‘The Replacements’ With Bill Simmons and Van Lathan

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Higher Learning with Van Lathan. Yep.
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You still doing that? Are there still Marvel and DC comic movies coming out? You know what? So this is what.

What's going on in that universe? Anything? Star Wars? I can't wait for 2025. First of all, Skeleton Girls coming out.
Are you back?

2025 is going to be the most consequential year in the history of superhero movies. Really? Superman.
Fantastic for Superman. Superman.
Wow. They've never made a Superman movie.
Why are you...

What's the angle going to be? Let me guess. He comes from another planet and has superpowers? And then bad people try it.

Oh, wait, I've seen that nine times. You know what? I love it because this is your product, the podcast.
So making people uninterested in what it is. Why don't they create new superheroes?

We can't get a plastic band.

There's a lot of. But this is, but see, okay, look.
We get seven Supermans. We can't get one plastic band.
This Superman is the beginning of the revamped DC universe.

So you'll have access to all types of new and different. They got Mr.
Terrific in this one. Black superhero, guy, smartest guy in the world.
Mr. Terrific.
Mr. Terrific is his name.

So there are some new superheroes that are going to be in 80. Exactly.
So Superman Fantastic Four comes out next year. The Thunderbolt.
Well, the Penguin was good. The Penguin was fantastic.

Yeah, look at you. So maybe we're getting better.
2025, gigantic year. I can't wait.
We'll cover it in the Ring of Verse.

You can follow all of the videos and clips from this podcast on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. We're about to do a movie that has worn me down over the years.
I can't believe we're doing it.

The Replacements is next.

They had other commitments and other careers. So that style of dancer would be...
Is that dancing a style?

But on the field...

Not bad, Balco. They were out to prove

they belong to each other. Welcome unbelievable.

Kiana Reeves, Gene Hackman.

That's going to live with Mark. The Replacements Grading PG-13.
Sneak preview this Saturday. Starts Friday, August 11th.

All right, ben.

The wear-you-down rewatchable movies. Movies that you never considered would be in your life when you saw them the first time.
I was like, eh. I wrote about this movie for USPain in 2001.

I made fun of it for 3,000 words, but still enjoyed it. What was your take then on your first view?

This is what I wrote in 2001. Yeah.
You know what you're getting even before it begins. Keanu, Hackman, a cast of motley cliched characters, some football scenes, and a happy ending.

It reminds me of the summer when my old roommate Birdman grew a ghastly goatee, which was best described by our buddy Nick's father as, quote, delightfully unappealing. That's the replacements.

That's what I wrote in 2001. And since then, it's been on.
It's like by about 2007, I was like, I think I like this movie.

2012, I texted you about a month ago because it came on after an NBA game and they just went right into the replacements. And of course, I started watching it and I was like, the replacements are on.

And you were like, oh, I know. Yeah.
I'm watching with Kalika. How did this happen? How did this become a re-watchable?

Sports culture changed. And so now the replacements as a movie is actually a relic to how we used to look at sports.
Oh. When the movie first starts, when we love scabs,

kind of. I'm serious.
That's true. This movie casts the players as the greedy bad guys, the genteel old owner as kind of, at least in the beginning, as the nice guy.

He's being screwed over by these greedy millionaire

by the greedy millionaire players. That's completely changed.
You're right. So you look at it now.
The players are labor. They're the good guys.
The owners are these ridiculous capitalist Titans.

They're the bad guys.

So when you look at this movie, there's a quaintness about it because we really do not look at sports, particularly football, like we looked at that stuff when the movie first came out.

I thought we were going to do this later, but I'm glad we're doing it now. So this movie comes out in 2000.

This is a year after the NBA lockout, which pissed people off. Super

six years after the baseball strike, which pissed people off. And the theme was, these guys are so lucky to play sports.
How dare they?

How dare they think they should be paid whatever? Like, come just play your games and entertain us. And you're right.
In 2024, that's like an an impossible theme.

It'd be the complete, like if you made this movie now, you could argue the owner's evil, the replacement players are evil, and the good guys would be these guys trying to basically break up their replacements so they can come back and play the Cowboys and cross the line and settle the strike.

The version of this movie now is

the actual players. go and start playing in like a flag football league or something like that.

It's a different

billionaire funds a flag football game so they they make money yeah that's a good idea it's like they actually go play something different but it's literally about how they can't get what they want from their owners and so they have to go do something else it's definitely not a situation where someone crosses a picket line and becomes a hero no fucking way they whip his car they throw eggs at the bus you're like look at these guys what jerks throwing eggs at the bus the nice players who are striking for more money right or locked out think about the eddie Martell character, the villain in this movie, the old quarterback.

I don't even know. Like, we don't, we'd never have a character like that now.
We don't even have a person like that in sports. Well, we do.
Who is it? Aaron Rodgers. Oh, that's a great point.
Yeah.

I'm trying to think. Eddie Martell is Aaron Rodgers.
Just a deeply unlikable. And look, you guys, I'm not talking about

his political or social beliefs. Aaron Rodgers is an entitled Aaron teammate.
Arrogant teammate. Yeah.
Yeah.

Like, so he's kind of yeah what he did to mike williams this year yeah backs that up yeah he threw him under the bus mike williams catches a touchdown pass for the steelers take shots back at him on instagram yeah so he that that's kind of that guy but it will take a long time for us to get to the point where we don't like that guy at the end of the movie where martel says hey i'm an all-pro

two-time super bowl champ i was like this guy's pretty impressive man right

he's kind of the man they said he was the best quarterback in the league and he was an arrogant prick and i was like yeah you're right right. I can't believe I didn't make the Rodgers connection.

Rogers is Eddie Martel. It's a good one.
Well, the plot was loosely based on the 1987 NFL strike when teams hired scab players.

There was the Washington Redskins at the time. They actually got a boost from their strike players and that helped them, I think, eventually win the Super Bowl.

People still came to the games, really kind of destroyed labor in

the NFL for all intents and purposes. Well, they had another strike in 82, which I had forgotten because I was reading up on this and I was like,

I might have blocked, this might have been so traumatic, like when something terrible happens to you as a kid and you block it out of your mind and usually it's something horrible.

I think for me, it was the 82 NFL strike. I think it was so traumatic, I blocked it out of my mind.
They didn't play football for eight weeks.

And I don't even, in 1982, I'm 13.

I don't really remember it because I think I must have been so upset. I just like shelved it in my head.
Can you imagine not having football for eight weeks?

Can you imagine the cataclysm if it happened now at the gambling fantasy?

It's a gambling fantasy thing. If week two, they just say, fuck it, we on strike and they don't come back till like week 10.
Craig, what would happen if

we had a strike this season starting week two?

Would that be the most traumatic American event of the 21st century?

Yeah, what it would do to fantasy. I mean, it would be the biggest thing since DeMar Hamlin ended the Chiefs-Bills game and nobody knew what to do when they had like Jamar Chaser.

it'd be that like times 12 it'd be that for 10 straight weeks I don't think feel like they could be on strike for more than a week because I think people would be so mad like so many tens of millions of people would be like you guys are ending this now like you you you better get like everyone would we are so football oriented people would lose their mind but imagine if you could have a new fantasy draft with all the replacement players that would be actually kind of funny now but see but here's something else like Shane Falco second round

here's the thing about the replacement players now

we get a taste of the replacement players.

We see it. We see it in the XFL.
Oh, true. We see it in the USFL.
We see it. We see it.
We see it with the Panthers. It's the quarterback playing, the blocking are the two.

Yeah, we see it with the Panthers.

So Keanu Reeves,

this kicks off just a bizarre stretch of his career. He's got the Matrix the year before.
Yeah. So he's got point break.
He does a bunch of good movies in the 90s.

Speed, he becomes an A-lister.

He's in a devil's advocate. He's hitting a bunch of them.
Matrix kind of goats him for the 90s as like a real A-lister that becomes a poster boy of a whole type of movie.

You would have bought a ton of stock for him in the 2000s. Like, what's next for this guy? This guy's an A-lister.
And then he gives us the replacements, The Watcher, The Gift, Sweet November.

Hardball, a movie we've done on the Rewatchables that we have strong feelings about. Something's got to give Constantine Echo a Scanner Darkly.
And by 2006, The Lake house.

And he's just, that's it. And it kind of starts with this movie where he loses the A-list and doesn't really get it back until John Wick 2014.
This starts a 14-year

sabbatical from being an A-lister. Yeah.

But in 2000, I went to the theater to see the replacements because Kiana was in it. Smoking hot.
He was just the Matrix was a game changer in film. He's Draymond Green.

What does that mean? Meaning, he has a plethora of of tools,

but

you got to have him in the right situation.

Right. You can't have him.
You can't be like, Draymond, we need 35 from you tonight. No, he's got to be in the right situation.
John Wick is perfect. Speed is perfect.

Probably the less words, the better.

But when you let him do his thing.

When you let him do his thing, he can give you Hall of Fame characters.

But he's not the type of guy that you could put him in Washington, Orlando, or New York, Houston, and he's going to be a Hall of Fame or wherever. He's got to be put in the right position.

And he learned that throughout the 2000s because all of those roles. Speed is the perfect role for him.

Kind of speed. There's a speed matrix John Wick triumphant.

I'll throw point break in too. Point break as well.
Although it's a little of some overacting in there that makes us love point break. But when he's

even that, but that works, though. I am an F B I Agent.

That works though. It did.
That works.

And the rest of the 2000s show me that. And he likes to do the occasional weird movie.
He fucks around a little bit. He did.

Yeah, I would say you could even argue he might not have the best taste in scripts. He's made 20 bad movies.

Like, bad. I know, but I also do think that there's a part of him.

He seems like one of those guys who almost doesn't know

what

limits of his actual wheelhouse are. Because there are other times where he's in films where you go, huh, like a fantastic performance in, say, Parenthood.
I was going to say Parenthood.

Or a fantastic performance in,

what's the Gus Van Zant movie? My own private Idaho? Right. A fantastic performance in Gilbert Grape.
You know what I mean? He's in that one, right?

Maybe.

He was in one of those around that era. Whatever.

But

in these films, he tries it a little bit and it works. But in other ones, he tries to get us there and it just, it doesn't come together.
There's something else he brought to the table. What?

Unintentional comedy. Right.
It was a huge part of the Keanu package. It's something that

Matt Damon doesn't have. Somebody who, I like him.
I'm rooting for him.

But it's also really funny sometimes when he delivers lines, when he has reactions. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a 100 out of 100 on the unintentional comedy scale.

Keanu was in the 90s and has some scenes in this where I don't think he knew who this character was. He kind of plays him as almost like he's had too many concussions.
Yeah. Which he says.
Yeah.

And he's just kind of like

says his lines like this.

But it works, but it's also funny. It's his attempt at a burnout.
Yeah. People don't know how hard it is to play a burnout.
To play a burnout and like someone with a light has come out of their eyes.

