Johnny Dangerously with Josh Gondelman

I would like to direct this to the distinguished members of the panel.

You lousy corksuckers, you have violated my farging rights.

This summonabatching summon a

country was founded so that the liberties of common patriotic citizens like me could not be taken away by a bunch of fargan pork carsters like yourselves.

Pork carsters?

I'm a little proud of pork carsters.

There you go.

And treating podcasters like a curse word.

Great, Dimitri.

Thank you.

I mean, the other option, obviously, to do here was...

My mother tried to podcast me once.

Once!

Joe Piscapo is astonishingly good in this film.

We're going to talk about it.

You're going to bounce on that?

I'm going to bounce on that a little bit, but he's good.

It is the one time where I'm like, I get it.

This is the only Joe Piscopo thing where I'm like, I get why people were buying this.

Are you thinking

other ones that you've seen?

Have you seen wise guys?

I've seen, I have not seen wise guys.

I've seen Dead Heat.

That's the one with Treat Williams.

Yeah, it's a zombie buddy copy.

I do like a treat.

You look at the poster.

I love to go get a treat.

I'm not joking.

You're a treat boy.

I like a treat.

I look at the poster for heat and it looks pretty good it's true there's like lightning and yeah here i'll show you the poster josh it's really good at uh putting you to sleep that was my experience i had a lovely map while watching dead heat when you i mean i'll like the poster looks like cool but piscapo doesn't quite fit on it, I will say.

And then the tagline is you can't keep a good cop dead, which is an interesting tagline, you know, to think about, I guess.

But no, you can't change two things like that.

Right?

because at that point you might as well it would be like that's a good take you can't die a good dead cop or whatever

at that point it's like you you how much can you change before it's it's like a ship of theus uh idiom uh like i like the thank you bringing up the ship of theus as well i mean because apart from that like yeah what no you're right look how much piscopo have you bounced off the big thing is his four seasons of snl

which i would which aired before you were born just fyi but uh nonetheless i would watch first of all this was the golden era of Comedy Central having SNL reruns like five times a day.

Yeah.

And also all the compilations like DVDs and VHSs that I would watch.

When I discovered SNL, I was like, I need to watch every minute of this that is available.

And because Pisco Po is so often next to Eddie Murphy, the biggest star that show ever created, I've watched so much Piskapo SNL.

And at all ages, I've been like, I don't get it.

And I feel like he became a very easy retroactive punchline, but it was always framed as, but in 82, we thought he was going to be a big star.

I first knew of him because The Simpsons uses him as a punchline, right?

Like there's the many Simpsons flashback episodes.

There's like Lisa's first word.

There's the one where Homer, you know, where they're flashing back to.

There's the one where Homer is part of Nirvana.

That one might have come up.

That 90s episode.

I think it's going to be called.

Do you know this thing that The Simpsons has started doing?

I don't.

Well, the characters don't age.

I don't know if you're familiar with that.

There's a floating timeline.

And the show has run for 57,000 years.

Right, correct.

Yeah.

So when they started, they'd be like, here's a flashback to Homer and Margin High School.

This would be in the 70s.

Sure, of course.

And now no one's age, but the show still takes place per year.

Now the Simpsons are millennials.

Because they've just floated over to that.

But they will truly do an episode that's like, oh, that reminds me of your mother and I having problems right before you were born, Bart.

And then the episode is set in 2005.

So they have kind of a Kurt Vonnegut concept of time where they've always existed and will always exist.

So there was an episode that happened like 10 years ago now, probably, that was like Marge trying to get Homer to settle down and he's being drawn in by the grunge scene of Seattle.

Where it's like you're like, the show is already on the air at that point.

He was at Wallapalooza with the frying pumpkins getting a grown man.

He sure did.

Homer Simpson smiling politely.

It's an incredible joke.

Sorry, Episcopo punchline.

So it's like in Lisa's first word, it's Marge is always like, let me take you back to, you know, when you were one year old.

And like, and then she's like, a young Joe Piscopo taught us how to laugh.

And then in the barbershop quartet episode, she again is flashing back and she's like, a mature Joe Piscopo, like started to move on to Hollywood, right?

Like, so she's just like charting Joe Piscopo's career.

Great flashback.

Great bit.

And so I didn't even know who that was, but I just knew him as a Simpsons.

And look, a funny name to say.

It's a funny name to say.

And then you learn like, oh, well, he was on the SNL season where it was like Eddie Murphy, A1.

Joe Piscopo was like the distant number two.

Four years.

SNL Zone Judge Reinhold.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm just saying 80 to 85.

SNL zone Judge Reinhold, you say.

Took a real swing.

Just thinking of Beverly Hills.

Now we were talking.

Well, also, I love Judge Reinhold.

Our most recent episode a week ago was Fast Times.

Yes.

Where we were talking about probably Judge Reinhold's best performance, but also an interesting guy where you're just like, this guy was just in hit after hit, but the hit was never pinned on him.

He kept being number two through five, right?

In like giant, culturally impactful films.

What a dream career that was.

Well, see, I feel the same way.

I feel like you and I are aligned in this, where it's just like, it would just be nice to be along for the ride, to be doing good work across from great people

that the public cares about.

I don't care about being like the center of the show.

But it does start to make people go like, wait, is Judge Reinhold our biggest movie star?

Because he's the only through line.

The common denominator in every huge movie is Judge Reinhold.

Now, I think Reinhold in his golden run was clearly adding something every time.

I think Piscapo, my take on Piscopo has always been like, well, the show was really just buoyed by Murphy and Piscapo.

And I'm like, no, the show was buoyed by Murphy.

And Piscapo was the second best.

I'll even, I'll reframe this.

Piscopo was the best at hanging in there with Murphy.

He was was the only guy who could almost keep pace with murphy and be the like sounding board off of him right everyone else was like struggling and so i've just never gotten it and that's only increased by like how weirdly he's turned out as like the most like roided up trump supporter in the world right that's the other thing he got into bodybuilding yeah it's not yeah what a weird he's like so jacked and so political in a way i don't like uh i don't like it and i watched this movie

strong.

I agree.

I agree.

He was kind of the original Kumail in a way.

Well, or Carrot Top, though, also had that.

Caratop got roided out.

I didn't mean that as the slate against Kumal and Kinky Moore Rogan.

It is funny that it's like for a while, that was like a slam against those guys of like, and do you know that like Caratop and Piscapo are ripped?

Isn't that weird?

That's not what we want out of comedians.

And now it feels like almost every comedian is ripped.

Every comedian should comment on

MMA and they should be able to fight in a pinch.

Right.

And should live stream cold plunges.

But it's like, okay, so like Piscopo's big character on SNL, of course, was Frank Sinatra.

Apart from that, he had a character called Pauly Herman.

Now, it seems like he had to really dig deep for this one because Pauli Herman's kind of a stereotypical Jersey guy who made fun of New Jersey and was an annoying character.

And his big catchphrase was,

I'm just going to take a breath for this.

I'm from Jersey.

Okay, interesting.

So you're just kind of like, there was no TV back then, right?

You know what I mean?

So people are just like, I got to watch something.

Eddie Murphy will have a funny sketch.

He's going to do buckwheat.

And also,

they have Rick Baker.

They didn't have Nutty Professor technology.

Eddie Murphy could only play one person in each sketch.

And sometimes it was just that.

It was an issue.

It was an issue for the show.

Where I'm like, oh, what's his second famous?

They're like, Paulie Herman.

I'm like, who's that?

It's like, this guy used to be.

And so he's probably at this point the second best Sinatra, right, on SNL.

100%.

We already talked about this.

Hartman's Sinatra is way better.

So much better.

But I'm like, is he even number two?

He's probably said literally anything.

Totally out of good Sinatra at some point.

Karen Killim, blowing him out of the motor.

But I'm also like, is Alec Baldwin's Tony Bennett a better Sinatra than Piscopo's Sinatra?

Like, possibly.

So

Piscopo did him.

12 times.

Hartman did him 10 times.

Those appear to be the only two, according to the Saturday Night Live Wiki, which I do not know how comprehensive it is, the only two attempts at a Sinatra.

You're also forgetting his other major recording,

recurring character.

What's that?

The Weiners?

Him and Gail Mathias were Wendy and I want to say Richard Weiner.

And like Gail Mathias is one of those things where I'm like, yes, I've seen that name in like the tablets.

You know what I mean?

Like where I'm like, you could tell me that that was a person on SNL.

It would literally be like they walk into a restaurant.

We have a reservation.

what's the name winer there wasn't a lot of tv there was not there just wasn't much i went even the first five seasons which is good i've never all the legends i've never seen wise guys directed by brand da palma joe piscapo and danny devo above the title Feels like a classic, if this were good, I would have seen it by now.

For sure.

You know what I'm talking about?

Like, sometimes movies, you're like, the fact that I haven't seen it means that there's no way it's good.

But I watch this and I laugh at basically everything Piscapo does.

And he's done it seriously.

I feel like he's in the pocket.

This is a perfect role.

He's never, it's also the right amount of him.

It's the right pitch.

But you said he's astonishingly good.

And I would like to

ask about the framing.

Does that mean you are astonished that he's good at this movie?

Josh is giving you a good out.

No, no, no, but that is true.

Because every other time I'm just like, there is a void of comedy here.

And I feel like I'm losing my mind that anyone even briefly fell for this.

And I watch this and I'm like, I get why people thought he was maybe going to translate.

Now, that having been said, this feels like the absolute ceiling of what he can do.

Yeah.

This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

It's a hard, poor karst.

You did a good job.

You know, it's okay.

About Joe Piscopo.

Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want.

Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce once.

Amy Heckling, unfortunately had a couple bounces.

This is her first one though.

Yes, although it didn't cost that much money.

So maybe she kind of got away with it, but certainly a bounce.

I think it was seen as a bounce and she had to sort of go to like a preset sequel next to recover from this, which is its own story that we'll talk about next week.

This is a mini-series on the films of Amy Heckerling.

It is called Pod Times at Ridgemont Cast.

Oh, that was, that's what I thought it would be.

I think it had to be.

And today we're talking Johnny Dangerously.

Her second film.

Her second film,

not a movie of Shirote.

Neither was Fast Times.

A 1984 American Crime Comedy starring Michael Keat.

And Joe Biscovo.

Danny DeVito.

Mario Stableton.

Peter.

Marlon Hammer.

Yep.

Griffin Dunn.

Pretty excellent cast.

Yeah, it's a good cast.

Yeah.

Griffin Dunn, Dom De Louise.

Briefly.

Very briefly.

Although he gets good billing.

Dick Bucus.

Sure.

You got your Ray Walston and Vincent Scavelli's Dick Bucus.

Dick Buckus.

Wow.

Is that not a name you've heard before?

I don't think so.

What is Chuckled at?

He's a famous football player.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He played for Dubairs.

Oh, wow.

The famous, you know, the Chicago Bears of the 80s who were very...

No, he was maybe earlier.

Anyway.

With a name like that, you have to grow up to be a football player.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, he's also like a cube.

You know, like he was one of those guys who's

like LRNL.

Right.

He needs to be a football player because he's a cube.

There are some other names that I didn't even clock until the end credits.

The uh, other names of people that you recognize, or are they just funny names?

Well, both, but at the end, uh, when they're uh trying to escape in the car and the sergeant keeps updating, like they're now dressed like nuns in a white convertible or whatever, that is Alan Hale, the skipper from Gilligan's I think Alan Hale Jr.

There's like a lot of weird people like that.

And I don't know if you guys caught this when Johnny is walking down the prison the first time, and it's um, uh, what's what's his name from SCTV?

Uh, is the man who's being walked to death row?

Joe Flaherty?

Joe Flaherty.

Yeah, right.

He goes, like, guys, are we going to get this over with or not?

Funny.

The priest walking next to him, delivering the last rites.

Did you catch who this is?

No.

Jack Nance Eraserhead himself.

Interesting.

Sure.

Like, this movie is so loaded full of weird people that I've seen it twice in the last six months, and they're people I missed.

Our guest today, returning to the show, for embarrassingly only the second time.

It's very kind of you to say.

Well, he's too nice to ever get upset about it because he's the nicest man in comedy.

Josh Gonflam.

Thank you so much for having me.

Josh,

your newest special is titled.

It is titled Positive Reinforcement.

Just a really good snapshot of how insanely we run the show.

Like six months ago, you were like, hey, I have a special coming out in January.

I'd love to come back on the show.

And I was like, the soonest we can get you on is May.

And then, hold on, let me one-up you.

The weirdest thing about comedy special distribution is it is still not out.

Really?

Yes.

Okay, so this timed out, okay.

This timed out, great.

Amazing.

Will I be?

Who can say?

Who can say?

What place will happen?

Oh, we have a great question.

Okay.

I think I will find out within the week.

Okay.

Which doesn't help us here, but will be good for my peace of mind.

Right.

So at the time we're recording this, you don't

know.

By the time this episode comes out, we probably do know.

So maybe there's a pickup here.

And at least we'll have a link in the episode description.

Very kind.

Absolutely.

Well, you're, you're the kindest.

And I feel like we talked about this the last time you were on, but you, you got screwed over in a game.

I shouldn't say screwed over.

You did Back to the Future 3.

I did.

An American Classic and a great episode.

I had a great time.

But we bumped you around the schedule like four times because other things kept coming up.

You were so amenable.

And then this time I threw to you like heckerling first pick.

You went Johnny Dangerously.

And we just kept being like, no matter what, we can't move Gonzalez.

This has been locked in for

we can't do this to him ever again.

This has been locked in for months.

You showed me the grid.

I did.

We were at a bar together and you went, look at this.

Yeah.

And this was like Ok September.

Yes.

Truly.

Yeah.

And it was like, great.

Yeah.

And we called it, we called the shot dangerously.

And here we are.

Is this a movie you grew up watching?

I remember seeing little snippets of it on TV all the time.

It was like a TV, right?

Like a cable class.

The, the, um, what's his name?

Maroney, like, the character that you did at the top.

That is

Fargan Ice Holes is like the, the dominant memory of this movie for me.

And I was like, I got to see the whole thing and see like what the rest of it is about.

Right.

And what you quickly discovered, or not quickly discovered, recently discovered is that this movie is almost impossible to watch legally.

It is so difficult to find watching.

Although, I think a couple years ago, it seemed, it was streaming.

Because if you Google, is it streaming?

You see people a while back being like, yeah, it's it's on video.

They said it's on Mac.

It has had Windows of streaming, it is not rentable for money.

It is not streaming anywhere.

It has not been in print physical media since a DVD in the 90s.

I bought a disc.

Was this disc like made for me or something?

You get this?

No.

No.

It was a DVD, I think.

Okay.

I can't even remember.

I mean, this is pretty good.

This is a high-grade bootleg Blu-ray I got

labeled as the Fargan Ice Holes Edition.

I'm sorry, you Fargan Ice Holes Edition.

Let me see where I got.

Maybe I got a vintage DVD.

You must have gotten a vintage DVD.

I had a wandering Greek bard just recount the movie to me.

That's what I had to do.

I ordered it on January 27th.

Yeah, it looks like it's a DVD.

Yeah, I think it's just right.

It's a vintage DVD.

I probably, I think I got it for like, you know, 30 bucks or something.

Like I had to, you know, pay for a used coffee, but it was fine.

It had also been a movie that I would like see snippets of on TV.

Had probably watched all of Cloverfield Monster style, but not from beginning to end.

And then

whatever it was, last fall, I went on Big Picture to do a Michael Keaton Mount Rushmore episode.

And I was like, I got to fill in all my gaps.

I was only able to see this through being

let onto a Plex server.

You're going to say on a plane.

You had to fly across.

Julie, I wouldn't be surprised if

you go to like justwatch.com and it's like book delta.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

International.

You have to fly international.

March 15th,

it'd be Southwest.

Like, why?

This is a Fox movie.

I don't understand.

Why is it not?

It's so weird.

