‘Days of Thunder’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Kyle Brandt

Hey Rewatchables fans, you already knew we were coming to Boston for a sold-out show on March 27th, but what you didn't know is we're sticking around that weekend.

We're going to host our first ever Rewatchables Film Festival while we're in Boston.

We're screening some of our favorite movies, movies that we have done on this podcast, plus maybe a couple others at the historic Coolidge Corner Theater.

We're doing it all weekend from March 28th.

through March 30th, one of my favorite theaters in America.

We might even make a few surprise appearances at a couple of these screenings.

It's your chance to see some of our favorites as they were meant to be seen on the big screen.

Classic mob heist Boston movies we love.

Goodfellas, The Town, The Departed.

Oh, yeah, we're doing heat.

Again, it's going to kick off Friday, March 28th at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline.

Visit theringer.com/slash events for showtime and ticket information.

Hopefully, we'll see you there.

This episode is supported by FX's The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawk.

Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist/slash-rare bookstore owner/slash unofficial truth seeker who is always on the tail of his latest conspiracy.

This time, his most recent expose puts him head-to-head with the powerful family that rules Tulsa, meaning only one thing, he must be onto something big.

FX is the Lowdown premiere September 23rd on FX.

Stream on Hulu.

This episode is brought to you by Angry Orchard.

Rewatch your favorite horror movies with this perfect drink that's crisp and refreshing, but not too sweet.

Don't get angry that you already know the twist ending or who dies or in what order.

Just slash open Angry Orchard's brand new Halloween thriller pack made in partnership with the Jason Universe, featuring killer flavors like Berry Bewitched and Headless Pumpkin.

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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find,

what's it called?

The watch.

Yeah, that's it, right?

TV, the UN TV.

The Siege TV podcast.

Culture pod with you and Andy Greenwald.

You're on the big picture as well.

Try to bring your Philly specials sometimes.

Yeah.

Not a lot of Sixers talk there lately.

Kyle Brandt.

Yeah.

We can find you.

Where can we find you?

Tell us

off-season NFL.

You can find me on the Good Morning Football program, as always.

I did it this morning for four hours.

I'm ready to do more content with you for the NFL media group, and I'm ready.

Let's do it.

Is it good to get you groggy after four hours of content, or are we just getting like,

I don't know.

It's like you've played your second NFL game in the same day.

I'm curious.

No, but the good news is I had a 72-ounce mellow yellow, so I'm ready to rock that.

Let's go.

Change my tires.

Days of Thunder.

I guess it's sports movie month.

Let's go.

Cut me a loop.

Go, go, go!

The speed.

You're very quick.

Gotta see me drive.

The heat.

Yes.

The power.

You want to control something that's out of control?

Absolutely.

The thrill.

That lasts long after the ride.

Tom Cruise Days of Thunder.

Rated BT-13.

Starts Wednesday, June 27th at Theaters Everywhere.

All right, fellas, I guess it's officially Sports Movie Month.

We did Rocky.

We did Best in Show.

We did Days of Thunder, and we're more than halfway through March.

This was a special Kyle Brandt request.

Yeah.

Why?

Well, listen,

very personal to me.

I've never spoken about this publicly, but I first seduced my wife with two packets of Sweet and Lo.

So it's a very personal story.

No, listen.

Is this movie Timu Top Gun?

Yeah, maybe.

But Bill and Chris, it's great to be here.

I have not watched this movie in like four years after dozens of watches.

And as I'm watching it on the rewatch, as the credits are coming up, each name that pops up, I find myself saying, fuck yeah, like over and over.

And it became like the Team America, Tom Cruise, fuck yeah, Tony Scott, fuck yeah, Hans Zimmer, fuck yeah, Fred Thompson, fuck yeah.

Is it a great movie?

No, but it's really fun and it was like running into an old friend.

And it hit that 1990, it comes out, and it's just on cable for the next 15 years, just straight.

And you could jump in when you want.

What's your relationship, CR?

Yeah, like I, like Kyle said, I also regard this as essentially like cloned Top Gun, but man, this clone looks good.

And I have to say that

as far as like movies that have aged well in terms of like, if you get a good, if you watch this on 4K or something like that,

this movie has no business looking as good as it does.

Like Tony Scott, despite the fact that it sounds like Don Simpson was doing eight balls and pushing him out of the way of the viewfinder every five seconds, shoots the shit out of this.

And you really can just jump in and watch like a few races and a few scenes of tall nicole kidman kissing short tom cruise up against a wall and you're good for the rest of the month man yeah and it's also one of these movies that as the years have passed becomes just more interesting from all the side plots of when they made it what happened with cruise and kidman uh the half-assed internet research for this movie is almost too much

It was one of the rare times, like, you know, if we're doing boogie nights or something like that, there's going to be a shitload of research and it's worth it.

This is like, how long do we go about Don Simpson?

Do we go an hour?

Do we go three hours?

Like, what's Should we do a separate pod about Don Simpson trying to catch himself in the movie?

Well, we might have to because, you know, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer are these legendary 80s and 90s producers.

And they're starting this giant Paramount deal they did, which according to Premier Magazine was five movies, $300 million,

which is crazy.

And there's there's been podcasts about these guys.

There's been books written about them.

They've been, the story has been told ad nauseum about just how crazy Don Simpson was.

This was the craziest

he was during this entire run, 1990, where he's just like, budget, fuck it.

Is it 35 million?

Let's go 65.

Let's just argue on the racetrack about a scene for an entire day while we pay, you know, hundreds of extras and then not film the scene.

This is like the kind of shit you would see in a movie about Hollywood that would seem like, wow, they really went for this movie.

This is crazy.

This actually all happened.

This budget ends up being like $65 million.

If it was actually

$65 million, I'm six foot three.

Right about 100.

You guys, I'm sure everybody has different takes about what's happening with the economy now, but I think we can all agree we want to get back to a place where a movie production can literally take over the city of Daytona.

Right.

Yes.

And put up neon signs outside of nightclubs and whatever that says of thunder, where the producers just lord over the city like kings.

And Tom Cruise has like a coterie of like handlers and all this, like this must have been such a mind-blowing thing just to be fly on the wall for that it actually is almost as good as the movie itself.

Yeah, we're coming out of the cocaine era.

We're coming out of it.

That's right, Bill.

There's no cocaine era.

Well, there's Don Simpson's trying to keep it alive.

And it's that 80s excess era that's still kind of going in 89, 90, these big budget movies, a lot of sequels at this point.

I was trying to think like in 2025,

what would be a more sure thing idea than this was in 1990, where you have Simpson and Bruckheimer

and a red, red, red, red-hot Tom Cruise basically redoing Top Gun with race cars.

There's no scenario where somebody could be like, all right, it's going to be let's say chalamay yeah it's going to be chalamay okay who is a producer that was more reliable at this point than simpson bruckheimer i can't think of one what's the sport that hasn't been dove into like this i can't like kyle i i don't i i just think this is like a one-on-one in a weird way even though the movie's not great no if if you if you heard today that shalamay was teaming up with chris nolan to make some crazy thing that's really cool but it's not the nitroglycerin effect of tom cruise over the last five years he had with Jerry Bruckheimer.

And you're right.

It sounds like a fake movie that would be being made in a movie.

Like Christopher Maltasante making Cleaver.

It's like Days of Thunder even sounds like a fake name.

It sounds like a stupid fake name that would be in a movie.

And I love that Simpson's going to get shine here today because Bruckheimer, I think, is so much more famous, contemporary to the young people.

But it feels like Simpson was really the wild one of the group and everything you hear.

Right.

Well, Simpson,

so they're talking, they're talking in the Premier magazine, and basically the premise of this is there hasn't been a cool race car movie since Laman with McQueen, which is a very cool movie.

It's a little dated now.

The movie is like 51 years old, but it's still cool.

And I think it was really inspirational for people who care about cars.

The Porsche that was in that movie, I forget what actor had it.

It was like Kevin Costner or somebody like that.

Bought it.

Got the actor Laman car?

Seinfeld bought it for like a million dollars.

He collects Porsche.

porsches 2001 and sold it for like 25 million dollars in the last year

but it was it and and since that movie there was a couple other ones like bobby deerfield happened there people kind of dipped in this pool but i felt like yeah i think they felt like this was sitting there and the other thing that was in that premiere piece was how excited nascar was

to welcome these guys into their world.

They basically, this is like if somebody made an NBA movie now and they were like, hey, we need the actors to play in an exhibition game.

We need to have all your uniforms.

We need like scenes of them in the fourth quarter playing with your players.

And they're like, cool, take it.

What about a regular season game?

Okay, great.

Let's put them in that too.

We'll do 10-day contracts.

That's how crazy this is.

You know what?

It's like, okay, so Dark Knight Rises, the NFL is like, you're not using our teams.

You're going to blow up a stadium.

That's crazy.

However, when Sudden Death with Van Dam goes to the NHL and is like, can we have the Penguins and the Blackhawks because they're going to blow up the stadium too?

They're like, sure.

You're going to make make a movie of the NHL, please.

We'd love to have you.

You want Jagger?

Yes.

And we'll put him in the movie.

We don't care.

Take it.

That's the NASCAR here.

So

the premise of the, or the, the, the bones of this movie, CR.

Yeah.

Tom Cruise will go into the moment he's having his career.

Bobby Duvall, big shot, Bob.

Fresh off turning down Godfather 3 for $5 million.

He's like, you know what I'm doing said?

Days of Thunder.

Nicole Kidman, 23 years old.

Had only really done Dead Calm.

I saw Dead Calm in the theater.

We all marked it.

We were like,

this lady's great.

Really interested to see what happens with her.

Did not expect to see her in Days of Thunder with Tom Cruise.

Michael Rooker.

Yeah.

Kyle, we'll say, we'll put him on this.

Oh, we're going to talk a lot of

Rooker.

I think this might be our third Rooker together.

We do a lot of hodgebols.

The rest of you guys can do the Tom Hanks and the Daniel Day-Lewis.

We do Michael Rooker and NCR.

I'm so glad you're here.

Rooker has officially passed Daniel Day-Lewis in rewatchables.

When we do the rewatches, Rooker is going to get like a special achievement for some of his great moments.

So we got Rooker.

We get John C.

Riley.

We get Kerry Owies.

who just keeps popping up in movies in the 80s and 90s, but there's no Kerry Owies conversations.

We get Fred Thompson, Randy Quaid.

We get a produced by Simpson and Bruckheimer.

Story by Robert Towne and Tom Cruise.

Yeah.

This felt flimsy to me, CR.

Well, apparently the idea for the movie came from Tom Cruise and Paul Newman doing like a charity race.

And Cruz got obsessed, had been obsessed with racing since he was a kid.

And then he got Robert Town, who's a big running sports, like aficionado, a passionate fan.

But let's just say they weren't at Starbucks banging out plot points on a yellow notepad.

I'm guessing I agree.

But Robert Town becomes like Tom Cruise's sensei for the next four or five movies.

Right.

So this is a written by Robert Town.

Robert Town, for the younger ones listening, legendary screenwriter, 1780s.

Shampoo.

I think detail.

Yeah, if you're just mentioning, hey, who are the great screenwriters?

His name is going to come up in the first five, six names you mentioned.

So he's in there.

Music by Hans Zimmer and Jeff Beck.

Fucking A.

Go, Kyle.

I mean,

just cook right now.

now.

Zimmer, you can have your John Williams.

Zimmer is my goat.

We just saw him in the headlines for the Oscars, but he is handed this white trash redneck NASCAR script and said, just make it cook, Hans.

And I said, I got you.

If there's a wheelchair race, I'm going to score it.

And he is one of the stars of this movie.

Not to step on casting what ifs, but.

Movie's first offer to Harold Faltemeyer, our guy.

Oh, really?

And Harold goes, you know, I'm not feeling it.

Can I introduce you to my friend Hans Zimmer?

And they're like, sounds great.

And Hans is like, I'm thinking there's some like orchestra stuff, but like a heavy electric guitar.

Yes.

And it's just,

and we just, and that's my, and they're like, go, cook, Hans.

Yeah.

And I say in the middle of movie, we put the guns and roses.

Usually you're losing one out of nowhere.

Let's do it.

I met Jeff Beck at a dinner party.

He's going to come in and do the electric guitar.

And then directed by Tony Scott, CR.

Yes.

Tony Scott now moving into first place in the all-time director rank.

As it should be.

In the rewatch.

As it should be.

Tied for first now.

I was thinking about this within Unstoppable, with Top Gun, with Days of Thunder.

Is there anybody better at shooting moving vehicles than Tony Scott?

Yeah.

No.

No.

Like maybe the best director of like movement that we have.

we ever had.

And Chris, Tom Cruise has talked about this many times on record.

He still thinks there are things ripping off this movie and the way that they shot that and how good it is and how good it looks.

And I remember when the three of us, I think the last, the three of us were last together on Roadhouse.

And after we made some like stupid comments at the beginning, CR jumped in and was like, this movie looks great.

It's got bones.

And this movie, for all its idiocy and wheelchair racism, we'll talk about.

It looks amazing.

And I think Cruz was super proud of it.

He still is.

He still talks about it.

So there's, I sent these guys

a video that nascar has put up all like these uh old daytona 500s of the cbs broadcasts of daytona 500s on youtube you can watch like they're like two and a half hours or whatever and it's really awesome just to go back in the time machine and see how like tv broadcasts were in 1990 right but one of the cool things about it is you can watch daytona from 1990 and see how a cbs tv camera shoots it

And then you can see how Tony Scott and Ward Russell shoot it and all the color they find and all the shadow they find and all the texture they find.

And it is literally what cinematography is.

It is seeing something that isn't necessarily there and embellishing things and lighting things in a way that brings out story.

