‘The Legend of Billie Jean’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

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You sure can.

Yeah.

We did 400 movies for the Rewatchables. Our 400th was American Gangster last week.
Yeah. It's football season.
It's the Monday of week one.

All anyone cares about is football and Steve Ballmer's illegal pay cycles, possibly.

My green bank that's going bankrupt. Yeah.

How are your, how's your aspiration stock? Isn't that you know what?

I think they're, they're saying fair's fair, but who knows? Well, we decided there is no better chance for a one for us than this week. And it's a 2B classic.

It's gotten to the point when I go on Tubi. And by the way, this is not sponsored by 2B.

I don't think Tubi even likes us. Why not? I don't know.
They've never really because you tried to change their slogan to go Tubi.

Right.

Every time I go there, they're like, hey, Legend of Billie Jean. Yeah.
Yeah, I haven't clicked on this in a while. And I've watched it probably 700 times when I was a teenager and in college.

And now we're finally doing it. Legend of Billie Gene, because fair is fair.
Here we go.

All right, CR. Just here's my first take.
Just take me back. Just take me back to the mid-80s when life was simple.
Yeah.

And we just had malls and we could just have people get innocently shot in the shoulder and become heroes and then just get away scot-free. And I just miss it.

It's like one of the most nostalgic movie-going experiences I can have right now is to watch, is to watch this. There's a run of movies from 84 to 86

that is essentially Last Starfighter, Maximum Overdrive, The Explorers, Big Trouble in Little China, Rad,

and The Legend of Billie Jean that I think I had on constantly from 1985, whenever we first got a VHS player, through when cable got introduced at my house, which I think was in the mid-late 80s.

These movies were just the wallpaper. They were on all the time.
The soundtracks are buried into like their brainworms in my head. And I remember every single scene and every single nuance.

And they still hit now. And it's like, they're not American cinematic classics, but they are like my VHS classics.

Yeah, there's like, I would have thrown in 40 to 45 other movies other than the ones you listed just because I was watching like Karate Kid, Teen Wolf, all those.

They all had music. They all had a hero.
They're all kind of innocent. There was all like these over-the-top villains.
They all had a lot of flaws, which was fine. Sure.
This movie has some flaws.

Like, I was surprised, the nitpicks.

I was like, has anyone ever picked nits with Legend of Billy Jean like this before? You guys just let Vigilante Justice run a muck? Yeah.

And the most important thing, other than the theme that we're going to talk about in a second, was just,

I was just in love with Helen Slater. Yeah.
I was in high school. She was 22 when she filmed this movie playing a 16-year-old, but she was just, I was just like, I'm in.

I'll follow this person to the, to the end of the season. And she, she was in Supergirl, right? Supergirl, and then this one, and was in a couple other ones.
But she's in there.

Christian Slater, we had no history with him yet. He's the little brother.
Film debut. Peter Coyote had been bouncing around in the 80s for a while.

And it just, it was a movie that kind of came and went. I think it was 14th when it, when it was released the first week.
Yeah.

And then was on cable for the next 15 years straight. Yeah.
It was perfect link for a TNT TBS where you could just do two hours. It was on HBI.
I was on Cinemax. It just was never not on.

What is it? An hour 35? Hour 35. Yeah.
Yeah. We told Craig, told him, I think.
Craig, congrats on your new camera angle, by the way. Thank you.

We told Craig 1985,

Legend of Billie Gene. Don't read anything about it.
And he looked it up. What was it? 101 minutes? It's 100.
It's an hour 35, 95 minutes, 97 minutes. 95 minutes.
He was like, I like that.

I thought it was going to be about tennis. It wasn't.

Tennis. I wasn't even about Billy G.
King or something.

Yeah.

But

what's interesting, 40 years later, watch, I mean, there's two major themes that we had, weren't talking about in the 80s, but there's a female empowerment hero piece to this

that I think I liked when I watched it. But as the years pass,

dare I say ahead of its time, it's like this. It's Sarah Connor.

It's even Joyce Heiser and just one of the guys flipping tables and trying to show her newspaper editor that she could get a good story. But there wasn't a lot of these.

And this was probably the most famous one. Yeah, it's funny to go back and watch this through 2025 Eyes, both for the feminism angle and also like the

viral celebrity angle and like the idea of somebody becoming like an overnight sensation and taking over. Now in 1980s, it was more of a like a local thing that would then explode nationally.
Yeah.

Now it can just be instantaneously, you go viral for something and then like you're the biggest thing online for two days and then everybody forgets you. But with the

part about like the female empowerment, it's wild, but like there's so much casual misogyny in this movie. The whole thing basically gets rolling because Mr.
Pyatt tries to like sexually assault her.

and then flip it on her. Yeah.
And that's really what, and now the whole time she's just like, I just want to get paid back for the scooter. We're not getting even getting into you being a deviant.

Yeah. Because that was probably taken for granted that that's what guys were like back then in some ways.
Yeah. There's no question.
She's navigating this

misogynist,

pretty like hairy world. Yeah.
But she's just like, this is the world I'm in. And I just know, kind of know what I can read this guy.
I know what to do. Niam and the balls.
Yeah.

But now it would be like, you know, this would obviously be a completely different movie. But

it's weird to think that these characters made sense in 1985, but they kind of did. It's like, Mr.
Pratt, totally get it.

Completes come back, taking a crack at a 16-year-old in the attic of a store. Yeah.

And we were like, wow, this is horrifying. What? Like, this guy's Annible Hector.

But back then, I was like, ah, there's multiple cases of pretty casual child abuse in this movie where you're just like, oh, man, Potter's getting tooled up by her mom again.

That's not like, hey, stop everything, call child services. It's like, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, even the way the adults talk about her,

basically Peter Coyote's character, the police officer, and then in the Mr. Pyatt, where they're like, you're a good-looking girl, Billie Jean.
Yeah. She's 16.
Yeah. And

they're just like batting up. Craig, were you taken aback by that? Not for the 80s, right? Okay.
Yeah. At least at this point.
Yeah, that's true. We have indoctrinated it.

We've been in the flames of the 80s. That's right.
For the last five years.

1980s movies. Yeah.
I think one of the things I really loved about this movie and still really enjoy when I, when I watch, I had such a great time re-watching this.

And it's not like I hadn't seen it in the last, I I don't know, five years, but

she's such a good character. It's so weird to say this is a well-drawn character because this is such a dumb movie.
But at the first half hour, she's like really innocent and shy.

And she's like, yeah, obviously like coming into her own as a woman and guys are looking at her a certain way and she's still getting used to that.

Like even when the four guys are hitting on her at the beginning. Oh, and Huby's like

milkshake straw. Yeah, and she's like, I'm kind of flirting, but I'm kind of horrified.
And then by the end, she's she's the fucking badass.

Oh, it's like all this stuff had like had like uh seasoned her in a way for how to actually make the world. And I do think at that time, like there was like

you know, obviously, Pat Benatar was a pretty big artist, but like gets a huge hit out of this movie with Invincible.

But like, Pat Benatar, Madonna, like, there were kind of like these pop culture figures that weren't as traditionally

not necessarily not beautiful or not, but like they didn't present as traditional.

Yeah, they were badass. They had like one glove and a spiked haircut or whatever.
And it was like things were changing a little bit.

I think like that you could see that like people were becoming a little bit more self-possessed through the images that they were seeing. C.D.
Lauper helped. Of course.
Pat Benatar. Yeah.
Yeah.

Madonna. And it was also right around the time when they were figuring out how to use famous pop music people,

famous artists, whatever, to kind of, to kind of supercharge a movie. Sure.
Right. And then Top Gun, they really put it all together.

But 85, you have Vision Quest, which they put Madonna in with the crazy for you. Yeah.
Great soundtrack. This was like, it's basically the stars of the movie are Helen Slater and Pat Benatar.
Yes.

And they play the song three full times in 95 minutes. Yeah.
And it even, by the way, I could have gone for four. It's

used as like a theme in the score itself. Like they'll go into notes from Invincible.
Yeah. That like, it's just a very wise way to kind of build it up.

And but that kind of speaks to this movie being right on the cusp of a change in media where, I mean, of course, like people used to, Barbara Streisand would do the soundtrack for a movie that she might be in and she would sing the theme song or whatever.

But this was really like, hey, we can put this on MTV. We can try and sell this girl as an icon, Pat Benatar.
It was a sea change for that stuff.

It was like I was telling Craig the other day,

This bloody road remains a mystery.

That's what they say with. What are we waiting for?

That's Aaron Rodgers' locker room speech. That's when he came out holding the flag in that first chance game.

That song is a banger.

I have a lot of thoughts about the music in this movie. So you mentioned the viral celebrity piece.

Once upon a time, we made the case. And I think we cemented it.
And I think it's become fact and gospel that pump up the volume created podcast.

