‘High Fidelity’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Joanna Robinson, and Rob Mahoney

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Speaker 1 The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We can find The Watch with CR.

Speaker 2 For sure.

Speaker 1 You can find The House of R with Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 1 Rob Mahoney, first time ever. I know.
You did it. You're on the Ringer NBA show.
You're in the Prestige TV

Speaker 1 podcast. You're on my podcast sometimes.
And now this one. I asked you for a list.
I asked Joanna for a list. Like, give me 12 movies that we haven't done yet.

Speaker 2 Didn't ask me. It's okay.

Speaker 2 You just sent me back to Sicario. You're like, Sicario, Sicario, Sicario.

Speaker 3 I have other ideas.

Speaker 1 But there was one movie that was on both lists.

Speaker 2 I mean, the star is completely aligned for high fidelity. How could it not?

Speaker 4 CR, you fucking bitch.

Speaker 2 Let's work it out.

Speaker 2 High Fidelity is next. You totally stole that from me.

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Speaker 1 I have a million places I could start here, but let's start with why both of you picked this. Joanna, you go first.

Speaker 5 Probably because we had just done the big pic movie draft and it was on my mind. So I think that's why it was on my list.

Speaker 2 But also if you work here, like this is a formative movie for people who care about things obsessively. Like what else are we doing here if not this kind of thing?

Speaker 2 I saw this movie as a teenager and of course you see some of that Rob and this Rob. You see some of that.
Like there are parts of him that you loathe and there are parts of him that you love.

Speaker 2 And so it's like, how could you not pick a story like this?

Speaker 1 CR, you actually worked in a record store in the late 90s.

Speaker 6 Yeah, from 95 to 2003, I was a record store clerk.

Speaker 1 So this movie comes out in the world.

Speaker 6 I was also an assistant manager as well. I don't want to make it sound like

Speaker 2 you had some oversight. My career development was taking keys.
You had keys.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You had keys.

Speaker 6 Not to Kim's, but from Newberry.

Speaker 1 So this movie comes out, but you'd already read the book.

Speaker 6 I had Nick Hornby. It's set in London.

Speaker 6 It's like a twin with fever pitch in that sort of like Peter Pan English male trying to hang on to the things that he loved as a child as he becomes an adult.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Was he like your favorite author in the 90s?

Speaker 6 He was one of my first, you know, he was one of my first contemporary authors that became like a favorite author.

Speaker 5 Like, if there's a new Hornby novel out there, you're gonna read it.

Speaker 6 I was so excited after what I felt very seen by those two books.

Speaker 1 Were you cool that they were making a movie out of the book? Because that was like a traumatizing 90s, like, oh, you can't touch that book. You're going to fuck it up.

Speaker 5 I was upset about Chicago.

Speaker 2 I was upset. Really?

Speaker 6 I was nervous about Chicago, but I I was a huge gross point blank fan. Yes.

Speaker 6 So I was excited for John Cuzak with music because he had obviously shown an affinity for like populating his movies with really great bands and really great needle drops.

Speaker 2 I'd be surprised for the two of you because you're two of the biggest anglophiles I know. So moving out of the UK, yes, that's scary.
But they make the characters in this obsessed with British music.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
So doesn't that speak to you in some way? But

Speaker 5 sure, but I loved the book, like CR, and I just didn't see it working outside of London. And it totally works.
Like it works really well, but I was, I didn't want it and I was wrong.

Speaker 5 And I'm surprised, you know, they made a TV show on Hulu, which I actually really, really loved as well.

Speaker 1 I feel like COVID killed that show. It did.
It was right before COVID.

Speaker 5 It was ridiculous that that got killed.

Speaker 2 I really liked it. Why? But we still.

Speaker 5 haven't had a London-based version of this story and I would, I would take it eagerly. That is kind of crazy.

Speaker 6 Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously the version of it that happens on Hulu, the Hulu show, I think the hardest thing to get over is the idea that there's still like a relatively thriving record store.

Speaker 6 Sure, right. There are some, there are some that are still doing well.
And the vinyl is probably having like its most popular run in a long time in the last couple of years.

Speaker 1 That would be the re-entry.

Speaker 6 But the idea of like a record store where like multiple people can work for even in 2000.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 2 2000, definitely.

Speaker 5 Even in 2000, I was like, that apartment. Rob's like, look at my shitty apartment.
I'm like, that apartment?

Speaker 2 That apartment's sick.

Speaker 1 I have a complicated relationship with this movie because I was probably the exact same age as the guy in the book when it came out. I was obsessive with weird shit like him.

Speaker 1 My life wasn't going the way I totally wanted it to go at that point.

Speaker 1 And I also loved the book.

Speaker 1 So it was one of those where I went into it, read it, and not like it that much, but it's kind of worn me down over the years.

Speaker 6 Can I ask you, do you feel like when you read this book,

Speaker 6 had you started writing it?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Was it influential?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 1 no, because I always thought his style was just so different than mine. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 1 see, I don't feel like he invented anything with that. It was a lot of how we conversed in the 90s.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because we didn't have the internet yet. And it was a lot of like, you would have these long arguments about shit for like two, three hours.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you would argue, you would do like lists of things or favorite whatever. Like this is.

Speaker 1 all the stuff that like became bleacher report you're just doing in somebody's apartment at 1 30 at night constantly generating listicles

Speaker 2 I'm kind of surprised you like this movie because I consider you the patron saint of the top sevens. Right.
Yeah. What are you even doing with it?

Speaker 2 You have to make a lot of fun. I'm loving QSAC straight to video movies in the 21st century.

Speaker 1 Well, here's what I realized as I was thinking about it. Like, I do think it's the last Gen X movie.

Speaker 1 I think Gen X kind of dies with this movie in a lot of ways. But then I was trying to think of this is why I called it Close to Run a Day.

Speaker 1 Because I was like, this is my list of the essential Gen X if you're doing a thread from

Speaker 1 where i'm going to start to high fidelity and it's interesting because cusack bookends it because his theory was that say anything is the first gen x movie which i actually agree with because he's like lloyd dabler all the things he stands for is gen x yes and he's like i don't want to sell anything yeah right like he has that whole speech he's like i don't know where my path is that was basically gen x pump up the volume i think is a gen x movie

Speaker 1 Slacker is the one that I'm not sure about.

Speaker 1 I have that as an asset.

Speaker 2 Why wouldn't it be?

Speaker 1 because it's like chuck was saying it's a little bit more like a it almost it's set in austin in the 80s but it is genetic it's like it's on the cups anyway singles reality bites before sunset kicking and screaming chasing amy and high fidelity i think are the ones that have to be in there and then slacker i'm not sure about i wouldn't put clerks in there because chasing amy is definitely the kevin smith that you would put on that list

Speaker 1 i think so because it's because otherwise it's five years between kicking and screaming and high fidelity and i need like something I need like just to like take it.

Speaker 1 But I think the thing that all those movies have in common, except Slacker, you have this male protagonist, doesn't know where his life's going.

Speaker 1 There's either somebody that he used to be in love with and he screwed it up or he was in love with her, but wasn't sure she was quite good enough for him

Speaker 1 or she dumped him. And they're just kind of navigating it and you're not even positive you like them.
This is probably the least likable character of all the leads.

Speaker 1 And it's about the woman, and it's always told through the eyes of the male. There's no female Gen X movie, really, that I can remember from the 90s.
Was there, CR?

Speaker 6 Off the top of my head, it's hard to think of one, but there was

Speaker 1 it's always the dude.

Speaker 2 Well, a lot of the movies you described are guys talking in room movies, and a lot guys talking in rooms at women, like trying to prevent.

Speaker 2 Even Ethan Hawkin before Sunrise and Sunset is a lot of let me preach.

Speaker 6 I would argue that Winona Ryder is the protagonist of reality.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's fair. That's a good one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think you could say in singles, like Bridget Fonda is a co-protagonist.

Speaker 6 Would you put Heathers in this group?

Speaker 1 Or is that like I wouldn't, but it's close.

Speaker 6 I think Heathers and Say Anything

Speaker 6 to me are a different kind of high school movie than the ones that I had gotten previous to that. So they're different than John Hughes.

Speaker 5 But what is Heather's teaching us about Gen X? I guess is the question.

Speaker 1 So when you were younger than Gen X, CR was right at the tail end and I was like headfirst in the middle of it. So when you when you both look at Gen X, what do you see?

Speaker 5 I'm a cusper.

Speaker 2 I like to play Gen X when I plan.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, obviously the jadedness, I think, is part of it. And clearly, just like the

Speaker 2 such a strong pushback against any kind of like sellout culture or enfranchisement in any way. Like there's such an independent spirit.

Speaker 2 And with that, I think just comes like a cold, hard, honestly bitter shell to a lot of these movies and stories. And you can see that with Rob through and through, right?

Speaker 2 Like he is closing himself off from the world in this book, in this movie, and just like, you know, fiddling through his record collection as a way to keep warm at night.

Speaker 2 But I think that's kind of what sticks out to me the most about these Gen X stories.

Speaker 5 It's funny that you went through these like Gen X signposts because I was thinking about this. I think that this is a great retail movie.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Like a hang at the store movie. Yeah.
And you've got Clerks 94, Empire Records 95. You've got Mail, which I was a bookstore clerk, so that's what I would count, 98.

Speaker 2 I think that counts.

Speaker 5 You know, and then you've got this 2000.

Speaker 1 It was like a nice little run for like even throw mall rats in there, sort of kind of at least the hanging out.

Speaker 2 Most of them are not out working, but yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 So like hanging out on your retail job is, you know, I think this is all comes from clerks,

Speaker 5 but that's my favorite part of this movie. Like Rob and Laura is interesting to me, but the guys in the store.

Speaker 6 Slacker kind of, the bookstore in Slacker kind of works for this as well as like a retail hangout place.

Speaker 1 One other thing with Gen X that this movie hits perfectly is you're kind of stuck with the people you were stuck with

Speaker 2 wherever you lived.

Speaker 1 And they weren't exactly, it's like you're not on the okayc thunder this year you're not winning 75 games you're kind of on a play-in team but you have all this content you want to talk about and it's like well these are the people i guess i have to talk to about these two guys showed up to work yeah never left stop name names you know

Speaker 5 yeah like he's with these two guys that i'm not even sure he really likes and they're not that likable yeah but they're all just kind of together every day doing top five and he's just like do almost like a stand-up doing a picture yeah but that's the joy of the retail job especially like based around like i would say music or books or something like that where it's just sort of like you have this base thing in common where you love books or you love music or you love like people worked.

Speaker 5 I worked at a movie theater, you love movies.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and so even if you like different genres, there is this sort of you wind up becoming friends with a weird group of people where you have this core thing in common, um, but otherwise your paths would never cross.

Speaker 2 So you're saying what you like is more important than what you are like. I actually agree with that.
Yeah, it's at least kind of true, right?

Speaker 5 And I found myself sick to my stomach when I was like, I know we're not supposed to agree with this, but i agree

Speaker 6 like the dark finstock award is

Speaker 6 it's like it doesn't matter i agree with joe i mean like i remember the names of almost everybody i worked with at a record store but like forget names of people that i met last year you know like and

Speaker 6 there it's also like it's a very important time in your life when you're kind of in college coming out of college or if you're just like entering the workforce The retail jobs that I had and the record store jobs specifically that I had, I was like,

Speaker 6 you you know what, if nothing ever else happens to me, I'd be good. Like I like, I kind of would still work at a record store if I could.

Speaker 5 I get nostalgic for it. I'm like, can I do that on the weekends? Can I go into the bookstore on the weekends?

Speaker 6 Intellectually stimulating while being physically mechanical. So like you just don't have to do that much.
You just bullshit with people all day about stuff you're interested in.

Speaker 6 And then like the things that you're quote unquote responsible for are like alphabetizing.

Speaker 2 and moving things. That actually does sound very good.
Shelving.

Speaker 5 A lot of shelving. And then you close the store door at the end of the day, and then you're done with work.
Yes.

Speaker 6 And lots of cigarette breaks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I remember my buddy Gus from high school, we used to play this game called the name game where you say Joanna Robinson, and then I had to say the next name had to have Joanna or Robinson in it.

Speaker 1 And we would just keep going until you could try to stump the next person. Some dude of Robinson Cano and then Frank Robinson.

Speaker 2 We did it.

Speaker 1 We would just survive. We would be driving somewhere for three hours.

Speaker 1 We didn't have podcasts to listen to. It's like, let's play the name game.
And you'd eventually get to some crazy name like trajan langdon it's like

Speaker 1 i have nowhere to go i don't know another trade but that's the kind of you did in the 90s you're just killing time with content and you never you know you'd hear somebody's theory or take on some movie or a music album or something like that's amazing oh yeah well there was i can find on the internet anywhere there was no comment section so people would be like i'm going down in flames with this take yeah and i'm right the only comment section is the bar so i don't have to like worry about this following me around for years.

Speaker 6 If I want to say like this band is better than Pavement or this band is a, this is a better movie than Apocalypse Now or whatever.

Speaker 6 You could just have one glorious night and then be like, oh, I had four beers.

Speaker 2 That's why I thought that.

Speaker 6 But like now, if you, if you know, if you're like High Fidelity is better than Nashville today, people will friggin

Speaker 6 at you for a while and like, you'll be like, well, that was miserable.

Speaker 1 I know. Yeah, drunk takes were huge back in the day.

Speaker 2 I think drunk takes still exist. They're just, you know, experienced and documented different ways.

Speaker 6 I love your point about the people that you're stuck with, though. Like the, that is one thing that this movie gets really right is the Barry and Dick and Rob trio.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Is like, they spend more time together than anybody else in their lives. But like Rob is just like, they just started appearing here.
Right.

Speaker 2 Who's supposed to be three days a week? He says that, but he goes out every night with them. Of course.

Speaker 6 You know, I mean, you go out every night with your coworkers from the rest, from the store

Speaker 6 because that would be the people who are getting off work at 9:30 or 10. And you'd be like, okay, let's go see a band.
Let's go to the bar.

Speaker 1 But then Dick moves to like, I don't know, Austin with Anna and would never talk to these guys ever.

Speaker 2 Oh my god, yeah, they would never connect ever.

Speaker 5 I moved a lot in my, I worked in a bookstore all through my 20s and I moved a lot in my 20s. And every time I went to a new town, I worked in a new bookstore.

Speaker 5 And then you just have built-in community. And it's so easy to move to a new town when you have that sort of like retail fam.

Speaker 6 Or were you like the Patrick Swayze of Roadhouse of bookstores?

Speaker 2 He's the cooler. The cooler of all stores, yeah.
Yeah. Hey, Joe Robinson's in town.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Can't pin me down, man.

Speaker 2 Who was there, Sam Elliott?

Speaker 1 The Gen X blueprint.

Speaker 2 I wrote down.

Speaker 1 I might have missed a couple of things. Turning pop culture into therapy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Reading way, way, way too much into music or movies.

Speaker 1 Caring way too much about a relationship because you didn't have enough else to care about. That was 100% true.
You're just missing like three things.

Speaker 1 Hanging out with people, you didn't really like that much. We talked about that.
Being tortured that you're not doing what you thought you'd be doing, I think probably is still the case.

Speaker 2 That's the normal truth.

Speaker 1 But in Gen X was like a badge of honor that I don't want to do this. I don't know how I got into this.
Like almost like proud, but not willing to change it.

Speaker 5 But it was almost like there's something virtuous about working like retail or something like this where you're just like, I'm not making a ton of money. I'm doing this with a passion.
XYZ.

Speaker 5 I feel like millennials, when they complain about not being where they want to be, it's like, because the economy screwed me right and with gen x it's like because i have principles i don't want to sell them yeah yeah wouldn't it be nice to have principles you know but think about rob he he was a good dj

Speaker 6 he probably made money from it like he was getting complimented and he was the happiest he'd ever been when he did it yeah but now he's like in this record store that nobody goes to and that's just but that was also like a very i don't know if this happened with you in the bookstore but like the moment you get any recognition from within the sort of business side of working in a store, you're like, whoa, wait, wait a second.

Speaker 6 This is my life plan.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, when you get, I was also a manager and I'm like, I don't want kids.

Speaker 2 You should think about the code. I'm like, whoa.

Speaker 1 Two more blueprint things.

Speaker 1 Settling with someone solid when you're not sure if you can do better, which was big, even in like beautiful girls who's dating.

Speaker 2 Oh, especially

Speaker 1 doing the ratings. And it's like, what is she? And he's like, she's solid seven and a half.

Speaker 1 And they're like, seven and a half. And you're like, yep, solid seven and a half.
And he can't decide if that's good enough. That was a big Gen X culture thing.

Speaker 1 And then you're the same person you used to be, and I'm not,

Speaker 1 which Laura says to him, Yes, was a classic Gen X thing of somebody's like, I'm 32 and I'm doing the exact same things I was doing when I was 27. What happened? Five years just went by.

Speaker 6 And this is like, if you were going to continue the sort of jumping the lily pads from this movie onwards,

Speaker 6 the

Speaker 6 man trapped in a boy's yeah mind thing is essentially the template for like the early appetow movies you know like for knocked up and like i just want to hang out with my friends and just

Speaker 5 play dnd and watch and watch movies and it's like yeah but grow up right like you're almost 30 kind of when you to go back to the settling for someone in this movie in high fidelity who's settling do you think well

Speaker 2 Well, I think it's Laura. It's both.

