Fast Times at Ridgemont High with Lola Kirke

I'm trying to schedule an acupuncture appointment for myself while I, while I do this, hell yeah.

Yeah, just talk through it so Ben can get the levels.

Okay, East Village acupuncture and massage.

Massage.

See, I'm just a massage guy.

I'm just kind of like, massages are great.

I don't need someone to do acupuncture because I'm already so happy with the massage.

This is a different thing.

What the fuck is

electro acupuncture?

Dude, that's a thing.

What is it?

I don't know.

It's like them putting speaker wires into you.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's an acupuncture, but with these things that are plugged into something.

Do you need me to keep talking?

Oh, no.

I'm all set.

Great.

Let's just go.

Any staff.

Okay, wait.

I'm almost done picking.

Oh, you're booking your appointment.

Do you think I'll be able to make

a 315 acupuncture?

Where is your acupuncture?

Ace Village.

I think we can.

Okay, well, let's go.

Yeah.

Let's go.

245.

That gives us time to talk for two hours.

It could be a short episode.

I love it.

I love it.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

We'll get you out of here.

It's fine.

Yeah.

Okay, ready?

Blank Jack with Bridling and David.

Blank Jack with Bridling and David.

Don't know what to say or to expect.

All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack.

What Jefferson was saying was, hey, you know, we left this podcast because it was bogus.

So if we don't get some cool rules ourselves, Pronto, we'll just be bogus too.

I really fucked that up.

Did you?

I mean, it seemed fine to me.

I feel like I went very generic.

I think part of the magic of his performance.

Right.

It's actually less.

There is a specificity to the way he plays this that still makes this the funniest version of this archetype, I would argue.

I would agree.

And I don't have to argue, Greg.

I did the off-the-rack version.

I I couldn't get there.

You know who Mr.

Hand is, right?

Ray Walston.

What do you mean?

Who it's based on?

No, no, just like, you know who Ray Walston is, right?

My favorite Martian.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

And a great, great, great musical theater actor, like one of the legends of Bray Warrior.

Popeye's dad?

Is he Popeye's dad?

Oh, in the movie.

Deck Pappy.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Robert Walmart's Popeye.

Yeah.

I did not know that.

And I did read the trivia last night for this movie.

Just because I wanted to like one-up you.

Well, you'll fail.

I know.

We have researchers.

It's

this is now a very tight operation.

I don't know if you know this.

You have now broken the record for the longest gap between appearances on this podcast.

Well, Lola and I discussed this before.

Many things have changed since the last time you were on.

I was getting Lola TV.

This is the whole thing.

No, no, no.

Okay.

And we actually have an episode together.

I'm not sick.

Don't say that yet.

Lola's not sick.

I'm not sick.

Griffin's whole thing now is that for some reason, and Ben and I were just discussing this, he's the one who picks up coffee, even though he's chronically late.

I have to push back on this.

Lately, yes, I do.

Lately, I've been having Ben pick up the coffee so I can get here early.

And that has been working.

I've been getting here early, and Ben shows up with the coffee.

If you check the records, this is a fact.

You were late the last couple of recordings.

But early for you is 15 minutes late.

No.

On time for him is 15 minutes late.

No, no.

This was the last one before this, I was late.

The last several before this, I was here early, and Ben picked up the coffee.

That is correct.

I had placed the order.

I was going to be on time.

I asked Lil if she wanted anything.

She said no.

And then she said, would you mind getting me a tea?

I had to add on to the tea.

So now it's our guests' fault.

We got a great

celebrity in the room.

Two minutes into recording.

You're throwing her out of the bus.

She's not busy.

Yes.

But I did a very kind thing.

It's true.

Do you know what the poster tagline for this film was?

The original?

The original poster tagline was the list of the 12 bands on the soundtrack at the bottom of the poster.

I mean, that's probably true because they are down there, but no, it's at Ridgemont High, only the rules get busted, which is one of those things that I'm like, that sounds clever, but I don't actually know what that means.

The other posters to this movie are also insane.

Like, you can kind of tell they don't really know how to tell you what this movie is, apart from like, it's a teen movie with a surfing stoner in it.

We'll get into it, but the fact that Universal was afraid to release this because they were like, is this borderline pornography?

Right.

And then, meanwhile, they were selling it like it was every other sex comedy of the 80s is fascinating.

That they were like terrified of it and also trying to sell it as the thing that was DeRigueur.

Like, there were 40 movies a week in which a guy put his dick somewhere weird and America cheered and it made $100 million.

And then this one, they were like, this might be illegal.

Don't talk about it.

What's this podcast?

We have a lot to set up.

We have a lot to set up.

This is.

Blank check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin.

I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who experienced a series of massive success early on in their career and are given, I said series too early, a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion products they want.

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby.

I have found that 10 years in, I'm having a harder time remembering the intro.

We should just stop.

Just love it.

No, no, no.

We'll do the podcast, but forget the intro.

Okay, well, just like it's blank check.

Google it.

What if I go back to doing a serial parody for the intro?

Oh, no, no, thank you.

This is blank check.

One director told in my name part.

What is this mini-series, Griffin?

Because I'm realizing I don't think think we discussed the title.

Pod Times at Ridgemont Cast.

I'm just, I'm shooting off the hip here.

I liked it.

Thank you.

Lola laughed.

Pod Times at Ridgemont Cast.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.

It's fine.

I'm going to say it.

I think that's almost kind of root one for us at this point.

Okay, so look who's podcasting to?

I think that's funny.

I just want to say that's exactly what I was going to suggest.

That makes sense.

It's funny because it makes a weird amount of sense, but then the two

kind of undercuts it.

Right, because the other option is pod who's casting to no, no, no, no, no.

Look who's podcasting.

I thought about casting two is genius because everyone has a podcast.

I mean, you guys obviously had the first podcast.

No, look, we did.

It was

podcast is fine.

There's nothing wrong with it.

Here's what I'm trying to balance.

Pod Times at Richmond Cast got an earnest laugh out of Lola, but then

Pod Podcasting 2 got a, hmm, that's genius.

And I'm like, which is more valuable?

Do we want to be smart or funny?

This is the eternal battle of this show.

Is it not?

Wait, are they not?

Did Amy Heckerling direct Look Who's Talking?

Yes.

Oh, I thought that that was the little one.

Oh, no, that's a different.

That's Honey, I Shrank the Kids.

Yes.

Got it.

She did the Look Who's Talking one and two and then handed off three.

I think pod times at Ridgemont Cast is better.

Okay.

Oh, now she's back to pod.

Well, you know what?

We'll discuss this later.

Those are the two of us.

But this is the start of a mini-series on Amy Hackerling.

Well, I'm honored to be here.

And a career that starts with an out-of-the-box masterpiece.

We've discussed this before, the different types of career starters we cover on this show as people who are obsessive completists.

This is like she just fucking nails it first try out.

Absolutely true.

I think she nails it very much.

But.

Yeah,

an interesting sort of way to think about her career.

Like, is it a problem to start with arguably your best movie?

Not in my opinion, but like, arguably your best movie?

Tough to top, you know, sets you up for a sophomore slump.

We'll talk about it.

I give her a lot of credit for this movie.

This is also one of those magical movies where it's just like all the elements of the game.

A bit of a magic movie, right?

Where like all the cast is so perfect.

I think the thing that pushes it over the edge is like her judgment and skill and taste.

But to your point, it being like Nicholas Cage is in two shots of this movie.

He is like, this is just a film where you think about the people who are on this set every day and like the energy of just like some people who would dominate the culture for decades who are all coming in with, like, I'm rearing to go, I'm ready to prove myself.

Now, we are all too young for this movie, right?

We all probably discovered this movie, it was already an established thing, right?

We were born into a fast-time film culture, right?

Exactly.

But I watched this movie like once a week on a portable DVD player for the entirety of high school.

I was going to say, we, I mean, when I, let's, let's say, our guest today, returned to the the show for the first time in eight years.

A long time.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Since what women want.

I love that movie.

Yes.

A film you sold me on.

Lola Kirk, musician, author, actress.

We're experiencing the 2025 year of Lola.

We were talking about publishing your first book.

Yeah.

Releasing your third album.

Yeah.

And then and your triumphant return.

Yeah, my triumphant return to the screen after no one would give me a job for a few years.

Hey, that's my life.

Yeah.

I understand that beat.

Being like, maybe I'm retired.

Does that have anything to do with no one wanting to hire you?

No, I think it's unrelated.

Absolutely not.

I made a choice.

I made a really strong choice here.

A really strong choice not to work until someone gave me a job again.

Sinners.

Yeah, Sinners.

New Ryan Kugler movie.

That's it, what, March?

Coming out of March, I believe?

It's now April 18th.

Oh, now, April.

It swapped with Mickey 17.

So it's now April 20th.

Right around the time of this episode, am I wrong?

Five.

Absolutely.

This episode

is dropping on April 27th.

So, oh, Cinders has been out for a week.

Oh, wow.

It just opened.

Burn up the box off.

I hope it's good.

I hope so, too.

Lola Kirk.

What's up?

Now, to your point, we grew up together, went to high school together.

I threw you, hey, it's been too long since you've been on.

Here's a long list of things.

Your immediate response was, well, Fast Times is basically my favorite movie of all time.

And it felt very apropos just because I feel like a lot of our high school was us watching this canon of movies obsessively over and over again.

I feel like that is one of many things we bonded on was just like an obsession with 80s teen movies.

Yeah.

Yes.

Lola's getting emotional.

I am getting emotional, but also because I feel like one of the things I was thinking as I watched it last night

was like, what are, what are teenagers watching now?

Like I saw this movie in the like, I used to read things when I was younger, like the lists, like you need to listen to these radars.

10 best, this is 20 best, yes.

And this was often that the cornerstone of our podcast, and also basically, you are speaking directly to the experience of every one of our listeners.

I guess it's just like millennials.

Okay, yeah,

nerdy.

Oh, I thought it was just millennials, but like nerds.

Yes.

No, less generationally and more that type of brain.

Sure.

I need to know what the canon is.

Yeah, I wanted to know

in all these different corners.

And this movie was like the one that it just was talked about over and over again.

And And I was like, I need to obviously see it.

And once I saw it, I fell so in love with it.

And it was kind of sad because I haven't seen it since I used to watch it all the time.

And the perspective that I had as like a 34-year-old woman who had gone through all of those things and was now like old enough to, you know, if I had been.

really young to have those people be my own children versus the perspective that I had as a kid that was like, okay, she had sex at 15.

So that means that that's when I should do it.

And like all of these other things that I wish I like wanted to be like them.

I think we both had the exact same thing was we we viewed these movies as aspirational.

Yeah.

And I think part of it was we had this like very

like fucking bespoke, precious, privileged New York childhood that did not resemble these teen movies.

Oh my gosh.

Yes, absolutely.

This is the normal teen experience I'm not getting and I should be experiencing.

And yet, I didn't notice this in the origin when I first saw it um but when jennifer jason lee loses her virginity to ron johnson the way that amy heckerling shoots the ceiling and shoots her pov i which i didn't even notice yeah then i was just like oh my god she's having sex and that guy looks like richard gear even though the richard gear i knew was like

really old it's like no he doesn't yeah um

but

Yeah, I, I, I was like, oh, right, there is a sensitivity to these kids' experiences that I never understood.

It is what is crazy about this movie and what makes it like such a kind of miracle film is I watched it in the same context as you.

I was like, this is the movie that all the quotes come from, which is like a real flattening of what this movie is.

And yet I probably watched it for the first time at 12 and was like, funny, good, liked it.

Wasn't like, I don't get what the fuck's going on here.

And then every time I've seen it since then, it like deepens for me.

It is a movie that kind of works from all perspectives.

And we had our friend Tim Simons on the the show recently and we told him we were getting ready to do this series next and he was like fast times is one of those movies I haven't seen but I feel like I've seen through cultural osmosis sure and was like I know all the quotes and the memes that was my experience of this movie where I had seen scenes probably and I knew about spicoli and all that but then I watched the movie and was shocked by it the mastery of this film is that it is both of those things that it's not one of those like well people quote the four things but actually the movie's much more this in tone in the way we always talk about like saturday night fever right?

Yeah.

Where you're like, it gets reduced to three images, and then most of the movie is like a pretty

even more extreme, right?

Where you watch it and you're like, oh, these people are not, not only is this movie lurid and violent and upsetting, but these people are sad.

It's about how sad they are.

It's not about cool people.

They're kind of cool, like they're dancing, but like...

Culture flattens it to like two dance scenes, walking with the pizza and the BG soundtrack.

Whereas this movie, you're not wrong if your perception is it's spicoli, it's got big lines, it's got huge characters, but then it's simultaneously holding this other thing.

I think you're wrong if you think that.

I want to say you're wrong.

What I think, this is my framework of my argument for the value of this movie, is that like, I think there is an insane simultaneous managing of tones that Heckerling is pulling off on this that defies logic.

That like this movie should not be able to cross-cut between Spokoli and Jennifer Jason Lee, let alone have them exist in the same shot.

But that's that's life is a teen, baby.

Totally.

That's the message.

That's why it's so good.

Fast Times at Richmond High.

Fast Times at Ridgeman High.

Amy Heckerling's 1982 film.

Any of you ever read the book by Cameron Crowe?

No, I didn't even remember that it was a book until IMDb treated it.

So out of print that it costs $500, $600 to buy a used copy of it.

Damn.

And Griff has it.

I got a $90.

You want to know why?

I don't know.

Because the cover's misprinted.

The title's like sliding off.

I have an original copy of it that I stole, I will say.

I was at a family member's house in California.

It's a long story, and I won't tell it, but we were staying there.

And like, all their kids were grown up at this point in their 30s or whatever.

But it was their house that they all grew up in.

And I was staying in one of the kids' bedrooms, and I saw it on the shelf, and I took it.

And I read it, and I was like, I took it home with me.

So I guess I didn't.

Do they listen to this podcast, Your Family?

I would be stunned to realize

a member of your family listen to this podcast.

That's actually a really good question.

Joey doesn't listen regularly, right?

My brother has listened.

I think my brother occasionally listens.

That might be that.

My mom's become a regular listener, which sucks.

Oh,

it used to be a sometimes thing, and now I'm like, she's hearing everything I say.

Like me saying it sucks that she listens.

Well, I think she's probably hearing.

Anyway, no.

My mom has, like, sees my Instagram and it makes me want to die.

So I can't imagine, you know, anything in more in-depth.

Yes.

Fast Times Original High Kids by Cameron Crowe, obviously.

So it's his launchpad too.

It's a launchpad for a lot of people.

So Cameron Crowe was doing this before he was doing the stuff he did in Almost Famous.

It's after.

That's the weird timeline.

Because he never been kissed it and went back to high school.

That's the origin of this movie.

Yes,

is that he doesn't have a high school experience because he goes on the road as a music trooper.

He was 22 when he enrolled in high-five.

I told my wife this.

I told Forky this.

She'd never seen it.

It almost breaks.

That's what this movie comes out of.

And I was like, yeah, I guess if someone did that now, that would not be greeted with like

if he just went back.

The school was aware of who he was, but I guess the kids weren't.

He was 22 years old, and he sort of approached the school being like, can I quote unquote enroll?

You look at the photo on the back cover.

He had a baby face.

He looks like he could send in.

And he was also, I think, perhaps a little developmentally stunted from being on the road and not experiencing these things.

But yeah, if I wrote a book now that I was like, yeah, I hung out with a bunch of high school, people would be like, what the fuck is the matter with me?

Totally.

But also, like, the framework of the book not being like, this is what I found going undercover, like making himself the main character.

No, it's just a matter of fact.

That it is just like, it's vignettes.

It is just observation, which is obviously Cameron Crowe's kind of superpower.

And then for the movie to also not go for the high concept hook of young-faced reporter.

Well,

right, for him to not be a character in the movie.

Thank you.

You could just imagine Hollywood, even if he avoided that in the book, that Hollywood was like salivating and being like, oh my God, the premise is Tom Cruise goes on.

Well, they were salivating.

They may never been kissed.

Yes.

They eventually did just make that movie.

Amy.

I.

Heckerling, however, is here we're here to talk about.

Okay.

Born 1954 in De Bronx

in an apartment building where most of her, she says, neighbors were like

Holocaust survivors.

Her grandparents had relatives who've been in concentration camps.