I think this movie created the internet.

Can I just say, I think that might be the most used trope on this podcast, in this history of this podcast. I think Sean has said that three or four times, right? The created the internet? Yeah.

Where he'll be like, Daniel Plainview created the internet.

This whole, her becoming a viral celebrity with the Fairest Fair hashtag and the thing and the merchandising. And it's just like,

I don't think the movie realizes this because this is not, I wouldn't say this was you know this wasn't a paul thomas anderson production but this movie does see this world coming it does that is about to happen with donna rice and and you know monica lewinski eventually and and but there's also tammy fay baker all these people it points out a couple of things that i think are really important one are uh first of all we've kind of like slighted this movie a couple of times and i do think it's really silly in places it looks way better than it has any business look could be slighted i think it should have been nominated for an Oscar.

What do you mean? This movie's amazing. But if we slighted it, I apologize.
You know, you are finding a generation of kids who are fucking obsessed with television.

Like, it's Yarley Smith's character. They're like, she's just obsessed with what she sees in TV.
She's always like, I saw it on TV. You think I'll be on TV?

And then the other thing happens later in the movie, which is kids are starting to get their hands on video cameras. Yeah.
And they're starting to tape stuff more.

Including this kid right here, Bill Simmons.

Had a video camera and the Honda Elite scooter.

This movie really resonated with me. Inside of you are two wolves and it's Christian Slater.
Yeah.

I had the camera in high school.

It weighed 25 pounds. It couldn't have been heavier and more unwieldy.
And you brought it around, you taped, and you had these big giant videotapes. Yeah, so you bait.

And then you have this Keith Gordon character who's probably the first kid in Corpus Christi or whatever, who's like, let's start filming stuff ourselves. Let's speak back to television.

Like, we'll send this tape to the tv stations we'll take control of this narrative craig how expensive do you think those cameras were back then

like like not adjusting for inflation in 1985 how much do i think that cost yeah i have no idea a hundred dollars i mean that guy's av setup was sick no uh

doing this from memory but i'm gonna say at least like 500 yeah i think they were it was like six It was a luxury item. Yeah.
I don't know what the equivalent would be. Like in

a Sony high high eight

in high school in the 90s, and now it was like, this is the only present you're ever going to get for the rest of your life. Yeah.

And it was like, if you, by the way, if you, if you dropped it or accidentally hit it, the thing was just, there was no way to fix it. It was just gone.

The tapes were really expensive. They were 90.
The batteries were like an hour. Yeah.
You know, and it was just

20 pounds. Yeah.
Yeah. There are all these different ways it could go wrong.

We filmed, I did a student project in high school and we filmed a movie about our school that was 40 minutes called the Wickhiker, based on the hitchhiker, the HBO show.

And we filmed it with my camera. Uh-huh.
And

it just was like, we've got to get the. It was almost like the sun's setting.
We got to get this shot now. That was what it was like with these cameras.

It's like, we have 32 minutes before this thing dies. You're like Coppola and the Bakla.
Yeah. I was like, go, go, go.
See,

action.

Did you have editing equipment?

i i had the two vcrs and you would god yeah you would plug it in with all these like red dial that you could move back and forth yeah i was pretty good with this stuff but then i don't know what happened now i can like barely work a remote

experts now you'd have to edit the stuff edit it the other way and then you know it was just a huge pain in the ass we had no equipment back then so that kid set up for 19 because they filmed this movie came out in 85 so they really probably filmed it late 84.

yeah because that kid set up with they had security cameras in the house like nobody had that back then. Yeah.
And he had like a full kind of like basically home theater set up for 1984.

Fair is fair.

Great slogan. Yeah.

I think Gavin Newsom,

maybe as he heads toward toward battling the Trump infrastructure, maybe could start doing the Fair is Fair. Honestly, there are worse slogans to use.
Yeah. Fair is Fair.

The director, Matthew Robbins, he said, I was attracted to the screenplay because I hadn't seen anything like it. The empowerment of a female.
Everybody in the movie was young and powerless.

The assumptions were being made by all the adult males. It's kind of a force field the kids are up against.
So that was one theme.

And then the other one he said was, because he wrote the Sugarland Express with Goldie Haunt. That was Spielberg's first big movie.

He said, I was fascinated with notoriety getting confused with fame. which was exactly the same issue in the Sugarland Express.
That's a really interesting concept.

Notoriety getting confused with fame really starts right here in the mid-80s and goes through where all these people eventually like culminating in the OJ trial.

Someone definitely has a thesis paper that's like from Billie Jean to Hawk Tua, you know, like, right? I literally have that in my notes. Right.
That she's the Hawk Tua of 1984.

My flex was like the earnestness.

My flex category was what happens the next day. And I was like, I can't help but think about what would have happened in 2025.

Oh, she would have just gotten she would have gone on the Hawk Tua podcast, probably gotten to deal with like the unwell network, and then is like releasing music by the time she's 25.

She probably goes back to Corpus Christine, becomes like a school teacher. Turns out normal against the measles vaccine.

Well, Kato Kalen in the OJ trial, I feel like was the culmination of the start of this movie all the way, where Kato Kalen just became famous.

And he, you know, in the OJ trial, he was just this dude that lived in the guest house. And he brought nothing to the table.
He was like a wannabe actor.

He'd been in a couple things and then became like actually truly famous and was on the tonight show and was in game shows and was being cast in movies.

In 85, that would have been inconceivable, but people were starting to realize like you could use cable TV to become famous right away.

Yeah, I think the cool thing about this movie, too, is that it starts

when after

she starts to go on the lamb, the first reaction of like the kind of community is like, kids are running amok, and we got to put a stop to these kids who are just like terrorizing business owners and stuff.

And it's really like, whether it's organic or not, but it's really a youth explosion that leads to her becoming this folk hero. And then the haircut obviously like makes it into a fashion statement.

There's another piece to this movie that was really particularly the 80s. I'm interested from Craig's standpoint, if he feels like it exists now, like that

kids were the good guys and adults were just bad. And they didn't understand.
And that's a big breakfast club. Adults are bad.
They don't understand us. They take advantage of us.

In some cases, we're threatened by them physically or sexually. And adults are the bad people, but you have adults making movies about this.
Like this doesn't really exist now in the same way.

I think it's less ageist now and it's more about wealth. I think it's like the Louisi Mangioni and the United Healthcare.
Like, I think that is the version of what's going on.

It's haves and have-nots rather than old versus young. And also, back then, it was kids versus adults, adults don't understand,

and root for the kids. I think there's also an element that this might be simplifying it too much.
I don't know if you felt this way, but like in the 80s,

it definitely felt like when you were a kid, you just couldn't wait to grow up. Like, I, you know, like you really, really,

you know, you wanted to meet girls or you wanted to. I couldn't wait to have sex.

Thought about that a lot.

I couldn't wait to get a block. I really thought about that a lot.

i bet ellen slayer really you know we great having sex with another person but i mean but also like the music that was cool to like your older brother or cousin or the kids who were older than you that's the music you wanted to like yeah like you wanted to get out of being a kid that's always been the case but now i think that there's more

stuff for kids to almost stay perpetually young like they're served more culture that it's like, yeah, why would I ever just, I would never reject Taylor Swift.

I can just listen to Taylor Swift for the rest of my life.

Like Disney adults, there's like an exact era of these people who have kept the things they loved as children and just continue to like, or they can just keep watching that stuff because it's saved in perpetuity rather than when we were young.

And it was like, well, you can keep renting Goonies, but it's not as easily accessible as it is now, where you just be like, oh, I have it on my phone and I can fall asleep to it every night.

And the flip side, Millie Bobby Brown is now a 45-year-old. I don't know if you've seen her.

She looks like a

10-year-long Today Show anchor. Yeah.

She's like 22.

Well, I got to do it, CR.

Apex Mountain for hottest mid-80s high school babes that Teenage Bill loved. Yeah.

Right? This is 40 years ago. I still feel like it's fair game to talk about these people.

I'm talking about the love that I had. Helen Slater was 22 when she made this movie.
Yeah, I'm talking about, I'm not talking about me now. Yeah.
I'm talking about the love that I had

in the mid-80s, the feelings that percolated inside me, and I narrowed it down to five. Did you give me a fucking Carl Malone cup while you're talking about this?

The mailman.

Yeah. Oh, I didn't even think about that.
Jesus.

Oh, no. That was accidental.

Why do you have a Carl Malone cup? It's from the Dream Team collection. I bet to give you Dr.
J. I had a Dr.
J cup for you. We switched cups.

Well, it's almost better that you don't have the Carl Malone

for this topic.

Yeah, but I'm going for how I felt in the 80s. Yeah.

I already mentioned Kelly Preston and Secret Admirer and Mischief. Helen Slater and Billie Jean.
Joyce Heiser and just one of the guys.