Speaker 1 I think it's both sides on that one.

Speaker 2 When she says, like, I'm too tired not to be with you, there's something kind of romantic about that.

Speaker 2 I don't know. There's something about the comforts of finding your 7.5 out of 10 person.

Speaker 6 This is the big weird curveball that this movie throws is that there is not a...

Speaker 6 gesture in this movie the way there is in singles where he's like i want to be mr new to you you know like there is none of that here it's basically like have sex with me after my dad's funeral and then i guess we're back together i guess the gesture is i didn't or i made the tape for the reporter but it didn't mean that.

Speaker 2 I told you,

Speaker 2 I disclosed it.

Speaker 5 Even though I proposed, even though I was pretty sure you wouldn't say yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wasn't the gesture, have sex with me, or I'm going to go home and put my hand in a fire, or you can put some cigarettes out on me. Those are my three options.

Speaker 2 ABC.

Speaker 1 This is not a romantic movie in the traditional way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, no boomboxes in the rain, just pay phones and piles of quarters.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was going to do this on unanswerable later, but these two did not actually get married.

Speaker 2 No chance. Yeah, this is a wrap.

Speaker 1 Craig, can you give us your Gen X thoughts

Speaker 2 about the generation or

Speaker 1 yeah when you see Gen X represented in movies and TV

Speaker 2 what do you see uh well I don't want to spoil my because that's that factors into my entire opinion

Speaker 2 okay um

Speaker 1 I intentionally didn't learn how to pronounce Laura's real life name because I knew I had Joanna here and nobody pronounces names of actresses and actors better than Joanna.

Speaker 5 Great. I'm going to picture me last night in my hotel room wandering around just muttering this over and over and over again to see if I can.
I came up with Eben Yala. That's what I got.

Speaker 5 Is that what you got? I heard Yala.

Speaker 2 I heard something like Yale. Like, it just depends on the

Speaker 2 how much

Speaker 2 Danish spice you want to put on that last pronunciation.

Speaker 6 Yala, but like that was, that was just one version of the internet's response to how to pronounce this woman.

Speaker 1 Well, for the rest of the pod, we'll be calling her the lady who played Laura.

Speaker 2 I think Eben is doable. Eben, Ebenezer.
You can get my word. Yeah.
Well, she said. Also be very careful.
This is a Scandinavian podcast. I need you to be very careful about this.

Speaker 1 I don't want the sweets to come after me.

Speaker 1 She said, I knew tons of guys like Rob where it was ages before they understood that relationships and committing and having kids is a good thing.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't mean that you have to lose yourself or who you are or what you like to do.

Speaker 1 And then she said, Rob is the sort of character I would fall for to me. He symbolizes a whole generation of what matters is not what you're like, but what you like.

Speaker 1 Which I thought was an interesting way to put it.

Speaker 2 I mean, the things you like.

Speaker 1 But my question is, is that now too? The things you like are what you like.

Speaker 2 Are what you like.

Speaker 5 What's the difference between podcasters and these guys in the record store?

Speaker 2 It's a great question. I don't know.
I mean, we're here because I'm not happy about it.

Speaker 2 I'm not happy about it.

Speaker 1 Even there's with the Gen Xers, this is a whole different era of hopeless romantics and courting and standing outside somebody in the pouring rain.

Speaker 1 I don't know if this happens in the same way anymore. Now, somebody would just call the police or take a cell phone video.

Speaker 6 Or you'd just be on hinge being like, eh.

Speaker 2 Sorry, dude. Yeah, David Peter.

Speaker 1 I'm on Tenner. My next question.

Speaker 1 Did this book slash movie create the top five list, like for real?

Speaker 1 Because I'm going to say no, but I also can't think of what did.

Speaker 2 This is a pre-Apex mountain for top fives.

Speaker 5 Maybe, yeah. Like Casey Kasem?

Speaker 1 That's

Speaker 1 Casey Kasim. Yeah.
No, that's

Speaker 1 countdown might have been it. Yeah.

Speaker 6 When does PTI start?

Speaker 1 Later, after this.

Speaker 6 I know they weren't doing top fives, but they were doing that, like the idea of a countdown and the idea of like a sort of menu for the, for the day.

Speaker 2 We would do more arguing one thing against another thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Versus lists.

Speaker 5 We weren't doing a lot of lists. We were doing what's the best, the best.

Speaker 1 Like you do like,

Speaker 1 I don't know, Best Harrison Ford movie, or you'd be Barry Sanders versus Emmett Smith. Yes.
Right. Perns versus Hagler.
It was a lot of that. It was a lot of 1v1, not lists.

Speaker 6 And there was also like a, I think this movie or this book kind of introduced the idea to me at least of or like i don't remember a time before it of

Speaker 1 top five track one side one like very specific lists and then also adding like sub lists into the list or giving excuses for it i would say that was really influential at least for me like thinking about like writing columns and being like how far is too far and be like the answer is like especially when i was doing like the first year of the mailbag or something like every question's on board no answer can be detailed enough and fuck it let's go for it it.

Speaker 1 See, that book is like the lists are crazy in the book.

Speaker 2 Yeah, in a good way. The only reason I think this is not the outset of the top fives is that Barry in particular has all these like second and third wave opinions about list making.

Speaker 2 It's like, oh, you can't do the four safe ones and the one modern classic or else I'm going to call you a pussy. So it's like, it's been happening somewhat for a while at this point, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's like, it's been iterating.

Speaker 6 A couple of, there's a couple of like big bangs. There's like Tarantino in Sleep With Me doing the Top Gun speech.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad you you brought this up. It's like

Speaker 6 where I first saw

Speaker 6 the guy in the bar who's like, I have a fucking take that's going to blow your mind. And it was like to see that on screen and to know that there were satellite dudes like that in every town.

Speaker 5 Well, this is what the Kevin Smith Uber is, too. It's like just an assemblage of those hot takes.

Speaker 1 And kicking and screaming, too. And they, what was the top eight, whatever movies when they did, it's like ding.
Yes. Ding, which was before this movie, but yes.

Speaker 1 Anytime I would see that in a movie, I'd be like, oh, like the tarantino thing is the ultimate example that was so great and so random in that movie and it was like by it became the most memorable part of the movie but to see somebody do that in a movie i was like that's what me and my friends do we do weird like there's more of us like it was constantly trying to discover that there was more out there than just this little weird group you had yeah there was also this turns out it was everybody funny thing

Speaker 6 Because I think that this is actually similar to what goes on now because we have so much access to streaming stuff. But back then, from the 90s to the 2000s, like in 95, especially on,

Speaker 6 I remember this huge flood

Speaker 6 of

Speaker 6 like used stuff.

Speaker 6 Like you, you could basically build up a record collection for like a couple of dollars per LP.

Speaker 6 And you could start being like, I listened to Funkadelic and I listened to industrial music and I listened to Public Enemy and I listened to the Beatles.

Speaker 6 And it wasn't that expensive to have that kind of breadth of taste,

Speaker 6 which is why Barry's so interesting because he's got like hipster taste in some ways, but he's also like, I listened to Katrina and the waves and Rob, obviously, like the, the kind of variance of people's tastes was really interesting for those kinds of arguments and those kinds of lists.

Speaker 1 I thought of a better top 10, top five thing. It was Letterman, the top 10 list.
Sure.

Speaker 2 Of course.

Speaker 1 That started like 85. And that was my show.
He first he did it, ironically. He was making the stupidest list possible.
And then they became one of the staples of the show and became a serious thing.

Speaker 5 And that's, he's like the Gen X Sherpa. Yes.

Speaker 2 David Letter.

Speaker 1 But I wonder, like, with Nick Cornby, like, did,

Speaker 2 did he even know about it?

Speaker 2 I'm sure he knew about it. He must have, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Rob, can I ask you, please?

Speaker 5 Is this Rob the top pop culture Rob?

Speaker 2 The top Rob?

Speaker 2 Because I couldn't like. I mean, top five Rob?

Speaker 2 Rob Roy?

Speaker 6 Rob Lowe's pretty big.

Speaker 5 No, but that's like

Speaker 2 fictional Rob. Fictional Robs.
This is fictional Rob.

Speaker 2 yeah.

Speaker 5 There aren't that many.

Speaker 2 I was looking there, fictional robs. I can't honestly tell you.

Speaker 5 Rob Roy was the only other one.

Speaker 2 I could think what do you mean, Rob Stark. Rob Stark does two B's, it doesn't count.
No, two B's.

Speaker 6 You're in your hotel room being like fictional Robs and how to pronounce it.

Speaker 2 Evan Yala.

Speaker 5 I have a normal existence, Chris.

Speaker 2 Don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 How do you add the second B with Rob? Did we ever figure that out? Where does the second B come from? It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 That's just George R.

Speaker 5 Martin's way. He likes to add constants.

Speaker 2 Now, does anyone else do the double Rob? Second B. Does who?

Speaker 1 Like, who else does double rob double B?

Speaker 2 Anybody?

Speaker 6 Well, Well, there's the Rob report, but I, that's not, that's not Rob.

Speaker 1 Like, that's the, yeah, Jen with two ends was always at least understandable because it was Jennifer, but it was always suspicious because Jen should have one end.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so anytime someone added the second end, they were usually on the real world

Speaker 1 or show like that. Like, oh, Jen with two ends.

Speaker 6 Uh, when you were bartending, it was like, don't give Jen with two ends any extra shots.

Speaker 1 Jen with two ends, like, oh, she's here today.

Speaker 2 Uh,

Speaker 1 the cast of this movie that includes Cusack, who I can't wait to talk about.

Speaker 1 Jack Black.

Speaker 1 Todd Luiso. Yeah.
I never knew his name until the research of this movie. I just knew him as the Manny and the guy from this movie, Manny and Dick.

Speaker 1 I didn't know he had a name in real life, but he also directed Love Liza, which I found out.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like directed multiple movies. Couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 He's so good in this, too.

Speaker 2 I know Jack Black has all the shine, but like having the

Speaker 2 nebish guy off to the side is like so anxious he can barely contain himself as he's getting the title.

Speaker 2 I'm immediate to talk talk to him about, so I'll talk to him about that when I talk to him about those other things. He's putting the beta in baby.

Speaker 5 He's needed him to make like Barry work.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they have a beautiful thing going on.

Speaker 1 It's a good combo. Catherine Zeta Jones, Lisa Bonet, Sarah Gilbert.
Chris Bowers in this movie?

Speaker 2 Cut from the movie.

Speaker 5 Oh, he was cut. I know.
He's on IMDb, but he is cut from the movie movie.

Speaker 2 He's briefly.

Speaker 1 He's a deleted scene as he in it.

Speaker 2 I thought he was in it for a second.

Speaker 2 So I think his initial scene got cut, and then you hit like a two-second dinner party sequence after they get back together where he's like bringing a plate to a table or something.

Speaker 5 Frank Sabaka's here.

Speaker 2 Frank Sabaka barely made the cut. Okay.

Speaker 1 Lily Taylor,

Speaker 1 Joan Cusack, Tim Robbins,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 1 one of my all-time favorites, Natasha Gregson Wagner.

Speaker 2 Always dug her. Where'd it go? A Primo Nepo baby.

Speaker 5 One of the best.

Speaker 1 She's had some moments. Never sure why it didn't fully come together, but I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 She was married to one of the screenwriters for a while. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Great job by her.

Speaker 1 Okay, so we'll talk about Jack Black here.

Speaker 1 This is a really important Jack Black performance. He steals the movie.

Speaker 5 This is the Jack Black. Like, this is to me.

Speaker 1 This leads to School of Rock, everything else. Is this the best Jack Black performance?

Speaker 5 I think so. He said this is his best performance.

Speaker 2 School of Rock is carrying more, though. You know, he gets to come in and be heat-checking constantly in this.

Speaker 2 School of Rock, like, he has to be the emotional center of the movie and the Jack Black of the movie.

Speaker 1 Would you rather have this

Speaker 1 version of Jack Black coming off the bench? Yeah.

Speaker 2 yeah and just shooting threes or do you want jack black in the jalen brown selfix role right now i kind of want him in the jalen brown role really i mean only in school only in a specific kind of i prefer this version of him sixth man jack black but the streets have spoken and like he is one of the most reliable movie stars

Speaker 5 i think he's the number one movie star of gen alpha wouldn't you say probably yeah yeah well especially maybe even just

Speaker 5 movie yeah but like minecraft mario brothers jumanji like all these things that are directed for kids goosebumps, like he's the king of the kid franchise.

Speaker 5 And I think for generations of people, Jack Black is the biggest movie star in the world.

Speaker 2 Super Mario Brothers. Like, I guess there really is a straight line, not just to School of Rock, but to like Bowser singing ballads.
Like, it's a very strange world we live in.

Speaker 6 I went to a pre-Luca Lakers game last year, and he got a bigger round of applause courtside than anybody else, like on the floor. And I think Wemby was playing.

Speaker 5 I mean, he's easily the biggest. like thing to come out of this movie without question.

Speaker 1 And then thinking. Well, I didn't know who he was before i saw this movie i didn't know like he came out of like a cannon you're like what tenacious d was already

Speaker 5 was already on hbo but like i this this was like his calling card like this was which show is he on there was a tenacious tenius d show with his

Speaker 6 do you remember him in the day of the jackal remake with bruce willis and richer gear where he gets his arms blown off i 100 do

Speaker 5 He's also an airborne.

Speaker 2 Yes. A very important person.
Famously an airborne.

Speaker 6 You know, if you were ever going to let me pick a rewatchable, it wouldn't be Sicario.

Speaker 2 It would be

Speaker 1 i saw tenacious the at some point after we moved out hair when it was the right time to see them and it was like really amazing um

Speaker 1 he's just such a great stage performer captures it but i still think his best scene is the first scene it's one of their good comes in and he's doing the stuff with his hands and hey i there's just nobody like that i also just think there's like

Speaker 5 soul to Barry, like his ambitions, his disappointment that Rob is willing to back like the teenagers instead of him him and all his stuff like that.

Speaker 5 Like, I just think, I think, you know, Jack Black has talked about how he was so nervous to make this movie. And so I think he's just a little bit more restrained.

Speaker 5 And I like Off the Leash, Jack Black, but I like just like a little bit of restraint. And I'm not sure I can go to 11 in every single moment.
I like that balance inside of this movie.

Speaker 1 How about Zeta Jones?

Speaker 2 Where does this rank for her?

Speaker 1 Because for me, it's like.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Way up there.

Speaker 6 I wish she had done more movies like this.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Just come in and I wish she had just played more quote-unquote normal people

Speaker 6 where, you know, obviously she just gets cast in a lot of like really big blockbusters and pretty like

Speaker 6 comic,

Speaker 2 not comic book roles, but like really out there roles.

Speaker 6 And this is just like Charlie. This is like a lady that you would know.
She's great.

Speaker 2 And if I can borrow Dobbinsism, it's very important. Like her in a pretender's t-shirt is a very important thing.

Speaker 1 This was a specific type of woman that I'm sure still exists that I'd always had my number which which ver like the the college version or the terrible type had your number

Speaker 1 just no just

Speaker 1 you're annoying and i don't even want to put the two hours in here but you look great and i'm just glad i'm here but god you're annoying but god you're great and just that kind of battle yeah and she though she's not in this movie that much but she's so good in the parts And she's so, so like, just phony.

Speaker 1 And I just knew people like this.

Speaker 5 And it was, but you couldn't stay away from them but I just love that revelation he has because you get the flashback version of her and you're like you you believe Rob that she's the most fascinating person has ever existed and then he meets her now and he's like wow she's the worst she's absolutely the worst person I mean she probably was when he was 20 exactly you know but we're just seeing the like

Speaker 1 the horny haze the great thing for me is that some of these people are still on Instagram now

Speaker 1 and you can

Speaker 1 they just don't change you can I would say this is real life people are real life Charlies yeah I would say they are the core of Instagram Instagram.

Speaker 2 But I mean, they're like in their 50s now, still making all Charlie's cycle nods.

Speaker 5 They poured the concrete upon which Instagram is.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they really did.

Speaker 1 They started it. There's a Lily Taylor cameo.

Speaker 1 Always fun when the Q sacks are in a movie together. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then.

Speaker 5 How mad do you think Piven is that he's not in this movie? Oof.

Speaker 1 I had that in Unanswerables. Like, I don't.

Speaker 1 They were their best friends. And it's a Chicago movie.
I don't know what happened.

Speaker 1 And then my queen, Lisa Bonet, is in this movie

Speaker 5 incredible casting really really good work on real

Speaker 2 pre-la law susan day but black yeah it's it's a good description honestly it kind of works post-partridge freely pre-la la law

Speaker 2 shockingly accurate but the way to lose that is

Speaker 2 so distracted i'm just kidding

Speaker 1 it tosses it off yeah Want to do some Stephen Frears?

Speaker 2 I'd love to do some Stephen Freers.

Speaker 1 He does dangerous liaisons in this movie.

Speaker 5 You love dangerous liaisons.

Speaker 2 And one of my favorite things. I know.

Speaker 5 Chocolate list is one of my favorite things like doing research for this is how many people

Speaker 5 lost their shit about working with Stephen Freer's because of dangerous liaisons.

Speaker 6 The Grifters, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. The Grifters isn't.

Speaker 1 That's the thing. If you put his best movies all next to each other, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 Where do you rank?

