Golf on Screen: 'Stick' Eps. 1-3 (Plus ‘Happy Gilmore' and 'Tin Cup' ) With Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney

Speaker 1 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.
I'm Rob Mahoney. We are here live and in person to talk about the TV event of the year.

Speaker 2 Yeah, why not? Sure.

Speaker 1 It's Stick on Apple TV Plus. But before we talk about this new owned Wilson show that is ostensibly about golf, we're going to talk about that in a second.

Speaker 2 Golf, the meaning of life, family.

Speaker 1 I was reading this really fascinating piece. Have you heard of Bill Simmons?

Speaker 2 Vaguely, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He wrote this really fascinating piece on

Speaker 1 this website called Grantland several years ago.

Speaker 2 I've also heard of that, but mostly by reputation.

Speaker 1 Where he was talking about,

Speaker 1 is it a sports movie or is it a rom-com?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was sort of a delineation. He had a bunch of different sort of criteria on his rubric or whatever.

Speaker 1 Because we're going to talk about, not just talk about stick and whether or not it is, is it a sports show or is it a daddy issue show?

Speaker 1 This is a question we can ask ourselves.

Speaker 2 One would argue all sports shows are daddy issue shows at their core.

Speaker 1 A great title of a lost episode. And then before we do that, we each watched a golf movie we had never seen before.

Speaker 1 And so we just thought we would talk about, I don't know, sports movies quite broadly.

Speaker 1 A topic that might be of interest to people who frequent the ringer.

Speaker 1 Golf as a sport. How does it lend itself to the medium of a sports movie or a sports TV show?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then how Stick sort of measures up to these other two. I would say classics

Speaker 1 of sports cinema.

Speaker 2 I would definitely say so.

Speaker 1 I was looking at a bunch of lists of the top golf movies of all time.

Speaker 1 And every list had these two movies that we're about to talk about briefly before we get into stick

Speaker 1 at the top.

Speaker 2 Would you like to name them?

Speaker 2 The movies that we're going to talk about? I would think that would be helpful.

Speaker 1 I saw the film Happy Gilmore for the first time. Yes.
And you saw.

Speaker 2 I saw the movie Tin Cup for the first time. There you go.
I would say not only are these great golf movies

Speaker 2 that you could recommend to anybody whether they're interested in sports movies or not, really. But the DNA with stick, there's so much in common.

Speaker 2 And I would say, especially, I'm not a golf guy personally. I have zero interest in watching, participating, engaging with golf in any other way.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So bringing it down to dirtbag golf, now we're talking, right? Like now we're kind of getting somewhere. It's a little less stuffy.
Yes. You know, we're not in white pants.
We're in low-cut tank tops.

Speaker 2 We're in dusty old shirts. You know, we're on broken down driving ranges.

Speaker 2 I think both stick and these two movies we're going to talk about all kind of bring it down to that level in a really, if we're going to be honest, like humanizing way that makes golf a little less pretentious to me.

Speaker 1 And I think what's interesting about those two movies and I think a number of golf stories that have captured people's hearts and minds is the class question. Because for so long,

Speaker 1 golfer equals.

Speaker 1 I have a lot of money. I have a lot of leisure time.
I have a lot of X, Y, Z. In Happy Gilmore, of course, this is, we are playing for money to save our house and our grandma.
We are in hockey jersey.

Speaker 2 Most importantly, your grandma.

Speaker 1 Yeah, grandma, the house. We're wearing hockey jerseys.
We will not wear khakis on the golf course. That's not something we're going to do.

Speaker 2 Not so much.

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Speaker 1 Do you want to?

Speaker 1 I will explain for literally anyone who has never watched it, the plot of Happy Gilmore.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think this is a good format. Let's do a little plot swap.

Speaker 1 Okay, should I start? Please. Okay, Happy Gilmore.

Speaker 1 The titular of Happy Gilmore is Adam Sandler, a hockey player who cannot make it onto a hockey team. No.

Speaker 2 Possibly because of his violent erratic tendencies. Yes.
Famously tried to stab people multiple times with his some temper issues. Yes.

Speaker 1 His beloved grandmother loses her house due to tax evasion, and he needs to drum up some money to get the house back.

Speaker 1 And he finds through a series of random happenstances that he has an incredible golf swing.

Speaker 1 And he can crush it on the long game. But the short game, that's where it gets you.

Speaker 1 That's tough.

Speaker 1 We've got a nemesis in Shooter McGavin.

Speaker 2 All-timer. Chris McDonnell, right?

Speaker 1 We've got a love interest in Julie Bowen's character, whose name I didn't bother to learn.

Speaker 2 Also an all-timer, though.

Speaker 1 And we've got victory.

Speaker 1 We've got

Speaker 1 a down-on-his-luck, unlikely guy

Speaker 1 makes it in a sport that no one thinks he belongs in. What is Tin Cup about?

Speaker 2 I would say also a down-on-his-luck guy, who not a lot of people believe in, but one who meets Rene Russo one time and proceeds to have a nervous breakdown in which he reevaluates his life.

Speaker 2 And look, if Renee Russo walks into your life and talks about strapping you up with a saddle, I would think a lot of people might have a nervous breakdown.

Speaker 2 So radically starts changing his life, trying to understand what his priorities are, going to therapy for the first time. Really, it's a movie about the inner, the inner game of golf, right?

Speaker 2 The mental game, not dissimilar from Happy and his putting. And in doing so, is confronting his internal nemesis, himself, and his own kind of ability and willingness, or not, his own

Speaker 2 tendency to fly off the handle. And then an adversary in Don Johnson, who is like his old college teammate, therefore a longtime rival.

Speaker 2 And I would say makes the great offense of asking Kevin Costner to be his caddy. And that's really what sets all these events in motion.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, this is what Tin Cup is: the ultimate brains versus balls movie. Like it is all about

Speaker 2 do you go for it every single time and take the riskiest chances? Or do you do you play the percentage team? Do you lay up? Do you lay up? Do you do you play smart golf? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Great assessment.

Speaker 2 How did you feel about Tin Cup?

Speaker 1 I loved it.

Speaker 2 It was great, right? Incredibly charming.

Speaker 2 What is there not to like? I think to the bill part of that, it's both a great rom-com and a great sport.

Speaker 1 It might just be a great rom-com. This is like something I was listening to because I'm a totally normal person, some golf podcasts where they were talking about the best golf movies.

Speaker 2 Do you want to shout out the golf podcast you're listening to?

Speaker 1 And one of them was saying that he doesn't like Tin Cup because he feels like it's just a rom-com.

Speaker 1 Not enough golf in the golf movie. There is an iconic sequence in Tin Cup.

Speaker 1 Happy uses a hockey stick for much of his gameplay.

Speaker 1 Kevin Costner uses gardening tools in a very memorable way.

Speaker 2 Shovel. Yeah.

Speaker 2 A break, I feel like at one point.

Speaker 2 There's a whole thing in the sand trap where it's like you're not allowed to actually hoe the ball out of the sand trap.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing. Even if it's not that golfy a golf movie, the point of making a golf movie or a golf show or a sports show in general, we're mostly here for the metaphor.

Speaker 2 Like we're here for the like tee off and you might shank it, but guess what? There's another hole coming up. You get to reset your life all over again.