Lots of Jewish immigration to the Bronx, whatever at the time, you know, and that's she probably lived on Grand Concourse the way she's describing it.

My father and mother, both accountants, spent a lot of her youth in Brooklyn with her grandma.

Her mom was basically a teenager when she was born.

She had a younger brother.

So she was shuffled around.

She liked Brooklyn a lot more.

She lived near Coney Island.

She loved movies.

She loved gangster movies.

The grandmother lived near Coney Island too.

She liked going to Brooklyn for this reason.

Yes, she liked musicals.

She liked James Cagney and Freda Stanley.

She's really into golden age Hollywood.

Yes.

And then as a teenager, obviously, she's being exposed to like Mean Streets and Clockwork Orange and all these new Hollywood movies.

So she's really into all of that.

Yeah, she has a lot.

Wow, this is a long dossier.

Okay.

I'll say there's, there's, JJ put a lot in here.

This Cagney section, we might circle back to.

Yeah, we'll get back to that mirror dangerously.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Have you ever seen Johnny Dangerously?

Her follow-up to this is she basically makes a Mel Brooks movie that's a parody of gangster movies.

Right,

which I think rules, but it is like a wild swerve into like full cartoon mode, like gag a minute movie.

Um, when she's a teenager, she moves to Queens.

She hit all the boroughs.

Okay.

When she's 14, she goes to high school at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, starts hanging out at the Museum of Modern Art.

And, you know, she's just whatever.

Art is in her bones.

She's into all that stuff.

This is the other funny part of this movie: it is made by two people who basically didn't have this experience, right?

That like Hacker learns

like California.

Hacker's a city kid and Cameron Crowe doesn't really go to high school until he's an adult.

I think it's

part of like them being very intuitive and observant, but also having a little bit of distance.

Well, I also feel like that's like

some testament to the idea that you have to be a little bit of a freak to be a real artist.

Yeah.

Like, could you make a movie?

I don't know, if you have this kind of more regular experience, not that there aren't amazing artists that come from totally regular lives, but I mean, most of them are also, I mean, a lot of them are freaks.

Yeah, yes.

And at least, you know, the byproduct of some weird perspective.

She goes to NYU, film school,

starts making weird student films that are, she says, sort of like 1930s musicals, but with hippie vibes.

She's doing postmodern riffs on the old Hollywood movie she loves.

And

Washington Saddles was a big activator for her.

Meets Martin Brest, who I think we briefly mentioned this when we did his miniseries.

There is a nice kind of dates him briefly.

Handholding between this series, the Lynch series, and the Martin Brest series, weirdly.

Yes.

They're all connected.

Right, because David Lynch was the original choice to direct this movie or a choice to direct this movie, which is crazy to think about.

But also, Martin Brest and Amy Heckerling are like the cool kids who are on and off dating and become friends with Stuart Kornfeld, who is an AFI student who later becomes Mel Brooks' producing partner and hires Brooks to do Elephant Man.

But he also kind of helps both of their careers.

And he is Judge Reinhold's boss in this at the pirate.

What an asshole.

Oh, it's a pirate thing.

He's the one who tells them to keep the uniform on.

But he's this quiet figure who passed away a couple years ago who kind of like links a lot of American 80s film.

So she follows Marty Brest to AFI to LA.

Yes.

They both go to LA.

They break up.

She really hates LA.

She hates that she can't get around at all.

She's like a New York City kid.

She hates how it all works.

She doesn't know how to drive.

Martin Brest tried to teach her and

failed, apparently.

Eventually she figured it out.

JJ relayed this to me as a note of solidarity and consolation that Amy Heckerling failed her driver's test five times.

Do you have your license yet?

Of course not.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Can you drive?

Of course.

Of course she can.

So can I.

Ben?

Yeah.

Three drivers in a room.

Ben's picking his sunglasses on this episode because he said it matches the vibe.

Heckerling.

He's also maybe still recovering from his.

Yeah, she hates LA.

So she finds AFI very elitist.

She hates that it's a big mansion on the bill.

Another thing to pin is interesting when we get around to Clueless.

No, 100%.

Which is Clueless making a movie with compassion about the opposite of the person she is.

That's true.

That she came to be like they seem, it must be nice to have that view on life.

Yeah, it has compassion, but also Clueless is a social satire.

It's close.

I mean, this is the magic of what she's good at.

So her thesis film, she makes a movie called Getting It Over With about a girl who just wants to lose her virginity before she turns 20.

She struggles to finish it because it's fucking hard, especially back then, to make your student movie.

She gets in a car accident.

That messes with her.

One point for Griff for not driving.

She really does seem to hate cars.

And the president of Universal sees her short, wants to work with her.

She's like, I'm fucking sitting in my apartment in Hollywood.

I got no money and no car.

I don't know what to do.

I've got to go to physical therapy because I was in this accident.

Tom Mount from Universal calls and says, like, get an agent.

Cause I want to work with you.

This is also just, let's just say.

This is so unusual for like a female filmmaker in like the 70s, like the early 80s whenever this is look there was this argument that gets repeated a lot quietly that like when the last 10 years people are like it's finally gotten good for female directors and it's like no it's finally like getting back to kind of where it was in the 80s it was better in the 80s than it was before that and after that for 30 years where like it wasn't great it was still disproportionate but there were a lot more like young film female filmmakers getting to make stuff within the studio system in the 1980s um she's trying to to make this movie called My Kind of Guy.

Warner Brothers is interested.

She calls it a female version of carnal knowledge.

I like the idea, but then like, whatever, there's an executive shift.

The project dies.

She shops it around.

No one will approve it.

There was only one woman making profitable movies in Hollywood, and that was Barbara Streisand.

This is her quote.

It finally gets a home at MGM, but then an actor strike kills the project.

And she's like, you know, I don't know what to do.

I think the one thing to call out here is this is basically the second wave of film school students.

Yes.

Sure.

It's becoming more of a professionalized thing.

You can go to film school.

There aren't that many of them.

And if someone makes a good student film, the studios are actually just keenly paying attention.

to what's coming out of these places because they're looking for new directors.

Like the model has shifted from someone works their way up from being like a PA or an exec, you know, works their way up the ranks within the studio and learns on the job to there are now film schools where people are coming out of a pipeline with a show reel and they can at least get into development meetings or whatever.

All right, moving on to Cameron Crowe.

We all know Cameron Crowe's story of teen sensation becomes a Rolling Stone Rider at like the age of fucking 15.

Right.

You know, all this stuff.

Yep.

And he decides when he's turned 22, like no one knows about the kids.

No one's like written a book about the kids, right?

Everyone's trying to figure out what the kids like, but I'm going to go and hang out with the kids.

And so he goes to the school that he attended for like some summer session once, Ridgemont Senior High in Redondo Beach, and walks in, tells the principal, I'm going to attend classes.

It's like an inconspicuous presence in this school for a year.

The principal allows this to happen.

I don't really get how that's possible.

But then again, like,

I don't know.

Like, I'm watching this movie with my wife who's a teacher.

And when they're, you know, dissecting a cadaver in front of kids, she's like, this would never happen.

And I'm like, maybe it did, though.

Like, I don't, like, I feel like back in the day, people teachers would just kind of be like hey i'm gonna do this i mean where griffin and i went to high school they just hired a well you convict my mic teach the children and then he me too'd all the kids i'm aware of that because my wife also went to the same school oh

we're gonna bleep it out but he's gonna say it I don't know if you know her.

That name sounds really familiar.

You definitely are.

Yeah, but we'll bleep it out the times we said it.

But yes, yes.

David's keenly aware of how overly permissive our school was of everything.

Yeah, they kind of went a little too far in the old permissive sense of

It would be a good show.

It might be a little bit more euphoria.

Yeah, I think it's analogy.

I think now it's become very euphoria.

But like, oh, well, I feel like kids, I feel like euphoria, and I could be wrong, but euphoria, the kids like have sex and do drugs.

I thought kids didn't do that anymore.

Yeah.

Well, now the kids, right?

The kids are all incels who hate porn.

And

they just play video games.

Right.

So I don't know.

Do you think movies with sex scenes should be arrested?

That you should put handcuffs around the film reel.

This is like a thing.

I don't know.

Who knows?

There's film reels?

Well, I took the joke into an abstract direction.

I liked it.

I liked it.

So there's this whole argument of like, are sex scenes unethical?

Because the characters aren't giving.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Fast Mind Times at Ridgemont High.

Insane.

Yeah.

The book is already like hot stuff.

And so the scripture is pretty much written immediately.

Universal snaps up the option and they throw it right to David Lynch right off of Elephant Man.

A really interesting.

Crow meets with him.

But like, look, when he takes the jump from eraser head to Elephant Man, people were like, I guess maybe he's just a guy who can do anything.

And there are a lot of examples of like someone starts out making weirdo abstract art films and then they just get conventional.

Like George Lucas was kind of that narrative.

So I think after Elephant Man was good, people were like, I don't know, maybe he can make any kind of movie.

But he actually meets.

with them.

He meets with them and he says, this is a great story.

It's really great.

It's just not the kind of thing I do and good luck.

And he apparently got into a white VW bug bug and drove away.

Cool.

Art Linson, who is a producer,

has seen Heckerlink short and he's like, this girl gets sex.

And let's face it, this is a movie about sex and she really gets it.

And so that's why they take it to her and they pick her.

The book blows Heckerlink away.

It had such reality to it, she says.

You totally get into the kids' lives.

And she goes to Crow.

And she's like, you know, like, has tons of ideas.

Crow says that she was like a European director who wanted to make like this raw movie.

And, like, no, I guess no one else is probably coming to him with that take, right?

Everyone else is probably trying to sell him on a conventional teen movie.

This movie is very unconventional.

It is.

It does have main characters and it does have a plot, sort of.

Kind of.

It has narrative threads, clean arcs.

It's like half sketch, half narrative.

And it has sympathetic characters, but it also has very unsympathetic characters.

And it, yeah, it just, you know, obviously it just depicts life realistically, but then also has the most famous like whack-off fantasy sex scene in a teen movie ever,

which is like a parody of it, but then it loops all the way back around to just being the fucking whack-off teen fantasy sex movie.

What I'm saying, though, it's like this movie defies logic and how much it is all of these things.

Which is the fantasy sex scene.

It's like scene.

Like, where it's like, you know, like, that is clearly just getting out the pool.

Right, but like, that is like a parody of dumb teen 80s movies.

Doing like, okay, now we'll have a scene with tits because that's required of these movies.

I did re-watch it on the airplane last night in the middle seat.

And I got to say, I felt really

good.

The pilot came back to look over your shoulder.

But I thought people would be like, you know, maybe offended.

And then I thought, I don't care.

And that made me feel really happy.

Finally.

Yeah, it's boobs.

And what are they watching?

Everyone was watching the exact same thing last night, which was the Bills game.

It is crazy to me to talk about pornography.

Yeah, talk about pornography.

Come on, no, to think that, like, you used to go on a plane, and the pilot would be like, Our movie today is Home Alone 2.

Oh, yeah.

Like, everyone would find out in real time what the movie was going to be.

And you'd be like, oh.

And then there's just everyone looking at communal screens, the same movie that has been edited down for planes.

And now you go to plane, people are just watching fucking whatever they watch.

Fucking throwing on a Serbian film.

Right, but that's the thing.

You'll like sit there, and someone will be sitting next to a kid and they'll be watching fucking Terrifier 3 or whatever.

I mean, I watched Nowhere on the airplane once, and that felt wrong.

Sure, but I only watched it on the airplane because I'd always wanted to see it.

And the girl sitting next to me was watching it, and she wasn't.

Nowhere was that like available on the plane, and you had an laptop

next to me had her laptop, and I just wanted to see it.

It was like today on Delta, we have a Gregger Rocky uh series if you want to check out that package.

Yeah, and next time we'll be doing kids on the return of flight, yeah, yeah,

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 ads based on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

They love it to 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 is true.

We had a sponsor come in and say, we are looking for the coveted Ben Hosley endorsement.

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.

Yeah, 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 order, as they asked, which I really appreciate.

Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Tremblay, Taylor 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 of them yet okay you got

dinkledge is fantastic yeah he's talking he plays it with so much heart yeah 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 gotta say the original movie was shot in the town where i went to high school.

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches.

Yes.

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, it's 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.

It's gooey.

It's sufficiently 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 one of the huge hits.

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

Want to make that happen again here?

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Advanced sales really matter for movies like this.

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

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In theaters, August 29th.

Yup.

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 is in the world on this list.

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvengure.com/slash blank check.

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She goes with Crowe.

They pick through the books, like, okay, what's all our favorite stuff in here?

She's like, the mall is the narrative center of this book.

So it will be the narrative center.

It's like the let's amp it up even more.

That's the social media.

I do understand the exoticism of a mall as a New Yorker.

Yeah,

I now live in Tennessee, and I love the mall.

But aren't malls kind of dying a little bit as online shops?

Right.

They're not quite the social hubs that they used to be, I feel.

Not in New Jersey.

As a New Jersey.

Well, New Jersey, they're like historical artist buildings.

They're just,

exactly.

They're required.

They're truly so in my DNA.

That

was where everyone would hang out on the weekends after school.

I would just hang out at the mall.

But I have that same thing where once I was out of high school and I traveled anywhere and I still have this instinct.

I'm like, where's the mall?

I should go to the mall.

You know, like, I want to, I will understand the place I'm in right now if I go to the mall.

Have you been to the Mall of America?

I haven't.

Oh, my God.

They've rolled coasters.

That's in the order.

Yeah.

Well, I've been to the American Dream Mall

in Rutherford, New Jersey, which also has roller coasters and is a nightmare.

I didn't see that recently.

This is a new mall that opened during the pandemic.

Did you go to the mall a lot in nashville i do go to the mall because that's where like the nice stores are right right because i only buy nice things well

um

because the appeal of the mall is like i get it so much like maybe malls need to make a comeback because it is like i don't know what to do with myself the mall will show me what i want do i just want to go eat some pizza and window shop fine well it's like the ultimate place do i want to go like yeah like the ultimate third place because what's the third place is a million places to

a little chicken teriyaki yum yum yum yes right but i also just feel like and i'm sure it was like this in the 80s too but like now it's so much more obvious how much like crap you can buy like yes even it's all laid out for you there and it just like i feel gross at the mall after a certain amount of time because it's just like

Obviously, this was made by someone that shouldn't be making clothing.

And, you know, like there's a, there's a kind of,

yeah, the purity of the mall

has been replaced by my knowledge of capitalism.

Another thing, too, which is just like we're being sold shit all the time everywhere.

Yeah, so it's less of an escape or whatever.

Right.

The escape of just like, I'm going to a mall and considering buying stuff for the future.

I like the idea of versus like every social media feed is like cramming stuff down your throat.

London.

And, you know, I would like to say that.

I'd say.

And I would do the same shit with my friends, which was like, I would go to the record store, your Virgin Megastore or HMV or whatever, right?

And just clip that for a Virgin Mega Store.

We don't want to save that to the soundboard go on david um right and then we would go see a movie it's just like we just didn't get to all do it in one big building we were doing the same i feel like for us that was union square right where it was not a mall but you had the virgin megastore you had the virgin district like there were like you had the places you'd shop lift from max brenner chocolate bite bulb oh my god what about cozy

cozy and sando is that you pronounced it ollie's would you go to ollie's no because i would go to ollie's okay we know what we were cool forbidden planet forbidden Planet.

Forbidden Planet.

Oh, right.

You're talking Union Square, not Lincoln Square.

Sorry.

So, okay.

Casting.

Sean Penn had only been in one movie, Taps, but says he felt like this was his role.

Like he was already sort of brimming with arrogance.

His father is like a top TV director, did a bunch of Star Trek and stuff, Leo Penn.

And yes, he was like already at this age, had the reputation for like that pen kid is serious.

And then I was reading on IMDb trivia i'm gonna keep saying that until it sounds like a reputable news source about like how seriously he took this comedic role and i was just thinking like whenever i've worked with actors who do that now well a they don't but b if they did i could i'm thinking of one person who was just like so serious all the time and

I felt like they were a loser.

You want to strangle them and also

usually you watch the final

prick.

They're a prick.

And he was probably probably a prick, but it's so good.

But it's so alive.

He's being serious about playing a fun guy.

Yes.

Where I'm like, he might have been less of a prick on this movie than on every other movie.