Speaker 1 It's like just all over the place.

Speaker 2 Where do you rank Mary Riley?

Speaker 1 So I never liked Mary Riley. I didn't like too skinny.

Speaker 5 You have to say it like that because that's how they said it in all the time.

Speaker 2 Did you like it?

Speaker 5 No, nobody liked Mary Riley. Julie Roberts doing doing a bonkers Irish accent.

Speaker 1 What was the other one? The big Steven Freer's?

Speaker 5 The Griffiths, my Beautiful Londre.

Speaker 2 My Beautiful Londrette.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Did he do the hit?

Speaker 2 Is that him? No. I don't think so.

Speaker 5 But after this, he just veers really into like sort of Mirror Max, Fuddy Duddy, British.

Speaker 2 Yeah, costume drama, period piece. A lot of very British movies.
This is like the most American thing you probably ever.

Speaker 6 I always wondered whether.

Speaker 6 I was trying to figure out who Jim Broadbent is supposed to be in Jay Kelly, you know, the British director. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 And it's like, it has a little bit of Freers, a little bit of Michael,

Speaker 6 who was also originally attached to this,

Speaker 6 or Bogdanovich.

Speaker 5 Do you think Freers makes a good sandwich? What do you think?

Speaker 2 I bet. Yeah, I bet it does.

Speaker 1 Liaisons is on the 26th rewatchable slate.

Speaker 5 It's got to be.

Speaker 1 Watched it just randomly two weeks ago, and I was like, I forgot this movie is amazing. This is like an amazing movie.
Anyway,

Speaker 1 this movie was based on the Nick Cornby book, obviously. They gave him 500K.

Speaker 5 Wow. Plus truck changed back then.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He is a fan of the movie. It was developed for three years

Speaker 1 with somebody named Mike Newell, who's the director, and

Speaker 1 beautiful girl, Scott Rosenberg. Yeah.
Who was the guy who was dating Bridget Moynihan or maybe even married to her before Tom Brady started dating him? It was a Boston guy.

Speaker 1 And it was always like the all-time conundrum. You're like a giant Pats fan.

Speaker 2 I'd watch a hundred.

Speaker 1 But you lose your girl to Tom Brady, your quarterback. It's the great rom-com nobody ever made.

Speaker 2 Yet. Yet.

Speaker 1 Cusack got a hold of it and they moved it from London to Chicago.

Speaker 1 I can't wait to talk about some of the QSAC

Speaker 1 oral history performances.

Speaker 1 Just wait.

Speaker 2 On the edge of our seats.

Speaker 1 Just wait. But he said, when I read the book, I knew where everything was in Chicago.
I knew where American Rob went to school and dropped out, where he used to spin records.

Speaker 1 I knew that he does the whole thing. He knew.
He just felt like it could all switch over and be a transition. And he was right.

Speaker 6 To me, this movie actually

Speaker 6 is like the one of the rare examples of a hipster movie or like kind of cool movie that actually got in under the wire before all the stuff it was talking about was sort of over, which is sort of the criticism people love at singles, which is like, it feels like they're like a year behind everything.

Speaker 6 This was like actually a great time in Chicago music. All these venues were like iconic.

Speaker 6 Like all my friends who would tour to Chicago would be like, do you think we'll be able to play Lounge Acts or whatever? And the bars, we'll get to all the locations, but it's a great Chicago movie.

Speaker 1 $30 million budget made $47 million.

Speaker 1 It's fine.

Speaker 1 Roger Ebert, four stars.

Speaker 2 Raj?

Speaker 2 Raj came in. Came through.
He loved this movie.

Speaker 6 What a shock that Raj like does.

Speaker 1 He said, watching High Fidelity, I had the feeling I could walk out of the theater and meet the same people in the street and want to, which is an even higher compliment. Raj was in.

Speaker 5 The number of people,

Speaker 5 probably Roger Ebert included, who read this book or watched this movie and said, I am Rob, is really fascinating to me.

Speaker 6 Probably disturbing as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 5 but like the number of guys who are like, that is me. That is exactly me.
And I was like, that guy's an asshole.

Speaker 2 Like an asshole in an arc, but an asshole. Okay.

Speaker 1 You're missing the other piece of it.

Speaker 2 What am I missing? What am I doing?

Speaker 2 That is the arc. That is the movie.

Speaker 1 There was that group, but there was the other group who was like, I'm not Rob.

Speaker 2 Why do you think I'm Rob?

Speaker 1 Right. Yes.
And the people who were defensive that they weren't Rob, even though they probably were.

Speaker 5 Were more Robbed than the other guys.

Speaker 2 I know that.

Speaker 1 That's Chuck Closterman because he literally said, like, people come up to him and be like, you must love high fidelity. You're just like Rob.

Speaker 2 He's like, I'm not Rob. Yeah.
Just about the meanest thing you could say to somebody. Especially Chuck.

Speaker 1 Chuck doesn't want to be pigeonholed by a movie character. But yeah, so those were the two groups.
Sure. I remember I left singles.

Speaker 5 And then the women saying, I've dated Rob.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 I left

Speaker 1 singles.

Speaker 6 Yes, I dated him and I'll do it again.

Speaker 1 I left singles at the Chestnut Hill Mall and was with a female friend of mine and we left and she thought I was like,

Speaker 2 eh. Okay.

Speaker 1 I thought, she thought I was like the Campbell Scott character and it really threw me off for the rest of the night.

Speaker 6 Because you thought you were the Matt Dylan character?

Speaker 1 I was like, I'm not any of those characters. What are you talking about? She's like, no, you're just like that guy.
And I'm like, what?

Speaker 1 And there's nothing worse than being compared to a movie character when you're not when you don't feel like you're the movie character sure you know what I mean but if I wanted to be anyone in that movie it might be Campbell Scott in singles if you had to pick if I had to pick yeah I've just ruined transportation in Seattle and I just

Speaker 2 ordered Chinese food dramatically improved transportation in Seattle my thing I spent a year on it was a huge fan with Xavier McDaniel yeah

Speaker 2 what are your thoughts on garage door openers

Speaker 1 a lot of them uh we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna do most rewatchable scene this episode is brought to you by United Airlines.

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And now Kate Hudson is a Golden Globe nominee for best actress.

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Speaker 1 Most rewatchable scene, scene, the beginning. What came first?

Speaker 1 The music or the misery? What came first, CR?

Speaker 2 The music.

Speaker 1 I think the misery came first. You think that there's something? Because then there was music about the misery, which then it became a cycle.

Speaker 6 But when you're young and you're like, I don't know what I am yet, maybe you have lots of different feelings, but you can't put words to them yet.

Speaker 6 And then you see like, oh, look at this really like my friend's older sister who likes the Smiths. What's up with that? Like, that's dark.
I get, I get it.

Speaker 6 That's me, you know, like, there's a certain kind of like you're, you're basically like molding your personality to the things that you like.

Speaker 5 I think there's nothing stronger when people talk about music. There's nothing stronger than the song you listened to when you broke up with some, the breakup song.

Speaker 5 And what that, what, what is the song that got you through this breakup, or what is the song that always reminds you of that breakup? And so that's like the epitome of misery and music together.

Speaker 2 But the misery came first before the music.

Speaker 5 But you mold the music to the misery.

Speaker 2 For a lot of people do not.

Speaker 1 You think in day one, Adam and Eve, music was the second.

Speaker 2 People were not like, Morrissey, let's go.

Speaker 2 Not the hive. That would have been amazing.

Speaker 5 But maybe with their various instruments, they created a car crush and

Speaker 1 initially misery was first, but then I think as we evolved as human beings,

Speaker 1 probably the music puts... a face on the misery.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, so much of our life, like modern lives is how do we simulate danger? Like we watch sports to get the adrenaline rush, but it's not actually dangerous.

Speaker 2 And it's like, we tap into sad music to feel something immense that's not actually like harmful to us in a way.

Speaker 2 It's like they're just feelings, they're just emotions, but it taps you into something different. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I remember it's funny because they play this song in the movie, The River, The Acoustic Version of the River by Bruce Springston, one of the great concert album moments of all time when he tells the five-minute story.

Speaker 1 And I remember driving to Boston to go to Assault the game, listening to, the, they put out that concert album and these tones

Speaker 1 live. First time I heard the story, and he's like, when I was growing up, there were two things my dad hated, me and my guitar.
And he does this whole Bruce Springsteen thing.

Speaker 1 And you're just driving, like, this is the. And then you would hear things like that, and they would really resonate.
And this, you mean, Bruce Springsteen was going through stuff in high school?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 It wasn't just me.

Speaker 5 Why do you think they called Jeremy Ellen White and not you for the Springsteen biopsy?

Speaker 1 Do you think I could have done it, Joanna?

Speaker 2 I think he could have gotten that

Speaker 5 nomination as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? Was the other part of this? I would say that's probably 50-50.

Speaker 1 I like when he says, if you really wanted to mess me up, you should have gotten me earlier.

Speaker 1 It's a great line.

Speaker 2 Very normal thing to say to somebody.

Speaker 1 We know right away we're dealing with somebody who's messed up. All right, more rewatchable scenes.
Jack Box, first scene we mentioned.

Speaker 1 Charlie, you fucking bitch. Let's work it out.
Just that little piece. When he's going to see Marie play.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 This is so funny when he does the John Dojer was shot dead in the theater.

Speaker 2 You know, he tipped him off his fucking girlfriend and he just walks in.

Speaker 1 We get to see Lisa Bonet.

Speaker 1 Next one, Laura tells his sister the four reasons they broke up.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Junk you suck. Didn't really enjoy that much.

Speaker 2 Rob. But she may have told her two, but perhaps all of the following pieces.
steal information. If your list is four or five, like, it's bad.
Yeah,

Speaker 6 well, because he does the like, I slept with somebody else while she was pregnant. He's like, that's one.
I was like, that's

Speaker 2 two. Where do we go from there?

Speaker 1 Rob plays the beta band in the store for everybody and that gets robbed. I liked this whole thing about playing the beta band and looking to see who reacts.

Speaker 1 It's a real thing. Classic record store move.
Yeah, selling.

Speaker 1 Charlie,

Speaker 1 Charlie calls Rob back, but then Ian shows up. And then we get the four versions of how he handles Ian.

Speaker 2 It's great.

Speaker 1 Laura reading the top five jobs. Did you have some notes on that?

Speaker 6 The top five jobs? Honestly, we felt very seen by that list.

Speaker 1 Rolling Stone, 76 to 79.

Speaker 1 Producer, Atlantic Records, 64 to 71. Singer, director, and architect.

Speaker 2 The top five. Seemed like a real invasion of privacy, I gotta say.
Like, that's his list. It was in a drawer somewhere.
Why did she even find it?

Speaker 2 I think all that's off with Laura and Robin at that point in terms of invasion. We need to gravitate.
I mean, I get it.

Speaker 1 Rob and Laura get back together, but he knows some things missing.

Speaker 1 And then my pick, which would be DJ Rob doing the concert, introing Sonic Death Monkey, who coming off that album with the two kids, their song, I Sold Mom's Wheelchair.

Speaker 2 Kinky Wizard tune. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Then Let's Get It On and the Jack Black. And then we get the ending.

Speaker 1 The last eight minutes of this movie is fantastic. So that would be my pick.
What's yours, Joanna?

Speaker 5 I mean, I think you hit most of mine, but I will say that I want to expand on the beta band and say it's just that whole entire hand selling sequence, right? Like Jack Black is hand-selling,

Speaker 5 you know, the Jesus and the Mary chain, and Dick is hand-selling stiff little fingers, you know, and we're just like.

Speaker 6 Joe casually dropping hand selling right here is just unbelievable.

Speaker 2 That's what they're doing, hand selling.

Speaker 5 If you work in a like a bookstore or music store, you're just sort of like, and I like the different styles, right? Like Rob just plays it passively and he knows he's going to hook people, right?

Speaker 5 Jack Black is emotionally manipulating this guy into buying Ostack. And then Dick is making like a very personal connection with somebody.
Yeah, you make it so craven for him.

Speaker 5 He's he's making a genuine effort with Anna, you know? Right, but he's, he's, he's catching some other strays while he does it, right? Is this the new green day?

Speaker 5 So I think that that, because I think this is such a good retail movie, I think the whole busy Saturday hand-selling button is-Do you have a favorite hand-selling story?

Speaker 2 Favorite like yeah, because well,

Speaker 5 um,

Speaker 5 you can stack anything on staff favorites and it'll fly out the

Speaker 2 door.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 You can put something at point of sale. It'll fly out the door.
You know, yeah.

Speaker 1 CR, I might have been more in it than you, but the bootleg CD culture in the 90s.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 6 The live stuff.

Speaker 6 The live stuff, yeah.

Speaker 1 And then there was a store, actually in Kenmore Square, there was a store that had a whole bunch of great ones, but they would do the move of.

Speaker 1 It would be behind the counter. It's the only one I have with the high price.

Speaker 2 Oh, I think what's Jack Black does with Jack Black?

Speaker 1 And you would go back. It really worked.
You would go back and be like, it's still there. Are you going to sell that yet? I don't know.

Speaker 1 And then eventually the fifth time they would sell it to you for $20.

Speaker 2 My favorite. Yeah, what's your favorite?

Speaker 6 I was recreationally high on Adderall, and a mom came into Newberry and was like, My kid really likes corn. Do you have any recommendations? And I was like, your kid doesn't like corn.

Speaker 2 And I like walked her through like the entire store. You pulled the I just called to say I love you.

Speaker 6 You got to get him Fugazi. You got to get him this.
And I was just like, she, I just changed that kid's life. And then my mom's life.

Speaker 2 But in retrospect, I was so high. She was probably like, I'm going to call the cops.

Speaker 5 I had a woman come in. She was returning

Speaker 5 Hunger Games or something like that. And she was like, this is too violent.
And for my kid, I'm bringing my kid up religiously. I don't like this.

Speaker 5 So I sold her his dark materials trilogy where basically like they kill.

Speaker 2 God.

Speaker 2 I'm just like, but she won't know that.

Speaker 5 So that's my favorite hand-selling story.

Speaker 2 She didn't return.

Speaker 1 So I did the wine version of that when people ordered Pinot Grigio, and I was like, you know what, Pinot Grigio.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 It sucks. Get a Chardonnay.

Speaker 1 Please try the Chardonnay.

Speaker 1 And if you don't like it, I'll get you the Pinot Grigio.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Your favorite review?

Speaker 2 I think it's when they go see Marie DeSalle play. I mean, it's got the Dillinger trivia.
It's got the Peter fucking Frampton, which is the only way I refer to him by his full God given name now.

Speaker 2 It's got daydreaming about liner notes. It's got everybody swooning.
And it's got Lisa Bonet in it.

Speaker 2 Like that whole, the the whole movie kind of stops for a second and everyone is just kind of marinating in it together. It's a great call.

Speaker 1 He's making me rethink my choice. I know.

Speaker 6 What do you have, CR? I'm tied between Jack Black entrance scene, which culminates with Cosby Sweater

Speaker 6 and the

Speaker 6 side one, track one list making.

Speaker 6 with the Captain Beefheart vinyl problem and like that whole sequence because that is Jack Black being like, oh, a new classic casually slipped into the end of the top five so that you don't look so boring.

Speaker 6 Interesting. And I just like, that is, you would just have that fight about like the nature of your own list making at that time.
And it was just so perfect.

Speaker 1 Do you remember before we started Grantland, we went to New York? Cause I still hadn't met a couple of people and we all hung out at this bar.

Speaker 1 And it was like me and you and Katie Bakes and Klosterman,

Speaker 1 maybe like two other people.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And all we did for four hours was shit like this where we were just arguing.

Speaker 2 I was like, is this a job interview? Like, what's that? No, I didn't have to say, oh, this is what Bill's actually like.

Speaker 1 It wasn't a job interview, yeah. But it was like, this is what we did.
It was like, it was kind of the vibe that I think was going to, we thought might be the website.

Speaker 1 But it was like, oh, all these people kind of get it.

Speaker 1 But that came out of like this weird era.

Speaker 5 I do have to say the Tim Robbins fantasy sequence, the Get Your Patchouli Stink Out of My Store, as someone who worked at Bay Area bookstores for a decade is my most

Speaker 2 about patchouli.

Speaker 5 That's my most quotable line from this movie.

Speaker 2 Get your patchouli stink out how many people did you bash over the head with an air conditioner in my mind

Speaker 1 that was a good job by him nobody held it up yeah what's the most 2000 thing about this movie i have a few things but we'll go around what do you got see it's really weird but i noticed it this time is that when laura first comes back to pack up her shit

Speaker 6 that's when she gets her laptop and it reminded me of like yeah i leave my computer at work you know like like i when i when i leave work i don't i'm not checking my email i'm not like checking the internet oh right and it was just sort of like, if that was, if that was now,

Speaker 6 the laptop would be in her bag first. You know what I mean? She'd be like, I'm taking my computer, I'm taking my phone, and all this stuff.
So that was, that jumped out at me.

Speaker 2 What do you have, Rob? Oh, that's a hard look in the mirror. I mean, bands, rock music, I think all that stuff is right there, but also calling the operator to get somebody's home address.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, absolutely not.

Speaker 6 Directory assistants. Definitely not.

Speaker 2 What do you have?