I think she was like 30 in that movie in real life, but playing in high schooler. Elizabeth Schuman, Crowded Kid, we've discussed.
And Mia Sarah, Ferris Bueler. Yeah.
Those were the five.

I also was pretty into Jennifer Gray, too. Oh, Jennifer Gray and

Ferris Bueller. Yeah.
There were others, but just for like these, these characters were all in high school. I was in high school and I loved all of them.
Yes.

How about Rebecca De Mornay, Risky Business? Was she there? Not accessible. Yeah.
She was like a 19-year-old prostitute.

She doesn't count as a high school character. She was like from another galaxy in that movie.
Yeah. Just couldn't get there with Molly Ringwald.

Never, even though she was in multiple high school movies back then. Never like Sean Young in stripes, but she was a little bit.
She was an adult. Yeah.
Yeah.

No, this had to be like in your age where you felt like when like was Renona Ryder Lucas? Yep. Like you could meet her.
Yeah. It was like this person.

Oh, and then the other one, I guess this counts in mid-80s is Amanda Peterson, Can't Buy Me Love, because we were the exact same age as her in that movie.

So anyway. It was quite an era.
Helen Slater is in that mix. She sure is.
Yeah. If we had Dream Team Cups for that era, she would have had one.

uh, we should do that. That's good.

Those would be good cups. That wouldn't be weird at all.
7-Eleven Dream Team mid-80s. Yeah, I want to get a bunch of teenage girls on cups.
Is that cool?

No, Bill. Yeah, no, the only

time when you were in high school. Yeah, Bill's not enough.
No, it's retroactive. It's fine.

She did Supergirl Billie Jean, Ruthless People.

Secret of My Success with Michael J. Fox,

and then City Slickers. And

I think she was pretty fairly serious actress, but that was kind of her. And then she went back to school.
Yeah. I think she went to like do other stuff.

Yeah.

And then Christian Slater.

This is his first big movie. He's in Name of the Rose, Sean Connery.
Good movie, actually. Tucker Man in his Dream.
And then Does the Heathers Pump Up the Violin Blizzard? And it's off to the races.

Heathers. But you could see the pieces in here.
It's fun to actually watch 15-year-old Christian Slater. Yeah.
I mean, I, for the longest time, thought they were actually related. They were not.

He was in love with her while they made it.

Rightfully so.

And yeah, I read that in the research, and I'm like, Do I even put this in the document that 15-year-old Christian Slater was in love with 22-year-old Helen Slater when they filmed a movie together for four months?

Like, if he hadn't been in love with her, it was like, Do you have blood in your body?

I found out they aren't siblings right now. I thought they were siblings.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, they weren't. I think that was a confusing part of this.

You know, I don't have because they kind of look, they're both like platinum blonde in this movie. They look similar.
He died his hair, though. Yeah.

You know how you were like, you started this podcast by saying, take me back, you know? Yeah. um, let's just do a list of the most popular movies of July of 1985.
I can't wait.

Number one, Back to the Future, wow, number two, Cocoon, Pale Rider, oh, Rambo, First Blood, Part Two, sure, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, San Elmo's Fire.

This is just in the box, San Elmo's Fire, yeah. This is just stuff that was at the movies, it wasn't necessarily released then.
E.T.

Goonies, European Vacation, Emerald Forest, Silverado, Pritzy's Honor, Fletch, The Explorers.

I know, Beverly O's Cop, View to a Kill, Brewster's Millions, Red Sonia, Day of the Dead, Legend of Billie Jean.

And you left out like Vision Quest, just one of the guys, like so many other movies came out during the course of the year. We just had it all figured out.
Well, there was just volume.

This is the thing is that the movies are actually in a really good place right now, but there's just not enough of them.

There's not enough in the movie theater where you're like, I could go to the theater like four or five times in a week if I wanted to, or all month, like I could go to the movies.

It's like more like an event. You're like, I can't wait.
You just want the four-receiver offense and a lot of passing and a lot of plays and hoping to get lucky.

Or I actually would be cool if we got two really good receivers and never pass to them. You know,

I was going to say.

We're in this space now where the Eagles' offense of 42 seconds per play, run play,

just chewing up clock. That's movies in 2025.
Back then, we're just chucking the ball. Yes.

It's like flat, flat sure chevy chase yeah let's make it go here's 10 million um this was produced by uh this is hilarious john peters and peter guber peter gruber uh who's still still kicking yeah uh part owner of the warriors and uh still producing and john peters immortalized in licorice pizza John Peters, hairdresser, Barbara Streisand's hairdresser, becomes a movie producer.

These guys end up crushing it in the 80s. Not with this movie,

but crush in the 80s. And then Sony gives them an incredible amount of money to run Sony in Entertainment, and it's a disaster.

There's a good book written about it, and John Peters never quite happens again, but a character. Yes.

And Matthew Robbins said that John Peters' biggest contribution was being completely obsessed with Helen Slater's hair in the movie and what the haircut was going to look like when she has her famous haircut.

What's producing? And

he said it was a gigantic issue for him.

There you go.

No budget recorded for this movie.

Yeah. It only made like, what, three, four million? It made 3.1 million, which is, I don't know, Craig,

top seven least grossing movies we've done on the rewatchables. What was pump up the volume?

It did. It was not.
I think that was about 2.3 million. You think? I think so.

We've rarely done movies that made less than like 5 million. Did Kicking and Screaming the Noah Bomback movie make money? That did not make money.
Yeah.

That was in like 11 theaters, it feels like it made $20 from you and me, and another 10 from Greenwald,

and then 100 from the Bombback film. Kicking and Screaming didn't even make a million.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. That might be the lowest.
No budget recorded. And no Roger Ebert review.
Where was he?

Raj was like, I'm good.

I actually think Raj would have really liked this movie. He would have loved the female empowerment stuff.
Yeah.

Yeah. All right.
A lot to discuss in the categories. We're going to take a break.
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Let's get to the categories.

So

we got most rewatchable scene.

Would you throw the opening credits in here with the Divinos Boys in Town? Number one thing I have here, opening credits. Yeah.

In the running for a most underrated mid-80s song. Yeah, and it's also just like you're immediately like they shot this movie entirely on location.

location so like they use like something like 85 different real locations it just feels like you're immediately transported and even though they shot it in the winter it you're like it is hot summer like this is so authentic feeling it's funny because vision quest starts with uh i think it's either journey or john wait but it's the same thing like

I'm in somewhere near Seattle. I'm outdoors.
I'm watching a guy run and there's a kick-ass song playing. It's like, all right, you got me.
Yep.

This one, same thing, where we're just like, I'm in some weird part of Texas. There's guys, and there's a gas station, and there's a scooter.
You just kind of get the feeling, like, what's going on?

It's like this guy, obviously, he's very proud of his scooter, but these four jerks are chasing him around, and his sister's hot, and like, you know,

and then Huby steals the scooter. We get the whole, uh, yeah, the whole swimming scene, which was a big thing back in high school, way back when.
Uh, next one: Billie Jean gets harassed, yeah, by Mr.

Pyatt, who is so fucking evil in this scene.

And then gets to come up.

You know what? The funniest thing about this, I was going to save this earlier, but I have to mention it now. Is that in my memory, Mr.
Pyatt was like an oil baron.

And he sells like a, he's like a seashell and souvenir store on the boardwalk. Right.

What's like actually

didn't have $600?

It was just like, actually, like, this guy is just like a piece of shit tourist track. Right.

We're going to have a little arrangement, a layaway plan. It's like, oh, my God, this guy's disgusting.
She gets out of that. I always like when somebody picks up a gun.

Yeah. In a movie.
No, in a movie. No, I don't.
And they're like, hey, what's this? And you just know somebody's going to get shot. Immediately.
Oh, it's like, oh, boy, here we go.

Somebody's taking a bullet. Yeah.
Usually like the bullet right like. That looks like it was like an inch above his heart.
Yeah. Yeah.

With these movies, sometimes when somebody gets innocently shot, but they're fine, when you actually think about getting shot. That was much more of an 80s thing.

It was like, oh, I just have like, oh, my arms are. There's two spots up here that you could get shot, and maybe it's okay.
Other than that, you're getting a shattered shoulder.

You're getting shot in the heart and dying immediately. You're getting a shattered collarbone.
Yeah. And what's the response time for Corpus Christi Paramedics? Like, that's a lot of blood loss.

He's like, I lost two pints. Right.

The mall exchange. Yeah.
The mall exchange gone wrong. With a sped up rebel yell by Billy Edol.
Yeah.

Chekhov's marbles. This could have just been the whole movie.
Yeah. I could have spent 30 minutes in the mall.
The Sunrise Mall and Corpus Christie. And I just, I wanted some more stores.