Speaker 1 Here's a line that might be in all three of these, might be in Tin Cup and Happy Gilmore and Stick.

Speaker 2 They do repeat themselves.

Speaker 1 It's a game of inches. It is.
The most important being the six inches between your ears.

Speaker 1 So yeah, it's a mental game. I just want to, I think.

Speaker 2 And a physical game. You know, I think they apply in Tin Cup, especially a movie that, because of its era, dares to have actual adult relationships in it.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 you get the golf metaphor in the bedroom, too. You know, it's all about tempo.
It's all, you know, can I get a mulligan on that?

Speaker 2 I think there's many ways. He absolutely shanked it.
But guess what? You get, you get another T.

Speaker 1 We're talking about the yips inside of this

Speaker 2 inside of all of these contexts.

Speaker 1 Tin Cup, which was made by Ron Shelton, who did Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump, Blue Chips, like a bunch of incredible sports movies, bringing the love of the game

Speaker 1 and a knowledge of the game, but also they're just their hang movies

Speaker 1 in Tin Cup, especially like Costner's character is surrounded by a coterie of just like fun loser guys. I mean,

Speaker 1 Cheech Marin is kind of the runaway star of this last rewatch of Tin Cup for me as his caddy and best friend.

Speaker 1 But the whole gang that hangs out at the driving range, like, and just all of them just shooting the shit all the time, like, that is very bulldurum to me as well. And it's incredibly fun.

Speaker 1 But it's interesting to think about golf as a game

Speaker 1 versus what's your favorite sports movie of all time?

Speaker 2 I mean, it's probably Hoop Dreams. Sure.
So, but like, non-documentary gets a little dicier. Honestly, Challengers rising up the ranks pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 I was thinking about Challengers, actually, when I was watching Stick.

Speaker 2 I think it works really well. And tennis and golf have a similar kind of quandary in terms of like a filmmaking or a showmaking endeavor, which is they're naturally very dramatic sports.

Speaker 2 Like it's one person either on their own playing singles or, you know, getting ready to tee off or on a green. Like you have these dramatic moments, but tennis is naturally kinetic.

Speaker 2 And that can be challenging to shoot in a way that I think challengers solved really effectively. And the tennis in that movie is so magnetic.

Speaker 2 Golf, though, is like not the most interesting sport to watch from a movement perspective in a way that as we kind of get into stick, I think stick does really, really well.

Speaker 2 and makes it feel like you feel the momentum, you feel some of the drives, you feel the power of.

Speaker 1 that's a sound design.

Speaker 2 Uh, that's what's sound design, but it's also a cinematography.

Speaker 2 Like, they do a lot of kind of drone shotting off of the T, and so you know, putting yourself in the place of the ball in a way that kind of transforms those scenes.

Speaker 1 And a lot of that comes from, I should say, the cinematic classic Happy Gilmore because Happy has this incredible swing, and so the camera is just like shooting back with the ball, uh, you know, and probably across the entire golf course.

Speaker 1 As his, I was thinking a lot about that inside of Stick. Um,

Speaker 1 and I think this idea of golf as

Speaker 1 it's really you versus you because Shuda McGavin and David Sims, which is no relation to blank check host, David Sims, who is Don Johnson's character, like you know, these are like the stereotypical 80s jock rivals,

Speaker 1 you know, that you have here, but you're really fighting your own inner demons. And that's what probably any good sports movie is.
But in a lot of sports movies that I love are team-based.

Speaker 1 And so it's much more about team dynamics or who is your ultimate team rival and stuff like that. And this is just sort of you versus you at the T

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 how you can overcome that or not, which is one of the joys of Tin Cup.

Speaker 2 I love that part about it. I love that in the end, it's not about winning, but about like kind of overcoming a hurdle for you or even kind of proving a point in a way to you or someone else.

Speaker 2 I think a lot of these sports movies, and especially the golf movies, come down to that moment of you had these characters have an arc over the course of the movie, learning the thing that they have a hard time with usually in golf it's like self-control a lot of anger you know it is that mental game and so in order to get to the end they have to conquer some of those elements but then in the end it's like you kind of have to go back to the person you were at the beginning and channel some of like the loose canon elements of your personality but in a more constructive way that got you there that got you there in the first place like you have to be yourself in addition to whatever you learn i agree about um

Speaker 1 golf being i mean i've never personally sat down and watched, you know, the U.S. Open or anything like that.
Why is that?

Speaker 1 It's just not my game personally.

Speaker 2 What is your game?

Speaker 1 To watch? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Hockey.

Speaker 1 Okay. I like a hockey game.

Speaker 2 It hurts, but okay.

Speaker 2 It's not basketball. You know,

Speaker 2 I was just throwing you the alley up.

Speaker 1 I was hoping. It's baseball and hockey.
It's not really. I will watch a basketball game, but it's not my first choice anyway.

Speaker 2 I'm so sorry to wound you personally.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I think this idea of, I have no idea what I was going to say.

Speaker 2 I'm so sorry. Well, let me bring it back to this with the sports movies.
Like, things that I love about a sports movie, you nailed it, the camaraderie of team. And that's somewhere with a golf movie.

Speaker 2 Like, you have to create a group around the player or the players to make it really, really work. It can't all be internal.

Speaker 2 I also think that they have such like a crystal clear arc. Like, there's always a big game or a big tournament.
It makes it very easy to say, like, we're trying to get here.

Speaker 1 And it reminded me of something you brought up. We filmed the big pick draft, 2000 draft.

Speaker 2 Yes. We certainly did.
I am recovering in many ways.

Speaker 1 You were talking about what you wanted from Gladiator, which was more mini sort of minor league gladiatorial games.

Speaker 1 And that's every golf movie.

Speaker 2 Golf in particular is so good at the minor tournament.

Speaker 1 Tourney, tourney, tourney leading up to the big open or the big championship or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 And this is the thing, too. Like, to me, there are never small stakes in any kind of story.
Like, I just don't believe in in that concept. I think every story tells you what's important to it.

Speaker 2 And if you tell me the big game or the big tournament is important, I'm right there with Happy Gilmore, like trying to get his grandma's house back.

Speaker 1 I think the kinetic, the lack of kinetic nature of golf, I think is a really interesting thing to bring up, but it is so easy to follow in terms of, you know.

Speaker 1 Any sports movie, you can look, there's usually a scoreboard, whatever. In golf, it's so fun because you can watch your name rise up the ranks or fall down the ranks.
I don't need to understand

Speaker 1 about under par to understand that Happy Gilmore's name

Speaker 2 goes

Speaker 1 up the board and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And then you've got

Speaker 1 announcers, some great announcer work in Tin Cup, especially, I would say.

Speaker 1 And then you've got fun things like sand traps and water, you know, water features and stuff like that that can sort of make it a little bit more kinetic. But it is a challenge.
And I think most of

Speaker 1 the most successful golf depictions will yada yada through a lot to get you where they're going.

Speaker 2 You simply have to. There's a lot of course to cover, multiple rounds being played in some of these tournaments.

Speaker 2 Like, you have to kind of jump to the points that matter, jump to like the crux of when these people are in crisis on the course in some way.

Speaker 1 So, let's talk about stick, please.

Speaker 2 Because, yeah, there's a lot of crisis on the course in stick already, even within these first three episodes.