I was, Ben and I were talking to people who worked at a streaming service recently at a party.

Cause we've been like, knowing this miniseries was coming, we've had like emails of like, should we like nudge these places and like see if we can get a rep screening going?

Like, I don't want this to be an episode where no one has seen the movie.

And it just feels bizarre because it's like a Fox movie from a major director starring a major still relevant star.

And it's like a broad comedy.

And it's so fucking hard to watch.

And we've been like trying to see if anyone can just like have this movie streaming in the month of May or April.

And who knows if it's going to fucking work.

And it's also not like notably bad.

Like it wasn't a hit, but you don't watch it and go like, people shouldn't ever see this.

No, it's not that, but it's not quite.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know.

It's not like a cult classic right it's it's never totally been reclaimed at that level but it almost feels like it should be like it's kind of ready to be

i feel like it had a real like comedy central like tbs rotation era in the 90s and then i i just feel like has been memory hold since then is a fascinating second movie Fascinating, especially following Fast Times, which is a movie that not to, I know you talked about this last week, but a movie that I remember remember seeing as like a teenager, thinking it was going to be more of like a raucous laugh riot.

A lot of what we talked about in the middle of the day.

Oh, it's, it's like sincere.

Very, and then this is the silliest movie that's ever existed.

Very silly.

It's a reaction to fast times.

That's a good point, right?

This is just like, you know, no stake silliness, costume party.

It feels like a deliberate effort on Heckerling's part to be like, I am going to immediately refuse pigeonholing.

Like, you know, she talks about in the dossier that like she was just offered a bunch more teen comedies and like female-led teen comedies and like coming of age movies and sex comedies and whatever.

And it just feels like a very, very strategic choice to be like, whether this works or not, I need to not make the same movie two times in a row.

And we also just know that like she is a big movie dork.

We'll talk about that.

Of course.

Like, yes, her influences are clear here.

I also think this is the exact kind of movie that like women were not getting offered to direct.

Well, women weren't getting offered any movies, really.

They weren't getting offered a lot, but I think if you look at the female directors working within the studio system in the 80s, like Fast Times is much more the type of thing that would sometimes go to a female director.

And this is really, I think on paper, like a kind of boys' club comedy.

Where you're like, this is what Mel Brooks does.

This is what the Zucker brothers do.

Right.

There are only a couple people who can do this kind of thing.

And they all basically come from like sketch comedy or vaudeville, have their background on the stage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It felt, it has like an airplane quality to it, the zaniness.

Okay.

All right.

Well, so I think I like this movie less than you too, unfortunately, although I don't dislike it.

But I found this, this is my take was I found this movie fun, but not that funny.

Does that make sense?

I had like a good time watching it.

I, it was pleasant and high energy, but rarely did my mouth open to emit a laugh.

You know what I mean?

I I was like, I'm not really laughing.

The jokes aren't really like making me laugh.

And there are a lot of jokes.

Whereas Airplane,

I'm doing this right now because you invoked Airplane.

That makes me laugh.

Like, you know, ha ha ha.

Yeah, airplane's very funny.

See, this

to me is like the only movie like this, not directed by a Zucker, Abrahams, or Brooks

that I would say makes me laugh.

It just wasn't.

It is the one where I'm like, it's not at the level of those dudes' top work,

but I'm like, it is below, it is above their worst work.

And it is basically above, I think, everyone else who has tried to make a movie like this.

And I, I think it is a kind of movie that I had such an affection for growing up until it became like, like this kind of movie that's like a broad genre parody became like kind of a pastiche of sketches like in the early aughts.

And then they just stopped making them entirely and stopped making film comedies entirely.

Look, this is a lot of what this episode is going to be about.

Right.

And I'm, this is a soapbox that I'll stand atop anytime.

Yes.

You're also, look, you are, Josh, you are a great comedian and you have a very specific voice

as a performer, as a writer.

And it is because of that that I'm always kind of surprised how good and versatile you are as just a straight joke writer.

Thank you.

Like that's what a lovely compliment.

So much good work writing in other people's voices, sometimes credit, oftentimes not,

where I'm just kind of impressed that you have like captured their voice that well for voices that can be difficult and specific, but also because I'm like, you are such a good example of like, you tell jokes that only you could tell that fit into your mouth and your rhythm, but you do have such a clear like appreciation of just the art of joke writing.

I love jokes, which this movie is like

and it was, I agree, David, the highs aren't as like high as something like an airplane.

I had a few out loud laughs watching on my computer with headphones.

Right.

It's my counterargument as well, which is I laugh watching this.

Yeah.

I laugh out loud.

I did laugh out loud.

Yeah.

And I think now, like, there's so much comedy that starts with like,

you know, after the death of his entire family, this ex-marine deals with trauma.

And you're like, that's a comedy?

Like, you should see the dramas.

Right.

Well, so the comedies are like, these two people are going to a bed and breakfast, but one of them is secretly an ex-marine.

He's got a gun.

He knows how to use it.

He can just assemble it, blindfolded.

Right.

You talked about it.

Was it with Gen D'Angelo?

I thought that was such a hate that everyone has to have a gun in a comedy.

Such an insightful conversation where it's like everything is either a light-hearted superhero movie, nothing wrong with those existing, or full-on action comedy, where this, obviously there are guns in this movie, but it's not quite the same thing.

Although, it's a good point that there are actually lots of guns in this movie, but the violence is so silly.

It's loony text.

It's a loony text.

But there are like 10 streaming comedies starring A-list stars that have come out in the last five years

where the premise is either this person is in boring suburban life, but secretly they used to be a hitman slash spy slash whatever.

or this normal guy gets thrown into the high-octane world of hitman slash spy.

And I'm like, Wahlberg's done three of them.

Yes.

And they're all, it's all like

movies that would be pitched during Michael Scott doing improv.

Just like, I have a gun.

And they all either like star not comedy stars or people where like comedy is a thing they do, but like mostly star like action stars doing comedies with guns where they have to shoot people in serious sequences.

And I love a stupid, silly movie.

I loved

The Gutter last year.

Oh, I need to see The Gutter.

It's so silly.

Yes.

And I like, I, so I like, my body craves movies like this, like minerals, like vitamins.

This is like such a pure comedy.

Like whether or not it works for you, this is a movie that is just like devoting all of its energy just to trying to be funny at all times and throwing so much at the wall.

And I feel like it is the kind of obvious knock against like the Zucker Brooks wannabes is like.

If you're doing a joke every 15 seconds and your ratio, like hit to miss ratio isn't good, it gets exhausting fast.

And this is one where it just keeps me.

I think it has peaks and valleys.

I feel like the first 20 minutes I'm watching and I'm like, this is the greatest comedy of all time.

And then it falls down and then it'll like come back up and whatever.

But it holds me the whole time.

And I think the story works enough.

I agree with you.

It is not a pastiche of big set pieces kind of loosely strung together.

It's not like

a super breathtakingly original story.

The characters don't have a ton of depth, but they do enough work with the the story that you aren't like, wait a minute, what am I watching?

Who's doing what?

I agree.

It also, for me, is not bogging itself down with like too much plotting where it's like, hey, I don't care about the story that much.

We're the mob.

We do crime.

They're not heavy on the right, on what's happening.

It's just, he's got his brother after him.

He's got Joe Fiscafo biting at his heels.

That's basically it.

I also love, and this is like the heckerling of it to me, is it's just like, this is a parody movie that it feels like it's wearing its love for movies on on its sleeve.

Like it is so in love with like identifying certain tropes of things, but also jokes you can make about like the audience's understanding of film language.

Just like the early, it's basically the first fucking joke in the movie where you have the cross dissolve from the painting to the city street with the Chiron that says New York City the year and then the car crashes into it.

And you're just like, that's shit that like requires like forethought.

I truly watched that i saw the car crash into 1935 and i was like let's go

yes this is what all movies should do this all brutalists should have done this

would have made it a little less brutal yeah the brutalist could have taken a couple notes from johnny dangerously what if piscapo was in there piscapo

piscapo could have been good you know really good in the brutalist who i forgot to mention i feel like no one mentioned all fucking brutalist season adrian brody jonathan hyde it would just be so funny if you said Adrian Brody.

No one gave this guy his funny while he said it.

Jonathan Hyde is good.

Yes, absolutely.

I love Jonathan Hyde.

I do too.

And a guy who had like a fucking 90s heater run.

Well, he fucking was the one who told the Titanic to go faster.

He blew that.

He was.

And he's the one in the mummy who's like, what have we done?

He's the dad and the hunter in Jumanji.

Yep.

He's fucking Cadbury.

And Richie Rich.

He's the villain in Richie Rich.

No, he's not the villain.

He's the greatest ally.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

John Lariquette is the villain.

Oh, that's right.

Larrakette.

That's right.

Cadbury is his

closest friend.

Larikette is a villain.

Yeah.

I don't know what they were thinking.

I literally

Hitler tried to eradicate the Jews once.

Just once.

It would be funny if in the Brutalist, one of his patrons that he like, he's like, I need, you know, I want to make a building or whatever is Richie Rich.

Richie Rich is like, I need you to make a ramp Mount Rushmore of my family or whatever it is Richie Rich has.

You need to design a McDonald's for my family.

I want a mountain of a

scent sign or something.

It was always weird that, right, the poster had the cent sign for the C because he's Richie Rich.

And I'm like, yeah, but that's cents.

That's not what rich people have.

They have dollars.

That goes back to the comics where I'm like, when Richie Witch was created, was it like impressive that he had 20 pennies?

I think it was, you know, it was a bigger deal.

He is all the candy he wants.

Right.

He's so rich that his middle name in the comic book is a dollar sign.

right so that's how they create richie dollar sign rich right yeah uh richie rich kind of like too too short i mean i guess that's the whole name short but forget it no but i hear i hear what you're saying i don't think it's important it's interesting and we're we're really thinking on it

yeah richie rich it's funny that they were like all right macaulay needs a vehicle right he's gonna get paid through the nose his his evil parents are gonna be part of the right we talked about this i like that there is so little meat on the bones of Johnny Dangerously that we're in a five-minute Richie Richards.

No, we're going to talk about Macaulay.

Yes.

Richie Rich.

All the money is going to Macaulay.

Fine.

All right.

And, you know, then we, you know, he's going to, there are some kids in the movie, right?

He's got, he's got friends.

You got Lara Kett.

You got Edward Herman.

No, but that's what I'm saying.

Right.

And then they're like, right.

No, now just bring us heavy hitter character guys.

Every one of these is so good.

Laricette, Shane, Herman, Jonathan Hyde, Ebersole.

The dad from Carissa

is his dad.

The dad from Clarissa.

Is whose dad?

Is Richie Rich's dad?

No, Edward Herman's Richie Rich's dad.

I watched it right now.

You're right.

You know what?

You're right.

I watched this movie two weeks ago.

I haven't seen it.

Well, he kept making jokes about Elon's son being Richie Rich.

And I was like, I wonder how that ages.

It's just that they have the same glasses, I think.

I have not seen Richie Rich since 1994.

Yeah, I saw it in the theaters, I think.

December 21st, it sounds like it came out in 1994.

Sounds right.

I have not watched Richie Rich since Check's notes, 2025.

And why?

Because it kept getting invoked around Elon's son.

And then I was sort of like, that's a funny cultural snapshot of it in like when that character was created in the 40s or whatever, the 50s, but once again in the 90s,

that could be the hero of the movie where you're like, this little boy was given everything and he has so much money and we all love him.

Well, it's like a blank check.

You know, it's like little kids like me wanted to just see a boy who could buy any toy, right?

I guess.

But also, the movie's about how he lives in a gilded cage, right?

Like he needs friends and he doesn't have any.

Yeah, but the movie, yes, it is.

But then re-watching it, the movie is really about like, look how fucking cool his life is.

Right.

He's got a McDonald's in his house.

And he's right about everything.

He learns no lessons.

Yeah, that seems like it is.

Blank check, the whole point is like, what if you could figure out a way to get all the money?

Whereas Richie Rich is just like, what if everything was handed to you forever?

And you would deserve it.

Right.

And there's a point in the movie where his parents go missing because Larikett tried to bomb their plane.

And they're stranded in the ocean.

And Richie Rich has to take over his parents' companies companies and he does it really well.

There's no conflict.

But there's a laser, right?

There's a big laser that shoots at the Mount Rushmore.

Remember that.

There's a big action scene with the Mount Rushmore.

Correct.

Right.

Well, this is what's crazy about it.

And then we're going to talk about Johnny Dangerously, but my thought was always the same thing of like, fuck, Macaulay Caulkin's the biggest star in America.

Our number one box office draw is an 11-year-old blonde boy.

What vehicles do we design for him?

And someone's like ripping through the library and they're like, Richie Rich, Richie Rich kind of looks like Macaulay Caulkin.

And then it it gets like fast tracked, right?

Wrong.

Warner Brothers had already spent years and millions in development trying to make Richie Rich with Fred Savage.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're right.

And Joel Silver at his peak, like writing high off a fucking lethal weapon and shit, was like, I want to make Richie rich.

And then when Home Alone blows up, they were like, God damn it, we got to kick Savage off this project, ASAP.

And we got to do some rewrites on the Shane Black Richie Richard.

Yes.

It's a little rough around the end.

Yeah, Black did way too many bumps while he was writing this script.

This script is manic.

No, yeah, because anyway, look, we're moving on from Richie Rich.

We're moving over to Johnny Dangerously, and Josh is here.

Ben's here.

Ben's kind of with me, it seems like on the like, I had fun, but it wasn't that fun.

I thought you were going to love this.

Your love of Crime Wave made me think, like, this is better than that.

Crimewave is unhinged.

Crime Wave is on hinge.

That's like an odd object.

Yes.

And I think because I was aware of this growing up in New Jersey and having friends who were a fan of this movie and it feeling such like a Jersey knucklehead kind of thing.

You also grew up in Piscopo County.

I did, truly.

Yes.

Piscopo Country, truly.

That I think I just immediately rejected it.

The William Faulkner of New Jersey sets all his novels in Piscopo County.

So we covered Crime Wave on the show.

Josh Gray joke.

Five comedy points.

Extremely good.

Five Faulkner points.

Five lights in August.

We covered

Sam Raimi on the show years ago.

Five Sounds and Furies.

What?

Sam.

Remember when James Franco made like eight William Faulkner movies no one's ever seen?

Yes.

Insane.

Insane.

We should do that on Patreon.

Nope.

As I lay podding the big series.

Yaka Podcastma County.

It's just the hubris.

Anyway, carry on.

No, I just remember like in high school reading Faulkner books and being like, fuck, is there a movie of this I can watch?

Sure.

And people being like, I don't know, he's kind of unadaptable.

As you can tell, this

seems almost impossible.

People haven't tried, and the ones that have been made don't really work.

They're not going to get it.

It's fine.

Let me knock three out over a weekend.

What were you going to do?

Years ago, we covered Sam Raimi.

His second film, a weird swerve from the first Evil Dead, which is so much more somber and straight ahead relative to where the Evil Dead movies end up, is this movie Crimewave, which is very much twinned with Johnny Dangerously,

a movie that is directed by him and written by the Cohen brothers?

I've never seen that.

I got to see it.

It's

all three have been functionally disowned and just don't include in their filmography, their biography, like any of that.

I think took their names off of it.

The Cohen brothers, you said?

Cohen brothers wrote it.

Raimi directed it.

And they all are like,

that movie got taken away from us.

We don't want to be associated with it.

And Ben really loved it.

And so I was like, Ben's going to fucking lose his mind for Johnny Dangerously.

Some of this is interesting.

I was telling a friend, oh, I started a friend of the podcast, Maddie Lubchansky.

Oh, yes.

And I was like, oh, I'm doing, going to see the blank check fellas, and we're going to do Johnny Dangerously.

And she said, was it a Ben's choice?

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, no.

You didn't choose it.

You didn't choose it.

No, I didn't.

I can see that.