We only really get Florsheim in the background. Yeah, I don't know where Spencer's gifts was.

I guess they were probably in KB Toys when they were getting all the G.I. Joe walkie-talkies and stuff.
KB Toys, there should have been like some sort of foot locker type.

You got to have an Orange Julius store. Yeah, where was Orange Julius? Where was the weird pizza place? But

something about the malls back then, I don't know why people just haven't tried to recreate that. Why they haven't recreated that?

I know Craig, it's near and dear to his heart. Oh, yeah.
I mean, just in general, the mid-80s, the mall era, it's like the Duffer brothers cashed out on this with Stranger Things.

It's the most nostalgic era to go back to. It sounds wonderful.
I caught the tail end of malls in my childhood. I used to go to the mall in the Bay Area that was near me.

But I guess kids still go a little bit, but it's just hard. Nobody shops in person anymore.
There's no reason to go. Half of them are shut down.
Maybe they'll come like movie theaters did.

People are going to movie theaters again. Maybe malls will come back.
Because here it's like the outdoor malls kind of pervert your idea of what they're supposed to be. But yeah, maybe.
I don't know.

A couple good things in this part.

The two mustache guys that work for Peter Coyote.

There's like a whole separate movie going on with those guys. At one point, he does the midnight run, like couple punched to the chest.
Yeah.

And then they're just, they just seem like it's a buddy cop that they just decided not to address and then Huby coming out of the plants is fucking hilarious

Yeah, I can't wait to talk about him, please

Billie Jean watching Joan of Arc get set on fire and unleashing her new haircut for the videotaping

It's an iconic scene, yeah, and then that's where she you know, she they meet Lloyd there. You get some really great hallmarks of a rich guy house

highlighting.

There's no lights on anywhere. Yes.

If you're super rich, you apparently don't use electricity anymore. You've transcended it.

There's security cameras all over the place. You can't see anything because everything's pitch black.
He's got the slide from his bedroom into the pool.

It's like one of the great dreams of my life is to have that.

Yeah, except nobody would ever actually have that.

I know.

It's probably a fire hazard. Can you imagine when we were doing my house if I said to my wife, so I'm thinking at Ben's bedroom, a giant slide.

It's the most 13-year-old invention ever. Yeah.
Yeah. It's the best.
But it's like a perfect, like, probably divorced dad for sure. Just being like, I got to buy this kid's affection.
So whatever.

I got some money. Like, yeah, we'll go.
It's Corpus Christie. Like, they'll do whatever.

Also, for Keith Gordon's character, for being a pretty cool guy for the most part. Yeah.
But yet is also like basically. Who's the guy who did the Michael Jackson thriller? All the creatures for that.

Oh, Stan, Stan Winston? No, the guy. I can't remember the name, but he's.
Oh, Vincent Price. No, no, the guy, the guy who made the mask.

I can't remember, who did American Werewolf in London and Thriller? All those.

He's basically has this weird horror movie side. Yeah.

And it's really weird. Well, it's not like normal weird.
It's not like come to my room. Was what horror was back then was like weird guys who would read.

But imagine that guy taking a girl back to his room that he's been dating. Well, was it really Rick Baker? Rick Baker.
Rick Baker.

Yeah. It's like, yeah, come to my room.
You can see my 20-horror movie.

Well, I get the impression he spends a lot of time on his own.

I mean, Lloyd probably has a nice chunk of change in his pocket. And for the amount of time he spends, I had this as a nippick later.

For the amount of time he spends on his own, he sure knows how to vibe with the fucking super hot Billie Jean. Yeah.

And is also wearing a pretty cool suit when she shows up. Yeah.

He's just hanging out.

That character is all over the place. It's like,

is this guy a loner dork? Is he cool? What is he?

Billie Jean's tape getting played in the police station with the Ferris fares, which is great. And the little kid doing the arms.

I think that's a really good scene, the actual, like her talking to camera. Oh, yeah.
Mr. Pat,

you sleaze.

I put in Crazy Couple chases Billie Jean and shoots at guns at her for the ransom. I had that for one stage of the worst, but yeah.
Well, it's just so insane. I kind of enjoy it.
Yeah.

Like, like, he's like, I'm going to shoot the tires. It shoots through the windshield twice.

But it also is like kind of indicative of how these stories tend to get a grip on people and drive them kind of crazy.

Um,

I think this is my winner. Billie Jean gets exchanged around Texas as Pat Benatar cranks Invincible for five minutes.
Also, Kid Cutty Pursuit of Happiness word best needle drop by far.

It's like she calls

the cops to kind of she's like, I'm going on my own. There's I don't need anyone attached to me.
And then it's like

this bloody road remains a mystery.

There are so many great 80s cars in that scene. Like there's like a Celica.
There's like a good Mazda.

What are we waiting for?

Also, like,

how did this exchange network work with? I don't know.

I don't know. With no cell phones.
What's going on? I mean, it's pretty cool, though. It's pretty cool.
I don't ask questions. I loved it.
Yeah.

Then then there's the one guy with the motorcycle yeah who's like he's in the sons of sons of anarchy but looks like fabio then at one point she goes downstairs to a rave yeah and that's like a rave whole thing

and it's basically a live podcast no i think it was like billie jean davy sponsored by state farm

Tonight on the Billie Gene Davies show. Today I'm going to talk to my brother Binks about a scooter.

But yeah, so everyone applauds. They go nuts.
What's the next hour

there after that? Meet and greet, step and repeat. Just check, hey,

good luck. Yeah.
Great to see you.

And then Billie Jean burns down Pyatt's store. Joan of Arc burns down.
People sadly throw Billie Gene merchandise into

the fire. Yeah.

And the director is like, should we do Invincible for a third time?

Yeah. Let's do

Joshua Peters is like, yes.

The director's like, what about Love is a Battlefield? Maybe we switch Benatar, and they're like, nope, nope. Invincible.
We paid for Invincible. You can use it.

So, what do you have for most rewatchable?

Her coming out of the scene at Lloyd's house, like her coming out of the house and making the tape the first time.

And that's got my favorite line of the movie where the putter sisters were like, or like putters, like, oh my God, you look. And then Christian Slayer's like, you look famous.
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there you go. That's when the internet was created right there.

That created Twitter. Key Wasiak was like that.

We got to do that.

I have an idea. What's the most 1985 thing about this movie? I mean, the answer is everything, but

some nominees, the key musical moments for Pat Benatar, the Divinals, Billy Idol. Yeah.

The Honda Elite Scooter. This is right when it was really climbing.

In Pyatt's store, there's a huge stand of Panama Jack sunscreen

with like negative five SPF.

It's basically putting gasoline on your body. Pure peanut oil.

I don't know if I think Panama Jack, I think that it's all been out loud.

What if Kennedy's like, we gotta bring back Panama Jack?

That's a great American company.

We need tanner people.

We see at one point, gas is $1.05.

That was probably high. Yeah.
We've seen this in a couple other movies we've done.

Multiple people who don't know each other watching a wall of TVs in a store. Yeah.
I want to go back to that. Yeah.

And then, like, that being how you found out about like Major News. Yeah, how you found out about Major News.
Yeah.

An authentic beta movie camera, I think, is the winner. I do want to shout out Hubie Shorts in the scene when they steal the bike.
We called them back in the day jams, or at least we did where I live.

The shorts, they were like, had like these crazy patterns. They almost looked like they'd been electrocuted.
It was like, it was also like

indicative of in the summer, if you were a kid, you wear your swim trunks all day long. Yeah, you never know.
You never know when you might swim. Right.

But they were like, they were like, they could go as swim swim trunks, but you could also just wear them when you went out.

They all had like weird designs and colors. And this was a two-year run that I can't really explain.
Yeah, it was a day to night.

It was okay to wear the beach, but it was also okay to wear the chilies.

You missed the biggest 1985 thing. I can't believe we haven't talked about it yet.
Let's hear it. Jimmy J.
Judge, C-101 Talk Radio. Oh, yeah.

Just taking calls about local crime and weather and playing hot tunes.

It's like five years later, that makes no sense. Also, the only thing anyone in all of Corpus Christi is constantly listening to is Jimmy J.
It's how Binks finds out that they have to go on the run.

It's like they listen to it all the time in the car. I don't think I ever realized until this viewing of this movie, they never leave Corpus Christie.
Yeah. Like they don't even get out of town.

Right.

How big is Corpus Christie? Is it like London? I know.

What was the most 1985 thing for you? What jumped out watching it, Craig? Oh, man. I mean, her hair, probably, the haircut choice has to be the most 80s thing in the world.
Yeah. I gotta say, Jimmy J.

Judge is up there with my favorite movie radio DJs with Clint and Play Misty Forby. Oh, Stephen Wright, DJ in Reservoir Dogs.
Yeah.