There's a possibility that him taking Spokoli seriously made him easier to work with.

Did he go method, you think?

Yes, he did.

So he got stoned?

Yes.

I mean, his eyes.

I was like, how you could not, the eye, I was like, someone either is the best makeup artist of all time who figured out how to do that.

The eyes and just just his general like redness like there's just something very very something really notoriously was like i will treat this as if i am playing hamlet you can't call me sean i'm only jazz

none of the actors like interacted with him right this seems like a nicer guy to interact with but to your point usually that's annoying because it's people doing that to play tortured people right or right right if you're taking something that could be this silly that seriously, you're just kind of like, dude, you're sucking the fun out of it.

You watch the final product and you're like, this is too overthought.

Well, you're not understanding the assignment.

And this is something I feel as an actress all the time.

Yeah.

Like,

I overburden the script with my idea of what good acting is.

Very well said.

And I'm like, oh my God, it was a scene where I was supposed to eat like pasta.

And a normal person would do that with a knife and fork, but not I.

I use spoons.

Well, this is the movie brain thing of both of us being like obsessive movie dorks is you like read the script and you go like oh this is that type of scene.

Like rather than trying to do the math on like what serves the character,

this person behind

the story.

Right.

You're like, what are my favorite pasta scenes in movies and how do I make this my version of that or whatever?

Yeah.

Like he is so serving the film.

Yes.

It is one of the best comedic performances of all time.

There are also so many cases of things like this where it's like a serious actor who has an early like quote unquote silly performance and they're really embarrassed by it.

And he's like, no, that's like amongst the best work I've ever done.

I take it really seriously.

He will do every retrospective interview.

Yeah,

he's just like

so much.

It's just so funny to be like, oh, the pen kid.

He's like fucking method.

He's the new brando.

He does one movie, then he does this.

It like turns him into this surprise kind of like teen like movie star for a moment in like a very different vein.

And he doesn't distance himself from it and yet then goes back to doing his other shit and becomes like that guy times a billion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He did We're No Angels.

He's made very few comedies.

Yes.

And usually when he makes a comedy, quote unquote, it's kind of like a crime comedy or whatever.

Like it's got like a edge to it.

But I also feel like the times that Tylon Graham's is a comedy, right?

Yeah, it's very fun.

No, he's been, he's done funny things, if you ask me, in the last 15 or 20 years, and almost all of them are self-parody of making fun of how serious he is.

But his, my favorite Sean Penn performance of all time is Milk, which is a drama, but is like such a like life, like, you know, filled with life, so humorous.

Like, he's soccoli, where you're like, there is like a beauty to the purity of this character and the optimism of that, where you're surprised that he's able to conjure that for a guy who's so like

gangsta squad.

But then, like, right, he'll show up on like

not curb your enthusiasm.

He's so funny in Licorice Pizza, playing a guy who takes himself too serious.

And even like, he's like funny in Walter Mitty.

Like, there'll be these things where it feels like he's riffing on Sean Penn as humorless.

Right.

And he does it well.

Right.

But the bizarre thing is to see him nail this.

Mystic River, that's a comedy?

I thought it was hilarious.

Yeah.

Okay, wait, I have to pee.

Okay, go ahead.

I'm going to keep doing context while you pee.

Judge Reinhold

is the only person they like who reads for the role.

Your honor.

My favorite performance in the movie, kind of, in a weird sort of a way.

Wonderful.

And or also a performance that reveals more to me as you rewatch this movie.

I've seen it this movie many, many, many times.

I mean, we'll talk about

it.

exactly.

Yes.

But to Lola's point, Nicholas Cage read for that part originally.

They liked him.

They found out he was underage, would not be able to shoot adult hours.

Yes.

So they throw him the Brad's Bud part just as a like, hey, kid, we'll give you a credit and help you get your SAG card.

Can I tell you what Art Linson said about Judge Reinhold?

As they are obviously wrestling with like, right,

do we cast this underage actor?

And apparently they like Reinhold and Art Linson says, look at this guy.

He's as old as Ed Aster.

I just think that's a great insult.

And so they cast everyone in the senior class is basically played by a 25-year-old, which is my wife remarked on it immediately.

She was like, It's like all the teen movies where, like, and I'm like, it's kind of starting, you know, like

it's this sort of unavoidable, but yes, and also he just reads old.

I was gonna say, I think you could pull him

in class at 17, and he still would have read old.

I think he's just got a bit of an old man, he's got the gawkiness, he's so tall that he the deep voice and the he's such a

point, in this movie, it feels

deliberate and appropriately applied that it's kind of speaking to an ecstatic truth of when you are 15 or 16, how old an 18-year-old feels.

Right.

Like the gulf between him and Jennifer Jason Lee, and I know Jennifer Jason Lee is also not a teenager in this movie.

No, she is.

She's like 19.

Okay.

She's like 19 or 20.

She's, everyone's a few years older than their friend.

Six years between them in real life feels reflective of how big the two years between those characters feels when you're a teenager.

For that very reason.

Exactly.

I don't know if you agree, Ben.

It's so authentically capturing what it's like to be that age and be that and that time in your life that I think you just settle in.

And I'm not, I'm not so distracted by that fact.

You know, you just lock it.

I don't find it remotely distracting, but I'm also watching actors I know as older actors.

Well, there's that.

So I'm like, look at Jennifer Jason Lee's like little puppy fat cheeks.

And like, look at baby Champen.

Look at baby John Tright.

You know, like, I'm like, I know what these guys grow up to be.

It is wild to watch a movie like this where so many people in it continue to be relevant today, where you're like, you have like many, many people where the careers are really long and important.

And then you read the list of like so many of the other people who read for parts or were close to parts.

And it's one of those things where you're like, there's an entire alternate cast of of this movie that would have been good that aren't like Eric Stoltz and Back to the Future.

Like, thank God we missed that.

Eric Stoltz, of course, also in this.

He is.

Matthew Broderick, Ralph Macchio, Scott Bayo, Ali Sheedy are people who read and who came close or whatever.

Jennifer Jason Lee, obviously, it's her big breakthrough.

Phoebe Cates, Art Linson, found in a juice bar because she was just so gorgeous.

Jodi Foster was the studio wanted her for the Jennifer Jason Lee.

She's a young actor.

Makes perfect sense.

Justine Bateman was offered the Phoebe Cates part part and did family ties instead.

Well, that worked out for

everybody.

That's a normal poster.

Tom Hanks turned down for Brad.

Yeah, Tom Hanks makes total sense for Brad.

Yes.

But I'm happy we got the judge.

Me too.

Movies made for

$5.5 million.

Shot in 35 Days.

Sherman Oaks Galleria is the mall they use.

Van Nuys High School, which I feel like is a high school that gets used all the time, is the high school.

The main two producers on this are Art Lens, as we said, and then, then uh what's his name irving azoff who is a big music producer as well right and he's uh putting the soundtrack together right which is incredible so there's basically this balance of like they got this heavyweight who's able to negotiate to get some of the songs they want but also he's like I represent Stevie Nicks.

You got to put a Stevie Nicks song in there.

What is that song?

Sleeping Angel, which is an incredible.

Yeah.

I have never heard it.

I know it from the Fast Time song.

Eagles had just broken up and he kept trying to get every like solo Eagles project that was starting up as well.

Like, he'd be like, you got to do this and this, and this, right?

And

Heckerling is fighting for, like, I want edgy new music.

I want Fear, I want the Go-Go's, I want the Talking Heads, I want Oingo Boingo, the Dead Kennedys, like, she's fighting for that, and they're just

the soundtrack is a compromise, but I think it's a great balance.

Like, if I kept working and it, yeah, there's a weird thing of like it having these leftover 70s songs that you're like, they would still be circulating.

It's that thing people talk about with period films.

Like, if you're making a movie in 1980, the art director should look at things from 1975 because it feels wrong if everyone has the newest clothes, the newest furniture, the newest cars.

And so there's that sense of like these songs would still be on the radio.

And also, Amy Heckling was clearly like finding things that were right on the edge of breaking.

It's perfect because when you're a teenager, you do listen to like old

radio music as well as new shit.

It's a perfect soundtrack.

They test screened it in Orange County and famously get terrible results, probably because Orange County is more conservative.

That was Art Linson.

The studio gets spooked.

And Art Lenson was like, this is not our audience.

We made a movie that has sex and drugs in an honest way.

And these are not our people.

They have to cut Robert Romanis' penis out of the movie because they got an X rating.

Correct.

When they cut it out, they go back to an R rating.

Now my Blu-ray lovingly includes this penis.

The Criterion Collection versus the flaccid penis?

The flaccid penis.

Just to take it.

Just when they're undressing, it is, in my opinion, crucial to the scene because the idea, they're both equally vulnerable in that moment.

And the scene's timed a little differently.

It's just slightly longer.

Right.

It's a little more awkward.

I mean, she gets, look,

the abridged version of it has its own comedic power because it becomes so ridiculously fast.

But yes, it is like quietly

restored on the criterion version.

I feel like there wasn't even a lot of noise made about it at the time, but it was the first time you could now see her version of that scene.

And someone within your, oh, but it's event.

Sorry.

Did you want to say that?

I was just going to say, I mean, not even a one-minute man.

No.

Yes.

No.

No.

No.

He dreams of it.

It's so perfect.

It is so perfect.

Of course.

We'll get to it, but it's just like, yeah.

Yeah.

The arc of that character is unbelievable.

Someone internally at Universal writes a memo to Nid Tainen and Shin Sid Scheiberg, who run the studio.

And say, if you release this film, like the future of the studio is in doubt.

People were talking about it

as if it was kids.

Right.

As if like this is a movie with like, you know, like unsimulated sex and like intravenous drugs.

Like the, the level of outrage within the studio is insane.

So they kind of release it quietly, then are flabbergasted that kids are really excited by the movie and want to see it.

It does

okay.

Yeah.

But they basically could never kind of catch up to the demand.

And then it becomes the early VHS super smash.

It was a weird screen.

And famously, when you rent the VHS, the Phoebe Kate scene is completely degraded.

Oh my God.

100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which then makes it mythical of like, I have a cousin who saw it in theaters.

Yeah.

But, but it is an early example of a movie that owes so much of its life to video.

Yeah.

Because it was sort of the early days of video.

And it's also a little bit more.

And obviously it's a teen thing.

I was going to say it's a little early in the 80s teen movie trend.

You know, I mean, it's not like the one that kickstarts everything, but it does feel like which one did kickstart everything.

Let's do a timeline on this.

Oh, boy.

No, because the first Hughes is 84.

Is that?

Oh, no,

okay?

Okay.

Well,

you have to go back to like last picture show in American Graffiti, which are these early 70s new Hollywood movies, but they're about teens.

Yes.

Now they're vint, they're uh, they're set in the fifth, nostalgic looking nostalgic, right?

But they're a little realer.

Yes.

And so, like, I feel like, I mean, and if you go even back even further to like the Blackboard Jungle or whatever, like, there's even, you know, there's like early like those movies are real, but also kind of wistful, right?

And have this sense of being a little more elevated because they are

then in 78, you have Animal House, yes, which i feel like that is the the

to me original r-rated movie for teens yeah right like where it's like it's kind of contradictory in it's like why would you make like a grown-up movie essentially that's about stupid idiot teenagers getting naked and swearing and like getting in fights or whatever right but it's also college sex it's college so it's a little more grown-up uh-huh um but still it's like it's not like that movie is for you know sweater wearing 40 year olds right like i mean no in fact that movie flips off the sweater wearing 40-year-olds.

And so then I guess it's like Rock and Roll High School is an early one, right?

And like, I'm trying to think of other, like,

like, early.

I mean, this is really one of the first ones.

This is the thing.

I think this is a lot of fun.

There's Porky's

two as well.

Yeah.

And Porky's kind of is porn.

Right.

Like, Porky's is like softcore porn.

I think.

Like, I'm not saying that judgmentally.

It's just like Porky's is a little bit more like, let's do some plots so we can get to like more sex jokes and nudity and stuff.

I put forward the notion that Porky's and Fast Time basically creates the two lanes that these movies go on for the next decade, right?

Where it's like Fast Times more directly leads to like Hughes and Martha Coolidge, and then Porkies leads to just like fucking screw balls and hot dog the movie, all the fucking movies where like dudes are fucking things and jerking off.

Have you seen Porky's?

No.

Do you know what Porky's is?

Yes.

I mean, I know the poster.

Yeah.

Of course.

There's a character named Booger.

No, you're thinking of Revenge of the Nerds.

That's Revenge of the Nerds, which is kind of sanitized Hollywood porkies.

Right.

I would say.

And Revenge of the Nerds has essentially like a rape subplot in it that it doesn't recognize as a rape.

It's like, oh, this is funny.

It treats as sort of like Snobs versus Slobs victory.

Right.

That like the nerds got one over on the uptight cool girls.

Right.

Which is an example of like how dysfunctional these movies are.

Correct.

Which this one is not.

Well, this is what I'm saying: is that there becomes this split into like the movies that are just like hormonally like fucking tits and hijinks, right?

Like losing it and

private school.

I'm trying to, you know, like all those sex comedies of the mid 80s.

And then there's the sort of like inner life of the teen movie made compassionately kind of like John Hughes movies.

Right.

And Valerigirl and stuff like that.

You know, even in a sillier version or whatever.

And that this is the one that's like kind of both.

But it's also neither.

In a much more intelligent way.

But as you said, it's also neither.

Like this movie is also one of the very few that's directed by a woman.

Yes.

Of all any of of the movies we're talking about.

And it's just the way it depicts sex to me is all because a woman is directing it.

I agree.

They during during the pandemic,

Museum of Moving Image, along with the Queen Science Center, did this whole summer series of drive-in double features that we went to a couple of.

We went to RoboCop and Escape from New York.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you take a taxi, Griffin?

I would make people drive me

such as

my friend Ben.

Yes.

But I kept on, anytime I saw a good one on the schedule and and I was so scared of doing anything during the pandemic, I'd like text everyone I knew with a car and be like, hey, you want to do this on Tuesday?

Griffin wouldn't let me hot box, though, which was so annoying.

What a fucking narc.

Did he at least bake out with you?

Of course, I made that.

Okay, I'm a gentleman.

He put out.

Yeah.

You bought the pop.

Over the shirt.

Over the shirt.

Over the shirt.

They did a Fast Times Days and Confused double feature.

that I went to with our old friends Ramona and Eloise Head.

And Ramona just turns to me like an hour into fast times and is like, how did this get made?

Yeah, well, not the public.

And I was like, it's directed by a woman.

And she's like, oh, okay.

But was just so confounded by like, this is from 1982 and it's treating this stuff this way.

Why does this feel different than every other teen movie I've seen?

And I was like, that is the key difference.

Something I feel like it really nails is how grown up kids are.

Yes.

Yes.

Like, that's something.

And yet aren't.

And yet aren't, but how grown up they like seem like they are.

Like, I love how untimid Jennifer Jason Lee is, or her character is, about sex.

And whether that's because she's compensating for a real timidity that she does have.

It's a little bit that, but then she does actually, right, have a sexual boldness to her that she doesn't quite know how to express.

Yes.

Here's the thing that hit me on this watch that I don't think I picked up on before.

Does this movie not show a single parent?

It doesn't show any parents.

But like, that's to your point

that it like is just about treating them as autonomous individuals.

Yeah.

They are not defined by their relationship with their parents, which I feel like is such a big part of all these other movies.

And even Breakfast Club, that only has the parents at the beginning, is so much of them talking about their parents.

Well, but Breakfast Club is also them very loudly talking about their social class.

Whereas in this movie, all of that is there for you if you want to think about it, especially how Damon is clearly so much poorer than most of the characters in this movie, but you don't really think about it until the end of the movie.

And the movie also doesn't really create like a social strata within the school of like the hierarchy of the clicks because that's it's just sort of like these are just happening, right?

Yeah, everyone's sort of coexisting, you have different types because that's what everybody wants.

Some is also about to measure.

It's like it's like throwing back to a less clicky time.

It's college, obviously, but right where you're like, stoners, jocks, who cares?

Let's all just like hang out, man, and sing songs and get stoned.

But this isn't quite as utopian as that.

It's a subculture

taking over.

But everyone wants to go see fucking Van Halen.

Yes.

Or whatever.

Like, whoever's playing at the, you know, Blue Oyster Cult.