Speaker 5 Rob's sunglasses, which I believe are Oakley's and they're just like right on the edge of 90s and into like 2000 style. They're just like right on the cusp.
That's good.

Speaker 1 I have the

Speaker 1 last days of mixtapes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Describing someone as Cheryl Crowish combined with Partridge family, pre-LA, La Souza Deba Black. I don't know if that would fly now.
Yeah. Like Craig wouldn't understand any of that.

Speaker 1 Being tortured by answering machine messages. It's the tail end of that era, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Smoking indoors.

Speaker 2 Well, I was going to say.

Speaker 1 Smoking indoors is always in here i

Speaker 6 was gonna ask if any chicago listeners could just hit us up and let us know could you still smoke at your workplace in 2000 because i don't think so if you owned the store that's a that is the twist that was kind of right on the edge but if you walked into championship vinyl and you were just like these guys have been smoking darts in here with like no windows open like don't you know that championship vinyl weeks of cigarette smoke and it doesn't matter when they stopped

Speaker 6 the only person i've ever worked with at a record store were like inveterate chain smokers yeah but we did did it outside.

Speaker 1 I have two more: being afraid you'll end up someday working in a virgin megastore.

Speaker 2 2000s.

Speaker 1 And then a guy in his late 20s, early 30s named Dick.

Speaker 1 Sure. That guy doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 6 He's named Scout now.

Speaker 1 Craig, do you know any dicks?

Speaker 4 Not a single dick.

Speaker 2 Bring back dick. That's what I mean.
Bring back dick. Yeah, bring back dick.
That's what we're going with. That's what I'm going with.
All right.

Speaker 1 We're going to cut that out for social.

Speaker 2 Robahony.

Speaker 5 Quick question. Have you ever made a mixtape?

Speaker 2 Mixed CD, yes, but not a mixtape.

Speaker 2 And I mean, this will shock no one, but after seeing this movie in high school, I'm like, well, I gotta follow Rob Gordon's advice where you gotta start with the banger, you gotta lead it off, then you gotta bring it back down because you don't want to blow your wad.

Speaker 2 It was like, there is a philosophy to it. I was very bad at it, but no mixtapes, only mixed CDs.

Speaker 6 There's just nothing like messing up a mixtape and being like, shit, I gotta start all over.

Speaker 2 So maddening.

Speaker 2 I actually found my stop and started slinging.

Speaker 1 I found an actual mixtape I made in 1993 that I made as a Spotify playlist. And here was the order: Feed the Tree by Billy.
Yeah. Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 Sure. Canaloop, Flip Fantasia.

Speaker 1 Fuck with Dre Day.

Speaker 2 Let me ride.

Speaker 1 Geppetto into your arms. Mr.
Jones. Time capsule by Matthew Sweet.
Cannonball.

Speaker 1 Make you sweat by Keith Sweat. I don't know why he's on this.
This is so good.

Speaker 2 Ordinary World by Duran Duran.

Speaker 1 Remedy by the Black Crows. Let Me Go by Cake.
Anna Begins. Mm-mm-mm.
by the Crash Test Dummies.

Speaker 2 Loser.

Speaker 1 Get Off This. Amazing by Aerosmith.
Uncertain Smile by the Human Behavior by Bjork. And it ends with Indigo Eyes.
And I have no idea. I must have.

Speaker 6 Human Behavior. Must have been hammered.
93 Bill. Just vibing out.

Speaker 1 93 Bill, I think, just trying to prove he had a lot of layers. Sure, I can't.
I don't know who he was trying to prove it today.

Speaker 5 I can't tell for me if it's the Counting Crows into Matthew Sweet or cake into the Counting Crows. Like, what is the most quintessentially Bill?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's how you you said we would have been friends when I was 24 is what you learned.

Speaker 6 He would be like, you know what, Peto Greasy.

Speaker 1 Just try this shirt today. What's age the best? Mixtapes?

Speaker 2 Have they?

Speaker 6 Because of playlists?

Speaker 1 I think the mixtape is better than the playlist, and I'm going to make the case. I can do it now.

Speaker 2 It takes

Speaker 2 so much longer. Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1 Playlist. Easier.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Pop them in. Digital.
I get all of it. But there's something about the mixtape, listening to it.

Speaker 2 I'm not agree with you.

Speaker 1 you and not knowing

Speaker 2 tears you put into the tape.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, but also not knowing where the mixtape's going to go is the art of the mixtape. And somebody's listening the first time and they don't know

Speaker 2 the order of why.

Speaker 5 I didn't write out the tracks on the on the

Speaker 2 don't look at the things, just listen to it and take a ride on art on the cover of the mixtape. No, I just would write the songs.
What did you do?

Speaker 6 Sometimes I would make like zine style, like rubber.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1 Yeah, CR renegade, Renaissance man.

Speaker 2 Jesus,

Speaker 2 God damn, CR.

Speaker 2 But how is this not a Spotify feature where you can hide the track list? And so you could be Spotify.

Speaker 6 You can make your own art on Spotify, but you can't hide the track list. It's tough.
That's the next frontier.

Speaker 2 We got to mixtape this shit.

Speaker 1 So it's almost like the vanished text that Apple has for playlists.

Speaker 2 You got to hover over

Speaker 2 the playlist.

Speaker 6 You should request an emergency meeting with the top two guys at Spotify.

Speaker 2 Gustav, have you seen High Fidelity? This is a great idea.

Speaker 5 We're going to revolutionize playlists and it's mixtapes.

Speaker 1 I have a shitload of what's age the best, so give me yours.

Speaker 6 I was going to, so I didn't know whether to do this here or Apex Mountain, but this is the best breaking of the fourth wall in cinema history.

Speaker 2 It's really great.

Speaker 6 And with the exception of maybe Ferris Bueller

Speaker 2 sustained.

Speaker 6 Okay, yeah. I mean, Alfie's up there.
I would say this is my favorite.

Speaker 1 What else is on the list? Singles did it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, singles did it. There's a lot of fourth wall breaking momentarily, like in space balls or something like that.
But to have it be,

Speaker 6 I am just addressing the camera and

Speaker 1 as your narrative on the L, on the ironically, it was Klosterman's biggest nitpick with the movie. Really? He doesn't like the staring and in the camera.

Speaker 5 I love it because you can, he they're using like swaths of the book in that he's just like reciting the book.

Speaker 5 But also, one of my favorite parts of the movie is when Laura comes back and she hears the fourth wall break.

Speaker 2 A very fleabag moment, you know. And when he wakes up the morning after Marie, he's like whispering it so he doesn't wake her up.
It's like all that stuff, I think, works textually so the time when

Speaker 6 Joan Qzak calls him and is like, I don't know how I feel about this Ian guy.

Speaker 6 And then Marie comes in and he goes out of his office for a minute and talks to Lisa Bonnet and then comes back and he goes, what

Speaker 5 that was just like in the back impercolating his brain the whole scene.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Could you have done this movie blind?

Speaker 6 I'm finding that I don't need to look at my date.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 What else do you do for what stage is the best?

Speaker 6 There's a very, very cool QZ moment, which is like, I'll give him some honor Adap for smoking here, but the beat that he takes between taking a drag on a cigarette and revealing the four pieces of information that Laura might have told Liz is like, it's everything you need to know about Rob, where he like takes this drag and he's like,

Speaker 2 okay.

Speaker 6 And he's like, you're an asshole, but not without your charms.

Speaker 6 And also

Speaker 6 probably

Speaker 6 getting laid off the back of a parent dying because we call this the Jesse from reality bites.

Speaker 6 That was a move, Pat. Classic.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Classic move.

Speaker 1 What do you got, Rob?

Speaker 2 Marvin Gay's Let's Get It On. I mean, only gets better with age, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 I think one of the all-time final relative to 2000, to your point, Chris, like it is boomed way beyond my wildest expectations to the point where I never thought I would own a single record.

Speaker 2 It seemed inconceivable. Yeah.
When I was 15, I would ever buy one.

Speaker 2 And now, you know, you got your tidy little collection of your favorites and it's like a nice analog way to experience what do you have joanna 30 something white dudes talking about records and books and movies what are you talking about yeah welcome to the ringer

Speaker 2 exactly

Speaker 1 i have uh

Speaker 1 dickheads working in a record store who don't actually care about customers or selling records is a staple this is what is the best well because that was that's the way it was and the way it probably still is this is this is a like a perfect balance that we had in in this country

Speaker 1 i still think we saw how these places could stay in business yeah i don't want to name the store but i was in a store with ben and they were just not interested in selling us anything because they were deep in a conversation behind the counter and it was this has been a thing that's gone on for 30 plus years of like

Speaker 1 Can you hold on a second? I'm in the middle of this meaningless conversation with somebody I work with.

Speaker 6 Or were you like, I'm going to get on fucking Yelp and kill these guys?

Speaker 1 No, I think it's just the culture. The people that are in the store aren't in the store to make money for the store.

Speaker 1 They're in the store because it's a cool job and and they get to hang with their whatever. And it's like

Speaker 2 hell yeah, Comrade Bill. Like power to the people, power to the world.

Speaker 5 You don't make enough money to care. You also don't make enough money to run down shoplifters.
Rob does, but the fact that Barry goes, I'm like, you don't make enough money to do that.

Speaker 1 The concept of a grown-up Charlie, I just thought was really well executed.

Speaker 2 Two.

Speaker 1 What's aged the best, two great theories from this movie? The is it better to burn out or fade away? It's just a great question.

Speaker 6 With no little black hand acting as he does this, but that is that his Stevie Wonder point is like one of those, like, we're going to fight about this for five hours. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Because now it's like, I don't think anybody really wants to hear anything negative about Stevie Wonder, but like a dude throwing a Molotov cocktail and being like, Stevie Wonder's greatest failures of the 80s is like, yo, all right, man, you're a team.

Speaker 1 That was a classic Molotov cocktail point.

Speaker 2 You're right.

Speaker 1 Which you wouldn't do on the internet in the same way. The other one I loved was

Speaker 1 Rob's theory about how he

Speaker 1 tried to move up in weight class with Charlie and how guys have to punch their own weight. It's like one of the great theories that I've always been jealous of.
He's like, I'm a, what did he say?

Speaker 1 He was a welterweight or a middleweight?

Speaker 6 It's like he said he's a middleweight.

Speaker 1 He's like, I'm a middleweight.

Speaker 2 What was I thinking going up in class? I was like, that's fucking great.

Speaker 1 Katrina and the Waves for What's Age the Best. I think this was their only song.

Speaker 1 And it's probably a top five, the happiest song that anyone's ever made.

Speaker 2 And you just hear it, and it's like, hey, let's go.

Speaker 1 Um, sad bastard music. I just like the phrase.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 1 how about movies where there's a cute lead actress, and she's really belongs to this movie? And I don't know what else she was in. I'm sure she acted in a bunch of stuff,

Speaker 1 yeah, but she belongs to this movie. And when I see her, I see her in this movie.

Speaker 5 She's in America, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm glad this wasn't like Gwyneth Paltrow, sure, you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 You mean Iban Yala?

Speaker 2 She's the Gwyneth Paltrow of Denmark, though, you know?

Speaker 2 True.

Speaker 5 Well, did you read what Frere said about casting her?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 That he was like, if we cast an American, she would seem too much like Rob's mom. So we need someone who's like European just because Rob is such a man-child.

Speaker 5 And he's like, I need someone who won't feel like she's babysitting Rob.

Speaker 2 Problem is, she still feels like she's a bad person. She sure does.

Speaker 2 Sure does.

Speaker 1 Busy coffee houses with people pounding cigarettes to her. Yes.

Speaker 2 I know you were getting the shakes. I miss it.

Speaker 1 overqualified stars doing small cameos i just wish there was more of them like just let's see tim robinson when he's red hot yeah it's going to be in like two scenes uh hulu remake show i think is age the best i liked it it's so good this is interesting uncomfortable property i just can't believe that they they gave up

Speaker 2 zoe kravitz was like i would still be making that show fighting for it yeah

Speaker 2 Would that enjoy Randolph cover Oscar, though, if probably not.

Speaker 6 For that, she's like, me and Joey Kravitz text each other about how we wish we were still making high fidelity.

Speaker 1 all right here's my best what's age the best um there's an entertainment weekly 2020 oral history about this movie and cusack's on a heat check in it to the point that i decided to create a new award for the rewatch balls called the john cusack hero ball award for biggest heat check in an oral history anniversary feature It's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 They only go to like three movies. Yeah, it might never be given out again.

Speaker 1 The cousin to this is the Wikipedia where somebody involved with the movie clearly wrote a lot of the Wikipedia, which is also one of my favorite. Cusack has quotes on this oral history.

Speaker 1 These are actual quotes. I knew that Jack Black would be my secret weapon.
He had made a movie with Tim Robbins, and there was this sort of actors gang, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 I knew the secret was that he was a great musician and a great comedian and hadn't gotten a role with like high fidelity yet.

Speaker 1 He's got like 10 of those in this, where it's like everything was his idea. He knew this.
He knew that. He pulled this off.

Speaker 1 He got Bob Dylan to give them most of the time. I was lucky enough to be friendly with him.

Speaker 2 So I called him up

Speaker 1 and I said, do you want to be in this movie? Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 And then he has this quote, my movies,

Speaker 1 at least the ones where I've been involved in producing or writing or co-creating it.

Speaker 1 A lot of times they don't get seen or loved right away when they come out. So that's pretty common, but I am proud of it.
I put an enormous amount of effort and care into this film.

Speaker 1 The whole oral history is like that. He's just heat checking it.
I sent it to CR.

Speaker 6 It was, it was such a bracing read.

Speaker 6 Doesn't he also just like, I just, I had Springsteen on speed dial. Like, I got him.

Speaker 2 He does that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like it's a spotty reputation for QSAC.

Speaker 2 I think this is.

Speaker 1 Piven being his best friend says a lot of it.

Speaker 2 Telling.

Speaker 5 Did you read the Freer's quote where he was talking about working with him on the Grifters, where he's like, I only had two good hours a day with John on the Grifters.

Speaker 5 So we had to schedule around that. He's like, by the time we did High Fidelity, he had figured it out.

Speaker 6 He could like show up for a full day of work but on the grifters he only gave me two hours a day and that's it it's one of it's him and nicholas cage where it's just like it feels like the world is at their feet and and then they go on to make six movies a year that are on amazon prime this is ironically they were in con air together is this john kusack's last great movie No, not I mean, Hot Tell Time Machine was a massive movie, but that's probably nine years ago.

Speaker 2 Are you stumping for serendipity? What are you stumping for? Must be a little bit more.

Speaker 1 i was thinking malkovich too but it's 99 yeah this is the end of the run for him though well yeah i know i guess like terms of i mean i think he's darling yeah this maybe it is i think it is i meant to do this before we did the categories about qsec just like

Speaker 1 going back to the sure thing he's in a couple 80s movies even before the sure thing like he's in class

Speaker 1 he's in uh one of the hughes movies maybe 16 candles yes where he's just a partygoer he's just in the background and then he became like a main guy and he did his sure thing and he's better off dead and then say anything kind of of minted him.

Speaker 1 And then I think he had a good 90s.

Speaker 1 But Lloyd Dauber, I think, was a really important character for an entire generation. So I think people gave him a lot of leeway for a long time.
And then this movie helped.

Speaker 1 But I don't think he sustained it in the way I would have predicted.

Speaker 5 He just did a bunch of like. I think bad rom-coms after, like he took the wrong lesson from High Fidelity, where he's like, I'm a rom-com guy now.
And that is not what

Speaker 2 it was like, I'm a rom-com or weird, like psychological thriller guy yes

Speaker 1 but he probably actually would have been better off he had a good career but he probably would have been better off like uh

Speaker 1 i don't know some sort of hbo show and the oh like being like the big love part and bill pax the part something like yes definitely big love being sabaka in the wire

Speaker 1 something take a swing john cusack i don't think that's the one

Speaker 5 take chris bowers like

Speaker 6 legacy what do you have for great shot gourd or see y i don't don't really, this is a very subtle visual film, but I had, I like this shot of him walking with the MetroGraph movie theater in the background and talking about Dillinger.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 6 There's not a ton of blinding visual stuff in this.

Speaker 1 What'd you have for Kid Cuddy Pursuit of Happiness or for Best Needle Drop Rob?

Speaker 2 We could do a whole bracket

Speaker 2 for this movie. It's hard not to pick Stevie Wonder.
Like the closed out song with Stevie Wonder, but I think Bob Dylan coming out of the funeral is also, that's a fucking powerhouse.

Speaker 1 Would you have Joeyna?

Speaker 5 It's a beta band.

Speaker 2 Dry the rain. Dry the rain.

Speaker 6 Although, we'll say, puts the CD in, and the song starts four minutes into the CD.

Speaker 5 I was going to say the exact same thing. It starts with a hook.

Speaker 2 Yeah, which is like nitpick. We can't do it.
Yeah, it's

Speaker 5 A, you wouldn't do it in the record store with their such purists, and B, you can't do it on a CD. No, because it's not even a vinyl.
It's a CD.

Speaker 1 I have Katraina in the waves. Because Black switches it and it's like a pure needle drop.

Speaker 5 Can I go back to Cinematic Shot?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And say when he's on the Kinsey Bridge and the camera's

Speaker 5 and going back and forth.

Speaker 2 I think that's the five things he loves about Laura or Mrs. Laura.