It's a Ben's rejection.

Right.

You're thinking for sure.

Johnny Dangerously, I'm cracking open the dossier.

And Maddie's book is out soon, probably when this episode's airing.

Yes.

And thank you to Maddie for her contribution to our art show, which would have happened already.

Fast Nimes Origin High.

Studio messes with it.

Release is botched, but nonetheless a success.

Yeah.

Despite all these caveats.

It was not horribly botched.

And becomes a huge home video success.

Inspires a spin-off show that doesn't go anywhere.

All that stuff.

And

i think universal is also like fuck why did we like overthink this teen movie teen movies kill let's start pumping out teen movies right you know like i don't even like what we were being ridiculous like universal becomes john hughes's main studio they very smartly just like clamp down on him yeah and because heckerling made fast times original one high as you say universal is like yeah it's a kid loses his virginity interested come on the girl goes to school i don't know fucking they wear wear bikinis.

Make one of these.

They're just lobbing screaming.

Mining, throwing fastballs with a precision that would blow your mind.

Um, and she said, I didn't want to deal with that.

You know, I don't want to spend the rest of my life dealing with bad teachers, the girls getting pregnant, loss of innocence, etc.

I don't want to do it.

She's smart.

Like, I think she knows if she does it well twice, she's never going to be able to do anything.

She gets stuck.

Yeah.

So,

Bud Austin is a producer.

Stone Cold.

Stone Cold Bud Austin.

Stoned Bud.

Because, bud.

Oh, sure.

Oh, that's good.

Stone Bud, Cold Austin.

It's okay.

Stone beer, cold bud, stone.

He watches Blazing Saddles like Many an American and laughs, I'm sure, his belly full, but is also like, oh, I want to do like a golden age Hollywood spoof, but not Westerns.

How about I did like a gangster spoof?

Making fun of, you know, Roaring 20s and, you know, James Cagney movies and all that stuff, right?

And here's the thing that I think Blazing Saddles and Johnny Dangerously specifically have in common.

They are not primarily parodying one movie.

No.

A lot of soup.

Right, but like airplane is taking from what's that thing called Zero Hour.

Airplane is a weird example where they're taking the plot of a serious movie.

Obviously they're parodying a larger genre, but yes.

But like Young Frankenstein is like basically beat for beat son of Frankenstein in a really fascinating way.

Like it's the third one.

A lot of these are like riffing on one primarily, whether it's something like High Anxiety, where it's like, okay, it's using Vertigo as the main coat hanger, or they're taking something that's like more obscure that people don't know and using that as a structure to do their riff.

Blazing Saddles starts as the comedy premise of like, what if there was a black sheriff?

And then 27 different writers work on it cumulatively until it turns into what it is.

But it starts with a core of just a story and then grows into a, this is a way to parody a whole genre.

The parody is initially going to be called Blazing Tommy Guns.

They're literally going with Blazing.

That would have been terrible.

yes uh he reaches out to michael herzberg who uh produced blazing saddles and many other mel brooks movies uh and they start cooking up a screenplay lots of people work on it but different strokes creators bernie kukoff and jeff harris uh are involved and uh they at least Jeff Harris is a screenplay credit here and Bernie has a story credit.

So they're involved.

Have you either of you read Mel Brooks's memoir, by the way?

No, I have not.

It's delightful and every chapter is like, like, we set out to make the kind of picture nobody had ever made before.

It was an ambitious undertaking, and we did it, and it was a great success.

And I have lunch with every single one of the people on the crew twice a week.

You're making the book sound terrible.

No, it rules.

It is.

He's like one of the few people that I would tolerate that level of like.

Of course,

we really did it, guys.

It's just delightful.

I gotta say, and I mean this solely as a compliment.

Melbrook sometimes reads to me as like one of the least interior people in history.

Sure.

Maybe that's how he's survived this long, just by not looking inward and worrying.

Right.

I think he's so incredibly funny and in a way that feels very specific, where he's like pulling at things.

And then every interview he's done is just like, here's how it came about.

I sat down and said, what if I make a movie with a lot of jokes?

Yep.

And it gave me money and I succeeded.

It's so great.

And they're like,

there's so many anecdotes that are like, we tried to book this guy.

He wasn't available.

Then we went to the next guy and I couldn't imagine anyone better.

And it's like, you just said you imagined someone better, the first guy.

Right, right, right, right.

There's like, I feel it was maybe his WTF episode where Marin tried to like dig into the Nazi stuff with him.

And he was just like, so that's like, I feel like you did something that was like very important

for our generation, which was like culturally reckoning with.

the Holocaust through comedy and like processing and defanging it.

And I was like, no, I never thought about that.

Who cares?

And he's like, but you do like a lot of Nazi humor.

And And he's like, yeah, I guess it's just a thing to make fun of.

It's just there's Jews and there's space.

Right.

I love it.

Ben?

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, this isn't a humble brag.

It's just a fact of the matter.

Despite you being on mic, oftentimes when sponsors buy ad space on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

They love that they get a little bonus ben on the ad read, but technically that's not what they're looking for but something very different is happening right now that's true we had a sponsor come in and say we are looking for the coveted ben hosley endorsement what this is laser targeted the product we have copy that asks is the product a porch movie it certainly is and what is today's episode sponsored by The Toxic Avenger.

The new Toxic Avenger movie is coming to theaters August 29th.

Macon Blair's remake of

reimagining, whatever.

A reboot of the Toxic Avenger.

Now, David and I have not gotten to see it yet, but they sent you a screener link.

Yeah, I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But, Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

Let me read you the cast list here in billing orders, they asked, which I really appreciate.

Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Tremblay, Taylor Puttie, Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinkledge is fantastic.

He's Toxie.

He plays it with so much heart.

It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like David.

David sizzling.

Yep.

And then Elijah Wood plays like a dang-ass freak.

He certainly does.

He's having a lot of fun.

Tell us some things you liked about the movie.

Okay, well, I'm a Jersey guy.

I just got to say, the original movie was shot in the town where I went to high school.

Trump.

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches

with my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

And so when I heard that they were doing this new installment, I was really emotionally invested.

It was in limbo for a while before our friends at Cineverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

But I feel like there have been years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary.

They're playing with fire here.

Yeah, it's just something that means a lot to me.

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

It somehow really captured that sensibility, that sense of humor, even just that like lo-fi, scrappy kind of nature that's inherent in all of the trauma movies and the original Toxie movies.

And they have like updated in this way that it was just, I was so pleased with it.

It's gooey

gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

It just, it hits all of the sensibilities that you would want.

in an updated version.

Cineverse last year released Terrifier 3 Unrated.

Yeah.

Big risk for them there.

I feel like it's a very, very intense movie.

And a huge hit.

More interesting, yeah, theatrical box office phenomenons the last five years.

Want to make that happen again here?

Tickets are on sale right now.

Advanced sales really matter for movies like this.

So if y'all were planning on seeing Toxic Avenger, go ahead and buy those tickets.

Please go to toxicavenger.com slash blank check to get your tickets.

Blank check, one word.

In theaters, August 29th.

Yep.

And Ben, it just says here in the copy, wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says summon the nuts.

Can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it?

Summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band.

Hell yeah.

Who are also mercenaries.

Cool.

And drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill, and that's all I'll say.

Okay, and they are the most dang-ass freaks of dang-ass freaks.

I'm excited to see it, and your endorsement, I think, carries more weight than anyone else's in the world on this list.

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvengure.com/slash blank check.

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This screenplay bounces around.

Many studios.

Heckerling reads it, knows she won't be the obvious choice, but also knows she knows these movies that are being spoofed better than anybody.

She knew all the references.

She could go on about the genre.

So let me do it.

And

she specifically loves James Cagney, who is, I would say, the most obvious sort of inspiration for

appears like there's a specifically referenced in it.

Yeah, the big

final

store showdown.

Yes.

And she grew up watching him

and she loves James Cagney, who is great, to be clear.

You know, she just has

profound

memories of watching movies like Angels of Dirty Faces in the Roaring Twenties.

It was sort of

formative for her.

In our Fast Times episode, but like a lot of this generation of like filmmakers coming up in the first film school generation who were raised by like TV.

Yeah, they're watching

it over and over again.

A lot of the guys will talk about it being sci-fi movies and westerns and this and that.

It feels like Heckerling from a small age really kind of locked in on gangster pictures.

Her big, yeah, right.

Her big memory is that, you know, at the end of these Cagney movies, he dies because back in the day, you know, top of the world.

The gangster had to die.

That one's white heat.

That one's fucked up.

But, you know, I think the book is normal.

He's got a good relationship with his mommy.

He loves his mommy.

Even in Angels and Dirty Faces, he goes to the electric chair.

And when she was a kid, she freaked out after watching it.

And she, because she was like, he's dead.

And her mom had to sit her down and be like, It's a movie, you know, he didn't really die.

Don't worry,

like, she had to, like, sort of like, don't worry, that wasn't like a projection of real life that you just watched.

As we all learn about death from James Cagney Farmer, exactly.

And so, this is

a train moment, exactly, right?

Like, literally, the idea of like pulling apart the artifice of the gangster movie.

Yeah.

Um, so the script is floating around.

Heckerling is interested,

uh, and um,

she, you know, is sort of like into the idea of satirizing something that a lot of people won't even know or remember.

This is pre-DVDs, right?

Like, lots of people just maybe have never seen these movies.

Um, and uh, lots of other writers come aboard, and in and out, Neil Israel, who is not credited, but was credited as Amy Heckerling's husband, in that she married him.

Uh, he works on it.

He gets a credit.

He, he, In the end credits, he gets a call out as like special medical consultant.

Yes, him and Pat Proft are both credited for that.

That's a script doctor joke.

Get it?

Doctor.

But Pat Proft came up with

your testicles and you, that whole little segment.

I would say that's one of the parts that worked the least for me.

She says, she says,

it didn't fit, but people laughed.

So

it's a really weird thing in the middle of the movie.

And not to call forward too far, but it reminds me of

her comfort with that reminds me of kind of the opening to look who's talking.

Oh, yeah, interesting.

I mean, sure, sure, sure.

Yep, yep.

And that's her finding maybe a more whatever, resonant or universal take.

Yes.

And much more apt for the movie, although still weird.

Yeah.

Well, it's a movie about baby.

It's a movie about baby.

Michael Keaton

had appeared in a little film about a Mr.

Mom in 1983 that was Fox's biggest comedy, I think biggest hit of the year.

Not just comedy, biggest movie of 1983.

It was a very big hit.

So he signs a giant contract with Fox that guaranteed the next four of his five films would be Fox.

Interesting.

Yes, which is interesting.

The classic dentist ratio.

And they say, hey, you'll have creative input.

You can pick your projects.

Maybe you even direct a movie in one of those classic deals, Johnny Dangerously, which actually doesn't even count as part of the deal because it, whatever, came together at a different time.

He doesn't make another Fox movie.

I was about to say, I'm like looking through.

It's all bullshit.

Like, all these things are bullshit.

But I just want to, I want to call out as a bit of a Keaton historian, he is like rocketed to stardom in Night Shift, right?

Gets the kind of like Jack Black and high fidelity, like a perfect showcase for a guy, introduced some movie audiences, hits the screen immediately and is like, we want more of that guy.

Has just been like kicking around like sitcoms and stand-up and variety shows.

That's basically his first movie appearance of any kind.

Then it's like straight to Mr.

Mom and then Johnny Dangerously in 1984.

So he's had this insane ascension of like 82, who was that guy?

83, this guy's now the leading man in a big hit.

And he played like a little more of a grown-up than we thought he could do.

Because in Night Shift, he's just playing the wacky guy.

At this point, he feels like invincible.

Famously, of course, Bill Simmons won maybe greatest pop culture take his theories, Market Corrected by Tom Hanks, which I think is true.

Yes.

But we can get to that later.

The next four years of Keaton are really bad.

Between Johnny Dangerously and Beetlejuice and Clean and Sober in the same year in 88,

like 86, 87, 85, it's like Keaton's fucked it up.

And this is the moment where he like kind of loses the heat.

Although I vouch for this movie 100%,

the next couple of choices he makes are borderline terrible.

Because this movie, even if it doesn't, like, I get it as a movie that like anything can bomb.

But again, I don't watch, you don't watch Michael Keaton and go, this is an embarrassing swing.

I don't think so.

I think he's so good in it.

And I think it's doing the thing that most people could not do.

But I also, I also think it's like not what the audience wants out of him.

And I think the audience is just sort of like, what is this movie, period?

Yeah.

And Amy Heckerling, I'm sorry.

Again, sorry if I'm cutting in on,

I was doing a little reading about this myself.

And

she has mentioned that she thought it didn't succeed at the box office in part because of the thing they're trying to do, which is parody movies that people weren't familiar with.

It's just, it's too nerdy, probably, but we'll get to that.

Let's call it the other thing, though.

is like, there is this weird like man at a time thing with Keaton, right?

Like there's something about him being able to play this very heightened old style of acting, but in this kind of modern, postmodern, like sort of snarky way and whatever.

The year after this,

his direct follow-up to this is supposed to be Purple Rose of Cairo.

They shoot three weeks with him in the Jeff Daniels role, and Woody Allen fires him and reshoots the whole movie because he says he's too modern.

Weird.

Yeah.

But if that feels like a weird straight line from that that to this, and it was like, oh, he didn't work like playing old tiny in a sincere context.

That's really interesting.

Yeah.

Apparently,

Keaton, this is an aside, but years later,

the Pope, John Paul II, came to the United States and

like he called

or his office called Keaton and was like, we'd like to meet you.

And Keaton's like, I'm not a practicing Catholic.

That feels disrespectful.

And then they were like, we're big Johnny Dangerously fans.

Look, this is one of the best Pope comedies.

What does he?

He gives them a bunch of money once he makes it as a gangster and goes, build a new gym at the Vatican.

And then Dom Deloise weighs it like it's a little lucky.

And basically, Keaton's like, look, I'll do this if my mom can come because my mom is like a real Catholic who like goes to church and cares about the Pope.

So can like she come with me and like get blessed by the Pope.

Kind of a huge flex.

Like kind of a huge flex yes and it's a you know again once again jj has posted a four paragraph story in the middle of the research could i said read it word for word pope said absolutely not uh

but uh he you come alone yeah or don't come at all he uh you know uh met uh

the pope wow

the pope he met a pope

I just can't imagine, I guess it's a little different now that with Conclave out in the world, but I can't imagine popes watching movies no no it is weird to think about it's also weird to think about like does like vatican city have its own like a sort of closed circuit tv system

like like when you're at a college cruise or something or a cruise you know yeah right like is johnny dangerously just one of only four movies that vatican city has in rotation maybe i don't know maybe it's do they cut the movies for the pope and take stuff out that might offend them he's only seen the popes easily

Michael Keaton.

My favorite

thought is just like, do they just decide they want Michael Keaton for some star power?

And then he's like, oh, I don't know.

And they're like, no, we love

tiny dangerously.

They pick a weird one.

They don't want to be obvious to be like, we love Batman.

They must be real fans.

But they're also like,

Catholic Church can approve of Night Shift.

Everyone says, Mr.

Mom, what's third on the list?

He's so funny.

The Pope loves Beetlejuice.

Mary Lou Henner.

That's not what it's really like.

Mary Lou Henner, and let me just check my notes here quickly.

Hummana, Hummana, Hummina.

Very beautiful woman.

Obviously, had just been on Taxi, the great sitcom.

Nardo.

She was cast supposedly because of a red carpet photo taken of her and her on-and-off boyfriend, John Travolta, who she dated for much of the 70s and so on.

Johnny, as she says, took me to the Staying Alive premiere towards the end of my Tucson shoot for Cannonball Run 2.

A lot of shit being brought up here.

I was going to say, a lot of normal things happening in the culture.

And I guess the picture made the front page of

the LA Times calendar section, and she got cast in Johnny Dangerously off someone seeing the picture, I guess, and being like, what a babe.