Man.

Where were you two weeks ago?

He had all the Blue Oyster Cult tickets then.

Do you just like wait for them to do Don't Fear the Reaper?

And then you're like, all right, I'm out.

Thanks so much.

Hopefully they start with that.

Yep.

We need to shout out to just because we didn't include it, Greece.

I feel it feels like another

teen movie.

Yes.

And Greece.

I've seen before.

The musical is much raunchier.

Yes.

And then the movie version sands it down a little bit to make it more difficult.

But another movie that is nostalgic for an earlier time.

Another, right, 20 years ago.

That was the bridge, though, I do think.

Because also Animal House is a period piece.

Yes, it is.

People forget that.

But like all of these.

Well, because they all feel like period pieces now, yeah.

But all of them were getting in through the system because it was like slightly older filmmakers making films about their childhoods with a distance that was more sellable to middle-aged audience members.

Yeah.

You know, rather than being like, we are just making movies for teenagers, which I think was seen as like a limiting audience, like as a business model at that time.

And then in the 80s, they're like, oh, fuck, teenagers have money.

They go to malls.

We got to make more movies for them.

So we've got Jennifer Jason Lee is a, is a sort of major major character.

I'm trying to think of like how you organize this film.

I feel like she is the ostensible lead character.

She's the main part.

She's probably the biggest lead character.

And then you've got.

Do you have performances on your Oscar bracket for this movie?

Because I was doing the math on this.

David has a spreadsheet of who he would nominate in every category every year for Delta.

This is cool.

You shouldn't be telling her that.

That's why I have to tell people.

I like this game, though.

Yeah.

I'm not that cool.

So, Jennifer Jason Lee is my winner for best actress.

Okay.

And then I have Sean Penn

uh nominated and supporting and judge.

Uh, and that's it.

I don't have any, I mean, that's but that's plenty.

Who should be for actress in your age?

Oh, Sean Young for Blade Runner, uh, Mary Waranov for Eating Raoul, very underrated movie, Dee Wallace for E.T.

and Joe Beth Williams for Poltergeist.

I think it's kind of like a weird year for actresses.

Interesting.

Um, yeah, but I might be kind of.

Did Meryl Streep not make a movie that year?

I think she did.

He too.

What was it?

Silkwood?

Like French Lieutenant's Woman.

That's a great movie.

Or that's a good movie.

Let me look up the Oscars for that year.

Yeah.

So the Oscars.

You have zero overlap.

Definitely.

Because the Oscars for that year is the Gandhi E.T.

Oscars.

Yeah.

Right.

And so, oh, right.

Sophie's Choice.

Meryl Streep wins for Sophie's Street.

That's a point.

Didn't Meryl Streep make a movie that year?

She made the Meryl Streep movie.

I've never seen Sophie's Choice.

Me neither.

Nor I.

We've all chosen the others.

Yeah, I see.

I've never seen these movies.

I've never seen Missing, the Accustograggers movie, which is Whisty SpaceX.

I've never seen Francis, where Jessica Lang plays Francis Farmer.

I bet it's good.

What is kind of hard to see now?

Is that right?

I think a lot of these movies end up in weird rights zones or whatever.

I've never seen an officer and a gentleman in full.

I've seen that like half on TV or whatever, Deborah Winger.

I have.

I'm cool.

Cool.

It's great.

I mean, I love Deborah Winger.

Huge fan.

I do too.

Big Deborah Winger fan.

Yeah.

Probably five years prior would have been perfect for Fast Times Original.

Hi, like she kind of has.

Well, did she make a movie with Amy Heckerling?

Am I good?

No, she didn't.

No.

But I feel like, I don't know, there's a world where they would have crossed.

But okay, so Jennifer Jason Lee's kind of your main character, and then like Phoebe Cates is sort of attached to her, right?

Like,

and I guess Brian Backer rat is sort of a main character with Romanus kind of, you know, with a, you know,

maybe you have attached to him.

Yes.

And then Judge Reinhold is sort of your third-ish, like, most important main character.

Yes, I think the rat demon

is kind of floating around.

Is that for the first half, Rat is leading that storyline.

The second half, Damon is leading that storyline.

There's sort of one thread that flips in terms of.

This all feels like it flies in the face of how you would do this kind of action.

Absolutely.

Right.

To not force any sort of more conventional structure on the book, you know, or hooks or any of that kind of stuff and to just have it be like, it's just sort of a fudgy timeline of a year.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Let's not even, right, worry about homework or parents or, right, like, oh, I got to get into college or I got to, you know, like, none of that shit.

Like, my favorite thing about the decision to really center around them all is like really tying each of them to their jobs.

Yeah.

Right.

And also forcing these characters to spend half of the movie in the dumbest uniforms possible.

Really dirky clothes.

Like, it gets this sense of like this weird conflict between like you feel like a grown-up because you have a responsibility and you're making money on your own for the first time.

Right.

But the payoff for that is you got to wear wear some dumb shit and flirt with the people you like while wearing that shit.

It's such a big part of the book.

And that's the Judge Reinhold character, Brad, who I love.

It's such a great joke that he's like, I'm so good at this.

Yes.

I'm a single successful guy.

I'm a successful guy.

I'm on top of the world.

He's a Faraday chef, essentially.

And it's just like, he's.

It's beautiful.

Like the rest, every other character in this movie, I think, is more just kind of like, God, I cannot wait to be a fucking grown-up.

Like, I'm get out of this shit and like go do whatever exciting things I I want to do.

And Brad is the guy who's like, it ain't getting better than this, baby.

I got a little saber, baby.

I got my Buick.

I got my job.

I got my girlfriend.

I've been going steady for three years or whatever.

You know what's funny?

I'm realizing now, Brad is kind of the original template for the Cameron Crow character.

Okay.

Not as much like Say Anything, but Brad is like a mini high school version of like Jerry Maguire, where it's like this guy who kind of feels like I have it all figured out.

I'm a master in the universe.

It's so fun pulling the rug rug out, right?

And then his life just like crumbles, and he's like, I'm getting it together.

You know, like Brad just keeps being like, gonna get this back on track.

The thing that shocked me the most watching it last night was that it's Forrest Whitaker.

Yeah.

He's, he is, it's one of his first roles.

Well, you're just like, he's like 20, 21 years old.

Like, he's in three scenes, but the way this movie's shot, you're like, he's around in the background a bunch.

But I always remembered like how that character had one eye smaller than the other.

Right.

And then

re-watching it, I was like, oh, yeah, that guy looks like Forrest Whitaker with one eye smaller than the other.

And then I looked it up and I was like, that is.

It's Forrest Whitaker baby.

We've covered this on some other episode.

Maybe it was the Panic Room episode, but this thing I find fascinating is like, this is his first movie.

Is that right?

Yeah, he has one other credit the same year.

Tag the assassination game.

And then he does Color of Money.

Yeah, but that's four years later.

He has some other credits in between.

Or Just one.

He's in Vision Quest.

It's like us, Greg.

Then Color of Money, he's got this.

He's been done some TV.

He's a good kind of showcase extended role.

He's really good in the Color of Money.

And he's in Platoon that year.

And then after Platoon and Color of Money, Lola, Forrest Whitaker's like, I don't know my craft.

And then like goes to drama school.

He already has five major credits.

and has like worked with incredible people and is like, I need to get serious about this.

And then like, hell yeah.

Goes to fucking conservatory and then comes back and is like, here I go.

I'm ready.

I mean, I know it's interesting.

Cause I, are you sure that didn't happen after Vision Quest?

Because he goes right from Color Money and Platoon to Stake Out in Good Morning Vietnam to Bird.

Then you know what?

Maybe I'm right.

Maybe it's in between.

I feel like it must be before in between Vision Quest and Color Money.

It makes sense too, because he comes out of whatever that was,

a much more fully formed actor.

So that I knew there was a gap, but it has to be that.

Because in this, he's being cast for his physicality.

He really, like, he looks the part.

He's so funny just for like one minute, basically, like, uh, as the, I mean, I think the scene where Damon pretends to be his friend is really funny.

Um, because he doesn't, he's not mean to Damon.

He's just kind of like, okay.

I mean, this movie just constantly somehow holds back from the most obvious version of every scene, of every joke, and like just grounding it enough in realistic behavior.

Yeah, and not, yeah, not making too much of a meal out of the fact that like Phoebe Cates is making making up a boyfriend, essentially, probably, or whatever.

Whatever, that's at least completely delusional about a guy she had sex with one time or something.

That Damon is full of shit about, you know, his little business as a scalper, that Brad is full of, you know, he's so he's not a scalper?

No, he is, but he's just like, he's acting like he's some real.

He doesn't have any money for the abortion.

He doesn't have any fucking money.

Like, he's clearly like laying himself out way too much to get like people to like him by getting them to be a bad person.

I'll answer ask the question too.

One of his big intro scenes is him explaining to Rat the like five moves that always get a woman.

Right.

This kind of like pickup artist shit.

This guy's got all the fucking answers.

My read, especially watching it is

he losing his virginity at Jump for Days and League.

100%.

Of course.

If not

then he's barely ever had sex.

I had always considered it and watching it this time, I was like

100% shit.

This is the bigger question.

Is Damone hot?

Yes.

Would you fuck Damon?

This is I would.

When I was 14, I was.

I might not fuck him if I got to know him because then I'd be kind of...

He was hot when I was a teenager.

I thought he was hot now.

When I was 14, I was like,

Damon is so cool, and this movie pulls off this amazing narrative twist of revealing that he's a piece of shit, right?

But I was like, the first half of the movie, I'm buying his coolness.

And now I watch it and

I see fucking through it from the get-go.

This guy's trying too hard.

I find him.

I find the film is very compassionate to him, which I like.

Yes, I agree.

It would be easy for him to be a villain because he does the most straightforwardly villainous thing in the movie, which is he doesn't pay for the abortion.

And it doesn't show up.

More than anything, like beyond the pain.

The cowardice, right?

The cowardice is not showing up and saying, I'm sorry, I couldn't get the money.

And I like that the movie doesn't really punish him.

Like that Rat and him sort of like shake on it and they're like kind of still friends, although it's always going to be weird.

Yeah.

And that he's just going to be Damon.

Like, and it's kind of like, you know, you're like, punishment enough that he's kind of, you know, a bit of a bottom feeder or whatever it is.

It is an incredible performance.

It's a great performance.

And then I really think it's crucial that at the end of that movie, near the end of it, you see him coming out of his house, his apartment, and you're like, right, he doesn't have a big fucking house with a pool that lives in an apartment.

Yeah, like it's like, like you just get more and more,

you get to know him more as the movie goes on in a way that, again,

whatever, a regular teen movie would just not bother you.

And it isn't overstated, but he's not overstated.

But there's the moment when he goes to Jennifer Jason Lee's house and he goes, oh man, it must be nice to have a pool.

Yeah.

And she has a pool house to have sex in.

A changing room or whatever they call it.

Pool house.

Yeah.

You know, whatever.

Right.

But that, like, that happens like 10 minutes before you see the one-shot of him leaving, and you've heard, you know, that she called him and his mom picked up and said he's in the garage working with dad.

Right.

Right.

But like, it's all that sort of stuff where you're like, so what's the structure of his life?

What are his parents like?

You don't see it.

You don't know.

Yeah.

He's just a little more lower middle class or whatever.

I love his fashion.

He has such good fashion.

Also, his musical taste from his walls are like incredible.

The tattoo you poster that's on the wall, like

you do get this sense of his aspiration and his desperation to leave this world that he's in, which is very different from the Jennifer Jason Lee character's life.

This guy wants to be Cameron Crowe, right?

I guess so.

Or at least he wants to go live in the city.

I think this guy lacks the focus to be like, I should be writing reviews or trying to interview musicians.

But like what he dreams of is that kind of life of like, I am friends with all the people I think are cool and they respect that I am cool.

His whole posture is like, can I present a worldliness, an awareness of culture, you know, a sort of understanding of business that shows these teenagers that I'm on a different level and I'm beyond this.

And in reality, he just wants those people to be like, you belong here with us.

Well, he's like,

you know, I guess in today's terms, he would just have been like a hipster.

Yeah.

And Jennifer Jason Lee, like, if you look at her bedroom, like, she's, she loves her life in a way.

Like, she, when she takes Rat into her room, she wants to show him pictures, like, of her and her friends.

It's so sweet.

It breaks my heart.

Like, because she likes having pictures of her friends and she likes her family.

And then

when you see Spicoli's room, I mean, you really do understand.

Yes.

I did see.

that a lot of those pictures on his wall are of Dorothy Stratton, which is another interesting.

We have two Lana Clarkson and Dorothy Stratton references in that movie.

Yes.

Very interesting.

Right, but she was star 80.

I mean, this is like her era.

But even that, I'm like, the absence of the parents is so fascinating because it doesn't feel like the stylistic choice that is calling attention to itself.

And yet, like, they are less present in this world than they are in fucking peanuts, right?

Like, you don't even have a representation of their absence.

But you can, what's nice to me, and I think, you know, is a, is a good maybe note for filmmakers now is like you understand the inner lives of these kids without having any of them talk about how depressed they are.

Totally.

And to the point I feel like you were setting up,

when you see Spikoli's room, and especially that moment at the end when Mr.

Hand is leaving and he clocks all the naked women on the wall and just kind of gives it a beat and then walks out.

Yeah.

My mind starts to go like, oh, this quietly says a lot about Spikoli's parents.

I don't need to see them.

I don't need to hear them referred to.

They're chill about this.

There's something here in the culture of Spikoli's home where it's like his entire room in the world.

Spokoli has no mom

is the immediate thing that I think.

I mean, you have the dad, it's the little brother references dad, and then

I don't think your mom would let you have that stuff on your walls.

All this coding shit where like this movie makes you kind of like spin out considering the aspects of the characters that aren't stated directly through the little hints it gives you of these things.

And like seeing Damon's room before you see him leaving the complex, you know?

Like, oh, his taste is good.

Look at who he has on his walls versus, oh, he's the only person in this movie who doesn't live in a house.

But Spikoli also has the most incredible fashion.

And I, oh, those vans?

The vans.

I didn't realize that that was, you know, originated by Spikoli.

He's right there.

The kind of pink knitted sweater thing.

Everything turtleneck underneath.

Yeah, the blue cap the cult 45 t-shirt in the last scene all of them you're like i know the whole point of this guy is he just rolls out of bed right into a van that's filled with bonk but i'm like he's making choices he's making great choices i mean this movie i think really extra cheese sausage not a bad pizza order totally

this movie really i think gave vans as a brand like uh uh exposed them to like the mainstream

because it was like them out of a box it was like skater right show the fresh one straight to camera and then fucking hit himself in the head with it you're like fuck those shoes are cool yeah i'm wearing my van slip-ons today

i had a vans

they would always just kind of fall apart on me kind of fast they're you know they're not great no offense to vans who should sponsor our show like love come on board van but i do feel like they kind of fall apart on me quickly they're never gonna come on board now that you said that well maybe you walk

but also like yeah

no but i'm playing hard to get they're gonna be like we gotta win win it.

Like Converse High Top is another iconic piece of shoe.

Or what I wear.

They fall apart similarly.

I think they're kind of made, they're ephemeral.

I was a fucking last duct tape.

Maybe that's the new tag line.

Like,

nothing lasts forever when you're enjoyable.

Enjoy all.

There's something there.

I had these like puke green converses.

I loved them.

I had hot pink converse.

Hell yeah.

I had all black, the soul.

Everything was black.

Those were cool.

And then I refused to retire them.

So I would like tape them up to try to get another two months out of them.

Yeah.

And by the end of it, it was like, these are more duct tape than they are shoes.

We're so

it was like when you're a teen, you're like, I don't get to get shoes that often.

You know, like it was such a big deal.

Now I'm just kind of like, shoes aren't, you know, Matt, so you can just go get more shoes.

I know, but it was just like...

Back then, it really, you did like.

If you can't order them online, you had to go to 8th Street between 5th and 6th.

That was the shoe block.

That was all shoes.

I went to a uniform school.

There were zero shoe stores left on the block now.

It's It's crazy.

What is it now?

It's like just fucking juice bars and avocado toast.

I'm going to fucking think.

AI.

Everything is.

Chat GT store.

I had to wear black

non-sneakers, right?

Like it's like

I had a dress coat.

I was wearing a uniform as many British students do.