Speaker 6 Did you try to pay tribute to that shot when you did your walk and talks in Chicago?

Speaker 2 You know, I didn't, but I can claim that I did.

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Speaker 1 CR flex category, what do you got?

Speaker 6 Um, the Den of Thieves Benny Hano Award for scene stealing location when Rob is going through the four things that Laura might have told Liz. It's the green mill, which is the bar from Heath.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thief. Sorry.
Blows the fuck up at thief. Oh, shit.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a good one. Yeah.
Surprised I didn't notice that.

Speaker 1 Butch's Girlfriend Award, week link of the film. What do you have, Joanna?

Speaker 5 I think it might be Lily Taylor, who's an actress who I love.

Speaker 2 First of all, how dare you? I love Lily Taylor. She's so great in this.

Speaker 5 I think that character's too real

Speaker 5 for this moment, like too sad for this moment. And I needed more like Elizabeth Banks and 40-year-old virgin energy, I think, from her.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 I love the heartbreak. Like, her performance messes me up.
Her grabbing him when they sit down. It's like, are you seeing anybody?

Speaker 6 I would say to piggyback off of that,

Speaker 6 I don't know that Rob reckons with like the wreckage of his, you know, uh, going back through his back pages interviews with these women where it's like, Penny's like, I was basically like sexually assaulted after we broke up, and then Sarah being like, I'm off my meds and unemployed.

Speaker 6 And he's just like, Great, okay, moving on. We got

Speaker 2 an answer there.

Speaker 5 That's what I have for what's age the worst.

Speaker 5 When she's like, it was basically rape, and he's like, Yes, I rejected her, right?

Speaker 2 And you're like, Rob,

Speaker 1 yeah, not great.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 Seriously, yeah.

Speaker 1 I think he just ended up with the wrong girl in the movie.

Speaker 6 So, do you think he ended up with the wrong girl?

Speaker 4 I think he should have been with the girl from the reader.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 1 My girl, Natasha Gregson Wagner.

Speaker 2 Breaking Gregson.

Speaker 5 I just don't. I think he should have

Speaker 5 chosen himself. I don't think he should have wound up with anyone.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I think he should have kicked the tires with the reader girl. I thought.

Speaker 6 But he's already back together with Laura when that starts.

Speaker 5 It's your girlfriend.

Speaker 1 But that should have been the sign, though.

Speaker 2 also he was only with her because he didn't

Speaker 2 someone new

Speaker 1 he was only with her because he couldn't think of what else to do but then he clearly had this other person who's like this is like my soulmate here but that's

Speaker 6 not his soulmate his whole point is that of course you're gonna meet somebody and they're gonna be distracting and they're gonna be like the the tantalizing new thing what was distracting about her she was great

Speaker 2 in her everyday underwear. Only her lingerie.

Speaker 5 They only had the cute problems, like buying each other the same christmas present you know it's not a real thing what's going to happen when the chicago reader negatively reviews the cd single he's put out and she's just like what the you know just thought thought she was a good coming present no but i feel i feel like if he hops to the next woman there's no lesson learned back with laura is a lesson learned but i think the real lesson should laura should not have come back Well, so I had that in unanswerable questions.

Speaker 1 Is this a better movie if he ends up with nobody at the end? And I think if they make it 10 years later, I think that's how it ends. I don't think he ends up.

Speaker 2 I think it's 500 Days of Summer. Right.

Speaker 2 Minka Kelly.

Speaker 1 Well, in the last 20 years, we have shifted to we actually, it feels like a rom-com, but we are not going to give you the happy ending. We're going to actually give you the

Speaker 2 problem now is like we have so many movies in which they choose themselves at the end.

Speaker 2 And I think it's like, we're like, it's so therapized in terms of the robs of the world now in films and TV, like have to work out their problems in a real way.

Speaker 2 This is so incremental.

Speaker 6 Guys should not be in therapy. They should DJ.

Speaker 2 Well, this is, this is a man's journey to thinking about a person for literally the first time who is not himself it's like the revolutionary ideas i'm gonna make a mixtape of stuff she likes versus what i like can we bring crazy can we bring back the hottest take so cr can do a whole men shouldn't be in therapy they should dj episode i mean why you know who created i choose me jelena knows i know it's kelly

Speaker 2 902

Speaker 6 sent dylan and brandon pack and she choose she's like i choose me i think it should be a category the kelly taylor i choose her i choose me do you guys think that the the Rob and Laura getting back together works within the context of the movie being satisfying even if you don't think that they belong together I do what I think is interesting and I think this is true I did not reread my copy of High Fidelity in the last 48 hours but um

Speaker 6 if you just had one more night in the hotel

Speaker 5 even yalla even yalla as I turn the pages um Rob doesn't do his career shift in the book. Like Laura comes back, but he doesn't have this like, and now I'm a music producer.

Speaker 5 And I think that's an interesting ad of just like, this is this is another,

Speaker 5 area of growth for Rob as he is sort of like growing in his career and Laura comes back. So it's like he's evolving in multiple ways.

Speaker 1 It's just, it's what's funny is we all had the couples in our lives where they got back together like this.

Speaker 1 And you're like, they're not going to make it, but then they end up getting married and having kids and then getting divorced.

Speaker 5 There's a deleted scene. There's a lot of great deleted scenes.

Speaker 5 But there's one where Laura is talking to Liz, the Joan QSX character, and she's like, maybe I should go back just so that he can break up with me and then it'll be easier.

Speaker 5 And Liz is like, that's demented. And she's like, I know, but like, that would just calm everything down if I just go back, let him break up with me.

Speaker 6 It is something that people used to think back then, though, where it was like, you just didn't have enough feedback. So you were like, maybe what I'll do

Speaker 2 is like, we want to have sex for three weeks and see what happens.

Speaker 5 So that might, there's an interpretation. If that scene stays in the movie, there's an interpretation of the ending of like, that's just what Laura's doing.

Speaker 1 What was the other deleted scene that's the famous deleted scene? Well, there's a couple.

Speaker 5 There's Beverly D'Angelo with the

Speaker 2 record collection.

Speaker 5 The record collection, which in the TV show was the Parker Posey episodes, which is so good.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 then there's

Speaker 5 Harold Ramis's dad.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's one where when the reporter asked him to give his top five records, it turns into like a full-blown nervous breakdown where he goes home and has to like revisit and he keeps like calling her back to add more records to the list.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of really fun stuff.

Speaker 5 There's a direct address that I kind of miss, which is like he's talking to the audience and he's like yeah you think i'm an asshole he's like okay take a moment write down the five worst things you ever did to your partner or never told your partner and then he like

Speaker 5 next scene he's like do you write them down all right who's the asshole now you know and so it's just this like interesting relationship he has with the viewer where he

Speaker 5 keeps saying like yeah i'm an asshole but to your point earlier it's just like i feel like he wants the viewer on his side and that's that's really demonstrated i think they do a really good job of not like almost not quite needing that because the movie undercuts Rob all the time.

Speaker 2 Like he'll go on some super self-indulgent tangent and then like a dead body at the funeral goes underground.

Speaker 2 It's like this fucking guy, like there's so many ways where they point at him and so many characters who are constantly making fun of him for who he is that like it is the movie is judgmental of Rob even if Rob himself isn't calling stuff out directly.

Speaker 6 In the oral history the

Speaker 6 actress who plays Laura Iban Yale

Speaker 6 talks about the sex scene with Tim Robbins and how it was fun because

Speaker 6 they were like, this is what's happening inside of Rob's head. So it's not like a real sexy.
It's supposed to be what's tormenting him.

Speaker 6 And I was like, I wonder how many of these scenes you could view as like an unreliable narrator telling you about them.

Speaker 6 That being said, I don't think the film itself tips its cap towards that very often. Yeah.
So I do take the movie at face value when it's depicting events, but like

Speaker 5 the flashback stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 You're like, that's through a ledge.

Speaker 2 For sure.

Speaker 6 Also, Age the Worst.

Speaker 2 Yes. yeah

Speaker 1 also for what's age the worst the uh the semi-stalking the mean spiritedness and the misogyny we've got to throw that in but that was the 90s rob rob ages the worst rob is a character rob is a character uh charlie you let's work it out what's the funniest and most disturbing thing in this movie

Speaker 1 uh we gotta talk about cusack's hair

Speaker 1 every time joanne is on somehow we get into the hair piece thing last time it was robert redford Redford and your cross hairs. Now it's Cusack telling me never really answered.

Speaker 5 No one has definitely answered that.

Speaker 1 People in my life sending me different screenshots of him in the early 70s, but nope, we'll never know.

Speaker 5 I stand by it's a dying problem, not a

Speaker 2 piece problem.

Speaker 1 Well, Cusack had the combo of he's wearing wigs in the movies for the throwback scenes, but then it's it's the real Cusack and it's like, are we, oh no, that's it's a lot of that.

Speaker 1 I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 5 Do you think he has fake hair just as Rob In present day, present day Rob.

Speaker 1 Well, he definitely added hair from the seanth anything kind of early. Conair was when it was.
We talked about in the Conair podcast. He comes in with a full mane in Conair.

Speaker 6 There's a lot of not continuity problems, but like stuff shot out of order in the sense that you can tell like he's changed his hair since they shot the exterior

Speaker 2 to the interior.

Speaker 6 And I wonder if it was just like that's not a huge concern of this movie is like how his hair looks.

Speaker 1 I have another what's age the worst.

Speaker 1 Springsteen's cameo just isn't that good. I just wanted more from it.

Speaker 1 It's fine.

Speaker 1 Bruce Springsteen, can you come up with better than

Speaker 2 whatever it is?

Speaker 5 So it sounds like you guys read an EW. Did you read The Consequence of Sound? I did.
Yeah, which was like constantly reloading. Did you have that issue?

Speaker 2 I also had that issue. We got to talk to the server people at the Consequence of Sounds websites right now.

Speaker 5 But they talk a couple things about the Bruce Springsteen cameo. One, they claim that Bruce himself is the one who punched up that line where he's like, oh, yeah, you'll feel better.

Speaker 2 They might feel better. They might feel better.

Speaker 5 That that was like a Bruce.

Speaker 2 They might feel better. Yeah.
Definitely feel better.

Speaker 5 Where he's like, no, it's not that they'll feel better. And so, and then also for

Speaker 5 copyright reasons, they had to have Bruce noodling something unidentifiable so they could use it

Speaker 5 because they didn't have to pay for it.

Speaker 6 Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 5 And they made him say on camera, I'm just making this up as I'm playing it so that they could like send it to the record company.

Speaker 6 I figure if they paid for the river, they would have just like paid for maybe he could.

Speaker 1 mishandled have him actually play one of his songs play something from tunnel of love well then you then your then your budget goes up from 30 million to something higher and you're 47 million tim robins in this movie you're fine uh scott rosenberg wrote the original draft set in boston cr yeah how crazy would that have been that would have ended our lives um

Speaker 1 and then uh they moved around and then somehow ended up getting a writing credit anyway and then my last one forth stage the worst this movie did pretty well which led to fever pitch and jimmy fallon being on the fucking infield grass as the red sox won their first world series in 86 years and i'll never forgive anyone for that but if this movie doesn't do well maybe that doesn't happen so what's age the worst for me joanna get jimmy fallon off the fucking field my team just won the world series fever pitch in the uk punish nick hornby we'd already made fever pitch why are we making this again The Ruffalo Hannah Rubenk Partridge over acting word, it's Jack Black, but I'm also, it's not an insult.

Speaker 2 It is Jack Black. You'll take it the wrong way.
I mean, it's a a complicated. I'm playing more Saul Rubenk.
We're fans. Yeah, we're fans.

Speaker 5 Also, Tim Robbins, but I'm also not mad about it.

Speaker 2 Tim Robbins is fine. It's all fine.
I do think Natasha Gregson Wagner, who plays Caroline Ford is a little bit more. Careful, Rob.

Speaker 2 She.

Speaker 2 This is your first time.

Speaker 2 Her flirt dial is cranked up so high, she forgot how to be a normal person.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that is a definite, like, it's happening in Rob's.

Speaker 2 It's weird. Yeah.
Some Olivia Nizzy, like, journalism ethics questions. Wow.

Speaker 2 We're getting topical. I don't know current affairs here.

Speaker 1 Well, Jesus.

Speaker 2 That was great. She's been relieved from her post as West Coast editor of Food Twitter.

Speaker 1 Oh, Joanne has got a flex category.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 5 I was tempted to do the category that I invented, which is would a cell phone ruin this movie? I would say social media would ruin this movie. Yes.

Speaker 5 We all know too much about our exes already or whatever.

Speaker 5 But I'm actually going to give it to the Big Kahuna Burger Best Use of Food and Drink is when he says Laura's dad died and Jack Black goes, oh, drag, and then just chomps on a burrito.

Speaker 2 And it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Oh my god.
Oh, drag.

Speaker 5 And then just like a massive chomp of a, like a, of like a

Speaker 5 $2.99 burrito.

Speaker 2 Barry's whole reaction to her dad dying of like top five songs about death, a Laura's dad tribute list.

Speaker 6 And then all the guys in the record store are like, okay, yeah, forgot that.

Speaker 2 Solemn acceptance.

Speaker 5 I mean, tell Laura I love her.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 bring the house down CR what do you have for the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take a word I have two I wonder if Joe and I are circling the same thing which is kind of the TV show

Speaker 6 I don't know if it's better than the movie but it has I think it had legs uh

Speaker 6 my hottest take is that there's just no way Rob and Laura even get back together much less stay together and that first of all the Marie stuff comes out fucking one day Barry's like hey this is Marie to salt remember when you were sleeping with her for like a couple weeks weeks when you and Laura broke up?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I just don't think the I'm making a mixed CD for the Chicago Reader music critic.

Speaker 2 No, it's a rap.

Speaker 2 She's she's not, she's just like, oh, cool.

Speaker 6 Like, that doesn't, that's not happening.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 it's a rap when he's caught making the tape.

Speaker 5 I don't know that I would say the show is better,

Speaker 5 but because by the nature of television, it just has more time to luxuriate in the side plots like I'm selling my terrible ex-husband's.

Speaker 1 I'm saying you know you guys have the balls too the tv show is better than this movie

Speaker 2 and i like this movie the tv show is better it's not a

Speaker 2 it's absolute crime yeah it is that they canceled it it's

Speaker 1 good the show was good and it would have to have been covet because it was otherwise the best possible like zoe kravitz got to do like you just got to see her do everything also no offense to hulu but i'm going to offend hulu like You're not exactly the 96 Bulls.

Speaker 2 Great use of Jake Lacey in that show.

Speaker 1 It's not like, oh, we have to cancel this because of all of our other awesome shows here on Hulu.

Speaker 2 Like, what the fuck are you guys doing?

Speaker 5 Lizzie Moss needed more money for Handman's Tale season.

Speaker 1 It's ridiculous. They have like three good shows a year.
Max.

Speaker 6 Tiger, next time you see him at a Clickers Game.

Speaker 1 It's ridiculous. How did they cancel this? Zoe Kravitz?

Speaker 2 They fucking blew it. Like, they really had it in their hands.
And again, there's no reason to not let it play out.

Speaker 1 Also, not a lot of people at Hulu in 2019. Like, it was still...
I don't think Hulu is where it is now. Handman's Tale was like one of those.

Speaker 2 I think everyone was watching normal people on Hulu and during COVID. I certainly was.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Absolute bullshit.

Speaker 2 You're not a normal people.

Speaker 1 No, I don't know the story behind it, but I guarantee it's like whoever ran Hulu got fired and it was their show. And the new person came in.
It's like, well, that's not my show.

Speaker 1 I don't get credit if it does well. And they just got rid of it.
I also think that's what always happens.

Speaker 2 I think, in terms of scope, too, one way that the show would work better, I saw this quote from Ryan Koogler this morning about like he's adapting the new text files thing.

Speaker 2 And he was talking about how someone in TV had told him TV is about like the most important journey in somebody's life and a movie is about the most important moment in somebody's life so good the most important moment for rob is at the end when he's like i cannot believe i've been putting everyone at a distance i haven't committed to anything my entire life it's this huge revelation in the rain and his life changes from that point forward but he needs more time to actually become a not shitty version of rob yeah you don't need to hear jack whack playing music for two minutes to be like i found the light And so if you play it out over multiple seasons in a TV show format, like this is a journey story, not a moment story.

Speaker 6 There's also like, it would have just been cool if they were more realistic where it's like well okay after he covers marvin gay and you do one record release party like now what now yeah now what

Speaker 1 your take did you have a hottest take

Speaker 5 i agree i just like laura should say laura should not have come back i will say this movie does some things for laura that the book doesn't like we're at least in her pov sometimes like there are scenes of laura without rob and i the moment where he's crying for her at her dad's funeral, does a lot of work for me.

Speaker 2 But in general, Laura should not have come back, I think.

Speaker 1 Did you do yours?

Speaker 2 I have one.

Speaker 2 The top five, you were talking about earlier, Chris, the top five side one, track one debate in the record store. The problem with that.

Speaker 1 With a road not being on it.

Speaker 2 Well, no, the problem with Smells Like Teen Spirit being on the list is not that it's like a cliche pick. It's that that song kind of sucks and nobody wants to talk about it.

Speaker 2 This is your hottest take? This is my hottest. Holy shit, Rob.

Speaker 2 At the risk of never coming back on the the rebox.

