Passion Project is a loaded term.

So often the words Passion Project come laden with a certain perceived vanity.

And yes, many times in cinema, in the history of film, passion projects

have failed due to a perceived overindulgence by a particular filmmaker. For Arnold Schwarzenegger

especially, Last Action Hero was a passion project. This film, in many ways, was made entirely

on the shoulders of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And that's what we're going to talk about in this installment.

How the failure of this film not only was a blow to Schwarzenegger,

it occurred at a time when entertainment media was ravenous for opportunities

to cut down someone of such immense box office prowess as Arnie himself.

What's uniquely ironic is that I did not foresee how much of a passion project this Last Action Hero series would be.

Yes, it had been a movie I'd wanted to cover for many years, but always found an obstacle in my co-host's

stalwart dissension in the conversation about its classic status. So it was a passion project

that Joe and I got to sit down and talk about it at all. It became even more of a passion

project, as during the course of the recording, it became evident that we were sitting on

over three hours of analysis.

A treatise, a masterclass on Last Action Hero,

such as no one had ever done or probably should have done in the past.

And it's a good thing that it was a passion project.

Because as I sat down to edit together all of the audio,

it became apparent that into the second episode, some sort of

glitch with Joe's audio produced a horrendous scratching sound that would have made the listener

...