So I wore Doc Martin's.

Ben Clipback for the summer.

Wearing Doc Martens was the way to be kind of cool while still obeying the rules.

Because it's like these aren't sneakers.

Yeah.

And they are black, right?

So they're not like, they don't have like a pattern.

That's why Dr.

Martin invented Doc Martens.

I like you calling him Dr.

Martin.

Dr.

Martin.

He's my physician.

Well, he was hanging out with Dr.

Pepper and who else?

Who are the other doctors about Document?

They were Dr.

Martins when I was a child.

Dr.

Martin.

And I used to have the floral Doc Martins.

I believe they are officially Dr.

Martins.

Thank you.

Here's here's my strong memory of what we're talking about with like oh my god i finally get to get new shoes is like trying to sell my mom like oh god these shoes hurt i think my feet are growing too much you know that you try to jump ahead of like you're only getting new shoes when you've grown out of them when you're still at an age where the size isn't like changing rapidly oh my toes are breaking i need new shoes right now wow

so it's a really good performance how you got that's how you got into the biz that's how i got into the biz i mean like such a a case was discovered at a juice bar.

I was discovered at a shoe store.

And they're like, this kid's really selling toe pain.

David, what?

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin David Podcast Bell Philographies is brought to you by Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what I was about to say.

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God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life, perhaps even in this room.

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Bringing me in, and there's only one other person in the room.

Who is one other person in the room?

This is so rude.

I sleep easy.

I'm definitely not someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets.

No,

that's an example of a fussy person.

Look, people have different demands.

And you know what?

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Maybe you're in Europe and you want to make sure that's very demanding to be in Europe.

You got air conditioning.

Well, I think of one person in particular, although it's really both of you.

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I need air conditioning if I'm in the North Pole.

Look, if I can find my perfect stay on Booking.com, anyone can.

Booking.com is definitely the easiest way to find exactly what you're looking for.

Like for me, a non-negotiable is I need a gorgeous bathroom for selfies.

You do.

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As long as I got a good bathroom mirror for selfies, I'm happy with everything else.

Look, they're again,

they're specifying, like, oh, maybe you want a sauna or a hot tub.

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah, please.

Can I check that?

You want one of those in the recording, Stuart?

That'd be great.

You want to start,

you want to be

in the sauna when we record.

I was going to say, you want to be the Dalton Trumbo a podcast.

You want to be Splish Splash and what's going to be.

You would look good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge.

And while recording, I'm on mic, but you just

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Only murders in the building.

Season 5.

The Hit Hulu original is back.

He was talking with a smobster.

Was he killed in a pit?

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I'm trying to figure out how to tackle this movie.

Like, um, I mean, we start out with just

smash your car and spray paint it.

Yeah.

And that's how we'll get into the movie.

Because it's a short movie, 90 minutes.

It gets nonetheless feels quite epic because I think of the year structure.

Like you just really feel time passing, even if the movie is generally kind of light and airy.

And it doesn't do that,

like hitting up the seasons, reminding you of what month it is.

So many movies like this really.

Partly because it's set in California where it's like, man, it always looks like this.

But I feel like a lot of movies like this try to use like holidays to like pinpoint where you are in time.

And this movie doesn't do any of that.

You just sort of realize at the end, like, oh, the year's over.

It doesn't even make like the dance a thing like often in these teen movies where it's like, it's all building up to the

class.

Until basically, it's the day of.

Sure.

No one's talking about an anticipation until the scenes that are taking place that day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's not what these movies become, which is,

oh, I have to ascend the social structure of this school or figure, crack the code or whatever.

In fact, the cheerleaders are very made fun of, but I guess that was a trek.

I think that's true at the time.

I think, yeah, cheerleaders haven't gotten to be alphas yet.

And that's such a funny scene.

It's just historically where the cheerleaders trying to say, God bless her.

Like, we worked really hard on this.

And everyone is just like, every, this, I don't know if this is what kids were like in the early 80s.

I wasn't a kid in the early 80s.

When they're on the school bus and it's just fucking anarchy, everyone just throwing shit at each other, right?

It does feel like more discipline came later.

There must have just come some point where in like pedagogy, it was like, you know what?

You should probably like make people sit still in their chairs.

I also think you think of like the 60s and the 70s.

Like, we don't have have to be a military school over here, but people stop throwing shit at each other all the time.

I think in the 60s and 70s, you had this cultural shift to like the youth of America becoming very politically engaged and feeling the need to push back and the sort of like unwieldiness and the chaos of their behavior was like as means to an end to make a point.

And in the 80s to some degree, that has like dissipated and now it's just chaos.

And all the adults are so burnt out at that point.

That's the thing.

Like you imagine these teachers were like 10 years ago dealing with students doing bra burning and being like, well, I can't push back on this or I'll look like a square.

And now it's just kids being kids, and they're no longer trying to accomplish anything.

But I think about Mr.

Hand, played by Ray Walston.

Incredible performance.

An incredible performance.

So I'm going to say that Mr.

Hand is the age that Ray Walston was.

Okay.

Okay.

How old do you think Ray Walston is?

Great question.

Because it's going to surprise you how old he is.

Yeah.

So my favorite Martian's in the 60s or 50s?

My favorite Martian, which was the TV show he's on.

Yes, where he was.

Was in the the mid-60s.

Arguably my favorite Martian.

Oh my God.

I had to do it.

I debate.

I don't know if you saw me just close my eyes and take the beat and go, am I going to go through it with this?

But it was too far along.

I'm going to guess he was 47 when they filmed this.

He was 68 years old.

That's crazy.

I was surprised in the opposite direction.

I assumed you were setting me up.

That's what you assumed I was doing.

And I was shocked to learn that, in fact, he's really old at this point.

So let's say he's actually 68 years old.

That means he's probably been teaching since like World War II.

Right.

He's been teaching for 40 years.

Because I was really trying to put myself in this mindset of fucking Spokoli walks into this guy's class.

This guy just wants to drone on about the Spanish-American War to these kids.

Yeah.

And Spikoli's ordering pizzas to the classroom, right?

It's like the most like impossible force, immovable object thing, right?

Like it's just, he is never going to get through to this kid.

But he's also not the kind of teacher who thinks he should be getting through to kids, right?

He's like, the kids should sit still while I talk to them.

I'm just talking about behind scenes.

Right.

Yes.

And I was just, again, I had a lot of empathy for Mr.

Hand where I'm like, again, like this guy, he probably served in World War II.

Yeah.

And now he's just like, what the hell has happened?

But to America's youth.

Well, that's my, this is what I'm being confronted with.

To my point.

This way of reaching them is terrible.

Yes.

He's such a bad teacher.

Yes.

Sorry.

No, to my point that it's like Mr.

Hand has had to deal with trouble before, but the trouble always had some kind of driving reason behind it.

Whereas Spikoli is something he just cannot wrap his head around.

Where like Spikoli's lack of like shame or understanding when he is called out seems to be the thing that trips him up most.

That when he's like trying to make an example of Spokoli, Spokoli just kind of lets it roll off him.

Yeah.

And yet it's like the thing in the final scenes where he's just like, I do kind of respect this kid.

There's the combination of like

dumb.

His brain is sideways.

He doesn't think like anyone else, but he's not dumb.

You know, he's like, you actually got close on that one, Jeff.

Even when he's trying to explain the Revolutionary War through his prism, he's like, you're not totally off.

And I think by the end of it, he's like, there's something kind of beautiful about the way Spicoli functions that he is so like unimpeded by the forces of anything else in the world.

So I said, have any of you ever ordered a pizza to your class?

No, it's the coolest move in the world.

I wish I had.

Why didn't we do that?

I don't know.

I feel like I did other dumb shit.

I watched this with my wife.

She's a high school teacher.

And she's laughing at that scene because it's funny.

She's like, because we, and she says, like, we had to stop the kids doing this.

And I was like, what do you mean?

It's like, they were all fucking ordering DoorDash.

Because I was like, right now.

Now,

that's too easy.

That's too easy.

Yeah.

And

she was like, we had to make a rule.

So it went from being the coolest thing in the world to kids being like, let me just DoorDash some chick chilly right now.

An entire White Castle crave case into perhaps a class I had with your wife about this on the show.

And the teacher just being like, absolutely.

Correctly.

This is nice.

I remember 4.20, my favorite holiday for way too long.

Of course.

Yes.

And I can't believe I did this.

But I guess Spicoli was like a hero to me.

I walked into my 8 a.m.

first period English class with a pint of fish fruit ice cream.

And Ms.

Cantor.

Oh, yeah.

Ms.

Cantor looked at me and was just like, are you kidding me?

That was the response I got to the crave case was just like.

That feels like a St.

Anne's thing, too, where it's like, you kids have so much rope and still you find

the boundary.

Yes.

As someone who was basically high throughout my junior and senior year, okay.

So that's when it kicked off for you, kind of junior year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, it's unbelievable to think back of how I would just be like bloodshot red-eyed going to class and my teachers just didn't call me out on it.

Yeah.

And I wonder if it's a thing where now weed is so pervasive, it's so readily available that I feel like now teachers are maybe like have to call kids out more so.

Whereas

I feel like I feel like they don't do it as much.

That's my thing.

I'm like, it's like being legal probably makes it less appealing to high schoolers.

Like in my

bought my drugs.

Right.

Like in a store.

Right.

Right.

Rather than getting like the worst drugs from

this person.

Did you smoke on the regulars?

No, we would,

there's a lot of weed smoking while in the car, unfortunately, while driving.

Oh, sure.

Which is

seen adults do that all the time.

this movie

um but yeah it was mostly we would smoke in the car on the way to school and then show up late and roll in stinking stinking like bluntness i'd be so fucking annoyed with you it is impossible i would be like school gets out in the middle of the afternoon get stoned then it's fine like why do you have to get stoned at nine in the morning i mean i'm already winding down for the night by 3 p.m absolutely well now sure

16 you know it is impossible to watch this movie and not go down these roads and like trying to like what was i doing and what were my things and like what did i see in other kids and whatever and yet this movie is not coded in any sense of sort of like wistful nostalgia remember one like it is very unsentimental because it's not a but it's compassionate also being compassionate is exactly

very compassionate for everybody this very like fascinating balance especially when you think about all the things leading up to it being like man we're at the 50s a better time it's not great that we grew up in the 50s it's not nostalgic and it is not about like, you know, kids versus adults.

It's not bye-bye birdie of like, ah, fuck these teachers.

The teachers are kind of, there's just Mr.

Hand, who, yes, he's a hard ass, but he's just clashing with Spikoli, who is

not being a very good student.

Mr.

Hand is funny.

Like when

he's got wit.

When Mr.

Hand sees

Spicoli, the students laugh.

Yes.

He's not funny to the audience while watching a movie.

He knows what he is doing.

He's working his classroom.

He's trying to get one up on Spokoli by making the better joke at his expense.

Like, even that is much more

balanced than just him being like mean, scary teacher.

And then there's Vincent Chevelli as Mr.

Vargas.

He just switched to Senka.

Please forgive him.

Such a sweet performance.

Beautiful.

Of a teacher who, again, maybe is maybe traumatizing his kids by essentially showing them a cadaver.

I don't know.

Like, feels a little traumatizing for a teenager.

I think it feels important.

Okay.

I mean, I'm kind of with you on that.

Has the two two weird, like, for lack of a better word, franchise extensions that don't work.

They make the second movie, The Wildlife, directed by Art Linson, starring Chris Penn,

that is based on additional material from Cameron Crowe.

Wow.

Is not a straight-up sequel, but is like, let's try to do another Fast Times.

Is he Spikoli's

character?

They were just sort of like, fuck, can we get a pen?

Like, we just want to remind people of Fast Times as much as possible, but it's not a straight sequel.

Let's just glom on, right?

But then there was a network TV fast times TV show where the only two returning cast members were the teachers.

Because why not?

Yeah.

I love that Mr.

Vargas' wife is a babe.

Well, yeah.

That's such a funny joke.

Of course that guy would, Paul.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah.

He's tall.

He's interesting.

He's got a good heart.

But Ben, Lana Clarkson, did you realize who this is?

No.

This is the woman that Robert Blake shot, correct?

No.

No.

That Phil Specter.

Excuse me.

I'm sorry.

I get them confused i get those two crimes confused because they were so close together they are they were very close together yeah so rather than trying rather than trying to succeed at school or defeat the teachers or whatever the fuck okay so jennifer jason lee she wants to have sex she doesn't even want to have sex like some american pie like we've got to do it by this decades she wants to be she wants to be grown up yeah and that to me i feel like is very much an 80s thing like i feel like now everyone wants to be a kid Yeah.

Yeah, forever.

Versus.

Wanting to be a grown-up.

Like, when I look at so many movies from the 80s that aren't teen movies, like, I was just watching

Basic Instinct.

That's 80s, right?

That's not

very early 90s.

Oh, oh, it's 991, maybe.

Whatever.

Doesn't matter.

All movies from that time, every leading lady looks like a librarian.

But the point is, besides, I mean, Sharon Stone is obviously, you know,

but even her, she's wearing like blazers and turtlenecks.

Danny Moore and Sharon Stone and all these like the major sex pot sort of desirable leading ladies of the late 80s and early 90s were like adults.

They were not

children, they were not in fancy.

They were in a style, though, to

wear clothes that made you look like you were an adult.

And I think it's much sexier because it actually, you have to imagine so much more.

Yes.

It was like, no, what I'm working with must be so amazing

that I can wear this

and still drive you crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously there were like, you know, a lot of other things in culture culture happening that glorified naked women's bodies and all that type of stuff.

But I do think the style was look sophisticated.

Yeah.

And

I think that that's something that you really see in this movie.

These kids want to be grown up.

They are posturing as being grown up.

And I don't know.

I feel like the kids I know that are younger now, it's really more about like embracing the commodity of youth.

Yes.

Like they look down on older.

I mean, I look down on older people too.

That was, and I still do because I know everything now at 30.

You finally figured it out.

But I always knew everything.

It just, I, I just always learned that I, what I, everything I knew wasn't true.

And just in time before anyone else realized.

But yeah, I just think that it's interesting to see the way that these kids like want to be adults in a, in a different way.

Well, what does Jennifer Jasonly like sort of

respect the most or what is she most in awe of?

It is the fact that Phoebe Cates is like over it.

Yes.

It isn't like, oh my God, she's had so much sex and I haven't and she's selling that sex is so exciting.

Yeah, Phoebe Cates is kind of like, oh, I had my wild period and now I've got my steady boyfriend who never and so like that feeling of like the movie isn't centered around I gotta lose my virginity.

It happens very quickly because what Jennifer Jason Lee wants to do is go six steps.

Yeah.

She just toddles right into a buzzsaw, which is she gets picked up by a 20-something and thinks that's normal because God bless her, like, you know, he's showing interest and like he's a grown-up he's like what she says at the end of the movie i had never heard it because i just wanted to have sex when i was watching this movie though but what she says when she says anyone can have sex what i want is romance and then phoebe cate says something to the effect of like we don't even have uh what we don't even have good pizza or something in this town and you want romance yeah um

but and phoebe cates has been this whole time talking about this like guy who she's like engaged to be engaged to yeah the implication that they have a more serious, mature relationship.

But like, as you said, you get the sense of like, this is probably someone she slept with four times.

This is someone who would like call her when he was on break in between semesters, you know, like I don't even think he's real.

I think that somebody is fabricating it.

I sometimes think that she's, he's made up, that he's like a Canadian boyfriend.

Yeah.

But then the whole thing where she's crying at the beginning of the day.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't think she can.

He's too pretty.

You have completely made that up.

I'm sorry.

That's the other part.

I think it's more someone that exactly is essentially just like has her on the side and she's taking it seriously because he's more.

Like if the guy that Jennifer Jason Lee has sex with in the fucking dugout, right?

If she had slept with him three more times over three years, that's what Phoebe Cates has.

But then, like, I just love the reversal of once he's discarded her.

Yeah.

Phoebe Cates being like, he's a fucking stereo salesman.

And it's like, if you knew he was a loser this whole time, which he is clearly a loser, because he's picking up 15-year-old pizza waitresses.

Like, why didn't you point that out before?

Because she's, you know, and I'm not saying Pete Kidd is a bad friend.

She's just like,

like an affirming friend, right?

I mean, I had that friend.

Yeah.

