Welcome everybody to another Wednesday Night Book Club.
I'm your host Andy Rice of Pride Rice Podcast, so let's get Pride, which I've already started
to do.
This is a fun, weed-based book review club that meets every Wednesday night.
You can help me choose the book by going to our website, friedricepodcast.com, and submitting
a book review there.
Or, if you are feeling spicy and you want to leave a voicemail for the podcast, or for
me, or for the book club itself, you can call 702-829-0117.
Again, that's 702-829-0117.
That is our number.
It doesn't ring, so don't worry, I'm not going to answer.
It's just a voicemail.
Let me know what book you want me to read and review, and I will, because right now
I'm just kind of choosing at will.
So far, it's been hit or miss.
I think as far as...
Well, I mean, I've liked them all, but as far as...
I don't want it to just be books that I read as a kid that I enjoyed reading, or sci-fi,
or Stephen King books the whole time.
I would like some variety.
Recently, and I haven't done a review on it, but I read House on the Cerulean Sea, and
that was definitely an interesting pick, about an adoption agent guy who's in charge of making
sure that children are safe in a world where every now and then children are born with
supernatural abilities, and he is sent to an island where they keep the most precious
cases, and he is sent there to determine whether or not they are...
What the whole deal of the island is, because there's a bit of a secrecy shrouding the place.
And I don't want to give away anything, because it's definitely worth a read.
It's definitely sweet.
It's like one of those kind of give you some tears in your eyes, but like the sweet kind,
you know, not a...
It's not too dark.
It's not violent or anything.
It's just a story about...
What does it mean?
That's not the book I'm reviewing.
Well, let's go read House on the Cerulean Sea.
Today we are talking about two books.
It's going to be The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier and Beyond the Chocolate War, also
by Robert Cormier.
The first one was written in 1974, and Beyond was written in 1985, so an 11-year gap.
And shortly after the second book was written, so a couple of years later, they made a movie
directed by Keith Gordon, and it's 1988, The Chocolate War.
And I had never watched this movie.
I had not seen it before.
And this is one of my favorite books from when I was younger, and I've read it a couple
of times over the years.
Before I didn't know it had a sequel, and I read it like maybe a couple of times.
And then found out there was a sequel and lost my mind because I was like, holy shit.
And now I've read...
I won't read one without the other because it's...
As we'll find out, it's very much...
You can't.
So let's see.
For the first time of doing this Wednesday Night Book Club, we have...
Am I too loud?
I might be a little bit too loud.
Let me turn myself down just a little bit.
We have...
Sorry, guys.
I'm still learning my new soundboard and mic, but I actually think I figured it out.
I think this is going to sound a lot better than the last one did.
So bear with me.
I'm figuring it out.
I'm going on forums.
I'm trying to...
I don't know anything about audio engineering.
It's my first soundboard I've ever owned.
I'm looking at all these knobs.
I still don't know what most of them do.
I just know that if I go online and I look at what other people are saying, I can kind
of figure out at least where the knobs should be-ish.
But anyway, it doesn't matter.
That's not the point.
All right.
So for the first time since this podcast has started or since the book club, I have a book
that has a movie.
And so I decided to watch it this time.
And I'm glad that I did because there are some noticeable differences.
So if you're a fan of the book and you haven't seen the movie or vice versa, you're about
to learn some shocking differences from both formats.
So let's get into what is The Chocolate War.
So The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.
I hope I'm saying that right.
Or Cormier.
I think it's Cormier.
Cormier is a controversial young adult novel written in 1974 that has been on so many banned
book lists over the years.
In fact, one of the notes that I took was that a 1987 report by the People for the American
Way, The Chocolate War was the most challenged book ahead of Catcher in the Rye and of Mice
and Men.
So this was at one point more controversial than Catcher in the Rye.
And that is saying something because that's always been even South Park made fun of the
fact that it's like been this classic banned book that people have an issue with.
And sure, The Chocolate War does cover some pretty intense themes.
You know, you have one character who is probably dealing with like a budding homosexuality.
He doesn't really cover that much.
But you know, this kid gets excited when he bullies other boys and when they roughhouse,
he like finds himself getting erections, that kind of deal.
And he doesn't really go into that too much.
But I think that's definitely something that's addressed.
You have bullying in the most savage, you know, way.
I mean, it's bad in this book.
And it addresses sort of the futility of fighting.
I mean, there's so many.
You have a lot of bad language, if language is something that you're a stickler on.
And it does talk about sex.
But you know, from being a teenage boy, from that perspective, I did read a review on it
that they said that the author has this uncanny ability to remember what it's like being a
teenager.
And he does.
As you're listening to this, it covers these kind of emotions that I feel like other writers
who write for young people's perspectives miss.
Like when you're reading Harry Potter, for instance, he's not ever going and I understand
that's not the point of the book, but he's never like has those puberty moments of shame
or guilt or like confusion or anything like this.
It's more that he like they gloss over all that so you can just enjoy a wizard book.
But Choclore doesn't shy away from that kind of stuff.
And it really goes into like what when especially when you're in a microcosm, like a little
like a little mini ecosystem of because this is an all Catholics boy school and are an
all boys Catholic school.
And in this school, I'll tell you this.
So this was the plot.
So it's the Choclore is it's an all boys Catholic school called Trinity High School.
And in Trinity High School, there's a secret.
It's ran by brothers like priests or not quite priests, the middle ground between like a
nun, I guess.
But you know, I guess that would be what a brother is.
I'm not really on the whole Catholic religion.
I don't know much.
When I grew up, the flavor of Christian was, I think, loosely Lutheran.
But with, I guess, just modern Christian values, it didn't really go too much into like we
had communion and you had to be baptized.