Yeah, she also, she has the right look.

Yeah, she does.

Sure.

Piscapo had just finished SNL,

and Piscapo was kind of like, it's Keaton's movie, and it's Mary, you know, Mary Lou and Maureen Stapleton and Peter Boe.

Like, it's a cameo for me.

Like, he's very, like,

you know, what's the word?

Humble about it.

But the poster, they got a box around

the same.

It's a box.

It's a box in the credit box.

It's Piscapo as Vermin.

As Vermin.

And of course,

his face is as big as Keaton's on the poster.

Have you guys seen the trailer for this movie?

Yeah, no, I watch it every day, actually.

I watch it before I wake up.

I watch it before I go to sleep.

No, why would I see the trailer?

David likes to wake up dangerously.

He lives dangerously.

He sleeps dangerously.

He has it running in headphones while he sleeps.

The trailer for this movie is very cool because it falls into the category I love of trailers

that had footage shot only for the trailer.

The trailer is a projectionist booth and it says like this theater right now.

And Piscopo walks in as Johnny Vermin and, like, holds the projectionist hostage and basically sells you on the movie.

Okay.

And that's them trying to cash in on Piscopo being.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm like, the trailer is like Joe Piscopo presents his new movie, Johnny Dangerously.

He does the once joke.

It's good.

He followed this up, of course, with wise guys.

And

that's kind of the end of that for Joe Piscopo.

Like, Hollywood pretty quickly is like, okay, you're sort of a footnote.

All the other big stars, of course, Stapleton Boyle, DeVito, Jack Nance mentioned, Carl Gottlieb's in this.

Griffin Dunn is

this is in between American Werewolf in London and After Hour.

So Griffin Dunn is, you know, he's working.

And

he is, obviously, his sister Dominique Dunn was murdered in 82.

So that's he's in the middle of that while this is being filmed, a very famous, you know, shocking Hollywood murder.

And

he

is good in the movie, but he's the least comic,

I guess.

I love him.

I mean, I love Griffin Dunn.

I know he's a big guy for you.

Yeah.

He's very endearing.

Yeah.

But there is, I think it's a disservice that the thing they give him, like the big comedic angle, is like, he's so horny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's an interesting thing.

I think he maybe doesn't play the horniness enough in a way.

The joke is funny.

Yes.

It's, yeah.

I think the payoff is less funny than the setup.

He plays like the righteousness well.

Right.

You know, like you're kind of, yeah.

As the like the do-gooder kid brother.

I think he doesn't really get jokes in this movie.

He doesn't get like moments to score.

It's one of the, I mean, he's kind of like got the thankless role in a certain way.

And he's kind of the guy, right, who bursts into the movie being like, everyone stop having fun.

Right.

But I also think he's like really good at playing the kind of comedic pitch of the character, if that makes sense.

Like he's doing a good parody of this type of role and the kind of obliviousness and the sort of wet behind the ears, naive, like, wow, what a great big world

kind of thing.

What's the last time he directed a movie?

It's been a while.

He sort of had another wind as an actor.

And right, we're not counting the Joan Diddian doc.

It's the accidental husband, right?

Okay.

He's a good director.

director, or I like, I'm a big fan, obviously, of some of his movies.

Addicted to love and practical magic, to be clear.

Johnny Dangerously, budget $9 million.

Shot in LA on soundstages.

Might surprise you to hear a lot of this movie was filmed on soundstage.

Just another one of the jokes I love immediately in the opening narration is like all the immigrants moved to New York City in what felt like a two-block stretch.

Yeah.

Which I'm like, oh, they're making the joke right off the bat about like, this is like the backlot in New York City street that every studio has that looks big as long as you never go past these two blocks.

It's fun.

I loved all that little framing stuff at the beginning.

Saying,

my mother, she had this way with words and she just goes, the Lower East Side really sucks.

I just liked it.

Right out of the gate, this movie has like 15 jokes I liked.

So sickly.

Like ratatat, like right away.

Yeah.

Everyone had fun making this movie.

Good.

But did you say good?

Good.

Henner, this is Maryley Henner's quote.

You know you're in trouble when the rap party lasts until 6.30 in the morning and the director shows up with a dog collar around her neck.

Go off, Amy.

And you sit around and watch a gag reel of the shoot.

It's the kiss of death.

It means you had way too much fun making the movie and too much of the energy dissipated before you actually got it on screen.

When I finally got to see the film, I was in shock.

90% of the fun we had was missing from the movie.

So everyone's having a good time, but maybe they're not figuring out how to cut that all together.

I don't know.

Henner says that Heckling was maybe talked out of some of the zany stuff she wanted to do,

but Henner seems to be very unhappy with the movie.

The movie tested poorly.

And so I think they did mess with it a lot,

trying to figure out how to kind of, you know, soften it, I think, for the audience a little bit.

Keaton dies in the original.

incarnation of the film.

Oh, interesting.

So it was the whole framing of it.

And audiences hated that.

That makes sense.

So they made it slapstick and, you know, yeah, did the framing device.

The framing device feels noty.

It does.

Like, we need to start the movie letting you know that this guy's beautiful.

He's going to be fine.

That he's going to be fine and he's going to make it to the other side.

And that we're watching a thing that's like an old-timey thing.

We're not just starting in 1910.

Right.

We're in 90, we're starting in the future, and he's looking back.

That's why we're in the past.

Right.

You start in the very modern 1930s.

So the audience doesn't turn off.

There was also, there was a thought to film the film in black and white, and Heckerling decided to do color and somewhat regrets that decision, but I don't know.

The color is nice.

This movie is like visually exciting and bouncy.

Weirdo Jankovic, the great Weirdo Jankovic, of course, does the song, This is the Life.

And I think he did a good job.

Yeah, I was going to say, this is maybe a moment where Josh and I are like, couldn't be more in, and you guys are pushing back a little.

Although the version I saw, I found that out later.

The version I saw started with Let's Misbehave because

I saw later

video version a contract dispute between the film's producers and CBS Records, who I guess own the Weird Al catalog.

And so his song was not included in the VHS release of the film.

It was instead replaced by Let's Misbehave, which they use in the end credits.

It has been restored to the DVD release.

Okay.

Because even in the Piscohote trailer, they call out the announcer says opening song by Weird Al.

So fast.

Weird Al was big.

It must be really big as they pretend he was.

It was a movie about weird.

I Love Rocky Road, which I feel like was his one of his first big ones.

Yeah.

Comes out in 83.

That's just a year.

So it's like he's just started being a big deal.

This is Tom Green Road Trip.

This is them going, like, we're the first movie that gets to bottle Weird Al and put him on the big screen.

And it was lightning.

So let's go there.

Okay, so wait, I Love Rocky Road.

It happened.

Had My My Bologna happened yet?

My Bologna is on the same album as I Love Rocky Red.

But I think that was the Doc Demento track that put him on the map.

Right.

So maybe that comes first.

What about another one rides the bus?

That's earlier.

So the whole thing with My Bologna, I think, is like he does the original.

Ben has a scathing look on his face.

I'm thrilled with what's happening.

I love Weird Al.

I just can't believe

how quickly I'm trying to establish this.

The whole thing with My Bologna is the original version of his

business.

He's in his bathroom with a squeeze box

to get the acoustics.

Right.

And that's the one that Dr.

Demento plays.

And then he does another one, Rides the Bus, which is an EP.

And then he does his first full album in 1983.

And that has, of course,

I Love Rocky Road.

Yeah.

Which you may or may not know is a parody of Joan Jett's I Love Rock and Roll.

Okay, I thought that was an original.

Josh, you made the embarrassing mistake of thinking that I Love Rock and Roll was a parody of I Love Rocky Road.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, it's a common mistake.

Ben, what's your favorite Weird Al song?

The Coolio.

Oh,

Amish Paradise.

That is really good.

His biggest fan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love Weird Al.

I love that he's still just doing it.

Okay, well, I want to figure out what else is on that first album.

Okay.

Well, I can tell you that, and I think this is true of a lot of those early Weird albums.

You know, it's half original songs.

Half parodies.

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I'm not going to have I Love Rocky Road, My Bologna, and another one Rides the Bus.

Do you want me to tell you the other

two parodies?

This was the original version of Nothing Compares to You was on this.

Yes.

People freaking forget.

Evau wrote it.

Prince

covered it.

Yeah, yeah.

He's also got Ricky, which is a parody of Mickey.

And Stop Dragging My Car Around, which is a

parody of the Stevie Nick's Tom Petty song, Stop Dragging My Heart Around.

And then there is

a song called Happy Birthday that apparently it's noted here is a style parody of Tonyo K.

Don't know what to tell you.

And then a bunch of original songs, you know?

And then in 3D is the next album.

And that is a little more like pretty much all parodies, a couple original songs.

That's got Eat It.

Does it have like a surgeon or is that later?

No.

It's got the Brady bunch, which is a parody of the safety dance.

Wow.

Maybe I should go deep on Al.

He's probably said this other places, but he...

Like a surgeon's on his third album, of course, which is called Dare to Be Stupid.

Right.

That's the big one.

I did a wait wait where he was the special interview guest.

Yeah.

Very intimidated.

Yeah.

And he's so sweet.

He's so lovely.

He's so like the second nicest man in comedy behind Josh Dunda.

That's right.

Don't come for my crown, Al, because it will not go well for you.

But he said his one of the like white whales of parody was he reached out to Prince about doing a parody and Prince said like, no, thank you.

And he respected his wishes.

Yeah.

But the one that he had pitched, and I'm sure he said this other places was for UHF, they wanted to do a song called 1999, but like as a Ron Popil, like all it costs is three installments of 1999.

Funny.

And I was like, that's why you're the king?

That's why he's the king.

I've always liked that about him, the gentlemanly sort of like, I don't need to legally clear this, but I won't do it unless you're cool with it.

I think it is Coolio, right, where he had the experience of Coolio being like, fuck that guy.

And him being like, well, I don't ever want to like bum anyone out.

So I'll always clear.

But then Coolio later was like, I don't know know what my problem was.

The song is good.

Like, I think I was just too famous.

I was like going insane.

Didn't like Amish Paradise outselled Gangsters Paradise?

Here's the real question.

Right.

Is Coolio a good rapper?

Is Coolio good?

Huge question.

Because like Gangsters Paradise is great.

He did pass away recently, right?

We're speaking of the death of the farm.

Yes.

He died in 2022.

And I think Coolio is a celebrity we all enjoy.

We all enjoy gentle old

gray hair.

I couldn't have loved him more as a celebrity in the 90s.

I mean, Coolio is where it's like Keenan and Kel, where they're like, obviously our first choice to do the theme song is Coolio.

Like, you know, like, that is the case.

I see that opening and I go like, got it.

So he's the most important musician alive.

But Gangsta's Paradise was also like a.

Gangster is a good song.

Good song.

Grant.

Big, nominated for a bunch of Grammys.

Big hit.

Huge.

And obviously it was a movie that was.

Dangerous Minds.

Right.

Dangerous Minds, the movie.

And like, but like, is Coolio

good?

That's a great question.

I think he's kind of more a novelty album.

Corny, but then he had like a long career with a lot of albums.

And I do feel like early on, was he a little more?

My soul was the album I owned.

I had My Soul.

My Soul is his third album that's post-Gangster's Paradise.

And that's got Oola La.

Yeah.

Good song.

And see when you get there where he's sampling Pacho Bell's Cannon.

And it's one of those things where I'm like, well, that doesn't sound that cool.

No, but it sounds good.

It's maybe more Goodyo than cool.

If I,

wow, I'm changing my name to Goodyo.

I no longer care about being cool.

I don't know if I get to assign these, but five weird out points.

Is anything more cool than not caring about whether others think you're cool?

Do you think Coolio was saying that at like sort of to the media?

Yeah.

No, Ben, what's your, what's your, I was just going to say, looking at someone's like record collection, if they had a later Coolio or early Coolio album, I would be like, this is a weird ass person.

Well, remind me, it's just something about to invite you over to my place.

I remember

like having friends who owned Gangsta's Paradise, the second album, which is obviously the big breakout.

But right, after that, I don't know if I'm like, let me hit up Virgin Megastore.

When you say late Coolio album, what's your cutoff point?

Are we talking coolio.com?

I have no idea.

His fourth album is called Coolio.com.

I love that era of things.

Albums were called, like, I think daddy had an album called like www.thug.com.

Dude, it was just for like a year or two, right?

Where it was just like, websites are new.

And then like iParty, wasn't it like iParty.com?

Or like every, oh, yes.

I just love that idea when everything was like, we have to be named after the internet.

Not to invoke, you know, Mr.

Kelly, but also R.

Kelly's fourth album was called tp2.com.

People forget.

Yeah, aftercoolio.com is how cool makes this.

I like that.

Is that a cutoff point for you, Ben?

Does that count as a late album?

I've literally swore.

For Ben, the cutoff is like a speck at this point.

Ben is so far back.

Ben is like tapping out, gasping for air.

The taps are getting fainter.

I think, as much as I am famously hip-hop Sims, I think I am not up enough on Coolio's like emergence, right?

As like an artist to know if he ever had much cred, right?

You know what I mean?

Because the whole thing with Gangsta's Paradise is like the sample is so good, right?

And the

LV singing that fridge in the chorus.

It's just like, it just go, it's so, yeah, it's great.

But he's not bad

rapping.

He's all right.

Let's also acknowledge like him being eight-year-old Griffin Newman's idol doesn't lend him a ton of thread points.

I was very young and surprisingly very white at the time.

And so it is like the kind of thing where I'm like, yeah, similar to you, Griffin, where I was like, this is cool, which probably means it isn't cool.

Right.

The fact that I liked him is kind of a strike against him, that he was kind of the king of Nickelodeon.

I do, this is somewhat embarrassing to admit.

I remember

seeing an ad during probably a Nickelodeon show for his album, My Soul, and thinking to myself, I really want that, but my parents don't respect hip-hop.

They'd never buy it for me.

Not saying it out loud.

And then months later, finding it under the tree on Christmas

and citing it as evidence that Santa Claus was real.

Oh, and respected hip-hop.

I doubled down on Santa for like a couple more years because of Coolio.

I refuse to believe that my parents thought to get me

on record.

I distinctly remember being too embarrassed to tell them.

You thought Santa read your thoughts.

Correct.

And then was like, I got him.

Because I definitely didn't put it in a list.

Right.

Yeah.

I was like, Santa, not only is Santa real, he can read minds.

That is pretty good deductive reasoning.

Thank you.

Santa's got Cerebro and he knows I like Coolio.

He knows when you're sleeping he knows when you're awake i mean he knows your favorite hip-hop artist if he knows when you're sleeping when you're awake when you're good or bad for goodness sake

reason you know to believe that he might also know which hip-hop artist you like yes it's interesting though because yeah you read about him and it's like yeah he uh it's he was asthmatic so he grew up kind of like sheltered and didn't go out much uh and like went to the library a lot apparently and played board games but then he did you know uh serve a little prison time for larceny and was addicted to crack in the 80s for a little bit.

So, like, he had hard times in his life.

And then, but I do think he kind of always was a little corny.

Yeah.

Right.

A little corny.

A little cornea.

Which is fine.

Can I swing back to the Mary Lou Henner point?

That's interesting.

You don't want to do 10 to 15 more on Coolio?

Yeah.

Mary Lou Henner.

Trust me, we will get back to you.

Mary Lou Henner saying, like, basically, like, we all had so much fun, but I don't see it on screen.

It's her take.

You hear that a lot.

I feel like, especially with comedies where people are like, terrible shoot, great movie.

If you're having too much fun, something's wrong.

The energy is not getting captured in the right place.

And I even feel like a lot of times when stars have finished filming a comedy and are talking to the press and they're like, we had so much fun filming it that I don't think it's going to turn out well.

Like they're trying to own the joke of it.

Mary Lou Henner also famously

autobiographical memory.