Everyone has that friend.

That's what I was responding to.

Can you say it and then bleep it out?

Who it is?

I mean, it was kind of like a composite.

I feel like it was so many people.

Yes.

Okay.

That's, I was just wondering if you were pinning it on one person.

We don't need to say it.

No, but just the girl that you thought had everything.

And then you get older and you realize she just probably had a really unhappy home.

Like

i will say this without naming the person but there was like a friend of ours in high school who talked to me about losing their virginity very young in like this very kind of like i got it over with it didn't you know i don't i don't put a lot of value on that kind of thing it was just whatever in that kind of phoebe cates way i'll tell you afterwards and then like

A year or two later, she supped with someone at her school and made a really big deal of it to me.

And I was like, why are you making such a big deal of it?

You'd already like had sex before.

And then like five years after that was like,

okay, no, of course I hadn't had sex before.

You believed that story I told you?

You know, and I feel like there's some of that with the Phoebe Cates character.

And Jennifer Jason Lee is like not being,

she doesn't care about how she's perceived by other people.

She is such a sincere person, but she's not naive.

What she's really in pursuit of is like experience, right?

Not just sexual experience, but she's like, I want to figure out what it's like to be a person, what it's like to be an adult, to try all these things, to have heartbreak, to have feeling.

Right.

Except for Judge Reinhold.

Yes.

Who feels like he's 45.

Yes, he does feel like he's 45.

Right.

Is he still a virgin?

Judge.

Yes.

Yes.

Judge Reinhold.

No, I think his character is a virgin.

He's a girlfriend.

No.

But there's that whole scene where he's saying to her, Do you want to go to the point tonight?

And she goes, For what?

And he goes, you know.

And she goes, like, I don't, Brad.

I'm not going to use sex as a tool.

I've always taken that as like, again, with the 45-ness, that he's like, they're like an old married couple.

Oh, my God.

No.

He's never had sex.

No, I think it's an important detail that he hasn't had sex yet, but his younger sister has.

And I think my other read on it is that moment of her saying, I don't want to use sex as a tool comes 30 seconds after he's bragging to the other guy on the front line about how good she is in bed.

And the immediate shutdown, I think I used to read it the way you're saying it.

And this time I was like, oh, no, it's complete posture.

And he's just once again being like, maybe if we go to the point one more time,

she puts out, which he's just wrong about.

Yeah.

Interesting.

And she's over him.

I just, right.

To me, the joke of him is so much just like

that he's old before his time and right is just acting like anyway.

But yeah, I get it.

I get it.

I mean,

I don't think him jerking off to Phoebe Cates really confirms it in either direction because he's still a horny teen as much as he's like basically filing his 1099 right, you know, after he does that or whatever.

Exactly.

His iconic response in that scene.

One of the most incredible line readings.

When you dig into it, what's so funny about it is his response more than embarrassment of being caught is like, I wish she stays have no manners.

Exactly.

We don't even knock anyone.

We don't even go fucking spy on the pool from the bathroom.

But his response is as if she interrupted him building a fucking house of cards

or doing his taxes.

Um, and I that scene again, 10, 15 years later, that scene is,

I'm sorry to keep bringing up American Pie, which our friend directed and is a funny movie.

Like, yes, but in, you know, it's like that scene is a crazy set piece where something wild happens, and instead it's Phoebe Keats going, like, oh,

then being like, doesn't anybody fucking knock anymore?

And like, that's it.

That moment's so much quicker than you think it would be.

And it's also not only that, immediately undercut by you're, you're going with the, like, the slow-motion iconic Phoebe Kate's shot right and the cars song playing and everything and then you know cut cross-cutting between that and like Judge Reinhold just looking like a dork masturbating which is a silly looking act right especially if you're just sort of like standing right

but then the immediate like puncturing of the reality before she even comes in and knocks is you cut to regular motion Phoebe Kate's getting out of the pool and she's got water in her ear.

Like this immediate re-centering of like, here's now replaying the actual version of her getting out of a pool, and she's like,

and she plays it so well, it's so funny, but she's just sort of like walking weirdly.

She's so funny.

I love when Ratt and Damon show up later, yes, and they like jump in the pool in their rough housing, and she's just like

immediately is like, I'm getting the fuck out of here for both of them.

But I, it is interesting.

I have, I have had conversations with people who I think incorrectly have said that, like,

there is a necessity.

How am I going to frame this?

I'm relaying someone else's sentiment that I disagree with, okay?

That like

there is a necessity for the male gaze in the film ecosystem because films are sexual and there is something about capturing female beauty that female directors can't do and has led to a sexless culture in film.

This is a thing that I have had said to me by a person or two that I always was like, I don't really agree with your take, but also watching this movie, right?

And I understand the scene is presented as parody, that it is sort of like a riff on these types of scenes in other movies.

I'm also like, this is Amy Heckerling shooting what has become the basic high watermark for like male fantasy image and film.

Sure, yeah, like slow motion, MTV, you know, whatever, car commercial, like, yeah.

Right.

She did it better than any man could do it and is also making it funny and commentary at the same time.

Totally.

Absolutely.

I mean, this is a genius movie that's beautifully directed.

Yes.

Wait, what was the take?

Dude, I can't even begin to parse.

I know you're trying to sum up.

Someone's dumb argument.

Yes.

But that films have become sexless because women direct them.

Because men, that male directors.

I think the framing of it was.

Male directors have now been scared out of being horny as filmmakers.

So those films have become sexless, and the only people who are allowed to depict sexuality are women.

And women don't know how to shoot female bodies in a way that is actually titillating.

You know, Mr.

Bernard is in his office has like a button that drops people into a pit.

I think that take needs to be dropped.

Yeah, drop him in the fucking pit.

Drop him in a pit.

Drop him in a pit.

He's the one bringing it onto the airwaves.

Women are much more sexually creative than men.

I agree.

That's, I mean, this is my point.

It's like this scene is such a good example of that.

And I think there are many movies that have come out over the last 10 years in particular that are great arguments in that favor.

Yeah, we're, again, we're arguing against the strongman who's not in the room.

So I think we should move on.

Yeah.

We're doing a lot of invoking people who refuse to name on Mike in this room.

All right, so Jennifer, so Jennifer Jason Lee's character, of course, is called Stacey, and she

hooks up with Brad on the bench, the bleachers.

What does it say?

What's the

graffiti that she focuses on?

Fuck.

Something about...

Surfers.

Yeah, or shark, like die.

Die shark.

Right.

I think it's the

name of the team.

Yeah.

Like, I just love that, that she's just like, uh-huh, I guess I'm looking at this while I have this kind of seminal, life-changing experience.

But to what you said also, like, Phoebe Cates is like, fucking go for it.

When she's kind of like, I don't know, he is kind of cute, right?

Like, I need your affirmation before I call this guy back.

Phoebe Cates is like, yes.

And then immediately on the other end of it is like, that guy's a dork and a creep and a loser.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's this feeling of like she just wants to get this over with.

100%.

Right.

Which is, I'm sympathetic to, obviously, but you know, she doesn't sympathetic to, obviously.

Uh, just the feeling of, like, I just want to get that out of the way, the like, uh, you know, the pressure of the first time, quote unquote.

I never realized until now,

uh,

you know, that they have sex on a fucking like wooden bench

dugout, like, disgusting.

For how much this movie was received within Universal and by the NPA at the time is like, this is pornographic.

This film is like

toxic, x-rated, lewd.

This film has two sex scenes, and both of them are basically as unsexy as a scene could possibly be and take place in the worst environments.

One is an adult environment.

The pool house is sexy.

The pool house scene is sexy.

I think the build-up to it is sexy.

It's not a sexy space.

I did a lot of sexy things in pool houses as a teenager.

Sure.

I'm saying the moment he gets on top of her, you become aware of, like, oh, this couch is not big enough for their bodies, you know?

Like, the undressing is sexy.

The kissing is sexy.

No, this is why they got the X-rating.

It's too realistic.

It's not that it's sexy, it's that it's realistic.

At the time, everyone was like, This is too pornographic.

And you're like, No, what you're actually responding to is this makes you uncomfortable because it's honest.

The Ebert review did JJ put it in his dossier.

Let's see.

Who's this JJ?

JJ's a researcher.

If you want to go ahead and fire him quickly, feel free.

No, no, no.

I'm impressed by it.

You know, it's kind of a gift we offer to our guests.

The ability to be friendly.

Roger Ebert.

So, Roger, you were gave this one one star yeah and it's a review I think about all the time because it is clearly written with the perspective that you're talking about what did Sisko say I don't know I can find

it one boner up probably I got this fucking corny uh it the lead of the review is how could they do this to Jennifer Jason Lee how could they put such a fresh and cheerful person into this scuzz pit of a movie same fucking blue velvet review yes it's like and I think he did somewhat soften with age and understand that maybe he was being a fuddy duddy essentially with with this stuff.

But like he's so scandalized because he feels for Jennifer.

He's like, look, I can watch Animal House.

That's a cartoon.

I get it.

That can be vulgar.

I'm not opposed to vulgarity.

But like, sweet little Jennifer Jason.

Such an emotionally honest person.

Hollywood royalty in a way.

That's maybe part of it.

Like, hey, you have a star on your hands here.

So why is she in this like, you know, lurid movie?

And we'll say to Ebert's credit for someone of his stature and prominence.

Whatever happened to upbeat sex?

Whatever happened to love and lust and romance and scenes where good-looking kids had a little joy in exceptional fucking wrote Russ Meyers movies.

I mean, that's right.

He's just like, this is pure exploitation.

And I'm like, bro, teenagers have bad sex with each other all the time because they don't know what they're doing.

Adults have bad sex with each other all the time.

That's the revolution of this movie, also, is like showing things like that and not doing it in a tortured rebel without a causeway, like being able to make it a fact of life.

Not to be all if a man directed this movie.

Sure.

But if a man directed this movie, her getting an abortion would be this like tragedy yes it would be this like awful experience the film really like and instead it is a bummer day that she has yes but it is kind of something she's like okay

well and she's so strong too in that scene where she just says like no i i told my boyfriend to pick me up downstairs like she doesn't make too much she's not sobbing no on a couch she's not confessing to her parents you know like i just think amy heckerling gets this far more than like most directors.

I also think a male director would

make Damon worse.

Or that's something it would just all be much more.

They would make that a lot more torrent and topologically.

He fucking

came, you know, two seconds into having sex with this person.

They would make Damon worse to make him a more clear-cut piece of shit to be like, well, he's a really bad example of a guy versus all of this guy's failings coming out of like a cowardice, a vulnerability, you know, an insecurity?

Like, I like that we see him making the calls, trying to get the money.

I like that.

See him being tortured.

He makes some effort and then fails and is too cowardly to reveal that he.

It fucking sucks, but you see it on his face when he's making the calls of him just being like, do I have the courage to go to her and say I don't have the cash?

Is it better to not show up?

There is also, to me, total emotional truth of like, do we see a scene later where she confronts him in the school?

No.

No.

Like, obviously he has the graffiti, this, like, but like, no, the confrontation is him and Rat almost fighting in the locker room or whatever.

Oh, so what's the bigger confrontation?

And then being like, whatever.

The bigger confrontation is her making four attempts to talk to him and him brushing her off, where it's like, that's the first offense, right?

Of just like, he's acting like I don't exist.

There's that amazing, I think it all plays out in one shot of Damon walking down the hallway like he's king shit.

And for the first time in the movie, you're like, oh, this guy's got real confidence now.

He feels so good about himself because Jennifer Jason Lee wanted to have sex with him.

We just watched him have the worst sex of all time.

And yet he's taking it as a win that he was desired.

And he's eyeballing the other girls in the hallway, right?

He's making faces at them.

He's like, I can get anyone.

And then she walks up to him and he immediately shuts down.

That's so sad.

And it's like he's got this power of being like, I am someone a woman wants to have sex with.

That makes me feel grown up and cool.

And his greatest vulnerability is the one person in the world who actually knows what having sex with him is like, which is terrifying to him.

Right.

You know?

Right.

I also think what's so interesting to the point of like, if a man directed this, this movie, would we have this incredible part?

I feel like that archetype in the movie is, and this happens in Fast Times as well, but like is the character that the woman should like, the good guy.

And we see very clearly like why she doesn't as well.

Like she's, I made the first move, I made the second move, I made every move.

Like, he's got that insecurity too.

I like that, though, we're not going like,

no, don't be with Damon, be with Rat.

We're like, well, I see why you wouldn't want to be with Rat.

And it's even better than that because it's like so many versions of this movie.

She spends the entire film taking Rat for granted.

And then only after she's been treated worse by other people.

She tries with him.

She sits his ass down on her bed and he's like,

she gets into, oh, she builds up

to make that move.

Yeah, but she's one-tenth of a move, and she's totally open and she gives him multiple shots and then goes to her and is like, I think he doesn't like me.

I don't get what the fuck is going on.

Yeah.

And then later she's like, I think he's nice.

Like, you know, when Damon is like, I'm friends with Rashad.

But I like you.

I mean, she's so hot.

She is.

She's so hot that then she could go be in single white female and be so scary.

Kind of hot, though.

Yeah.

And kind of hot too.

For sure, I would wear those apples.

I mean, fashion icon.

She is

an icon.

She is an icon.

Always.

I was trying to describe her to my wife, who, again, is like so pop culture illiterate that, like, give her a copy.

I'll be like, it's Jennifer Jason Lee.

And she's like, I don't know who that is.

Hard to kind of describe Jennifer Jason Lee.

She's been like mega cool for her.

Different things without feeling like she has defined phases.

But you're like, right.

A major actress, but never quite the Meryl Streep type, right?

Like more of like sort of an indie arty actress.

Respected in that way.

Hugely respected by everybody.

Can do character stuff, can do like comedy, can do, you know.

There was a moment in the 90s where there was kind of a quiet, like, is she the best actress working to the market?

Yes, there was.

It's the sort of single white female shortcuts, hot sucker, Mrs.

Parker, and the vicious.

Oh, my God, we're in shortcuts.

Yes.

But that's like an incredible movie.

That's what I'm saying.

But none of those movies are hits, right?

Except for a second.

She never gets an Oscar nomination until Hateful Eight.

It was kind of like...

Wow, I did not know that.

Yeah.

Yes.

And like that, it's especially Mrs.

Parker, Georgia, which are two Oscar snubs in a row, right?

Where it's like, she played Dorothy Parker.

You didn't like that?

You know, like, she likes.

She did.

Yeah, that movie rocks.

I haven't seen it.

Maybe I'll watch that today.

Was supposed to be a bit of an Oscar vehicle for her original.

Sorry?

Kansas City was sort of framed as that movie didn't go over at all.

And like, have you seen that movie, Lola?

No.

Altman's Kansas City is really good.

What?

No, I have not seen that in Prohibition Jazz movie with

Jennifer Jason Lee, Miranda Richardson, and fucking Harry Belafonte.

It's a cool rules.

I just watched Copycat with Harry Belafonte.

Sorry.

Wow, Harry Connick Jr.

I'm tired.

Sorry, I'm in.

Why did you wait?

Why did you watch Copycat?

Because I love 90s Neo.

Yeah, man.

Yeah.

Hell yeah.

That movie isn't even that good, but like the vibes are out of control.

Does Harry Belafonte sing?

Yes.

Yes.

And so does Harry Connick Jr.

And they're both named.

They're both Harry Frank.

It is so funny to imagine confusing them.

There are Harry Browns.

Oh, I know.

Yes.

There's a Miriam McKebba and Harry Belafonte record, which I really love, and I highly recommend people listen to.

I just realized I have a better pitch.

Kansas City is Altman doing

jazz Thelma Louise.

Oh, amazing.

It's amazing.

It's an evening with Belafonte Macaba.

That's what the record's called.

It's really beautiful.

Jennifer Jason Lee, right?

And then by the late 90s, early 2000s, when you've got like anniversary party and in the cut and stuff, it's like, right now she's already graduated to character actress in a way.

Yes.

Just an interesting career.

And not only character actress, but it's like she's either in kind of like small indies or bigger parts, or she's like in stuff like Road to Perdition, where you're like, she's in big movies, but in kind of entirely thankless roles.

Whereas like Phoebe Cates, obviously, is a star throughout the 80s, and then it's like, I'm marrying Kevin Klein, peace, and never great choice.

I love when that, when sex symbols do that.