Speaker 1 As we were talking to Bill a couple prestige episodes ago about this idea of Apple strategy of putting stars of the wedding crashers into their into their shows.

Speaker 2 It's an effective business model. I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 1 Is the Owen Wilson show. Yes.
Like without question, this is the Owen Wilson show. He plays Price Cahill, a down on his luck former pro golfer

Speaker 1 who is now selling golf clubs.

Speaker 1 I can't remember exactly what I texted you, but I was like, he's a combination of Roy McAvoy from Tin Cup, but also the bomber from the Royal Tannen Bombs, because there's this sort of like meltdown, famous meltdown from his past.

Speaker 1 So I was thinking a lot about his brother Luke Wilson. He has an ex-wife

Speaker 1 slash mom

Speaker 1 played by Judy Greer.

Speaker 2 The great Judy Greer.

Speaker 1 Oh, the great Judy Greer.

Speaker 2 The greatest, maybe.

Speaker 1 The greatest doing kind of exactly what she did in Ant-Man.

Speaker 2 I would say better. I would say better.
Yes.

Speaker 2 I'm willing to defend some of the Judy Greer character writing in this episode and also some of you know I would say like the central plot of these first three episodes is yes like we're getting used to price as this like another down on his leg golfer another person in crisis another person grifter schemer trying to scrounge up money finds this kid Santi who can just knock the ever-living hell out of the ball at the driving range and that's a happy direct happy Gilmore moment completely like this the sound the echo like again you're very wise to put out point out the sound design like that is how you get people invested in that kind of action.

Speaker 2 Decides to try to endeavor to coach Santi. Right.
And so we're kind of learning, oh, what Santi's background in golf was, what his relationship to his family is.

Speaker 2 We meet his mother, Elena, the second Elena we've met in another Apple TV show, I would say, the superior Elena. Yes.

Speaker 2 And so, like, these are two characters to me, Elena and Amberlynn is Judy Greer's character's name,

Speaker 2 who like in other shows, I think, could very easily fall into all sorts of pitfalls.

Speaker 1 Feisty Latina mom.

Speaker 2 Feisty Latina mom. Yeah.
Ex-wife who's like kind of a nag, kind of a ball buster.

Speaker 2 And it's like, I think they're threading a pretty careful needle with both in a way that works pretty well, to be honest with you. When that could easily be a huge blunder.

Speaker 1 I would say Elena doesn't always work for me, but I don't want to come on a podcast and be anti-another Elena on an Apple show.

Speaker 2 But this Elena is like that. Elena had problems.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, this is much more promising. And I'm thrilled by Mark Maron's presence here.
Mark Marin plays Price's pal Mitts,

Speaker 1 who helps him in a bar grift, a very tin cup moment,

Speaker 1 and owns, crucially, owns the mobile home, the Winnebago that they will be traveling around on.

Speaker 1 Judy Greer is listed in the guest category. So now that they're on the road, we start with some at-home drama.

Speaker 1 Judy Greer is like, please let me sell this massive house that you have trash and are just smoking weed in.

Speaker 1 And she's basically funding with $100,000 that she, you know, drums up for him, funding this on-the-road idea of let's get Santi

Speaker 1 to the championship. His big bet, basically.

Speaker 2 It's like, I'm like, this is basically prices money from the prospect of selling the house and he's going to invest it all. Yeah, plus a little extra.
I have a lot of questions.

Speaker 2 Again, as someone who's not super familiar with the world of golf, is this how golf prospecting works?

Speaker 2 It's like, if you want to coach a kid you pay the family a hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of then having a split i don't know but i admire elena's uh bargaining skills she's a great business woman i just don't know if this is how golf works and look if but is she i have some questions about her the bank scene

Speaker 2 i don't think the bank scene is meant to portray her as like someone who's totally financially fluent right someone who's come into this huge sum of money this hundred thousand dollars and is like trying to figure out what to do with it and like everyone else in the story is like a little over her skis So we've got Elena, we've got Santi, we've got Mitts, and we've got Price.

Speaker 1 And that's who's in the Winnebago, right?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 And then in episode three, we met the other series regular

Speaker 1 who's a manic pixie dream girl bartender named Zero

Speaker 2 bartender.

Speaker 1 Zero

Speaker 1 played by Lily Kay, who people might know from Yellowstone, et cetera.

Speaker 1 And she wins

Speaker 1 Santi, who has daddy issues, and Price, okay,

Speaker 1 I am enjoying the show. The end of episode one

Speaker 1 dead kid montage

Speaker 1 via home video. Yep.
Not my favorite move that a show has ever pulled.

Speaker 2 Totally valid point. Okay.
Completely valid point.

Speaker 1 But the point is, Price has

Speaker 1 I lost my son issues. Santi has my dad left me issues.
So these are where these two people are meeting each other.

Speaker 1 But when that dynamic plays out in the third episode, which is literally called daddy issues, they're like, we know what we're doing. Yes.
In Swoop's former bartender Zero to be a sort of

Speaker 1 Renee Russo-esque sports psychologist, reclaim your power

Speaker 1 figure.

Speaker 1 Will she join the team? Will she crop up bartending at all of these random tourneys? We don't know exactly what her involvement will be going forward.

Speaker 2 She does whip very quickly from I'm going to storm out of my my bartending job at this golf course into I'm just going to follow this kid around during the tournament all day.

Speaker 1 Yes. Well, I guess what else are you going to do? You're not working the shift anymore.

Speaker 2 Go home? Yeah. Do literally anything else.

Speaker 1 It's a great point, but she's invested in Santi. And I should say, I am also invested in Santi.
Hell yeah, Joe.

Speaker 1 Because the actor who's playing Santi, who we believe his name is Peter Jake, or we believe that's the pronunciation of the last name. Yeah.
I really like this kid. He's really good.

Speaker 1 They're styling him Chalamé.

Speaker 2 I mean, the tussle is admirable.

Speaker 2 The hair is enviable tussle.

Speaker 1 Pure uncut chalamay, but this kid is like, I really like this kid. Very good.

Speaker 2 And a very believable golfer.

Speaker 2 Oh, I don't know anything about this.

Speaker 2 You can just tell from the like the smoothness of the motion. Like we covered, we covered Fargo, and there was like

Speaker 2 an asshole husband on his home simulator, and it was like the hitch in his swing was like, oh, this is very clearly either not meant to be a good golfer, although that character insists he was.

Speaker 2 This one's like, if you're going to tell us this kid is like a real talent, it needs to look like this and sound like this and feel like this. And he's selling that.

Speaker 2 He's selling the athlete as much as he is the kid.

Speaker 1 This kid has to work for this show to work because Owen Wilson is just dialing up his folksy Owen Wilson. I've got a bunch of one-liners like a butterfly, you know, like whatever it is.

Speaker 1 Like he's dialing that up to 11. But if he's not bouncing off a kid who can sort of meet his energy or with the opposite Sullen kid energy, the show does not work.

Speaker 1 And I really think this kid is a great find.

Speaker 2 And him being like an empathetic presence in the show, I think sells some of the harsher edges of Owen Wilson's character too. Because as we said, like he is a schemer.

Speaker 2 He's someone who's like always looking for an angle, always looking for something to play. There's clearly a part of that character that just believes in this kid and what he can be.