Yes, she has hyperthymesia, which is essentially a sort of super memory of like being able to recall like all of her life experiences in detail.

Right.

And I've like watched the, I think it was the 60 minutes segment where she sort of came forward with her experiences with that, which was not public about for a while.

And they talked to other people who have experienced this.

And the thing that is like not discussed as much is like, oh, you can ask Mary Lou Hanner any specific date and she will tell you like the weather and what she wore and everything.

The thing they don't talk about is like it is emotional as well that not only do you like recall the detail of everything, but you feel it as you think it.

And like in that 60 minute special, there are women who are just like, I like still can't get over my high school breakup because I wake up every morning and it feels like it just happened.

It is like that present to me.

So the idea of the Johnny Dangerously rap party outtakes real being played while Amy Heckerling wins, wears a dog collar, and Mary Lou Henner's like, this movie's not going to be a hit.

Being a thing she wakes up with every morning and feels deeply, but you also, she's coming off one of the best sitcoms of the 70s and the 80s.

And she's starting to do movies.

And then like the movie career that I think she should have had, like immediately kind of doesn't happen in the wake of Johnny Dangerously.

It's not like this movie's designed to make her a star.

But I also think like her looking back on it harshly probably is like the momentum stops here for sure.

I mean, she doesn't become a movie star at all.

Josh, what's your Mary Lou Henner take?

Oh, I was just gonna say, it though, she doesn't have a ton of fun to do, kind of in the same way that Griffin Dunn doesn't, right?

Right, that's true.

This is also the most thankless of the big roles, probably.

Yeah, she looks good.

I feel like they let her deliver more jokes, but

she's more often the subject of the joke than she gets to be.

She does get to make some, totally, right?

But they give her, it's a lot of like, it's a, right, about her, people talking about her.

And, and, and I think it's like a little slight compared to even some of the small, like, um,

Johnny's, Johnny and Tommy's mother gets like a lot of great jokes.

It also feels like Mary Lou disappears for like the middle 40 minutes of the movie.

She doesn't really matter in the plot alone.

No.

She kind of just pops in and out.

She comes back at the end and is like, oh, Vermin's trying to make me his girl.

Here's information.

And you're like, where have you been for the last 40 minutes?

Like the whole her getting in with Vermin thing.

It's like, I can tell you everywhere that I've been in the last 40 minutes.

Well, I know it's

happens entirely off screen.

And one day, CBS will make a movie about a TV show about my condition.

Yes.

Unforgettable.

Right.

She now sees the future.

She has a credit on.

And then she was like a consultant.

She plays

her mother or some shit.

Yeah.

Interesting.

I mean, her big thing after this is evening shade, right?

Like, that's her sort of, like, she eventually ends up back in TV, but she does not become a movie star.

She is in, like, she's in Noises Office.

She's in stuff.

She's in LA story.

She's very good.

She's in LA story, which is good.

Yeah.

But it's specific, you know.

But yes, this was it is this era where, like, if you are on a good TV show and you got the it factor, they're going to give you like two or three shots to be a movie star.

A couple bites of that.

And if it doesn't work and you go back to TV, it does kind of feel like a concession in a way that is so hard to think about now.

It's so different.

Relative to like DeVito in this, where you're you're like, of that taxi cast, that is the guy I would least bet on to become a

De Vito star.

Yeah.

Right.

And like, this is the era where you're just like, DeVito doing like this level of thing in Johnny Dangerously makes so much sense.

But the ascension from being like, of course, DeVito, great character actor, to one of the biggest value adds in a supporting role, to DeVito makes movies, like constructs vehicles around himself, directs and writes and stars in his own films.

It's just kind of wild.

This is still his supporting king era for sure.

He basically is rude gambler in this movie, like from Mars Attack.

But I think it's.

No, he's funny, but it's just like he's just dropping in to do a couple funny scenes.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Which is like very similar to his terms of endearment role.

Yeah.

Obviously.

Something like Romancing the Stone is a little more filled out, but he's a supporting player still.

Romancing the Stone feels like it is supposed to be the same size role as this, and he starts over-delivering so much that he becomes more important in the movie.

But if you actually clock him, he doesn't have that much screening time.

And that feels like people being like, fuck, do we start to like write these movies around him?

I love DeVito.

I never want to lose the man.

Like, can we get 10, 20, 30 more years of Danny DeVito?

Let's put some air tags on him.

80.

I'm not a person.

That's fucking crazy.

And he's still just doing sunny.

And the Jersey Mics commercials.

Wow.

I don't get super invested in like celebrity relationships, but that brief period where it was public that he and Rhea Perlman had separated for a short time, I remember being like, uh-oh, love isn't real.

That was a little shocking.

But then they like got back to

now they're sort of like together with distance.

They've got a Tracy Let's Carrie-Kuhn thing going on.

You know, they believe in boundaries.

Yeah.

But that was, that's just like one of the most perfect celebrity couples of all time.

Yeah.

Did you hear Carrie Kuhn on WTF?

I haven't listened yet.

So I haven't either.

But Fran, last night I saw Fran, she was telling me, you got to listen.

And she was like,

she was like, Carrie just keeps being like, my old husband with his DVDs.

Like she's not like, oh, I love DVDs.

That she's like, Tracy's crazy.

The clip of her on Fallon promoting Ghostbusters colon Frozen Empire, when I feel like was the first time she really started publicly talking about the physical media collection.

And she's like doing it in this sort of like

screwball comedy, like affectation voice where she goes, my husband has 10,000 Blu-rays.

And every time I hear her say it, it's just like full body shivers.

Like, why is this the sexiest thing I've ever heard?

Coolest.

She is.

The coolest.

Yes.

All right.

So Donnie, 10,000 Blu-rays.

Johnny Dangerously.

Johnny Dangerously.

It's about

you open with Kelly's pen.

You got this framing device.

Right.

Yeah.

But kind of, I will call it kind of in the unfrosted vein.

It's Clifford-esque as well.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Yes.

Did you ever get unfrosted?

We've talked about this.

Your memory is gone.

I'm sorry.

It is.

The unfrosted framing device is the most insane shit in the world.

No reason for it.

Although, I think maybe the best joke in the movie is the little kids sitting at the soda fountain and going, two Pop-Tarts leave the box.

Yes, that is funny.

I just couldn't hate Unfrosted.

But I mean, the whole movie is, why does this exist?

Certainly.

A question even Jerry Seinfeld himself cannot answer and has declined to.

I think part of my I can't hate Unfrosted is getting back to your original point.

It's like, we don't get this kind of shit anymore.

Like, I don't find the majority of this funny, but I like that he made it.

Whereas everyone else is like, why spend this much time and energy making something this stupid?

I'm like, this is what our country was founded on.

I wish he spent more time and energy making something that stupid because it feels like, and there is, I think there's a

there's something to be done with a genre parody of this genre of a company existed which is so many movies now are that and i think it there's there is a genre parody in there but i don't think jerry seinfeld thought about that or cared that was irrelevant he was just like i like pop tarts this is funny to me but you're right that the cliffords framing device is the same thing of like we want to tell the audience this guy is okay before the movie starts the one reason I don't bump on this is I do think Keaton's performance is so funny in the wraparound, being the kind of like G-Shucks guy.

And there are even just some little throwaway gags of him doing the price sticker gun on the handle.

There's stuff like that where I'm just like, this movie has like a level of like comedic invention.

And there are, I love, I like that there are jokes in that and it's not just like a dry setup.

The kid is stealing a dog and he goes, you like stealing and the kid goes, beats paying for it.

And it's like, that's a cute little joke this movie just for me is on the right line of like something like the freedberg seltzer movies which are so overzealous in their attempt to have like no down moments and yet nothing is actually really a joke there's something that resembles a joke every two seconds but if you look at it you're like that's just them doing the thing and pointing at it or someone getting kicked in the nuts right whereas this is like trying not to go more than five seconds without something funny happening, but that can be like a visual visual gag, a written gag.

It can be a reaction.

It can be the way someone says something.

Like it feels versatile enough in the way it is exploring how can you make a movie funny.

Right.

Some just genre cues of like, oh, you're going to look at this thing that kind of blows out the convention.

And yeah.

The term I feel like we should be using for this movie is wacky.

It is a very wacky.

Yes.

There's a lot of wacky moments, but wacky isn't necessarily like laugh out loud, funny.

it's true one could say that that's how we feel about it you and i

because then again but then i love weird al who is wacky you're well i'd say he's more weird interesting

what's what's what's giving you that feeling about him his basic temperament

um so

we flashback to the 19 teens and he's a newsboy's trying to steal the the pair or no he's trying to steal a puppy yeah and trying to give him

the framing device let's move on back.

Let me tell you how it got good.

He's a kid.

He's a newsboy in New York City.

He's a good boy.

He's played by

Byron Thames,

who has got a, you know, a little face.

He does indeed have a little doesn't really look like, but is most famously the

parent of Hudson Thames,

who is the voice of Peter Parker in lots of things, I will say.

Oh, interesting.

A little fact I have for you there.

He's connected to the Eddie Fisher, Carrie Fisher.

I'm just seeing sister-in-law George Fisher.

Oh, well, he must have

married Tricia Fisher, who is the son of Eddie Fisher and the half, was the half-sister of Carrie Fisher, different mommy.

He's a good little newsboy.

His mother, in my opinion, may be the comedic powerhouse of the filmer Stapleton.

So fucking funny.

Yes.

This is right when she's just like won an Oscar.

Like she wins an Oscar for Reds and want to say 82, 82, right?

Let's see, 81.

So, she's just won an Oscar, and she's like, Yeah, let me have Johnny Dangerously.

I'll have fun, right?

And I'm just gonna like play this as straight as I can.

Like, the joke is giving everything the gravitational.

They are very funny.

Her one is really good.

Her like opening scene

after the street, but her coming home to the apartment, them giving her the cigarettes, yeah,

oh, well, I've been considering trying, but this finally pushes me over the edge.

And then the reveal that she's 29th,

happy 29th birthday, mom.

Yeah,

um,

so she's there, she's the mommy, uh, and uh, Johnny's dad is dead.

Of he was a criminal.

They have a photo on the desk of him in the electric chair.

Um,

funny, this kind of got banged.

This kind of got banged.

Uh, and uh,

you know, you've got you've already got like young Danny Verman, right?

Is

the rival newser, you've got the brother, obviously, who's a good boy, right?

Um, I always

got Roman Maroney, uh, the nightclub owner, who played by

Richard Dimitri.

Oh, oh, sure.

Who is a malaprophist?

Yes.

And then Peter Boyle is Jocko Dundee.

Right, who of course has the same initiative as Giant Dangerous League.

I always think young Griffin Dunn is Lucas House.

Yeah, he does look like Lucas House.

It does look like Louis.

Yes, he does.

But it's

Troy Slayton.

Who became a lawyer?

Who was on Cagney and Lacey as one of their children, I guess?

He was Lacey.

he ran for judge of Los Angeles Superior Court in 2022.

He was also on Parker Lewis Can't Lose.

Well, I'll tell you what he lost.

His campaign for judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court.

What the fuck is Parker Lewis?

That was on the TV for a while.

Parker Lewis Can't Lose was like the ripoff of Ferris Bueller.

It's basically a TV show that's just trying to do Ferris Bueller.

And then I think he was in Paramount.

We're like, fuck that.

We could put Ferris Bueller on TV.

And they did did that.

No one liked that.

Was there like fourth wall breaking and Parker Lewis can't lose?

I think so.

I think it might have been a little bit of a Clarissa.

Yeah.

Let me explain it all.

Yes.

Oh, I love it.

Because like a cool team.

Well, because that's, of course,

that's a Bueller.

Bueller tells us it's time to leave the theater.

The surrealism was toned down in the series' final season, going as far as having Parker acknowledge this by breaking the fourth wall and canceling one of the show's transitions.

That sounds okay.

Did Peter Boyle always look like that?

Yes.

He just always looked like that.

He came out looking like that.

He almost seems like he was a baby like that and then never grew the rest of his hair.

Yes.

I would agree.

Like, here, I found a picture like a beard.

I don't like it.

I don't like it.

How much hair?

How much hair are we talking about?

Well, here is Peter Boyle as an actual young man with hair.

There's his hair.

Yeah.

And then here is Peter Boyle with

40 minutes later

fully bald, with, I think, a little bit more like, you know, the hair's starting to go a little bit.

He's combing it.

He's got a big part.

He's a handsome guy.

But it is funny that he looked like Frankenstein.

He did.

He was.

And of course, that is why he played Frankenstein and Jan Frankenstein.

But like, even in this, he's good as a gangster.

And I'm like, motherfucker looks like Frankenstein.

If they remade Young Frankenstein now, it would be Austin Butler in the worst bald cap you've ever seen.

And he'd be tracked.

And then he would show up at the, he'd show up at at the Oscars like,

when he's accepting the Oscars, fuck, he can't drop it.

Genius God.

He spent all the time with Frankenstein's family.

Peter Boyle has maybe

one of the

blockiest heads.

One of the most,

one of Hollywood's great noggins.

Just like such acute angles on his skull, right?

I feel like that should be all straight lines.

A Ripley's believe it or not, museum you can go to.

It's just like Hollywood's greatest noggins, and it's just like heads revolving on sticks.

When you see him with hair, it looks wrong.

You're just like, the amount of forehead that guy had was part of the charm.

You can't contain that with hair.

Anyway, yeah, so you got, you know, will he enter a life of crime?

He has to support his family.

His mother has a series of conditions, the prices of which keep going up.

It starts out as very ron pumpkin in 1999.

Yeah, 1999.

Now only or something this week only.

Right.

Well, because like Boyle is like, I'll you do this.

I'll give you 50 bucks.

He's like, no, no.

And then it's like, right, your mom has this operation.

It's $49.95 this week only.

So, right, he's got to do it.

He helps smuggle weapons into the club using the newspapers.

It's weird.

The more we talk about it, it's almost as if you're realizing that every joke in this movie is good.

It sounds funny said aloud.

And again, I liked this movie.

I was like, it's funny.

Like, the electric chair picture is funny when you describe it.

But when I watch it, I'm like,

I was like, yeah.

good?

See, there are a bunch of movies like that that I watch, and I'm like, I like that they made this.

It doesn't make me laugh.

This is a good question.

What?

I mean, definitely, I'll say this.

Like, a lot of the weird Michael Keaton 80s and 90s around the good ones are like that, where I'm like, nothing in this is making me laugh and it should be funny.

I like this cast.

I like this premise.

Gung-ho.

Gung-ho is weirder because I think gung-ho is very affable and is also so culturally regressive that you're like, gung-ho is the best of this era, but also the most conceptually fucked.

This movie, Johnny Dangerously, we've talked about the character already, but they did the, have the incredible foresight to make the guy with the nearly inscrutable accent Greek.

Yes.

And you're like, all right, we can still laugh at that.

You're not thinking.

That's fine.

And I'm allowed to do my impression in the opening.

No, like the dream team is one of those.

Speechless is one of those.

Fucking heard of these.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm also, I think, kind of like, can we get to grown-up Keaton?

Yes, please.

Sure.

See this kid.

Which is another reason probably why it's worth starting the movie with the framing device of like,

get Keaton on screen.

I'll move on.

Sure, sure, sure.

How to describe the rest of Johnny Dangerously?

Because it's not, again, like at this point, the plot begins to fall away.

Like, yes, he has the

rivalry with Piscapo.

And yes, he has the rivalry with his brother.

I want to...

name another thing I like very well that I think I like very much that I think is executed very well by Heckerling.

The sort of, okay, Johnny's going to help prove himself as a little boy and like endear himself to Peter Boyle and the mobsters, which he does by the gymnastics routine, knocking out all the gangsters.

I think it's fun.

That's like Heckerling also doing like musical

words.

I would say I didn't hear a NY.

I agree.

That sequence, that sequence fun more than funny.

I agree.

But it is a delightful little combat set piece.