But it wasn't like we didn't we did a mass.
There wasn't any 5am bullshit.
So I was OK with that at the time.
And then I grew out of it.
But that's just me.
And so this covers so they the brothers run the school and the headmaster is out sick.
So Brother Leon, who think of him like the closest thing I can think of is like a Snape
from Harry Potter.
I know it's making so many references to Harry Potter right now.
That's it's I mean, I guess it's another book that takes place at a school.
But in this so Brother Leon takes it upon himself for this year's chocolate sale to
he finds a great deal on these Mother's Day chocolates that he buys for a dollar a box.
But he had to buy twenty thousand of them, which is twice the amount of chocolates that
kids had to sell the year before.
And he's selling them for twice the amount of money.
So it's not over two dollars a box as opposed to last year.
I think it was a dollar.
So it's harder.
And he enlists so in this in this Catholic school, you have a secret group of boys called
the Vigils.
Think of them like the skulls if you ever watched that movie.
But like they're a group that meets up whenever the finger is what they refer to as their
this they flip a little thing over upside down on the bulletin board to let members
know that there's a meeting.
You find that in the second book.
I don't think that's in the first book, but they meet up.
And as far as like what makes this interesting is you never really know what they do.
There's no point of the Vigils.
And I think that might be the point because they feel like they're a fixture of the school.
They're necessary to be there.
Otherwise, the school is chaos and they hold it together.
They're like the thin student line that, you know, keeps it all in place, like doesn't
let the kids root, you know, whatever.
But they they don't do anything in this to show that they are effective in any capacity
like that.
So basically all they do from my point of view, and I've read this book several times,
watched the movie and read the sequel from my point of view, all the Vigils are there
for is to occasionally prank other students and make them do embarrassing things.
Now on one level, if they pretty much get to every student, I don't know if they do.
There's 400 students.
I don't know if they have time for that, but I would imagine that over the course of your
four years of high school that the Vigils might get to you eventually.
So it might be a bonding kind of thing where it's like no one talks about the Vigils.
You don't mention the Vigils, but you're going to get a Vigil assignment at one point, right?
And I guess once you've gone through your Vigil assignment, you're then part of Trinity.
So I guess if you want the that fake sense of belonging to a school that you're going
to be out of in a few years anyway, then yeah, I guess there's some merit to doing these
assignments.
But other than that, these are just cruel things that mean bullies all started a club,
I guess.
It's undetermined amount of time as to how long it's been around.
Like either the Vigils have been around since the beginning of this.
The school is made and maybe that's a hundred years old school, who knows?
Or maybe this is just the first iteration of it and they're going to try to pass it
on to the next kids, like the next group, because in the sequel they do talk about because
one of the the guy I'm going to talk about in just a moment is a senior and he's about
to leave.
So he has to pass it down to the next person.
So in this group, you have, I'm going to say three people of note.
You have Carter, Carter, who is the president, but he's basically just a figurehead.
He's got a gavel, he's a big jock, but sports seasons are over except for football.
But in the sequel, which is the second semester of the school year, all the seasons fended.
So he's kind of like listless.
But in the first one, at least he still has football.
He's sort of a minor character in the first book.
He's there as the head, you know, the threat of violence if something goes awry, you know,
to that degree.
Then you have Obie.
Well, I guess then you have Archie, who is, in my opinion, the main character of the series.
We're going to call it a series, the two books.
He's the main character.
He's the assigner of the vigils.
And what his job is, is to come up with these creative, psychological sort of manipulating
assignments to give to these kids.
And the way with the help of Obie.
And Obie is this nerdy henchman of the vigils of Archie specifically.
He kind of hates Archie.
I mean, he absolutely hates Archie because Archie is a cruel, manipulative son of a bitch.
But he also admires Archie because Archie is a genius with what he does.
If Archie pointed his genius towards good, towards like turning that creativity into
like some sort of civil planning or finding a way to organize people to get charity done
or whatever, right?
Like, I don't know what, anything.
He could be a force for good, but instead he leans way into his just serial killer mentality,
almost like leave me alone.
Don't touch me.
I know that sounds a lot like me if you're a fan of the podcast, but I'm not a serial
killer.
Despite everyone saying that I have a room full of bodies in my apartment.
It's just one body and it's a puppet and it's part of a comedy thing I do.
So let's not even get into that.
But he, so Obie hates Archie, admires Archie, looks up to Archie, wants nothing to do with
Archie.
It's a complicated sort of relationship.
And it gets, there's, I'm going to tell you about one of the adaptations that they made.
So I mean, I guess I can talk about it.
Well, once you, sorry, I'm a little bit disorganized.
I took a lot of notes for this one because I wanted to be prepared and I wanted you guys
to learn something that I learned because this was just an interesting journey.
So Archie is in charge of doing the assignments.
And he, when we, the first assignment we see get done is actually kind of crazy because
he gets a kid called Goober and Goober is Jerry's best friend.
And Jerry, I guess would be technically the main character of the first book because he's
the one that you follow most.
But you do follow Archie quite a bit.
So Jerry's a new kid to the school.
He's a freshman.
So I think he starts middle of the semester.
I think he's like starts a little bit late.
So, Mom died earlier in the year or last year.
So he's still reeling from that.
He's pretty depressed.
And Archie writes his name down along with Goober for assignments.
And Goober goes up first.
And Goober is told that he needs to go into a classroom and unscrew every screw on all
of the desks and chairs.
And so that way, when the class starts the next day, all of the desks and chairs break
apart.
So, simple.
I mean, I don't think it was that brutal of a prank.
But the brother, the teacher, the brother, he like reacts so poorly to this that he leaves
the school.
