‘The Saint’ With Bill Simmons and Kyle Brandt

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Kyle Brandt to honor the late Val Kilmer in ‘The Saint,’ who stars alongside Elisabeth Shue. Watch this episode on our Ringer Movies youTube channel! Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Jessie Lopez, Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe Show. That's right, I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're going to talk about the games, yeah, the games, the X's and O's, the drama, the trades, the playoffs are coming up. And now, you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're gonna love, so make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe Show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts. Let's go!

• 0:38Speaker 01

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• 1:23Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. You can get this podcast as a video on Spotify. I'd highly encourage you to do so. You can also go on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel and see a bunch of old Rewatchables that we've done, including ones with Kyle Brandt, who's here today. Val Kilmer passed away. We're going to talk about one of our favorite Val Kilmer movies. Not a movie you probably expected, The Saint. It's next.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  For an American scientist caught in a world of espionage, there is no escape. Brings her alive. And now, the man who was hired to betray her.

• 1:57Speaker 06

  Uninstal small. All those Christmas love murdering the porridge.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Is the only one who can save her.

• 2:04Speaker 06

  If you want to live, you believe my side.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Val Kilmer, Elizabeth Shue.

• 2:09Speaker 06

  I'm on!

• 2:10Speaker 02

  The Saint. Starts Friday, April 4th, everywhere.

• 2:28Bill Simmons?

  All right, Kyle Brandt, you're basically, you were kind of semi-off this week. Kids were off from school. Wasn't really a rewatchables taping week for you, but you had to move stuff around because Val Kilmer passed away this week. People, I don't, I don't think it was a massive surprise because he'd been sick for a long time. It was a total surprise because Val Kilmer is no longer with us and we were texting. We had talked about doing the Saint forever, which I don't think would crack most people's top five Val Kilmer list, but for us it does. And we'll get to that in a second. But Val Kilmer, big picture, 20,000 feet overhead. What are your thoughts?

• 3:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, I've been really moved by this, more so than I even expected to be over the last 48 hours. I've been upset. I've been on, you know, our show, Good Morning Football, talking about it as much as the NFL will allow me to just talk about an actor and not, you know, Cam Ward or Shador Sanders. And I think I'm a little surprised how upsetting it was because this is not Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford or Tom Hanks. It's not one of these like all time leading man legends. It's just someone who has shown up for, in our lives for years and years and was always cool. And I'm looking at him, Bill, it's like, we lost the coolest character actor of all time. And that I think really was what he was. And that's really his legacy. Looked like a leading man, had the

• 3:47Speaker 07

  talent of a leading man, but was better off playing bass instead of being the lead singer.

• 3:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's weird because he could vacillate. He could lead a movie and be on a poster, right? He could be on Batman, he could be on The Saint, he could be on The Doors. But usually there was some sort of gimmick that came with it. And he was really at his best in a movie like Heat. I always felt like if you're thinking of him like an athlete, you think of like Randy Moss, somebody like that, that Randy Moss could be on the wrong team and go four and 12 on the Oakland Raiders, or you could put him on an awesome team with weapons everywhere. And then everybody's like, oh, my God, Randy Moss is amazing. And there's, there's other actors like this. I think there's a Brad Pitt case a little bit too, where he's just way more fun in movies like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But with Kilmer, I thought what was so weird about him, super handsome. Yeah.

• 4:36Bill Simmons?

  Like, anyone I've ever dated has loved Val Kilmer. So he had that, but really quirky. And just kind of hard to put a finger on. And I think that's what so like heat. I don't really know what he's doing in that part. I just know I like it. The saint, I'm not even sure he's good in the saint, but there's something compelling about watching him the entire time. And then there's other movies like the doors and, you know, some of the other tombstone, the classics that he's been in where you're just like, God damn, this guy's great. Top Gun comes in just like all time D N waiters every time he's in. So he could do everything and yet you're right. It wasn't like the type of career of a cruise or some of these other dudes that could just go for 35 years. There was a shelf life to it.