Was it Lynn Thigpen and the Warriors? Don't forget about Ellen Barkin and the fan. Ellen Barkin and the fan and then playing the fabulous sports babe.
Adrian Barbeau and the fog. Yeah.
Oh, yeah.

That's a good one. What's age the best? Um, Mr.
Pyatt is just an amazing 80s villain. I don't think he's gotten enough credit for how like disgusting he was in every respect.

Really, really like well-drawn out. I fucking hate this guy.
I'm glad his store is burning down by the end of the movie. And also, like, the

it's perfect that he actually has this store that he has because that's the guy who would get t-shirts printed up as fast as possible. I had uh exchange scenes in an 80s mall going wrong.
Yeah.

Feels like a recurring recurring theme. Like, we'll meet there at 12.30.
Meet me in public somewhere.

Always like places for the cops to hide, and there's plants and weird stores, and then chases and escalators. And people can hop from the escalator going down and the one going up.
Always worked.

What did you have? I had a few more. Young Christian Slater.
Yeah.

Billie Jean's haircut becoming a local phenomenon. It's pretty good.
Yeah. And I love

in the mall after the exchange goes bad, the local TV doing doing man on the street responses, and the woman's just like, they're just picking on her because she's a lady.

And he goes, There, you have a woman's perspective, right? The female perspective. He's like, kind of poo-pooing it off.
He's like, all right.

I had any time in a movie when people shoplift with IOU notes. Yeah.

I don't think it's ever happened in real life. Isn't that basically Klarna?

You're going to fully. It's like, I have a dollar.
I'll be back.

The fact that the Slaters aren't related, but they actually genuinely look like they're brother and sister. Yeah.

Here's one that I honestly could have used more of in the 80s and 90s when characters found an empty, really nice suburban semi-mansion to hide in for a couple days. Amazing.

Why did we stop doing this? Yeah. This is the whole plot of Beverly Hills Cop 2.
This is why, like, maybe ring cameras were a mistake. You know what I mean? That would have been a good hide.

You don't get to find out.

You don't get to find out that a bunch of teens have been living in your house while you were vacationing. It seems great.
I mean, it could have been the whole movie.

They're just living there and ordering

delivery, pizza delivery. I had 80s high school bad guys.

Yeah. Like Hubie's crew, Cobra Kai.
Yeah. James Spader's crew in Pretty and Pink.
Like just.

They're some of the most evil people we had in movies. They were just like 17-year-old.
Yeah. Always a blind guy.
Always like super flirty and borderline sexual harassment. They're always chewing gum.

Named like Hubie or Bart. Yeah, some shit.
And at the end, they have some sort of realization that maybe this was the wrong way to go. Yeah.

Hubie at the end of this movie is like, yeah, I'm going to let my dad burn to death. I don't care.
Go get a pizza.

Johnny Lawrence, the Danikrott Kid. Look this.
I'm going to TCU in the fall. This is too heavy for me.

This is a deep cut. What stage is the best? Movie characters getting mad that the ransom number for them wasn't high enough.
Oh, yeah. Keith Gordon being like only 10K.
Yeah.

I like anytime that happens. That's actually a ton of money for 1985 in Texas.
Yeah.

I like anytime a movie character says, your money lets you get away with anything.

Lloyd's hostage plan, which is ridiculous, but I also have it as a what stage the best, like really inventive way to try to get laid. Yeah.

She's like, I just, I just need to stay around Billie Gene and keep taking shots. Yeah, he knows this will happen.

Also, like, just like him being being like, I'm super into Houdini, so this is a chance to put my tricks into action.

Uh,

Mark Safin

did the theme music for this, he also did the closing-in song for the golf course chase. Yep,

do you know what song he did that's an absolutely all-time iconic 80s movie song? No,

win in the end in Teen Wolf, really,

the whole basketball scene, win in the end.

I'm going to win in the end. You don't remember that one, Craig? From Teen Wolf? No, I don't.
It's like five minutes of him just singing Win in the End.

The music in the scene where she walks out and

she first gets her hair cut, I'm pretty convinced is just like where Stranger Things got the music.

Yeah, I mean,

this could have been a hottest take. I think Stranger Things really studied like three, four movies.
It's like E.T.

E.T., I think they studied this. Maybe Goonies in this.

Yeah. I think there was some Karate Kid.
Yeah, 11 having the haircut. Yeah.

But

I think if you gave true serum to those guys, I think they would admit they were. I think they would admit it.
Yeah. Yeah.

Big Kahoon and Burger War, best use of food and drink.

I just always enjoy when somebody dumps a milkshake on a movie, Billy.

That's just going to win me over every time. It's also very 1980s to be like, it's hot out.
Let's get like a big cup of milk.

Right. Who would get a milkshake? And it's awesome.
98 degree weather at one in the afternoon. I had the shopping cart full of junk food that Potter tries to buy in the convenience store.

It's like all butterfingers. Right.
Yeah.

Great shot order were most cinematic shot. There is a nice big wide shot of them lying on that, whatever that big wood thing is in the lake.
Yeah. And it just seems calm and quiet.

And you're like, oh man, something bad's going to happen. The hair reveal is cool when it's incredible.
This was shot by Jeff Kimball, Jeffrey Kimball, who shot fucking Top Gun.

Wow. That makes sense.
It looks really, really good. Chess Rockwell, Brock Landers Award for Best Character Name.

Billie Jean Davy is pretty good. Awesome.
I do love Binks.

But I think the winner is Huby Pyatt. That's just somebody you want to punch in the face.
Yeah. We don't name kids Huby anymore, do we? Nor Binks.
I think Binks is a nickname, right? Oh, is it?

I'd assume. For what? So his name would be Binks Davey? I would assume his name's like Bradley or Bobby or something like that.
What do you have for a flex category, CR?

Um, I have a couple, but I did. Can we do Zoe Want now? Can we talk it out? Yeah.

Does Lloyd get heavy into VHS porn? Because I think it's in play.

He becomes like Butt Man.

He's got all the equipment. you know he's got a little bit of startup capital he's had his taste of crime

um i think that he launched as a competitor to vivid video binks moves to uh burlington vert and becomes a scooper at an early ben and jerry store and kind of bums around the mountains sells some bad acid at a dead show and gets his ass kicked uh

Lloyd's dad winds up having a low-key role in the David Koresh standoff

huey becomes becomes lieutenant governor and Billie Jean gets embroiled in a years-long copyright litigation. Huby's the governor of Texas for like 28 years.
What do you mean?

I actually, ironically, put this in the rundown after unanswerable questions. And I had the Zwatan Award: What happened the next day? Binks eventually becomes the father to Doug McRae

in the town. Yeah.

Yeah, that's his dad. His dad is Binks.

His idea of what Vermont is like must be so fucked up because it's just that chick on a poster.

I mean, honestly, even people in Vermont are like, dude. Yeah, don't get your hooks up.
Yeah.

Vermont's fine. Yeah.
Do kids still hang up posters of hot women in their rooms growing up? Did Ben do that? No.

What a shame. It's because it's all on their phone, right? Yeah.

That's a bummer. Yeah, I had some good ones.
That's such a vibe.

Kathy Ireland

on my wall.

I like QB being

in some sort of major political role in Texas. Yeah.
Like playing off the Billie Gene thing. Yeah.
I learned my lessons.

The Butch's Girlfriend Award week link of the film. It's either Billie Gene saving the Kenny the random abuse kid,

that whole section, or Billie Jean getting shot at by these two people trying to get a ransom. That whole section of the movie, by the way, I like that whole section of the movie.

It's just, we kind of go sideways there for a second. I know that Yardley Smith is like,

in an interview, is like, I don't understand why my character gets her period, like in the middle of this movie for the first time.

But I do think the child abuse section where it's just like, you got to save Kenny. It's like, well, I'm on the run from the law.
So I can't do that.

I like when she comes out of the house and she's like,

Kenny's going to live with his grandmother. And the crowd's like, yeah.

And little we know, the grandmother's worse than the fucking.

Kenny is CT, but he's going to live with his grandmother.

What's age the worst?

We mentioned earlier, but dreaming dreaming about someday living in Vermont is weird.

Like, why not go,

I don't know, like California? Well, I think it's because it's 120. He hates the heat, and he has, he's only seen one poster of Vermont.

He probably can't name another city that he thinks all of Vermont is chicks who are naked underneath their ski suits.

It would have been funny if he had just saw Hot Dog the movie and was like, this is my jam.

Yeah, this is what I need. What do you have? I have a feeling.

I have a good old boy taking a shot at Billy with a hunting rifle while she's surrounded by kids in order to get the down payment for his house. Pretty fucked up.

And

station wagons fishtailing a lot. You know, we just have better suspensions now.
Yeah. But like that was like some of those fucking cars were really dangerous back then.

