to kakado not for tourism
but for mining. I don't know what that last sentence means.
The film brought tourists and the area became more accessible
with the construction of improved roads. In twenty sixteen, Tourism
chief executive Tony Mail told Perth Now Perth Now the

(01:23:39):
film helped put Australia on the map let alone Kackadoo,
let alone, let alone Kackadoo, adding that Crocodile Dundee and
the Kakadu National Park still get an average of one
hundred and thirty five thousand Google searches monthly. According to
the Guardian, They even started giving Crocodile Dundee tours in
the aforementioned Kakadoo National Park where the movie was film

(01:24:00):
and in Darwin, where you can have close encounters with
live crocodiles. Three hours away in Jabiru, you can stay
in the indingenous owned Mercure Crocodile Hotel, which is shaped
like a crocodile, before exploring the wilderness of the aforementioned
Kakadoo through guided tours, scenic flights or arts and crafts
lessons with indigenous Aborigine tribes who have lived in the

(01:24:21):
Northern Territory for as previously mentioned, forty thousand years.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
You should do the next part.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
Yeah, you know, it's funny film. Funny film, a great
line about the knife.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
Paul Hogan Q guy hansoms and nice muscles. Much of
this has not aged well, as you know, you might
surmise from the low hanging fruit of his comedy show
that launched him to stardom. There's an article in a
Guardian by writer named Luke Buckmaster from twenty eighteen that

(01:24:51):
just shows the astonishing breadth of the offense quite offensive
things that happened in the film. They'd be for starters
sue the journalist she is not actually a journalist, but
working for her boyfriend for her father's paper. A lot.
That's a rich text, we'll move on. There are comparisons
made between the indigenous Aboriginal tribes arguing for land rights

(01:25:14):
in Australia to Flees arguing over who owns the dog
they live on, and of course Mick asking sue Charlton's chauffeur,
who is played by Reginald vel Johnson aka Carl Winslow
from Family Matters and the cool cop from Die Hard
what tribe he's from? The article like cause that's the

(01:25:35):
thing about Like, I mean, come on, man, well actually
maybe not. Maybe he'd never seen a black person. That
part I buy. There's also a yeah, there's a trends.
There's a moment of outright transphobia. You know, there's a
trans woman that Paul Hogan is talking to before a
friend pulls him aside and says, I've been trying to

(01:25:55):
tell you all night that girl she's a guy. And
Dundee grabs the woman in the crotch and points and
yells a guy dressed up like a shila, how about that?

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
Or look at that?

Speaker 2 (01:26:07):
And the pub explodes into rapturous laughter and applause.

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
He also he grabs another woman in the art gallery
and Sue says, it's okay. He's Australian, of course. Paul
Hogan has some enlightened thoughts about this. While discussing Cancel
culture with the project, he's quoted as saying it's sometimes
understandable and in some cases stupid. In the case of
me and the shows I did, it was never designed

(01:26:35):
to hurt anyone. I just love starting a sentence with.
In the case of me, I'm taking that per The
Daily Mail, Hogan told The Australian, I don't think I
ever did anything with any sort of malice. Okay, man,
the success we forgot We've got to mention one. Sorry,

(01:26:55):
there's in the sequel. He's trying to talk a suicidal
man down from a leg edge and so he stops
this guy from killing himself and then hugs him, and
the guy says like something like, well, now I can
go back to Steve say he's a gay guy and
uh then dundee, let's go in disgust.

Speaker 1 (01:27:13):
And does the guy fall off the bridge after that?
I don't believe so oh.

Speaker 2 (01:27:17):
Oh greatest Living American of the Year character actor Dan Hidaiya.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
Yeah, I was gonna say, what were you still alive?
I would have accepted Leslie Nielsen.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
Oh yeah, goodness.

Speaker 1 (01:27:29):
Is he Canadian? He seems like he would be Canadian. Yeah,
so well, look he's Canadian.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
I have a sincere vote, and it's Willy Nelson. I
have a sincere vote. Sure, and it's Willy Nelson.

Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
Okay. The success of Crocodile Dundee proved to be the
predictable blessing and a curse for Paul Hogan. In twenty
twenty two, he told Mark Meets because of the ridiculous
success of Dundee, which is still the most successful and
defended film ever made, it's sort of like, oh, whatever
I do next will flop by comparison, so I bother
so I mentally sort of retired after the first one.