• 5:21Speaker 07

  Definitely. And, you know, to continue the Randy Moss comparison, he, he, at the end of his career, before he got really sick, it was Randy Moss on the 49ers and then the Titans. And it just wasn't happening anymore. But I think also part of his legacy is like, go to anybody and say, what's your favorite Val Kilmer role? Or you know what? What's your favorite three Val Kilmer roles? I bet he's not the lead in any of those movies. I bet he's not. It's like his four most famous roles or five, six even. It's just like we're at Iceman. We're at Doc Holliday. We're at Chris from Heat and then just other kind of supporting stuff. Like his lead vehicles, even though we're doing one today. The saint is a hack for him. It's he figured it out. He said, I want to play a cool little interesting side characters.

• 6:05Speaker 07

  So just give me a movie where I play 10 of those and sew them together. And that's why it's fun to watch Val in the same.

• 6:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And he could also be good in movies that weren't that good, which was another weird superpower. I like, I really like Ghost in the Darkness. Goldman wrote it. Val's great in it and Michael Douglas is horribly miscast, which Goldman wrote a whole chapter in his book about. But Val's good. He makes sense. He's got this weird. I think he's like a British accent or South African accent, whatever it is. He always has to bring some sort of weird wrinkle to it, even in heat. You know, he's the hair is a little different. He's like volatile, but also hard to figure out, but kind of cool. And, and then the way he works the gun, like they always say how like, uh, military people would study how he, how well he was using a gun and that. The Doris, he just disappears into Jim Morrison. There was some stuff, the SNL account that I really like on Instagram.

• 6:55Bill Simmons?

  They ran all the things from his SNL that he hosted in 2000. He's amazing. He was like one of the best random in and out hosts they've ever had. He's doing Top Gun. He does Jim Morrison again. He's just floating around all these different things, but.

• 7:09Speaker 07

  If you guys, if you're looking for some Kilmer this week, and we all are. One of the sketches Bill's talking about is it's with Chris Parnell and Will Ferrell. And later in life, Tom Kozanski is just an airline pilot, but he's still doing all this. He's like, we got a bogey at six o'clock. He's got tone on us. And Parnell's like, that's the nine 35 out of Tampa. Calm down. It's, it's a great sketch.

• 7:30Bill Simmons?

  He's going on the flight attendant. I don't like you because you're dangerous. And she's like, do you want decaf?

• 7:37Speaker 07

  Well, I shaved with a Mach 3. If you, if you think you're dead, all right, Tom. It's, it's a perfect sketch. He made fun of himself and it's funny, Bill, because like, it's a pretty serious guy. It's, it's a very serious actor. You know, like we, we can get into the whole thing. If people don't know, like the youngest.

• 7:54Bill Simmons?

  I'm ready right now.

• 7:55Speaker 07

  Let's do it. Youngest student ever into Juilliard in New York City. And if you've never seen like his upbringing, this guy grows up in Chatsworth in LA in the valley. Got a couple of brothers. His younger brother is like the creative one in the family. He's the director. He's going to go on to be the successful brother. His younger brother dies in the family jacuzzi at 15 years old. Like just dies there, right there on the property. And shortly after that, Kilmer shows up at Juilliard and like, let's act. And he is like a true, true thespian who is all about characters, acting method, all of it. But then he wound up in movies like Top Gun, which just are for kicking ass and eating popcorn, which was fun.

• 8:31Bill Simmons?

  And he could do comedies.

• 8:32Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 8:33Bill Simmons?