He's got the light in his eyes i could see he's down at the bottom of the fucking ocean in the first scene running plays right with a metal trophy with a metal trophy he's still got the fire in him you know there's that scene when she goes to visit him and she's like what are you doing and he goes oh my job

you're a professional football player the girl says Sure, this week, but when that's all over, you know, I'll be back here. I don't want to lose my customers.
Like he's just delivering.

He's not, it's almost like a like a work in wrestling. You're shitting on this man so bad right now.

He's, this is how he acts in the movie, but this is what I like about the movie.

I guarantee Kiana is not like, man, I nailed the replacements. But, you know, he has multiple scenes where you're like, why didn't they do another take of this? I will say this, though.

I will say this, though. That same type of attitude works when, say, the guys flip his car over.
Right.

Because he's supposed to be so nonchalant about it, so like virtuous in a way that you can't get a rise out of him. And so it works there, the fact that it doesn't seem like anything sticks to him.

He stays with it the whole movie. Like even when he loses his job, he goes to the bar

and he's like, oh,

I'm not going to be there on Thursday. And they're like, what? They stop it and he tells the team and you think it's going to be this big speech.
And it's just.

He never has it. He doesn't do it.
His quicksand speech is good, though. I like Keanu in this movie.

I think one of the reasons it's re-watchable is now we have this whole John Wick history with him, too, where he's so fucking cool.

And John Wick, he hasn't really figured out the cool part how to do in this movie, but I still like it.

Gene Hackman's also in this movie, which I was outraged by in 2000 because he was Norman Dalen Hoosier's, one of the great coach performances. And it's like, why are you being a coach again?

Well, now you know why. Why? This was, we only have four more years.
So this was part of his retirement package. Right.
So we have this. He's in the Mexican in 01.
He's in Heartbreakers.

We get Horny Hacking. I love Heartbreakers.
Heartbreakers. We've never talked about my love for Heartbreakers.
He's Sigourney and a prime Jennifer Love Hewitt. Jaylo.

Who at that point is

fighting for the title of number one white girl? Oh, yeah. It's like really, they're going because in the 2000s, the title, the number one white girl crown was really being pulled back and forth.

A lot of contenders. There were a lot of contenders.
And Jayla gets in there right there, J-Lo. That was when you were cataloging your Maxim magazines.

FHM, Maxim, the whole deal. You were getting different takes on it, all different types.
Tara Reed, like just a brief two-month run. She flirted with it.

She flirted with it. And then I saw this thing on.
Charlize came off the top rope with her. Where did she come from? When Charlize came, it was up.

She was doing her thing. The thing with Tara Reed was I

saw her one time on this MTV. Ludacris did this like

MTV video, making of the video. Yeah.

Ludacris type of situation. And he went to lunch and Tara Reed was at the lunch.
Yeah. And I was like, I already know what's up.

What does that mean?

Figure it out. Okay.

Heist 2001 for Gene. Royal Tannenbombs.
Behind Enemy Lines. Runaway Jury.
And can you guess the last movie he did? 2004.

Last Gene Hackman movie. So so you did you say royal tender bombs yeah

um

oh i know he they re-released the donner cut of superman 2007 doesn't count okay welcome to mooseport oh welcome to mooseport where he plays it's like the president so gene could have had this whole late 70s early 80s run as like the old guy and been like a judge and he was like i'm out yeah i made enough money That's Ray Romano, right?

Who becomes the president of the United States or something? No. I forget what.
Whatever, whatever. Yeah, but then after that, so Gene Hackman's done.

So when you look at some of those movies, he's fattening up the wallet a little bit before it's time to get out of here.

I wrote down in my notes, he's basically Norman Dale with a fedora and a mustache and three drinks in him. Yeah.
That's that's his.

He has quotes like, winners always want the ball when the game's on the line. Yeah.
A lot of cliche quotes. I look at you and I see two men.
The man you are and the man you ought to be.

These are actual lines from the script. By the way, he's he's

the Judd Nelson award he's in a completely different movie 100 he's in a very serious football movie yeah let's just give him judd nelson now a real man admits his fears there can only be one leader out there you be it right he comes it's like did you guys work on these lines at all or you just decided to just

have gene say them he's like a uh what's the old time he's like tom landry out there kind of uh coaching up the guys here's the thing about him When I watched this movie, I remember that he also automatically gave the movie credibility because a lot of these actors that are in the film beyond Keanu Reeves.

Yeah, there are a lot of it's a motley crew of guys who we would know better going on, but we didn't really know well then. And Gene Hackman was in his final form when I came to know who he was.
Yeah.

So anytime you put him in a movie, the movie has automatic credibility with me. It's I completely agree.
I didn't feel that way in 2000.

I wrote, I kept hoping Barbara Hershey would emerge from the stands dressed in all black and shoot him in the chest. Remember, she was the bad, the black, the lady in black of the natural?

But now I've come around. Also, he gets to be in scenes with Jack Warden.
This was Jack Warden's last movie. Legend.

He has lines like, I've seen monkey shit fights in the zoo that were more or great as this.

He played the Sentinel's owner,

Edward O'Neill.

He was also in two other football movies. Can you name them?

Jack Warden, Secret Sports Movie Hall of Famer. Like maybe not, maybe not elected the same way like a Keanu would be, but, um, he was not.
Was he in Heaven King? What did the Oscars do?

The lifetime achievement when the old guy gets it. I think he might get in late.
Was he in Heaven Kinwait? He was a crucial role in Heaven Kinwait. He played Max.

And then he played the coach of the Bears, George Hallis, and Brian's song, the saddest sports movie of all time. Yeah.
You've seen Brian's song, right? Nah, don't fuck with it. TV movie.

What if you don't fuck with it?

It's about Kale Sayers. I know, I know it's about it.
Brian Piccolo. I get it.
But I've seen, once you see like the one scene in it, I feel like that's like the whole movie.

I'm not trying to be like, I've seen like really grown guys get super emotional about this shit. I'm not trying to do that whole shit, man.

It means a lot to you, doesn't it?

I think it's an important football movie.

I just thought, I just thought differently of you.

That I will watch.

I just thought you knew your football movies. Well, I know the movie.
I'm sorry. And I know the scene, but it's not the scene.
It's the whole thing.

Okay, what else about, by the way, before you guys get super pissed off, I'm not pissing on Brian's. No, the movie came out in 1970.
I'm not mad they didn't watch it. They remade it.

No, I didn't watch the remake. Who did they have? Omar Eps in that joint? It's bullshit.
They remade it. Nikon Pfeiffer.
Anyway,

there's a bunch of sports movie cliche characters that you've definitely seen before that they brought together in this movie, including the floundering QB who needs to turn his life around, Shane Footsteps Falco.

Yeah, we'll get to his footsteps thing later.

The token psychopath,

a SWAT team officer, crazy linebacker, played by by Jon Favreau.

This has to be the weirdest thing about this movie, 24 years later,

that Jon Favreau is the Brian Bosworth,

Ray Lewis, I don't know, whoever, crazy middle linebacker character. It's dumbfounding.
This is the stuff that makes a movie re-watchable. Yes.

You have Orlando Jones, who's going on to have a great career, but who also...

He plays the comic relief black guy, the Billy Mays Hayes role.

He achieved cultural ubiquity as the 7-up guy, but now has gone on to have a great career. You have Jon Favreau while he was still trying to be an actor.

And by the way, it felt like it was going badly.

Him trying to be an actor? Well, because now he's in this movie, it felt like he's kind of, he had been on friends. He was hosting that IFC show that

I really liked, actually, that part, Dinner for Five, whatever. But it felt like the moment it kind of passed him and Vince Vaughn was going to be a bigger star.
Well, yeah. And he flipped the script.

Well, Vince Vaughn, well, he flipped the script because he got back to his roots. I mean, remember.
Well, he does Iron Man in 08.

Iron Man in 08, but he really came into the game as more of a creator, as an actor as well, because he wrote Swingers, right? But

during this time, you still were used to seeing him on screen. Now, we still see him on screen.

But we just thought he was going to be an actor. We didn't know he was going to be like a director or person.
Right. And then that completely changed.

So when you see it now, that also gives the movie a little novelty. He was in Rocky Marciano, the showtime movie.
Rocky Marciano. He was in

uh i mean he's ripped in this movie no he is in great shape and that's another thing craig were you surprised yeah maybe i'm curious what he was taking behind the scenes

something going on i don't think there was testing on the set that probably not that year all of these guys take something though he was a believable like bill romanowski type middle linebacker you forget that he is actually a really great actor he still acts by the way he still gets mtu stuff chef all that stuff but he was we have the token crazy foreigner the drunk chain smoking welsh field goal kicker yeah played by the guy from notting hill yeah um he says things like

you just hold it and i'll kick the bloody piss out of it yeah i kind of liked him he smokes during scenes in games his bookies travel yeah his bookies travel across unrealistic you have to owe a lot of money i think you're flying it from england to watch him england to watch the game and intimidate from the stands they they travel across the sea to get to him

in the epilogue of this movie that guy just gets shot behind the stadium after the game. He's done.
We have.

So, Fast Black Guy Who Can't Catch, which they do in every Motley Crew football movie. They always do it.
Like, they even did it in the little movie.

Was it like the Little Giants or whatever, the kid can't catch? Like, Fast Black Guy, you like that one. Well, it's like Billy Mays.
Billy Mays.

I just saw that movie growing up. Like, Crank Cray likes that one.
Billy Mays hates it. I was acknowledging you were like, can't hit for power.
Can't hit for power speed. Super athletic.

Can't do the skill thing. We see what y'all do the two bouncers turned offensive lineman yep um

the intimidating black guys with a heart of gold which we also had in uh blue crush a couple years later with chief osworth yeah yeah yeah yeah i got those guys

they might have even been the same guys or they stole those guys from this movie or stole the characters one of those guys face on love shout out face on love the menacing ex-convict

oh i got some roll wilkinson we have some stuff for him later but he's the joe boo

oh right he's joe boo from major league but the the the menace and ex-convict yeah yeah save it yeah oh you know yeah i know okay okay okay okay we have likable handicap guy deaf tight end yeah and we have the uh obscenely obese offensive lineman guy who in this movie is japanese so they

just check a ton of boxes you know why because this movie is essentially a remake of necessary roughness yeah it is i it's not essentially a remake so it's like this it's kind of the same movie movie yeah from necessary roughness literally when they copied almost all the characters, the only one missing is kind of your Sinbad character, but it's like legitimate.

The female field goal kicker was the line they wouldn't cross.

They didn't want people to realize how badly they were. By the way, I'm all for ripping off Unnecessary Roughness.
I like that movie, too. Yeah, it's great.

We're missing

a couple of token characters. We don't have the semi-racist dumb guy from the South.

Maybe they couldn't find the casting for it. They kind of get you there with the cop, but I get what you're saying.

Remember the Titans guy?