Speaker 2 There's also a part of him that sees this kid as a way out or a way up for him personally. And, you know, like they were introduced to him in the show, like upselling golf clubs and like

Speaker 2 really laying it on especially thick with a prospective customer. I think kind of primes us for what to expect from you being a dummy, a rich dummy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like there's always gonna be something that's kind of earnest in an Owen Wilson performance, but there's also gonna be something that's like, this guy's like a little bit or maybe a medium bit full of shit.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And him having that and bringing that into it and like side betting on Santi's rounds and things like that, in addition to you just feel for this kid and you feel him being kind of like manipulated into the system by price as well.

Speaker 1 How is

Speaker 1 the maring character met's his presence working for you inside of the show like not just as comic relief yeah there's this whole plot line in episode three where he gets trapped under a bed but like as someone who knows price well enough that he says you bet on the kid didn't you yeah you know i you're you're you were yelling at him because you bet on the kid in his first you know game that you're here helping him and supervising him you bet you you put this you ramped up the stakes unnecessarily when do you think we will get the call back to like, he touches his ear when he's lying?

Speaker 2 Oh, that's come, that's coming back at some point.

Speaker 1 Great call. Great call.
I can't wait.

Speaker 1 Will it be every episode? That's the question.

Speaker 2 I think I hope for more of the show than that.

Speaker 2 It's so funny with this because the particulars of tone are so personal to every viewer, to every show. This is a show that has a lot in common with Ted Lasso, for example.

Speaker 1 That's next on my list to ask you about that.

Speaker 2 A sports show that is endeavoring to have a lot of heart and to look at some like interpersonal things that are more complex than just like, can you save this English football club?

Speaker 2 Or in this case, can you save a golf career? Can you teach this kid? Ted Lasso does not work for me. Like it just like totally does not work.
I think it has its

Speaker 2 earnest for you. I think the first season more successfully, and then it gets into a zone.

Speaker 2 And this is something we need to flag with a show like Stick is like, once we start pivoting into overt confrontation of the daddy issues and the dead kid montage and those things, like we're hinting around them, we're mentioning them, but we're not diving in just yet.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It felt early

Speaker 1 to call an episode daddy issues, episode three, but maybe it's like, I apolog you for getting it, putting it on the table and saying we know what we've set up here.

Speaker 1 The Ted Lasso of it all is really interesting to me because

Speaker 1 I did like these three episodes. Not everything worked for me.

Speaker 1 And in the moments where it didn't work for me, I was just sort of like, they're just really, I really feel like they put out a vibe to the universe that said, not a vibe, a directive.

Speaker 1 We're looking for our next Ted Lasso. Yes.
What, you know, pitch us, what do you have? And Jason Keller, who's the, who's the showrunner here,

Speaker 1 is not a TV guy. Um, and nothing on his CV, he's got some things on his CV.
Um,

Speaker 1 Four versus Ferrari. Big one.
You know, another crowd pleaser. Yeah, that, that helped me understand how he got here, but he's not a TV guy.

Speaker 1 so like the question of like the calibration of tv storytelling and pacing which is something we always talk about in apple show

Speaker 1 um david dobkin directed the third episode david dobkin directed wedding crashers so like we're just we're doing four versus ferrari meets wedding crashers and

Speaker 1 um and and that's not a bad time yeah but what's the arc of the full season and not only that do we need to worry about what's the arc of a multi-season show because we have to be arcing towards a championship or a competition of some yeah yeah yeah Some kind of high-level competition.

Speaker 2 Building up to something.

Speaker 1 Completely.

Speaker 2 And I think the missing element of that is like the directors of the first two episodes, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Ferris, directed Little Miss Sunshine, and you're packing a family into an RV and driving them across the country through competition.

Speaker 2 It's like, okay, now we're getting the elements, right? Like now we're getting the sports. We're getting the comedy.
We're getting the family dynamics.

Speaker 2 That may work for some people, may not work for others. I got to say, for me, like, this is a cold glass of lemonade.
Like, it is a very like. Is it an Arnold Palmer?

Speaker 2 Well, I'm not an iced tea guy personally, so you can save it, but

Speaker 2 just like just

Speaker 2 a simple pleasure kind of show. Bob, you have to be really nice to me today because you absolutely murdered me on the movie draft.
I'm not saying you personally can save it.

Speaker 2 I'm saying the bartender Zero, who's about to quit, can keep her iced tea, you know? Okay, okay.

Speaker 2 Like, it is like the pleasures of the show, I think, are, are quite simple. And it's like, it hits you, though, at least hits me on kind of an elemental level.

Speaker 2 Like, they play the boys are back in town. I'm like, fuck yeah, the boys are back in town.
Like, Like I actually appreciated the very on-the-nose needle drops in this one.

Speaker 1 When Owen Wilson says the boys are back in town and then they literally play the boys are in the back.

Speaker 2 They play the boys.

Speaker 1 And then the third episode starts with a bluegrass cover of Baba O'Reilly and then ends with

Speaker 1 actual Baba O'Reilly.

Speaker 1 That's when I had a question about, we talked about this with your friends and neighbors, the Apple TV Plus music budget on these shows.

Speaker 2 Astronomical.

Speaker 1 They're just dropping Rolling Stones and Hootrax

Speaker 1 on a third episode of a golf comedy on the show. Yeah.
So I would get down on it for its on-the-nose needle drops, were it not for Tin Cup.

Speaker 2 I was about to say.

Speaker 1 Tin Cup, where they're basically like saying the plot of the movie over the folksy songs that are sprinkled throughout Tin Cup.

Speaker 2 It's one of the most egregious examples of that I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 I agree. My parents owned the soundtrack to Tin Cup, so we actually, I like know all of the songs we listen to a lot, but.

Speaker 2 How does it feel disembodied from the movie?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's like, I mean, it's more country than I prefer, but it is like, they're kind of fun.

Speaker 1 Watch re-watching Tin Cup, knowing you were about to watch it for the first time, every needle drop, I was like, oh no, Rob's gonna have some questions.

Speaker 1 I had some questions about these needle drops, but yes,

Speaker 1 the music budget for stick is out of control.

Speaker 2 Along those lines, though, I have to say, this was maybe the fastest. Country, not usually my genre.

Speaker 2 I would say stick is not particularly country, but it is like a jangly kind of americana in its soundtrack yeah and the theme particularly is the fastest i have ever gone from hearing to shazamming to downloading this band's albums i was like this sounds great who is it this band called camp with two a's c-a-a-m-p okay uh i need i'm diving into the discography but like a really wonderful opening theme that i love is this like a gangstagrass uh situation nothing measures up to gangstagress

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Speaker 1 The location, before we go on the road, we're in Indiana. and Jason Keller, the showrunner, is from Indianapolis, Indiana.
So this is sort of like his love letter, I suppose, to Indiana.

Speaker 2 Explains the IU paraphernalia hanging around.

Speaker 1 But yeah, nothing about this show, coming off our discussion with Bill about your friends and neighbors and asking what an Apple show is, nothing about this show disproves my theory that Apple shows are for

Speaker 1 liberal leaning dads.

Speaker 1 Is this not

Speaker 1 a West Coast dad show?

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't think it has to be West Coast, but like, again, it could be an all-dad show.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I'm just saying in slight contrast to the Taylor Sheridan verse, there's something slightly

Speaker 1 ooier and gooeier about an Apple show, you know?