And it's so awesome to check it out.

Well, and then the other cool piece is, so in the 90s, we had the square TVs all the way through the 2000s.

And now widescreens really helped us.

HD, you can get this on 4K Blu-ray now, and it fucking looks amazing.

Bill, did you wet your beak?

Did you get this on Blu-ray?

You know, I didn't because it wasn't going to show up in time, but I'm going to.

Okay.

I'm going to get this in Rush, actually, because, as you know, I love Rush, but I think those two.

So in the all-time rewatchable standings,

Cruz is now up to 16 Rewatchables movies.

He is a three-movie lead over De Niro and Pacino.

But more importantly, Tony Scott moves up to nine in a tie with Michael Mann.

And I don't know what we do now, CR.

I feel like we almost have to get Michael Mann.

We have a few left.

I think we got to shoot one next.

We can't have him be tied for first with anybody.

Yeah, but we're going to have to.

So we're going to have to do a 10th Michael Band movie next month.

Yeah.

No, there's some good ones left anyway.

Yeah.

I just wanted to flag that because I, you know, I know Michael's a huge fan of the pod.

He takes it, takes it really seriously.

And

I don't think he wants to share first with the movie.

Well, we've been teasing the revice for a while.

Yeah.

Well, maybe, and maybe that'll be it.

So Richard Petty said of this movie, the only thing they got right was the numbers on the side of the cars.

I don't think this was very.

Talk your shit, King.

Settle down, Richard Penny.

Tom Cruise's first prime, 1986 to 93.

Yeah.

I think it's similar to LeBron, Brady, some of the great athletes, where it's like, oh, this first specific prime of Top Gun, Color of Money, Cocktail, Rain Man, Born the Fourth of July, Days of Thunder, Far and Away, Few Good Men, The Firm.

It's like this confined eight-year run.

And then we get a little weird with the interview of the vampire, and all of a sudden we're at Jerry Maguire into Eyes Wide Shut, Vanilla Sky, which is kind of like the first Mission Impossible.

That's kind of the second cruise prime.

Then we end up with that long stretch following Oprah's Sofa where we get Reacher.

We get some good ones, some bad ones.

It's a little like when Brady didn't win a Super Bowl for a while.

And then Top Gun Maverick.

And then some Mission Impossibles.

Now Cruise is like in his fourth prime.

I'll let LeBron play.

Edge of Tomorrow in that Edge of Tomorrow.

Yeah.

The other prime, yeah.

So four primes.

But Kyle, this was the first cruise prime, and he's basically playing variations of Pete Maverick Mitchell in as many movies as possible.

Where does Cole Trickle rank for you in the cruise rankings?

Because I was kind of

maybe one of my least favorite cruise characters of this run.

Yeah, it's

Kirkland Brand Maverick.

It's not the best character.

It's not.

It's a funny name, but

we never get the scene.

Like in Maverick, He has the scene in his tidy whiteys where he breaks down over Goose's death, and that's a really powerful scene.

He does really good acting.

I just,

when you're talking about this air of his prime, and I had this in What's Age the Best, it is Cruise with the greats of the old guard actors in the ring delivering.

He goes from 86 to 93, Newman, Hoffman, Duvall, Hackman, Nicholson.

Every single movie, it's him and a first ballot hall of famer doing high drama.

And, like, I like that he jumps off giant buildings right now and it's fun, but he used to go at it with the giant actors.

And this kind of brought me back to that.

Yeah.

And then Leo kind of followed that blueprint a little bit too.

How can I work with great directors and great stars?

But yeah, this is a great run.

So, and then he's in Few Good Men in the firm.

You know, Few Good Men is like the super cocky, sarcastic cruise.

Rain Man is the full of confidence charisma cruise.

Cocktail is, to me, peak cruise.

That's like my favorite cruise.

I just love cocktail cruise.

And then this is kind of in the top gun camp, right?

CR is there.

I guess Color of Money is a big charisma, like street tough cruise.

But I think that the thing you're locating is probably a...

result of the fact that they didn't really have a script when they started shooting this thing.

So

there is like

gestures towards like Cole's

father being

a financial criminal and ruining the first part of his career.

Then there's like, this is a guy who wears button-up white shirts all the way to the top and yet is in NASCAR.

So like, where's he coming from?

What's he doing?

He's from Eagle Race.

Ultimately, at the end of the film, I walk away with it being more of a movie about the Duval character than it is about Cole.

And it's about the Duval character learning to like trust a driver again after what happens with John C.

Riley's dad and everything.

But yeah, I, for me, this is way more about racing than it is about people.

And it's way more about watching shit go fast than it is about like guys doing great scene work.

Kyle, do you think Cruz was trying to make this guy like enigmatic,

trying to figure him out?

Was this like, was that like the cruise angle?

Because it's a pretty muted cruise performance.

Like you could argue this easily just could have been Kevin Costner.

Like this isn't like a cruise dependent role, whereas the other Cruz movies, like you can't have cocktail without cruise you can't have few good men without cruise this i feel like you could have other actors those guys of his ilk are always begging for demons and like there's legendary stories about leo diaprio would follow james cameron around titanic be like you got to give this guy some backstory this guy is a huge pussy jack dawson he's just totally nice and there's a little bit of that going on with cruise like when he's maverick He's referred to as like, it's got to be hard when you're Pete Mitchell's kid.

Like that is a heavy burden.

This is like kind of just an idiot who shows up on a motorcycle and his character twist is that he doesn't know anything about cars and like a completely, completely half-baked father storyline that CR just talked about.

And it's probably because they're like, you know, guys, shouldn't we figure out that dad thing for Cole in the third act?

And they were like,

no,

just more fucking racing.

Yeah.

And Cruz basically, it is like watching like LeBron on like the 2018 Cavs just being like, I'll turn it on this game and put up a 32, 11, and 12.

Yeah.

He has like four scenes where he's like, I'm going to cruise it up this scene.

So it's enough that he still gets the win for being cruise.

It's interesting too, because like there's probably a more Vince from Color of Money than there is

Pete from Top Gun in this movie where Vince in Color of Money, it's like he's being manipulated.

Like, what does Paul Newman call him?

Like, you're a great flake.

You know, like, you're kind of an idiot, but I can use that.

I can use your, your arrogance and your idiocy, you know, against other players.

Uh, Cole's confidence and his sort of like, I don't really know anything about cars, I just know how to drive.

Like, that is a kind of electric idea, but they do away with it once a brain surgeon falls in love with him.

Yeah.

So you can see somewhere in the middle, they were like, no, Cole's actually an emotionally,

you know,

he's like very like unpacked so that we can have Nicole Kidman be in love with him.

Yeah, I think if you're redoing this movie and you could cast anybody from any era, this is like a Brad Pitt mid-2000s.

Well, they're doing it now, right?

I mean, kind of with F1.

This is like, you want the guy to be handsome, a little enigmatic.

I can't read him.

Cruz has too much charisma to do that.

And I think he wanted to be that, but,

you know, eventually

you can't contain your inner Tom Cruise if you're trying to get it.

I think some of the things he has going for him in this movie is great Cruz hair, like really, really cool hair for 1960s.

Maybe the best hair he's ever had.

Really?

Like a full pert plus commercial, a lot of body.

And then listen, the top gun comparison, he's really good at a tight shot of his face wearing a helmet with his name stenciled across it, saying one line at a time.

When he says, Harry, this guy's going down.

It's fucking awesome.

It feels like Maverick is back.

It's cool.

You left out one piece of the cruise pie.

The

blank face of fear.

I don't know how this is going to turn out.

Maybe, maybe I shouldn't do this, which they

use leverage perfectly with the smoke scene.

Yeah, the driving through the wreck being the beat.

The blank cruise.

I'm not sure this is a good idea, Face.

When it's his re-engage Maverick, he's going through the wreck.

He's sitting there saying, Talk to me, Rowdy.

Talk to me.

He's looking at Rowdy's dog tags, and it's like, Trickles re-engaging.

Yes.

It's to the note, the same motion and scene.

Do you think they thought about calling Rowdy Goose or no?

Gooseburns.

Nicole Kidman, her first mainstream movie, because Dead Crown was an indie.

She's 23 years old in real life, playing a brain surgeon.

Just want to point that out.

But she could have a little doogie hauser action going there.

She could have just been second grades.

She chased the SCTs in Australia, whatever their version of it are.

Probably cool.

Yeah.

She looks fantastic.

Yeah, subscribe.

And when you think she's been in our lives since DEDCOM, but really since this movie, and it's a 35-year run, and just thinking about, what was that movie called Baby Girl, Baby Girl, fucking insane movie, and she's still cranking it along and making weird sex movies and still going.

This person here, it's almost like watching like her,

the Nicole Kidman now, like her red-headed daughter is in this movie.

Like, she just seems so young.

And now you watch this movie with this whole backstory of, oh, Cruising Kidman fell in love on this movie.

CR, is this the prequel to Eyes Wide Shut for you?

Yeah, I have some Eyes Wide Shut notes actually later for the different categories okay okay yeah great uh cole trickle loosely based on the careers of tim richman and jeff bowdine

tim richman we did uh 30 for 30 in season one about was a pretty crazy nascar driver ended up getting hiv

um passed away pretty tragic story before jason thunder even came out right yeah yeah um But Dale Earnhardt Jr.

said he thought the movie was based on a rivalry between his dad and Bodine.

And then they stole a bunch of NASCAR stuff.

Like the Cole and Rowdy would drive to the dinner thing together.

That came from an actual meeting when they were trying to get Earnhardt Senior and Bowdine to

kind of get along better.

Cole deliberately blowing his engine by overrevving.

That was a famous Tim Richmond story.

He did it.

Trickle Camp Pitt because the crew was too busy eating ice cream.

Apparently that happened in 1987, Southern 500 with Benny Carsons.

And then Cole and Rowdy destroying rental cars.

Apparently in the 1950s, these these two NASCAR superstars, I know you're very fond of them, Kyle, Joe Weatherly and Curtis Turner.

Those are my guys.

Supposedly would just rent cars and then just fuck them up and race them.

Ever since I got Enterprise President's Club, I do that.

You do.

Yeah.

You and Fantasy on your way to a shoot?

We like to drag race civics.

Yeah.

Just crash it into each other.

Can I ask you guys, what's your 1990, what's your relationship?

to NASCAR because for me, this kind of slots into one of those movies like, to some extent, extent, Rounders, Color of Money, this

movie that goes really in-depth into a world that I am like, that's cool.

I'm not going to now become a NASCAR fan or a billiards fan or a like a hold and poker fan, but I am very interested in this movie's version of this world.

So the complaints about this not being accurate to me don't really bother me.

Yeah, I don't care.

I don't care.

But if they did this about football

and probably took the liberties they took with this movie, the three of us would be going nuts.

They only had 10 guys on the field for the final, for the final sequence.

Like, what are they doing?

And I'm sure NASCAR Reddit is up in arms about how it's treated, but this is a NASCAR movie, like Point Break is a surfing movie, or Roadhouse is a movie about, you know, owning a bar and what it's really like.

It's, it's ridiculous.

So I get it, but I'm just, I'm, listen, when I was in 1990, I was in fifth grade, and what I knew about NASCAR was this movie.

And if you went to Hardy's, the restaurant, they had little matchbox cars you you could buy.

And I had a couple of them.

That's it.

I'd never seen a race, know anything about it.

It was this movie.

I saw this movie when the summer, I think it was after a sophomore year in college.

I just saw it for Cruise.

It didn't make me want to care about NASCAR at all.

It did make me wonder why there weren't more NASCAR movies.

And then every once in a while, what was that Burt Reynolds movie with Sliced Alone, Burt Reynolds driven?

Oh, yeah.

2000 range with Kip Pardue from Remember the Titans.

For sure.

And that was like that.

Every decade, somebody goes for it.

But I mean, I'm sure when producer Craig pops in, he's just going to, he probably, he hadn't seen this movie till last night.

And this is, this is basically Taladega Knights is a parody of this movie.

Yeah.

Right.

So that's, I think, people's relationship under 40 with this whole world is Talladega Knights.

I thought that NASCAR back then.

Because NASCAR obviously made that big push where it's like, actually, secretly, this is the biggest sport in the country.

You know, like that was like trying to do that a couple of times.

10 years ago, but this, it it was still like very much like a regional phenomenon i think like i was aware i think my dad would watch like the dayton of 500 and every year i'd be like so this is like their super bowl and he's like yes but it's also the first race and it's like it would always that was basically it was like indie 500 dayton of 500 were the extent of the car races that i would watch i think i think nascar is apex mountain for sports that you have to be there in person to really enjoy.

And that's what everybody says.

And like, I've gone, I went to a race once.

I went to a race 15 years ago and it was outside Chicago.

And you cannot fucking believe how fast the cars are going.

You watch it on TV and it looks like they're crawling.

And I remember I got to like, I got to go in the pits and like super randomly, this was the time in the Chicago area that Rex Grossman was there.

And I was like, what's up, Rex Grossman?

And he was enjoying it too.

But when you go, it fucking blows your mind.

It really does.

Rex is like, I'm thinking of taking us to the Super Bowl and then completely falling apart.

Kyle's like, that sounds great.

Yeah, but first, have the opening kickoff be returned for a touchdown and your dumbass still blows it.

Yes, that's what he was talking about.

My relationship as a kid of the 70s and 80s with this whole world was every once in a while, Sports Illustrator would write about it.

Like, I just looked it up because I remembered it was Cole Yarborough.

I didn't remember who the other person was, but there was a big fight in 1979 between Cole Yarborough and Bobby Allison.

I think Bobby Allison.

Yeah.

And Sports Illustrator wrote a story about it.

And I was like, whoa,

these guys fought on the track?