The guy then, when Gary finds, like, hey, man, you got to leave the team.

I don't know if we need to go that far, but we definitely needed somebody who

wasn't a semi-racist. Well, he was a full racist.
I'm saying,

could we have dipped in that pool? That guy went on to be Grand Dragon.

That guy.

That guy was.

Bertier had to get him off. Yeah, Bertier's like, even, look, man, it's 1970.
You have to go. You got a bridge too far.
What? You want to be with one of them?

You're off the team we were missing the token washed up white safety like scott bakula coming back maybe bakula was a qb oh no he could have put saying having scott bakula come back yeah as like the white safety who retired two years ago but misses it he comes back the don bbe and we're really we were really i can't believe they missed this the ladies man

who's just hooking up with multiple girls at a time. I don't know how they didn't have that in this.

The person who is like, he basically fucked himself out of football because he was having having so much sex. And now he's back, but it's like, might have been a mistake.
He's going to,

he loves the cheerleaders the most.

We got to talk about them. We also have, I think, a new record of seven cliché sports scenes.
The bar brawl,

the dance, puking on the field,

the teammate dance sequence, which happens in jail. The opponents getting distracted by the cheerleaders, which I don't think has ever happened in real life.
Not once. No.

The big fat lineman catching a pass and running.

The The QB throwing the ball at a defensive lineman's head body somewhere trying to knock him out of the game, just ripped off from long. Long shard, yeah.

Ripped off, and then the injured veteran with the you got to do it speech to have the guy who scores the touchdown in the big game and he like blows out his knees sideways.

Kiana comes over, he's like, Shane, you got to do it. It's like, you got to do it.
I scored my one touchdown. So those are the seven, right? Were there any more? Those were the seven cliche scenes.

Um, no, not, I mean, obviously, some of the romantic stuff, but in terms of sports movie stuff,

those are the big ones. I guess maybe.
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Did you do quicksand speech? Oh, the locker room speech. Locker room speech.
Well, that's like a net, you have to have that in every sports movie. Right.
They double back, though. Yeah.

They do, we're, I'm afraid to be great quicksand speech, but then they also come back to chicks dig scars. Guy comes in at halftime to win games.
Save your hero.

Same thing.

um

i don't know if this counts as a cliche thing but the we think they got the winning score but it turns out there's a flag on the play and we got to redo the winning moment i don't know if this movie meant to that but i like it's a good one it's effective that's that's i thought you scored oh wait you didn't that's the best shot in the whole movie yeah 50 million dollar budget made 50.1 million

So it lost money. No, it literally broke even.
No, no. I mean, without the marketing, it lost money.
Roger Ebert, two stars.

and honestly, words hurt because he wrote, uh, slap happy entertainment, painted in broad strokes, two coats thick.

It's like a standard sports movie, but with every point made twice or three times.

If you think the replacements has the nerve to surprise you, you've got the wrong movie, right? Roger, he's right. He's right.

Yeah, that way, but he didn't know that it was going to be on TNT for the next 23 years. We missed a cliche.
What is it?

Maybe you maybe brought it up. Maybe I just miss it.

Whiny baby athletes, bad.

Whiny, rich, bad athletes.

Anybody that wants to make money playing sports, bad.

Like when someone, it's funny because at the beginning of the movie, a guy goes. Because that's Corbin Burnson in major league.
That's Corbin Burnson in the major league.

At the beginning of the movie, a guy goes, I'm telling you, $5 million ain't what you think it is when you do taxes. Yeah, Eddie Martel says that my manager gets it.

And I'm thinking to myself, now I'm thinking,

I mean, he kind of spitting a little bit. He's got a point.
Like, he makes 5 million, but it's not a real 5 million. Remember the lockout? He's got to go for more.

Remember the NBA lockout in 99 when Kenny Anderson, it came out, he had eight cars and everyone lost their fucking minds. See, that's different.

But I'm just saying, like, the whole concept of the 90s and early 2000s was like, I can't believe this guy is complaining about. Charles Creewell, Feed My Family, all of that stuff.

People were getting sick of it. Now, now the money is so fucking fucking crazy.

But also what happens now is this movie is a low information sports fans movie because we don't know at this point how much the league is making. We don't know what the TV deals are.

We don't know any of that. So when we see these numbers, we go, how could they be making that much money?

Now, when we see how much money they're making, we go, how could they not be making that much money?

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So most rewatchable scene.

Jimmy goes to see Shane. Jimmy McGinty goes to see Shane to

talk him into it.

We find out Shane lost the 96 Super Bowl by 45. I have a lot of Super Bowl.
Questions later at the show. Sugar Bowl.
Yeah. Lost

by 45. I have more questions about that later.
Jimmy says, you know what separates the winners from the losers, kid?

And Shane goes, the score.

And we know we're off at this point.

And Shane says, I don't want to be remembered at all.

It's a dark place, cleaning boats. Yeah.
Embarrassed in the Sugar Bowl.

What

real life college football character is Shane Falco?

What college star from the last 25 years? Is there a Shane Falco?

oh, you know what he could be? Uh-oh.

He could be Troy Smith from Ohio State. Oh.

Ohio State's cruising

on their way to an undefeated season and a national championship. And they run into the Florida Gators, and somebody helped me, but I think the score of the game was something like 40 to 14.
Yeah.

Very unexpected. 41, 14.
41, 14.

Very unexpected. Troy Smith went on to

not really have very much of a career in the NFL. Not sure how much of a career he was going to have before that.
But it was a game that really, really injured the perception of him, if you ask me.

It would have been the Georgia quarterback this year, but they're not going to be good enough to be in a memorable game. Troy Smith is a great comp.
In that game, he threw for 35 yards. Jesus.
Really?

Who's your LSU Shane Falco?

We've had a lot of Shane Falco.

We couldn't have. Seven Shane Falco.

We didn't have a quarterback legitimately. We didn't have a quarterback for like 10 or 11 years.
So we've got Shane Falco's and Spades, man.

I don't want to name any of the guys because I love LSU too much.

Next scene, Annabelle, the hot cheerleader, who we'll talk about later, gives Shane a ride home and drives like a fucking maniac for a minute for no reason.

A lot of the stuff in this movie happens for no reason. And then says, nothing personal, Shane, but I don't think quarterbacks.

Like, all right, you'll be back we know that's fucking killing her car very like 90s early 2000s like driving that car you know it was like 40 degrees in Washington they don't care um Jimmy and Shane before the first big game

I look at you and I see two men

the man you are the man you ought to be

someday those two will meet

Should make for a hell of a football player.

I remember when I said that to you in 2020 when we we decided to work together. It was like I pushed it over.
It was right before the right before higher learning was launched.

Yeah.

Go fuck yourself.

But

we haven't talked about how much of a cliche she is. Can you hold that? Because I have a great spot for you.
Yeah.

We have the puking and the huddle to I need that ball and Favreau going to get the ball and coming back. I got you the ball.
Right. Which was ridiculous in 2000, but now I kind of like that scene.

Falco's almost game winner. And then the highlight of this whole scene was Pat Summerall and John Madden, who we also haven't talked about yet.
And they're in this movie a lot.

And they're doing the notes. And somewhere else, talk about the running back, the ex-con.
Doesn't realize this is an ex-con. And says, it says here that he likes embroidery.
It just slid that in.

So we get that. We get the bar fight.

That's fun. I like bar fights.
Always like a bar fight in a sports movie. We get her circling back and how he got his truck back with the girl and Keanu.

We get the, I need you to get me the ball. I got you the ball exchange, which was, I think in, I think I got that out of order.
Keanu's quicksand speech. Fantastic.

Which I'll have Craig play the clip of because he'll do it better than me. But I also want to do an imitation of it.

You're playing.

And you think everything is going fine, but then one thing goes wrong.

And then another.

And another.

And you try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink.

Until you can't move.

You can't breathe.

Because you're in over your head.

Like quicksand.

You're playing, and you think everything's going fine.

But then one thing goes wrong, and another. and another.
And you try to fight back.

But the harder you fight, the deeper you sink until you can't move. You can't breathe because you're in over your head.

The quicksand. Right.

That's how he delivers it. That's the way it is.
Garrett, that's my first text saying him. Our guy, Orlando Jones, comes in and goes, that's some deep shit, Shane.

Shane. This movie's great.
And they love this. It goes to each one of their faces.
Yeah.

It's like he's giving the greatest. He's like Martin Luther King giving like the greatest speech of all time.
Be careful.

But he, but, but he, he, he, all, but he's talking about not just football, but he's also talking about failure, their lives as well.

So when it flashes to each one of them, you're like, we've learned a little bit about their backstories and like why they didn't make it.

And everybody's like, I don't want to go back to the mini mart. I don't want to do this.
I don't want to do that. So scene works.
Byron's character seems like I'm actually fine going back to

killing criminals again. Yeah.

Next scene, I just, this is self-explanatory. The stripper cheerleaders cause an offside and lead a comeback.

Really fun. The coach in that scene is hilarious.
It's great. He slapped her on the ass, Riff.

Riff, she slapped her on the ass.

Like, that guy is really funny in that scene.

I mean, the last 25 minutes of the movie is probably the pick. Right.

Because we get the first half of the big game with Eddie Martell crossing the picket line and just going full Aaron Rodgers Jets on the entire team. We get Falco coming back

as Eddie Martell says in the locker room at halftime, nobody can beat Dallas with these losers.

Okay. Okay.

Man, who do you think O'Neal's going to side with, huh? Some burn-out old coach or someone who puts fans in the stands? Son of a bitch. Come on.

Hey, what the hell are you thinking about? We got a game to play. Nobody can beat Dallas with these losers.
I can.

Hey, Falco, it's great to see you. Now get the hell out of my locker room.
Coach, what the hell took you so long? Trevor.

Shoot up. Just call your wild.

Now get the hell out of my locker room. Which is just an immediate overacting award winner.
So what took you so long? Traffic.

It's kind of a Jerry McGuire type of situation there. Oh, we're getting into it in nitpicks.
Yeah. Yeah.

I have,

okay, so the opening scene sets the cultural stakes of the movie. It tells you all about where sports culture is and how you're supposed to look at the good guys.

It like literally defines the good guys and the bad guys.

The first sequence of the movie, right? But then like the first practice slash training camp esports. Oh, the little montage?

A little montage of everybody going through their thing because you get to see the deficiencies of all the characters. Hey, one guy can catch his ass off, but he's deaf.

One guy is fast, but he can't catch. One guy has all the intensity.
but no discipline. One guy is huge as fuck, but he has an eating disorder.
So like you go through all of the different things.

And in movies like that, in movies like this, and I say that's the one scene you have to have. Like, because it really gives you a lot of execution

in one little scene. We didn't mention the ending.