Is there putting the bucket on his head and sliding across the bar like a missile is funny?

Is there an argument for

like

this movie is sort of so well made, looks good.

She understands the sort of cinema she's referencing, right?

It's almost too well made.

Then, like, that's almost hurting the comedy a little bit just because it is kind of so jazzy and like,

do you know what I mean?

Like, high production value

thing i think i like about it though

in a lot of ways like that it it does feel like it's not that it's approximating the kind of movie it's parodying well it's that it is creating sort of an equivalent movie of its own right if that makes sense yeah

i think maybe my favorite joke in the movie is

He's listing all the relatives he never knew.

He's walking with Mary Lou Henner and he's listing, like, I got a brother I never knew.

I never knew my father.

And it's just like cut to, they're in different locations.

And it, it, like, really made me laugh.

It's like an editing joke.

Like, right.

There's stuff like that that I like where she is playing with the form.

Yeah.

Um, Ben and I are looking at each other.

I laughed out loud at that.

We had a dog, ran away, never knew him.

Yep.

It's so funny to me.

The funniest line to me was it could shoot through a school.

Like, that really made me laugh.

That was like the one time I was like, that's a fucking funny line.

So dark too now but i still laughed really hard right we talked about this in our 1941 episode with the dope boys which that's a good example of a movie that's overwhelmed by its scale and profit but this is what we were saying that is far worse than johnny dami there's this weird line twice we were discussing it 18 times as long there's this weird line we were discussing where i'm like if you're gonna parody something into a style parody you have to kind of get close to approximating the production values.

If you're not getting them and it looks so cheap, then it doesn't work, Unless the joke is that you made it for $2.

But then if it looks better than the real thing, then it stops being funny as well.

There's like an uncanny valley parody line that I do think it helps that this is like doing an homage parody to a B movie genre, that it doesn't have to be like an epic, which I feel like History of the World part one is like a kind of like turning point movie for a lot of people and Brooks is like, is this when he goes over the hump?

Sure.

And it's part of that that he's trying to parody like epics.

And in doing that, inherently, the movie gets too big versus like Spaceballs.

He's like safely below the George Lucas line.

But I mean, I think, I don't like Space Balls as much as some people.

I think also partly because, right, it's, it's a little, I mean, he never, young Frankenstein and producing saddles are like, he never topped that.

It's my only issue with doing him on our show

with Brooks, Melbrook, is like, I, there's plenty to say about some some of the later stuff, but for someone to just like kind of fucking nail it so hard with his like first three movies, essentially, it's tough to then be like, and then he, you know, made like 10 more movies.

I mean, the next big success, right?

Because producers was very early as well.

Producers at the first one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so then, and then the next big, the biggest success after the early wave, right, was the producer's musical, which is like, right, it's like one of the greatest, most decorated musicals of all time.

I contend that like high anxiety, silent movie, and history of of the world are all interesting to talk about.

They're totally interesting to talk about and they have good stuff in them, but obviously they're, you know, they're competing with something almost impossible.

The insane thing is that he made two of the greatest comedies of all time in the same year, that he like hit a height early on in his career and did two of them so close together.

They both come out in 73.

Yeah, well, what a crazy motherfucker.

Knowing Frankenstein is 74, and I think Blazing Saddles is too.

Yes.

They're both 74.

You get into adult Johnny, but basically he endears himself to the mobsters.

They make him one of them and he owns it.

And you immediately set up this dynamic of like him walking down the street, people selling I heard Johnny shirts, everyone loving Johnny.

But there is this kind of like Superman Clark Kent conceit of like just within his household.

I'm Johnny Kelly at home.

I'm Johnny Dangerously in the streets.

And the whole town, the whole neighborhood is in on it.

Except for

in on keeping it from his mother and brother.

the closest people in his life because the other side of it is the other mobsters don't know that he's the brother of the DA

right

although that argument's just starting of course his brother goes to law school and gets married because he wants to get laid uh as Maureen Stapleton calls him out um and uh becomes a lawyer right and show him this weird testicle cartoon

which yeah Josh already said it but yeah the one thing where you're just like what and it's such a like such a big swing set piece where it's like it's an animated kind of film strippy sort of thing.

And you're just like, could have done without it.

It's also, I don't totally get the inner logic of the joke where the bit is that like he's supposed to be the good kid.

And the more that Johnny goes bad, he feels a responsibility to his mother to make sure that his little brother stays on rails, right?

Suddenly, he's so horny and hot and bothered about his girlfriend that he doesn't want to go to law school.

And Johnny takes it upon himself to talk him into going to law school.

And you're like, okay, cool comedy setup premise here.

Johnny's got to do something to scare him off of just running away and marrying his girlfriend.

He needs to stay in law school.

And you're like, what is the comedic like effect of this?

And then Johnny takes him to a room where he has a projector where he shows him an animation that explains that the more you use your testicles, the more they die.

Yeah.

Where I'm just like, who made this movie and to what end?

The joke of the movie within the movie is not clear.

because it's not like he shows them like a movie about like stds right and it's not like he makes up like a fake mythical story you're like who produced this film right why where did johnny get that yes yes

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There is one other person in the room right now.

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I sleep easy.

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can we also talk about his apartment the aesthetic of it it's so crazy

it is kind of vaporwave i have to say yeah

it's very just like white he lives in a jazz club he well but it's i don't i don't know it it's it's almost like it feels like saved by the bell coded if that makes sense it's like if if zach morris were a scarface yeah yeah

uh there is a funny joke i think maybe one of the few times where i did laugh out loud he has like an apartment where multiple women who apparently live with him i guess he's such a playboy yes the women are all wearing their they're very exposed sexy but he the brother does some kind of thing where he's like uh no i don't want to go to tits i mean college you know that kind of like thing i think that's a funny little moment yeah i I'm going more fun.

I like.

We should go joke by joke.

Say fun or funny.

When Johnny meets Mary Lou Henner.

Yes.

And he's like, oh, and you got these.

And he looks down her breasts and then he says, I like those in a woman.

I like that joke, too.

What's a good joke?

Here's another thing I think Heckerland gets, and this is a thing through like trying to watch through the full Keaton filmography and for the first time really digging into these like non-existent 80s and 90s comedies.

Michael Keaton is an actor you cannot like cover in close-ups.

He is a full-body actor.

Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

There's so much about like his weird convulsions and like mannerisms and about how that interacts with the other person he's in the scene with.

And like there is something classical enough about Heckerling's understanding of like comedy framing and timing where she's just really smart about like basically always shooting him from the waist up at least, only giving him a close-up if it's sort of like a parody of an emotional revelation.

But you want to watch like long since sustained two shots and like roving shots where you're watching him interact with shit in real time because the whole magic trick of ketones is just like that he's got this broken metronome that he has the weirdest timing in the world and this sort of off rhythm and you need to see that engage with like other people in his space in real time

so there's even just shit like him coming into Maureen Stapleton's apartment saying, hey, mom, what you cooking?

She says, Beer.

And he's stirring the pot.

And he goes, Ah, with noodles.

That's a good idea.

And then, like, while she's talking and setting up plot stuff, he's in the background and he pulls down the clothes and all the laundry collapses on him.

Like, this sort of sustained, like, you want to watch Keaton just go through the sort of like mousetrap setup of these sets and the gags and everything.

I found it humorous.

I'm laughing.

I'm laughing the whole time.

I laughed at, what are you cooking beer?

That's like coming.

Funny.

With noodles.

Beer with noodles.

The runner of the mom always has a new weird sickness.

Yes.

And the doctor

strong as a bull, like on screen, really.

What did he say?

She didn't have saliva, like salivary gland.

And Michael Keaton goes, it'll be good to see her spit again.

That's good.

It's good.

Yeah.

I think this movie is like really good at parodying the sort of like weird sentiment of movies like that, you know, like parodying the emotional beats.

I also think I'm trying desperately to remember where I heard this.

And I feel like it was some podcast interview recently where someone with a background in comedy was talking about the difference between comedy and drama as an actor, which is a thing that people discuss a lot.

And I thought this was one of the best ways I'd ever heard someone identify the difference, which was, I almost want to say this was connected to the SNL 50th and it was some SNL cast.

I feel like Alec Baldwin is always talking about this.

This is what this person said.

Very normal guy.

The most normal.

You guys watching the Baldwins?

No, but I'm just hearing that it's normal.

It's America's most normal TV show.

People keep texting me, like, right, a clip from it where they're like, check out this normal clip of like a normal thing happening on that normal TV show.

The normal guy.

Doing the accent.

Kind of.

Yeah.

They were saying, whoever this is, and hopefully one of our listeners will find the interview I'm thinking about, that like the fundamental thing is you want to play it real in both cases.

They were like, the difference between comedy and drama is that you still play it real, but you make those shifts a lot faster and a lot more dramatically, right?

So it's like in comedy, you might have to go from placid to like furious in one line.

And you need to find the way to like earn that ramp up.

in a way that is unrealistic.

And that is a thing I think Keaton is very good at.

Like he is so bizarre.

He has so much energy that there's never anything in him to me that feels like he's pushing or reaching.

Like it's part of the magic of Beetlejuice of just like, this guy's somehow making it feel natural to be a ghost that changes voice six times in five words, right?

And similar, I think he's very well suited for this kind of comedy, which he didn't do a ton, where he has to like parody a leading man and do his kind of like somewhat ironic version of the actual emotional plotty scenes, but then swing to a big joke to go from like romantic to angry to tough to sensitive.

It's, I think he's very, very good in this.

I'm obviously just in the bag for the movie.

You love the movie so much.

And I'll say this: Griffin and I are maybe overselling this movie.

I do wonder, right, if people like now have to make the effort to find this movie too.

Can't just, you know, fire it up.

And I don't think, I don't think this is like a hidden treasure lost to history necessarily, but I was delighted the whole time watching it.

I can count probably on one hand the number of jokes that I'm like, that doesn't work for me.

And there are so many jokes.

Right.

And so many of them worked.

And so like the rhythm of the jokes I find so comforting in a way.

And like even Even the quality, like I watched like the rip on like whatever internet archive and that being extra grainy and from VHS, I think maybe David, to your point, added to it.

Because I was like, this feels old timey.

It doesn't feel like watching something new.

And so it gives you that distance, like when you watch a Marx Brothers movie, not that it's at that level, but you go, this is a

new Marx Brothers movie.

Josh.

No, but it gives, you're not like, oh, this is modern and they're trying to be modern.

Well, you also, I think this movie is so lovingly made.

It makes sense that this is a genre that Heckerling like grew up idolizing.

And there's this part of like, well, maybe she couldn't, like, she has too much of like

an off-kilter comedic sensibility to ever make a straight gangster movie.

But by doing a parody, she's also able to actually get at everything she loves about gangster movies in a way where like it's, I feel like a lot of people talk about this being an issue in the Mel Brooks divide.

is like he clearly loves westerns and universal monster movies and hitchcock films.

By the time you get to Space Balls, you're like, I don't think Mel Brooks cares about Star Wars.

I think he has identified good bits to do within this, but I don't think it means anything to him in the same way as much as when he was riffing on movies that he grew up loving.

And there was this aspect of like, oh my God, I can't believe I got them to build a castle.

And now I'm lighting it in black and white.

And like, all that sort of shit.

And I think the Zuckers had a similar love for like the sign kind of be trash that they would parody in Top secret and airplane and naked gun.

Like they love these kind of just like programmer genre movies.

I sent you the Alec Baldwin tweet.

That's really funny.

Okay, let me look up the Alec Baldwin.

I think that's really funny.

So, Johnny Dangerously, so we got Piscapo.

Have we talked enough about Piscapo as Danny Vermin?

It's really funny.

Can I read this out loud?

I think you can.

I think you can because her accent is fake.

So I think it's okay to parody it.

This tweet is from at Charlie on here, Alec Colin.

In 1983, I was hospitalized because my roommate's cat gave me an asthma attack i'm deathly allergic hilaria petting their five cats colon my horsepint is so funny

i mean that is a

vibe of the show is it's a vibe that is the a plot of episode two

the a plot of episode two is being like you know our life is crazy nine months out of the year we live in a giant 15 bedroom manhattan apartment it's It's too small.

We can't all fit.

Their apartment has stairs, and it's this constant thing of like, we love the city so much.

We're staying in this tiny apartment.

I'm like, I'd love for you to talk to some of my friends.

You've never met a person.

In his defense, he does have countless children.

But that's also, that's recent.

I know, I know, I know.

I can't explain the problem that they brought on themselves

since the start of the pandemic.

They also have like four cats and four dogs, right?

And he's like, when I first moved to LA, my agent let me stay on her couch and she had three cats and I got sent to the hospital.

I'm deathly allergic.

And now we have four cats.

And the A plot of this episode is it's the weekend where we go from the city to the Hamptons.

Of course, he lives in the Hamptons in the summertime or whatever.

We have to figure out the seating charts for the three vehicles that will transport the two of us, our seven kids, our eight pets, and two nannies.

The nannies are referenced a lot are never seen on screen.

Of course.

I just like to think about like the sort of the guy who has to produce this show, right?

Like the guy whose job it is to like film this show.

Looking up the credits here, a Satan.

Yeah, right.

But like, just like the guy who's like, I, you know, I went to film school.

You know, he's just like, how do we craft a narrative out of, well, I guess this week we'll do the

cars to the Hamptons will be the A plot.

I think his agent called and was like, how do you feel about getting yelled at a lot?

Right.

Baldwin just keeps saying, don't put me in a car with the cats.

And Hilaria is like, Let's see how this evening chart shakes out.

And then you see her drawing it, and it's like a car, Alec, and then like four little cartoon tags.

She's like trying to murder her husband.

Yeah.

She's like, please, I'm going to repeat it.

Don't put the cats in the car.

And she's like, there are a lot of moving pieces.

I don't know how things are going to look.

And then it's like, don't put him in a car with the cats.

So this sounds like pretty good TV.

I just like, the whole premise of the show is him being like, I need money.

I need so much money.

I have so many children.

I need money right now.

And someone's like, do you want to sell your spleen?

And he's like, maybe.

I don't know.

Do you want to look at it?

Like, this is the whole show, right?

50 bucks.

Oh, you'll look at my spleen.

But then half of every episode is him weighing the death of this horrible, truly horrible thing that happened to him that I don't really want to make light of or even really, you know, think about it.

But that's why that's right.

And it didn't just happen to him.

Right.

Obviously, he was like, but still, like, it must must be a horrible thing for him to have to trust

but the show is trying to simultaneously be john and k plus eight and the staircase that's what's insane about it is half of every episode is him like struggling from ptsd and being like i have to go back to court and it's not like an offhand reference it's like deeply invested and then wacky music plays and it's like here i am in the car with the cats

It's the most deranged TV show that's ever existed.

Giant Dangerously, the Great American comedy.

Where are we left?

Where are we left off?

I don't know.

The brother went to law school.

He's now the assistant DA working under Danny DeVito, the corrupt DA.

Of course.

Fun.

Who has a crush on Johnny?

Yeah, that's like a weird little moment.

Yeah.

I mean, look,

we talk about this, but basically any comedy you watch from 1980 to 2012

has some level of homophobic joke.

Yeah, gay panic.

And I'm like, this actually registers about as low on the scale as these movies do.

It's the Greek accent of homophobia.

It is.

It is.

Like, the joke is just sort of like, I wouldn't have expected that guy is gay, but is almost kind of done without judgment.

I'm not forgiving it, but it feels like the least critical.

Whereas like, there's no sort of like recoiling in ooh to this.

But Peter Boyle survives multiple assassination attempts.

Comedically.

Decides to sit down.

You have the robot, Dimitri.

You have his toilet being exploded.

I like him holding.

Ben is smiling.

You have to admit this is a funny bit.

He's got the chain handle and he thinks it's his dork, as he puts it.

And then once he realized his penis is still intact, he decides it's time to retire and hand it over to Johnny, which is sort of where things escalate now.