It's a good point because the chase scenes were just better back then, but it's because the cars

would just like spin out. But like now it's a really good point.
Thank you.

Thanks.

What's age and worst? I would have toned down Benatar and Invincible maybe by one song or brought it up by another three. Here's a I don't think it was at the right number.

Maybe five more or two less. It's too bad that I think Pat Benatar has a strange relationship to this movie, but it would have been great if she would have recorded like an acoustic version.

to play like during the second version. I was like, I'm not going to send scene, you know, or something.
So I read in the research she didn't like this movie. Yeah.

But then I don't, I didn't know if that was true because she still plays it at concerts.

Well, i mean it's her song i think she's just like this is the song from the dumbest movie ever made come on pat

that i mean that gets i i almost want to break out the ewaj for that for pat

settle down pat settle the down pat

like what other song in a movie does she even have at this point

um

the way adults talk to billie jean we mentioned the original title of this film was fair is fair

tough Tough.

You like that more or less the Legend of Billie Jean? I think if it had been called Fair is Fair, I wonder if it does better at the box office, but it does not become a cult classic the way it did.

Yeah, because it does. It's called Legend of Billie Jean.
Here's my big one.

So, and it makes sense because in the research, they said this. They had to do some reshoots, and her hair was different.
So she had to wear a wig for some of the.

You can just, it's like,

it's really bad.

Like, she, she looks like, there's a couple scenes where she just looks like she has Steve Kerr's hair and like the 98 Bulls.

It just makes no sense. And then it goes back to the old hair.

But man, I wish it's funny that Peters cared so much about the haircut and then didn't care.

He was on your back end by then. Yeah.
He was like, whatever. Moved on the top gun.
All right, let's do one more break and then we'll do the rest of the categories.

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Refresh your holidays. All right, Ruffalo, Hannah, Rubinik Partridge over Acting Word.
Putter's mom?

Who's just the worst person? I was thinking of Kenny's dad. Oh, Kenny's dad.
It seemed like he was really methoding out there.

Like, all right, so I've been been living in the back of this trailer for like two months. They're like, hey, we just need you for one scene.
Just can you just be evil and smelly?

CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Port. How does take a word? What do you got? I think in my lifetime, mass media should have stopped evolving right at the moment of this movie depicts.

So that would basically be early cable, radio.

You have some people who have like video cameras, so there is like you're able to make your own stuff, but not easily.

And it just basically means that i would never have a job and i would work at a record store for the rest of my life but i'd be okay with that if we could go back to like

this moment because it was just so perfect in my mind

which i think probably most people who are like i would like to go back to when it was like i was 10 that was the perfect moment like whether it was this game platform or this kind of like the cape cable tv like you had hbo but that was it everybody probably thinks that for whatever they are but it was like this is just such a perfect moment in my mind like i still remember sitting in the backseat of my mom's car and like listening to wmmr or eagle 106 and just being like these these are the only 20 songs i need to know yeah

84 and 85. you're right we had it all figured out

my take uh keith gordon

widest range of excellent performance to horrible performance of any actor of the last 50 years in this film specifically or across the course of his career he has a run i think he's really good in this movie.

He's pretty good in Dress to Kill.

He's good in Christine.

He's horrific in Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield. It's one of the worst performances of the 80s.
And Christine, he's kind of all over the place. I don't know what he's going for there.

To be fair,

I mean,

Jaws 2, pretty solid, but she's just all over. I don't have a reason.
And April, he became a director. Yeah.
He did a Midnight Clear, which is really good. Did he direct Chocolate War?

I can't remember who. or he did a bunch of chocolate wars, he directed a bunch of ones, anyway.
He's but he's become like a very good director, yeah. But good, that's a that's a hot take.

He was in kind of more movies than maybe he should have been. I think we would have been good with like three Keith Gordon movies, but he's in six, yeah.
It's funny, he's like, kind of like the uh,

he's like off-brand Matthew Broderick a little bit, yeah, like darker.

He has that, he has that, like, kind of like a little bit of like, I'm a little bit of a nerd, but I can also be cool, you know.

Yeah, but I also like i could see him in war games i also met a tried heroine yeah

um casting wood ifs couldn't find any yeah me neither best that guy award

yardley smith as putter lisa simpson is she yardley smith i think she's lisa simpson she's lisa simps i have barry tubb who is wolfman and top gun and he's qb in this movie

I had Richard Bradford as Mr. Pyatt because the only other thing, he's just one of those guys.
He was in the Untouchables, apparently. Yeah,

he's the cop who's who's like, this is a cop's bar. Yeah.
I never knew that guy's name. I knew who Barry Tubbs is.

Let's do Bradford. You're right.
Barry Tubb. Barry Tubb, I knew from Top Gun.
Yeah. And he's been in some other stuff, too.

Deion Waiter's Award. I don't think the undercover mustache cops can win this.
It's probably putter. It's Dean Stockwell.
What are you talking about? Dean Stockwell? Yeah. Really? Yeah.
He comes in.

He's like, I'm fucking 10 months away from making Paris, Texas. He's like a really good actor, and I'm just going to be the district attorney of Corpus Christie.

And the scene he has with Peter Coyote in the beginning, where he's like, oh, it's pretty smart to do it this way. Like, if you were going to do it, like, blah, blah, blah.
Really good scene.

He's good. I guess putter.
I think putter's funny.

Okay.

Recasting couch director of City. Can I offer you young James Spader as Lloyd? In the same city, or you want to move it to like Concord, New Hampshire, or something? No,

I think he Texas is it up.

By the way, Keith Core did no accent in this movie. For Corpus Christie.
I assume he goes to private school. What about young Cuzak for Lloyd? Yeah, 18-19 years old.

Oh, there you go, Craig. There you go.
It's great.

Uh, I have a rarely seen recasting a music scene choice because I felt like this was one

away from being a pretty great soundtrack. The golf course scene, the song's not good enough.

Pretty persuasion by R.E.M.

Needed something with a little kick where they're running.

And I think that was, I went through all my 80s playlists trying to find the perfect one. And I think that's where I landed.
Can I just off the top of my head throw one at you? Yeah.

When they are doing the like, let's help Billie Jean escape across the city with all the girls who look like Billie Jean. Yeah.
Voices Carrie by Till Tuesday. Ooh.

Female artist. Yeah, Amy Mann.
Female artist.

Like how

women. That's what we're doing.
I like it because we got the divinals in the beginning. Yeah.
Craig, what your flex category or did it oh i want to i have another one though i guess it's a

i guess i'll call it a weak link maybe it's a picking nit i'm going to double down as a feminist ally here with cr

I don't know I don't get to be a feminist ally

after the after the cup situation yeah you canceled

you have to earn your way back

I don't know if Billie Gene needed a love interest. I feel like that kind of like she just fell in love with the first random dude she meets on the road.

road and I think it's a it takes away from the female empowerment that she needs this man and she immediately falls in love with this guy I fucking like that idea Craig and it also is kind of like the we don't get to explore the loneliness of fame no it's like she just falls in love with the first guy she sees in mid-80s they were like she needs a love interest I'm sure yeah but I thought they they should have held strong little revision of that What if it would have been a love triangle with her, Hubie and

Lloyd? And like she had had something go with Hubie and that's just his way of like communicating to her. I mean, Hubie was the heir to this crappy Tora store in the middle of fucking nowhere, Texas.

All of these seashells and these could all be yours someday, Billie Gene. Yeah.

You'll work here with me. That whole Panama Jack stand right there.
We can adopt Kenny.

Get skin cancer together. Half-assed internet research.
The actress who played Putter's mother apparently slapped Yardley Smith for real. Oh my God.

And then the DVD commentary, that's why she she went flying backwards and her face was numb after.

They really went for it in the 80s. Yardley Smith almost refused to cut her hair for the part.
So when they show her their haircut, she's got a ponytail price. I thought she was great in this movie.

Yeah, I thought she was really good. I obviously know she went on to do The Simpsons, but was she in a lot of other comedy movies? Did The Simpsons just kind of gobble up all the time? I don't.

She was in City Slickers. And she was in a, was she in a sitcom? for a while before.
Yeah, she bounced around. She had a couple out of it.
She had great timing.

She could have been the friend in a lot of good comedy. She's really funny.

The miniature golf course is gone. It's now the Texas State Aquarium.

The mall is done. Yeah, you can watch a 30-minute video of a guy made of just like going through this decrepit, dilapidated, abandoned mall.
We should buy, the Ringer should buy a mall.

That should be our office. It's an old mall.
In Corpus Christi. Yeah.
You ready to move? It's probably like 15 grand to buy right now.