One more thing I want to say. The wild yam scene.
Yeah. Wild yam, that's the, hey, love matters scene.
He's not going to be the coach of the.

the

or he's not going to be the quarterback of the team for a long time, but he's going to have her forever. She's rubbing her wild yam yam on his shoulders

did mention the ending

i know you're tired i know you're hurting and i wish i could say something that was classy and inspirational but that just wouldn't be our style

pain heels chicks dig scars

glory

lasts forever

Would that have been your yearbook quote, Craig? I actually think that is like an objectively great sports movie quote.

It's the highlight of the movie. That would work.
If I was on his team, that would fire me up. You ready to run through a fucking wall?

We get the fake field goal, which I think is a really well-written smart wrinkle. The kicker's like, I'm going to have to miss this.
And Keanu snips it out, runs for the touchdown, called back.

And then we get the game winner, which I have some questions about. I have a question before we move on.
That's my pick for Most Rewatchable. Most Rewatchable is the last thing in the movie.

Yeah, for sure. Right.

But back to Craig's point, of all the sports movie speeches that you've heard, I'm not going to ask you for a top five. What are the most effective sports movie speeches ever?

First of all, you came to the right place. Okay.
Probably the best person on the planet to answer this question. Humble.

The longest yard with Paul Crew is the best speech ever when he calls timeout when it's fourth down and brings everybody over to the sidelines and does the, we've come too far to stop now. Yeah.

For Granny, for Nate,

for Caretaker, who just died. Oh, fuck.
It's the best.

It's the best one. Can I give you one that means something to me? I think there's been a lot of good ones.
There's a lot of great ones.

Billy Bob Thornton. Oh.
Friday Night Lights. Good one.
My God.

Now they know that they're about to go out there. You know they're probably going to, but my God.
That's a great one. Billy Bob Thornton, Friday Night Lights.

He's...

like imparting this upon these young men and he's letting you know look my heart is full I'm here with you like that movie to me is, it's kind of actually,

I look at that film as actually the time that sports movies changed a little bit. Sports movies are a little bit, they're a little bit more meta in how they do their thing now.

That started with like Moneyball, late 2000s. Yeah.
Yeah. They're kind of a little bit more meta now.

The sports movie now

almost always rides the line between sports movie and documentary. Yeah.

Because documentary has changed how we saw sports just in general. Yeah.
But like I love that fucking speech. Any given speech that makes me want to run.
Any given Sunday with Pacino is an all-timer.

Yeah. The inches all around.
The inches are all around us.

The inches are all around in that movie, too, in the locker room.

His people was like, what the fuck is going on? Jerry McGuire's speech to Tidwell is good. Yep.
Remember the Titans for me has some good ones. Will Patton and Denzel, both.

Yeah, Denzel was great, like fantastic in that one. You know what? Hoosiers.
Don't forget.

I know you have some issues with Hoosiers. I know great, great speech that leads to the slow clap.

The slow clap is just crazy in every movie that they do it. It seems like these movies, there are not as many great sports movie speeches in basketball movies, though.

The best one's probably He Got Game. Which one? The speech that

when they're walking on the boardwalk and Denzel's talking to Ray Allen. Yeah.

That's near the end of the movie when he's talking about how he has to get the hate out of his heart. It's not necessarily

speech. Yeah, yeah, but that's an unbelievable scene.
What he's basically telling him, like, I'm your dad. Yeah.
This is what I want. And I'm telling you, even if you don't give me this,

then what you have to do is be able to move on from everything that's happened or you're never going to reach out. Get rid of this hate in your heart.
Get rid of the hate out your heart, son.

It's a good one. There's been a lot of good sports movie speeches.
And I think we hit a point. Miracle, there's some good ones with Kurt Russell.

We hit a point in the late 90s when people, we had enough of a sports movie library that people knew that they had to have some sort of speech in it right so that's what they're trying to do and they also do you that in real life though that's another thing is the sports movie speech is accurate to the way they try to motivate you when you're actually playing sports yeah like i remember watching uh doc rivers and doc rivers is on the sideline with the celtics which you guys doc rivers is a good coach in boston and he says something to them he goes listen he doesn't doesn't like draw up a player or anything like that he says something he goes, listen, listen.

If you play together and you believe in each other, you're unbeatable. They can't beat you.
If you play together and execute together and look out for one another. I'm like, God damn.

If we play together, we can't be beat.

It actually was inspiring. Pretty great.
Yeah. Supposedly, and I think all videos have been destroyed.

But in 2006, Pat Riley and the Heat, when they were in Dallas trying to finish off Dirk and those guys, and supposedly him in the second half, the cameras that were there recording the stuff that he was saying was like all time.

So he had like no clipboard, and he was just like, you guys are tougher than these guys. You guys have to rip their heart out right now.
And was doing like crazy sports movie shit, but it was working.

And those guys came out and they just

took Dallas. They took it from Dirk and them, yeah.

All right, so what's your most rewatchable? My Rose Rewatchable is, it's like you, it's the last one. It's the final scene, but the opening scene is

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What's the most 2001 thing about this movie? I'll give you some options. All right.
Give it to me. Intentionally attacking football opponents.

Using good vibrations by market mark in a sports celebration sequence. Way up there.
Stick them.

That's like more like the 70s, though. No concussion protocol for the deaf tight end in the final game, just comes right back.
Yeah, or stripper cheerleaders.

Okay, so I'm going to make a case for stripper cheerleaders later. So that was my number one pick as well.
Really? No, that wasn't my number one pick, though.

I'm going to make a case as to why that should happen. But

my number one pick is the concussion protocol.

Bruh,

we've talked about it on the pod before.

There is legitimately, like, you made a joke about it, but it's, there's actually one. There's actually a ESPN jacked up segment

where the dude gets hit by Namdi Asamwa. Yeah.
And he's doing the fencing pose. He's like this.
He's like this. And Tom Jackson goes, ah.

You know, when you see the hands like that, that's when you know you got jacked up. And I'm I'm like, what the fuck? He literally is doing.
Tell him Jackson's voice goes down. Yeah.

And he goes, you think he's getting serious for a second? He comes back with the jacked up. So that

those segments, those ESPN jacked up segments, look like they're SNL segments of them parroting ESPN, but they're actually the actual ESPN. No, it's the real thing.
It's like, you got jacked up.

Look at him. Look at him.
He's not moving. He's not moving.
He got jacked up. The guy's like dead.
He's like fucking out. He's unconscious on the football field.
It's so funny. Jacked up.

Maybe there was that. There was a Madden game one year when the whole, it was like a 30-second intro before he started playing and each hit was just somebody getting decapitated or annihilated.
Yeah.

Right.

So that's, so the, the, obviously the notes. The death tight end is so.
But him getting fucked up and then coming right back in the game is just a different sport back then.

A category we don't get to give out very often. The Elizabeth Shoe is an Oxford Electrochemist Award.

Goes to Washton's cute and bubbly head cheerleader, Annabelle, who also owns a bar in downtown Washington. Yeah.
And she's single. Yeah.
Because this person exists. She is breathtakingly beautiful.

Yeah. She's sane.
No, she can't find a guy. She's breathtakingly beautiful,

financially independent. Yeah.
Hard worker. Cheerleads basically as a hobby.
Yeah. Because she only makes 50 bucks a game.
Right. Has to shut down the bar.
Probably costs her money.

Costs her money to do it right and just striking out either that or the sequel to this movie is her carving up his back or doing something crazy because there's got to be a reason why she's not married or backstory with her oh like some football player maybe there's a reason why the second one's an erotic thriller right she starts stalking shane because shane why didn't you come by the bar they hint at it near the end of their placements when he no shows the date and she's like basically turning the light on and off and right like fader track style

i will not be ignored right exactly she was played by uh former melros play star brooke langton

who um ended up getting involved with billy campbell on that show andrew shoe who was kind of the homeless man's keanu from an acting standpoint what a call yeah

same kind of blank faces and um

unenergetic line deliveries. It's funny that he would be brought up when his sister is the

Elizabeth Shue. He was a thing for a while.

He is one of the all-time. Andrew Shue.
What the fuck happened to that guy? Season one of Melrose Place. He felt like he was going to be one of the biggest stars in the show.

He had like commercials on TV and stuff and then gone.

What's aged the best?

I have a bunch of stuff. You can give me your best one.
All right. Now? Yeah.
Okay. So Keanu Reeves just age super the best.

Sex workers.

The way the sex workers are portrayed in this movie, uh, the strippers, it's age best. We there's it's totally different now.

I have them in this as well as what's age the best. I love those characters, I think they're hilarious,

and they're kind of it. They give the movie some spice, and it's like a TNT spice because it's not too dirty, but it's okay enough for TNT.

But it still feels like in the bar, she's giving the deaf guy like the fake blowjob thing, and it's like, What'd you do? Right,

that's for video you guys gotta see

i do the trunk where trunks up

um yeah they they it's like oh they wink they're winking at you they're not showing you that that's very 90s too because now there'd be some bit where they come out there with no underwear on it would be forever that was that era though that was that was 1999 2000 2001 a lot of the stuff that was going on in mtv

That was the Woodstock 99 that we did the documentary about where everybody's taking their tops off.

It got a little crazy there. It did, but they're winking at you here.
The strippers dance a little bit, the ladies dance a little bit different. They do a little bit different.

They're a little bit more out there.

That is the best. And just like

sports labor discussions have aged the best because we do not have them now

the way we used to do it. There's too much money at stake now.
Now they're just like, let's split this up. Let's not argue about this.
The baseball, the strike of 1994 is

the NBA strikes and the football strikes, all of that. The strike of 1994 was a watershed moment in the way that I view sports.
Yeah. Because the season leading up to that was so fucking special.

Tony Gwynn was hitting like, what, 394? 399?

Expos.

Montreal. Yeah.

The season was so fucking amazing. And there was this collective grief over the fact that we weren't going to see if he could hit 400.
Yeah.

Or we weren't going to see if Montreal could get to the World Series. I think the home run record might have been, it really cost people something.

I think after that, that really kind of changed, at least me as being a sports fan around that age, kind of changed the way I looked at sports later.

The 99 NBA lockout wasn't great. The hockey lost an entire season.
A whole season, yeah.

I have some smaller what stage the best. Keith David as head of the Players Union, always like Keith David.
Does it come back in the movie? Does it come back?

It feels like he probably had some deleted scenes. Got some shit cut out.
Yeah.

The TD celebration where Orlando Jones shoots the guys with the football. And then himself.
Yeah. I think they were making fun of any given, not any given

the last boys. That's funny.
Yeah.

I like the blue Washington Sentinels hats, the blue with the Washington.

I would buy one of those on eBay. So this is a what stage the best in real life.
Keanu took less money so they could afford Gene Hackman. Oh, team player, Keanu.
Yeah. Like a Tim Duncan.

Is he

so? People fall from grace. Kobe wouldn't have taken less money from Gene Hackling, but Tim Duncan would have.

I'm just telling you. People fall from grace.
Another Tim Duncan win.

Your agenda is crazy. I'm begging Keanu Reeves,

just don't let us down, Keanu.