Speaker 2 You're allowed to be emotional in sports. Like, I think this is a crucial part of the sports movie DNA, too.

Speaker 2 It's like very relatable emotionality that doesn't feel too dangerous, that doesn't go too out there, maybe tincup accepted. Like, we're really bearing all in tincup.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And we'll see how much we do that in stick and how they confront these sorts of things, but like using golf or using a sport as an avenue to get into the human emotional experience.

Speaker 2 That's how you Trojan horse a dad. That's how you make him think he's watching the funny golf show.
Yeah. But then all of a sudden we're talking about our feelings.

Speaker 1 I don't mean to completely genderline this, but would you say that like a sports movie is a clear avenue to giving men permission to cry? Your Brian songs are a little bit more like a bad thing.

Speaker 1 I think it's a huge part of it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Okay. You know, we're getting better as a species about that,

Speaker 2 but it's still there. It's still the low-hanging fruit.

Speaker 1 Okay, interesting. That's that's fascinating to me.
I

Speaker 1 am having a good time with this show. It's good.
Any other specifics you want to talk about in terms of this show?

Speaker 2 Hmm.

Speaker 2 I want to circle back to the Judy Greer element of this because, yeah, I think some of its writing and some of its performance from.

Speaker 1 Do you want to talk about Bento Ben?

Speaker 2 Bento Ben has taken some strays that he doesn't deserve.

Speaker 2 Seems like a really nice guy, but the clearest indication to us that Price's wife or ex-wife has like started to move on is she just laughs way too hard at Bento Ben.

Speaker 2 Like just keeling over at the worst possible jokes. Yes.
In a way that is like kind of charming in its own right.

Speaker 2 And I actually, this will be the shame if we're kind of on the road constantly and we don't check in with Judy Greer and certainly.

Speaker 1 No way we're going to.

Speaker 2 Unless it's like you're in trouble. Like, you know, if they hit the skids and I guess they need more money, is she just the ATM in this show? I hope not.

Speaker 1 Is she bailing them out of more jail?

Speaker 2 How many jails can one get bailed out of for parking tickets in particular?

Speaker 2 You know, know owen wilson is here to test the limit for that i'm sure i'm sure her big speech again to price a speech that like if written differently would feel very condescending or feel very naggy to like our male anchor character about how it's always someone else's problem pepper in like oh it was always someone else's problem that your dick got stuck in the dyson and it's like this the show knows exactly what it's doing and i i think it's walking a lot of these tightropes really really well i think the judy greer character were it the main character were she a main character Yes.

Speaker 1 I would have more issues.

Speaker 2 Which Judy Greer should be a main character in things of her own.

Speaker 1 If not this character. Give us more Judy Greer all the time.

Speaker 1 We really agree. But like, given that she's a side character, I'm not that concerned about her being fairly thinly developed.

Speaker 1 There's some stuff lurking for Marin's character where he talks about, you know, he used to be in the RV with his, with his wife. So that's sort of floating around.

Speaker 1 There's some stuff lurking, some bombs ready to go off for Elena.

Speaker 1 Really important question for you is, as an owner of a small-ish dog, Rob Mahoney,

Speaker 1 how do you feel about the tiny dog representation inside of this show?

Speaker 2 They're gorgeous little critters, to be honest with you. That said, bringing a dog into an RV, or in this case, multiple dogs,

Speaker 2 you got to check with all parties.

Speaker 2 Three. Are there three? I thought there was two.

Speaker 2 There's three dogs?

Speaker 1 There's the old one and there's two sort of more nimble ones, I believe. I believe that's the case.

Speaker 2 Any amount of dogs in someone else's RV is probably too many dogs.

Speaker 2 That said, they're adorable, and I support them in all of their life choices, including currently like peeing under the bed.

Speaker 1 How did it get in there?

Speaker 2 No clue. This is the question with dogs perpetually.
How did they do that? I don't know. Doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 Okay, let me ask you a question. This is based off of Spoilers for Tin Cup.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is the spoiler section for Tin Cup, I guess. A very old movie.

Speaker 1 This is a sports movie question. question.
Do you prefer a sports story

Speaker 1 where our main character wins, or do you prefer a story where our main character loses? I like the loss.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Look, I'm a sucker for the bittersweet. Yeah.
I'm a sucker for the moral victory, but the literal defeat.

Speaker 2 I think that makes for more interesting storytelling, especially because the natural tension is always going to be we're expecting them to win.

Speaker 2 How are they going to do this? We know that they're down in the fourth quarter. We know that they're trailing on the leaderboards.
Like, how are they going to to pull it together?

Speaker 2 The answer is a lot of times you don't. Yeah.
But you learned something about yourself along the way, Joe.

Speaker 1 I like the loss that...

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're right. The moral victory.
I'm not sure Tim Cup qualifies as that. The question about Tim Cup is, does his character actually go on any journey whatsoever?

Speaker 2 I don't actually

Speaker 1 some self-awareness, I think, is

Speaker 1 maybe the hope that he will continue to go to therapy with not his girlfriend

Speaker 1 might be.

Speaker 2 His therapy goes off the rails pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but what if he were seeing a different therapist well i don't think he was interested in going to see any other therapist that's kind of the crux of the thing but tin cup is not a win not a lot that's a movie that ends with a loss and it's not a loss where the athlete um necessarily has the moral victory he has just decided fuck it this is who i am i'm a loose cannon and that's who i'm gonna be or take the big memorable swing and don't play it safe but there are other sports movies where the loss is um for the sake of to save this relationship relationship or this other priority in my life, I need to let go of the trophy is the only thing that matters and I will sacrifice that for this other win in my life.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 For Santi, though, like what

Speaker 1 is the potential like moral victory or emotional journey that he can go on that would make not winning still winning for him?

Speaker 2 Well, I think the emotional journey that he started to go on, right?

Speaker 2 Like he started allowing himself to be coached, getting back into golf after playing, apparently not playing it for a long time, bumping heads with price pretty quickly once they get into the process of actually playing tournaments, and then turning to Manic Pixie, former bartender, Zero, a Zero, apparently, who

Speaker 2 helps him embrace his power and like his own instincts. Yeah.
And so, yeah, those are like the two presences on his shoulder, right?

Speaker 2 Like the two voices in his ear, kind of pulling him in these different directions.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, like the healing is the reason he quit golf, which were kind of, it's intimated that like something about

Speaker 2 his dad ruined their relationship in some way, and now that ruined his relationship with golf.

Speaker 2 And so it's like repairing the relationship with golf doesn't fix the relationship with your dad, but it may plug some kind of hole in yourself in the process. Right.

Speaker 2 Uh, find a different father figure, one who hopefully will not bet money on your wins or losses on your first day, but one that has their own child-size hole in their life, courtesy of their maybe dead, I assume, dead

Speaker 1 child. She says it won't bring him back.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's not, it won't bring him back from college.

Speaker 2 It won't bring him back from boarding school. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 I also love, I mean,

Speaker 1 he puts in the DVD that's like all their home movies or whatever. Yeah.
And it's like a real dead wife montage moment. Yeah.
Except Judy Greer is still alive.

Speaker 1 And so then there's the reveal that there's like, I mean, they had already had the it won't bring him back moment. And I was expecting him to just dig a photo out of a box.

Speaker 1 And then he got the DVD and then we had to see all of that.