Like, that's car seems kind of cool.

And they never watched it.

And then the other thing would be if it was on a network that had football, they would promote it.

Yeah.

Coming up next.

Daytona.

But it just never

took.

I always felt like it was just kind of in the south, just kind of happening over here.

You know what, Bill?

When I used to work with Jim Rome, we would book NASCAR drivers as guests.

And the reason we would do it is because.

They would talk shit and they were open and loose.

And it wasn't like basketball or football players.

They don't care.

She'd have Tony Stewart on and he would say some crazy, bombastic thing about another driver that no player on the Knicks would ever say.

So they were really good talk show guests, and they were always the NASCAR's always providing them anybody you want.

They're trying really hard, and that was part of the draw.

The personalities, like the first two months I had my podcast for ESPN, 2007.

Tony Stewart was one of my first guests.

Did Tony Stewart call in on the Subway Fresh Take hot?

I don't even think it was Subway Fresh Take yet.

And I did the research and I saw that he had a car, number 33.

so i was like oh this would be a good icebreaker my favorite number larry bird yeah and we started off i'm on the phone with him so i can't see him and i'm like yeah you know you know i you're one of my favorites because you raced number 33 and he's like uh I'm actually number 20 or whatever it is.

I only ran 33 that a couple races.

So it was just couldn't have been off to a worse start.

And then he withdrew.

And it was like one of the, it was probably the worst anybody I'd ever, ever did for the podcast.

To Kyle's point, though, about like how loose those guys were, I was just talking before we started recording about uh I think it's the 88 Daytona 500 I was watching last night I kind of went down the rabbit hole

just doing the work there's a Richard Petty crash in the 88 500 he really bad it looks really bad but they they like you know pull him out of the car they're like towing the car off they're like oh this is so bad this is so bad and they go down into the uh you know, the, the infield and they have like the sideline reporter guy is outside of the medical tent and AJ Hoyt walks out of the medical tent.

He had been in there too.

And they're like, AJ, how's how's Richard looking?

And it's like, what if he's like, Richard's dead?

Like, like, what, like, like, I was like, what are you guys doing?

There's no, this would be like, basically, like, going up to AJ Brown and being like, Saquon's in the tent.

How's he doing in there?

And A.J.

Brown was like, concussion or knee?

He blew out his knee.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You remember when a Rogers tour is Achilles?

They went to Tyrod Taylor and said, How's Rogers look?

And he's like, oh, he's fucked.

I'm going in.

I'm more of a.

We're going to take a break.

And then when we come back, we're going to talk about a famously fucked up shoot.

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This movie was filmed in and around Charlotte and Daytona Beach

and went 25 to 30 million over budget, they say, which is probably really 50,

because we had Simpson and Bruckheimer, we had Tony Scott, Scott,

legend, a rewatchables Hall of Famer.

I'm not positive he was that easy to work with from time to time.

So you have him and then you have Robert Towne, who's on the set with like crazy power.

And then you have Cruz.

And it's the four guys and then sometimes Cruz just arguing about everything because they keep changing the script.

The crew members apparently made so much overtime that they didn't have to work for like six months after.

Scenes were written day of the filming.

This almost seems too crazy to be true, but apparently, Cruz would have cue cards on the windshield because the scenes are being rewritten so fast, he wouldn't know his lines.

And Towns sometimes would be on the radio telling him what to say.

Yeah, well, Cruz ends up almost crashing because of the cue cards.

So they decide that's a bad idea.

They have to put the earplugs like he's a quarterback in football with Towns as the OC calling him plays.

What were you saying, Kyle?

Tom, Tom, right now on this turn, say, I'm dropping the hammer.

Say it.

Say it.

Say, Tom, just just, I'm dropping the hammer really quick.

Filming finished three months late, and it's crazy shit.

Like, Towns really wanted, I guess, Duval's character to have an awesome barn.

So they built the barn.

Towns, like, I don't like it.

Let's do it again.

Knock it down.

They build it again.

He's like,

and now.

Still didn't get it right.

They knock it down.

They built it a third time.

He's like,

nah, let's use the one we scouted before.

So they built three barns.

Didn't use any of the barns for like four weeks of something.

Now, I just want to say,

I will die on the hill of Robert Town should get to do this.

And this is what I wait for.

Yeah.

When you hear stories like this, you kind of understand why they shoot everything on the volume now and everything is like VFX and CGI.

It's like, we're never getting back to the place where one coked up screenwriter could be like, build me another barn.

Well, Chris, that video that you sent of the real race where they shot this movie, one thing that jumped out to me is in the CBS coverage, there is a shot of cold trickle on a spineboard being lifted up from a helicopter that is not in the movie so they paid for a helicopter to lift up tom cruise they show but they show shots they show them they don't show yeah they don't show the wide shot in the movie you're right it's not in the movie like you got to use that if you pay for it i think it's because i wonder whether it's supposed to have happened well no it is no it happened no they just probably decided not to like it the other thing is they they did all these reshoots they went all this money over budget and then realized after they finished the movie that they didn't have Cole Trickle crossing the finish line in the biggest detail of the whole thing and had to go back

and redo that part after it was already done.

It was like probably the only thing that really truly mattered to get on camera.

They didn't get

Simpson and Bruckheimer

spent $400,000 and this is 1990 money.

So what's that?

Like 2 million now?

I don't even know.

A lot.

To have part of their hotel that they were staying in converted into a private gym.

Oh my God.

That also had a large neon sign on it that said Days of Thunder.

So that happened.

Simpson had a whole closet of Donna Karen dresses, and he would offer women that he met either the dresses or come be my assistant, stuff like that.

They were throwing parties every night.

Disgusting and amazing details.

Yeah.

They had parties with people like Tone Loke rapping.

They

post-production was five weeks instead of five months because they took so long to film this thing that they were like, this movie's coming out June 27th, 1990.

This is it.

It's coming out on this date.

They don't finish until mid-May.

They now have five weeks to edit and finish and complete and get prints out for the movie.

Paramount was so upset afterwards that they asked for a 9 million refund on the profit participation from Don and Jerry.

We're told no, and then ended the relationship that had just started.

So basically, like Buffalo gives Josh Allen that $330 million deal.

He has one bad season.

They're like, we're out.

We're just going to pay you off $120 million.

Done.

My mind is wandering to that gym you mentioned.

I'm just wondering.

That $400 million gym.

What happened to it?

What were the top five exercises those assholes were doing in that gym?

I think it's a lot of like curls for the girls, bicep, tricep, decline bench press, calf raises, like all the assistants.

I would say

calfs and biceps.

You're such a sweetheart for thinking thinking that there was any exercising going on in that gym

maybe they really used it once right yeah no but can you imagine if there's one guy who's like guys i just want to get a pump in with all the other stuff going on here i think the best time

the best time to get a pump in was probably between seven and nine a.m in the morning because dun simpson was

those would be the rasillo hours

like can i want to get on that lap pull down jerry jesus christ it's i don't know if there was a lot of gains being made in that gym there was one of the stories about it.

They're talking about the gym.

Yeah.

And they make a point of saying how Cruz didn't work out in the gym because he was renting a house and built his own gym in the house.

They're just like, they're shooting $100 bills all around the Carolina area.

Has there ever been a scene stealing location award for something that's not even in the movie?

I want to hang in that gym.

Well,

they did a lot of press, too, about

this Paramount deal they did.

They took the newspaper ads for themselves, congratulated themselves they did all that so hollywood was lined up at this point hollywood was in full fuck these guys mode cr sent us a spy magazine one pager where some of the stuff that we're talking about was in there but it's like 450 vulgar

and it's everything you need to know about like hollywood access it's somehow it's basically written like a very very erudite party report and this person is obviously talking to people on this set but it's just such a great portrait of these guys just going full Babylon.

Well, and it fucked up.

So their next movie is supposed to be Beverly Hills Cop 3.

Yeah.

And still catching Eddie at the tail end of before I think he moved into a different phase of comedy.

And that gets delayed for three years.

By the time they make it, it ends up being one of the worst sequels in a while.

But then Simpson just is a fucking mess for most of the 90s and then has the one last comeback with Bad Boys and Crimson Tide ends up breaking up with Bruckheimer and then dies overdoses bill here's here's an unanswerable question and you mentioned this like is cruise part of the decadence if if it's blow and women and party and all it's cruise in he's in scientology by this point he's like already yes yeah because there was uh yeah even like a little tidbit about how the

the brain surgeon who's nicole kidman's boss is named after his like one of his Scientology associates.

There's some slightly weird Cruz stuff with that.

I like Cruz, but you know, he gets divorced from Mimi Rogers near the end of the 80s.

There's stuff in here about how he selected Nicole Kidnan to be his co-star in this.

They started dating, and it does feel a little recipe-ish.

And we'll leave it at that.

$60 million budget, allegedly.

I'm going to say it was really about, what, 85 CR?

$90,000.

Yeah, $85, $90.

Yeah.

The $400,000 gym, maybe not in that budget.

It did make $157.9 million.

Are you going to ever have a Don Simpson phase for me, Bill?

Like, are we ever going to really ball out?

I've had it.

It's like Watergate.

I can just go back and do it again.

I've already, I've already done it.

I've already read all the books, but I'm happy to redo it if you want.

Uh, Cruz, no, I actually mean like when we go to Boston for

me having a Don Simpson.

Yeah, I want

out late at night in the combat zone, you know,

putting up a days of thunder gym.

I'm too afraid.

The Lembias put the fair guy out of me.

Okay, that's it.

I just

fascinated by it, but I'm

probably like Cruz.

I like being peripherally near where the debauchery is happening, and I like hearing the stories after.

But keep me out of the rooms.

But do you ever think about the fact that Don Simpson was probably your age when he was making Days of Thunder?

Like, oh, I imagine younger.

Yeah, was he?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

I think during the cocaine era, like my 55 was like 42.

They look 55.

Yeah.

Don Simpson was 37.

Holy shit.

Wait, wait, wait.

47.

Sorry.

47.

So Don Simpson's my age making Days of Thunder.

Yeah.

So you just add another 10 years.

Cruise made $9 million plus points for this movie.

It got nominated for an Oscar for best sound.

Roger Ebert, three stars.

Days of Thunder is an entertaining example of what we might as well call the Tom Cruise picture.

And then goes through all the beats of Tom Cruise movies, which I don't need to read.

Parts of the plot are beginning to wear out their welcome, but the key ingredients are still effective and then he says about nicole kidman kidman has little to do as the love interest and doesn't make much of an impression

i disagree i think she glasses it up yeah i do i thought she looked awesome uh our guy quent tarantino loves it loves it yeah i saw this this is awesome i'm a big fan to me days of thunder is the movie grand prix and laman should have been Sure, it had a big budget, big stars, and a big director in Tony Scott, but it had the fun of those early AIP movies.

I just don't think it works if you take the whole thing too seriously.

He also loves Tony Scott, we should mention.

Speaking of taking this thing too seriously, I just want to throw out a Robert Towne quote about this film:

Days of Thunder becomes the struggle of a driver to replace his belief in his own infallibility with the true courage of a man who recognizes that even if some things are beyond his control, he must go on to face them if he is to race, to win, and to live his life.

Come on, that's how he said.

That was not my takeaway.

He's driving and he goes, son of a bitch.

And like, that's basically it.

Yeah, that was not my takeaway.

That should be a new category.

Okay, Bob Towne.

Sounds good.

You're good there, bud.

Got it.

Yeah, I mean, Bob Towne probably was thinking about this like the way, like, to me, without limits, the other, the Prefante movie with Billy Cruddup.

That's the version of Days of Thunder Bob Town probably had in his head, but that's not what is up there.

That's not what Tony and Don were thinking.

No, that's not what they're thinking.

All right, categories.

I'm swerving with you guys.

I have two categories at the top before most rewatchable sites.

I'll move some stuff up because I think it's too important.

The Chess Rockwell and Brock Landers Award for best character name.

Yeah, come on.

Our nominees are Cole Trickle, Rowdy Burns, Harry Hogg, spelled H-O-G-G-E,

or Buddy Bretherton.

I think it's Rowdy Burns.

What do you think, Kyle?

I think this category could be renamed the Cole Trickle and Rowdy Burns Best Name Awards.

It's Rowdy.

Listen, Rowdy says it all.

And again,

a guy named Rowdy directed Roadhouse.

And you know what you're getting from someone named Rowdy.

And his last name is Burns, which is also like fire.

It's just absolutely perfect.

Rambunctious Fire, Rowdy Burns.

That's the name.

We're due for a rowdy in sports.

Yeah.

We are.

Like, if I guess Abdul Carter is a pretty good name, but like Mason Graham in the NFL draft right now, if Mason Graham's name was Rowdy and he was like, it's Rowdy Graham, the Michigan defensive tackle, I'd be like, Jesus, that guy's got way up the big board.

It should be Rowdy Graham.

It should be a quarterback who kind of like flames out at Notre Dame or USC and winds up at like Washington State or something like that and sets the world on fire.

It's like Rowdy Burns is back.

Rowdy Burns.

It'd be like Johnny football.

Yes.

It'd be like that.

I think it's been a long time since we lost Rowdy Roddy Piper.

So it's like we're due for a rowdy.

We're due for a rowdy.

Yes.

Well, another category.

This is a brand new category, CR.

Okay.

376 movies.

I think it's a decent ad.

You're still surprising me.

The Dr.

Claire Lewicki Award for worst character name.

Why is her name Dr.

Claire Lewicki?

She's a fucking redhead from Australia.

How did they come up with Lewicki?

In addition to never filming the checkered flag at Daytona, I think they also forgot to maybe tweak the name from the first draft.

Once they hired Kidman, like, couldn't she have been Dr.