And then in the sequel, you find out that he dies from heart complications.
But it's a little bit vague.
Like he might have killed himself.
So this might have been more drastic.
Like he's a sensitive man and they kind of really fucked him up by doing that.
And it was mean.
And so Goober, who was responsible for that, even though he had help from Vigils that night
because he wasn't going to be able to do it alone, he feels awful.
And so he sort of just from that moment on is like, I'm just going to stay out of all
this shit.
Like I don't want to get involved again with Vigils or anything.
He feels real bad and I feel bad for Goober.
But the chocolate sale happens.
20,000 boxes of chocolates.
Twice the money.
Kids aren't going to want to sell this shit.
So brother Leon, the professor's name of the story, he goes and asks Archie privately,
hey, I need the Vigils help, actually names them.
And Archie says that he'll do it.
Sort of feels pressured, but he says, yeah, all right, the Vigils will help you.
And so as sort of a fuck you to Leon, the next assignment that he gives is for Jerry
and he tells Jerry, don't accept the chocolates and don't sell them for 10 days.
But we don't know that it's 10 days right at the start, but he says, don't sell the
chocolates.
And so Jerry, it cuts to the next day and brother Leon's homeroom class, which Jerry
has and brother Leon's going down the names of all the kids like, all right, say you're
here and that you're going to accept your chocolates.
And everyone does.
And when it gets to Jerry, he says no.
And brother Leon's like, I don't think you understand saying no means you're not going
to take the chocolates.
He goes, no.
And brother Leon's like, of course we can't force you.
This is voluntary.
This is, you know, but are you sure you don't want to take the chocolate?
He's like getting mad.
And Jerry says no.
And this starts the chocolate war where Jerry says no.
Brother Leon wants him to sell the chocolate.
And then you see all of the inner workings of the vigils.
What's going on with Archie?
And you meet the, I guess the last sort of main character, which would be Emil Janza.
And Emil Janza is basically the thug.
He's one of my favorite characters in the book because of how just savage he is.
You meet him and he's just out in the parking lot and he's just siphoning gas from another
student.
And when he gets caught by Archie, Archie's like, you're an animal, Emil.
What if he comes out here?
And Emil's like, what if he does?
You know?
And Emil found out when he was a younger kid that everybody wants to avoid conflict.
Most people.
So if you just do what you want, you can get away with almost anything.
And that's one of the most real fucking things I've ever read in a book.
When I read that for the first time, it reminded me of so many fucking assholes that I went
to school with or that I've just known over the years.
And I think what makes you an asshole is understanding that you really can just get away with anything
you want.
So I work at a restaurant and when people, it's a pizza place.
And when we, like, here's the trick, I guess.
When you order food from a place and they deliver it to you, if you just call them back
and say the food wasn't good, even if it was, they will, depending on how busy it is, they'll
either ask if they can credit you for next time or they'll remake you food and send it
your way, right?
And you can end up getting free pizza every time you order because these big chains, they
don't care.
They just, they'd rather just give people free food and forget about it than to, you
know, try to help the managers out and give them ban lists or blacklists to be like, no,
we're not going to deliver these people who always call back and always complain and always
get free food.
Sorry, I had a long shift last night.
Maybe that has nothing to do with the book.
I even forgot where I was at.
Oh, so Emil finds out, yeah, that he's basically just one of these people that can just get
away with just doing whatever the fuck they want all the time.
And he's a jerk.
He's also like, he's the main antagonist of this book.
Well, or Archie is, if you really want to, or just the Vigils or Brother Leon could all
be considered antagonists in this.
So you have Emil who sort of is in Archie's, under his thumb, because Archie took a picture
of him jerking off in the school bathroom and he's, you know, doesn't want to get out.
So he is kind of cool with Archie.
Otherwise he probably just beat up Archie maybe because that's just the kind of guy
he is.
So Jerry's 10 days ends and he still refuses to sell the chocolate and Brother Leon at
this point, oh, that's another huge plot point, but Brother Leon in order to get the information,
he gets this nerdy kid named David, not Carradine, I know that's an actor, but as far as like
Caruso maybe, David Caruso, I feel like that's another actor.
But David something, David C. And he is a straight A student and Brother Leon calls
him into the office and he goes, hey, so let's talk about this F that I gave you.
And the guy's like, I know what, like, what, what is that all about?
I'm a straight A student.
And Brother Leon's like, all right, cool, just tell me what's going on with Jerry.
And this, you know, we make mistakes.
Have you ever heard of that?
A teacher making a mistake?
That's crazy, right?
Like, but yeah, this could totally be looked at later on.
And so David's like, okay, yeah, well, the vigils gave Jerry an assignment.
So you know, that's what he's doing.
It's for 10 days.
And he's like, oh, that's up tomorrow.
Great.
And so when the next day happens, Jerry says, no, Brother Leon loses it.
And then he talks to Archie gets mad at him saying, you're fucking me over.
I found this, you know, other students are not selling chocolates now because they are
following this Jerry example.
And so then you would think the book could take two paths here.
And it doesn't take the path that you would think it would take.
So I think that the path that like you would get today if it was written for the feel good
ending would be Jerry starts a revolution.
The revolution overthrows the vigils, the corrupt, everything about the corrupt nature
of Brother Leon gets exposed.
The headmaster comes back.
Brother Leon gets shipped away to some other school or or or nunnery.
The brothers go there, you know, wherever you send bad brothers.
So that would be one way to go.
Instead what this book does is shows the futility of rebellion in some cases, because Archie
gets he goes, all right, well, this is what we're going to do.
We're going to get everybody to sell chocolates at the school.
We're going to, you know, get every popular kid to make it the coolest fucking thing on
earth is to sell chocolates.