Speaker 2 and it was it was a lot what one of my favorite elements of the dead family member montage in any way is the like who is holding the camera question like there's times where it's like they're both in the frame and the camera's like up upstairs looking down

Speaker 1 it's mark marin

Speaker 2 just living upstairs

Speaker 2 I don't know what I don't know what's going on with the camera work in that house and I don't know what's going on with that montage you probably didn't need it um I would you know here's the thing to bring it back to your do you prefer if they win or lose question I prefer leaving it on the it's not going to bring him back We don't need the montage.

Speaker 2 I really agree. And I don't even need them to win or lose.
In some ways, my ultimate preference is Friday Night Light style, ball in the air. Oh my god, ball in the air,

Speaker 2 cut to the future, and you see where these people are, and that's like showing their emotional growth, but maybe not their literal change in status from what they're doing.

Speaker 2 Isn't there a championship ring that like lets us know how that's a subtle reveal?

Speaker 1 I was gonna say, Friday Night Light's Ball in the Air is one of the all-time

Speaker 1 versions of that. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Someone we have not seen yet in the show is our guy Tim Oliphant. Yeah.
He's got guest star status. Is this, do we feel, our shooter McGavin, our David Sims?

Speaker 2 He was born to be it.

Speaker 2 He would be such a good shooter McGavin. Yeah.
Like, here's the thing: Owen Wilson is such a great talker that you need someone he's going to bounce off of that's going to like be

Speaker 2 the antidote to his kind of charisma. And we've already seen him like starting to make, again, these side bets with the competitors themselves and kind of insert himself into that dynamic.

Speaker 2 Who better to bounce off of than Tim Oliphant for that?

Speaker 1 And Tim Oliphant knows a thing or two about acting opposite a charismatic guy with a gift of the gab.

Speaker 2 He certainly does.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's exciting. And then also, Ryan Kara Armstrong is listed as a guest star.
Ryan Kira Armstrong, who we talked about recently, because she's the new lead of the Buffy Vampire Slayer. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Reboot, question mark, whatever that is.

Speaker 1 Any,

Speaker 1 you know, any thoughts or feelings about how she might be used? She's 15.

Speaker 2 Who is she in this show?

Speaker 1 She's 15. Santi's 17.

Speaker 2 Okay, I'm glad we talked about that because one of the elements of this show that I think you have to be along for the ride for is, so Santi's 17. Yeah.
Presumably, I guess he's. Is it summer?

Speaker 2 Is it summer? Did he graduate high school already? And he's like, you know, a little advanced for his age?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 But he, like, basically, the pitch is made. as far as like Price comes to the family, comes to Santi.
He's like, I want to coach you. I want to take you on this tour to play in these tournaments.

Speaker 2 I think one of the good things about the Elena portrayal is like she is understandably very skeptical of all of this shit. It's like, this is happening very fast.
Right. This guy just showed up.

Speaker 2 I don't know who he is. He just got arrested.
Here's his weird friend who's driving the RV.

Speaker 2 There's $100,000 in my lap, but like, I kind of don't even want to take it. I'm so skeptical of this situation.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, this is a kid who's just like going on the road. very, very quickly within the grand scheme of things.
It's not like leaving school behind.

Speaker 2 There's no conversation about like, what about finals?

Speaker 2 You're just out there playing playing golf tournaments all of a sudden.

Speaker 1 Was it the who that made you think about Almost Famous and Willie Miller getting home in time for graduation?

Speaker 2 He promised he would not miss a single exam. And he lied.
He did lie. He lied.

Speaker 1 Yeah, at least his mom is on the road with him. The fact that Santi is 17,

Speaker 1 it's the name more than anything else. I didn't mind the character necessarily, but like Zero.

Speaker 2 It was a bummer. Because we don't, at least, to my knowledge, like hear her name in this episode.
Or in these episodes.

Speaker 2 Do we? Yeah. Someone calls her zero.
Her boss calls her zero.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's right.

Speaker 2 He comes to sculpt her after she.

Speaker 2 That whole sequence in which she's like gets to performatively pour the pitcher or I guess the beer on the golf bros. On the golf bros.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Miss me, I guess, with that.

Speaker 1 We've seen better.

Speaker 2 We've seen it done better. It doesn't really need to be done at all.
There are much better ways to streamline and fastline a character. I agree.

Speaker 1 I agree.

Speaker 1 It's been a bumpy introduction. I didn't mind her conversation with Santi.
And what I like about her is like, so she is,

Speaker 1 that actress is in her late 20s. So we're not trying to say this is someone who is remotely near Santi's age.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he does have kind of hearts in his eyes when he's looking at her. You can tell.
Yeah. So like.
She's not.

Speaker 2 She doesn't seem uninterested.

Speaker 1 In the 17-year-old?

Speaker 2 I don't know how old she is.

Speaker 1 The actress is 28. That's

Speaker 2 maybe she is uninterested.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 here's maybe what I'm picking up on. There's like, they have real chemistry in terms of their performance and how the characters will read that, I don't really know.

Speaker 1 Okay. I will wait to find out what age zero is supposed to be

Speaker 1 before I pass judgment on it.

Speaker 1 But right now, I'm like, I'm hoping that he has a crush on her, so is more willing to listen to her, admittedly, good advice, you know, and then she just like likes him and is at loose ends.

Speaker 1 And do they bring her on the team? Do they draft her to be on the on the coaching team? Is she in the RV?

Speaker 1 Like, what, you know, I can't see any other way we organically get her yeah to every tourney going forward it's a little extracurricular in terms of like our understanding that she's cast in the show in a substantial way but like i just don't i don't understand how she wouldn't be on the rv well the episode ends with who's that and then her boss saying trouble

Speaker 2 again there's some things in the show that's like why are they doing that and yet I am perpetually charmed by it. I'm enchanted.
I'm in. And here's the thing.
We are clearly bumping on that character.

Speaker 2 I have hope that they will round her into something more more closely resembling human form. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I do think she's important, though, as we're zeroing in on the dad demographic.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Wow.
I just wandered straight into that, right into that water hazard, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 She's an important character for the dad demo. Like, as you're saying, if Apple is targeted, if part of the audience are liberal dads,

Speaker 2 you also want dads across the aisle.

Speaker 2 who look at this young woman talking about how aren't we all participating in the exploitation of labor and then by comparison identify more with Owen Wilson's character, Price, as they are kind of put across purposes.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 I think she's a natural philosophical tension point for the show in a way that is good for some audience members and frustrating for other audience members.

Speaker 2 And for people like us, I just want a human.

Speaker 1 To be clear, I think I need to come up with, I think West Coast dad is more what I want more than, or Coastal Elite Dad or something like that more than it's less political and more

Speaker 2 vibe centric,

Speaker 1 what I'm trying to narrow down here. Because I don't need it to be like liberal versus conservative, but I think there is just something

Speaker 1 dad-centric about Apple, a lot of Apple programming that is somehow different from the dad-centric program at over at Paramount. So

Speaker 1 listen, the dads are being served

Speaker 1 and we support them. And you know what?

Speaker 2 Apparently, I am too. Apparently, my inner dad is being served, Joe.
But

Speaker 2 one of the hurdles in this episode for Santi is like, what do you do when you're frustrated? Like when you're starting to spiral, where do you go? What do you tell yourself?