  He could do weird accent movies. He could do weird part movies and he would say over and over again, whatever movie he was doing, he needed some sort of challenge, some sort of thing that made it interesting to him. And it's funny because in the nineties, when the mag, all the, all the magazines kind of showed up, people covering the industry just got way better in all these different ways. The internet's coming in the late nineties. But there were, there was an awareness I had, just somebody living in Boston who liked movies and knew nothing other than what I read of like, oh, Val Kilmer's kind of difficult. Yeah. That became a thing with him and it kind of added to just the mystique of him. Like he does Batman once and he's signed to do other ones and they basically like let him

• 9:15Bill Simmons?

  out because he was kind of a pain in the ass. By the mid nineties, pain in the ass Val Kilmer? And it was kind of like hard to say what was real and what wasn't real. There was an Entertainment Weekly story about him in 96 that kind of hammered him. Premier had this piece about him in 97. I have some quotes, but EW in 96 called him Mr. Unpopularity. He was saying how he was committing six million a picture and nobody liked working with him, which I don't think was totally true. But he was coming off from 85 to 96, top secret, real genius, Top Gun, Willow, The Doors, Tombstone, Batman Forever, Heat, Ghost in Darkness. And then it starts to get weird right around The Saint, the movie we're talking about, because he's doing Island and Dr. Moreau, which I might be the only person in America who likes that movie. I've never actually seen it.

• 9:59Bill Simmons?

  It's bat shit. It's bat shit. It's the craziest. I was trying to convince CR to do it for rewatchables and even CR is like, I don't know, man. It's like, like you're offering a plutonium. And he's doing The Saint, but there's, this is the, from the premiere in 97. Opinions about Kilmer swing from pro parentheses, artist, to violently con, disturbed, with demanding and difficult, somewhere in between. He's aloof, though he's shy, he's a liar, he's terrific, he brings out the worst in everyone, you just have to know how to handle him. And then a quote from Tom Sizemore, never had I heard so much crap about an actor I had such a good time with. It's all bullshit. He doesn't explain himself to people, so people talk. Yeah. The action is the juice.

• 10:41Speaker 07

  And to me, I miss the juice. I maybe this should go under like what's aged the best. I miss the problematic onset actor, like shoving the director and busting up the hotel room. You know, we got it a few years later after Kilmer, it was Russell Crowe.

• 10:55Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 10:55Speaker 07

  But I, I mean, listen, I, I Eddie Vedder was difficult. Axl Rose was the complete asshole. Like those were my heroes in music.

• 11:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 07

  And there was something that was, I don't know if it's romantic, but or just maybe it was just good old fashioned cool about, oh yeah, he and Joel Schumacher exchanged blows on the set of Batman. Kilmer won't take any shit. He's so hard to work with, but he's so talented. They still do it. Like I thought that was kind of cool back in the day. I miss it.

• 11:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And Schumacher, I don't think history has treated him kindly the last 30 years, but he was one of the people that was killing him left and right. And then John Frankenheimer, who directed him in Island Dr. Moreau said, I will never climb Mount Everest and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world.

• 11:36Bill Simmons?

  And Schumacher was throwing him under the bus left and right, but I think he was just a really passionate artist who never wanted to be as famous as he got. But all these dudes, at the same time, they can't resist it. It's like, here's the Batman suit and they're like, ah, fuck. All right, fine. I'll be Batman. And then you like hate yourself that you did it, you know?

• 11:53Speaker 07

  Well, I think that's why also The Saint is actually a great movie to do for the Val Kilmer tribute because I think this is the most interesting juncture of his career, like at the, he's at the crossroads. So he's doing his thing. This is, this is post heat. This is post Tombstone. Michael Keaton decides I'm out on Batman. I'm not doing it. Kilmer gets a call while he's in Africa saying Batman's yours, doesn't read a script, doesn't do anything, signs up for it. And he talks about this in his documentary, and this is when my opinion of Val Kilmer jumped leaps and bounds. He was so miserable playing Batman, not just because of Schumacher, but he's surrounded by Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones, who are actors, actors and performers, and they're just painting scenery and chewing shit up and like owning every scene.

• 12:37Speaker 07

  And he's sitting there saying these stupid Batman lines and he can't move and he can't act. And it was like torture for him. I just, it was, it was heartbreaking to hear. For an artist, he's like, everyone wants to be Batman. I don't think everyone necessarily wants to play Batman. Like that's Val Kilmer.