Speaker 5 You were like, comment sections have killed the hot take, essentially.

Speaker 5 Here comes Rob with Smells Like Teen Spirit is bad, actually.

Speaker 2 Look, this is the Gen X divide. Honestly, it's like

Speaker 2 I've been listening to you on Google Chat for like four years and you're just like, yeah, you know, there's a lot to like about the Bulls, but you're going for fucking Kurt Govie.

Speaker 2 I have like things to say about Io Jasumu than I do about Smells Like Teen Spirit, to be honest.

Speaker 2 Tell me more about why that's tell me more about that why that smells sucks.

Speaker 2 I mean, I I think it's like the emblematic bigger thing, which to me, to me, grunge feels so put on. To me, the ethics of grunge do not feel authentic.
They don't feel lived or not.

Speaker 2 Now you're coming for the entire ideology.

Speaker 2 I'm starting big.

Speaker 2 We have to dig on this, Texy. Where are you?

Speaker 6 Like, we start there.

Speaker 2 And then if I were to pick a grunge song, it wouldn't be Nirvana. If I were to pick a Nirvana song, it wouldn't be like the nonsense radio play Nirvana of all things.

Speaker 2 Like, I just do not like that song.

Speaker 6 Wow. I'm speechless.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Well, that's it for the Craig. What'd you think of the movie?

Speaker 2 Wow. Oh, my God.
Damn, you're going to have to rename this category to Rama Onei because the bottom smells like

Speaker 2 that. I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 Not even overrated, just sucks.

Speaker 2 I think it kind of sucks. Dude, you would have to

Speaker 2 pass the category on.

Speaker 3 You would have done very well in Bars in the 90s.

Speaker 2 I feel like Rob is like Rocky.

Speaker 6 He's been fighting right-handed this entire time.

Speaker 6 What's Rob's hottest take going to be?

Speaker 1 It was funny because I thought I had a pretty hot take and now I just feel like

Speaker 2 a tepid take compared to following greatness.

Speaker 1 I just don't think the music's good enough for this movie. Whoa, what?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think it's the biggest reason it was. It was a re-watchable for me, but not like one of my movies.

Speaker 1 Because I thought it got too deep cutty.

Speaker 5 Did you only sound too...

Speaker 6 I did,

Speaker 6 but I actually now probably prefer listening to, like, there's a lot of playlists of

Speaker 6 all the songs mentioned in the book and in the movie and also in the TV shows.

Speaker 5 Here's me wandering around saying Eben Yell in my hotel room, and I listened to the official,

Speaker 5 and I was like, this isn't satisfying. And then I listened to like one of those playlists that it's just not that good.

Speaker 1 And I think it could have been like one of the great soundtracks of the

Speaker 6 movie's credit. A lot of the music is diegetic where it's like, it'll be like playing in the store at a certain volume.
So, like, they could have had

Speaker 6 any like, they could have had the greatest collection of songs ever, but I think they use music functionally in this movie rather than like Daze and Confused, where it's just like, this is the fucking best song at the best moment.

Speaker 1 I just think these guys would have been listening to more music from the last 10 years. They're doing this in 2000.
I think the 90s, that was like one of the great decades of all time.

Speaker 6 I know, but like, this is one of my picking nits. I'm trying to sell the new shit.
I get it.

Speaker 1 But this is one of my pick and nits, though. Okay.
I'll do them now as part of my hottest take.

Speaker 1 The Smashing Pumpkins not being in this movie is outrageous.

Speaker 1 They're a fucking Chicago band. It's 2000.
I think they just had this crazy run.

Speaker 6 There's a touchy relationship between the Chicago music scene and Smashing Pumpkins.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but here's the thing: Billy Corgan in the Springsteen spot, I don't know, makes more sense for me.

Speaker 2 You want Billy Corgan in here? Yeah, that's one stage advice you want. Yeah, I want Billy Corgan in here.
Hey, the world is a vampire. I don't care what you're doing from Billy Corgan.
He's so weird.

Speaker 2 It's a better cameo. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 So, you don't think the Chicago Pumpkins piece?

Speaker 6 I just think that there's like the bands that they're championing are like Touch and Go and Drag City Band.

Speaker 2 I get it.

Speaker 1 So the Pumpkins are like the sell-out band?

Speaker 2 Kind of. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, they're only one of the best bands in the 90s. Billy Corgan.

Speaker 5 I will say that Billy Corgan would not have aged well.

Speaker 5 They picked the boss. And anyone watching now knows who Bruce Springsteen is.
But anyone young watching now does not know who Billy Corgan is.

Speaker 1 But that's the thing.

Speaker 1 In 2000 I don't think these guys are listening to Bruce Springsteen but if there were critics adjacent geeks who care a lot about like music history canon stuff like the river is a very important record but he pulls he pulls up his fleetwood mac album you know what I mean like he's talking about land you guys don't think he wouldn't have cared about the 90s stuff too I feel like but he does care about the 90s stuff he's playing beta band he's like yeah but that's my point he's he's going like the old stuff is like the most famous people possible and then the new stuff is like the deepest possible So you want to know what his taste is.

Speaker 1 I don't understand his taste.

Speaker 5 You want older, deeper cuts or mainstream current is what you're saying.

Speaker 1 Whatever he's doing are two separate things at the same time. And I didn't understand.

Speaker 6 But a lot of new, a lot of older music genres and like bands were getting kind of rediscovered and like appropriated by younger people because you could buy their albums for three bucks.

Speaker 6 So I remember like for most of my life, I thought Fluid Mac was like soft rock that I didn't listen to.

Speaker 6 But then when you can get their records for like three of them for 10 bucks, and you're like, oh shit, there's like really good songs on rumors and Tusk.

Speaker 6 Like you, that's how like that stuff kind of like was.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I'm going to say Manchester is the guy in that movie. And by the time you're 30, you're not listening to The River anymore.
You're listening to like For You by Springsteen.

Speaker 1 Like you've moved on to Deeper Cut Springsteen. That's the part he's still like basic Springsteen, but Springsteen's been in his life the whole time.

Speaker 2 Isn't that kind of the formula though? It's like the old stuff is the canonized stuff. And then the new stuff is like you are digging deep into the bins to find what is like hyper-specific to you.

Speaker 2 That feels coherent. I hear what you're saying, though.

Speaker 1 I'm just, I just, I don't, I don't know how your mass appeal on one side and then deep, deep, deep cut on the other side seems weird. He contains multitudes.

Speaker 2 We really sidetracked.

Speaker 6 Whoever they picked isn't massively canceled now, so that like

Speaker 2 I'm dealing with like

Speaker 1 casting what ifs, Jack Plaque passed,

Speaker 1 and they just basically bullied him into doing it. The role of Dick was originally offered to David Arquette.

Speaker 1 I'm going to give that like a small-scale yikes.

Speaker 5 That's way worse. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Liz Fair

Speaker 2 was considered for Marie DeSalle. We'll never know.
That's a totally different movie.

Speaker 5 What about Bob Dylan for the boss?

Speaker 5 If it's Dylan instead of Bruce Springsteen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just don't think he ever does it.

Speaker 5 No, he wouldn't, but like, would that have Billy Corgan or Bob Dylan is my question?

Speaker 2 If that's the binary,

Speaker 1 Billy Corgan's so weird. Springsteen wasn't weird enough.
I think Bob Dylan is weirder, so he's probably better than Springsteen.

Speaker 6 Lisa Bonet is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life. I probably would still throw my life away for Liz Fair.

Speaker 6 I gotta say.

Speaker 2 CR is like, fucking run.

Speaker 1 This is my jam.

Speaker 2 They talked about how hard that part was to cast.

Speaker 2 And I think there is something at Lisa Bonet specifically versus Liz Fair, which is Liz Fair is great, but she needs to feel Marie does like an alien to rock. Like she's coming from another planet.

Speaker 2 And that's not Liz Fair's whole deal.

Speaker 1 CR, who are your 90s female musician Throw My Life Away?

Speaker 1 who's in your inner circle for that one?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 6 like Liz Fair is definitely like the number one seed. She's Gonzaga.

Speaker 2 Number one.

Speaker 2 I think so.

Speaker 6 There was a lot of like fleeting, like the, this, this is a strange conversation to be having in 2025. Well, I want no Sarah Shannon from Velocity Girl.

Speaker 1 I'm saying in the mid-90s, who were your throw the life away, Zers? That's not a strange conversation.

Speaker 1 Liz Fair was up there.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 The girl, like this lead singer from Velocity Girl, would be another one. I don't know if you liked them.

Speaker 1 Did you? Well, Juliana Hatfield was from the Boston area. So she was a big one for us.
There's a couple others.

Speaker 1 We really sidetracked big time.

Speaker 5 Phil, do you have any other names and burning a hole in your pocket?

Speaker 2 That's a good portion of the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You need to reflect it back to you.

Speaker 2 Well, Tanya Donnelly, like, like, whatever. You were locked in the middle of the day.
Would you care to go to therapy or just become a DJ?

Speaker 2 We're moving. Lost track.

Speaker 2 Lost track of where we were.

Speaker 1 Oh, you mentioned herald ramus beverly d'angelou

Speaker 1 rob cusack said he wanted i'm so tired by john lennon um for this key scene when rob finally proposed to laura and they couldn't clear it

Speaker 1 john lennon was also dead at that point but also i think would have told john cusack to off would be my guess best that guy

Speaker 1 Todd Luizo counts, right? I think so. Does anyone know his name's Todd Luizo?

Speaker 1 I see him and I think he's the manny from Jerry McGuire, and he's from this movie, and that's how I know him.

Speaker 2 I actually, to this point, think he's such a that guy. His name is Todd Luiso, I think.
At least that's how John Cusack fails.

Speaker 5 Even Yala.

Speaker 1 But there's a better, there's a better that guy than him.

Speaker 2 Alex Desert? Yeah. Alex Desert.
Yeah. From the beginning of the day.

Speaker 2 From PCU. Yeah.
He needed two more scenes in this movie. Swingers.
Like, why is he a part of all the arguments?

Speaker 1 He's in for two minutes, and I'm like, can he come back? And then, I don't know, he got cut. This place is dead anyway, CR.

Speaker 1 Deion Wader's Award, Alex Desert, Catherine Zeta Jones, Lisa Bonet, Tim Robbins, or Natasha Wagner.

Speaker 6 I think it's Catherine Zeta Jones.

Speaker 1 I think it's Catherine Zeta Jones.

Speaker 2 What do you think? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 She's great.

Speaker 2 Did we talk about Lisa Bonnet enough?

Speaker 5 Lisa Bonet is amazing in this movie. And

Speaker 5 I was watching this movie with someone who's younger than me and she was like, is that Zoe Kravitz? I said, no, Zoe Kravitz is not old enough to be in this movie.

Speaker 5 But yeah, she's just, she's absolutely smoke show in this movie.

Speaker 4 I don't think anyone's ever looked more like their parent than Zoe Kravitz.

Speaker 1 It's funny because we did this last week.

Speaker 2 Exactly alike.

Speaker 1 We did this with Cameron Kroeber talking about Kate Hudson, Goldie Hahn, how crazy it was that a mother and daughter that could have put in each other's.

Speaker 2 Ty Gerber is like

Speaker 5 Kai Gerber. But I think.

Speaker 5 Interestingly, in the Nepo Baby world,

Speaker 5 that Zoe Kravitz has cultivated looking like her mom. Because, like, when she first starts in like X-Men and stuff like that, like, she doesn't really look as much like her mom as she does now.

Speaker 2 This is the new frontier. You got to lean into it.
You got to lean into it super hard. You got to wear it.
You got to style yourself similarly. I think it, I think it pays off more than people think.

Speaker 1 She's one of my true queens, CR. Zoe.

Speaker 2 Along with

Speaker 2 Lisa. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Along with Michelle.

Speaker 2 She was aware of the Cosby joke in this

Speaker 1 Cosby sweater joke?

Speaker 2 Yeah, great question. Oh.

Speaker 2 We'll side swipe.

Speaker 1 She probably supported it.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 What if it had been Cosby instead of Bruce Bringstein?

Speaker 2 I think they may have re-edited that.

Speaker 6 They would have been like, can we get Corgan still?

Speaker 2 Is Corgan available?

Speaker 1 Recasting Couch Director Sidium, just throwing this in. Quick, can we test drive?

Speaker 1 Just take, hop in the car with me for Samantha Mathis as Laura. Oh, Jesus.
Just quick drive around the block with that thought.

Speaker 6 But then, then I get very difficult.

Speaker 5 Who comes up in this category more than Samantha Mathis?

Speaker 1 I know. I keep trying with her.
I I just thought it was a little throwback to the early 90s of Gen X.

Speaker 2 We were talking about her.

Speaker 5 We were talking about River Phoenix on the sneakers pod and their country music movie that they made together.

Speaker 2 What about Laura Linney? I was trying to think, like, how, who is it? Early Laura Linney.

Speaker 6 She's in Congo by now.

Speaker 2 So this is like, you can count on me, Era. Like, I'm already like, she's already babysitting Mark Buffalo.

Speaker 5 Yeah, early 90s.

Speaker 6 Oh, so she's she's in the mix already.

Speaker 2 I think she could really nail this part. The question is, can she be hardier Laura?

Speaker 5 She's like a whisper away from love, actually. Yeah.

Speaker 6 The only other one if you're going to keep

Speaker 6 Laura

Speaker 6 being from

Speaker 6 Europe, what about Fonka Johnson?

Speaker 2 Wow. That's powerful.
That's a lot for one movie.

Speaker 2 She's gene graining. She's gene graining really hard at the hardness and high fidelity

Speaker 2 run.

Speaker 1 I think you're bringing too much firepower to that car, CR.

Speaker 1 Oh, Craig, you get a flex category.

Speaker 4 I have the cell phone, same thought as Joe, joe and that this movie this movie makes like not knowing what happens to your ex seem torturous when in reality it's actually like the beauty of it yeah and that now i mean rob would be on a list now if he had instant

Speaker 4 psych yeah they wouldn't let this dude on commercial now if he knew that like somebody was like across the street at a cafe or was posting photos with like a different guy he would have completely lost his mind but the the other category i want to give which is kind of odd is the sausage jenkins award the actor you can't believe did become a bigger star jack black although you are right he is literally probably the most dependable box office star right now, but he is a kid star.

Speaker 4 And I think it's kind of crazy that Jack Black never really was like an adult comedy movie star. And for how funny he is, he was never even like the top five of like,

Speaker 4 that's my favorite comedy star. He never really had like the big movie.
He had Shallow Howell.

Speaker 2 Which kind of changed it, right?

Speaker 4 They tried Nacho Libre and things like that. He's really funny in Tropic Thunder.
But like, it's crazy that he never had an Austin Powers or an Ace Ventura.

Speaker 4 He's so so physically gifted and he like never became an adult comedy star, like a big one.

Speaker 6 And I think it's really weird.

Speaker 2 Would you not count School of Rock as like a kids movie?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but he's saying like he never got in the appetite crowd.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I never agree with the larger

Speaker 1 franchise comedy. I think it's a good point.
Like there should have been like probably five School of Rocks.

Speaker 6 It's weird that they're not thinking of that now. Like you could just base, I mean, like, it's strange that like.

Speaker 6 somebody wouldn't make a movie with Jack Black now where it's like, what's your Ace Ventura?

Speaker 1 Like, could he have been like Jim Carrey, like had like a 1994 Jim Carrey

Speaker 4 gifted physically as a comedian definitely yeah and it just never turned I mean he was so good in Tropic Thunder and he's really good in the roles he's given but I can't believe he never had his own franchise stay tuned this holiday season for Anaconda it's true it's true

Speaker 2 also the holiday a perpetual rewatch for a lot of people I think he's maybe the weirdest part of that though he's so out of play he's like the week link of the holiday I think part of the problem with him was he the tenacious D thing was pretty all-consuming sure he was like on the road half the time with them he He has said that, like, he was worried about making this movie.

Speaker 5 Some people have the theory in this Consequence of Sound oral History that he was worried because he was too scared. And he said that as well.

Speaker 5 But he was also like, but my music career was kicking off. And that was something that I was really interested in as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So, yeah.

Speaker 1 Half-Fast Center research.

Speaker 1 Not a lot except for the, you can, if you want to know the Marie DeSalle CD,

Speaker 1 what was on it. Yeah.
This is really fun. After Baby, I love your way.
It includes Ghostbusters, Beat It. Baby Got Back.

Speaker 2 Nothing. I will survive.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 My heart will go on. The time is now.

Speaker 2 I will kickstart the Marie DeSalle Ghostbusters cut. Like, I need Lisa Bonet singing Ghostbusters in my life.
I just need it. You should turn it up.

Speaker 2 Turn that thing up.

Speaker 1 You should turn it up.

Speaker 1 Tim Robbins said he agreed to take the small roles in high fidelity and anchorman because he didn't care about the money, but he wanted to keep the custom-made

Speaker 1 wigs.

Speaker 1 And that was part of the deal that he got to keep the wigs.

Speaker 5 Do you think Susan enjoyed the Ian Gray ponytail?

Speaker 1 Got to Give It Up was the original Jack Black song for that scene, and he really wanted to do the other one. So they did the other one.

Speaker 1 How many movies do you think Joan and John Cusack have appeared in together?

Speaker 2 So many.

Speaker 6 Career. Not only how many, but are they the best brother-sister

Speaker 6 actor tandem to appear in film?