(01:28:03):
And although Paul Hogan and Lynn Koloski started the nineteen
eighty eight follow up, Crocodile Dundee two, it was not
well received by critics and failed to out earn the original,
Although it's still made the top five of the box
office in nineteen eighty eight, It has a nine percent
on Rotten Tomatoes, but Ronald Reagan watched it at Camp
David and apparently liked it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
This was during the Middle East Accords.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
So Scott that going for it. At one time in
the early nineties, Paramount was considering a crossover sequel with
one of its other Big Eighties franchises, which would have
birthed Crocodile Dundee meets Beverly Hills Cop. That is so funny.

Speaker 2 (01:28:41):
I assumed they would have come up with a better title,
but I also assumed that they wouldn't have.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Yeah no, and it would have been the Avon Costello rule.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
Just being so funny that Axel is not referred to
as anything other than Beverly Hills Cup, like the Hunchback
of Notre Dame.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
Ultimately, Murphy vetoed the idea, but then he went on
to make Pluto Nash. As you mentioned earlier, Paul Hogan
was offered the lead role in Ghost, which eventually went
to Patrick Swayzee, and he turned this movie down to
star in Almost an Angel, the third installment of the
Crocodile Dundee franchise. Two thousand and one's Crocodile Dundee in
Los Angeles is so bad that we just assumed not

(01:29:22):
mention it. He was nominated for a Razzie Award for
Worst Remake or Sequel, but lost out to Tim Burton's
Planet of the Apes.

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):
Good he did get a marriage out of it, though.
There was a love connection made between Paul Hogan and
his co star Linda Koslowski, which is hilarious because Roger
the God Ebert specifically commented on the lack of romantic
chemistry between the two leads. Their union caused a bit
of a typically Australian scandal, since Paul was already married
to a woman named Noline Edwards, whom he met as

(01:29:51):
a teenager at the pool where he was a lifeguard
way back in nineteen fifty eight. He would later say,
I had three sons by the time I was twenty two,
so I had to grow up very fast. As reported
by e T Canada, the famed bigamist and Edwards separated
briefly in nineteen eighty one, but married again less than
a year later. They would part for good following the

(01:30:11):
film of Crocodile Dundee. It was but one of the
downsides of Hogan's experience. It became a very public divorce,
with the media depicting Hogan rightfully so, as abandoning his family.
But Hogan wed Koslowski in a private ceremony in Australia
in nineteen ninety at a mansion that he built as
a wedding gift for his bride.

Speaker 1 (01:30:31):
That's cute.

Speaker 2 (01:30:32):
There were no rooms for his other three sons.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
Has there ever been a you know those marriages like
Lizen Dick where they divorce and then they marry again.
Has the second marriage to the same person ever stuck?
I can't think of one. I don't care.

Speaker 2 (01:30:48):
The pair had a son named Chase, and they settled
in Los Angeles, where they raised him together. Sadly, they
split up in twenty thirteen, with Koslowski telling the Sydney
Morning Herald, Honestly, we just naturally grew apart. They would
frequently say in interviews how little they had in common,
but previously spuned his opposites attracting. She said, I lived
in Paul's shadow for many, many years, and it's nice

(01:31:09):
to feel my own light right now. The divorce was
very amicable, with Hogan himself saying it was twenty wonder
four years two or three that were sort of like
worn out. I'm very flighty. A woman lasts for about
a quarter of a century and then they get bored
with me. That's medium funny. He refused to characterize the
nineteen year old marriage's a failure, saying how can you
fail after a quarter of a century? Failed marriages are

(01:31:32):
when two people stay together even though they have long
ago lost interest. Kozlowski received a one off payment of
six point twenty five million dollars and the right to
remain living in their Venice Beach home for four years
or until she remarried, which ever happened first. While Hogan,
bless his heart, kept his eye on the prize, he
retained his rights to Crocodile Dundee, the character, and the

(01:31:53):
film company that produced the classic films.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
Australian actist Rebert Wilson said in recent years that she
approached Paul Hogan to make a Crocodile Dundee reboot with
her starring in the lead role. Obviously it would have
Paul Hogan in it in some way, she said, but
he didn't want a female to play Crocodile Dundee. I
think it's a travesty, as I think out of anyone
in Australia. I'm the one most suited to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
There's like, we're misreading all of these quots.