Speaker 2 You know, we, we learned that Elena mentally checks out and goes to the beach.

Speaker 1 They literally say happy place, which is the happy Gilmore.

Speaker 2 I mean, again, this is straight out of happy Gilmore, straight into the mental heaven where Chubb is playing the piano.

Speaker 1 Julie Bowen has two pitchers of beer.

Speaker 2 Two pictures of beer, scantily clad. Look, everyone's happy place is different.
Sure.

Speaker 2 We hear as well that Prices is like singing Cecilia to himself.

Speaker 2 Do you have a happy place, Joe? Do you have your own place you go to in moments of mental turmoil and anguish?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. It's actually genuinely

Speaker 1 I should have a fun answer for this. Yeah.
Genuinely, it's like on the Pacific coast, like

Speaker 2 right by the ocean.

Speaker 2 Rocky waves crashing. Waves crashing.
I mean, that's some incredible whiteness. How about you?

Speaker 2 I am a little more nihilistic. I am a like zoom out.

Speaker 1 It's happy place.

Speaker 2 Well, my

Speaker 1 bringing nihilism to the happy place conversation.

Speaker 2 I'm not trying to get happy. I'm trying to get calm.
Okay. You know, and so I am zooming out

Speaker 2 a speck on a piece of land on a rock hurling through.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 2 What do I mean to the grand scale of the universe?

Speaker 2 That's my happy place, ultimately. What that says about me, I'm going to leave to you and to Renee Russo to figure out.

Speaker 1 Follow-up question.

Speaker 1 At what point this season

Speaker 1 are we singing Cecilia?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Is it...

Speaker 1 An almost famous everyone in the RV is singing Cecilia. This is the first thought.

Speaker 2 Okay. Turmoil in the RV.
Yeah. I mean, maybe it is as simple as driving through a storm.
And it's like, we got to all calm down. You know, everything's, everyone's freaking out.

Speaker 2 But like, I mean, what are the alternatives to that?

Speaker 1 I would say leading up to it in order to seed it properly. I would like to hear Owen Wilson sort of like whisper, mutter, sing it to himself in order to calm down.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I'm just wondering if we're headed for like a tiny dancer moment. Santi doesn't even know the song, Cecilia.

Speaker 2 But he seemed interested in hearing it.

Speaker 1 There's only like 20 lyrics, to be clear. It's a lot of drum work in that song.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you're saying RV and when do we get it? Like mid-season or is this an end of season? Is this a reconciliation moment?

Speaker 2 I think it's going to be a getting over the hump

Speaker 2 end of second act.

Speaker 2 So like, is this a 10-episode season? Do we know that?

Speaker 2 Six, six, seven, somewhere in there.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to say about

Speaker 1 stick or tin cup? Would you recommend people watching? Like, so this is our question.

Speaker 1 We shared with each other mid-90s golf movies

Speaker 1 both expressing a little concern that they would not hold up in a 2026 well 2025 that's not it's not 2026 2025 lens one one one wishes it were on the break can we fast forward

Speaker 2 uh for me it's not even like will it hold up in 2025 it's more like i first saw this movie when i was 12 years old right and so i will always be 12 years old when i watch it right and so how will it stand up to you joanna robinson a normal adult person yeah well, the question about that is there's just too much cultural currency around Happy Gilmore for me to be able to judge it effectively.

Speaker 2 Including, very importantly, the sequel coming out soon, which you are now caught up on all the appropriate lore for.

Speaker 1 I can't wait. I understand the heckler.
I understand the caddy. I understand everything.

Speaker 1 Are you too good for your home is something that I have said many, many times in my life. Wow.
Kind of knowing it was a Happy Gilmore reference, but like.

Speaker 2 You would osmost it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because like my friends would quote it all the time, so it's like it's a funny thing to say.

Speaker 1 The price is wrong, bitch is also, of course, an iconic Happy Gilmoreism that has made it into my lexicon.

Speaker 2 Rest in peace to Bob Barker. It's a real shame he can't be around for the sequel.
Like iconic performance in Happy Gilmore.

Speaker 1 So I think that

Speaker 1 I had a great time with Happy Gilmore knowing exactly what it would be. Yes.
What were your tin cup?

Speaker 1 I mean, I know you liked it, but like in terms of, would you recommend it to people who have not seen it before?

Speaker 2 Would absolutely recommend it. I mean,

Speaker 2 you brought up Bull Durham as far as like coming from the same creative sweep. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think it hits the exact same sweet spot, one that we indulge in quite a bit here at the ringer, which is like assigning cosmic divine meaning to the randomness of sports and to basically like our smallest obsessions, right?

Speaker 2 Like taking this thing that you care about and all of a sudden it is a unifying theory of the universe. And like Bull Durham is big on that too.

Speaker 2 Like the cosmic circumstances that bring people together and that cause them to like orbit each other with and without sports.

Speaker 2 That element of Tin Cup, I think, is great. I think the relationship within Tin Cup is great.

Speaker 2 The golf, honestly, like, again, for someone who is not prone to love golf on screen, like I need to be sold on it in the way that Happy Gilmore sells me on it. I fucking loved it.

Speaker 2 Like, it is a purely crowd-pleasing movie that I think would work for a lot of different people.

Speaker 1 I also have to say, in the world of

Speaker 1 professional sports cameos, I find the pro-golfers who show up in both Happy Gilmore and Tin Cup to be very, very charming. Pretty good.

Speaker 1 Do you want to hear a story about how they got the pro golfer cameos in Tin Cup?

Speaker 2 I would love nothing more.

Speaker 1 Okay, so one of the producers on Tin Cup, and I don't have his name right in front of me,

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 a pro golfer himself.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he plays the guy in the bar who like does the announcing as Roy is trying to like

Speaker 1 into the soda gun. So that guy is a real pro golfer and was a producer on the film.

Speaker 1 And he wanted a bunch of pro-golfers to show up in the movie, but he did not want to have to deal with agents and he did not want to have to pay them.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 speaking of the exploitation of labor. Among the pro-golfers are doing fine.
I think they're doing fine. Well, what these movies suggest, and this show suggests, is maybe they aren't doing fine, Joe.

Speaker 2 Not up here, man. Well, certainly not.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 1 again, in one of the golf podcasts that I listened to over this last week, he told the story about how, in order to not have to deal with agents and get to the golfers directly at a tournament, he had Don Johnson and Kevin Costner show up for a dinner for the golf players' wives and flirt with the wives

Speaker 1 so that they could convince the wives to tell their husbands to show up to be in Tin Cup. And that's why you have so many in Tin Cup, which I think they got for a song.
So yeah, it's great time.

Speaker 2 Kevin Costner showing up to flirt with anyone is an incredibly powerful bribery tool. And I say that as someone, as you know, Joe, like Kevin Costner, not my particular brand.

Speaker 1 I wanted to follow up here. I mean, I know we're here to talk ostensibly about stick, but a bombshell you dropped on me recently was that you don't vibe with Kevin Costner, who is

Speaker 1 much beloved by many ringer luminaries.

Speaker 1 So, but you do like Bull Durham. I do.
And you did enjoy Tin Cup. So what, and we, we've both not seen JFK.
Are we allowed to admit that on a microphone?

Speaker 2 I think that's okay.

Speaker 1 What is it about Kevin Costner that doesn't usually work for you and why does it work in these sports, in these two sports movies?