Claire Sanders?

Yeah.

Lewicki doesn't sound like a story.

What's the story

about the Beatles, like Eleanor Rigby?

Like, Paul McCartney just opened a phone book and chose a name.

And that was literally how they came up with that name.

That's how they sent them.

They were too lazy to take it out.

I don't know.

Lowicky, fine.

Like, I just watched Youngblood.

The coach's daughter, like, could be, it could have been a Lewicki.

Like, she's living in nowhere, Canada.

Like, but Dr.

Claire Lewicki

town's like boom, I'm taking a break.

I can't, I have, I gotta believe I came up with such a great name, Dr.

Claire.

The fact that it's paired with Cole Trickle and Russ Wheeler, like, those are bangers, and then they just fall off the table.

What an amazing New York Times wedding announcement.

Cole asked our driver Cole Trickle spared Dr.

Claire Lewicki, 23-year-old neurosurgeon.

The groom more mellow, yellow, green.

Yes, I think she keeps her name of Claire Lewicki Trickle.

That's that's it.

Uh, most Most re-watchable scene.

So, Cole's first scene.

What's going on?

He's had second thoughts.

You said you'd look at it.

I've looked at it.

I paid $2,500 to use his track today, Harry.

Forget it.

He needs a brand name like Exxon or Richard Petty.

Well, I know a damn race driver when I see one.

What's going on, Harry?

Is this happening or what?

Do us all a favor, Harry.

I know a damn race car driver when I see one.

Let me drive.

I won't make a fool out of you.

We get that whole thing.

Cruise showing up on a motorcycle is hilarious.

How many times has Cruz broken out of a motorcycle in a movie?

If he had

done the research on this, a compendium of Tom Cruise's character entrances.

Yes.

I think

he thinks about.

I think it's something that he is very conscious of.

It's almost like professional wrestling.

Like he's come to my favorite.

I think it's like in collateral, which is kind of the opposite of this in terms of like the smoke and everything but the door just opens and vincent from you know collateral vincent is just standing full on right in front of the camera he's so good at making a huge first impression with these characters it's i'm so glad you said that i mean i listen i think of the magnolia entrance with the 2001 theme on the stage but i when he rode the motorcycle through the smoke onto the track on this rewatch i laughed out loud i was like absolutely hysterical and that opening scene that's that scene between him and Rowdy is what you call in scene study class, like a dick swinging contest.

It is so much back and forth.

I like that Rowdy goes and sits on his bike to reclaim status.

I like that Cole puts his duffel bag on the hood of the car.

It's so much back and forth.

I love that scene.

Yeah, I had this written later, but Randy Quaid was in Brokeback Mountain, and that somehow wasn't the gayest sexual attention movie that he's been in because Cole and Rowdy.

Incredible.

You build me a car and I'll win Daytona next year.

I love when people just say shit like that.

You're in a football movie.

You're like, you get me an offensive line, I'll win the Super Bowl next year.

It's like, you're from fucking Eagle Rock, California.

You're racing like,

what are you talking about?

Next one, Cole's first four races, disaster.

We do get the Kid Cuddy Pursuit of Happiness Award, best noodle drop for Give Me Some Love and Yeah, and I would actually go,

we need to kind of maybe come up with a subcategory here.

I think you could make the argument that Give Some Loving is the most effective montage song that we have in American cinema history.

I was thinking about this that, so I was going to go a different way.

Are we at capacity now with Gimme Some Loving?

For sure.

Like Shanitz is almost like in the air tonight for football games.

Like just no more.

Like we're good.

We had a great run.

But this is a little bit of a slow first 15, 16 minutes.

You know, a lot of talking to the car frames, a lot of like hold my duffel bag stuff.

When give me some loving kicks in, you're like, oh, fucking Tony Smith.

Yeah, that's damn right.

He rubbed you, and Rubin Sun is racing.

Stuff like that.

We get to hit the pace car.

We get the, we're busy, we're eating ice cream.

We get lines like, what do we do?

We end up looking like a monkey fucking a football out there.

Can we talk about that line for a second?

I had sponsors in the stands, and I'm hugging and holding hands, and kissing them in the ear, and praying for a good showing.

And what do we do?

We end up looking like a monkey fucking a football out there.

We all work in sports.

I work

implicitly for the NFL.

I have never heard the expression a monkey fucking a football out of nowhere.

I don't know what that is.

It's never been said.

And I also think it's the closest in the movie that Randy Quaid gets to being Cousin Eddie.

This is one year after Christmas vacation.

And when he says fucking a football, he is this close to saying Catherine revving up the microwave and pissing my pants for five minutes.

It's so good.

I love that line.

Great Randy Quaid run.

We also get Cole saying, there's nothing I can't do with a race car, which I think if it's story by Tom Cruise and Robert Town, he probably suggested that line.

I'm just throwing it at the wall.

You can use it.

You can reject it, but just what if this guy is.

My feelings won't be hurt if we don't use this, but I think it's good.

Next one, Cole wins his first race.

I like the whole concept of I'm going faster, everyone else is going slower.

It feels like there's some deep NASCAR shit going on there.

I don't fully understand it.

We get the pit disaster.

We get Cruz flipping out.

Set him a bitch.

This is before he had like the voice leveling stuff because when he screams, his voice goes too high.

Carrie lies about the tires I like.

And then

always fun when it's the boy who doesn't have the balls to pass me on turn four.

None of us understand NASCAR, but it's like, yeah, that sounds pretty crazy to pass him on turn four.

Is he going to try that?

That line should be on the freezing cold cold takes Twitter account.

Like, he doesn't have the balls to do it, and then he does it.

And then also, Russ Wheeler at the end.

I know Cole.

He always goes outside.

Oh, he's going low.

Freezing cold takes.

I know Cole.

I've raced against him four times.

But it's kind of like, it's like Fun for October.

It's the crazy Ivan.

It's going to go one way or the other.

It's not like he can go underneath of you, man.

You might as well be aware.

I enjoy that part.

I enjoy when they win a race in car movies.

Just a brief scene, but Cole getting stopped by the police stripper.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a very important scene.

Do you think that was a Don Simpson special?

He was like, I need to rent out this willow tree, light it beautifully, and then have an unnecessary stripper scene.

I think when you say Don Simpson special,

odds are strippers and or cocaine are going to be involved.

So in this case, we get one.

What did you think of Tom?

If this movie was rated R, this scene could have definitely

talked about about it.

But no, we could have explored the studio space with this scene, I think.

Well, looks like we found something.

What's that?

Concealed weapon.

Where?

Right

here.

Now,

the only question is:

will he actually use it?

Well, I have a question about that.

And I had this later, but so that woman's a prostitute, right?

Like, I don't think she's a prostitute.

I think she's an exotic dancer, Kyle.

I don't think so, Chris.

Exotic dancers don't immediately kiss you on the mouth the second they meet you.

Show some respect.

I did.

And God bless the sex workers.

I think, and my question was, does Cole have sex with that woman?

Because again, the stripper doesn't show up and immediately kiss you in the mouth.

That doesn't happen that way.

I think she's a prostitute.

The implication is there's a little bus orgy right after that.

Oh, I thought it was more like he's a bus orgy.

No,

they all have sex with her.

What are we talking about?

I thought there were more, there's more than just one woman.

No, it's a bunch of guys.

It's like Nick Sarah.

Yeah,

there's a second woman.

My unanswerable question is:

what happens next?

Like, right when that scene cuts, like, what do they all do with that woman?

Does she strip in front of nine dudes?

Do they let crews go in the van?

She goes in the bus with Cole.

And I told you there were more women, but you know what?

Okay.

So, wait, last question about that woman.

And do you guys, you guys know who that is, that actress?

Do you know this?

Can you save it for casting or for DM Wayne?

Yeah, yeah.

I'll say it.

It's unbelievable.

I couldn't believe it.

Oh, I couldn't believe it.

Do you know Chris?

Do you know CR who that is?

Okay.

You want to do it now?

No, let's save it.

Let's save it.

Let's save it for the audience.

Now they're excited.

Yes.

Next scene is another short one, but Cole thinks Dr.

Claire Lewicki is another stripper.

After the crash.

After the crash and puts her hand, there's some violations here, but it leads right to the wheelchair race, which is a phenomenal scene.

But this whole stretch is pretty funny.

This is probably my favorite part of the movie right around right around here.

Cole

wheelchair, the race.

Cole wins his first race,

the bus, the all the stuff.

The accident, all the stuff.

I enjoy the rental car race.

How did they end up in the water during this?

If you had to guess

in the water?

In the rental car race.

We're

down there.

We're banging in the street.

All of a sudden, we're on the beach just going through water

spraying.

Yeah.

But then we go back.

My senior year in high school spring break was Daytona Beach.

You can drive on the beaches there.

There's an actual beach where there's cars.

That's a real thing.

The valet situation is funny, too.

Yeah.

Cole ruins Russ Wheeler's victory lap when he comes out and just rams his car.

I love that part.

Um,

they write in a little cruise Duval.

Like, let's do a little four-minute emotional scene here.

Yeah,

I'm not getting back in my car.

I'm getting in Rowdy's.

Oh, well, that sounds just dumb enough to be a race driver.

You think you'll hide from your bad luck in his car?

And what the hell for Rowdy?

If he can run tomorrow, he crashed you to win the race.

He's mean.

He's no particular friend.

so why

because he asked me to horses

you just want a race again yeah

so do you

it's really the only time cruise dials it up as an actor for two hours and duval's you know he's going against an oscar winner there's there's a moment and then that is the only problem with that scene is there's

all of a sudden not only does cole know a lot about cars

But also you're like, we're going back to the guy that died on Harry's watch, which only got mentioned in the first scene.

Yes, briefly.

Thank you.

And there's a lot of like forensic kind of like, oh, no, he didn't have a heart attack.

He was talking, you know, like, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like, what happened?

I'm watching this movie for the first time and it was something you casually mentioned an hour and a half ago.

What?

It strikes me as someone had a moment of sobriety on stage and they're like, all right, hold on.

We got Duval and we got Cruz coming off 4th of July.

We got to have some acting in this fucking movie.

Let's throw a scene together and you guys just talk about some shit.

It felt very ad-lebbed from the hip because you got those guys.

They got to act a little bit.

I did like the whole idea that Cole blew his engine on purpose because he had the yips.

I'm afraid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Last one, Cole's big Daytona comeback.

Seeing the smoke, driving through it.

Symbolic in a lot of ways, Kyle.

A little like, I'm sure Josh Allen watches this movie and thinks there's going to be another moment on a fourth and one.

I just got to go through the smoke.

That smoke is the Chiefs every single year.

Just got to go through the smoke.

He got, you know, Joey Bosa, who plays like three games a year.

That'll be a difference for 12 million bucks.

We're set signing.

We're set.

Uh,

I like the big.

We gotta, I mean, none of us understand race car driving at all.

The whole, we gotta get out before that pace car.

Oh, that was awesome.

They show the pace car back to thing.

Oh my God, the guy can't get the look done in.

Everybody, oh, oh, we made it.

Uh, very fun.

And then he's going high.

He's going low.

Awesome.

Um,

I had this later, but I'll do this now.

Now, this is really good.

This is almost like this could be a social clip.

So, if you're the hero of a sports movie and you could pick any, any movie, what would be the single most fun scene to reenact if you were the actor?

Because I would make a case winning a huge race in either Indy 500 or NASCAR.

And then you get to do the thing where they all lift you up and they pour champagne on you and you're celebrating.

That seems like it would be number one.

I couldn't think of another one that would be better.

throw, maybe a perfect game running toward the catcher and jumping into the catcher's.

I thought baseball as well.

I was thinking of William Mays Hayes going home on Clue Haywood and the Yankees.

He slides into home and the Indians win and they switched to the ship.

And then the dugout jumps on him.

Yeah, like that, the dog pile.

Like that.

I would love to see that.

What about like a game winning, like a natural Roy Hobbes wins the game?

That's the home run tries.

I wouldn't want the bleeding out of the side out of my side, but I would like to break the lights with a home run.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Because then you could do like the Vanderbeek winning and varsity blues end zone celebration.

You could have the Jimmy Chitwood

making the jumper at the top of the key to win the state title and

the whole arena comes at you.

A fun part of it, too, is

with Vander Beek and with Cole Trickle is you get a victory makeout like right there in the celebrations.

Your first base is awesome.

You involve all the characters.

Boxing has like you win and everybody comes in the ring, but I really think racing is number one for this because you get all the characters in the movie things poured on you and you get to kiss somebody uh

what's the most 1990 thing about this movie

so i'll give you three choices tom cruise and nicole kidman falling in love which seems like it happened 130 years ago we for sponsors we have tied snickers skull and exxon and then mellow yellow i think exxon and mellow yellow being sponsors have exon was like nothing can go wrong for us yeah this would be great

they're still cleaning off those poor ducks with just covered in oil.

I feel so bad for those ducks.

Guys, we have this spot in Days of Thunder.

Yeah.

This is the peak.

By the lighthouse, we're good.

I think, unless you guys can come up with another one, I think I have the winner.

Is there anything else you think is 1990?

I got one too.

Russ Wheeler's girlfriend.

That's what I have.

She's basically Brigitte Nilsson.

Did they clean up her hair?

With dark hair.

She has the high top fade and the crazy boxy blazer it's it's just like chris i got this 90.

it's it's it's brigitte nilsson wearing some sort of pants suit with mike allstott shoulder pads underneath the jacket it's unbelievable the only thing that was missing was fred willard as the announcer going look at that happy fella

i think i have the winner Okay, this is just from the research verbatim.

The film's theme song, Last Note of Freedom, was sung by White Snakes Snakes lead singer David Coverdale at the request of Tom Cruise.