Because he is like the guy when you think about, hey, you can still be decent. You can still not care.
You can still be.

If we find out Keanu got three hoes locked in a basement somewhere, it's going to be such a dark day. The Matt Lauer buzzer.
Yeah, it's like just Keanu, like, for us, bro. Just keep it above board.

Always yourself.

I think we're good with him.

What's age the best? Hey, Falco, you're not even a has-been. You're a never-was.

Great insult. Yeah.
Really cuts deep.

Madden and Somerall.

So we have Vince Gully and For Love of the Game in 1999.

And it turns out, like, these guys, they do these games, they disappear, they end up on YouTube. But Vince Kelly is like a key character in For Love of the Game, and he's really good.

Madden and Summerall, this felt like a money grab in 2001. We had a lot of Madden and Summerall in our lives because they were the announcers for the video game, which everyone played.

Like the Madden 2001, I was like, everyone's playing it. But now I'm like really glad they're in this movie.
It's actually nice to see them because I miss Madden and Summerall.

I miss them doing lines like summer all is kind of awkward madden at one point does this thing like it looks like they're necking

where they're kissing my like the madden and summer all team is just like the golden age of football watching for me yeah it's like it made me super nostalgic absolutely and i think putting them in the movie probably gave the movie a little bit of credibility because them and hackman they didn't have um hackman as well they didn't have like licensing yeah so it's like real football if john madden and and and summer all are calling it

I like the kicker smoking butts during the game, even in the game. I just thought it was like they really went for it with that one.

Koosier's jokes during the Gene Hackman parts.

Not afraid to make a couple of like, I want four handoffs before every pass. Like just we're we've nuzzing.
I like the cheerleader with the deaf guy.

My favorite two things, though, for what stage is the best. Shane

Footsteps Falco. What a great nickname.
Kudos to the screenwriter for that. Did we ever get a reason as to why they call him that? I think because

in the Sugar Bowl, he got hit so many times, he just started like

taking self-sacks. Hearing footsteps or feeling footsteps.
Jim Everett. That was the famous Jim Everett in the 80s when he thought he was going to get sacked and fell down, but there was nobody there.

And it like haunted him forever. Be careful speaking on him.
Well, that's that's why

you think he's going to jump out?

He likes to get busy. I watch that shit live when it happens.
Can we call Derek Carr Derek Footsteps Carr? Yeah, you definitely can call me anything. Let's bring it back.

All right, here's my big one, though.

Keanu looks good as a QB. Bro, I'm ready to have this combo right now.

He,

I do this a lot where someone makes another point and I go, wow. But

realistically, he looks like he could get it done. He's athletic.
He looks like he has, he's got the kind of build to where he's lean, but still

sturdy. He kind of looks like Tubi.
I got to be honest. Like watching it, I don't really know the difference.
Like even in point break,

which, by the way,

I'm going to get to my multiversal theory a little later. But like Point Break, when he's Johnny Utah, he looks like a guy who could have played football.

A lot of times they put people in these roles.

And obviously there's the guy from the Amanda Bynes movie when you see him throw it. Have you ever seen that clip? You ever see the guy the in the mind and the Amanda Bines movie? Which movie was it?

Was it Freddie Prince Jr.? No, it wasn't him. Freddy could get busy, but it was it was um I don't know why I just big up Freddy like that.
I just like him. I like to think he could throw a football.

Okay, but it's a guy he's throwing the ball and he's doing like one of those. You have to see this.
I'm going to show it to you.

But but Keanu is very athletic. He looks athletic and he's got a good football motion and like a good constitution.
At the time,

I wrote that he was very Scott Mitchell-y, which was a compliment because I think Scott Mitchell

made line. Yeah, he made money in the Lions, but he had that kind of lefty, kind of lumbering, but athletic.
And you felt like it made sense if he scrambled for 15 yards. Two is probably the comp.

Now,

I'm ready to do it. The best quarterbacks in a sports movie.
I think Burt Reynolds is still one. Longest yard.
He's like amazing. Like, he's like.

He's like Lamar Jackson in the longest yard. Kind of shouldn't count, but I get it.

It counts. He's star of the movie.
No, I'm just saying. He played college football.
He's a real football player. I got to hand it to Jamie as Willie Beaman.
That's one way up there.

Once again, high school football player, a good one, but way up there.

Like, felt Kaepernicky 10 minute, 10 years before Kaepernick, like the same kind of slasher, you know, like quick throws, but also could run athletic.

At the time, it was Aaron Brooks was the comp for him. You want a fun fact?

Jamie did most of that, but the guy who filled in for Jamie

and some of the football stuff was a gentleman by the name of of Sam George, who

played quarterback for Southern University in Baton Rouge. Interesting.
HBCU. I thought Jamie did all that shit himself.

He did most of it, but there were some things

that he didn't do. I got Ronnie Sunshine Bass up there.
Way up there.

Once again, real football player.

Rifleman and all the right moves. is my dark horse for this category because he's never mentioned, but go watch all the right moves, watch some of the things he's doing in that movie.

It's really impressive. Ahead of its time, even some people say.

I got Keanu in here. Anybody else for you? James Vanderbeek.
Watch the moves. Yep.

Make the case. Okay.
So I thought he's, I didn't think he was good or bad. I thought he was passable.
I think he did a good job. I think he did a good job.
Paul Walker did a decent job as well.

I know a little bit of this.

We did a movie way back in the day in Baton Rouge, and one of the producers on the film was a lady named Sarah Flam. And she was coming out there and she was like throwing the football.
Yeah.

And she was like rifling the football. And I asked her, like, you know, I mean, are you quarterback princess or something like that? By the way, you did mention Helen Hunt.

Are you quarterback princess? And she goes, well, no, I did a movie called Varsity Blues. And on this movie, there was a quarterback coach.
that gave all the people there intensive instructions

on like like how to be a quarterback like they really put it into it. I think when you watch the movie, James Vanderbeek,

it shows to me him

that he really took it seriously. I think he's.
How'd you feel about Baku?

He's okay. He's okay.

I bought it, though. I bought it.
I wouldn't put him up with the rest of the guy. A lot of the guys you named are actual League footballers.
Craig Sheffer and the program. He's fine.

They didn't really

unleash him. They put too much on him as the QB there.

What about your Friday Night Lights television show? Was anybody from there? Well, NBJ was on that. He was good.
Yeah. You know what we found out this week? It's reboot.

You know who's never seen one episode of Friday Night Lights? Who?

Craig.

Explain yourself. Craig's defense was...

It came out when I was 12. I was like, well, fucking cheeseburgers came out in 1910.

So you can't eat them?

It's not a similar argument. It's outrageous you haven't seen that.
It hits every interest you have. I know.
You actually care about content. You care about well-done content.

You like like serialized shows. What channel was it on? It was NBC, like barely making it because we didn't have streamers yet.

I haven't seen the show. Oh.

What?

Friday Night Lights? Yeah. What do you mean? I haven't seen it.
I've seen an episode of it. What? I didn't watch it.
There are dozens of us. I didn't watch it.
What the hell?

I've seen an episode of it. I remember I watched one episode where Michael B.
Jordan was running wind sprints

and I was like,

outrageous. I haven't seen the Joe.
This is, this is the Joanna podcast. Podcast.
I've seen all seven Superman remakes and you haven't watched Friday Night Lights.

Stop coming at my culture.

You've seen Superman 4 and you haven't seen Friday Nights? I've seen Superman 4 dozens of times. It's terrible.
But

I haven't seen the Friday Nights, Friday Night Lights show. I've seen episodes of it, but I haven't watched the show in this video.
Amazing show. Incredibly important show.

The Fortune 3 Clap Award for most giftable moment is any crazy Jon Favreau clip, I feel like, right?

Great shot Gordo award. This movie wasn't good enough to qualify.
Oh, no, I got one. What do you got? There's one, there's one little one I think is a good shot.

In the

last play where

Falco takes the, the, he, he pulls the, the kick and he scores. Yeah.

There's a great shot of him running and the flag coming in at the bottom. Oh, the flag.
Yeah, I did notice that. They don't just cut to the flag.
Yeah.

The flag flashes in on the bottom of the camera almost in real time. The digital solar cut.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that's smart. Then they come back to it.

Yeah.

Dennis Benny Hanna award for a scene ceiling location. Probably the bar.
I like the bar. I think DC has strong bars.
DC, but also just RFK, right? Weren't they in RFK? Oh, yeah.

Well, but no, they were actually in Baltimore. Oh, were they? So no? Yeah.
Yeah.

Before we do Cape Cuddy, Cuddy, we got to take a break because it's an important category.

This episode is brought to you by Universal Pictures presenting the film Wicked for Good, directed by John M. Chu.

Wicked for Good is the epic, electrifying, emotional conclusion to the untold story of the Witches of Oz.

Deadline calls it a masterpiece in the movie that we need now for your awards consideration in all categories, including best director John M.

Chu, best actress Cynthia Arrivo, best supporting actress Ariana Grande, and best picture of the year, Wicked for Good, now playing in theaters.

All right, Kid Cutty Pursuit of Happiness award for best needle drop. Craig theorized that 90% of the budget was spent on the music in this movie.

I don't know if it was that high, but it might have been 80%.

But I really like the stones blinded by rainbows.

So there's two songs from Voodoo Lounge, the 1994 Rolling Stones album that I would say is not not considered a classic

that then featured prominently in two pop culture things that you love one is blinded by rainbows can you think of the other i can't let me try sopranos oh last episode season two yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the rolling the keith richards song yeah yeah yeah

so i'll give you that i'll give you i will survive in jail or i will give you the we can be heroes ending so it's probably i will survive we can be heroes is also great but just a little shout out to lit ziploc the way the movie starts.

The movie starts literally. I thought about Craig because he put that in the chat, but I thought about Craig when the movie, it starts off like right with one of those happy early

early 2000s, late 90s kind of, but I'm going to go I will survive because it's like thematic to the movie. There's also, it's just the pure volume of music.
There are so many songs.

They're just like ripping banger song after banger song. It's like a 40 song playlist on this movie.
It's definitely, it feels like a very era-specific movie.

This movie feels like it came out between 1999 and 2001. And there's the only three years that could have come out with how they do it.
And don't they have the police, the police play?

Every breath you take. I want to get into that later because it's important.

The Big Kahooner Burger Award, best use of food and drink. Probably the Japanese guy eating the hard-boiled eggs.
Yeah, that of them throwing the eggs at their car.

The ex-millionaires are egging them, but it's definitely eggs. The Butcher's Girlfriend Award, weak link of the film.
Probably the premise of the scabs or the heroes is an interesting one in 2024.

That is by far the weak link of the movie. They just are like, you know what? We're doing it this way.
You're either with us or against us. Yeah.

We rarely get to give this award out. I think we've given her three times.
The Seth Rogan Catherine Hagel Award for Worst Chemistry.