Speaker 2 I would venture to guess it's part of what makes him very attractive to people, which is like the

Speaker 2 smarm. What reads to me as smarm and to other people as like confidence or a cockiness that's like appealing.

Speaker 2 to me doesn't work well with the fact that in his movies, in a way that feels contractual to me, it's like he has to one-up everybody. It's like even when he loses, he still gets to be right.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so it's like when every movie kind of has that tone, I get a little worn down by it. And what works about Tin Cup is like, he just loses a lot.
And

Speaker 2 he's very often quite wrong. Yeah.
And so he gets the one-up moments, but it's like, you're doing this for the exact wrong reasons. You don't realize it.
Every other character does.

Speaker 2 They're all trying to help you. Yeah.
But you can't get out of your own way. Like, that's a version of Kevin Costner.
I can get behind. He doesn't play that version very often.

Speaker 1 I was excited for you to see this because I feel like Roy McAvoy, his character in Tin Cup, is, is this a sneaky backdoor Tin Cup podcast? Maybe.

Speaker 1 It's my favorite Costner performance.

Speaker 2 Has there been a Tin Tin Cuff Rewatchables? No. I guess this is it?

Speaker 2 Or the pilot?

Speaker 1 No, this is our bid.

Speaker 2 This is our bid. I have thoughts about Waffle House, about the Permian Basin.
We need to go deeper. Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 But he's such a perfect loser in this movie and a perfect loser that you want to root for. Yes.
And I like Kevin Costner a lot. I love Bull Durham.
It's one of my favorite movies.

Speaker 1 But this is my favorite Costner. Tin Cup is a top five sports movie for me.
And I'm just going to say that that is a fact and a truth.

Speaker 2 It's true about me. I have no objection whatsoever.
Love that. And as far as the stick element, I think Owen Wilson plays a great loser, too.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's always going to be at least a little bit likable, and they can kind of adjust that depending on what sort of character he's playing.

Speaker 2 But yeah, that baseline charm, plus the fact that there's always something about him that's like

Speaker 2 overly complimentary, overly flowery in his dialogue and a lot of his parts. It's like, again, it's like you're a little full of it, but I want to hear you keep saying it.

Speaker 2 And I kind of believe it, and you make me want to believe it about myself.

Speaker 1 And it's interesting to watch it because this is different from how much of Loki did you want to watch out? I love Loki.

Speaker 1 So like Mobius, his character in Loki is different because he doesn't look like Owen Wilson in that, right? He's got different hair.

Speaker 2 He still looks like Owen Wilson.

Speaker 1 But like, he looks paternal in a certain way.

Speaker 1 He, he is playing a different, not his usual Owen Wilson thing. He's got, he's got the laconic charm,

Speaker 1 but not, um, there's just something more put together and less uh scattershot about movie in local.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Um, this is a version by contrast where like Judy Greer's character praises him for wearing a clean shirt.

Speaker 1 This is what I'm saying. So, this is

Speaker 1 the Owen Wilson that we met in Wedding Crashers, um,

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 uh Royal Tenebums Owen Wilson, is even some a bit of Darjeeling Limited Owen Wilson, you know what I mean? Like, this is this is the Owen Wilson we met decades ago,

Speaker 1 and I love watching him in this because he's got his like, you know, beachy blonde hair, but it's decades later. So what does that archetype do for us decades later?

Speaker 1 And to your point about the Judy Greer character, like sometimes this is a man-child. Like that's, that's, that's there's no, there's no two ways around.

Speaker 1 As is Kevin Costner in Tin Cup, as is Adam Sandler and

Speaker 2 I can say this with professional certainty, many professional athletes.

Speaker 1 So like this is a man child. And sometimes I don't have patience for that, but there is something about having spent time with Owen Wilson

Speaker 1 that, like, I'm really invested in this man child learning how to grow up.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I really want to see it, you know?

Speaker 2 I think what's so great about him as a performer, and you know, he's had many different lives, playing all sorts of different parts, but kind of wandering to this stage in his career where he's done kind of the very like arch, sometimes campy, very stylized, like Wes Anderson stuff, obviously, that you alluded to, but also the deep comedy like Wedding Crashers.

Speaker 2 And we round the corner into something where it's like, I think maybe this started with more of like Midnight in Paris era, Owen Wilson.

Speaker 2 I love that movie, which is a great performance, a great movie, and kind of gets to this idea of this, of him having a lot of bluster, certainly, a lot of bravado sometimes or insecurity sometimes, but like a deep interiority that I don't think a lot of comic actors just like bring to every performance.

Speaker 2 Like there's a degree of like,

Speaker 2 This guy is like running from something or hiding something or fighting something in basically every role he ever plays.

Speaker 2 And recently that's become, I just want my kids back, whether it's Mobius or in this case, in the case of this former golf pro who, unfortunately lost his maybe young son, I guess we'll find out.

Speaker 2 I think that I think that's a really good point.

Speaker 1 And I think to go back to

Speaker 1 something like Darjeeling Limited, which is like not

Speaker 1 by any stretch the best Wes Anderson movie, but is one that I actually return to a lot and think about a lot because it came at this really interesting crossroads with Owen Wilson's own life.

Speaker 1 And so there is forever this

Speaker 1 soulful nature to an Owen Wilson that, you know, goes beyond what a Luke Wilson can bring to the table. Luke Wilson can bring plenty.

Speaker 2 I like he's a soulful man himself.

Speaker 1 But, but there's just like something different about I've been through it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 about Owen Wilson that brings us here to stick.

Speaker 2 He's just a delightful scamp. Like, I don't know how else to say it.
Like, Luke Wilson might be a little too, like, when he gets sad, he gets kicked puppy. When Owen Wilson gets sad, it's like

Speaker 2 there's still something.

Speaker 1 Needle in the hay starts playing.

Speaker 2 Big week for needle drops.

Speaker 1 All right, anything else you want to say about stick, golf, sports,

Speaker 1 cinema,

Speaker 1 stories for dads?

Speaker 2 We covered a lot of ground, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1 Small dogs.

Speaker 2 I don't know how we're going to cover this show exactly. You know, we're covering this with three episodes.

Speaker 2 We're not probably not doing it week to week. It's a triple premiere, so that's why we're covering these first three episodes.
I would encourage people to check it out.

Speaker 2 Again, I think a lot of people will like this show. Will it reach a Ted Lasso level of fame? That's a high bar to clear.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But personally, I would be down for it. I'm also just curious to see kind of how we want to continue to unpack this at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll see how

Speaker 1 the show goes and where it feels like a natural point to check back in. We will, speaking of sort of shows we're checking in on, our plan is for next week to check back in on Poker Face.

Speaker 1 There's been another four episodes for us to talk about, so we're excited to do that.

Speaker 2 Anything else? I guess just email us at prestige TV at spotify.com. If you're watching this show, if you like this show.

Speaker 1 How is Santi's golf swing?

Speaker 1 How is the golf on stick?

Speaker 2 We're talking to you, Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessy. Like

Speaker 2 we need

Speaker 2 some relatively expert testimonial that is above our pay grade.

Speaker 1 Please do.

Speaker 1 And that's it. I'm Jonah Robinson.
That's Broad Mahoney.

Speaker 1 And we'll see you soon.

Speaker 2 Bye.

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