We're going to do this and we're going to make this the biggest chocolate sale of all
time.
We're going to really push.
We're going to sell all these chocolates.
So he gets that done and they sell nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety or fifty
boxes, just fifty boxes shy of the twenty thousand.
The brother Leon's a static.
He got what he what he came here for, which is to sell all the money.
He's fifty, fifty boxes short.
Doesn't matter.
But Archie has an idea to sell those last fifty boxes.
And this is one of those.
Oh, in between this.
Sorry, I forgot.
But Emil on sort of orders from Archie, but he does it in a shitty way.
He gets a bunch of school, like a bunch of kids around the neighborhood, like bad kids,
younger kids, but bad kids nonetheless to jump Jerry and beat the shit out of him.
So Jerry just got his ass kicked.
And now everybody's calling him and taunting him and like torturing him and like hanging
up on him, like laughing when he answers the phone and like yelling out from the street.
They're like psychological warfare, physical.
You know, people are cold shouldering with school.
It's just awful.
And Jerry just is sticking to his like whatever.
And that's the thing.
He never really knows why.
He like it's just this unspoken, like this un.
This feeling that he gets that just never is put into words more than just this need
to rebel because everyone, you know, like it just he stuck to his to his need to rebel
to like his morals, his convictions.
And it's admirable.
But it's also like pointless because he everyone, everyone sells it.
He gets beat up.
And then Archie calls him and he says, and he tells him this plan that he has to sell
these chocolates.
And Jerry, who's just had enough of all this, like just torture from everybody, he agrees
because he just wants to get this over with.
And this might give him an opportunity to get the upper hand, even just a little bit.
And so here's the big reveal, the big plan, which is the finale.
And that is they're going to do a boxing match, just students.
Brothers aren't allowed.
This is it's going to be a student affair.
And they do a boxing match between Jerry and Emil.
And the thing is, it's not it's with boxing gloves, but it's not a standard boxing match.
It's a lottery.
So they sold the 50 boxes of chocolates, whatever they charging for tickets.
And each kid writes down who they want to punch the other one and where.
And then they pull out these slips throughout the night.
And it starts with a meal punching Jerry up, you know, uppercut left hook.
Jerry gets a punch off.
But then they accidentally read off a meal low blow to Jerry before Jerry could react.
Emil punches him in the dick, and that's when Jerry fights back and that's what Emil just
beats him to like beats the living shit out of him, beats him to a bloody pulp.
Fucks him up.
And that's and you see Brother Leon in the distance watching and Archie wins.
Nothing bad happens.
There is a in the in the book for every punishment, you the for every assignment, Archie has to
reach into a box that has five white marbles and one black marble.
And he pulls out the black marble.
He has to do the punishment, the assignment instead.
So that way, the signer doesn't get too out of control.
Like the power doesn't get to his head because there's always the possibility he himself
might have to do it.
And he skips like in the whole book, he doesn't have to do any of the punishments.
So because he keeps pulling up white marbles and at the end, he just basically wins.
It's just him and Obi again sitting on the bleachers or whatever.
They're just talking and that's it.
That's the end.
That's the it's it's Jerry loses.
The Goobers still depressed.
Emil Janza kind of wins Archie kind of wins.
The Vigils get away with it.
Brother Leon successfully makes his money.
What a sad, depressing ending.
Holy shit.
That's the end of the chocolate war on its own.
If I were to rate it, I'd give it probably a four out of five crunch bars.
Right.
Because I'm even going to go a little bit lower standard of chocolate, even though I
like punch bars.
That's probably what you were getting inside.
That's probably the level you were getting inside those Mother's Day chocolate boxes.
But I feel like you can't have one without the other when it comes to the chocolate war
and beyond the chocolate war.
Not only does beyond the chocolate war take place the following semester of the same school
year following all the same kids directly after the events of the chocolate war and
Brother Leon and the ramifications of everything that happened from that.
It also deals with the if you're going to go with the karma aspect, you can go with
everyone kind of gets their come up and their bad karmas do.
Right.
But it it doesn't feel complete.
Just the first book.
And it's also very short.
I read that in a day audiobook.
So sorry, I listened to that.
And again, I'm so tired of going to the comments and reading that it's like it's not real reading
that I'm listening to audiobooks.
Obviously, I'm comprehending everything that I'm listening to.
So just keep your snobest, you know, your eyes moving left and right, whereas my ears
absorbing information for some reason is a big stickler for you.
Like, OK, I know how to read.
I know.
Like I'm reading Wikipedia right now.
So anyway, fuck off.
I listen to this in a day.
It's a very quick.
I also listen to one point eight speed, so maybe not a day wouldn't be typical.
And I was driving around delivering pizzas the whole night.
So it's not a typical one day read, but it is quite a short book.
And I enjoy it.
I loved it as a kid.
But now we're getting into Beyond the Chocolate War and Beyond the Chocolate War is.
I think better in a lot of ways.
So first off, this is this is 10 years later, 11 years later that he wrote this book.
And so his writing style is a lot better.
He the way he describes the feelings of the characters, the way that he describes even
just like the physical locations, the set dressings, the world building.
It's all a lot better.
You get a better understanding of who the visuals are, what the power dynamic is.
You get a better understanding of who Archie is, who Obie is, who Carter is, who that David
guy is.
Oh, Cornaccio.
No, no, that's not.
Sorry.
They don't even mention David in the Wikipedia for Beyond the Chocolate War.
But such important part.
I did have some notes.
Oh, OK.
Well, actually, before I get into Beyond the Chocolate War, let me talk a little bit about
the movie and some of the differences real quick so that way I can just get into it.
So there's just a few changes.
