Episode 352 - Training Day (w/ Hermes Auslander)

“King Kong ain’t got shit on me!”

Join Ian & Hermes for our 352nd episode as we climb into Alonzo Harris’s Monte Carlo and discover very quickly that this is absolutely not going to be a normal first day on the job in Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day (2001).

Megs isn’t with us this week — Alonzo told her they were just stopping for a quick drink and she sensibly got out of the car.

Liam was supposed to join us, but somebody mentioned the Russian mob and he has spent the entire week refusing to answer the door.

Kev made it as far as the bathtub scene, quietly put his shoes back on and went home.

This week we discuss:

A film that is incredibly well laid out… until the third act. For most of Training Day, everything feels deliberate, controlled and carefully planted. So what happens when the machinery starts to wobble?

Did Ethan Hawke actually have the harder job? Denzel gets the swagger, menace and fireworks. Hawke has to make earnestness compelling.

The scene Denzel was jealous of. There’s one sequence where even Washington apparently knew Hawke had the better material.

Ian makes one claim about himself very early in the episode. Hermes then spends the rest of the show making absolutely certain he never forgets he said it.

The Training Day that could have been. We look at some of the other actors linked to Alonzo and Jake — and how radically different those versions of the movie might have felt.

Denzel versus Ethan. One actor gets to dominate the room. The other has to survive it.