Fucking awesome.

Yeah.

Is there any other point in the history of America where Tom Cruise would have requested a song from

White Snakes David Coverdale?

No.

We're looking at 88 to 90.

That has to be the window, right?

It's also amazing, too, because David Coverdale is probably like, God, you know, I did, here I go again.

I'm with Tawny Katane.

Yeah.

In Days of Thunder, and then Nirvana comes like nine months later and wipes him off the face of the earth.

David Coverdale's at an Exxon rap party, and then they're just like, guys, it's going to get better for all of us.

He has $2 million from Exxon to perform Is This Love for five minutes and then walk off stage.

That's the worst.

What's Age the best?

Robert Duvall is the crew chief.

Rarely do you see somebody this overqualified to be in a sports movie where they actually care about the movie.

Like Gene Hackman's in the replacements.

He's mailing it in.

It's still fun.

R.I.P.

Gene Hackman Duvall's like I actually like this character I'm gonna explore maybe I can steal this movie from Cruz like I just think he's really good I would honestly watch him talking to car frames for like half an hour yeah he's like I'm gonna build you close to the ground give you a good restrictor plate you know like is is it a hot take to say this is a top five favorite Duval movie Pretty hot because he's been in a lot of good movies.

Yeah.

Well, the other take is that this is a Robert Duvall movie featuring Tom Cruise and Duvall wins the movie.

Like Like, that's that's another take because every time Harry's on, it's good.

It would be like Tom Superman.

Yeah.

The hairdos, you mentioned this is the best Cruise's hair has ever looked.

Yes, ever.

I almost feel like there's been some decisions in the last couple of years where he's gone to the barber slash hairstylist slash die job person.

Sure.

And been like, hey, man,

Days of Thunder photos, like, could we, how close can we get to this?

Well, can I give it a special shout out to like the Top Gun comparison?

Russ Wheeler shows up with the same Iceman hairdo.

It's the same shit.

It's a blonde spike.

It might as well be Vel Kilmer.

It's ridiculous.

I know.

But it looks cool.

And curly hair Kidman is a special place in my heart.

Yeah.

Because what happens when...

Especially really, really attractive women have hair like that.

They ride it into their mid-20s and then they start straightening it out and they never have it again.

And I was having a conversation with my wife.

I was last night about Nicole Kidman's hair as we watched.

I think her hair was like fifth on the call.

She, she's like, her hair is amazing.

I'm like,

and she loved the hair.

It's like a running quarterback, you know, like they do it for a few years, and then it's like, no, no, no, I'm a pocket passer with straight light hair.

It's so good.

I just thought she was lights out back there.

I remember, did I ever tell you?

I was at a restaurant once with the great John Walsh in the early 2000s after I moved to LA.

So it was probably 03.

And all of a sudden, Nicole Kidman walked in and the entire restaurant stopped.

And it was the only time I've ever seen that.

And it stopped not because she was famous, because she was like so beautiful.

Everyone was like, oh, my.

It was like watching like dolphins jump in the fucking ocean.

It was incredible.

Everyone's like, oh, my God.

It's like tall, just like great.

But shit, what a great run by her.

Two best, aged the best, two Oscar winners, Kidman and Duvall, like sharing actual scenes together.

Yeah.

I don't think he was thinking this lady is going to be a multi-Oscar nominee someday as he was banging those cold trickle scenes scenes out with her.

Bill, did Walsh offer Nicole Kibben apart on Around the Horn?

Like, want to be one of the panels?

Bring him in.

Come on.

Because like, Hitler, I'm going to introduce her to Eric Reid home.

John C.

Riley basically as Reed Rothschild in this movie for what's he's the best.

Is there any difference with him and Reid Rothschild from what we can tell?

No.

No, and it's fun because he's intelligent and ice.

It's like, it's very meta and it's cool.

But no, he is, he's young, dumb, and he even plays guitar like Reed Rothschild does which is really cool so yes

Paul Thomas Anderson was just like just do the days of thunder guy that's really and the idea is basically that Duvall has kept Riley that Harry has kept Bucky on because his dad was the driver that died under Duvall's panel that story by Robert Towne and Tom Cruise also Bill I got it I have to jump on this the town cruise when you mentioned p.T.

Anderson So the scene when Cruz meets Russ Wheeler and he's on the phone and like kind of just mails in the handshake.

Yeah.

That is the exact scene when Jack Horner brings Johnny Doe to meet Dirk Diggler and he's like, this is a new guy here.

He's like,

yeah, it's the same scene.

I bet PT loved this movie.

Oh, no question.

Cause we know he loves Cruz and Riley, too.

Yes.

Kerry Elways as a dick.

I don't think there was.

Val Kilmer is probably 10 out of 10 best dicks of the 80s, 90s, but Kerry Elways was always a solid eight and a half.

I have two more, but do you have, guys, any more what's agenda?

I burned all mine.

What do you got, Chris?

I'm always here for drunk Tom Cruise.

It's like watching an alien try to speak French,

just him having a bud, trying to watch a monkey fuck a football.

Yeah, it just really is like so fucking funny.

And

we've discussed this before.

It's clear that he's never had a drink alcohol in the last 40 days.

It definitely seems that way because he's just when he gets drunk at a few good men, when he gets drunk here, it's just like, hey, man, that's not exactly how it goes.

It would be like if I tried to film a cocaine scene and I was like,

and you rub your gums.

Yeah, because you've seen violence.

I also just love

when

Rusty is like, I'm going to pull this rookie's chain.

I love hazing rituals happening at 185 miles per hour.

It's awesome.

Two more from me.

I'm more afraid of being nothing than being hurt.

Great yearbook quote.

Just pencil.

What are we in?

March.

We're still like handing in high school yearbooks.

Throw that one in there, somebody.

Couple racing lessons, as I've mentioned mentioned many times, we don't really understand this world.

Couple lessons I took away: driver has to trust his crew chief.

Sure.

Just know that going forward.

Tires win a race.

It's a dirty secret.

It's not about the car.

It's not about the driver.

It's the tires.

Don't have two race teams if you're the owner, like Randy Quaid.

You got to pick one.

You're going to have tension.

And then

this was probably the best advice.

They're calculating drivers and kamikaze drivers.

Which one are you?

So, Bill, when you're like, I don't like it when you do two other pods on a rewatchables day, is that because you're trying to keep my tires?

Right.

No, you're doing like four.

Your tires are like freaking a mess.

Can we talk?

Can we talk about the wheelchair scene?

Is it time?

It's amazing.

Go ahead.

It's just Tony Scott being like, it's like when we were at the Masters with Chang once and he just made us a pizza out of stuff in the fridge and it was like saltines and like a tomato and some broccoli.

And he's like, we're going to make a pizza out of this.

That's Tony Scott.

Tony Scott and Hans Zimmer saying, let's do the stupidest scene ever.

And yet, am I crazy?

It's my favorite race in the movie.

I like it better than any of the car races.

It's more entertaining to me.

And if you really get into the tape of it, like dive into the tape, the funniest movie of the wheelchair, part of the wheelchair race by far is at one point, Cole's nurse.

catches back up with him and takes the handles and fucking rowdy hits his hands away from Cole's wheelchair to preserve the integrity of the race.

Like, I'm going to win the right way.

And I think the subtext of that scene is Cruz was not to do any driving in the whole movie.

He wasn't allowed to drive the car for insurance reasons.

I feel like that scene was his Daytona.

Like, this is the one race they let me do, and he's fucking.

But it was actually kind of unfair because he's coming off of Born on the Fourth of July.

So he's been

in the wheelchair

for like the better part of the last two years.

Well, what I heard, it wasn't in the research, but I'm guessing Rooker was in the $400,000 gym just working on a wheelchair treadmill that Don Simpson bought him.

Triceps, you're right.

Getting it going.

I forgot to ask you guys what your most re-watchable scene was because mine is also the wheelchair scene.

Chris?

Mine is probably the montage, the give me some love and montage.

Okay.

I'm here for Rooker, and the most Rooker scene in this movie is when he first meets Cole is, you run good.

Now get your own car and me in a crowd.

Like, I I love the opening scene.

Uh, taking one more break.

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The Big Kahuna Burger Award, Best Use of Food and Drink, has to be Mellow Yellow, just being a sponsor, right?

We can't top that.

I actually looked this up.

Mellow Yellow still exists in some markets.

Did you know that?

I didn't.

It's

still alive.

Is it Coke's answer to Mountain Dew or vice versa?

One of those?

Yeah, it's kind of like it doesn't really work anymore, but they don't want to officially cancel it.

The only other thing I had was

when they finally get to the dinner with Fred Dalton Thompson.

Yeah.

And Cole goes for the crudite first.

It's like, is anyone, has a NASCAR driver ever had crude in the history of man?

Yeah, it's from Eagle Rock.

Yeah.

Would you have Kyle?

I mean, do we consider sweet and low to be food?

It is a sweetener.

You should consume it.

Okay.

We double pack it into the thigh.

It's mine.

Great shot Gorda award for most cinematic shots.

You have one, CR?

Yeah, you know, every shot in this movie is pretty much everything that modern blockbusters are not.

But there is a shot at the Daytone of 500 when the cars are passing like the last officials before they get ready to start.

And there is a low-angle shot of all the cars going by, and all these fucking balloons are going up in the background.

And I'm like, Tony Scott, you are an absolute demon for this.

This is such a great-looking piece, and it's just a throwaway shot.

But pretty much everything in this movie could be a painting.

I zag, Bill.

The shot that should be in the Smithsonian is during the physical when Cruise and Kidman are actually standing face to face, and you can see how short Tom Cruise is.

He never let that happen again.

That's disavowed by him.

Yeah, he's only ever been posted up by Kidman and McGillis.

Those are the only two times he's gotten dunked on.

Yeah, in the 4K Blu-ray, he actually had them add six inches to his height in that scene.

Yeah, they're the same height.

CR, you're up with the flex category from categories we don't normally have.

Yeah, I got a Vincent Chase award.

Are we sure this character was actually good at his job?

And I gotta say, it might have been the brain injury talking, but Rusty's Rowdy's idea to let his wife design the $10 million house when she maybe has no background in architecture or project management with maybe like hey rowdy maybe one more brain surgery settle down

she's from jacksonville rowdy settle down

that's good i like that one the butcher's girlfriend a word weak link of the film what do you got kyle

all right so i i have a little one and a bigger one the little one i have is that

We never really get full rowdy burns.

Like he never really goes super, super intense.

You don't yell.

It's not like he, it's a very underplayed performance there.

And I'm always waiting for that one scene like in Cliffhanger where he just screams at Stallone and goes absolutely nuts.

And we don't get it.

But my bigger one is just, it's

a little too much talking going on.

In the second half of the movie, we got too much talking and you're like, get us back to the racetrack.

I get these scenes of Duval talking to the car and them and Cruz.

The second half drags because I think in a race car movie where you just want to see ass kicking, a little too much talking.

I think I had no, I had the same.

i think i know why that is okay and it is one of my what's aged the worst i think the crash happens too early in the movie interesting i think it would be cool if maybe that montage scene had been two two montages or whatever it had been five minutes longer but that crash happens like

you don't really get that much time with cole racing in a in in his prime before now it's all of a sudden this is a movie about cte you know

right i had the i had right after the middle of the movie I think it craters for about 25 minutes, Rowdy's battle with a career-ending injury.

It just, just kill him off.

Cole's road rage incident and her being like, nobody has control.

Um, every scene where Claire is like mad at Cole or they're trying to establish some sort of tension with them, it just doesn't work.

Let me out of the car, Cole.

Let me out of the car.

Um,

I like the idea of moving it.

I like moving the crash later.

I think that's a good idea.

I would also, you could have talked to me into a Harry stealth cancer battle

that Cole finds out about when they have the big back and forth in the end.

Rocky plot line.

Yeah, just like a little, yeah, a little Creed one.

Something's wrong with Harry, and he doesn't want to tell Cole, and Cole finds out.

I think this movie's better off with Rowdy just dies.

We lose all those scenes.

Yeah, they goose.

We basically, and they probably didn't want to do it because they didn't want to have the goose parallel, but we have that.

So that's it.

And we have a hairy cancer battle.

They were like, we can give Carrie Elways Val Kilmer's hair.

Yeah.

But we can't have Kilmer.

Guys, they're not going to take us seriously if he dies.

Come on.

Hey, now we get to do the Elizabeth Shu as an Oxford Electrochemist Award for most ridiculous casting.

A lot of options, but it's hard to pass 23-year-old Nicole Kidman as Charlotte's best neurosurgeon.

The second best.

She's got this.

I had this as my flex.

I was going to reach to the top of the Elizabeth Shu Oxford.

And I just, I want to establish for the record: if any of us were in 1990 in Daytona Beach, Florida, of all places, and needed emergency care, we would get it from a 5'11, 20-something, beautiful-looking Australian doctor who is also completely DTF.

Like, I don't know if that is the fit that you would get.

The odds have got to be long.

What was a more unrealistic character, her or Kelly Lynch in Roadhouse?

If you had to guess, most unrealistic.

Why are you living in this part of the world?

And why are you this good at your job?

I think it's Lynch is unrealistic because she's in Jasper of all places and is a billion out of 10 working the ER in Jasper.

At least Paige Nowicky, whatever her name is, gets the call out from NASCAR.

Claire.

Claire Lewicki.

I think it's the Kelly Lynch scale of ridiculous physicians.

Do you think that Lewicki is in Daytona because that's where all the good brain injuries are?

Or do you think that nobody believes a 23-year-old could do this job so she could only get a job?

Yeah, this is the best way to do it.

But I think she's supposed to be like 29.

Right.

But she, I mean, she looks like a kid in this movie.