His brother has gotten out of law school.

Right.

The conflict is his brother on one side, Piscapo on the other.

He's got a rise.

He's become the king of ping and Piscopo's looking for the crown.

Right.

Right.

Good, good use of the one PG-13 F-word.

What is the one fuck again?

Because, of course, they do say fark a lot.

Oh, sure.

The bird,

the parrot, right?

You missed fuckface.

Yeah, that's like, yeah, that's fun.

Yeah.

So what's funny then?

There's the, I don't know, lucky cigarette case.

It's always protecting people.

That's kind of a running bit.

Yeah, it's also, I mean, is kind of the plot device of how they know how to identify.

I mean, it ultimately absolves absolves him of the crime.

Because Danny Vermin has taken the cigarette case, which smells like gum because Johnny doesn't smoke.

And he's used that as his marker as he's now the kingdom.

But I also, I like DeVito's bribery scene being done like price is right,

like him unveiling the options of how he can be bribed on the stage.

Right, right.

That's funny.

DeVito's funny generally.

He plays the sort of crooked DA who hires Griffin Dunn and doesn't want him to do his job.

Right.

Dies in a horrible bull accident because he's handed a red jacket.

That must be a parody of something specific, right?

It's like a malt liquor commercial.

Such a complicated joke, the bull.

And he says death by commercial.

That was the

newspaper.

There must have been a commercial because he says, what are you drinking?

And he says, malt liquor.

And then he's holding this red smoking jacket that was handed.

And a bull runs into the bar and gores him to death.

I'm wondering if it's a Billie D.

Williams Cult 45 thing because that would have been the time of that campaign.

i was trying to find something about this but i can't i was a little mystified by it although i did think the setup was funny it is a parody of schlitz uh malt liquor commercials uh featuring richard roundtree interesting shaft himself shaft himself which right where right like a bull would crash through the wall when you ordered a schlitz Yeah, I mean, I'm watching one right now and there's a bull.

No one does it like the bull.

It's funny because

like

right.

That's a gag where you're like, I don't quite get the setup here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Him going, what am I drinking?

Malt liquor.

I'm like, that must mean something.

It's one of the only things in this movie that feels like specific to the era in which it was made.

It's not like kind of a timeless gag.

Is it ever a good idea to do a commercial parody in a movie?

In a movie, I'm trying to know.

Like, no, right?

No.

I mean, like, you can do like the Wayne's World thing of like parodying the notion of commercial.

Yes.

Right.

Like of the talking to camera kind of thing.

Yeah.

But yeah.

I, in, in the wake of the great Gene Hackman's death, I watched No Way Out, A Blind Spot in his career I'd never seen before,

Young Costner vehicle.

And that has the crazy sex scene where Kevin Costner cannot wait to get home to have sex with Sean Young.

So they fuck in the back of a limo and the limo driver is like, whoa.

And Costner's like, thumbs up.

You like what you see kind of.

And they just go really far in the back of the limo.

And I was watching it and I was like, holy shit, this is what Hotshot's Part duh is parodying

like many years later you you see the original right and that was a scene i had just always found funny for decades and was like yeah this is just insane for a guy to in the back of a limo while this guy's here like it worked not being a parody and and then i watch it and i'm like hot shots is only like heightening this 10

but versus this you're watching and you're like i know this is referencing something that i don't have if it hadn't been for the malt liquor and the death by commercial on the newspaper if he had just held up a smoking jacket and then a bull came in, I would have been like, that's a funny long way around way to assassinate someone.

No, but you're right.

I didn't even ping like, oh, this must be something I'm not getting.

I was just sort of like, ah, can't win them all.

Johnny Dangerously taking a lot of shots.

I'm glad we solved that Schlitz mystery, actually.

That is interesting.

Yeah, I don't know.

The brother gets married.

He's so horny.

He wants to fuck in the janitor's closet, but he overhears that his brother is Johnny Dangerous.

His compos just put it together.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And then he runs out.

And then the janitor shows up.

And that just, I don't know.

Another weird little moment.

Yeah.

But they basically make the deal.

Like, you know,

Griffin Dunn's like, I'm not going to rest until I put you in jail.

And then they have their sort of fist fight bargain.

And Johnny takes the fall.

And then is like, I'm going to go clean.

Right.

I'll go legit.

I'll go legit.

Yeah.

So then the rest of the movie, the last half an hour.

How does Johnny get out?

Right.

Right.

While also Piscopo is trying to stage a coup and wants him dead.

And you've got funny stuff, or I should say more like fun stuff, like Piscopo cutting the brakes on

Griffin Dunn's car.

That seems kind of fun.

Her writing his name.

Well, that happens earlier.

That's earlier?

Yeah, that's earlier.

That's at the beginning of his career.

Afterwards, Johnny is framed for the murder of like the head of

that's right before DeVito dies.

That's right.

Right.

That's the beginning of Griffin Dunn's career.

Yeah.

Yeah, the sort of last half hour, right, is like, you know,

Johnny being like, I'm innocent.

And there's, we were building to the big fight at the movie theater.

Yes.

I mean, I think one of the gags in this movie that does not work is the Irish janitor lady who speaks entirely in actual slurs.

It is more jarring because you have a really good bit of a guy who says curse words incorrectly, and you're so used to that.

And then in the last 20 minutes, you're introduced to a character who just speaks in like unbroken slur chain.

But I do like her later scene with Maureen Stapleton, where Maureen Stapleton tries to appeal to her because she ends up being the one witness who can't like support the case and is like, look, we have a lot in common.

I also love like the degree to which Johnny is like idolized and respected when he finally goes to jail that like the warden is so thrilled to have him there and he's high five and he has has the line where he's like ah pops you still in here but also his father is not dead after all that johnny has somehow immediately made the gangster version of the prison uniform that he has the high collar david is very seriously mulling over whether or not these jokes are funny exonerates he they they exonerate him i think i was most i was really losing steam in the last act of this movie i like the ray walston bit what's the ray wallston bit he's a blind newspaper man oh i did like that bit and then he he gets hit with a sack of newspapers his vision's back.

Unblinds, but is now dead.

And he's

another one.

And then the third stack is, I can see and I can hear, but who am I?

Which he's funny.

He's very funny.

And I do like her, right, giving a little high-five to a, you know, a fast times cast member.

Like, it's nice to see him.

Yes.

Yeah.

And Vincent Scavelli is in here very briefly as well.

Yes.

He would have been a good goon.

Like, get him up higher in the cast list.

I agree.

Should we explain the Joe Piscopo bit that we've alluded to seven or eight eight times?

It's so simple, but I just find it very effective.

And it's just Piscopo playing it with full intensity.

Yeah.

Which is anytime someone does something that he finds disrespectful, he says,

a blank did blank to me once, takes a beat, and then goes once, holding up the one finger.

My favorite iteration was hung on the hook.

Yeah.

Michael Keaton picks him up and hangs him on a coat hook on a door and slams the door and he goes, my, I forget his father, my grandfather hung me on a hook once.

And it's like, that's good.

The specificity of everything has happened to him one time.

This is right.

It's like, is Piscapo funny?

No.

But does he have kind of like some gravitas in a way?

Is that why he succeeded in this?

This is where I give Piscapo credit.

I don't think that joke is funny on paper.

Right.

That's what I'm saying.

If I read this in the show.

Or it's like a little funny.

I think a lot of these jokes I would find funny on the page and then are performed well.

That's one where I'd be like, you guys are really reaching for a running bit for this.

Four or five times.

On paper, it's not funny.

And I think Piscopo is putting a degree of gravitas on it that does make it work for me.

We're like his increasing intensity with his sort of like haunted threat of don't let this happen again.

And then it just builds to like, he keeps getting interrupted before he gets to finish the sentence.

I wanted to pull up the exact line.

When Marie Stapleton goes to appeal to the janitor,

she says, we have nothing in common.

What do I have to talk to you about?

And Maureen Stapleton says, we have a lot in common.

We both scrub floors.

We're both swell lookers.

And neither one of us is Chinese.

I think that's a funny line.

Yeah, that's pretty funny.

David's really, I'm winning him over in this one.

But

I now feel like I'm being a scold about this movie that I like thought was enjoyable.

I just could immediately tell why I was like, why I haven't heard of this movie.

You know what I mean?

Where I'm like, Amy Heckerline made a gangster comedy with Michael Keaton.

Why haven't I heard of that?

I can understand why I maybe didn't get to see it, but like, why don't I know about that?

I get why it wasn't

because it's a movie made for weird doors.

Yeah.

But I had always thought it had more of a like, oh, that's like an interesting like swing they took that just didn't work at all.

Where in rediscovering it for my big Keaton watch through last year, I was just like so pleasantly surprised by how consistently funny I found it.

And once again, watched it last night for the second time in six months and was like still laughing out loud at it.

And part of it is the pleasure of like, I watch all three Naked Gun movies every year like clockwork.

Every year I'm like, it's time to check in and do the full Dreben trilogy, right?

There are jokes in those movies that like live in my brain forever that I think about on a daily basis, but there are so many jokes that I do just end up getting surprised by some of them every time.

And like most great comedies, if you've seen them a bunch, you're like, oh, here's that bit I like.

It is rare to have a movie that is this dense with jokes, which if you find the jokes as funny as Josh and I do, this is a movie you can return to and be like, I forgot that one because the bench is so deep.

Yeah, which is why I love Airplane as well and like all those Zaz comedies and stuff, because right, there's always a new one that you're like, I haven't, I haven't given this one love recently.

The heights also are not as high as Naked Gun and Airplane.

I think that's the big thing where like the one that feels like a home run swing is the testicle educational film.

And you're like, swing and a minute.

It doesn't girl like the iconic set pieces, but even just like this, I'm looking at the, I'm scrumming through the movie as we're watching this so I can call out some of my favorite bits, but as we're talking, but

the

grapevine passing of the information that Vermin's big play is going to happen at the Savoy theater and the message is retained perfectly until the mumbling guy.

And then it's said to Johnny and he immediately corrects it and the other guy goes that's not what I said and he goes yeah but I know this great

that that that is pretty funny the the nodding the all the gangsters nodding and then one guy going no more nodding it's like this that just the speed and density it's like a lot of singles and doubles which is like it is some that is a tone that I love and miss and it's done lovingly and not cynically like it's not like not another

uh war movie or whatever those you know

not another war movie is one they never attempted.

No, they would be interesting.

Friedberg and Seltzer come back.

We're ready to tackle Private Ryan.

1970s.

They'd be like, no, no, no, no, we're not even doing that.

We're doing all those like a rock movies nobody liked.

We're doing like stop loss.

The rendition.

Yeah.

Anything Wahlberg.

Yeah.

The whole Wahlberg.

Yeah.

Not another Marky Mark movie would be kind of funny.

Yeah.

Friedberg Seltzer could be gifted Wahlberg.

You would have to observe the Wahlberg things so keenly.

Well, this is right.

This is the thing about talking about this as a dying art form, right?

I think it was with our text later with the Doughboys.

Mitch sent us a scene from the end of Epic Movie and was like, or maybe Eva Anderson sent it to me and was like, I'm obsessed with this.

This is insane.

And we watched it and we were all like, this is really fucking funny.

But is it funny now because we're so deprived of these types of movies that even seeing reminder of the worst example from 15 years ago now feels refreshing?

Or does this almost work as its own out-of-context anti-comedy?

I'm looking at the Wikipedia.

Apparently, the epic movie ends with Borat,

or are you not talking about that part?

I'm sorry, I'm talking about a disaster movie,

which ends with a parody of I'm fucking Matt Damon.

Uh-huh.

Parody of a comedy set.

Apparently, the guru Shitka is involved.

Correct.

Hellboy is in it.

This, I think this is tipping towards anti-comedy.

It is.

like apparently chipmunks get crushed to death by a cow yes this doesn't sound funny this is what's funny i'm just saying this doesn't even sound fun doesn't even sound fun we're gonna post this on social media okay what's funny about it is i think if you've seen the full movie which i have not

This is just like lazily calling back every pop culture character that's existed in the movie up until that point.

If you only watch this one scene out of context, you just cannot guess who's coming next because you're just like, oh, terrible puppets of the chipmunks.

And then it switches to

Hancock, you know?

Like all these things, like the randomness of it is just genuinely kind of shocking because you're seeing all these characters the first time if you haven't watched the movie.

But it is just recognition comedy, right?

It is done with no point of view.

They are not like approximating the things they're parodying well.

So much of the Friedberg Seltzer thing was like, they had trailers out, parodying scenes from trailers for movies that hadn't come out yet.

Like they were like, our movie's coming out in August.

Hancock's coming out in July.

We need to parody Hancock.

So they would just parody the trailer scene so that they could strike while the iron was so hot.

So this is like, you don't even have a real frame of reference for what you're parodying.

And that's like the worst end of it, right?

And I feel like the Doughboys are always talked about, like, why'd the parody movie die?

The comedy movie died is a bigger thing, a thing we've talked about a lot.

The parody movie feels like a thing that is really tricky to imagine ever coming back again because it feels like this kind of thing has become such a like short-form comedy-based

macro culture, which doesn't exist as much.

It was murdered, you're saying someone killed it.

I think so.

By like Friedberg is Seltzer, I really think so.

But I also think like you had like SNL could parody things and you'd have like shows that didn't last as long, like the Ben Stiller show that could do like more cinematic parodies.

But the idea of doing these things with like a proper movie budget was rare and hard.

You'd get like MTV movie movie awards segments and Oscar openings and shit like that.

But now like SNL has this like film unit that can turn stuff out so fast, not to mention like the rise of websites like College Humor and Funnier Died that were also doing what if blank was a horror movie instead and doing it with reasonably good production value and with good actors where just like the idea of, oh, fuck, you need to string like 40 of these together to justify it being feature length versus like, why wouldn't we just do one five minute sketch of this?

I mean, Key and Peel, right, is another touchstone for like outstanding genre parody with great attention to detail.

Right.

It was like the standards of doing this on TV and the internet, there became so many more places that did them, and it became a lot easier for them to do it well.

Where the idea of having to go to the movies to see this makes no sense, especially when the movie versions of it happening simultaneously were dog shit.

I do find it interesting that, like, we have the Naked Gun reboot coming out this summer.

Who's Drebin?

Liam Neeson is Drebin, which is very fun.

Yeah.

Which feels like the smart, like

the Liam Neeson thriller of 2025 is the equivalent of the kind of cop procedural show that Naked Gun was parodying at the time.

It's Akiva Schaefer directing it, who is the right guy to do that.

At the time we were recording this, it has no trailer.

It has an August theatrical release date that I'm hoping stays and does not go to streaming.

Oh, God.

Pamela Anderson is playing the Priscilla Presley equivalent.

Paramount has it.

And they just announced that the fucking Matt Stone Trey Partner Kendrick Lamar movie is going to Paramount Plus.

Which I'm just so desperate for like a fucking live-action comedy, pure comedy to be released in theaters and make some amount of money.

I want to believe, perhaps naively, that if there was a movie that came out with the right people attached that was actually funny, everyone would go.

As much as I complain about the lack of successful theatrical comedies, there isn't an obvious thing in the last seven years where I'm I'm like, that was put in theaters and no one went.

All my favorites of the recent years, I thought, were like, maybe a little too niche to have that breakout.

Totally.

Love Dick's the musical, had a great time, but like, I understand why that did not gross $100 million.

A24 had their like getting behind Julio and like Dick's the musical and like trying to do the smaller, can we build this up kind of thing.

But it's like Naked Gun feels like there's a moment here for this to be recaptured.

You know, my favorite comedies recently, you know, Free Guy,

Wolves, The Family Plan, The Man from

Ohio.

I googled comedy recently 2020 and I'm trying to find the most cursed answers.

This really, it like hurts my feelings to hear you.

There have also been good ones that got like punted to streaming.

Like

Eurovision.

Barb and Star.

Barb and Star.

Barb and Star isn't.