• 12:52Bill Simmons?

  So The Saint, which was a TV series.

• 12:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 12:55Bill Simmons?

  That had been bounced around and we'll talk about how this was like a big TV remake thing. And it comes out and it does well. It doesn't do amazing, but it had always heard about it. They were going to try to reboot it. And Mission Impossible beats it by a year.

• 13:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:09Bill Simmons?

  Same studio Paramount and we'll talk about all the ways that was bad for The Saint. But I'm, so I'm living in, in Charlestown in 997 in Boston. I have the illegal cable box.

• 13:21Speaker 07

  Great.

• 13:22Bill Simmons?

  Which I've talked about many times in the rewatchables and it would have like 12 pay-per-view channels. And if it was like The Saint was now on pay-per-view. It wouldn't be like you got it on demand. It would be, it'd run from two to four and then four to six and

• 13:35Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:35Bill Simmons?

  Six paid and eight to 10. And that's how I would watch some of these movies.

• 13:38Speaker 07

  It was like a train.

• 13:39Bill Simmons?

  Just keep it on. Yeah. I would be like writing my, my Boston sports guy column. I would just have The Saint on the background for three days. And I think that's why I liked the movie so much because the movie's incoherent.

• 13:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:52Bill Simmons?

  We'll go over the plot. The plot is like, you have to watch this movie seven times to even fully understand what's happening.

• 14:00Bill Simmons?

  It's what it is and why I like this so much. It's a great hang. This is like, I, I can't think of a better like airplane movie than The Saint. You can, you're paying attention. You don't really have to pay attention. Elizabeth Shue looks amazing. Kilmer looks great. He's wearing weird disguises. There's a couple chase scenes. And it's a hang and it's over. And this is where I'm going to throw, I'm doing it right now. The CR thinks, the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harris Ford.

• 14:28Speaker 07

  You're going to do it in the open. Let's go.

• 14:30Bill Simmons?

  Doing it in the open.

• 14:32Bill Simmons?

  I've said this forever and I'm going to say it now. This should have been born Mission Impossible. There should have been six of these. It really makes me mad. I've felt this way for 30 years.

• 14:42Speaker 07

  And it wasn't ostensibly because it was a hit, but not like a mega hit. And then Kilmer was probably difficult. And then what is the other reason sitting there? I don't see it.

• 14:52Bill Simmons?

  Impossible.

• 14:53Speaker 07

  So Mission Impossible comes out in 96 and they, why not go head to head with that? They can't do it? Mavericks got too much for Iceman? Is that, that's the reason?

• 15:01Bill Simmons?

  So I think, I think there's other reasons. They didn't really hit the full potential of what this could have been. Partly because Mission Impossible had already happened. Now there's this whole alternate universe where The Saint just comes out in 94 and probably shifts what Mission Impossible is.

• 15:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 15:16Bill Simmons?

  But I think the reverse happened, but if you just look at it. Great name. I know what it is. The Saint.

• 15:21Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 15:22Bill Simmons?

  Repeatable action movie gimmick. Guy who's like, kind of a spy, but he's a thief and he disguises ours gimmick. Great lead actor. I want to spend more time with Val, just like Damon starts born. Okay, great. More Damon.

• 15:35Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 15:36Bill Simmons?

  We have a superhero origin story. Within the orphanage.

• 15:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, we sure do.

• 15:41Bill Simmons?

  And the girl falls to her death and it's like, oh shit. We're on location. There's action. There's villains.

• 15:48Speaker 07

  Mm hmm.

• 15:49Bill Simmons?

  What else do I need?

• 15:50Speaker 07

  I know.

• 15:51Bill Simmons?

  We should have had five of these.

• 15:52Speaker 07

  I know.

• 15:54Bill Simmons?

  The Saint, Budapest. The Saint, Argentina. Like, what the fuck are we doing?