So at the end of the movie, Archie pulls a black.
So he pulls a white marble for the boxing match.
But then Carter says, you got to try again because there's two fighters.
So you have to do it for a meal now.
And so he reaches in, he pulls a black marble and he has to stand in place for a meal instead
of a meal, obviously.
So now it's Archie versus Jerry.
And when they kind of when it just goes into full blown brawl, Jerry beats the shit out
of Archie.
And so Archie, having his ass handed to him, Jerry standing up on the stage, he's feeling
victorious.
He looks out and he sees Goober looking like, man, you really kind of just played into their
hand, didn't you, Jerry?
And so he sort of fucks off.
And then Jerry looks out and he sees his mom, like, well, at least a ghostly apparition
of her in the crowd.
And she like it almost looks like on the brink of tears.
And she's like disappointed in him.
So his victory feels like flat.
And so he's sort of, you know, just standing there.
And he talks to Goober a little bit and they leave.
And then it cuts to Archie and Obie.
And Obie now is the new assigner.
And he says to Archie, you're lucky they're even keeping you in the visuals.
And now he's laughing and he's coming up with these like, we're going to make one guy eat
a snot in front of everybody and we'll make one dude get us pictures of his little sister
naked.
Or and then he's like, no, better get his mom.
So he's coming up with these lewd, gross, not well crafted at all assignments.
And Archie just has to sit there and take notes holding his bruised face, you know,
and even more bruised ego.
And so that is sort of the ending that I wanted.
Like, well, not I wanted, but the ending that you would like the happier ending.
So the guy who directed the movie, who, like I said before, his name is Keith Gordon.
And you're thinking, Keith Gordon, that sounds vaguely familiar.
It doesn't.
I don't know who that is, but I will say you know him from he acted in Christine.
So he's the kid, Arnie, that buys the car.
So in the 1983 movie, Christine, he's the guy.
He's basically Christine.
He's a handful of other movies, minor bits here and there.
He's directed a few things, including the Chocolate War and a movie called A Midnight
Clear, which I'm going to watch.
And it looks like it stars Johnny Drama from Entourage and it's a war movie.
So I don't know what that's going to be about.
But yeah, so Keith Gordon and then it stars as Brother Leon.
You have John Glover, who I absolutely love as Brother Leon.
He's so good at it.
And I love him in his other role that I'm familiar with him in the two roles I know
from, which is he plays Lionel Luther in Smallville, Lex Luther's dad.
So I'm sure a lot of you would recognize him with that.
And then also the movie Scrooged with Bill Murray.
He plays the producer guy on set, sort of like a douchey guy, like a I don't know if
he's an antagonist for Bill Murray or not.
But anyway, he's the guy.
He's like the slick executive guy.
And then it stars as Jerry Ian Mitchell Smith, who's from Weird Science.
He's one of the two dudes from that.
And then a few other people that I just don't recognize.
Oh, and then of course, sorry.
Carter is played by Adam Baldwin, who is the big dude in Firefly Jane.
And he's also in Full Metal Jacket and Independence Day and The Patriot.
So yeah, that was a good casting choice.
He's young too, sort of feels a little bit like the opposite of the outsiders, because
that one starred a bunch of people who went on to become super famous.
This stars like one guy that went on or two guys that went on to be somewhat famous.
So that's a big change.
And then also a huge change made into the book.
This is the last one I really wrote down was Brother Leon makes a point to tell David's
character, the one who he pressures into giving information about what's happening to Jerry
and flexes the whole I'll give you a failing grade if you don't kind of thing.
At the end of the movie or near the end, he says, hey, thanks for fixing my grade, Professor
and our brother Leon and Brother Leon's like, of course, you know, these, you know, blah,
blah, blah.
Like, that's what I said I would do.
So that's such a and I know that sounds like such a minor change that doesn't mean anything,
but it's so important if you've read the sequel to know that that couldn't have happened.
So oh, and then I just wrote as a oh, wait, there's a couple things.
At one point at the end, after Jerry wins the fight, everyone, the whole crowd starts
yelling Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.
I thought that was pretty funny.
Oby takes over crude assignments.
There's a a adaptation of this movie called The Assignment from 2012.
It's a student film, could not find it anywhere, can't find it to watch.
But the it makes some interesting choices.
For one, it makes Oby or it takes the school out of an all boys school and puts it in a
coed school and it makes Oby a female Archie's assistant and makes her fall in love with
Jerry.
So I would love to have watched that adaptation because that sounds like an interesting twist
on what I would typically anticipate.
Also, lastly, for the movie, but I was watching I went on YouTube and I there's a guy named
Canto1408 that's C-A-N-T-O-1408 who just reviewed Chocolate War and Beyond the Chocolate War
about three weeks ago.
And he's reviewing my next and he just reviewed the next movie that I'm going to review, which
is We All Fall Down.
Spoiler, just like two weeks ago, whatever.
So I'm following this random guy's career and I didn't even I didn't even notice.
So I'm so sorry, Canto1408, if you find this online and you think that I'm copying you,
not intentional, just another big fan of the series.
So lastly, I keep saying lastly, I'm just going to keep talking.
Pete Cormier, who is Robert's son, was tasked with selling chocolates as a freshman and
his dad gave him permission to not.
And so he felt sort of like a little bit of an outcast at school, but it also inspired
the book.
So that's why the book got written.
And it was Robert Cormier's first sort of dip into young adult fiction.
In fact, when he wrote it, he didn't write it as a young adult book.
He just wrote it as a novel.
And then it ended up being I think I don't know if he edited it all, edited it, but he
ended up becoming one of the most successful of the of young adults books.
So it was so controversial back in the day.
I was reading up on this.