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
Yeah, I think there's yeah as Americans, and I think yeah.
I'm fairly certain that there's some degree of sarcasm there,
although she clearly did really want to do it. In
January twenty eighteen, fans of Crocodile Dundee were excited to
see teasers that seemed to hint at a new sequel.
This was followed by an expensive and extensive ad at

(01:32:41):
the Super Bowl featuring Danny McBride, Chris Hemsworth and Paul
Hogan himself. The trailer light clip fooled many into believing
that there was something bigger in the works, but instead
it was merely a twenty seven million dollar ad campaign
designed to revitalize Australian tourism. Australia's Minister for Trade, Tourism
and Investment, the Honorable Steven Siabo, told Tourism Australia this

(01:33:05):
is the single largest investment Tourism Australia has ever made
in the US market. The ad campaign had another result,
pissing off Crocodile Dundee super fans. According to Slate. Many
people wish the reboot was real, with some fans even
banding together to sign a petition. The Daily Mail reported
that Paul Hogan had no plans to make another Crocodile

(01:33:27):
Dundee movie. He told The Today Show It's not gonna happen.
But you know, for all we've said about Australia over
the course of this episode, I find a certain degree
of sweetness in Mick Crocodile Dundee. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):
I mean, the ways in which you can point out
the negativities are so cartoonish. But I also think this
movie is very funny. Paul Hogan is an incredibly charming man.
He might be not good at sketch comedy, but he's
very charming. Readily, uh things I do for nineteen eighty

(01:34:04):
never mind. And like I said again, man, every Australian
I've ever met has just been a delight, you know,
sometimes a delight that would result in astounding hangovers for me,
but a delight nonetheless. So please don't take my taking
the piss of them for off them, taking the piss

(01:34:27):
of them, taking the piss from them, from them, I'll
go from them, taking the piss to them, within them
of where.

Speaker 1 (01:34:37):
Is the piss and where can it be removed? How
do you remove the piss? How do you take the
piss off? Someone?

Speaker 2 (01:34:43):
Catheter very quietly cath Yeah, Australia is great, you know,
just like two of my favorite bands of all time
and history of Lovely, lovely.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
Charming people and great Barrier Reef fun movie.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
Oh yeah, they got great reefs. Oh Royal Headache. I
forgot about Royal Headache. They're probably one of my favorite
bands of the past ten years. Incredible punk band who
I believe just broke up because they were Australian and
the lead singer was like a moss. But I forgot
about Royal Headache.

Speaker 1 (01:35:15):
Great band. Uh you got a kicker? I write a kicker. Okay.
So I'd like to leave you with this quote from
Paul Hogan. He talked about how kind of disturbed he
was that people in the US saw his character as
they cross between Chuck Norris and Rambo, but for him
this really wasn't the heart of his creation. He said,
when Crocodile Dundee was due to be released, the movie

(01:35:37):
scene is screaming out for a movie hero who doesn't
kill seventy five people less of those commandos, terminators, ex
terminators and squashers. Makes a good role model. There's no
malice in the fellow and he's human. He's not a
whimp or a sissy just because he doesn't kill people.
And you know, from an Australian, that's as much as

(01:35:59):
we're gonna get a kidding.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
I mean, I also think it's funny where he's like,
He's like, yeah, Americans just thought of me as a
cross between you know, Robert Redford and Bruce Lee and
Sylvester Saloone, Arn't Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean,
Marlon Brando, Ned Kelly, Ned Kelly, three of the four
guys on Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 1 (01:36:25):
At least two of the Beatles.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):
The's two of the Beatles. Sure, yeah, yeah, Elvis Presley's
bass player, Jerry Lee Lewis's bass player that he shot
in the chest. But I didn't think of myself that way.
Australians hit me up.

Speaker 1 (01:36:39):
You're hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
I love you. I'll get drunk with you anytime this week.
I'm Alex Hegel.

Speaker 1 (01:36:43):
And I'm Jordan run Tag. We'll catch you next time.
Too much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
The show's executive producers.

Speaker 1 (01:36:55):
Are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The show's supervising producer
is Michael Alder. June.

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan Rundogg
and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (01:37:04):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and a ghost Funk orchestra.
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review. For more podcasts and iHeartRadio, visit the
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}'Crocodile' Dundee: Everything You Didn't Know