It's kind of like.

Brigitte Bardot being like,

I'm so like done with you guys looking at me and now I'm going to go like, you know, live, breed dogs.

I think she breeds dogs.

Can we also just, like, frame of reference because i feel like this is a thing my dad would talk about all the time and it's he's it's a little gutenberg adjacent but like the run judge reinhold has of just like four or five years of being at the center of the culture where people were like is judge reinhold just golden okay so give it give it to me Well, I might get this order wrong, but I'm just like, Judge Reinhold is in Fast Times, Beverly Hills cop, Gremlins.

Yep, true.

He's also in stripes.

He's also in stripes.

He's in stripes, which is the year before.

He's like,'Five for Judge,' is insane.

It's pretty insane.

I mean, you know, I know he's not the guy in any of the

thing.

But I'm saying the through line of like, this guy keeps on showing up on the right sets.

He's very much around, but I do feel like he's,

you know, he's a reliable white guy.

Like to be like, you know, not steal your movie, right?

Is he eclipsed by the other reliable white guy, Tom Hanks?

Yeah, he just doesn't evolve.

I guess.

Who's the reliable white guy now?

It's kind of still Tom Hanks.

Yet it's still Tom Hanks.

I'm like, I don't think that...

Who's the young Tom Hanks?

Chris Brad, of course.

He's always playing relatable characters.

I think that the

buffist high school science teachers or whatever.

I don't know.

I don't know who are relatable.

I mean, I think about Adam Scott and Severance, a show that I love that I'm thinking about right now because

there's a new season of it where he kind of exists in that world, right?

Because he's being picked for that.

I have the answer, but he's old.

Okay, who?

It's Paul Rudd still.

It is still Paul Rudd, kind of, but he is actually, but who's young, Paul Rudd?

That's her question, right?

I know

you know what I'm saying.

Like, obviously, Paul Rudd launches with Clueless.

We'll talk about that in a couple weeks, but then it kind of takes another like 15 years for him to become a full-on movie star.

So, he basically, at

what is it?

What is it?

What is his movie star?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I'm so happy.

Oh, my God.

There's a birthday party in here

for me.

Oh

my god.

Ben, I just want to make clear.

That was an actual pizza order and not you hiring an actor to deliver a pizza because you've done that version of things too.

That's cool too.

Wait, I have to pee again.

Yeah, I'm going to pee after you.

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Yeah,

she's gonna be somebody.

So

There's the one where he does the key change.

He goes really high at one point.

I try to shine.

Jackson Brown does, but I can't get her out of my sight.

Ben, thank you for one of the best tasting bits we've had in a long time on that.

That was amazing.

We had to take a break so people didn't hear us chewing.

Yeah.

You're so welcome.

Yeah.

All right.

That's the part I was thinking.

Yeah.

It's so good.

We've talked about JJL.

Yeah.

We've talked about Phoebe.

We've talked about

Damon and Rat.

Do we have any more?

No, we've talked about them.

It's not.

I think this is a movie where you just kind of have to go through moments.

And I know everybody else is going to be able to do it.

Are there any other moments because it's hard to kind of track?

And we talked about

Forrest Whitaker.

His little brother makes me laugh so hard.

That's really.

She's going to kill us.

You know what's a really good, very skillful, but like not overstated thing?

What?

The scene where, after having sex with Damone, Jennifer Jason Lee is asking Phoebe Cates about how long

like 30 to 40 minutes.

Right.

Well, no, I think at first she said.

Phoebe says 20 to 30, and JJL is like, I thought you said he took longer.

30 to 40.

And she's like, oh, right, 30 to 40.

And he goes, what about Damone?

And he goes, like...

10 to 20.

Right.

And she goes, not bad for a high school boy.

What are they doing while having that conversation?

Chopping up a big-ass sauce.

Pepperoni.

It's amazing.

Also, I was, I always wanted to do that.

They're just fucking cutting dicks.

I wanted in high school, like, I remember that carrot scene so well when she's teaching her how to give the blowjob and then all the boys clap.

Yes.

And I like that the reaction is not embarrassing.

Yes, me too.

Me too.

It's so, it's so cool.

They're so cool.

To go back to the way that she then bites the carrot at the end is so fucking good.

They're just so chill.

You were saying

the bad tagline on the poster.

That's just pen and the chair with a surfboard and a textbook and two ladies.

Babes, right, average month high, only the rules get busted.

The other posters I saw on the IMP Awards site, my favorite poster resource.

There's this one that's like a painting of a topless woman from behind on a beach,

pulling off her bikini bottoms, and like Spikoli going, like, whoa.

Yeah, that's the one I remember.

Right.

And Fast Times is written on her back in what I assume is supposed to be Suntan lotion, but looks a little bit like a jackulet.

And the tagline is literally, you loved porkies, now turn yourself loose on some fast times.

And then there's this one that's like the very animal house sort of Jack Davis mad magazine sort of cartoons.

Fast cars.

Fast girls.

Fast carrots.

Fast carrots.

Yeah.

That's the tagline.

Oh, hilarious.

No.

Okay, I guess.

It's just very funny how weird all the approaches

were.

You know, it's hard to just sell this movie because it's basically just about high schoolers hanging out.

Outside of knowing Spikoli was Money in the Bank.

That was the one thing they seem to be very clear on.

They know that, and they know Spikoli's different, right?

You know, his look is kind of different, so that's cool.

And it's more modern.

Again, it's not a vintage movie, like

Animal House or something.

It is Valley Girl.

Valley Girls, like the year after.

Okay, because Valley Girl is a Valley girl, it's getting Cage off of this.

Valley Girl, Valley Girl, you would like

a syllabus.

Yeah.

I mean, that's another of the few that is directed by a woman.

Can I pull a stop about something?

Yeah.

I'm just remembering that this was a thing in high school that for your birthday, you would say, Mom, Griffin's going to pick 10 10 movies and can you buy them for me?

Do you remember that?

Like, vaguely, that's so sweet.

Are there any other scenes we want to hit?

I was thinking

we pointed out that there's no grown-ups, right?

Only teachers.

But no, there is another presence of grown-ups, and that is the managers of the restaurant.

Oh, yeah, right.

Who are like the 25.

Yeah, like they're the little stooges.

Yes,

because they take it even more seriously.

They're like, you know, hey, you know, come on, was this guy?

So like the guy who works at fucking Captain Jack, like the manager, where he makes him wear the uniform.

Stuart Cornfield.

Oh, my God.

Him flirting with the girl is so funny with that fucking hat on.

And that is

Nancy Wilson.

That is Nancy Wilson is the first one.

Who then fucking homes Cameron Crowe's wife, Nancy Wilson from Heart.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anthony Edwards, Pamela Springsteen, Martin Brest is the doctor.

Yeah, when they go to the morgue, that's Marty Brest.

Oh, wow.

There's a lot of

cameos.

And of course, the great Taylor Negron delivering the pizza.

I mean,

who's that?

He's just a guy who's got a great face.

Oh, yes, I did recognize him.

Sort of like

a comedian, and then he's doing a million things in this sized role.

He's a classic that guy.

He's one of those guys where his voice is so funny, his vibe is so funny, and his look is so specific that you can be like, hey, will you show up for three lines and just hand over a pizza, and it will be funny?

It is one of my favorite things of all time.

Yeah,

his vibe in that scene is amazing.

You can look him up and be like, oh, right, he's that guy in 20 other movies.

He passed away a couple of years ago.

I think it is the funniest thing in the world.

Do you know the Mulaney Stefan Taylor Negro story?

But we're not doing that right now.

No, Griffin.

We're trying to wrap up this episode.

No.

No, that's a no.

People Google it.

I'm giving a look.

I'm going to Google it.

Lola's curious.

Lola's got to go.

So you cannot complain later, Griffin, if we didn't talk about something.

I won't complain later.

Here's what I'll say.

I'm getting a pizza while you do this.

Oh, you're getting a pizza?

So I wasn't going to tell the story, but now I have to.

I was not going to.

I was going to move on.

Lola.

Yeah.

Remember the Stefan

Bill Hayter Saturday Night Live weekend update bit where he was the guy who would list like this club has everything.

No.

Fuck, this really isn't going to work.

I'm sorry.

I missed a lot of SNL.

That's right, but what am I going to do while you're chewing on pizza?

Talk about the movie.

What do you mean?

Boy, Ben's chewing too.

Everyone's chewing around.

I know.

Lola and I are the only two people trying to chew the fat and have a conversation.

Jesus Christ.

Okay.

Okay.

Everyone dances so well at this point.

Oh my God.

There's one.

I think it's Forrest Whitaker's character is dancing like amazing.

He is killing it.

They're all so good in a way where I'm almost like, that is the one thing that's not authentic to high school.

No,

at least my school was not.

The band's also too good.

I think.

In that kind of movie way of like, well, they had to have some elements of cinema, you know?

Here's the other thing with Forrest Whitaker.

He, when he has this sort of, I guess, post-drama school second wave, earnest start of his career, he's like bulked up a lot, right?

And then he's like increasingly a bigger and bigger guy.

And then I feel like after Last King of Scotland, he slims way down.

He did get Tremor, it's true.

This is the one movie where he's just fucking like an absolute unit, right?

Because he's he's such a tall guy, but now he's gotten so slim that you don't think about it in the same way.

Where in this, it's like, oh, he's a fucking quarterback.

Why do you think?

Well, he's not a quarterback.

What position is he?

It seems like he's a tackle.

Because he's like a defensive.

Frankly, I wouldn't.

You have to tell me.

He stands out.

This is Sandy.

Football with your wife.

Football's illegal there.

I just like that anytime David tries to mock me for going to that school.

Are you kidding me?

I'm like, you fucking marry into it.

I fucking.

You married into it.

I don't like having gone there either.

Oh, whatever.

I don't like where you went.

You didn't get to pick.

I didn't get to pick.

Yeah.

What do you mean?

It was an amazing school.

We were so lucky.

Oh, well, you could have gone there.

My mom wouldn't let me go.

Because my dad said I was going to end up dancing on top of taxi cabs.

Okay, I know we don't have a lot of time, but I'm just interested.

What was everybody's job in high school?

I'll share mine because I was a stockboy at a like a local market.

So my major, like honestly, how I made my money was as a babysitter.

I was a really good babysitter.

Oh, I can see that.

You seem like you would have been a trustworthy kid.

And well, not just that.

I was, I was always just given boys, right?

Like the parents were, they were just like, I don't know, these boys, they're climbing up the walls.

Like, I need to get out of that.

Like, I was, I was good because I knew how to chill out like nine-year-old boys, which is you played video games all day, obviously.

It's not like I was like enriching these kids' lives.

But I was also a receptionist at a doctor's office, which is crazy to think about

for like two summers in a row, which is crazy to think about because like I was like handling medical records or whatever.

I mean, my job was just basically like making appointments and being like, okay, like I had the person

for being a stoner.

I would show up late all the time and just like restock.

Clack melt.

Clack.

Yeah.

Clack.

Putting cans on shelves.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I feel like I didn't have a good job for being a stoner because I worked with children as well.

Right.

That's what I did.

But I worked at a daycare center in Chinatown

with mostly only kids that spoke Chinese and me.

Yeah, it was basically

like daycare

stuff.

Yeah.

But I mean, there's different dialects, obviously, and some of the kids didn't even speak the same language.

I've tried to explain this to people.

It is tough getting high school jobs when you grow up in New York City because everyone wants jobs in New York City so badly.

Right.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

You know, the things that are sort of like good entry-level jobs for teenagers

are like competitive here.

yeah yeah so you do have to kind of find like weird sideways under the table things but it was i loved that job it was my favorite job i've ever had yeah more than any acting job that is that is what the i have kidding the only other thing i think i would be happy doing in my career is working with kids is like being a preschool teacher yeah yeah i worked at the preschool at st ann's too right and then when i dropped out of college i went and worked there

Oh, you literally worked there.

I literally, yeah.

I mean, I was like floater sub stuff.

And they were sort of like, if you want to really do this, you have to go back to school.

Right.

And I was like, that sounds like a bummer.

Guys, I'm just going to be like, if you're walking in 15 minutes late to St.

Anne's preschool with a bunch of blank street coffee.

I like this bit.

Bit.

I got Lola tea.

He got me tea to help me get through.

Yes.

Lola, before you go, because we can rap without you.

But is there anything else you want to say about Fast Times at Ridgemont High?

I'm just so happy that I got to watch it again.

It made me feel so good inside.

It's really a really special movie i read this quote of hers on imdb trivia um where she said i wanted to make something that if like a movie that if you woke up inside it you'd be happy i don't think she nailed that

by the way because this movie's also a bummer but it is nonetheless the end is i am really happy when she talks that the hackerling part of it is there is a very positive spirit to this movie but if it were artificially happy, it would not create the same warmth.

If it felt like it was in ignorance of reality, right?

and i think when i think about why these like 80s high school movies are this ultimate comfort food for me it is that that they're able to like create the sense of fun and individuality and the music and the clothes and whatever but the ones i like also have like they're touching on sadness you know and like broken aspects of the human condition and i think you know at john hughes's peak The thing that people would say, and especially the actors he worked with, were like, it's crazy.

He like, there's like a teenager still inside of him.

He knows how to write as if it's still so like present and immediate for him.

Right.

And this movie isn't that in an interesting way.

It is like a 22-year-old who never kissed, never been kissed his way into a high school and a woman who never had this kind of experience at a high school.

And there's like a little bit of remove and it has this level of like adult perspective on these experiences while respecting the characters.

Yes.

Yes.

Recognizing what's funny about them and what's silly about them, but also what's like

sad about them and what's uncomfortable and all of that.

It's like a very unique film.

Lola.

Thank you for being with us, Lola.

Book is called Wild West Village.

Yeah.

The new album is called Trailblazer.

Sinners coming out.

Yeah.

One week ago.

One week ago.

I love you.

Lola, Winter, Suck, Spring.

I love you, Lola.

Thank you for having me, guys.

This was so fun.

We'll see you in eight years.

I'm joking.

Six.

I think two.

Let's see.

Oh, right.

That sounds fine.

But you live in Nashville.

I mean, like, Lola's not always here.

It's hard.

Bye, no, but

see you later.

Okay, that was a door slam.

Bam.

Yeah.

Lola's gone.

Lola's gone.

Never to return.

Yeah, no, no.

No, let's make this

the final part of the conversation, okay?

I mean, we're talking about the summer job or the high school job thing.

I do think it's

what you were saying about like Brad's whole thing being taking this so seriously and priding himself on how much he's good at it.

Sure.

and these guys who are just a couple years older than him and have such an attitude and such a sense of superiority the final note of the movie is like brad's great victory being that he gets promoted to manager really quickly right yeah because he stops a robbery this movie nails the like chiron what happens to the characters shit i mean the chiron the the those are so funny we should also say brad brad is the the the closest thing in the movie to have to a hero he steps up for his sister in this like non-obnoxious way.

It's just a beautiful thing.

He's so sweet with her.

Him dropping her off at bowling.

He's immediately sort of like

bowling with friends.

He drops her off.

He gets stuck in like an intersection.

Yeah, he notices her.

She catches in the rear view window.

And he waits for her.

It's not like he barges upstairs.

He waits for her.

He just waits outside.

Patiently.

And he's just super chill about it.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

But then, of course, yeah, James Russo, we should shout out fellow Beverly Hills copper trying to stick up the 7-Eleven or whatever it is.

Oh, shit.

Who's really funny.

Right.

He's he's Axel's partner at the beginning of the movie.

But I just, I love the sort of efficiency of like how quickly he comes in, spray paints the camera and takes the gun out.

Like this guy moves so fast that even though he's not wearing a mask or anything, it's like disorienting of you don't have time to respond, which is what he's counting on, right?

I also think it's important that like the most put together and least put together characters kind of unite at the end who don't have anything to do with each other, Spicolian Brad

to solve this problem.

There's like an incredible restraint of this movie not forcing the characters together in like obvious overlap ways.

And you'll have like

Jennifer Jason Lee being in Spokoli's class, but it's not like it's building to any specific interactions with them.

You know, like the plot lines don't really cross over that much.

Not really.

Oh, I should have.

Which makes it fun when at the end, it's like, oh, right, these two guys haven't interacted.

I

also think we should shout out that Rat takes Stacy to some sort of German

fucking Oktoberfest-ass, you know, mall store.