There was a Moat middle school in the 80s, 86 after this came out, and they were savage
on trying to get this book out of here.
And there was a petition to get it banned.
And a local reporter on the news read that some of the signatures were invalid on the
petition.
Just that just like some of the which were they probably were probably some invalid signatures
on the petition.
She was just reporting on it.
She woke up the next day to smoke and a flammable liquid underneath her apartment door.
They were trying to murder her over this, which is absolutely insane.
It's not even that fucking savage of a book, although pretty depressing the lending there.
So Beyond the Chocolate War, Jerry has had his spirit broken, his body broken.
He's now he went to Canada for I know like a few weeks or maybe a couple months to recuperate.
He finds this church out there.
It's not super religious, but he finds that when he runs out to the church, the wind makes
the church sound like it's talking to him, you know, like just the noise of it all.
And so he finds comfort there.
It's like this little abandoned church or whatever.
And he finds somewhat of a peace, but he also learns to not cause waves.
The sad part was in his poster starting this, I mean, obviously intentional, but the audience
in his in his post in his locker, he had a poster that says, I think, dare to disturb
the universe.
And it's like a guy like walking out into the universe or whatever, a picture of it.
And that's like really cool.
But now his entire persona is the opposite of that.
It's don't cause waves, don't cause ripples, don't do anything.
Just keep your head down.
And so he comes back and he's not going to go back to Trinity High School and Goober
is also like not doing sports or anything.
He doesn't want to go back to Trinity after he finishes up this school year.
And he is still reeling about what he did to that one teacher, especially finding out
that that teacher just died.
And Goober tries reaching out to Jerry because Jerry's dad calls Goober and says, hey, please
come over and hang out with my son.
He needs you.
And that's an awkward sort of thing.
And so like everything is just uncomfortable.
Archie is still doing assignments and there's this new kid in school that's starting a new
transfer student, Ray Bannister, and he's interested in magic.
So he's also building a guillotine for a magic trick.
And him and Obie become friends after Obie goes to give him an assignment.
He ends up not having to do the assignment because of some, like the bishop cancels his
visit and so there's no reason to do the assignment that was going to involve the bishop.
So Obie instead becomes interested in learning, you know, like how he does his magic tricks
and they, they don't know, they become friends.
Obie also has a girlfriend, Laurie Gunderson, and she is the love of his life and everything's
going great there.
You have a new character called Bunting that's Archie's replacement.
So he's sort of also taking the place of Obie.
Obie's kind of getting edged out.
He's spending more time with his girlfriend.
Bunting is coming in, but he's a little bit too eager, a little bit too sadistic, a little
bit too willing to commit violence.
So Archie's trying to tame him a little bit, but at the same time he's using him to get
shit done because he doesn't like Obie and Laurie's new relationship.
So he kind of gives Bunting the go ahead to do what he needs to do to stop that from happening
anymore.
So Bunting along with his two buddies, they go one night while Archie, while Obie is making
out with Laurie in their car, sort of at like a makeout point, they open the doors, they
push Obie to the ground, hold him down, they take her, pull her sweater up over her head
so she doesn't see anything, exposing her breast in a bra, and Bunting reaches out and
cups a handful.
And then they, I don't know, they sort of run away or whatever.
So sexual assault for sure, Laurie is traumatized, she breaks up with Obie, doesn't want to have
anything to do with him, especially because he's part of that stupid Vigils and that she
hates that.
One moment.
So Obie, having seen one of the shoes being scuffed, one moment, edit this up.
So Obie, having seen one of the guy's shoes and it has like cut up sort of scuffed buckle
and ripped in-seat, or like the sole of the shoe, like he can recognize it.
And so he searches, like that's just part of his new thing, is he's now just like looking
at shoes all the time, he's like looking for who it could be.
Archie, on the other hand, is, you know, he's trying to, he's sort of losing control of
the Vigils, but he's gone a little bit too far and Carter, the president, he gives a
letter to Leon telling him like what Archie's planning because he didn't want to embarrass
the bishop because he is a religious guy.
He thinks that that's a little bit just too far.
And so now there's a rift between Obie, Archie, and Carter.
And so they, okay, so you have Brother Leon is pressing Archie because he now is the new
headmaster.
The headmaster didn't make it or he got too ill, you know, had to quit.
And so now Brother Leon in control of the school is pressing Archie on, you know, the
whole Vigils business.
He's like, I want this, the end of the school year to be, you know, it's perfect.
Like don't fuck this up.
And Archie doesn't like being told what to do.
So he wants to do, you know, he wants to do something.
But Obie ends up finding out through Cornaccio or Harley, one of the two guys that he was
one of the two other, besides bunting his buddies, finds him and he gets a meal, the
bully to come with him on the promise of, you know, maybe getting into the Vigils next
year.
And he takes them with them to go confront this guy with, you know, some muscle and they
end up, the guy confesses what they did.
He didn't know about the getting a handful of breasts, but he did know that like they,
you know, assaulted him or whatever.
And so now Obie knows that it was bunting that did it and that Archie gave the go at.
And so Obie starts planning his revenge.
A heartbroken nerdy Obie, Archie's assistant is now on, is trying to get revenge.
And this is where Ray Bannister comes into play.
Because Ray Bannister shows Obie sleight of hand and close up magic.
And Obie thinks to him, like has one of those eureka moments where he realizes that Archie
has been possibly using sleight of hand this entire time to get out of doing assignments.
So he uses that to his advantage later.
And so here comes fair day.
Oh, on the side, you have sort of Jerry's redemption art where him and Obie, him and
Goober, sorry, they go, Emil is still torturing Jerry, like sees that he's back in town.
He starts pacing in front of the dude's house.