Anyway, she's young.

Um,

what's age the worst?

The video game for this movie stunk.

I just wanted to get that on record.

It's terrible.

Bad, really bad, really disappointing during an era where our expectations for video games were starting to go up.

And this was bad.

And in general, most driving video games were bad in the 80s and 90s.

But this one, I feel like that you spent a hundred million dollars, you fucking built a gym for Simpson and Bruckheimer.

You could have a good video game, CR.

Come on.

Yeah, it's that's a tough one.

What was like kind of the preeminent driving game right around this time well arcade wise pole position was great yeah

pole position was iconic for five six years and that's days of thunder at least should have had an awesome arcade game with cruise's face on it like i don't know how they that up no like in the arcade at this point there's a game called outrun on nintendo

was uh rad racer on nintendo was kind of the standard rad racer years earlier

there was fun stuff but this on the golden eye scale of like movies being made into video games this is a two The top gun game was way better and you couldn't fucking land.

So this game is really bad.

Give me more Woods Age or Worst because I have three left.

What do you guys think?

Chris?

There's just too much baggage in this movie.

Everybody's got some sob story with the exception of Luicki.

There's just, and it's hard to navigate it.

It's hard to separate it.

John C.

Reilly never even gets like a moment to grapple with his dad, but Harry's talking about him all the time.

I just feel like there was like one too many things on a whiteboard that they put in the movie.

yeah, it's an eight-episode prestige TV series as a one-hour and 40-minute movie.

Yeah.

And then the only other thing would be knowing that they had to go back and reshoot the end of Daytona, I feel like they could have spent one more half a day on nailing Cole's reaction to winning NASCAR's biggest race, which is, all right, all right.

Yeah, it's a great let's change the worst.

I couldn't agree more.

Let Tom Cruise be like, let's fucking go.

Oh my God.

Another Tom Cruise.

No, you're right.

He should have done the KG.

He should have.

Like, think how many times he unleashes in Cocktail, which is only two

years before.

Like, at least break out the Brian Flanagan for a split second.

You have anything, Kyle?

Yeah, I have Cole's courting of Dr.

Noicki as one of the most deplorable, ridiculous things that's happened.

Four steps of being a creepy stalker/slash asshole.

Step number one, you take the doctor's hand and put it on your penis in a room full of witnesses, and they all just laugh.

Stage two, you then wait for her in the parking lot by her car, which is what serial killers do.

Stage three, you fill her apartment with $10,000 worth of flowers and balloons, which is the terrible thing to do.

And if you do that, they call the cops to have it photographed.

And stage four,

after you kiss her in the middle of the physical, you walk out and say, How are you ignoring me?

Which is really the line from Fatal Attraction.

It's like from start to finish, deplorable and gross.

And she apparently just loves it because she's in it's almost like this is a character who's probably dyslexic and has a massive brain injury

right she has to and he has to both of them that's a great i love that kyle um i have some small ones i really like the scene when harry's building cole's car and he's like he's got the hands yeah and we see like the frame of a car and then in 10 seconds there's the car i could have gone three more minutes with them

him like instructing people.

No, no, you got it.

The fender's got to look like that.

Like, I just, I was so interested in that part and it just is gone immediately.

I could have done, I could have done a whole scene.

Randy Quaid's character is named Tim Dalland.

Yeah.

This is a movie with Rowdy Burns and Cole Trickle and Dr.

Claire Lewicki.

We couldn't have done better than Tim Dalland.

Can you just talk me through financially?

What's Tim Dallin on the hook for here in the beginning?

It's like he's basically putting up all his money to get into NASCAR and then hoping he gets sponsored, but then over the course of six races, is swimming in it enough to have two car to have two.

Yeah, so some bigger motor sports entity comes in.

Okay.

It's like a henchman.

Cole won like six races in a row.

Yeah.

Oh, that's like the greatest rookie.

I don't think it ever happened.

Yeah.

So I think he's looking to expand on the coal, riding the coal gravy train, and he gets the second car, and then that's it.

Is that a nitpick CR?

Nobody wins six races in a row in Baskar?

At least the way I looked it up, it was something like he had won five out of six or something like that.

And it was like, I think the like, if you win like two in a row, people are like, holy shit, like we're, we're in a rarefied era here.

So, this is any given Sunday, but Willie Beaman throws for 590 yards five weeks in a row.

Yeah.

And 400 TDs.

All right.

My big one.

I'm really excited to share this with you guys because

how much you

love this.

Awkward Tom Tom Cruise bedroom scenes.

Go on.

This is yet another one with the

in bed.

It's it's the, he's got they're lying next to each other.

It's like, did they have sex?

Are they about to have?

You can never tell with Tom Cruise in bed.

It's like, did he just come?

Is he about to come?

What's going on?

Maniacally laughing in Jennifer Connolly's face.

So much comedy in bed.

Most guys are in bed.

They're just like, that girl's hot.

I'm going to try to have sex with her.

Tom Cruise is like, he's on Sirius Channel 94 doing like comedy bits on Netflix is a joke.

He brings out sweet and lows.

There's always props with Tom Cruise.

He can't just be like, hey, you know what?

I'm going to do is make out with this person and then

let's do a genital thing.

He's like, now I'm going to bring in some condiments, some sweet and low.

But I was trying to think like the awkward Tom Cruise bedroom scenes of all time.

Go on.

This is like an eight and a half.

I think that with Gina Gershon and Cocktail, that's like a solid eight.

I don't know what they're doing there.

They're bouncing around.

They fall off the bed.

It's like nobody has had sex like this ever.

Top Gun with Kelly McGillis is a nine and a half.

And I think a 10, I think a solid 10.

Top Gun Maverick with Jennifer Connolly.

Which is the most chased sex scene in American history.

We broke it down when we did the immediate rewatchables after seeing that movie twice.

I still don't know what happens.

Every time it's on

cable near that scene, I watch it because I enjoy it so much.

He's just laughing.

They're just laughing hysterically.

It's unclear what's happened.

Did they just make out?

Yeah.

So, Kyle, why can't Tom Cruise get this right?

What's wrong with him?

I think you hit something there is that when you watch a bedroom scene, you should know unequivocally if they already did it or they're going to.

And I have no idea.

And I will only jump in.

I got more sex scenes I'm thinking about.

Jerry Maguire with Dorothy Boyd, they're playing a jazz record and she comes out.

Oh, that's another one.

And then they start doing doing awkward kissing.

And I'll tell you.

And Bonnie Hunt's listening to the laughter.

It's like, why is there so much laughter?

Why isn't there grunting?

And fucking Luther Van Dress.

Bonnie Hunt, go to a 7-Eleven.

What are you doing?

Get the fuck out of here, Bonnie.

Same best Tom Cruise sex scene ever.

Same movie, Kelly Preston.

And that's because she goes to fucking town and he just sits there.

And I feel like Cameron Crowe, after like six takes, was probably just like, Kelly, just go fucking nuts on him.

All right, just go nuts.

All right, I got it.

Cruz doesn't get it.

Just

in the complete ham.

But he has the

risky business train scene.

He starts out great with the sex scene.

Yeah.

Then we have all the right moves with Leah Thompson, which is like a very tender high school.

Oh, here's the first time you've seen me without my shirt.

It's one of those.

It's like very early 80s.

I wasn't going to pull my shirt up.

Yeah, it's time.

But awkward, whatever.

But as the 80s go on into the 90s, it just gets weirder and weirder.

And then Eyes Wide Shut

in some ways, Eyes Wide Shuttle is the most erotic.

Because that's just like, it's capturing in him at his weirdest.

But once he was on the sofa with Oprah, I don't know if we ever saw it again other than in Maverick.

And then in Maverick,

I still can't explain it.

Are they watching Seinfeld?

Like, are they, what?

What's happening?

Are they waiting for a post-trained order?

What are they doing?

I like J.

Farkasi.

What are they laughing about?

She's like, I had this customer yesterday and he tried to pay with a five, but he gave me 100.

He's like,

SNL is so back.

Anyway, all right.

Ruffalo Hannah Rubinik Partridge Over Acting Award.

Probably Cruise in the Car a couple of times, I would say.

Unless you want to go all of Kara Elways.

There's a very specific thing that Duval does in a lot of his films, which is fucks with a guy to the point where the guy gets mad at him and then he laughs at him.

So when he's doing the ice cream thing and Cruz gets out of the car and he's like,

like a real De Niro Cape Fear?

Crazy Duval laugh.

Yeah.

All right.

So the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford.

How does Take a Word?

I have one.

Do you guys have one?

I do have one.

So in my research for this film, there's a lot of stuff that is unattributed, but I loved this one so much because of what it means to movie history.

And I think

without without Dr.

Jerry Punch, there's no eyes wide shut.

Because apparently

it was Dr.

Jerry Punch who saw Dead Calm and mentioned it to Tony Scott.

And Tony Scott cast Nicole Kidman off of that, thus starting the ball rolling down the hill that leads to Stanley Kubrick making one of the craziest movies of all time.

There's so many weird sliding doors, Nexus event.

butterfly wings in this film.

If this movie had been more on time, we would have gotten the better Beverly Hills Cop 3.

We have basically half the cast of Justified winds up in this movie with Nick Sercy and Margot Martindale.

There's all these little things that are so amazing.

Wow, that's a good one.

What do you have, Kyle?

And we never get the Cruz Kidman marriage, like of all that produced and like all the places that that went.

Yeah.

Mine couldn't be more difficult.

We never get the two kids they adopted that Cruz doesn't talk to anymore.

We don't get those either.

Shout out to those kids.

I don't love the pod.

Yeah.

I was trying to do A Days of Thunder is better than Top Gun Gun Take, but I just couldn't get there.

I can't justify it.

So it's not.

It's not.

Fighter planes are cooler than race cars.

So my take is this.

I miss Tom Cruise's old teeth.

I miss them a lot.

And I think that they were better.

If you were this movie, I thought this too.

I liked it too.

They were like going all over the place, but they worked.

They're everywhere.

And if you don't know, in the early 2000s, he got braces and he has normal teeth.

I fucking like the old ones.

They're real.

They're authentic.

And I love that the biggest movie star in the world had a snaggle tooth.

It was just kind of cool.

It was like it'd be if Julia Roberts had a straight end gap.

And now it's like everything is fucking veneers and it's all bleached.

And we look perfect.

I wish Cruz would go back if you would like unvisalign the thing for one more time.

Like before Jordan played his last game in the garden, he wore the drain ones.

I want the old teeth.

They look better.

I'm telling you, I stand by it.

It's a wonderful, wonderful hottest take.

Thank you.

I have a warm-up hottest take and then a hottest take.

We've talked about Rooker many times, and I think this is a good spot.

I still don't understand why he wasn't a way bigger star in the late 80s, early 90s.

He's coming when he does this movie, he's coming off Henry Portrait of a Sierrakiller.

He does see a love.

It feels like there's going to be a Rooker moment.

We called it the Rooker Sance.

Everything peaks in Cliffhanger.

And then he just kind of moves into like kind of graduated from that guy land and pops up in a bunch of stuff.

It's always fun to see him.

I remember when he showed up in Walking Dead, I was like, oh my God, Rooker.

This is amazing.

I just felt like there was more there.

I know, Kyle, we've talked about it.

We almost don't even need to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, I hear you.

It's almost like saying, yeah, it'd be nice if the Bills won a Super Bowl.

It'd be cool.

I just don't understand what happened with Rooker.

I feel like, like, CR,

what was he missing?

I feel like he was maybe missing Bill Paxton's sense of humor because I feel like Paxton being Sizemore and Rooker were were all circling a lot of the same parts.

And if you had your number one draft choice every time, it seemed to be Paxton.

And he just missed a couple of those roles.

Yeah, so that's a good point with Rooker.

Like, could he have been in heat 100,000%?

He could have played like six characters in heat.

So there was, it turns out like his iconic role was cliffhanger.

Yeah.

being mad at Gabe for trying to save his girlfriend, which we broke down for 20 minutes.

She trusted you and she died.

I think Ciara's right.

I think he's missing Paxton's sense of humor, but I also think he's missing Mel Gibson or Val Kilmer's leading man looks, too.

It's like it's not quite there.

And listen,

he was huge in the MCU when it was still cool.

The Walking Dead thing.

He's an amazing career.

Great run.

But never the face on the poster.

Well, that's not my hottest take.

My hottest take.

This movie is way better if Cole Trickle is just Brian Flanagan and it's called Cocktail 2 Days of Thunder.

And Brian Flanagan has gotten divorced.

He's given up the bar restaurant business.

He always enjoyed driving and he's just playing Brian Flanagan.

And he's doing it.

He's

that much farther removed than Cole Trickle's actual origin, which is

they just put me in a car and I was good at driving.

Yeah, like let's just make up Flanagan.

He's got every time he looks at the dashboard and Coughlin's right there.

And he like pats the dashboard.

Coglin's, maybe he has the reconciliation with Elizabeth Shu, but it doesn't work out.

It leads to Kidman.

I just think it's more.

I think also like his sponsor has to be Captain Morgan or Malibu Rum ordering from the bar.

Oh, perfect.

Casting what ifs.

Cruz wanted Kurt Russell for Rowdy Burns, but Russell did backdraft instead.

It's a pretty good what-if.

I have a casting what-ifs

lineup here that I do think rivals what we got.

You mean Robin Wright being the first choice of Dr.

Claire Lewicki?

Robin Wright is Claire Lewicki.

Tom Sizemore is Tim.

Kurt Russell is rowdy or Dale Earnhardt as Rowdy.

Yep, that was another one.

And then I like the idea of Paul Newman coming back and doing Harry.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

said that his dad was disgusted for Rowdy and Dale turned it down because he didn't want to play a bad guy, which goes to show you how little of the script they wrote because what they ended up with, Rowdy was 100% not the bad guy.