What if Phil is like return to work like return to the office but in corpus chris yeah do you remember when you can work inside of the husk of an orange julius that'd be awesome yeah were you working with us when i seriously investigated buying the boogeyman's house yeah the video there

that probably would have been a mistake that's like very

east la right where is it no it's in uh it's in tarzana isn't it yeah no no it's it's closer toward chino oh oh

yeah i've done it it was it was like a good 40 minutes away How close were you to actually doing it? Not actually that close.

Once I actually whized it out and did a couple different times. Yeah.
Imagine poor Gahal being like, hey, we're shooting at the boogie tonight. It's good.
It's a rush hour.

I'll leave today to get there tomorrow. It's a three-hour drive.

The last research thing was just the Pat Benatar thing we mentioned earlier, where she said this was from the worst movie ever made and then belted out Invincible. I hope that's not true.

And if it's true, it's a borderline settle-down pat. Yeah, I saw a bunch of.
of uh, it's not a fucky Raj, but it's a settle-down pat.

There's this really cool website called fast-rewind.com, and it's got like a ton of stuff about the kind of movies that we were talking about in the beginning of the PA 80s VHS classics. But their

way of like posting

behind the scenes information is like you can just write in and be like, I was an extra on this movie, and Helen Slater sucked.

So, I don't know like whether it's true or not, but it does sound like Helen Slater was like very opinionated about her haircut and about how the movie was being made.

Good for her, though. Apex Mountain, Helen Slater.
Good for her, though. Yeah, I guess they'll listen to Supergirl.
I think it's Secret of My Success.

Because wouldn't you say this is a bigger movie now in no?

Because it bombed when it came out. And

Supergirl bombed too. Oh, that's right.
Secret of My Success. She's in a movie with Michael J.
Fox. He's on family ties.
He's like one of the biggest TV stars in the world.

That's a pretty good movie. And it felt like she was headed for bigger things.
Well, by that same token, wouldn't City Slickers be your Apex Mountain then?

Because she's in, wasn't City Slickers like the biggest movie in the world for a little while? I'll just tell you this, CR.

I know you had a lot of Aspiration stock.

It was sad to see in the bankruptcy filings. I had a lot of Helen Slater stock.
C-R-L-L-C-K2.

I had a lot of Helen, a lot of us did. We had a lot of Helen Slater stock.
When she was in that Michael J. Fox movie.
It was like, here we go. Same thing with Elizabeth Shu.

When she's in cocktail, it's like, here we go.

Everyone on the bus. We're headed toward the Oscars.
And, you know, some of these people just never made it. Kelly Preston was another one.

If Helen Slater had been a working girl, what are we talking about today? You know?

Wow. Look at you.

Christian Slater now.

Hondo Lead Scooters. Yes.
I think, yes. This is right.
This was somebody who Lou Reed did the Honda Lead Scooter ad in 85. Yeah.

What? Oh, yeah. Wait.
100%.

What? Lou Reid did a Honda Elite Scooter ad. Like an endorsement or he did a song for it? He did the do-doo.
Oh, the Walk of the Wilds? Yeah.

No shit. Fuck yeah.
Oh, I had no idea, man. That's cool.

Self-haircuts.

Has anyone ever pulled off a better self-haircut? No, she crushed it. Yeah, she really did smoke it.
And it instantaneously becomes iconic. Craig, who cut your hair during COVID the first two months?

Liz, Liz did it? Yeah, but it was like basically just, she didn't really touch the top. It was, you just kind of like shave the sides, let it get long.

I just, yeah, I'm like pretty, I don't have to cut my hair very much. My wife did mine.
Yeah. And it was kind of fun for a couple months.
I had, my hair just goes up. Yeah.

And it was just like, I just looked like a mushroom. And we were like, so we got this razor and she just started.
Yeah. She's talking about military.
Because we were doing pods on Zoom at that point.

And I think we're wearing hats most of the time. You should have kept it going for the castaway solo pod.
You should have said.

I wish that was on video. Could you imagine if that was just existed on YouTube? Oh, I should check.
No, it's not. I didn't do it on video.
Do you think I just turned the recorder on and did it?

This is Apex Mountain for Peter Coyote, or is it narrating Ken Burns's Civil War?

What is Apex Mountain for him?

He's been in bed. No, it's E.T., right? I guess so.
Yeah. He's got great hair in this movie.
He looks like Bob Myers. I just like Peter Coyote.
I think it's this award.

Apex Mountain for Billie Jeans.

We have the song Billie Jean. We have Legend of Billie Jean.
That's a great call. And Billie Jean King.

I was going to ask about that if the name was especially popular, if they specifically chose the name Billie Jean because of the. No, it was actually, they were really annoyed about that, I think.

When I read something about it, oh, really? I think Billie Jean

was a more common name back then. Is that right? Yeah, I wasn't a Billie Jean in 30 years.
I thought that was the name was supposed to be like a play on Billy the Kid. You know what I mean?

Like, she's like an outlaw rises. We had Billie Joe's and Billie Jeans, and now we have neither.
Because Billie Jean, the song came out in 83. Yeah.
So it was hugely popular.

Craig, I'm aware. Interesting.
I'm just saying, like, how could the biggest moments of my life in 83? I feel like Billie Jean video.

The producers being upset that people were comparing this movie to that movie or, you know, connecting the names. It's like, why would you do it then? It's super obvious.
Yeah.

You've just named your character after one of the five biggest songs of the 80s.

Maybe people are going to be confused.

Fair being fair, Apex Mountain. I mean, it certainly isn't now.
Yeah.

Short-haired 80s woman.

Benatar, Slater.

Who else had a cool short haircut back then?

I mean, it was the look for a while there. Yeah, it's kind of like it's going back to Veronica Cartwright.
Courtney Coxon, family ties. Yeah.
yeah courtney coxs and dancing in the dark

short hair in that she has no it's long she has longer hair in that right

no i think it was shorter martha plimpton and goonies right yeah there's long hair in there uh sturby beach had to have been apex mountain the final scene that's what it was called our radio guy's like whoa big day here sturby beach

Yardley Smith, it's the Simpsons, which made her probably, she's probably buying the Portland Trailblazers.

Corpus Christie movies, I'm going to say yes.

Barry Tubb, Top Gun, Top Gun, Keith Gordon,

Christine, movies built around him. Yeah.

Joan of Arc, probably not. No, I think it's

got some other peaks.

All the other peaks she had.

Defeating the English.

Cruise or Hanks? How about very young Tom Cruise as Binks?

Could see it. Yeah.
Like all the right blondes.

Cruz ever bleach blonde his hair? Just for collateral. He grade it.
He grade it.

Yeah. You could also see if things have gone a different way.
Cruise being like a good guy in Huby's gang.

Right. You know? Like the guy taking the photos.
Yeah. Yeah.

Scorsese or Spielberg. Clearly Scorsese.
We get cocaine. Yeah.
Mr. Pyat's.
Mr. Pyat's running a coke.
He's selling cocaine in the top floor. I mean, they probably should have done that anyway, right?

Yeah. It should have been, she burns this thing down, but then it turns out he's also the biggest Coke dealer in Corpus Christi.
And like Lloyd is way more of like a Paul Schrader character.

She's like, I never leave my house. I just, I just write my journal.
Yeah.

What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? Clearly, Hubie. Yeah.

All right, picking it. Can't wait for this.

Let me go first for this one. Okay.

It just seems like there are a lot of detectives working this case in Corpus Christi. There's there's like no other crime scumbag got shot in the shoulder and he's fine

um but as a part of that it's like how many times does hubie try to take matters into his own hands during a literal police intervention like yeah did obstruction of justice just not exist in texas in the 1980s

pretty tough yeah

I had my first pick in it is these kids would have been caught in 45 minutes. Yes.
They never left Corpus Christi. They went to the same three spots.

Pretty sure we could have found them.

Um,

would all right. So they're living in a Corpus Christi trailer park.
Yeah, it's apparently still there. Binks gets some money and he buys a really expensive Honda Lead scooter.
I have some questions.

So what do you think he should be spending his money on?

I just had some questions.

Okay. That's like a thousand dollar scooter.

He wasn't worried it was going to get robbed by somebody. no parking outside with no bike lock he's 15 he's like this is as good as it's gonna get i

support the choice i'm just saying okay uh

so they break into a house and it just happens to be the district attorney's house yeah and of all the houses a little bit of a fairy tale yeah and the district attorney lives in corpus christi but isn't home but it's never home yeah he's somewhere else he's in dallas okay and he has a private shopper

Why not just stay at Lloyd's house when you're hiding? I don't think anybody's like, let me come with you and I'll be your hostage. It's like, or we could just stay at your house.

Nobody knows we're here. I think it's supposed to be that, like, they have to get the two sisters home.
Like, this can't go on forever, you know?

But it just seems like Lloyd probably could have given them $100 for gas and they could have gotten pretty close to Vermont on that.