It's like it's fucked up and mean, but they follow Goober and Jerry follow Emil and Emil
turns around and he kicks Goober in the nuts.
And then Jerry follows him in this alley and he just puts his arms down and lets Emil punch
him until Emil starts feeling like, what are you doing?
Fight back.
And Jerry's like, no, I'm not going to fight.
And so Emil punches him, beats him up a little bit, but then he's like, you know what, just
stay out of my fucking way.
And he leaves.
So Jerry does kind of win in a way, like at least Emil's not going to pick on him anymore.
But and Goober did stand by his friend, so he kind of redeemed that aspect a little bit
because he did feel like he let Jerry down last the last semester.
So that's sort of that's their whole thing, I guess.
But let's get back to Archie, right?
Like he so now we've got Fair Day.
Oh, I forgot about the sidebar, the whole David thing, the whole David.
So in the book, not the movie, the movie Brother Leon fixes David's grade.
In the book, he forgets to or at least the author forgot to address that plot point,
I feel.
And so I think he I don't think that was intentional because in the next book, it feels like he
just took a dropped plot point and made it into a major plot point, which I like.
So you get David who is a it cuts to he has like entire like little chapters.
Where it's just his point of view.
And he's just thinking to himself that like he tries to first kill himself and doesn't
do it at the last minute because he thinks it's not fair that he kills himself and Brother
Leon gets to live.
So he gets a butcher knife.
And then on Fair Day or Fool Day is what they call it.
He confronts Brother Leon in his office, puts a butcher like butcher's knife to Brother
Leon's throat.
Brother Leon tricks him, like gets his diversion, like diverts his attention just enough to
get away to fight him off.
Another brother comes in and then David runs off.
He ends up running to some high overpass thing and jumps to his death on some railroad tracks.
But the way he dies and that last suicidal thought is haunting because the moment he
is in the air, he regrets everything instantly.
He's just like, no, no, what am I doing?
And he thinks about his mom and his sister and his brother and all of his friends.
And he just he like he starts screaming and then he dies.
So like what a fucking tragic way for that character to die.
And the reason he the reason he did that is because Brother Leon forgot to put his grade
back.
He went from valedictorian to not and a matter of just Brother Leon's whim to try to get
information and it fucked him.
And it just it's tragic.
It's like and when he tells this Brother Leon, you know, he's just trying to live.
So he's like, we could fix this.
We could fix this.
But no, there's no fixing it.
It's done.
And his life's already ruined putting a butcher knife this dude's head.
So God, when I first read that as a younger, younger person, I was like, fuck, dude, that
was brutal.
But anyway, that that's one aspect of what's happening on Fool Day.
But then it cuts back to Obie having convinced Ray Banister to do a magic act for the talent
show portion of Fool Day.
And the reason they call it Fool Day is because there's always a fool who has like a kick
me sign on.
And in the Vigil's meeting, it was going to be, you know, one student.
But at the last minute, Obie, using slight a hand that he's been practicing, switches
out all of the marbles with just black marbles.
And so when Archie reaches in, he pulls out a black marble.
And later you find out that he could have done slight a hand and pulled out a white
one.
But he had seen Obie do his thing.
And he's just like, I want to see where this goes.
And so it's kind of a cool move on Archie's part.
He just goes with it and he becomes the fool.
And so he has a kick me sign on.
But no one at school dares kick Archie.
It's kind of cool.
He goes on the dunk tank and he's sitting there and nobody dares throws balls at it,
which is cool.
The kid does and he keeps missing the mark on purpose.
And the guy who runs the dunk tank, he's like, you know what?
Get out of here, kid.
I don't know who you are, but I'm not going to make a dollar with you here.
So he leaves.
But then the last thing is Archie being used as the head for the guillotine magic trick.
So earlier in the book, when Ray Bannister shows the trick to Obie, he smashes a cantaloupe
or a cabbage with the blade.
And then he gets his head underneath.
And when the blade falls, it doesn't do any damage to us.
Classic trick.
Blows Obie's mind.
He's like, we have to do this on stage.
And then he gets the idea to use Archie, maybe scare Archie a little bit.
And so he watches Ray.
He's been practicing over and over and over with him on what to do.
He's like his assistant, Obie the obedient.
And Ray does his trick and Ray reaches up on the top bannister.
After Archie's there and he hits the safety.
After cutting a cantaloupe or a cabbage, I don't know why I think cantaloupe, but a cabbage
clean in half.
Perfectly this time.
Like he perfected it.
Like you could tell he's been working on it.
He then puts Archie's head underneath, reaches up top and hits the safety button, the safety
switch to make it so that it's now in, you know, you're not going to die mode.
So Obie, he gets Carter to distract Ray just a little bit on stage so that Obie can reach
up and switch it back off of safety mode, which he does.
And so as the reader, as the listener, you're just sitting there going, oh my God, what's
about to fucking happen?
And the button gets pressed.
The blade comes down and Archie's fine.
And Obie doesn't know what's going on.
And Ray looks at Obie with like a questioning look, but then finishes up the show.
Huge applause.
Everyone loves it.
Ray backstage turns to Obie.
He goes like, man, I don't know what you were doing, but thank God we had that safety, that
second safety, you know, that's on there.
It's like, if we didn't, who knows what could have happened?
You almost messed up there, Obie, you know, like maybe kind of laps it off and walks away
thinking it wasn't like it was a mistake.
Right.
But Archie on the way out talking to Obie, Obie's like, Archie's like, huh, that was
a little bit crazy, whatever.
Like I can't believe he thought that, you know, whatever.
I think he says like, um, you wouldn't have killed me.
And Obie's like, I tried.
No, you're wrong.
I did.
I hit the safety switch.