Speaker 2 Who are they competing in? Jill and Hall?

Speaker 2 Together?

Speaker 6 How many Jill and Hall movies are there?

Speaker 2 Donnie Darko.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 How does one suck a fuck? How exactly does one suck a fuck wrong?

Speaker 2 You didn't guess.

Speaker 1 How many? Five. Ten.

Speaker 2 Ten. Wow.

Speaker 6 There's a bunch that they're just, yeah, they're both sporting. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Not very big in, but because she's also in

Speaker 5 that Hughes movie that he's yeah, 16 candles.

Speaker 6 She's incredible in Gross Point Blank too.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Has that been rewatchable yet? Gross Point Blank?

Speaker 5 Because she like, I like that this is sort of her, her, like, girl on the phone is like kind of her role in this movie, too.

Speaker 6 Well, and the scene at the funeral between the two of them is one of the best scenes in the movie.

Speaker 2 But she's like, we are talking about someone else, Laura.

Speaker 1 There's a theory that there's five albums that you can see in Rob's apartment, that that's his top five albums.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's Funkadelic, Neil Young, Beach Boys, Sonic Youth, and The Minutemen. It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 Checks out.

Speaker 6 It's a pretty good five checks.

Speaker 5 Which Beach Boys album?

Speaker 1 It's got to be Peasant. Wild Honey.

Speaker 2 Oh. See? A little curveball.
Yep. Classic Rob.
Classic Rob.

Speaker 1 Rob got us again.

Speaker 1 Speaking of Rob, Rob, you have a flex category. Your first one.

Speaker 1 Probably your last after you get fans and you re-watch the most.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go out in Flames then. I'm coming for Glassdoor.

Speaker 1 You took over the hottest hate category.

Speaker 2 Once we send that clip to Courtney Love, absolutely screwed.

Speaker 1 I can't wait for fantasy for that clip.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 1 Top three people who will go nuts for that clip.

Speaker 6 Definitely like Yassi and Sean are going to lose their minds when they hear that.

Speaker 2 I will chill out the ass revolt.

Speaker 1 Let's keep that away from Yassi.

Speaker 5 Rob, you were like establishing yourself as a music guy. I listened.

Speaker 1 As Avi knows, we need more hottest takes in life. Craig tried to bring back cannibalism.
Now cannibalism is in pleuribus.

Speaker 2 It's true.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Craig.

Speaker 1 I heard. Rob, what's your flex?

Speaker 2 I'm going to attempt the double Seagal. So we've got Steven Seagal shitting on himself for the most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot.

Speaker 2 And the Steven Seagal Hard to Kill Award, did this movie need a better intimacy coordinator?

Speaker 2 Apparently, the Tim Robbins dream sequence that we've been talking about,

Speaker 2 it wasn't really directed by Stephen Freers at all.

Speaker 2 He went and gathered all of the women on set who were just like working in hair and makeup or working in craft services and were like, can you guys just tell us what to do?

Speaker 2 And the result is that Ivanyala said, this was the best sex scene I've ever shot and the most, like the most comfortable I've ever been. So I put it to you.

Speaker 2 Do they need another intimacy coordinator or did they crowdsource an entirely new model we should be taking advantage of?

Speaker 5 She said Stephen Fears was essentially like in the corner with his hands over his eyes.

Speaker 2 Turned to the corner shielding himself. As the women of the wardrobe department were like, grab her ass.
That's hot. That's funny.
Crawl your hand down her throat.

Speaker 6 Robin's kind of like, I have like a small window to do this.

Speaker 2 So we gotta, we gotta kind of like get out of here.

Speaker 1 Well, maybe this would be a new blueprint for intimacy coordinators that will go terribly wrong on some other movie set would be my guess. Yeah.
So maybe don't crowdsource the crew.

Speaker 2 Maybe not. Or be very careful about your hiring in the crew.

Speaker 2 But it turned out to be a hilarious scene fun fact the cinematographer of this movie seamus mcgarvey also was cinematographer on 50 shades of gray was he inspired by this sequence who's to say i don't think so based on what we know about the 50 shades of gray intimacy coordination apex mountain qsack no what's the argument for no

Speaker 2 gross point blank i don't think it is but this run like 97 to 2000 that run he doesn't like these i don't like the run he doesn't like the run he likes the exact moment i've trust me i've tried to to unlock this door so many times it's always fun when a new rewatch this person comes in what's apex mountain goes the most juice he didn't have the most juice in this movie

Speaker 2 they literally called him to be like can you bail out our script because it doesn't work can you make this movie work and he's like yes i will do it i will star in it i will make an unlikable character quite survivable within the context of the movie like you want to spend time with rob despite the fact that he sucks i think he's got a lot of juice here maybe he never had an apex mountain i think 96 just a couple mini mountains.

Speaker 6 96, 97 is his Apex Mountain. But it's in Conair? City Hall, gross point blank, Conair.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I agree. All right, Sierra.

Speaker 6 That's like Blockbuster. Yeah.
Prestige Pacino.

Speaker 2 But you stretch out a little bit and you go Thin Red Line, Malkovich, this. Yes.

Speaker 6 Although he probably doesn't even know he was in Thin Red Line.

Speaker 2 No one knows they were in Thin Red Line. You could have been in it, guys.
I don't know. Apex Mountain.

Speaker 1 Deleted Smith singles.

Speaker 5 Micro Bangs.

Speaker 2 Love Thy Neighbor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, Micro Bangs. I was thinking about that.

Speaker 6 That was very attractive to me at the time.

Speaker 2 Jackwack, no.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 Beta beat, definitely.

Speaker 6 Beta band.

Speaker 2 Beta band. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Bonet, no.

Speaker 1 Santa Jones now. Katrina and the waves, maybe?

Speaker 2 Probably just too.

Speaker 1 Dude, that or when the song actually came out? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Iban Yala? Iban Yala. Yes.

Speaker 2 And her micro bangs.

Speaker 1 Sad bastard music.

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 1 Breaking the fourth wall in a movie. CR brought that up earlier.
Possible.

Speaker 6 I guess he does, like, they do it in Annie Hall. I'm trying to think of like when that would have been.
Like, I think Ferris Bueller was probably the most like I was ever like,

Speaker 2 that might be the one. But this is, this is Ferris Bueller.

Speaker 1 That's, you're right. That's what it is.

Speaker 2 It's Ferris.

Speaker 1 Or it's Stanley Roper on Thruce Company.

Speaker 6 One of those.

Speaker 2 Or it's Fleabag. Fleabag is great.
Or Fleabag.

Speaker 1 Would you go for Todd Luizo?

Speaker 1 Is it the Manny or is it this?

Speaker 6 I think it's this. It's this.

Speaker 2 I think more people know him There's a BBC show

Speaker 5 that has the name Ted in it. It was like a workplace comedy.
Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 2 Better, not better off. Better off Ted? No.

Speaker 5 That's a thing. He wasn't one of the light guys in the lab.
I'm maybe confusing him for another guy who looks like him.

Speaker 1 Chicago movies.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 Book movie combos from the last 35 years.

Speaker 2 In terms of both are good? Yeah.

Speaker 6 35?

Speaker 1 Last 35 years. We'll go back to 1990.
I think the answer is Fight Club.

Speaker 5 Let's just do 25 years, 2000 on.

Speaker 5 Why are we involving the 90s?

Speaker 1 Because I want to bring Fight Club into it as the answer.

Speaker 6 What about Mr. Grubber?

Speaker 5 Atonement? What?

Speaker 2 Is that my time?

Speaker 2 Atonement? Attempt. Really good.

Speaker 2 Fight Club?

Speaker 6 When was Bridges of Madison County? Was in the 90s?

Speaker 5 Bridgie Jones.

Speaker 2 Bridgie Jones. Holes, obviously.
Obviously,

Speaker 2 50 Shades, we already cited. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Cruise or Hanks.

Speaker 6 This is tough.

Speaker 6 It is tough.

Speaker 5 I think this is Cruz.

Speaker 2 Hanks.

Speaker 1 I'm never buying Cruz running a record store in Chicago and pretending he likes music.

Speaker 2 It's Cruz as Ian. That's the yeah.
I don't think Cruz is

Speaker 2 Raymond. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I agree.

Speaker 1 So is that doable? Can Cruz win on that?

Speaker 2 Or does he have to be? Well, it has to be for the lead. It's got to be the lead.

Speaker 2 You don't think that they're, I mean, yeah, it's Hanks then. It's Hanks as the Rob.
I guess Hanks is Hanks as Rob, but Cruz is Ian slash Raymond.

Speaker 1 What role would Philip C.

Speaker 2 Moorhoffman have played? I think so.

Speaker 5 Fruit said that Philip Simurhoffan auditioned for this movie.

Speaker 5 It seems like Dick.

Speaker 2 They were trying to figure out where to put him.

Speaker 6 But do you think he would have been good as Barry? I mean, he basically does that.

Speaker 1 His version of Dick, I think, would have been pretty good as like a Scotty J cross.

Speaker 5 I don't think you could put him with Jack Black, though. No.
But him,

Speaker 5 because he basically does a Jack Black role in Twister.

Speaker 2 Do you want to place that out for a minute?

Speaker 5 Phillips and Merhoffman and Jack Black.

Speaker 1 You don't think Philip C. Moorhoffman would have laid back and counter been counter puncher for Jack Black?

Speaker 5 I don't think he's capable of fading that much.

Speaker 6 I feel like it would be like Philip C. Morohoffman's punch drunk love character would come out.

Speaker 2 Shut up.

Speaker 2 It's like, hey, man, we're just talking side one track ones.

Speaker 5 He's like, you put some respect on Anna's name.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Picking knits.

Speaker 1 So Jack Black's character, I think we would all agree was fantastic as a performer. Just not ever playing music in any any capacity.

Speaker 2 Never sleep. Worked at the store.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Could have gone to karaoke night and belted it out a couple times.
Just got never sang.

Speaker 6 I do like the idea that, like, when he's just like, how come you're not putting my record out? And he's like, because you just won't let anybody hear your stuff. That being said,

Speaker 6 the influences that he has up on the flyer for his band has got nothing to do with the music that he plays at the end. Like, it's far from like classic soul.

Speaker 6 Like Pale Head and Primal Scream and Warp Records is like all over the place.

Speaker 1 Laura

Speaker 1 being with Ian,

Speaker 1 this was like a 90s trope. It was the same guy in singles with the ponytail guy that

Speaker 1 Kier Cedric's character ends up with. Why do they do this?

Speaker 2 Sometimes

Speaker 5 you're interested in understanding what Tantric is. Sometimes you're like, have I tried Tempe? I don't know.
Maybe, maybe I want to.

Speaker 2 But how many earrings does this man have on his ear? You know, it could be four, could be five.

Speaker 5 Something I said while watching this movie is, I'm upset that my ear jewelry and his ear jewelry is essentially the same

Speaker 5 i was not happy about that there was also like a trend back then because they would like the genre of world music was so kind of popular and it was a very like jack black wearing the yanni uh t-shirt the yanni tour t-shirt this is john john corbett's character in serendipity too right because he's essentially yanni in that movie i do think rob referring to him as some super tramp fan is offensive that's rude for no reason do you like super tramp fine but like ivan nirvana no comment

Speaker 5 wow He's a Magnolia soundtrack guy.

Speaker 1 What other nipps do we have?

Speaker 6 The

Speaker 6 band that they use as a stand-in for,

Speaker 6 what is it, Vince and what's the other kid's name?

Speaker 2 Like the two

Speaker 2 kinky wizards band.

Speaker 6 They play Royal Trucks' music as like, this is what they sound like. But Royal Trucks would be a band in the high fidelity world because they were on Drag City, which was a Chicago label.

Speaker 6 So that just is like breaking. breaking a seal there.
Sorry to get nerdy about that.

Speaker 6 And the way that Lewis, the Alex dessert character holds the captain beef heart record shows that he does not get him kicked out of that store 40 lps because he's like holding it by the corner of the sleeve and bending it and like you're you're like get your patchouli stink out of my store well no but it's like it's like that that record is now worth like five dollars less because of the way you're holding it

Speaker 1 So that was the secret sauce right there from CR.

Speaker 5 I think, I think it's really good stuff.

Speaker 5 I'm going to go with Rob can't afford that apartment.

Speaker 2 No chance. No.

Speaker 6 Nor can he afford to pay Dick.

Speaker 5 and is he paying them only for three days a week, even though they show them like Evanston?

Speaker 2 Like, how does that happen?

Speaker 1 What's the ratio of people who couldn't actually afford the apartment they're in in the movie? It's usually 50-50.

Speaker 5 I believe Marie could afford her apartment, possibly.

Speaker 1 No, I'm not saying just this movie in general with movies and TV shows we like. The apartments are always necessary.

Speaker 5 I would say 75-25. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. 75 feels low.
I feel like overwhelmingly, it's like you just need enough space for one to film in these places a lot of the times.

Speaker 2 And then there's just no way they'd be realistic for a record chore.

Speaker 1 This is a big thing with my wife when we watch stuff. It bothers me.
She's always really upset with if they don't get the real estate.

Speaker 5 I mean, I think especially because in this movie, he's like, look at my shithole apartment.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, it's like, it's freaky. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I will say the other thing about Laura moving in with Ian slash Ray is when he tells

Speaker 5 when he tells the story of their story, she moved in with him right away. So I think this is just something Laura does.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Serial monogamous. Yeah.
Also a little weird because Ian's living in Rob's building, but moves out and then Laura moves in with him.

Speaker 2 Right. I think that's.

Speaker 6 I would need a minute to kind of process that.

Speaker 6 It's a move. It's a ploy.

Speaker 1 The My Lisa's Expiring move.

Speaker 2 Does it work?

Speaker 1 You know who it worked for? My wife.

Speaker 2 What's her mind?

Speaker 5 She said to you, My lease is expiring.

Speaker 2 Might as well move in. Yeah.

Speaker 1 She's like, I'm here all the time anyway.

Speaker 2 Next thing I knew, I had a roommate.

Speaker 2 Bill's like, hold on, let me turn down my world music for a second. We got to move you in.

Speaker 6 I'm like, hold on, Pedro, like I entered into a relationship and a girl I was dating got evicted and was like, I can either leave Boston or live with you. And I was like, oh, live with me then.

Speaker 2 There's just like, just, as long as you know, there's four other guys

Speaker 5 working working in retail in San Francisco in the early aughts. There would be couples who would break up and they would like have to stay there because that's tough.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's tough.

Speaker 5 Like someone has to sleep on the couch or whatever because you just like can't afford to move. So

Speaker 1 that's like an Apple News story you'd read on the side of your iPhone where it's like the divorced couples who still live together

Speaker 1 here in Harper's Magazine.

Speaker 6 The real story of the housing crisis.

Speaker 1 Six-minute read. Any other picket nits from anybody?

Speaker 2 After the funeral, Rob jumps over the white picket fence into the mud. He's covered in mud and then immediately goes into her car and they have sex.

Speaker 2 Just vile. Absolutely disgusting.
No, but he does not do that.

Speaker 6 He's completely cleaned off when he gets into the car.

Speaker 2 But, but how?

Speaker 5 Well, I would say it's a torrential downpour for about like 40% of this movie. So So that rain was coming down.

Speaker 6 It's shaking the mud off because everybody has pneumonia.

Speaker 1 Disgusting. Any nitpicks, Craig?

Speaker 1 Nothing brewing for you?

Speaker 2 No, not yet. Okay.

Speaker 4 I'll let you know.

Speaker 2 So just to be clear about the movie's statement on this, sorting your collection autobiographically is deranged, right? Like it's meant to read as deranged.

Speaker 5 No, but kind of cool.

Speaker 6 No, it's.

Speaker 2 How do I explain this?

Speaker 6 It's crazy. It's a crazy thing to do.
Dude, though, there's, this is, this is, I got to tell you, there's nothing more satisfying than reorganizing your CD collection or your records.

Speaker 2 I agree with that. Just taking them all out, seeing what you got,

Speaker 6 and cleanly putting them back away.

Speaker 5 But don't leave them stacked because the, you know, no, the pressure.

Speaker 2 They'll compress.

Speaker 5 Rob, if you took your movies, your DVDs, your Blu-rays, your 4Ks, and you put, could you put them in autobiographical order?

Speaker 2 No chance.

Speaker 5 There would ben't it fun to try? I watched this. I remember I watched this when I was in fifth grade at the Marvel To It.

Speaker 2 Maybe. I'm thinking Nirvana.
Unplugged. Yeah.
Who's to separate the one time I went to like CD Warehouse in 2006 from the other time I went to Movie Trading Co. in 2000? I don't know.

Speaker 2 I guess not. And you're not a true fan.
So is it meant to be autobiographical by when you first listened to it or when you bought the record?

Speaker 6 I think it's supposed to be every song has a story. So every record has a story.
It's like, oh, I listened to Super Chunk when I broke up with my girlfriend, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 6 So I have to find it in this year.

Speaker 2 The soundtrack of your life stuff.

Speaker 6 I don't think you can do that.

Speaker 5 That is when I would listen to Super Chunk.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Any other nitpicks? Because I'm going to move on to the Wayne Jenkins award.

Speaker 6 Do you have a Wayne Jenkins award?

Speaker 1 We can skip it. I could also be talked into doing one.

Speaker 6 I was wondering, I don't have any other nitpicks.