But to stay at the house for a couple more days, maybe use the pool slide.

My number one, I have a couple more, but sharpshooters at the Billie Gene rally. Insane.

Insane.

Sharpshooters. Sharpshooters who are also seemingly only taking orders from the district attorney, not from.

Yeah, not from the head of Corpus Christi Police. Yeah, the number one detective.
Yeah. Shoot her in the head if you get a good shot.

The Binks hostage plan at the end is legitimately insane. Yeah.
I don't know why anyone thought that was going to work. And then at the end, they just let her leave.
I know.

All charges have been dropped? Well, I think it's supposed to be that Mr. Pyatt has clearly done some bad shit.
And so they're just like, it's like offsetting penalties.

Do they think that Billie Gene shot Pyatt or do they know that Binks did?

I think they know that Binks did, but I think Billie Jean is, they've reported Billie Gene has made like 600 robberies in two days or something. So that's why he's like, this is ridiculous.

All these robberies are happening at the same time.

Also, if her goal is to not,

I don't really know what she's, is she trying to be recognized or is she not?

Because if she's, if she wants to remain anonymous, she should have cut her hair after the video she wanted to be remain anonymous until piatt and everybody started going on the news yeah and talking about her because if she didn't want to be recognized you you you record the video for the news and then cut your hair so you look different she realized she couldn't be anonymous because she was creating the internet and she saw and she saw joan of arc and she was like i'm going to start the internet she called out gore and she was like i have an idea and she's like now i'm the most recognizable person in corpus christius yeah yeah

where we can just somehow drive around in a station wagon with license plates on it and evade police for seven days just in different spots. Let's go back to the miniature golf course again.

You have any other picking nets? I don't. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TBL, Blackcaster, Untouchable.

The prestige version of this is interesting. Written by Brad Inglesby.

Would you set it in Philly? It said in Corporate Christie. Okay.
Mr. Hyatt is the biggest Coke and opium and heroin dealer in Texas, but he has this thing as a shell Ponzi thing.

There's a shooting there, but he now has to kill her because Binks is on

foot police. Yeah, Binks tries fentanyl for the first time, and we just go.
Yeah, I like that. I just call it Billie Gene.
I also like the sequel where Lloyd becomes like the jackhorner of VHS porn.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treyo, Mad Dog Russo, Russo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilfred Brimley in the firm?

I have a new addition to the category.

And I want to say that this is out of the utmost respect, the deepest appreciation and love, but we have to add Peter Schrager to the category.

Let's go,

Bill. I've been talking to the Jack sisters, Ophelia and Putter.
And you know what they said? Billie Jean is even more committed to fairness.

I know there are a lot of girls out there with the haircut and they are getting attention. And let me tell you, Billie Jean has been listening to C101 and she hears everything.

And it's just motivating her to get back to the top of the mountain.

You think he's going to get that?

No, he'll love that. He'll love that.

That was great.

I had Mad Dog Russo.

I mean, Mike, here's the DA. He's got sharp shooters at the beach rally.
What's he going to do to our headshot to Billy J, Davy? What are we doing?

Just one Oscar who gets it. I wonder how many people who are listening to the 57th minute of The Legend of Billy James Pod know who Mad Dog and Shreigs are.
Probably not many.

Just one Oscar who gets it. Probably Benatar.

Was Invincible an original song for the movie? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to give Jeffrey Kimball best cinematography, but I think it's the best part of this movie.

I feel like I have to look at the 1986 Oscars now.

It could have been best original song, right? If she did the song for the movie, which I think don't know that she did do this. I mean, the video is basically from the movie, but I don't know.

The winner was Say You, Save Me from White Knights.

Music and lyric by Lionel Ritchie.

Power of Love from Back to the Future did not win. What an outrage.
Oh, my God.

And then three more of it.

Whatever. I feel like she could have made it.

All right. We are near the end here because we have probably unanswerable questions.

Is this movie better if Binks accidentally shoots Mr. Pyatt's head off at the beginning? Like Paul Fiction? Yeah.
Oh, shout out Barbett's head. Shout out Barbett's head.
Whatever you said.

If he just does. If he just actually blows his head off.
And now they're on the run because they've committed an accidental murder. Yeah.

Would it even be better if the wolf came and helped them?

I had one more, but do you have any? Do you who do you think Mr. Pyatt had in the Danny White Gary Hogaboom quarterback controversy from the Cowboys in 84?

He's got a Cowboy shirt on. Did he have Mavs tickets? Yeah.

When did the Mavs come into the league? 80. Oh.
Yeah. Wow.
They were the 85 Mavs were good. I had, did Mr.
Pyatt create MAGA?

Like 30 years later, he's definitely like right in there with Trump. I mean, he's got every supplement.
He's like red hats and shirts. He's he's he's in.
But he's articulating a lot of that.

Like, you know, I'm just, I'm a voter and I just think these kids are running wild. You got to clean this up.

Uh, what piece of memorability would you want or not want from this movie? Lloyd's AV setup home theater. That would have been sick.
You know, Fenty was just like, oh, this guy.

He's got all this, all the good stuff. I would take the scooter, and that was the exact scooter I had for like a year and a half before I crashed it.
The Honda Elite. Yeah,

I had the background up one.

That was the one when I really got banged up.

Yeah, because I was driving that. Those things were fast.
They went up to like 60. Damn.
Yeah. But those things were great.
Lou Reed was promoting them.

It was you, Lou Reed, and Slater. Yeah, they were great.

Best double feature choice.

I had the Terminator so we could have female empowerment heroes from the mid-80s. Sarah Connor and Billie Jean.

I would pair it with Last Starfighter or Rad, which are just two classic cult VHS movies from this time period. And Helen Swater won the movie.
What about the Coach Finstock award? Is it Ferris Fair?

Oh, I forgot the Coach Finstock. Yeah, Ferris Fair.
Helen Swater wins the movie.

Or, you know what? Did Pat Benatar win the movie?

Is Invincible the thing that people remember from this movie? I think it's Helen Slater. Okay.

Craig never saw it. What did you think? I had never heard of it.
I even asked Matt Bellany today as we were taking the town. I said, have you heard of the movie The Legend of Billy G?

And he was like, no.

So I was like, all right, excited to get into this.

We still got some tricks up our sleeve. Every time they think we've zigged, we've zagged.

I really enjoyed this movie. I thought it was a really fun 95 minutes.
I thought the plot was entertaining

and smart. And, you know, with these movies, I kind kind of always toe the line between genuine love and ironic love for them.

But I kind of think that's part of the fun of these 80s movies is, you know, they're a little bit on the fringe, but I enjoyed it. That was good.
Sometimes they just feel like time capsules to me now.

Like there's, I sent you guys that screenshot of like a bunch of the teens at the beach in the end scene, like in the exchange at the end.

And I'm just like, look at these fucking guys, man. Like, that's like a Life Magazine photo.

This is, I think I've said Life Magazine twice now in Tupods, but it's like, it is like a document of what kids kind of like used to look like and how they used to hang out back then.

And it's just like this movie is aggressively representing culture at this exact time.

And I think a lot of stuff now doesn't, maybe 30 years from now, we'll look back and be like, wow, the summer I turned pretty really encapsulates what 2024 was like, but it, it doesn't feel like it in the moment, I guess.

Yeah, it's interesting. This movie comes down to the four people are just a good hang.
Billie Jean, her brother, and the, and the two sisters. It's just fun to hang out with.
And it's a cool setting.

Yeah. Yeah.
Like the first, what is it, 20 Minutes of Jaws 2, we were talking about like, this just looks fun. Fun hanging out here.
It's a great setting. It's like, you know, you can.

Roy Scheider's got some problems. He's dealing with him.
Yeah. It's cool.
He's probably using that tanning oil. Roy Scheider.
There were a lot of movies like this in the mid-80s.

Like Anthony Michael Hall made one where it's like wrong person now on the run. And I think this movie did it the best.
Yes. Because there's a lot of bad versions of this.
Yeah. And a lot of the guys.

Out of bounds. Remember that one? Anthony Michael Hall and Jenny Ray.
Even though, what's the one? Um,

uh, Cloak and Dagger, where like the kids on the like Dabney Coleman is like the spy, right? Right, right. And the kid goes on the run.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

It's a great, it's a great premise. I thought Helen Slater was great.
I really liked her. Yeah.
All right. There you go.
Thanks to Gahal. Thanks to Ronic as well.
Thanks to Horbeck for producing.

Thanks to Horror. Thanks to Eduardo.
Yeah.

We got the whole crew.

This is some crew.

I don't know what we have next week, but it'll definitely be. We have one banked if you want to run that one.
Yeah, yeah. Or maybe we're filming another one next week.
We'll see. CR.

Pleasure as always. I hope they throw to AJ Brown more next week.
We'll see. Good to see you.