Keanu and Brooke Langton. Can we talk about it? Yeah.
I can't say it was electric between the two of them. It doesn't.

She's trying hard. She's getting cleavage going and big smiles and wink winks.
And I never felt like he totally likes her. Two great look.
Wait a minute. You never felt like he totally likes her?

I never felt like he was like, I would risk everything for this lady. I feel like she

deserved that. I feel like at the end of it, she was just kind of, I felt like it was the opposite.
She was kind of like, all right, nigga.

It would have been controversial. You know what I'm saying? Like, it would have been.
But like, she was just kind of like, okay, whatever. Oh, I think she.
But he kept coming at her.

He didn't show up for the date. I think that you're going to break up after that.
She's never forgiving that. They're going well for three months, and then she has two drinks.

And she's like, man, it's like, when you didn't show up for the date that time, you motherfucker. It's over.
What's age is the worst?

Ebert on Madden and Summerall, this is what he wrote, stashes them in a booth with a couple of TV monitors, has them stand around awkwardly as if looking at a game.

Sometimes they're not even looking in the same direction. I rarely get to say this, but fuck you, Raj.
Oh, no. Yeah, settle down.
Don't go after Madden and somewhere else.

American treasures can't go after other American treasures. I didn't like that at all.

Just stop it, Raj.

And then I wrote this about Jon Favreau in 2001, and I recant it because I actually like him in this movie now. And

I wrote How the Mighty Have Fallen. It's impossible to overstate how dreadful Favreau is here.
He makes you wince in pain during certain scenes. A career-ending performance.
Yeah, that's

not a good take. It's a freezing cold take.
It's a freezing cold cold take. He's like literally one of the five most powerful guys in all the fucking town.
I take it back.

The Gary Glitter song always ages the worst when you hear a movie because he had one of the darkest Wikipedias you'll ever

look at. Crazy, yeah.
All right. So tell me if this is a what's age the best or a what's age the worst.

Keanu finally makes a move on Annabelle and they're playing the Every Breath You Take song from the police.

And then they use Madden and Summerall commentary. Okay.

But it bleeds it in the football game, which is why they're doing it. But it makes it seem like the commentary is about Shane making a move on Annabelle.
Does it work or does it not work?

I fucking love it. Okay, good.
Okay. I have it in what stage is the best set in the world.
I have it.

It's like legitimately one of the more inventive things they do in the movie because the movie is pretty paint by numbers, pretty predictable. But that's actually like pretty cool.

That's like one of the, that's one of the more...

Unique things about the movie.

In the deleted scenes, they cut to those guys and they're just in their underwear

like watching them on monitors yeah that's the erotic theater thriller it's about them they they had it in a with john madden and then the last what's aged the worst i can't think of a paragraph that's more in your wheelhouse wilkinson played by michael jace

was afraid to go back to prison in the quicksand scene

and in 2016 was convicted of second-degree murder in real life for murdering his wife and went to prison for 40 years

this guy went to my church.

This was going to be a Van Lathan Fun Fact. There was a church, and I don't know if it's still going.
It's called Oasis. It was on Wilshire.

I was embarrassed by a friend of mine that was visiting in the town because Common showed up at the church one day and he went up to take a picture with Common during the service. Oh, no.

But one time I see this guy there and he's ushering people. And it's Michael Jays.
I'm like, oh my God, I know this guy. I know him from a movie.

He's in a horror movie, right? He's been in a bunch of movies, but there was one specific movie, and this is like an underrated classic that knows it's called Thickest Thieves.

The movie is with Alec Baldwin, Michael Jai White.

Wow, I don't know this movie. It's a, and, and, um, I can't believe I don't know this movie.
It's Michael, Michael Baldwin.

That sounds like something got stolen, and then the guys escaped, just knowing nothing. It's a movie about

Alec Baldwin plays, I haven't seen it in a long time, but there's the mobs involved and Michael Jai White runs one part of the

underworld, and these two people are like up against each other. But it's very funny.
It's very cool. I think Janine Garofilo is in it just like for a little while.

She played like Alec Baldwin's ex or something like that. The IMDB is...

A thief is betrayed after a well-done job in Detroit. Returning to Chicago, he decides on revenge.
Things escalate. How the fuck have I not seen this? It's really good.
I'm outraged at myself.

It's really good. It's a smaller movie.
I don't know if it got theatrical relief. It released.
It's really good.

It's like Michael, Alec Baldwin is like trying to get revenge and all of that stuff, whatever. Andre Brower's in it.
Andre Brower plays

Michael Jai White's number one in the movie. Sounds great.
Michael Jakes is in that movie. So I recognize him from that.

And everybody's like, oh, Michael Jakes, but he was like serving at the church, like ushering people and helping out and all of that stuff like that.

And then one day he

got arrested for murder and it was like a thing like with the truth talk to the guy been around the guy

the title of this bit and maybe not call it van lathan's fun fact

i don't know if we can get that one sponsored van lathan's unfactor van lathan's fun fact presented by arbies i remember it was like

fried turkey sandwich and do you know and the the way that i learned about this this was one of the early tmz moments this was somebody that i knew and then all of a sudden it comes into tmz and i'm standing up i'm like i'm gonna fucking know that guy.

But yeah, 40 years, Murder in the Second, right? Van Lathan's maybe not that fun fact. Maybe not that fun fact.

Was there a better title for this movie? Scabs.

No?

Nah, probably not. What do you think, Craig? Scabs? I like the replacements.
That's funny.

The only problem is there was another movie called The Replacements, right? It gets confusing.

Oh, the

movie called The Replacements. Ruffalo Hannah Rubeneck Partridge Overacting word.
It's either Favreau with the Give me the ball. I got you the ball.
I got you the ball. But I really think it's Martel

Falco. It's great to see you.
Now get the hell out of my locker room. He goes Pachino first, but second.
Yeah, I got Orlando. I got Orlando Jones a little bit as well.

Love you, Orlando, but he was hamming it up in this one. And Favreau, the get-me-the-ball thing.
Can you dig it award, most memorable quote? Pain heals, chicks, dig scars, glory lasts forever.

Great job.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest take a word.
What do you you got?

That they should actually have strippers in real NFL stadiums.

Okay. Okay.

We're gearing this stuff for kids. All right.
And the reality is, is that, let's face it, we've passed the point where it's for kids. It's just not for kids anymore.

It's not, it's not for kids. Didn't the XFL try to do this, basically? Perhaps, but maybe it used to be, you guys can't, we know too much about the game now.
Yeah.

For you to, the game, the game is a bunch of people fuck literally poisoning their brains right right like yeah let's just own it like yeah it's not for it's not for kids if the game isn't for kids whatever kids look if kids can enjoy it i'm not saying that we put the strippers out there in front of the kids but there should be a an adult part of the stadium where you can get a little you know what i'm saying that you and it and it that i'm with that Gambling, all of this stuff, all of this stuff is for adults.

We're grown-ups. All it is, we're grown-ups.
We're grown-ups watching this grown-up sport that we like, where guys are literally shortening in their lives. Bring some ladies out there.

Let them make some money off the NFL. The strippers are making money after the games.
Let them make money during the games. Yeah,

it's a first of a two-part day for them. That's what I'm talking about.

Here's mine. It's not even, this isn't a typical hot take.

I had a friend who was really upset that I mentioned how.

I wanted to do a hot take for body double that Frankie goes to Hollywood, could have been queen, but I backed off. I was like, I can't do it.
I can't.

because that's the whole point of the hottest take is to say something crazy and try to defend it. I don't think this is crazy.

I just don't think we've made enough football movies. And I don't know if,

you know, new president, maybe I know he's gotten some initiatives. He's naming a cabinet, but maybe this could be part of it.
What the fuck are you talking about? More football movies.

Maybe a four-year commitment to more football movies. What are you? There are guys in this movie that could be like actually named to his cabinet.
You never know. He might be.

Maybe Trump needs a sports movie consultant. He might put sports movies on Michael Jace on his cabinet with some of the appointments.
Do we have enough football movies? No. The answer is no.

We're like one-third where we need to be. Bill, I would watch 20 versions of their replacements.
The sports movie itself is in peril because we know too much about sports. The sports movies now.

So documentaries

ruin sports movies. Because like, okay, so the sports movie now, remember like the movie that Adam Sandler had a couple of years ago with the big guy from Spain, Anthony Edwards Hustle.
Yeah.

Okay, so that's a good movie. Yeah.
Because it's a small story more about basketball culture than it is about the actual NBA or college basketball, high-flying bird, movies like that.

But movies about teams in sports leagues and stuff like that, they don't work as good anymore because the

archetypes of these athletes and stuff, they've been destroyed by what we actually know about them. Can I pitch you a movie? Give it to me.

You know how sometimes the rich guys can have their son is on like North Carolina as like the 15th man, and they basically give money to the team and the guy's on the team, but he never plays.

Certainly.

A lot of injuries. That kid becomes, gets into a game, does really well,

has to like play minutes, and then it turns into a whole nepotism argument.

That's all I have so far.

So that's the whole movie. That's like no, that's half.
That's half the movie. Like Dan Hurley's kid on YouTube.
Yeah, it's a sports movie.

I was thinking about that Gonzaga kid who got dunked on, who was the coach's son, and the kid got violently dunked on.

And I was thinking, what if there was a scenario where this kid actually came into play during March Madness and was like, Ollie from Hoosiers? That's all I have. And he starts cooking.
Yeah.

That's interesting. So it's all the Nepo babies maybe combined for one.
Nepo babies. Maybe Bronny James plays the son.
Well, because you want a skilled basketball player. Right.

And then you have like a whole meta element to it. I'm with it.
Nepo ball. Nepo ball.
I said the word Bronny James and Van's lip just curled he didn't even know where it was going you were not sure

the agendas

casting what ifs

i couldn't find any

not a lot of info in this movie i can't there was no oral history there was no like 20 years later feature um

but the deaf guy became roy from the office which is apparently a big deal to people who watch the office and then i like to think andy reid is the cowboys coach and i like you disparaging for for people who watch

the office. You're mad that I haven't seen Friday Night Lights and you're disparaging that often.

I like to pretend Andy Reid is the Cowboys coach in the end. They cut to him a couple times and he looks like Andy Reid.

You know what? I forgot something that aged the worst. Oh, what is it? Andy Reid? No, he aged actually the best.
Okay.

Coaches wearing suits. Hmm.

When I watched this, remember Austin was talking about coaches need to wear suits? Everything Austin says, people go fucking nuts. like, but like, coaches, like, coaches wearing suits.

When I saw him on the sideline in the suit, I was like, oh, coaches used to wear suits. Yeah.
But for some reason, when you say Andy Reid, you know who ruined that?

Mike Nolan on the San Francisco 49ers. When he made a big thing about suits and fedoras, and the team sucked.
Right. And he got fired in like two years.
And people are like, we're done with that.

Hey, we don't get

this out that often. The Van Lathan word for this movie needs more black people.