Speaker 5 It's Rob's first time. Don't you think you should do it?

Speaker 2 I would love one.

Speaker 1 You want to do a Wayne Jenkins award?

Speaker 2 I don't want to do one. I would love to experience one.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I had Stephen A.

Speaker 1 Smith

Speaker 1 as Rob in the scene when Ian slash Ray shows up to the store

Speaker 1 as a fifth scenario. Because we have four scenarios in there.
This would be the fifth. I'll pretend you're Ian slash Ray in this.

Speaker 2 Ian slash Ray.

Speaker 1 You know I like you.

Speaker 1 You know we're friends.

Speaker 1 But I did not appreciate how you came into this record store.

Speaker 2 That's how I'm.

Speaker 2 I was doing this.

Speaker 1 Stephen A on YouTube does this.

Speaker 2 That's a very low.

Speaker 6 Oh, he's got like a a very like, I'm warning you not to cross this line. This kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ian slash Ray.

Speaker 2 You know, I like you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you want to do whatever you want to do with Laura, I hope y'all are very happy.

Speaker 1 Just don't come in this record store again.

Speaker 1 Because if you come in a second time, we're going to have a problem.

Speaker 1 That's Stephen A. YouTube saying that.

Speaker 2 Really, really nice work back. Pregnant pause, Laura voice.

Speaker 2 Honestly, you really hit it. Build threat, also an important part of the formula.
I'm working on it. Yeah.
And now he'll go to answering fan mail where he like ranks Pokemon.

Speaker 1 Just want to ask her who gets it?

Speaker 2 I think Qzak, right?

Speaker 1 I was going to say Jack Black supporting production designer.

Speaker 2 Oh, I like that. Good call.
Especially like the record store they built that record store from scratch.

Speaker 1 Unanswerable questions.

Speaker 1 Is this movie better with Ethan Hawk?

Speaker 2 As

Speaker 2 aren't most?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 no, because

Speaker 5 you're taking Troy from reality bites and you're putting him in this movie.

Speaker 1 Or I'm zagging from Troy from Reality Bites and doing the evolutionary older Troy from Reality Bites.

Speaker 6 Like a self-aware Troy.

Speaker 2 A little more.

Speaker 5 Dad already died.

Speaker 5 True. Froggy already went according and now he's doing this.

Speaker 6 Hey, that's my bike crashed and burned. He's moved to Chicago and opened a record store, you know?

Speaker 2 No. I'm in for it.
Like, I think QZAC is is really tremendous in this movie, but I don't know many Cusack movies that Ethan Hawk couldn't also do.

Speaker 5 No, well, here's the deal. I think Ethan Hawk is a way better actor than John Cusack.
I think John Cusack has a

Speaker 2 likability

Speaker 5 that Rob really needs, that Ethan doesn't inherently have.

Speaker 1 That's my next question. Did Ethan Hawk market correct John Cusack?

Speaker 2 We have a pretty parallel, right?

Speaker 6 Like, I think he's a little younger than him, but.

Speaker 2 I mean, maybe that's part of the reason Cusack started doing so much other, so many other weird roles. It's like Ethan Hawk grabbed all the sensitive boys, and then QSAC had to hit it and do that.

Speaker 6 And then John Qsack's like, I have to make a movie in Bulgaria with like three UFC fighters.

Speaker 2 Ethan Hawk could do Must Love Dogs.

Speaker 5 Absolutely. But John Cusack could not do Dead Poets Society.

Speaker 2 No doubt.

Speaker 2 Not a bad movie.

Speaker 5 It's a bad movie. It would have been cool.

Speaker 2 Not a bad movie. That's your Diane Lane head talking, I think.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 That's just a normal Diane.

Speaker 6 It would have been interesting if they put Ethan Ethan Hawk in the Tim Robbins role and made that character much more down. Like it would basically be like choosing.

Speaker 2 He was cartoonish. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 And Laura had to choose between the two icons of Jet X.

Speaker 2 That's just reality bites at that point, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's probably Stiller is better in that role.

Speaker 1 That's a better Ian slash Ray thing, right? He owns like the biggest comic book store in Chicago with some

Speaker 2 Rob's Corner. He's not even a threat.
He's got a bad scout.

Speaker 2 What piece of memory? We've got a couple other possibilities. Oh, let's take a question.

Speaker 6 Who should Rob line up with?

Speaker 1 Nobody.

Speaker 2 Or the reader.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm already in with the reader lady.

Speaker 2 Well, sub question, not is it better to burn out than fade away, but why doesn't he call Marie? You also did the one gesture. It's part of the move.

Speaker 2 Like when he and Marie part ways, he's like, I'll call you. And she's like, yeah, whatever.
Why wouldn't he call her?

Speaker 5 Because both of them knew what that was, which was not an actual beginning of anything, but just sort of like, we're both not over. the person, the exes that we're talking about.

Speaker 2 I just don't believe that that guy does not call her again. even though he's trying to play a real

Speaker 6 more out of his league than Charlie. Maybe.
That's like more of my like.

Speaker 5 How about he has a better reaction to Penny's story? Yep. And he winds up with her because he's like, we're having a great date.
She has a light up pen. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And that's what I thought film critics had to have a light up pen

Speaker 5 because of this movie. But he's like, we're having, we're getting along.

Speaker 5 And if he has a better conversation with her in the restaurant that doesn't end with her storming out on the word rape, then maybe those two crazy kids make it work.

Speaker 2 All he had to do was not bring it up. All he had to do was not be be going through a what does it all mean thing.

Speaker 6 And it would have been fine. We talked about the Allison Ashmore, the one in like seventh grade, the first kiss when he's just like, she married Kevin.

Speaker 2 I'm fine now. She kisses me.
Yeah. She marries Kevin.

Speaker 5 I'm fine now is such a good, like such a funny delivery.

Speaker 2 That's the thing. Could Ethan Hawk do the like, I am alone in a room screaming? Because that is half of the two sack performance.
Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure he has that anymore.

Speaker 6 Just what do you, what do we think the ceiling on rob's djing is you know like oh you had some thoughts on this well so in the early 2000s i would go see holotronics dj and that was diplo and his partner low budget and they would play a lot of stuff but like it had that same kind of like i'll play the neptunes and then i'll play like an 80s new wave song and so like that kind of like variety was emerging as a dj choice but I don't know.

Speaker 6 Like they make it seem like Rob is just selling clubs out with his DJing.

Speaker 1 and i was just like i'm not so sure that's like a viable he also didn't have the dj type of personality yeah i like did you believe he was a dj djs have a certain vibe to them that i'm not sure john kusek has i can't see him being like

Speaker 2 dj's got to do a lot of that to get the crowd going when famous enough that caroline would remember him but not so famous she wouldn't remember that he's rob and not bob It's like, it's a weird final.

Speaker 5 I do have a weird thing about Rob and Bob.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Rob Bob.
I think we all do, you know? But like, it's nothing offensive. It's just like, I am not a Bob.

Speaker 5 Yeah, or a Bobby or anybody.

Speaker 2 Definitely not a Bobby. Yeah.
I mean, nobody wants to be a Bobby.

Speaker 2 But you could be a Rob.

Speaker 5 But you could be a Rob or a Robert, but not a Bob or a Bobby.

Speaker 2 I mean, I literally am a Robert, and I'm definitely a Rob. Okay.
Bob is just like, it's. They grew up on the other side of the river.
You should develop culture.

Speaker 6 You have a chat character called Bob Mahoney. That's where you save your real taste.

Speaker 2 The real dude.

Speaker 5 Chris, have you ever considered Topher?

Speaker 2 No. No.
Okay.

Speaker 1 That's in the chat.

Speaker 6 That wasn't in the mix until Topher Great.

Speaker 2 I didn't.

Speaker 5 It took years until I figured out that that was short for Christopher.

Speaker 2 I just found that out right now.

Speaker 2 And Liam's, the other one.

Speaker 1 Liam's didn't exist for the first 30 years of my life. And then all of a sudden, this is.

Speaker 6 I'm just glad I got past the era of my little league coach calling me Chrissy.

Speaker 2 You know, that was tough.

Speaker 6 I was really worried that was going to stick. It was real tough.

Speaker 1 Tony Soprano calling Christopher Chrissy a couple of times. That's the last time that's happened.

Speaker 5 What about Will simmons like your alter ego will simmons i just never would have

Speaker 1 no i was billy for the first like 20 years then went to college and dropped the why oh wow because my dad was always bill and i was billy dude separated us so did you just never introduce any yourself college i'm like i'm bill you're bill now yeah i'm bill a rebranding yeah i'm now bill oh okay

Speaker 1 What memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? What one thing?

Speaker 6 To be completely honest, it's not quite memorabilia. I want the record store.

Speaker 1 All the entire record stores.

Speaker 6 I swear a storefront smoking indoors is allowed. We listen to records all day and argue with each other.

Speaker 2 I could probably live stream it.

Speaker 1 There's a Marie DeSalle poster that I think would be pretty good. The black and white one? Yeah, the winner

Speaker 2 outside the club.

Speaker 1 There's a poster of her thing. I thought it was good.

Speaker 5 What about the dickie shirt that he wears and Zoe Kravitz also wears in the TV shirt? Sure.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 5 quite good. Also, great coat.
John Cusack, perhaps top five coat actor.

Speaker 2 The leather jacket. Yeah.

Speaker 5 The long leather jacket, but he's like a really good coat jacket actor. He knows how to like swing a pocket, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 I like that.

Speaker 5 How about you, Rob?

Speaker 2 I would love the flyer for the record release party, which, I mean, looks, it looks like a woman is giving birth to the name Kinky Wizards in space, but most importantly to me, at the risk of doxing myself, the party is happening literally on my birthday.

Speaker 2 So I got to have the flyer, you know? Doxing.

Speaker 2 just more fuel for the nirvana

Speaker 6 for corny love to steal your identity life lesson is it it's not what you like it's what not what you're like it's what you like yeah that's a pretty good

Speaker 2 for all the physical media collectors at the ringer fetish properties are not unlike porn i mean it is true i'd feel bad selling to these guys if i wasn't one of them

Speaker 2 How about when Rob is going through what he misses about Laura, talking about how she has character, and it's like, character is not taking it out on people when you're having a bad day.

Speaker 2 I think there's some truth to that. Oh.

Speaker 5 But more importantly, it's what you like.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, that's not what you were like.

Speaker 6 Double feature choice. You know, Joe, Joe got me thinking about clerks, but I had Empire Records written down.

Speaker 2 What about if you so if you flip the formula and you make a movie that's basically from Laura's perspective, it's also another Nick Hornby book, which is Juliet Naked, where she's like dating a guy who is like.

Speaker 2 She's knocking it, right?

Speaker 2 I like that, but I think that like the movie's pretty good i think it could work as a double feature i would say either gross point blank or about a boy

Speaker 1 i would do say anything bookend it with qsack the beginning inner of gen x yeah uh who won the movie jack black

Speaker 2 i think jack black as well his entire career it's i mean it's hard to argue I think what QSAC gets out of this is pretty powerful.

Speaker 2 And like all the iconography of the movie, the cover, the poster, him in the record store is all QSAC. But Jack Sack wins because

Speaker 1 he knew that Jack Black, this was the perfect part.

Speaker 2 He made Jack Black, so he wins at all. Springsteen, I called these guys.

Speaker 1 Jack Black was going to be great. I told Dylan when I was on the phone with him.

Speaker 2 Picked all the songs in the movie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What do you have?

Speaker 6 I think I have Qsack. I think that there was a road here where he could have done like an iconic generational role every 10 years.

Speaker 6 And he kind of did it in his teens and his 20s and gets right up to the precipice of his 40s. And it just goes direct direct to video.

Speaker 1 Too much time with Jeremy Pittman.

Speaker 1 Producer Craig. Yeah.

Speaker 4 What do you got? Never seen this film.

Speaker 2 Oh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But your wife likes it, though.

Speaker 4 Yeah, she saw it a while ago and I think she saw it when she was really young and was like, now I'm realizing that I completely didn't get that movie and I need to watch it again.

Speaker 4 But there's a lot I liked about this movie, but there's no way I could like it as much as the people who actually fit the demo who saw it when it came out.

Speaker 4 Like I just think you kind of can't get there unless you were there. It's just not for me.
It's not mine.

Speaker 4 Like I feel like you guys were like the people in the record store in the movie, like working there.

Speaker 2 And then I was the dad who walked out and swears dad.

Speaker 2 What are you in a coma? Yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm like, I'm not going to point out the scenes I like.

Speaker 6 And you guys are like, you are fucking there. You don't understand.

Speaker 2 But.

Speaker 4 It's funny. This movie being in 2000, I feel like I knew less of the names you guys talked about today than a movie that came out like 1980.

Speaker 2 The actors are like the bands? Just like the cultural references are just like gone.

Speaker 4 I don't like when you were just naming all the singers that you were like attracted to in the 90s, like, I don't know any of of the names you were talking about. Have the bands over my head.

Speaker 4 It's crazy that, you know, I think the, I was born in 1994.

Speaker 4 And it's like your parents, when I, you know, when, right when they have kids, like that's the time in your life where you like stop consuming new things. Right.

Speaker 4 And so from probably from like 94 to 2000, my parents probably watched the least amount of movies they had ever watched,

Speaker 4 which is when kind of this comes out. And then when I come to in like the mid 2000s, I was completely getting ingested into like the Apatau era.

Speaker 4 So I think there was just like, it's like there are these blind spots. And it's why I saw 80s movies before these movies, because my parents loved the 80s movies.

Speaker 4 So I think there's like a blind spot from like 94 to 2000 that I just like have no cultural reference for.

Speaker 1 And you never read the book? No. Yeah.

Speaker 2 The book's really good. It's worth reading.
It really is.

Speaker 5 My copy is all water damaged because I accidentally left it on the lawn of my dorm and the sprinklers came on. And so it's all like crunchy and wavy.

Speaker 5 And I was just like, I'm going to keep it that way.

Speaker 4 I also struggle with the like, the emotionally stunted, like angry at the world, woe is me, like reality bites Troy type. I don't, there's something about that that's never caught.

Speaker 2 I don't love that, but that is the Apatow guys, too. Like that, you know, in a slightly different format.

Speaker 1 They're just making fun of each other.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's more stone.

Speaker 2 That's true.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it turns much more raunchy and slapstick in the middle.

Speaker 6 It's just because you're trying to do Mr.

Speaker 2 Skin.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Instead of having a record story.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and it's like, it's not as clever. Like the writing is not as clever deliberately.

Speaker 4 Like there are still lines in this movie that are very reality bitesy, like John Cusack looking at the camera and being like, it was a state of ill-advised blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 4 And you're like, nobody in an Avatar movie talks like that. Yeah.
And it's still very, it's very lyrical in this movie, which is like kind of a example of that 90s side.

Speaker 5 Except for my guts have shit for brains, which is a line I would cut from this movie.

Speaker 1 I'd like to apologize before we end the pod that I didn't mention the lady from Mazzy Star as one of my throw my life away people.

Speaker 6 Well, you didn't, you did that classic thing where you shoved the boat out and you you didn't come up behind me it's like who who is your rush more

Speaker 6 so the lady lady from Mazzy star who else Julianna Hatfield no like who are these people

Speaker 2 okay mazzy star you got it I don't know those

Speaker 6 you don't know fade into you you would know that's awesome you would know faded yeah

Speaker 2 who is the who is the one that dated Evan Dando Evan Julianne Hatfield did yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah she's on there I feel like we're missing somebody I'm not prepared for this.

Speaker 2 Well, you've, you asked me

Speaker 2 either. This is how I feel.

Speaker 2 I didn't get the list on you.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but I didn't like, I didn't, it wasn't like, oh, I'm going to talk about who I was attracted to for a decade. Like, it was, I just forgot.

Speaker 4 You're always doing that in the office, though.

Speaker 2 Cracking a cold poppy can.

Speaker 6 It was also like, there was just like, it was more like types of women. And it was like,

Speaker 6 you know, it was more like women in Hal Hartley movies or Noah Baumbach movies or whatever.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like the girl and kicking for jicking and screaming.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Rob, how was it for you?

Speaker 2 Just great. Yeah.
This is the kind of initiation I was I was hoping and you did a great job. Thank you.
Hoping to just like burn your career with oh yeah this is shit.

Speaker 2 Clearly can't be invited back.

Speaker 1 Joanna, a pleasure as always. That's real.
CR, you're the best. Thanks to

Speaker 2 great world back.

Speaker 1 Cahao as well.

Speaker 2 Who else is back there?

Speaker 4 I don't know who's back there now. CT, Jack Wilson.
Shouts out to Eduardo.

Speaker 2 Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1 We'll be back. How many more?

Speaker 6 What's today's date?

Speaker 6 Today is like the 8th or 9th or something. Today's the 10th.

Speaker 2 10th.

Speaker 4 We have two more in the month of December.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Wow.
There you go. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 2 Thanks, Bill. Thanks.

Speaker 2 and a hora. Oof, nava comodarte un gustaso por tam poco.
The extra-value meals is

Speaker 2 regressive.

Speaker 8 Gana por la mañana con el extra-value meal, sausage, mc, muffin with egg, hash browns, and a cafe.

Speaker 8 Poros $8.

Speaker 8 Bara, ba-ba-ba! Preces and participación can various. The precious del promotion can serve.