I had no idea there was a second safety.
I wanted you dead.
And Archie's like, holy shit.
I, okay.
I kind of respect you for that, Obie.
And, uh, that's how that sorta ends with them.
And I think it's a better, it's, it's a depressing ending because the one kid kills himself.
Archie almost actually dies.
So he kind of gets his comeuppance.
Uh, I don't know.
I think this one had more, uh, suspense, more consequences, more personal victories and
defeats.
So I'm a big fan of Beyond the Chocolate War.
The themes, I don't think it says like, I don't think this has been on very many controversial
book lists.
I think he made it tamer because he didn't want to have to deal with, um, having to fight
this all the time because he was a, uh, Robert Cormier was a big, uh, fighter for not banning
books.
And he would like frequently write teachers and school boards or whatever, tried to defend
his book being included.
So one moment.
Well, Evil Wins.
That's the end of these books.
Um, sorry, there's a bit of a pause there.
I had to, someone's calling.
Uh, so let's see Beyond the Chocolate War.
I'm going to give, I'm going to give a four, uh, I have a rating system for this.
I'm going to give this four Hamidah Jandubi out of five Hamidah Jandubis.
And that is if you're, if you're curious, the last person to be sentenced to death by
guillotine in Western Europe and be executed by it, which was 1977.
It's not that long ago.
So, um, he was the pimp killer and he viciously murdered someone.
So they executed him by guillotine in the late seventies.
Uh, so anyway, that was the last French, uh, execution if you were worried.
Uh, so yeah, overall, if we're going to go Chocolate War and Beyond the Chocolate War,
uh, young or old, doesn't matter your age.
They're interesting.
They're engaging.
It's a nice slice of life for the time.
There's a few like goofy, um, language, slang terminology components that are fun in hindsight
because this was again made in the eighties and uh, seventies.
So there's a lot of, uh, just, it just sounds, but it's, there's some things like we all
say cool still, which I like.
Uh, but yeah, there's some things.
It's nice reading a book where without cell phones in it.
I always liked that.
Just there's something about pre cell phone era movies and books that are pre internet
maybe is going to be, I think the distinction of classic and modern move.
Like at some point people are going to be like, what's a classic cinema?
And it's going to be anything pre internet where people are not using cell phones or
computers to solve their problems.
And I think more modern would be everything after that.
That's just a, I just thought of that right now.
So I don't know if that's a fully fledged, you know, philosophy, but whatever anyway.
So overall, yeah, four chocolates out of five chocolates is what the whole chocolate war
gets.
And I recommend it to anybody.
So and the movie, if you're a fan, if you haven't watched the movie, I saw it on Pluto
I'm usually a fan of to be didn't to be didn't have it.
Pluto has way too many fucking commercials.
So but if you're willing to sponsor us Pluto, you know, not that many commercials.
It was a lot.
It was a lot of commercials and they were very long, but you were the only one that
had it for free ish.
Although I feel like the amount of time I spent watching ads, I don't know if it was
worth the amount of time I saved or the amount of money I saved by watching it for free.
And I'm using air quotes here.
But again, great service, I guess.
It's the first time I've used you.
But please sponsor us maybe unless to be unless you're listening, you know, you know how we
do.
Fuck Pluto.
Pluto, if you're listening, yeah, just do better, I guess.
Less ads, probably.
Anyway, next week's next that next week's book is another Robert Formier book.
This one I had no idea existed.
It's called We All Fall Down and it's about a kid Batman and not not a it's not a DC.
There's no actual Batman in it, but it's about a kid who takes the law into his own hand
after after viewing a traumatic event and becoming a vigilante.
They call him the Avenger in the book.
And it is so far about halfway through.
Awesome.
I love it.
Maybe that's even why I sort of forgot what happened at the end of Beyond the Chocolor
there for a second.
But also, maybe I wanted there to be a happier ending because the first one had such a Evil
Wind vibe.
And then the second one has an Evil Evil Wind vibe.
I mean, I know that there is Jerry decides to stay at he decides to go back to Trinity
High and he decides to end his friendship with Uber and he decides to go but like that's
like another form of rebellion.
And since Robert Cormier died in 2000, you know, we're not going to get another chocolate
war unless his family is a huge podcast listener.
They scour the Internet for reviews of these books and they're listening to this right
now and they're like, hey, you know what, we'll let you make a third one.
Like I'll call it Chocolate War Summer School or something.
And or or, you know, we just do the next year with Brother Leon and and a meal in the in
the vigils and we follow Jerry's return.
And maybe Laura Laura Laurie Gunderson comes in, you know, because I don't know.
Or we make it modern day.
What's Trinity High School?
We can even make that into a TV series.
We're being honest.
What is Trinity High School doing today?
What are the vigils up to today?
And you make it just like a Pretty Little Liars or something.
You know, it's a lot of hot young people.
There's a bunch of steamy makeout scenes and then you get into the like the like the nitty
gritty assignments and each episode could be a new assignment or just the ramification.
I mean, this is so good.
What am I just giving this out for free?
Hit me up to be sorry, Pluto, whoever.
Yes.
Less less ads.
We all fall down.
Robert Cormier forgot the year.
Sorry to look that up.
But it's so far super good.
I'm really digging it.
And that's going to be next week.
I will see you all then.
I hope the audio has been.
It's 1991 is when that came out.
I hope the audio has been a little bit better.
I'm sorry.
We're still learning here at the podcast and, you know, adding music in post.
I hope it's already playing.
If it isn't, I'm not doing my job right.
And hopefully I'll try to add this up a little bit.
But thanks for listening, guys.
And I'll see you next week.
And don't forget to bring your copy of the book.
All right.
Have a good night.