Right.

Like he actually should have played Rowdy.

And I think this would have been a good hottest take.

I think you could make a case like unbelievable career move for Dale Earnhardt Sr.

to be Rowdy Burns in a Tom Cruise movie.

Like, I know he is the most famous driver in that world, but people like me and you, like, we barely knew who he was.

Yeah,

he could have been terrible.

Who knows?

I don't know if you can pull that up.

It could have been awful.

Or it could have been Brett Farvin, something called Mario or something.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

This isn't quite a casting with it, but we haven't talked about it yet.

Don Simpson put himself in the movie as driver Aldo Benedetti, B-E-N-N-E-D-E-T-T-I.

Later to the movie an inglorious bastard.

This movie wasn't deranged and cokey enough.

It had a producer, and you see him in the beginning, and it's so fucking funny when you know it's there.

Apparently, his acting was so bad, and his scenes were so awful that they ended up cutting out a lot of the Aldo Benedetti stuff.

He only has one cameo.

And then there's a story after, who knows if it's true, that Tony Scott shot long, terrible scenes with him so Simpson would know how bad he was and just had like five, six minute long scenes of Simpson Mangley dialogue.

Yeah.

So it would get fucked up and it ends up just being a cameo.

But how much cocaine do you have to be on to think you should be in a Tom Cruise movie?

Aldo Benedict.

Italian race car driver.

Italians.

His name's Simpson.

Danny McBride Award for Playing Yourself.

Richard Petty, Rusty Wallace, Neil Bonnet, Harry Gant, Dr.

Jerry Puss.

So we have that.

Who do you have for Best That Guy Award?

Because there's a great one in here.

I have JT Quinn, who is

Rowdy's pit guy, and he is forever the guy at maximum overdrive who gets blinded by gas.

That's where you went first?

Yeah.

Come on, CR.

What do you have?

Well, you

got a great one?

No, JC.

It's JC Quinn or JT Quinn.

JT.

JT.

I have him too,

but he was the chef in Vision Quest.

Oh, man.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

It's not about the six minutes.

He's the chef.

That's what happens in the six minutes.

One of the great sports movie characters.

Always love seeing him.

He also plays the dad in the program of

the quarterback.

I had Nick Cersei, who's the Ranger, who says everyone's under arrest for transportating the alcohol.

It's the same guy who's the Ranger in the Fugitive, who says, wide Earth here is going to take over.

Same guy.

Oh, man.

And then he goes on to be a marshal in Justify.

Yeah.

And he has that great scene.

He's in Castaway with Tom Hanks where he's like, you know, we had a funeral and we put, I put Elvis records in.

Like, that guy's Nick Cersei.

He's been around for decades.

Yeah.

Margot Martindale is no longer that guy, but this is, I think, her first feature.

I like Quinn.

Deion Waiter's Award.

Here we go.

So not going to say the winner yet, but Fred Thompson is our runner-up.

who just calls people monkeys, tells a long story about calls them the Japs with lettuce.

Sure does.

Fred Dalton Thompson, always reliable to come in and be mildly racist.

Just coming in hot and be awesome, but also mildly racist.

The Japanese inspection star is great.

He's not the winner, though.

The stripper police officer.

Go on.

Lilani Sorrell.

AKA.

Like, hmm, where does she?

She looks so familiar.

What else did she do?

Fucking Roxy from Basic Instinct.

Yeah, let's go.

When we did the Basic Instinct pod, it was like, why wasn't she one of the biggest stars of the 90s?

She does that, Basic Instinct.

And then that's kind of it.

Was she dating Simpson?

No, somebody else was.

I have that in the half-ass.

The other girl in that scene who's on the bus, Simpson cast and then ended up dating and marrying.

But then didn't Tony Scott also wind up dating?

Oh, no, he dated her, and Tony Scott married her.

That's what it was.

Yeah, yeah.

She became eventually Mrs.

Tony Scott.

And she's on the bus.

Wasn't Sharon Stone up for Lewicki, too?

Like, that could have been the full crossover.

Ten years later, she was up for

everything.

But listen, when I was this movie, when I was 10 years old, and we had the VHS from Blockbuster, that was a very important scene for us.

That was fully erotic, completely titillated on every level for fifth grade kids.

PJ 13 erotic.

Yeah.

Roxy, just an iconic 90s character.

I haven't thought about Roxy since the pod.

Recasting Couch Director City.

I mean, just get Val Kilmer for Ross Wheeler.

What are we doing?

Great.

What are we doing?

Yeah.

You guys could have taken a little bit out of the gym budget and hit Kilmer's.

What are we doing?

It's there for four days.

Just say, hey, I know you're shooting the doors.

Just can you come down to Charlotte and just

shooting the doors?

We were to put a flat top hairdo on you and just

Morrison.

Leather pants.

Yes.

I'm throwing it for my flex category.

Was there a better title for this movie?

Okay.

And I'm just not really happy with Days of Thunder.

I don't know what it means.

Stupid.

What does it mean?

It's corny as hell.

Yeah.

What if you just called it Daytona?

Yeah.

Or, like, I mean, the F1 movie is just calling it F1.

You know, like.

Would you call it Trickle?

No.

Dropping the Hammer?

Dropping the Hammer is not bad.

Checkered flag?

Something with tires?

I don't know what the answer is.

I just said.

Days of Thunder might be a good title.

You know what?

It's incoherent, though.

What else could I mean?

Days of Thunder could be about anything.

I don't even know what that means.

Days of Thunder.

I don't know.

It's terrible.

It sounds like a storm movie.

It sounds like Twister.

Yeah, we still don't have the answer.

Half-Fast Center research, only a couple ones.

Hendrick Motorsports supplied the main cars, and they were actually raced in real races three times to get the extra footage.

Cole and Rowdy raced rental cars in the beach, and they show birds scattering out of the way.

Apparently, they put bird seeds on the beach, and the first time they filmed the scene, the cars just ran over a bunch of birds.

There was

bird death.

Yeah, PETA violations were had.

Uh, Donna Scott, the pit girl in that scene with Roxy, uh, broke up with Simpson, dated Tony Scott, they got married, had two kids, and then um, Cruz apparently got a speeding ticket in Carolina, 85 and a 55 because he was revved up.

There's one here, Bill, that might be one of the great pieces of IMDb trivia I've ever come across.

What is it?

Nicole Kidman wanted to study neurosurgery for her part, but the producers told her it would be a waste of time.

Yeah, okay, Meryl Streep.

Some other movies.

I saw that and didn't include it because it seemed too crazy.

Do you think that was true?

Yes.

Yes.

Don't worry about it, honey.

We need you on set.

Oh, go on.

Could I go and maybe study neurosurgery?

Can I get into the hospital and talk to some neurosurgeons?

That's awesome.

Apex Mountain Cruise.

Probably not.

We're in the Cruise vicinity, but I still feel like it's a few good men that range.

Yeah, I mean, I think 89, 90, 92

is

about.

We're in range.

We're not quite there.

Duval, no.

Kidman, not yet.

Cruise's hair and teeth, I think.

How is going yes and yes?

Yes, yes.

NASCAR, no.

Lunatic Don Simpson stories.

I think, yes.

I think we, this is Apex right here.

Yeah.

I mean, my favorite one is still David Milch's from Bad Boys, but yes,

this is incredible.

Cruz as a believable real-life Playboy Bachelor coming off divorce, landing Nicole Kidman.

I'm going to say yes.

I had no questions when I was in 1990.

Makes that makes sense.

Rooker, Cliffhanger, right?

Cliffhanger.

Yeah.

It's him and Stallone toe-to-toe, the whole movie.

John C.

Riley, no.

Carrie Elwies, no.

What is Carrie Elways say, Peter?

Princess Bride?

Princess Bride.

Yeah.

I think 87, I think.

Hans Zimmer, probably not.

Simpson Bruckheimer, no.

Mellow Yellow.

Car racing movies?

Car racing movies,

probably Talladega.

I think that's had better legs.

And then Mellow Yellow, yes, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

There's better from Mellow Yellow.

That song that inspired the soda, song by Donovan, like an old hippie song.

But I think this car and the movie and everything has got to be.

Yeah.

Cruise or Hanks.

Cruise is in it.

I'm willing to have the Hanks convo.

Yeah.

I can't get there.

But Cruz, sure.

So I don't know what the standings are now for those two.

What do you have for Scorsese or Spielberg?

I would like to see the Scorsese version of this.

You know, a lot more cocaine.

Simpson's like, yeah, let's have Cole become a cocaine addict.

Cruz goes on to, you know, work with Spielberg a bunch throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, but I always wished he had done more with Scorsese because I love Color of Money so much.

So I'll go with Scorsese here.

I got Scorsese too.

Harry had this wonderful system for doing the moonshine.

He would slice the barley so thin it would liquefy in the jar with just a little yeast.

That's it's scorses.

What role would Philip C.

Moorhoffin have played?

You could see him a little bit older as Harry.

You could see him a little bit younger as the John C.

Riley.

Yeah.

Rooker would have been interesting.

That party as Russ would have been cool.

Like just as a gear change at the end, showing up and just being like, hey, Cole, like,

yeah, I like him.

I had, I wanted to see if we could get him in a race car, too.

I don't know if that works, but like full-on, talented Mr.

Ripley, cocky asshole, over the top.

Yeah, Freddy.

And then I also had him potentially just stealing the scene as Big John.

Just turning around and talking about the Japanese this and that he would kill.

So

Philip C.

Mohoffman as Freddie, as Russ Wheeler, that's it.

Going, going, cool, how's the CT?

How's the CTE?

Racehorse, rock band, wrestler, fantasy team name, heart the top, cold trickle, cold tricklers, anything with tricklers, yeah.

I got a, I got a cool, cool punk band called Japanese Inspection.

I think that's fucking rock.

Oh, that's the blues.

Peaked in the early 80s with a couple songs.

Yeah.

All right.

Craig, come on camera for this one because you have a flex category for us.

I'm going to keep this one somewhat wholesome.

I'm just going good old-fashioned, best quote.

And

I generally think this movie, you could probably just enjoy it with the sound off.

And that's complimentary.

I mean, in a complimentary way.

But there's a couple moments where Town and Cruz nailed it.

I thought, Bill, you hit one with I'm more afraid of being nothing than I am of being hurt.

Great line.

Duval has a line.

You can't hide from your bad luck in his car.

Great line.

And then Rooker has a quote where he's like, you know, when I grew up, I hated farming.

All I wanted to do was race cars.

Now I'm a race car driver, and all I want to do is work on a farm.

Just like a couple of bangers.

I got to say,

I'm starting to feel like Craig might have liked this movie.

We'll find out at the end of the pod.

Picket nets.

A NASCAR driver from Eagle Rock is just ridiculous.

You walk the streets of Eagle Rock a lot.

See any possible NASCAR drivers floating around there?

Just fantasy.

Yeah.

Jesus.

Luicky falls for a coal in about two minutes.

Yeah, that's tough.

I just want to mention that.

Yeah.

And he's off to a terrible start.

And as Kyle laid out, the whole stalking scenario with him.

Terrible.

Unclear why she doesn't have a boyfriend either.

Another classic, like, why don't you have somebody?

Because unlike Kelly Lynch in Roadhouse, she's in Charlotte.

That's

pretty big.

She's insisting that she works 24 hours a day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is extreme.

Dream, dream girlfriend.

Smoking hot doctor was on call at the time.

Sounds great.

I'm going to watch sports.

Tell me when you get back from the hospital.

Yeah.

Any other nitpicks for you guys?

I had one about Dr.

New Wiki.

Awfully preachy and judgmental about race cars for someone who jumps on the back of a Harley with no helmet and some asshole driving her around that she just met.

I don't know if a lot of doctors are just doing that, especially if they're just constantly talking about the lunatics who are race car drivers.

It doesn't really jive me.

I have one more small one because this is a movie thing that happens a lot where the passenger wants to get out of the car and then opens the door.

Yeah.

In real life, I just think Cole keeps going.

Go ahead.

Fucking fall out of the car.

How dare you?

How dare you?

You're going to fall out.

I'm going 80 miles an hour.

I had my two or three here.

Two of them are interrelated.

One is Cole drove indie cars or open wheel cars before NASCAR.

Yeah.

I just don't think you can get to the level he's at with the level of car aptitude that he claims to have or lack of car aptitude that he claims to have.

People are like, I don't know what you guys are talking about.

Like his weird, like, I don't know how to read thing is strange.

But then when he confronts Harry, which would only have taken place like six months, nine months later, maybe

he's like.

a car expert where he's like, oh, NASCAR said the carbon monoxide and the and the

restrictor plate.

So it's like, so are you Mr.

Goodwrench or did you not know anything about that?

Or a fast learner.

Yeah, fast learner, maybe.

And then the other one is just that I feel like this film is too reliant on the high pass.

I could have used one more cool car move.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

every race basically hinges on: can Cole pass this guy high until he passes him low?

Right.

It's like if this was a football movie and it's just a tush push is the only player.

Every single time.

We got to get to fourth and one for another tush push.

It didn't work last time.

Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all blackcaster untouchable.

So

less than six months ago, reported Tom Cruise is going to do a Days of Thunder sequel

and doing it with Top Gun Maverick.

I guess he's hairy in this.

Yeah.

Well, I reckon we're still

Maverick was being developed, the whole idea was that

Maverick was going to be Viper, like he was going to be the teacher, and that these younger guys were going to take over, just like Jeremy Renner was going to take over Mission Impossible.

I will believe Tom Cruise passing the baton when I actually see it being taken out of his cold, dead hands.