I mean, Barb and Star and Palmstrings were supposed to go theatrical and got fucked by the pandemic.

Palmstrings also.

Same with King of Staten Island, which is less good than those movies, but

that was supposed to be a theater movie.

But the naked gun thing, I'm just like, if that were good,

it feels like it is correctly positioned at the right moment to make people go like, oh, right, this is fun.

People like comedies, dude.

One of them days just did really good.

Like, people will go see a comedy.

One of them days is so good.

Yeah.

Like, it's like, people go see a comedy.

Yes.

No Hard Feelings obviously did pretty good, you know, a couple years ago.

I feel like I'm all.

Two movies that I would describe as very fun.

At the time we're recording this.

One of them days is the third highest grossing film of the year.

And I just feel like there has not been a lot of talk of studios being like, oh, we should make like 10 of these a year.

I think this movie costs under $10.

No, there's talk.

I hear it.

There is.

There is.

I mean, they were

really great.

Keeky Palmer and Seza, both really funny.

Fantastic.

The Cat Williams scene is really funny.

It's all good.

It's funny.

Yeah.

You know what Cat Williams is really good in?

What's that?

Norbit.

Really?

Cat Walmer's kind of good in everything.

He's really funny in Norbit.

The whole joke in Norbit is that he and Eddie Griffin are former pimps who then start to run a legitimate business, but they start to run it like pimps because they can't stop being pimps.

Extremely of an era where, like, pimp was kind of a cultural reference of like a cool guy with a hat, yeah, wearing like a red or blue suit.

Women like him by his, by their own volition.

Uh, I mean, Cat Williams' entire early career was, is this guy a pimp or not?

Yes.

Is he implying that he used to be or is still currently?

I'm like very close to pulling the trigger on Cat Williams at the Barkley Center next weekend from the time we're recording.

What's the day cry for hope?

By the time this episode comes out, I will have gone or not.

It is March 22nd.

Are you interested?

I am not disinterested.

We can talk off March.

Okay.

Here's what I was going to say.

There have been a couple other spoof movies announced in development, but I do find it fascinating that all of them are taking the same approach, which is let's reboot the legacy spoof movie brands.

What are the other ones?

They announced that the Waynes brothers are coming back to school.

Oh, a scary movie.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm a little anxious about that, but yes.

Same.

Because I think, again, those, the first one, I remember really enjoying as a young person.

Yeah.

And then I think they became kind of those pastiche things of like, right,

you just have to have seen 14 movies to understand what's funny.

So they only did the first two, but two is already becoming that.

And is was made on such a

celebrated timeline that it is like parodying the stuff from six months earlier.

And then David Zucker takes over from that point.

But right, that's the big deal: they're coming back for the first time since two.

And then I have heard things about Hotshots, which kind of makes sense to do a Hotshots Lega sequel that is parodying Maverick.

Yeah.

And I feel like there is one.

I feel like they needed to do that right away.

That's already kind of receding.

There's another one I'm forgetting.

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Johnny dangerously.

You know, Vermin gets arrested.

Governor pardons Johnny.

Everything works out.

We'll have a little fun with it, David.

Big sequence in front of the movie theater screen.

I like the shot of him falling through the screen.

Cool.

That's fun.

Is that the Roaring 20s that they're watching?

I can't remember which movie it is.

Yes, it's one of those.

Yes, it's Roaring Twenties.

It's the big shootout on the steps.

The film

having to change the disguise of the car and their costumes.

ripping off the car like it's wallpaper the shelf paper yeah the shelf paper which is like so funny why they made that tight, why they referenced shelf paper earlier.

Oh, yeah.

To seed, like, I love shelf paper.

And then they're using it to camouflage.

Intentionality.

Like, this movie is like holistically building its bits for maximum impact later.

Film got bad reviews.

Okay.

Jenna Maslin says it that heckling brought a sense of fun.

Mm-hmm.

Fun.

And sort of, yeah,

you know what?

She did say that.

But she found the movie wound down as it went along, eventually descending to a lowest common denominator of dopey adolescent gags.

But she was like medium on it.

But most others did not like the movie.

And it opened somewhat confusingly Christmas time.

Yeah, 1984.

It was very bizarre.

And it made $3 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend.

It did make it to $17.

Okay.

So on a $9 million budget, it basically,

you know, like broke even-ish yeah i don't want to spoil the box office game but there's something important about the box office okay well i'm excited but i do think this is that kind of like follow-up movie where everyone's like crossing their arms and going like see amy you should have just stuck to your thing like why did you say no to all those scripts we sent you do you want to do the box office yeah let's do it i'm very curious what christmas time december 21st 1984 okay it's opening number nine at the box office so it's not in the top five what's number one at the box office a huge comedy something interesting is happening sort Sort of.

Beverly Hills Cup is number one.

That's correct.

And as Amy Heckerling said, I was so depressed when the movie came out.

My ex-boyfriend had a movie come out that day, too, called Beverly Hills Cop.

And his, she's wrong that it came out that day.

It had been out for a couple of weeks, but the point is beaten at the box office.

And his feeders were full, and mine were empty.

And I was just so miserable.

As we covered on our Martin Breast episode, those two had a thing when they were young.

At film school at AFI, I thought I saw Martin Breast in one of the scenes.

I don't think he is credited, but there is a one-line role, and now I want to see if I can find it.

I almost want to say it's in the courthouse that I could have sworn was young Marty.

Not seeing anything in particular as I Google it, but I don't know.

But so Beverly Hills cop is number one.

Beverly Hills cop.

Do you like Beverly Hills Cop, Josh?

I find it, this might be controversial, fun.

I mean, I would sort of agree that it is actually such a plotty movie and it's like kind of a straightforward cop movie that it is less about the laugh out loud stuff.

But

it really runs on Eddie Murphy's charm.

I also kept waiting for a twist and it's like, nope, we know it's the bad guy.

We go right at him.

Right.

Which is although I do kind of appreciate that it's just like, this guy sucks and he is right about him and he's just gathering the evidence to back up the case.

Which I just, I like assumed it was a slightly different kind of movie, but it's like, it is very fun.

Very fun.

But it is weird to watch today, as much as I love it and be like, that movie like shattered the culture.

Yes, right.

Like, people were losing their fucking minds, and you're like, it is a pretty standard cop movie that one guy is just like wheeling into being funny.

Number two at the box office is another film we have covered on this podcast quite recently.

Okay, it's a science fiction film.

The science fiction film.

A bit of a disappointment.

It's been out for two weeks.

The motion picture of Dune?

Dune!

There's an interesting, I mean, the AFI mafia of like Stuart Kornfeld, Breast,

Heckerling connecting to Lynch and Brooks.

We're building a little bit of a constellation.

We're in the mid-80s right now, although Heckerling will be, you know, will be moving forward.

But yes, number three.

So we've covered a lot of these because like we've done these box offices recently.

So number three is a buddy crime comedy film that was sort of a flop with two major movie stars.

Is this the one?

I feel like someone texted us about this recently that we didn't give it enough attention.

It's not The Fortune, which I feel like is what I guessed last time.

Is it the Kirk Douglas one?

No.

What's that one called?

I don't know.

Tough guys?

Sure.

That's not wise guys.

Maybe.

It was a bit of a flaw.

I don't know what you're talking about because I'm talking about this movie here.

David tapping out with Ben listening to stories about weird Al Force.

Film's called My Bologna.

No, it's, come on.

It's Burt Reynolds and Clint.

And Clint Eastwood.

It's a movie called City Heat.

It's a big disappointment,

throwbacky kind of, similar to Johnny Dangerous.

There are two throwbacky guys in hat movies.

You know, like it's like,

come on.

And then number four is an ambitious science fiction film that we've covered on our Patreon, a sequel.

2010?

2010, 2010.

The year we make contact.

So it's like, hey, kids, do you want to see flawed, ambitious sci-fi or like goofy gangster shit?

Yeah.

Or fucking, they're like, well, let's go see Beverly Hills Cop.

They are all going to go see Beverly Hills Converse.

Number five at the box office, you could also see this.

It's a film that had actually come out in 1940, but it's currently in theaters.

Gone with the Wind?

No.

The kids' film.

Wizard of the Boss.

Animated film.

Snow White?

No.

No, that's...

That's in the 30s.

I believe it is Disney's second film.

So then is it Pinocchio?

Pinocchio.

Pinocchio.

Yo!

Beverly Hills Cop.

I'm sorry to digress from Pinocchio, but Beverly Hills Cop being number one while Johnny Dangerously is number nine kind of underscores the Murphy

dynamic there.

I wasn't even thinking about that part of it.

You're like, Murphy is like breaking records as the star of the movie, and Piscopo is bombing as like the funny villain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

that's your top five.

You've also got Starman, another film we've covered.

You've got a new entry that's opening above Johnny Dangerously called Protocol, which is a Coldie Han comedy written by Buck Henry about a cocktail waitress who gets sucked into like an assassination plot or something.

Sounds like something she would do.

Yep.

You've got The Cotton Club, Francis Forcopola's big epic flop.

It's a lot of things flopping.

I mean, I feel like when we do these earlier, except you've got fucking Beverly Hills copy.

I was going to say, I feel like when we do these earlier pop-ups,

it felt like a healthier time at the Cineplexes where multiple movies could be succeeding simultaneously.

And this is a rare example of like Beverly Hills cop is just sucking up all the oxygen in the room.

You've also got

opening at number 10, new this week, a little sequel called Breaking

to Electric Boogaloo.

Boogaloo.

A movie remembered, I think, as a meme.

Yeah.

Movie remembered for its, yes, for its subtitle only.

I like when Johnny Break dances in this movie.

Like that too.

I'm seeing that the film received mostly negative reviews from critics.

Interesting.

Cowards.

Yes, Lucinda Dickey and Adolpho Shavadu Kinonyez and Michael Boogaloo Shrimp Chambers are the stars of that picture.

Maybe you should start an ASMR channel where you just list the cast of Break Into.

It just get like quieter and quieter.

David Names, famous breakdancers.

Also opening this week, there's a lot of flops.

There's a movie called Mickey and Maude, which is a Blake Edwards Dudley Moore like mega bomb.

And you've got a 20th Century Fox movie called The Flamingo Kid, which stars Matt Dylan, a young Matt Dylan, and a younger Hector Elizondo.

So, as you know,

Gary Marshall.

Hector Elizondo, which is about, I don't know, some kind of flamingo kid.

Oh, the intrinsic about the flamingo kid.

Thank you.

Is he like a kid who works at like a fucking country club or something?

Fanaboy or something.

But it's the first film to get a PG-13 rating, which has

been existed.

Now, it was not the first released because a couple more had come, but it was the first that the MPA certified with a.

Got it.

And yeah, that's what's been in in the box office when Johnny Dangerously comes out.

Now, so the film doesn't do very well.

Okay, I found who I think is Martin Brest, and I'm going to screenshot it, and I want to solve this mystery, but it's when Griffin Dunn goes in for his first day at the DA's office, and he has one throwaway line, and I feel very confident that is Marty Breast.

From us seeing cameos in his own area, I just don't know.

I can't prove this.

But I just, I found the moment, and I will screenshot it.

And it's a mystery to be solved later, perhaps across our series.

We'll see.

I like, I think, I like that you're transitioning to one of those podcasts that solves a mystery.

I mean, look, we just got back from the iHeart Podcast Awards, and those seem to be burning up the charts.

We need more mystery.

That's how this show started.

Decade of Dreams.

We were trying to solve what the Phantom Menace was about.

We've lost the mystery angle.

This show needs to go back to being a whodunit.

And I'll tell you whodunit.

Amy Hackerling.

She made a movie that is funny.

I agree.

Jokes.

Well, what do we think of her next movie, National Lampoon's European Vacation?

I have never seen it.

You have been watching through the vacation movies for the first time, David.

Huh.

Huge totemic series for you.

I mean, I love Chevy.

I feel like this is almost universally.

Nobody really likes this.

Right.

It's like the least liked installment.

No one likes the first one in Christmas.

This is the one people are less into.

And even like...

Vegas is out of steam, but I feel like people, I have heard people say, my best friend growing up, Derek Simon, whose family loved the vacation movies, were like, European vacation is like noxious.

I mean, the last time I watched it, I was 13.

I remember having a good time.

Josh, do you have a vacation take or care for this film?

They were movies, I think I saw Vacation and Christmas on TV.

I remember wanting to see Vegas in theaters, but being a child had no agency to do so.

So I missed it entirely.

And it's also like one of those things where the more you hear about Chevy Chase, the less I'm like, I got to go watch his old stuff.

Yes.

Jumping ahead, it's just an interesting arc of like this movie that really puts her on the map that like does okay at the time, but grows immediately, right?

Then her like swerving to something totally different that doesn't work.

Then it's like, what's my safety net?

Make a sequel to a hit with a big star that is a sure thing.

I think she views that as like a failure in her eyes that she like didn't

get the reins around that thing successfully.

And it was obviously successful enough to keep the series going, but it's like the least love entry, which leads to her going into Look Who's Talking being like, I need an undeniable hit that everyone has to give me credit for.

Like, I need a thing that is me that like they can't take away from me.

Uh, we'll talk about that next week, though.

Yeah, she successfully spawns her own franchise.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of her movies became TV shows too.

A lot.

I mean, Clueless, Fast Times, Look Who's Talking becomes Baby Talk.

Uh, but they didn't make a Johnny Dangerously show.

No, they did make a CSI loser.

They investigate teenager jerkbags.

They found him at the Iron Maiden concert.

They found him at the Iron Maiden baby.

Josh, thank you for being here.

Are weedus good?

Carry on.

David, is that song fun or is it funny?

Guys, guys, truly, we cannot burn this here because it's going to have to be half of our business.

We're going to need to do some real weedist digging.

I think.

That might be the most weedist has ever been discussed on a podcast episode is our loser episode coming in a few weeks.

Josh, you're special.

Someday, somewhere.

Hopefully out by now.

It will be called, it is called positive reinforcement.

Thank you so much for having me.

You're the king of positive reinforcement.

I mean, Twitter is now a hellscape, but it's a thing I always love that you would do where you just kind of post like, I have a free 45 minutes.

Who needs positive reinforcement?

I do it.

I have a newsletter now that I do some pep tax in, which is fun.

Substack?

Substack.

Oh, currently.

And josh gondelman.substack.com.

It's called That's Marvelous, which, of course, cribbed from the big Lebowski Philip C.

Moore Hoffman.

Rest in peace.

But it's pep talks and jokes.

And that's where all the Josh Gondelman-related information is.

I'm on Instagram and Blue Sky and fucking whatever.

I just love that people would say, like, I've had a rough day.

Can you throw me something?

And you would always be specific.

It was never just like, I try to cheer up.

The weather's nice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have you heard a bird sing lately?

Right.

It was always like, this is well thought and considered.

And if you didn't know someone, you would like look at their profile and find the first thing you could compliment them on.

You're a very genuine, kind, thoughtful person.

The Johnny Dangerously of jokes.

And by calling something the, someone the Johnny Dangerously of blank, I mean.

Fun more than funny.

I was going to say my highest compliment.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Next week, we will be embarking upon a European vacation.

Pack accordingly.

And as always, we've recorded a Johnny Dangerously episode once.

Once.

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.

Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostley.

Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas.

And our associate producer is A.J.

McKeon.

This show is mixed and edited by A.J.

McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J.

Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel.

With additional music by Alex Mitchell.

Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.

Our production assistant is Minnick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

Join our Patreon, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack.

This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.

I'm gaming this out.

I got two options and I'm just running it in my head.

This movie has a lot of good lines.

I feel like you got to do one of those like one time.

Oh, I like that one.

I kind of like that.

Don't blow it.

Don't blow it, Ben.

You got Episcopo?

Is that his last name?

Yeah, it is Episcopo.

How do you not know his last name?

Let's get into it.

Sorry.

He isn't stuck in my mind.

Hey, save it for the mic.

Ready?