• 15:59Speaker 07

  Yes, let's go. It's like Real Housewives, just move them all over. The coolest thing that the Saint does is the costumes, right? Like, the problem is, is though, is that Mission Impossible almost does the exact same thing with the masks, almost kind of in a cooler way.

• 16:11Bill Simmons?

  Kind of better, yeah.

• 16:13Speaker 07

  It's like they take their best club and hit it better. You know what I mean?

• 16:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 07

  And it's just, Cruz is a little more compelling than Kilmer when he's just being the agents. And so, I hear you on that. Like, it's Mission Impossible's superior product. And then, the Saint would have to market correct it a year later and he didn't have that kind of firepower.

• 16:29Bill Simmons?

  It's an all-time market correction. And the irony of it is you have Maverick fucking beating the Iceman yet again.

• 16:38Bill Simmons?

  He just, Maverick just, just outthought him one more time. Same thing. No difference than Kaczynski flying in that whatever conflict we were in in 1986 and Maverick became the hero. All Kaczynski did was just kill it. Top of his class. Just, just getting wins left and right. Goes on, has a better job as we find out in Maverick. Has just way more importance in the country and Maverick still somehow wins. Same thing here.

• 17:02Speaker 07

  And it, and it cuts even worse because meanwhile, you know, Kaczynski's trying to make up for it by getting with Maverick's girl from Cocktail. And like, that doesn't do anything either. Like, there's a whole universe involved here.

• 17:11Bill Simmons?

  It's fucking bullshit. Um, I, I love this gimmick.

• 17:16Bill Simmons?

  There's a, there's a couple of other things I love, but would do, what's, we gotta do the disguises now. It can't wait for the categories.

• 17:22Speaker 07

  Oh, it's so early.

• 17:23Bill Simmons?

  Everything written down. I know that.

• 17:25Speaker 07

  You guys want some coffee or something?

• 17:27Bill Simmons?

  Go, go do your thing. Do your thing with the disguises.

• 17:30Speaker 07

  They're the best. And it's, you said like, it's a great hang movie or airplane movie. Cause the lead character changes every 10 minutes and you get a different cool voice from Kilmer and he just gets to cook. So I did a top five. I got the top five, my top five characters in this. All right. And I'll start with number five. Number five is, uh, at the end of the embassy, it's southern accent, goatee guy.

• 17:50Bill Simmons?

  Little tombstone in there. Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 07

  He's number five because he sounds like Doc Holliday. And it's like, oh shit, he's doing doc and he has the up to get into the file himself. Number four, uh, Spanish guy on plane who's swinging the medallion, the seductress.

• 18:05Bill Simmons?

  Little Jim Morrison, like, once again dips into past roles. It's a little Jim Morrison-ish.

• 18:10Speaker 07

  He's got a little bit of the lizard king. His hair almost looks like Ron Perlman in Beauty and the Beast. He's got, all right, number three, um, I got the, uh, the, oh, the grumpy, uh, cold fuse and mumbo jumbo. You don't believe in this type of stuff. I like him. He's like a cross between Ernie McCracken and Joseph Lieberman. Like he's, he's just all over the place. That's my three.

• 18:31Bill Simmons?

  Teeth, right?

• 18:33Speaker 07

  Terrible teeth.

• 18:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:34Speaker 07

  Terrible comb over and he hits on the young girl. Two, I got, uh, German lipstick guy. It's so early. Do you want some coffee or something? Love in the train terminal with the lipstick and everything.

• 18:45Bill Simmons?

  That's the one I wrote. It's, his name's Bruno, right?

• 18:48Speaker 07

  I can't remember their names. Is it named Bruno?

• 18:50Bill Simmons?

  I wrote that he looks like a Danish hairdresser or the fifth BG or both.

• 18:55Speaker 07

  Yes. He has the hair like the guy from Firehouse. Like it's, yeah. And then number one, I got, I got the artist Thomas with the wine and the sculpting and the, like, I think that's the best part of the movie. That's my guy. You?