No.

Pretty well represented. Yeah.
Yeah.

best that guy michael jace doesn't qualify no he's not

the assistant coach who's looks like a chubby ed o'neal oh he's been around a lot he's one of those guys yeah his name's art lefleur but i think the winner is eddie martel he's played by some guy named brett collin i can't name one other thing i've seen him in if i see him in anything i just think he's eddie martel But he's been in a lot of shit though.

Did you know his name? No, I didn't. What do I know? What's his, this wouldn't.
You know him as Eddie Martel. You'd be like, oh my God, that's Eddie Martel.
I'm trying to think of that guy.

He's definitely a that guy, but I think he's a that guy from a different movie. I think I think of him as somebody from a different movie.
I can't think of the movie, though.

I'm thinking of a Western that I know him from

intripping, but he ain't. What about Phase on Love?

I think he's Phase on Love. Nah, Phase on Love got too much.

Yeah. I feel like people my age just to see him as the guy from, who plays Santa and Elf.
But Phase on Love, remember, Phase on Love. He has Fazon Love.

Yeah, he, he, you know, you, people from my age think of him as Big Worm from Friday. Friday, yeah.
So, you know,

Dean Waders award. I'll give you Madden and Summerall.
I'll give you Jack Warden as the owner, and I'll give you the winners, the two stripper cheerleaders. The two stripper cheerleaders are up there.

I feel like this is. They're going to be in the bracket, Craig.

I feel like they're up there. We're doing a Deion Waiters bracket.

I feel like Madden and Summerall are the clear winners here, though.

Over the two stripper cheerleaders?

I get it. I get it.
But Madden and Summerall. They're pretty great.
They're pretty great on it. Co-winners.
Yeah.

First time ever Madden and Summerall get to share something with two stripper cheerleaders we don't know what happened on the road recasting couch director city

we got to get a different eddie martel i feel like we could have done better i'll give you a couple choices matt dylan oh that works

stephen weber single wave female oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the guy that's getting the blowjob at the end yeah guy i'm gonna tell her from um uh from wings from wings yeah on nbc david ducovney

doesn't have the football player type. All right, so you like Matt Dylan? Matt Dylan or Stephen Warburt works too.
Okay.

Romo Collinsworth or someone else for the director's commentary. I got to be honest, we don't need other announcements.
Matt and Summer are so good in this.

I don't know if I would put another announcer in this. Not even Ryan Rucco.

No. Matt and Summer were perfect.
Those guys are the goats at what they do. Everybody's chasing them.
Yeah.

Half-assed internet research. So

Shane Falco's meltdown in the 1996 Super Bowl.

Sugar Bowl.

I literally have Sugar Bowl in my notes and somehow fucked that up anyway.

There was no Sugar Ball

in 96.

They played on December 31st, 95, and they played on January 2nd, 97. Oh, wow.

So maybe they used 96 because there was no Sugar Bowl that year. Maybe so.

Something else that you know who he lost to in the game? Who? In the Sugar Bowl? OSU? Nah, he lost to he.

Shane Falco lost to Florida State. Oh.
Which you talk about something that. Has aged the worst.

Yeah. Nobody is losing to Florida State right now.
Are they going to D3, you think?

Florida State is in all-time hell right now. Yeah, tough one.
Keanu gained 23 pounds for his role as Shane Falco.

And then apparently in the I Will Survive dance scene, Keanu is replaced by a stunt double who's hiding his face. I don't know if that means Keanu can't dance or maybe he was sick.

I find it hard to believe he can't dance. He does all the John Wick Matrix stuff.
He can't dance. Can do like

10-minute fight scenes. Can't dance.
Maybe he couldn't.

There are times when you see, and it looks like he could be struggling a little bit. They let you slide isn't for the week.
Apex Mountain, not a lot of candidates here.

Keanu, no. Broo Langton, no.
I still think it's Melrose's place. Madden and Summerall.
No. No.
Jack Warden, no. You just, it's nose around,

except for

throwing throwing a trophy football underwater. I'd never seen that before.
Yeah.

Scabs? Scabs, movies about scabs. Movies about scabs.

Movies celebrate scabs. If you think about

any movie about labor celebrates labor. Celebrates like Norma Ray or.
Norma Ray. Yeah.

This is the apex mountain of movies about scabs that I can think about.

21st century football movies.

Remember Friday Night Lights. Remember the Titans? Well, I'm just getting bad.
Mentioning it. Yeah.

I think it's probably Friday Night Lights.

But you could also talk me to Remember the Titans. Remember the Titans, which goes back to my original point.
All these movies are early 2000s. Yeah.
Like we haven't had anything since.

All right, one more break and then we're doing Cruiser Hanks.

This episode is brought to you by Coca-Cola. From the first time you turn on your Christmas lights till the last president is placed under the tree, the holiday season is packed with iconic moments.

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That's a gift in and of itself. Enjoy a Coca-Cola.
Refresh your holidays. Well, this is one of the best Cruiser Hankses we've ever had.
I agree.

Cruise's Shane Falco is unbelievable. I also feel like 80s Hanks could have played Shane Falco, but I'm going with Cruz, and I think he's the right answer.
I think he's the clear answer.

Either guy could have done it, but like this is an amazing cruise. This is basically cocktail crossed with Cruz being a replacement strike quarterback.
Nothing to Keanu. Love him.
Yeah.

If Cruz is in this movie, it makes $150 million.

I think more.

You think so? Yeah, $200 million.

I don't think he could have thrown the throwing scenes. I'm just judging from War of the Worlds when he's he's trying to throw the baseball.
I don't know if he could have done the quarterback stuff.

He's also very small. Yeah.

He would have to be like a Kyler Murray. Yeah, he's going to scramble around.
It's going to be a whole lot of fun. That's why he lost the Sugar Bowl because

he got killed. He didn't get drive.
He's too short. He's too small for the job.
There's Doug Fluty biases. Remember, Doug Fluty didn't get a job for a while.
I think it's Cruise.

Racehorse, Rock Band, Wrestler, Fantasy Team name. Wild Yams is pretty good.
Yeah, Wild Yams. Yeah.
I just had Yams, but Picketnets. I like Yams.

So Shane's all-American trophy is just at the bottom of the ocean under a boat? He obviously threw it there.

Nothing happened to it? It's just still there?

I mean,

what do you mean nothing happened to it? Why did he throw it there? Was that his boat? Well, he was, he, he's cleaning boats, but he also lives out there. So I think the.

So he got drunk and threw his trophy? He got drunk or he's moving on for football. Wouldn't have sold the trophy.
We have eBay in 2000. He would threw his trophy down there.

The only question is him seeing his trophy and then wanting to play with it again after that. Maybe, but

it's clear he threw the trophy off the boat into the ocean.

So they have a strike. The players go on strike.
The cheerleaders also went on strike? Yeah, the cheerleaders. The cheerleaders are in the National Football League Players Union.
Yeah. Solidarity.

What? Yeah, they did decide to do it. Whatever.

Nigel Gruff kicks a 65-yard field goal to win the game, which would have been a record by two yards. Like maybe go 61.

Like settle down. You're not beating Tom Dempsey in 2000.
Shane Falco is recovering onside kicks. He's out there in that formation.
Yeah. No, he's on the other side.

He's trying to get the onside kick. Oh, wait.
Oh, yeah. Well, oh, yeah.
No, he's on. Yeah, he's on the receiving.
Wait, he's trying to get it. Oh, he's on the telephone.
He's onside kicking team.

He's on the kickoff team.

He's the quarterback. They're not doing that.

Why wouldn't Shane have stayed on as backup QB for the last game? Why did he leave?

They made one QB.

by the way, that's another thing.

He's their starting QB and their holder, which I, which happens sometimes. It hadn't happened since Romo, right? Nobody else is.
Romo killed it.

Romo killed it, but he just decides, okay, I'm too good to be the backup. And they don't seem to have a backup quarterback on the team.
They seem to be one deep at quarterback. It's a whole.

Again, sports movie consultant agency fixes that pretty quick.

Why does Eddie Martell care about Annabelle the bartender in that scene where she's like, she's too good for you, Shane?

Are there like five scenes missing? Why is he involved? Did he used to date her?

Yes. And if he did used to date her, why not have that scene? Yeah, something got cut.
Something got cut because... But put it back.

He just throws that out there as if he cares about who she sees or whatever.

And he also. Obviously, they dated.
I know, but he also knows that they've got something going on, which there's no indication in the movie that anybody knows that, really. Right.
It's a whole.

My guess is it was another cliche scene and they're like, we're already at eight. We can also have Eddie Martell dating Keanu's new girlfriend.
There could have been like a whole storyline where Keanu

doesn't go to meet her because he finds out that she slept with Eddie Martell as well. Or maybe Eddie Martell is the reason why she doesn't date football players, especially quarterbacks.
That's...

I mean, that's clearly the answer. Yeah.

Why did Madden and Somerville announce every Washington game? They didn't move them around. There wasn't a Giants game, just four straight weeks of their doing Washington games.
Right.

Thought it was suspicious. It could have worked in Gus Johnson, maybe, for a game.

All right, here's the big one. Well, there, do you have other ones? I have a huge one.

It would be the same one. It's the only team with replacements?

Well, they say how Dallas's whole team crossed. Right.
Well, they're

supposed to think the whole league was using replacement players, right? Well, yeah, except for the fact that they play other guys and they list off their accolades. Yep.
They say this guy did this.

So maybe that was just Dallas. Maybe.
Maybe that was just Dallas. But

like the movie actually,

the whole movie is actually a huge nit.

But it is. But that was my big one.
My big one was it was unclear to me how many teams were actually. Yeah, we're missing a sports center scene where like Rich Eisen's telling us how 240 of the 300,

whatever, offensive players or scabs or whatever. Right.

One more thing for me. Okay.

Shane Falco

fucks off one college football game. Like, what kind of, what, what, what kind of prospect was he?

He fucks off one college football game. So I have this an unanswerable question.
Okay.

How bad was his box score in that game? It doesn't matter how bad let's say they they we know he lost by 45 points yeah

would you say over under five and a half turnovers you're going over or under well they lost 45 to nothing so he had to give them some points

so if i said he two lost fumbles yeah three picks plus a pick six right six turnovers yeah and a fumble touchdown and a pick six as two of the six turnovers yeah And it's so bad

that he literally can't get drafted. So no one drafts him.
Does he take a shit on the field?

He gets hit. He just loses his bowels.
Like, what's the worst thing that could happen to him in this game? To where he just, to where no one touches him.

Does he start crying? He doesn't even like a Little League world series person. Does he walk off the field during the game? Does he leave the game? Yeah.

Here's my biggest nitpick.

Shane Falco watches the first half of the big game on his boat.

And the half ends and Gene Hackman's coming off the field and they're like, what happened the first half? What are you missing? He's like, heart.

Shane Falco's watch is like, heart right here. Jane Falco turns off the TV.
He's at the dock.