Like, the nastiest farts are going to be coming out of you on this date.

You're eating like Bratwurst or whatever.

Sauceworst.

Sauerkrau.

Not only that.

Jennifer Jason Lee is a tiny woman.

She's tiny.

They drink like a bunch of people.

Rat is a tiny person.

They're also sitting in the biggest chairs of all.

So funny.

It's like the least good vibe of them in like the most grown-up, stodgy, bad-smelling, like angry servers place, sitting in these chairs that look like they're swallowing them.

And he realizes he doesn't have his wallet on him, and she does like a full kind of like Mel Brooks musical sting.

Like he's in a thriller suddenly, and he keeps just ordering more and more cokes to delay to get Damon to drop off the wallet, which of course is the fatal move that fucks him.

But what really fucks him is, no,

I'm scared to make it.

That's the mistake.

Yes.

Yeah, he's just, he's just not ready, man.

They just got to kind of circle around and

find each other better uh funny

yeah um

uh demon gets busted for scalping ozzy osborne tickets mr vargas switches back to coffee linda of course starts dating her professor

uh in college rat and stacy haven't gone all the way yet yeah spicoli saves brooke shields and then spends

all the way

van halen to play his birthday party sounds like a good party but brad gets promoted to being the manager of this gas station and i i a thing i really like if you watch that it is very clear that they didn't get enough footage uh-huh and so the the footage that is running over or underneath the chiron for brad where he's standing above the body with the gun and he it looks like he keeps readjusting is the same clip played backwards and forwards like three times

If you notice, he starts to do weird like movements.

He's going

Black Lodge.

I was just going to say we should shout out the football

scene.

It's really funny.

I don't give a shit about football.

I just think it's like really funny physical comedy.

And I think she does a really good job with just making it so over the top.

But that's what's crazy.

Like, it's in the dossier, but that she grew up loving Mad Magazine.

That like that's her sensibility, right?

Yeah.

It's sort of like comedic exaggeration.

And we'll totally get that in Johnny Dangerously and talk about that.

And even Clueless is like a much more stylized, heightened movie, right?

And, you know, that it was another thing that JJ put in the dossier, but that when she was growing up and she loved movies, she was like, what's my career path?

I only know of one female director.

And she would have to point to her parents and be like, I guess I want to do what Elaine May does.

Cause that was the only person she could sort of point at as an aspiration.

And Elaine May's movies are like a lot more heightened, you know?

I just think this movie being able to do both and cut between them so quickly and so much of this movie will play out in montage, you know, and we'll have these sort of sequences beyond even our primary characters just catching like five-second glimpses of random kids or featured background actors or people who have like under five roles.

And it's just sort of like, here's what everyone's doing in class.

Here's what everyone's doing at the mall.

Here's what everyone's doing at the dance.

And they feel like Mad Magazine, like Sergio Argonis, like weird marginal drawings.

And then she can like have a scene that has real emotion in it.

And neither one is like fighting against the other.

And I struggle to think of other movies that are good at holding both tones at their most extreme ends.

And not, as you're saying, David, sort of doing a movie that is like funny and goofy for the first 45 minutes.

And then she gets an abortion and becomes really serious for 30 minutes.

Her mistakes come back to haunt her.

And then suddenly there's a stretch with zero jokes.

Like, I just kind of can't believe believe how beautifully she lets this film be everything, which also feels reflective of like being a fucking teenager.

It captures the energy.

It's all time actually.

And the wild emotional swings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now you saying, does it kind of fuck her that she's got a movie this good out of the gates?

Tough.

And it's tough to follow it up.

I think it does help her that the movie is a bit of a slow burn that grows.

So it's not like it lands with such an impact that she's stuck under the shadow forever.

No,

weirdly, over time, it becomes a bigger sort of shadow for her.

I mean, like, she doesn't, I mean, Johnny Dangerously, her next film is, is not very successful.

No.

And then she makes European Vacation, which is successful, but is not exactly her movie or her success, really.

But she's sort of...

So it takes till Look Who's Talking for her to really have like sort of like a major success in

a huge success.

But Look Who's Talking is like a revenge movie.

Like Look Who's Talking is a Raiders of the Lost Arc.

Like, I need to make something that's undeniable.

That's a franchise, that's a blockbuster.

You know, it was a very strategic move for her, but that's the first one that she's like fully creating and conceptualizing herself.

Yeah.

It's an interesting career that I'm very excited to talk about.

This is a director that we've been threatening to do for so long.

Yeah, no, she's been on our list from the beginning.

A decade of dreams.

So

this film came out August 13th, 1982.

So it's like a pretty quiet, trashy time.

Like late summer back then is not a real blockbuster time, as you'll see from what's in the box office.

And as you said, it's like this movie is conceived of as like, maybe this is our new animal house or American Refeiter or whatever.

Then they get scared.

They suppress it.

And then it sort of catches on.

So then they try to catch up with the demand, but they never quite did okay.

It made, I think, 22 mil, something like that.

It's opening number seven on 500 screens.

Okay.

So number one at the box office office is also new this week.

It's the big hit of the week, and it is a horror sequel.

Hmm.

Is it a Halloween?

Nope.

Is it a Jason Voorhees?

Yes, it is a Friday the 13th.

Is it two?

No.

It's three already?

Friday the 13th, part three.

So it was 80, 81, 82, three consecutive movies.

They made them every year.

They were on a paranormal schedule.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, their movies were made quickly, and obviously the whole point was decided.

But then I.

How's three?

Three is the first hockey mask one, right?

Yes,

three is good.

It is not my favorite.

But it is the one that kind of codifies the whole Jason thing.

I guess so.

I mean, two is pretty.

Yeah, but two is sackhead and fucking overalls.

Yeah, yeah, I guess so.

Three is also the 3D one.

So in whatever, you know,

because that was hot back then.

And then four,

the final chapter

is the one with Crispin Glover that I think is really good and is kind of...

It's wild that they ended it there and never made any other one.

And then five is really bad.

Wait, what do you mean?

The last one was the final chapter.

And then six rocks.

Six is my favorite film.

I'm confused.

That's two past the final chapter.

And yet they keep saying

it.

The math ain't mathin'.

The math ain't mathin'.

So that's number one at the box office.

Okay.

Teens are going to see that, obviously.

Number two at the box office, since it's been in the box office for 10 weeks, it's made $200 million and it's going to be the most financially successful film ever made.

Is it a film we have covered recently on the show?

It is called E.T.

the Extra-Terrestrial.

That's right.

Obviously the biggest hit of 1982.

Number three.

Obviously up until that point, the biggest hit of all time.

Movies.

Yes.

Number three is

another giant hit of the year.

I already mentioned it.

A big romantic drama.

It's a big is it Officer and a Gentleman?

David is it okay slow response time.

Sorry.

That was a real kind of throwback time, David.

An officer and a gentleman with Everwinger and Richard Gere.

Okay.

Jesus.

Just noticing that there's just a knife on the desk.

Lola helps this out.

Look, here's a little peek behind the curtain in terms of a weird record order.

That was the knife that Gethard used to open the box of Kit Fisto presents.

Right.

Which, for the listener, will have been three months ago, but in our reality, it was three days ago.

Yeah.

And just, Lola was playing with the knife.

Number four at the box office is

we run a proper business.

Musical comedy with

big stars.

It's a musical comedy with big stars in 1982.

Yes, it is, I think, actually a solid hit.

It's a solid hit.

It gets one Oscar nomination for supporting actor.

Oh, it's a best little whorehouse in Texas.

The best little whorehouse in Texas.

Starring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Farton.

But Academy Award-nominated Charles Derning performance.

I've never seen that film.

Neither am I.

I often invoke Charles Derning as one of my 10 favorite actors of all time.

Great actor.

I have seen his number in that probably 20.

He's the governor.

Yeah, and he does a, what's uh,

is his number called Sideshow or Soft Shoe?

Uh, his number is called The Sidestep.

The sidestep, thank you.

Number five at the box office is a film that was released in 1977.

He's about using weasel words as a politician to spin the narrative.

They never do that.

That's crazy.

But the thing is, he starts literally doing a little sidestep, even though he's talking about it metaphorically.

I'm sorry, go on, David.

It's a film that came out in 1977.

It's been re-released clearly.

Oh, I think it is called Star Wars.

That's right.

Okay.

The film Star Wars.

You've also got

Fast Times Version 1 High, of course.

You've got The World According to Garp.

You've got a action comedy with Cheech and Chong called Things Are Tough All Over, which is, I guess, not a proper Cheech and Chong comedy.

I think that's a...

It is.

I think it's the fourth one.

Are you sure about that?

I don't know.

I feel like I might be very wrong about this.

I've never seen the film.

My thought was always that that was more of a cheech vehicle that Chong is in that was them starting to figure out what their post-duo career is.

I guess so.

But the film is about Cheech and Chong take a cross-country chip.

So maybe I'm fucking wrong.

I don't know.

I think you're thinking of something else.

I am.

Maybe.

But I'm not sure.

Okay.

But, you know, they also, because it's in between nice dreams and still smoking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Okay.

You've got Night Shift.

Sure.

Which is the Michael Keaton film right yeah

one of the greatest

debut performances in film history damn uh ron howard film obviously yeah and you've got rocky three

i mean i know we say this very often when we play this game pretty good eaten at the cineplexes um yeah i would agree there's a good spread

there are a couple undisputed classics but i'm also just like they're they're big cultural movies they're popular hits there's a lot of big things coexisting.

Yeah.

So you're saying they ate.

They ate.

But you've got two part threes in here.

There's a little bit of a things are getting a little

samey, maybe.

I don't know.

But yeah, yeah, you got a musical.

You got a big grown-up drama.

Yeah.

I mean, it's August.

For August, this is not bad.

For August, this is incredible.

So that's what's happened there.

And that's it.

Wow.

That's what happened there and that's it.

I think that's, that's it.

Wow.

Right?

Yeah, I i think that's what happened there and that's it excited to go on this heckling journey yeah yeah it's gonna be fun have neither of you seen johnny dangerously

no no why would i have seen that yeah it's like not available yeah how am i gonna see it uh we'll find a way i'll say this i mean we're recording this some months in advance we're like can we convince someone else to make Johnny Dangerously more viewable by the time this comes out?

We're working on it.

We're working on it.

But in the meantime, might be a great time to sign up for ExpressVPN.

Is it available on?

I watched it on like Disney plus Croatia or something a couple months ago when I was doing my Keaton watch through.

And if you remember in a past Express VPN ad read, when I hinted that I had to use it to watch an upcoming director's movies, that was it.

I'll say this.

You know, I have my, and part of it's a personal challenge.

I want to get physical copies of all the movies of whatever the miniseries is.

This has been the most difficult one of any director we've ever covered.

Yeah.

Fast Times Criterion.

Johnny Dangerously, this is a straight-up bootleg.

It's a very good bootleg.

It's a straight-up bootleg.

European Vacation weirdly seems to be out of print as a solo.

And I wanted the solo rather than it as a box set or a double feature.

That one I assume is available on like iTunes or whatever.

I think the Look Who's Talking Disc is out of print.

There's no Blu-ray for the two sequels.

Clueless is okay.

Loser, I had to import from Australia.

It might be the single most expensive Blu-ray I've ever purchased.

And then I believe I Could Never Be Your Woman came from Denmark.

Wow.

Those are the only countries those two are.

Yeah, I mean, all these things.

Sam's gotten okay.

All of the movies he just said, except for Johnny Dangerously, are streamable for, you know, iTunes or whatever.

So I will probably just be doing that.

But I guess I'm going to buy this Johnny Dangerously DVD.

I don't know.

I'll send you the link.

Oh, sure, to the bootleg.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you to Lola for being here.

Yes.

Thank you, Lola.

Yeah.

Thank you to all our future guests.

Oh, well, hey, a big thank you to all our future past guests.

Let's throw it back to the past guests.

It's been a decade of dreams.

We couldn't have done it without them.

Tune in next week for Johnny Dangerously.

Next week is Johnny Dangerously.

And then, yeah.

European vacation.

Wow.

And on Patreon, at this point, we are doing Superman.

Is that correct?

Oh, God.

We're looking up in the sky.

It's so true that we are doing

Star Trek finished, I think, in.

Yeah, we're about to start Superman.

Okay.

About to start it.

We're about to start it.

We're doing Superman.

In just a couple days, we'll be covering the film Richard Donner's Superman.

Have you heard of this guy?

Man of Steel, which we've owed for a long time.

Yeah?

That's one of the movies we'll discuss.

Yes, and then it will lead straight into Superman Returns, a movie we love, made by entirely unproblematic people, and then leading straight into a new release episode on the James Gunn Superman parenthetical 2025.

Fun series.

Yep.

Excited to do it.

Everyone's happy.

Sure.

I'm excited to go back to eating pizza.

Yeah.

Thank you all for listening.

You know what, though?

I want to do this.

Man's holding up a finger.

We're going to actually, at the end of the episode, include a clip.

What?

To a section of our Superman episode.

Oh,

just give a little sample, a little taste of what's available on the Patreon.

Interesting.

We haven't recorded that episode yet.

What if it sucks?

Fuck.

What if it's like, what's going on?

Who's that?

Why is the why did the movie, the picture?

We don't know what editing is.

The picture is different.

It was a picture of one guy and now it's a picture of another guy.

This motherfucker flies.

What if we respond to Chris for re-flying like it's the train coming into the movie?

No, I think it should be more idiotic than that.

me.

They do like a close-up of his head, and we're like, His head got cut off.

It's his only head.

His get so big, his head's getting so big.

Where'd his head go?

Where's the body?

Oh, my God.

Should I buy the Arrow Limited the Cell disc?

Oh, boy.

I don't fucking know me.

There's a Bunch of Noble sale going on right now.

And I've been trying to get the Arrow companies with the Glorious Bastard set, but it's sold out everywhere.

And so I keep checking to see which stores have it in stock stock for pickup because they won't do ship to home.

Right.

But this is what we were talking about with Bilga: of like some movie you think is okay gets a lovingly restored

set.

I think the cell's pretty good.

Yeah.

But you like that someone put in the time.

I liked the cell more than critics, and now I probably like it less than whoever is in charge of culture because it's become canonical or whatever.

Remember when we were trying to end this episode?

All right, we're done.

No, we're not done.

I haven't done the thing to end the episode yet.

We went on a couple side tensions.

And as always, I'm going to put the knife away.

Williams' score here is so good.

This overture.

Fortress of Solitude.

No, this is Krypton.

Krypton.

Fucking Christ.

You need to leave this podcast calling another fucking Fortress of Solitude.

I'm sorry.

God.

This is Krypton.

God, so many.

No, this is Krypton.

It's called Krypton.

Huh?

Marlon Brando always says Krypton.

Krypton.

So then, Superman is from a planet called Krypton, right?

Marlon Brando calls it Krypton.

And they decide, in their infinite wisdom, that there should be a big prologue, you know, explaining the destruction of Krypton and where Superman came from.

And they'll cast a big star to play Superman's dad, Jor L.

And they paid him $3.7 million and 11% of the box office Griffin.

Yep.

So he made $19 million

in 1978.

Right.

For what is 10 minutes of screen time or whatever.

Yeah, I think it still is maybe the most someone's been paid relative to time on screen.

Right.

Yeah.

If you break down how much he was paid like per second, per minute.

Famously,

I love this scene so much.

So Brando has famously, of course, said that, why don't we have my character be a suitcase or a talking bagel?

And they instead are like, How about we have it be Marlon Brando?

How about if we're paying you $3.7 million, you need to show up on set?

Cue cards are all over the set because he refused to memorize his dialogue.

His whole performance is him looking off to the middle distance in different directions where different cue cards are.

And nonetheless, he certainly is.

Brando's really good in this movie.

It's kind of an iconic performance.

This is a year before Apocalypse Now,

And it's sort of like

it's the tail end of his post-godfather boom with like Last Tango in Paris and stuff.

Yeah.

Where it's like he's a really big actor again.

And Apocalypse Now is where fat Brando becomes like what Brando is.

Yes.

Right.

Like uncontrollable, bizarre, out of shape.

This is the last time you can feel him kind of like

kind of coming correct.

This is lazy, arrogant Brando still giving you results.

He gets

and within four years, you're just like, I don't know what to do with this footage, right?

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 Bardy 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 Minic.

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.

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