• 19:07Bill Simmons?

  I had all those written down. I don't want to sleep on first time we see him. He's the gimp from Pulp Fiction. Climbing the building. We're in the same, the same outfit.

• 19:17Speaker 07

  Verbal kin.

• 19:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, he's got that. I also enjoyed, uh, Russian maid lady.

• 19:24Speaker 07

  Sure. Quick cameo in the background with a mop.

• 19:26Bill Simmons?

  I honestly could have spent another 40 seconds with Russian maid lady with him. And then, um, Ivan Tretiak lookalike guy.

• 19:36Speaker 07

  He's cosplaying Ivan Tretiak right through his face. It's great.

• 19:39Bill Simmons?

  I like that. I mean, so in the, in the research, they, they openly say this because this was what he was all excited about. They didn't want him to do as many disguises because they felt like it was stepping on Mission Impossible. It was like, you motherfuckers, you were developing this before Mission Impossible. But Kilmer was like more and more and more disguises. And they were like, no, no, last year, you're on the corner. I feel like every scene, he could have been somebody different.

• 20:03Speaker 07

  I'm actually, listen, I, I actually don't like the scenes when he's not somebody like that's we're gonna, the weak link of this movie, Bill, like, when he's not in disguise, he's not that great. Like it's, it's kind of a little bit boring when he's just Val Kilmer. You're like, get back to the disguise, even the Australian guy is like, eh, guns make me nervous. Like I, I like it all. I don't want him out of a costume ever.

• 20:21Bill Simmons?

  So Roger Ebert, I won't step on his review later, but he, he wrote, I've been trying to put my finger on the movie's key problem. And I think it may be that Kilmer plays the saint too realistically. If you take a step back and really think about James Bond, you'll realize that he is mad. So is Batman. So is the Phantom. They live in fantasy worlds of their own creation and bring a certain style of their delusions. The saint still harbors ordinary human emotions and that will not do. But that was interesting. He's, Val Kilmer almost plays it too straight. And yet I think that's why this movie is such a good hang because I don't feel like, you know, I, I'm never like, I, I never have to like be too involved in fucking character arc, any of that shit.

• 21:03Bill Simmons?

  Get one flashback to the girl falling her death in the orphanage. Other than that, he's just having fun stealing money from people.

• 21:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, he's driving his car around. He's kind of fucking around. He's leaving notes for her. But when he is, when he's just Simon, it's like, you know how you said, like, you don't really know what, what Kilmer is doing in heat? He's kind of just underplaying and brooding like that's, he's, he's not doing much as Simon. He's just letting the action handle it. And he's letting Moscow handle it because it looks really cool.

• 21:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:30Bill Simmons?

  The old TV show remake era, we have to mention really quick.

• 21:33Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 21:34Bill Simmons?

  This is a stretch of two Brady Bunch movies. The Flintstones, Addams Family, Charlie's Angels, The Fugitive, Beverly Hills, Hillbillies, The Saint, there was more. And for some reason, I feel like if you look back, even though the 90s were amazing for movies and we had all these great stars and directors in there, this is also Hollywood telling us they're starting to run out of ideas.

• 21:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's tough.

• 21:57Bill Simmons?

  They were like, The Saint, sure, let's, okay, greenlit, let's go. Sounds, and they're just doing this with basically everything that came out in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

• 22:08Speaker 07

  As a guy who was going to movies all the time, you and me as well, were you going out and being like, I gotta see John Goodman as Fred Flintstone, I'm there. I wasn't, I didn't care, I was kind of annoyed by it. I was a late teenager and like, even now, I'm like, those movies I have no desire to watch, I would never show them to my kids.