Three minutes later, he's in the locker room.

A, how close was the dock to the football stadium? B,

even if you get there, you got to park in the parking lot. You're running through.
It's 25 minutes minimum. Yeah.
Right? He's there in four minutes.

And they're like, we hope that we hope nobody notices this. Well, it's like, guess what? You're on TNT now for 24 fucking years.
It's absurd. He should have left at the end of the first quarter.

This is why we need Mallory, because the only question I have is,

if this is Baltimore.

Well, it's Washington and Baltimore. Yeah.
Washington in Baltimore. Baltimore pretended to be Washington.
What fucking changes it then? Yeah. Because

I don't know. I was going to say, maybe if it's Baltimore, then you're around the bay.
It's 25 minutes minimum. Yeah.
Yeah, I tried.

So the move should have been, if we were the sports movie consultant agency in this one. It'd be like, no, make it so a gene hackman interview at the end of the first quarter

when it's 17-0. Then he turns off the TV and leaves.
But he's listening to the game on the radio so he could hear it kind of like in Moneyball. Yeah.
Where Baby Pitt is listening to the game.

He goes back. Yeah.

Sequel, prequel, Prestige TV, all blackcast or untouchable. Leave it alone.

Prestige TV, you could talk me into. Really? Yeah.

Like,

you know how they do American Sports Story? And it's like, this, this season, it's Aaron Hernandez. Maybe it's just every season is about scab replacement players.

We just do it that way.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treyo, Sid Goldberg, Sam Jackson, J.T. Walsh, Nell, Byron Mayo, Harling Mays, Evil Laughi, Ramon Raymond, Long Legs, or Philip Baker Hall?

Can I give you Sam Jackson?

I was about to say, go ahead and go for the Sam Jackson. Go for it.
The movie needs Sam Jackson. I agree.

Give it to us.

Deep Blue Sea cameo, Sam Jackson. It's just four scenes.
Sam, here's a million dollars. Just four scenes, two days.
Yeah. Just stand on the sidelines and be like, what the fuck are we doing?

And do a couple of Sam Jackson things.

What do you want him to do? No. I want you to do something.
It's a new America. Things are different now.
Oh, Sam Jackson has happened. No.
Give us your best Sam Jackson.

When this

savage, when this, you know what the fuck I'm talking about.

When this happens, I normally get my man CR, CR somewhere. I normally get a voice.
You got to give us a Sam Jackson.

So maybe

at halftime,

Shane Falco comes in.

And he's like, oh, I got it. And Eddie Martel says, get out of the locker room.
We go back and forth. And then Sam Jackson turns to Eddie Martel and goes, I don't remember asking you a goddamn thing.

I like it.

I like it. That's it.
It's got five lines.

Just one Oscar who gets it. I'm going to go with the rare nobody.
There are no Oscars given out for this movie.

I want to go with nobody, but if you had to do it in the spirit, Hackman is the only person taking the movie seriously.

Probably unanswerable questions. We did Shane Falco's box score.

business was this for Annabelle, this bar that she had that she had to close every time there's a football game? I just worried about her financially. Right.

So I would think the football game would be a big night at the bar. Are we sure that she's the only person that works there, though? Maybe she's literally the only one.
They don't even have like

bar backs or another bartender or busboys, anything. Yeah.
She's closing it herself. There's no bouncer.
I made up a whole backstory. Whoa, okay.
What is it? So Annabelle is the owner's daughter,

but not through his marriage. Illegitimate.

Annabelle is the owner's illegitimate daughter. See, we made Annabelle so much interesting just in this podcast.
She just dated Eddie Martel. Yep.
She's going to turn into fatal attraction.

She's the owner's daughter. That's great.
I love it. He gave her a bar.
She wants to be close to him. So she cheerleads, also to bother him a little bit.

So she doesn't really need the money when the bar closes for the games.

Best use of Every Breath You Take.

I will give you Stranger Things, Billions, Risky Business, the Replacements, or Soprano's first episode season three. Soprano's first episode season three by a mile, but I'll leave it.

That's my answer as well. I'll listen to Risky Business, though.
Okay.

Best double feature choice. So you'd go unnecessary roughness right into this so you could compare and contrast.

No, I thought about it, but I actually go any given Sunday because these are the last gasps of the NFL football movie. Yeah.

You could also talk me into Hardball, the Keanu double, the Keanu double feature.

Did he do another sports movie after?

These are his only two sports movies, Hardball and this one. It's point break count? No.
Yeah, it is. It's surfing and football.
Yeah, it's kind of, yeah.

The Andy and Red Zoan air word, what happened the next day. So what does Shane Falco's next few years of his career look like? He's 26 or 27, looked pretty good in these replacement games.
Yeah.

Can he catch on as a backup for like in Pittsburgh? He's Cordell Stewart, third string quarterback. Maybe get some time for like a year and a half.

He gets a Matt Flynn-like deal. Matt Yeah, maybe he's to a new team

out of the league in three years. The Lions get excited about him.

I feel like he has at least 10 NFL starts. I have Shane Falco founds FanDuel.

Interesting. Goes a different way.

He talks to the guy about gambling, the kicker. Yeah.
They start talking about it. He gets in on the grind.
His wheels start turning. Wheels start turning.

He's giving the picks right now. It's combine this movie with Two Foot of Money.
That's his future. I like it.
What piece of memorability would you want from this movie?

The Shane Falco jersey would be pretty great. I want the trophy.
Trophy's great. Yeah.
I like the hat.

Oh, the hat would be good. Yeah, that's that Washington hat.
Their merch is cool. Yeah.
I like their merch.

Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson. Pain Heels, Chicks, Digs, Scars, Glory Lasts Forever.
Who won the movie? This is a tough one. I had a lot of, I didn't, I put question marks.

This is a tough one. I don't feel like Keanu won it.
I don't feel like he won it either. This is the most.

Can we say Brooke Langton won it?

I think everybody loves her in this movie. And I think the common refrain is like, why didn't...
So she was in Swinger. She was in Melrose Play.

She had like a 10-year run. This is the most, this is the least leady.
part from a leading man I've ever seen. I don't feel like Keanu won this movie.
If anything, Scabs won it.

Stripper cheerleaders? Stripper Cheerleaders could win it. I'm into that.
Who won the movie, Craig? I finished this movie because of Brooke. I probably would have bailed had she not been in this film.

Desperate to know what you think. Yeah, all right, let's hear it.

This one might be only a re-watchable because it's not a watchable. It's not a first-time watchable.
You can't watch this movie for the first time in 2024.

And honestly, it's not even because of like the problematic stuff.

Like, there are plenty of movies that have problematic stuff that came out a long time ago that you can still watch now and appreciate. This one, this one's just not good.
This one's like,

this is like someone else's hand-me-down. Yeah.
You know, this was my reaction when I saw it in 2000. Right.
No, it's like, this movie's not good. They didn't really try that out.

There's no charm for me. It's somebody else giving me a hand-me-down from their family.
And I'm like, this doesn't mean anything to me.

What is your favorite older football movie?

This movie came out the same time as, it came out a month before Remember the Titans. That's my favorite sports movie.
That like Sandlot, probably.

So this is why we call it the Wear Me Down Rewatchable. Right.

It took literally seven, eight years for me to admit that I kind of secretly enjoyed this movie.

I think the reason why this movie is weird is because it's like trying to be dodgeball and also a little bit of Remember the Titans and it doesn't pick a side.

I think Remember the Titans and Sand Lot and a lot of those movies have like real.

values you can take from it. This movie doesn't have any of that.
But this is what the early 90s sports movies were like.

But then they should have just leaned in and like, I think Gene Hackman is miscast.

I think it actually, they should have went even sillier and just made it completely slapstick because Hackman tries to reel you back in and make it a real movie and it's not. I agree with that.

This movie doesn't know what it is. It doesn't.
It kind of doesn't know what movie they're making. Because

the sand lot is a movie where a lot of funny stuff happens. Totally.
But the sand lot is really about something. Coming of age.
Coming of age.

And yet it came on a month ago after a basketball game and both of us started watching it.

I like the movie. How did it break us down? Is the enduring question of this? You know what the reality is? And, you know, it gets thrown around a lot.

A movie just doesn't have to be good for you to like it. Yeah.
You can like a movie for all kinds of reasons. It can be amusing.
It can be funny in spots.

This movie is not a good movie, but it is incredibly watchable. Most pieces of content are just tied to when you saw it and how it made you feel and what age you were.

It's like why people's favorite music is always the music they listen to when they were in high school or college. It doesn't mean it's the best.

But it's, but, but it, this is, this movie is funny, though. Yeah.
It's, I mean, to me,

it's funny. It's like, she's beautiful.
It has stuff to look at. I like Keanu Reeves.
I like Gene Hack, but that's not a movie I won't watch.

The big sign to me is that TNT, TBS, like it just, it's still on. Because people still want to watch it.
People still watch it because they study this shit.

And they're like, every time we put the replacements on, it keeps whatever rating.

Also,

I just thought about this when you guys were talking. So I could be wrong.
This might not be fully baked, but I think sports movies movies about professional sports are worse.

You know?

I mean, worse, like in life or just like... No, like the movie's just not as good.
I feel like it's harder to work. Everyone's older.
If it's about professional sports, the characters are older.

There's like a business element that's not that fun. It's not coming of age.
When I think to all the best sports movies, they're always about kids or like college. High school or college.

High school or college.

Like you loved Rudy. Yeah, Rudy.

What's the best pro sports movie? None of them have 100% worked. Any given Sunday, Sunday.
Major League? Oh, Major League is bad. Oh, you're saying any sport.
Any sport.

Major League is by far the best in. Yeah.
Major League. But you know what?

I'd say that

about movies, if you're talking about baseball movies, though, baseball movies might be better when they're about pro baseball.

Well, it's because there is no college baseball is not a thing that people follow. The natural

down to kids. Where do you stand on Eddie? The fucking movie with Lufa Goberg coaches the Knicks comes out of of the stands movie.

That's kind of like this movie to me, where there was this silly sports movie era that kept going until, I don't know, early 2000s. Where do you stand on Celtic Pride? It's terrible.
It's really bad.

I would say if it was about any team, it's just not a good movie. It's not a fun hang.
It's a weird one, yeah. Yeah, I don't really like it.
Also, this movie's two hours.

Why is this movie two hours long? This movie needs to be 140 down.

Craig and Ebert.

You know what's funny? Craig's going going to text me like six years from now. He's like, you know what,

replacements was on tonight. I'm kind of in that.
I'm on Pluto and I'm drunk. Replacements.

I'm on the Elugs rocket watching the replacements. No, I'm talking about the streaming service, not the planet.
Eating ice cream coets.

Pluto, the planet.

You could tell me either Pluto. All right.
That's it for the rewatchables produced by Craig Krullbeck. You can watch this on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel.
Thanks to Ben Lathan. See you next week.