We could do CGI and also do that same speech about LeBron and Luca Dodger.

Hey, LeBron's going to retire.

Pass the torch to Luca.

Oh, one other nitpick I had, just briefly,

is for the...

extremity of that accident that Cole and Rowdy get into.

Cole just having like the cutest little burst blood vessel in his eye, as if that's his only.

Yeah.

Get a little scrape in there.

You know, yeah.

Yeah, give him like a high, high ankle sprain, something.

Yeah.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treyo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, no, Byron Mayer, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harling Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilfred Brimley in the firm?

CR.

God damn, Cole.

I didn't know I was working with Superdriver and a motherfucking Australian girlfriend.

You better pass pass Russ on the high side or your lady is going to be doing AMC theater intros a long fucking time, big boy.

Get him the fuck out of here.

I just wanted to do that for Kyle.

I actually think DV would be great.

Yeah.

We see you, Mr.

Trickle.

We see you passing high.

You didn't know anything about cars when you got behind the wheel of a 195 mile per hour vehicle.

That's like going after Vince Carter in the the dunk contest.

But I've always wanted to do this one, and I'm so thrilled.

I'm going to take my shot.

I am going with Wilfred Brimley and the firm.

Yeah.

Because we got Cruz right there.

And I think the premise is Cole is going to leave the race team.

He's like, I'm out of here.

And then Randy Quaid says his head of security to take Cole for a little drive.

Oh, sorry.

And he takes out and he says, imagine this, Cole.

Here's your page.

One day walking to the mailbox looking to get her Red Book magazine.

What does she find instead?

Heartache, Cole, and it's the pictures of him with the stripper from the bus.

Yeah.

Not just screwing Cole, Intimodax, oral, and whatnot.

Impossible for a young Australian doctor to forget.

That's the scene.

I need it.

Wow.

Those were two great ones.

I almost don't want to follow it just with Romo going, he might go high, Jim.

He's going low, Jim.

Just one Oscar who gets it.

Hans Zimmer?

Don Simpson said Robert Towne should get an Oscar for this.

I disagree.

It did get nominated for best sound, so maybe that wins the Oscar.

Probably unanswerable questions.

Cole's Daytona odds.

I have no idea how to do a race car odds, but Cole coming off major accident, not doing that great.

Not as

100, not as car.

I'm guessing 100 to one or higher, right?

Something like that.

Yeah.

All right, here's, well, I have one more, but do you guys have any unanswerables?

I had a question for the panel panel here.

Yeah.

Do you guys think you'd be good at driving a pace car?

Like a Pontiac out in front?

Yeah, I'd be like, it'd just be so nerve-wracking.

You're driving like a Chevy Lumina and like all these sock cars.

Yeah, I just wouldn't enjoy it.

Yeah.

I'm going to say no.

I think it's very deceptively difficult to drive on those tracks, the way that they're curved and arced and everything like that.

And plus, you're just, it's like being the drum major in front of the marching band, like, don't fuck up.

Everybody's looking at you.

I get nervous just thinking about the question.

Harry telling him to hit the pace car is one of my low-key low-key favorite moments.

Yeah, it's awesome.

And he's going to do it because he's that stupid.

I have a question about Kidman and Cruz.

So they met on set.

The romance starts.

Yeah.

At what point of the shoot or at what scene do you think that they were getting together?

And was it before or after the bedroom scene?

Were they a couple at that time or were they flirting together or not?

When did it happen?

Good question.

I had to guess, I would say, really practically speaking, probably upon casting.

Yeah.

Right away.

Oh, see.

My take was:

I think it's right after the violent makeout in the hallway where she's like, I'm not ignoring you.

Because honestly, like, Kidman really goes for it.

It's very hot.

It's very sexy.

And I think after that scene, they're like, we should do this for real.

That's my take.

And Cruz is like, I've always liked tall girls.

Yeah.

Mimi Rogers was like 5'11.

Kind of Cruz's thing.

Katie Holmes is like 5'11.

Katie Holmes' tall, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Here's my unanswerable: what happens if Duval does Godfather 3 instead of this movie?

Who's Harry?

And I think it's Jack Nicholson.

Oh, wow.

I was going to say Harry.

Coming right up Batman.

I think they just throw a giant check at him.

And he's like, ah, you guys are going to, Don Simpson is going to be on the set, right?

That sounds good.

All right.

Don't have fun time.

All right.

I'll do it.

But then do they still do a few good men a few years later?

Maybe not.

That's another, we get a what if off the what if.

What piece of memorability would you want or not want from this movie as a hat guy i would love the super flow hat yeah that they have i like that one too yeah i want the uh i just want the the mellow yellow racing suit embroidered with cold trickle and i feel like my eight-year-old could wear it for a halloween costume it'd be fun oh my god that'd be amazing i think the mellow yellow suit is the answer i mean you could go cars but we said this is no cars allowed category Doesn't award for what happened the next day.

We're bringing this back.

All right.

What happens here?

Does he end up with Claire Lewicki?

Do they have kids?

They don't, right?

No, no, no, no.

One of the most improbable couples to last.

No way.

Unless you see it differently, CR.

I think they're done.

Well, so the question is, is do you think Claire becomes okay with

the racing, the dangers of racing?

Or do you think Cole retires after winning Daytona 500 and becomes like a house husband?

No.

The scene is when they're in bed together.

She keeps, I mean, I think they just screwed.

They're about to.

And she's like, isn't there anything else you want to do?

Don't you have any other dreams?

Like, that's very relatable.

You don't want to be in that relationship.

I forgot to mention this to nitpicks she goes from she's 24 hours a day saving brains and working on people and then just available to go to any race yeah she's just bouncing between charlotte and daytona yeah yeah where's the next race oh it's in virginia i'm there yeah hold on i'll get something to cover my 16 hour shift i heard dover delaware is amazing this time here coach finstock award for best life lesson I'm more afraid of being nothing than being hurt.

I'm just going to take that into my life.

I think I liked rubbing is racing.

Yeah, I did too.

It's so everywhere now, and it applies to life.

It applies to sports, everything.

Sometimes there's going to be some shit that happens, but that's life.

What do you have, Kyle, for best double feature choice?

I broke the rules.

I'm doing triple feature.

I'm doing Days of Thunder, Far and Away, and Eyes Wide Shut.

I want to see that relationship with you.

I want to see all of it from the beginning.

Unbelievable choice.

Great job, Kyle, man.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm not topping that.

All right.

This will get interesting.

Who won the movie?

I got Roxy winning the movie.

No.

I think

Cruz is just such a one seed that's hard to knock off.

I love Duval, but I'm not taking my eyes off Trickle either.

I know that

I do directors a lot, but I just think in the hands of somebody else,

this does not work.

Tony Scott makes every car racing scene, every crowd shot, every the smoke going across the road.

Like he's just an artist, and I think he makes this thing worth rewatching.

I had Duvall 1A and Tony Scott 1B.

Yeah.

I know Cruz is a one seed.

I just love Duvall in this movie and I think he saves it from actually being a bad movie.

Yeah.

I think if he's not in it, we're in a lot of trouble and it's just becomes like a, and Tony Scott has made these where it's just like, it's just Tony Scott doing stuff, but the movie's bad.

I think that's where this lands.

I don't feel that way about this movie.

And it's 35 years old

this summer.

Yeah.

Listen, if Tom Scarrett came out yesterday.

If Tom Skarrit's gone from Top Gun, we're going to be fine.

But if Duvall is gone from this movie, you're kind of fucked.

Like you need that to hold it together.

All right.

Big moment.

Producer Craig had not seen this movie.

Come on, baby.

I know he loved the runtime, which is like 1.41.

Somehow the rewatchables pod is going to be 15 minutes past it.

What did you think, Craig?

I have thoughts on the runtime that I'll get to in a little bit.

But, you know, it hasn't been the best couple of months months for this country, but this movie reinvigorated my love for America.

I have to say.

And I watched it on Pluto.

So every commercial break was just the Harrison Ford Jeep commercial.

So I was really kind of ready to run through a wall for the red, white, and blue for about an hour and 55 minutes.

Why is Tony Scott, who's a Brit, so good at making patriotic films for America?

Oh, great question.

That could have been a good unanswerable.

You're right.

I mean,

he's become our most patriotic director of the last 40 years.

Just like raw over-the-top patriotism in this movie.

Great music.

And yeah, it's like top gun, true romance.

It's like feels very American.

And Tony Scott's a Brit.

Crimson Tide.

Yeah.

Crimson Tide.

Yeah.

Craig, how did you feel about in the first 30 seconds of the movie, no less than three Confederate flag shots in the movie?

They kept going back to it.

Like I said, like I said, pure America, raw America.

My hot take about the runtime for this movie is I think it could have been a little longer.

I wanted to actually lot more.

I think this movie feels like 20 minutes are missing at the beginning.

Yeah.

Like this movie starts and it's just like Randy Quaid in a cornfield talking to Robert Duvall.

I don't know who either of them are.

I don't know what the fuck's going on.

And then like three minutes later, they're like basically racing.

I don't know who Tom Cruise is.

There's no backstories to anybody.

Now, you saying that the movie only had five weeks to edit makes sense because they're like chopping scenes left and right.

There are scenes that like kind of cut in the middle of the climactic moment.

Even the crash, it's so quick when it goes from the crash and he's just getting airlifted and then he's in the hospital there's like no time to breathe yeah i wonder how many of those car scenes are like we only can do one take of this yeah you know yeah i wonder if they told tony scott for like the 15-year anniversary can you go back and do your director's edit of this with i wanted like 15 more minutes i really did well there's there's there's no

change i was expecting from craig i know craig usually goes for sure there's no closer at all on rowdy burns we're supposed to see him one more time that's how the movie works.

He adds

a fist pump.

I want Bertier from Remember the Titans in the hospital bed.

Yes.

You show them in the hospital bed cheering and they don't even show him.

Yeah, I think Don realized that two months later as he was on rail number nine.

It's like, oh, fuck, we should have shown Rooker in the hospital bed.

Yeah.

Also, iconic final shot.

You guys didn't really talk about it, but the freeze frame.

The freeze frame and the race.

I rewound it, watch it like three times.

Just, I mean, there's something about the old guy running next to the young guy.

Cruise is so happy in that scene.

Yeah.

Craig, how do you feel about Tony Scott from 90 to 94, 95, four in a row, Days of Thunder, Last Boy Scout, true romance, Crimson Tide, just fucking banging him out back to back to back?

One of the greats.

It's a bummer we don't have him around still.

Yeah.

I know.

Yeah.

So he's nine.

So now he's tied with Michael Bann.

A couple, can I throw like a picking nit at you?

Yeah.

What about the scene, the all-time flag for targeting when that goes unpunished, when Trickle just sneaks out of the pit zone or what hits called and just t-bones carry out

after is it after he wins is the race over yeah carrie's is one yeah yeah he t-bones him to ruin the car and then 20 minutes later randy quaid is back on his side yeah he's like i give i'm gonna give you a fake like my engine also like NASCAR doesn't punish him in any way.

Like that, wouldn't that have been the craziest story that went through NASA?

Like, you can't help him.

And he's like, that's my engine in that car.

Well, Craig,

the football equivalent of that is Jalen Hurts is on the podium with Terry Bradshaw getting the Lombardi and like Chris Jones runs up there and hits him, blindsides him, decoats him after the game is over.

It's ludicrous.

It's ludicrous.

You know what Craig just made me think of that this movie's missing?

This would have been a good pick and knit.

Where is like ESPN Sports Center?

There's such a natural cut to Chris Berman and

And Tom Lee doing the some crazy thing happened today in NASCAR.

Russ Wheeler won a race.

Watch Cole trickle here.

Comes in and they just do the whole.

It's fun to see those guys.

Magic trickle.

We get some bourbon.

Yeah.

Goes after Russ 18 Wheeler.

Well, 90, we would have gotten maybe, well,

would that have been Kilbourne back then?

Not quite Kilbourne yet.

We're still Berman, Gail Gardner.

I'm trying to think.

Stu Scott's not even there yet.

Yeah, it's still the Real Montgomery Burns.

Yeah, because they could have, because by mid-90s, they were really starting to shoehorn ESPN into these sports movies, but I haven't thought of it yet.

All right, so thumbs up from Craig.

Way to go thumbs up.

It's like my top choice for a movie to be on in a bar, and I mean that in a very complimentary way.

Sure.

So Cruz, 16 rewatchables right now, Craig.

It's going to be tough to catch him.

You know, free up on De Niro and Pacino with there's some good De Niro left.

There's less Pacino.

Cruz has whittled me down, down.

And I honestly used to not have him in like my top three or five favorite actors.

And it's because I've only seen old Cruise.

And I think a lot of people my age are the same way.

I was texting my brothers-in-law who are like 23 and 26.

And I was texting them about Days of Thunder because we liked, they usually watch Rewatchables movies with me whenever they're in town.

They had never heard of it.

And they're like, man, there are so many Young Cruise movies that I've just never watched.

And it's like all my favorite Cruise, like I love Risky Business.

I now love this movie.

I think I like the persona that Young Cruise brought much more than Old Cruise.

Cruise.

Obviously, we only really have Mission Impossible and like a few other things.

Yeah, it's hard to go back to that pre-opra zone where it was like his approval rating was in the high 90s, where it's just like, ah, man, every movie he makes is pretty great.

Yeah.

Well,

Tom Cruise, we still have a few left, too, which is amazing.

We still have a bunch of Mission Impossibles left.

There's some really good ones.

Craig, thanks for producing this podcast.

CR, always great to see you.

Kyle Brandt, a pleasure.

As usual, always to see you, baby.

the rewatchables.

Don't forget, you can watch this on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel, and you can always watch these podcasts on

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See you next week.

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