• 22:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it almost seemed like the thing that hit the hardest was the casting. Even before you came out the movie, it'd be like, so John Goodman's gonna be Fred Flintstone, I'm like, okay. And then you would go see the movie. I remember one of the weirdest ones was Lost in Space, a TV show that wasn't even like, you know, I don't, I'd never felt like that show held up. And then all of a sudden they're making it and I think like Matt LeBlanc is in it.

• 22:46Speaker 07

  Matt LeBlanc's in it, Lacey Chabert, William Hurt. They rounded up some folks.

• 22:51Bill Simmons?

  Why did we do this?

• 22:51Speaker 07

  And then amounted to nothing. We don't need, it's not like Star Trek or Star Wars. Lost in Space is kind of a reach, guys. We need that, but they're like, anything that was on TV, let's do it. They never made a Gilligan movie, but I'm surprised they didn't.

• 23:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like, I remember in the 2000s. I was really, when I finally had like just enough juice to even get a meeting with anybody and I was like, you gotta remake The White Shadow, gotta remake The White Shadow.

• 23:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:15Bill Simmons?

  And you realize like, if something hasn't really existed for 25, 30 years, why do you even have to remake it? Cause ultimately the people that are gonna carry a movie or a TV show are in their teens or their 20s and they have no history with the show. If you made, remade The White Shadow right now, nobody would fucking know what it was. You know, so like, I felt that way with The Saint. I didn't know what The Saint was. It was like, oh, Roger Moore, TV show in the 60s. It was like, great, I wasn't there, I don't know what that is.

• 23:40Speaker 07

  Well, they're not making White Shadow, but in 20 years, they're gonna be remaking White Lotus, and people are just gonna absolutely love it. It's cool. They just hang out in hotels and fuck around. Like, the shows we're watching now, in 20, 30 years, they'll be something.

• 23:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, The Saint apparently inspired 14 movies. This was the initial thing which started. It was all these books in the 20s, written by Leslie Charteris. Just wrote dozens of novels, so no different than Bosch or some of these ones that exist now. And it kind of peaked with the 60s TV series, which was with Roger Moore, who then became Bond.

• 24:13Speaker 07

  Became Bond.

• 24:14Bill Simmons?

  Another piece of this movie, Our Girl, Elizabeth Shue.

• 24:18Speaker 07

  Let's go.

• 24:20Bill Simmons?

  You know, after Karate Kid and Cocktail, there's not a lot, not a lot left to do. Like, she won an Oscar, so what? Like, Oscars over here, Best Actress, fine. Other people have won Best Actress. Not everybody has gone toe to toe with Macho and Cruise in a five-year span. I don't know, when you fly that coast to the sun, Kyle, I don't know what's left for your IMDb, your career, whatever, but she wins the Oscar, and this was one of her big movies after. The Oscar was really weird with, with certain actors. Like, Adrian Brody's another one. It's actor or actress. Sometimes it's not what you think it is, and in this case, she makes The Trigger Effect, The Saint, Deconstructing Harry, and Paul Meadow are her next four movies,

• 25:05Bill Simmons?

  and the moment kind of comes and goes, but this was the memorable one.

• 25:09Speaker 07

  Well, then let me say this as we remember Kilmer. Shue has an Oscar. Val Kilmer, never nominated for an Oscar, never nominated for a Golden Globe, ever, in his life. And I've seen a lot of things this week, and I think we should, we should mention this. A lot of people are saying, "Oh, my God, Doc Holliday in Tombstone, how is he not nominated? It's an outrage. He wasn't nominated." I'm like, "Yeah, he's incredible." I went and did the rewatchables thing, Bill, and I looked at who was nominated that year for Best Supporting Actor. Holy shit.

• 25:38Bill Simmons?

  Loaded.

• 25:39Speaker 07

  All right, 1993 is Tombstone, so it'd be the 94 Oscars. Let me read you the Best Supporting Actor nominees. Leonardo DiCaprio, Gilbert Grape.

• 25:48Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 25:48Speaker 07

  Ray Fiennes, Schindler's List.

• 25:50Bill Simmons?

  Ooh.

• 25:51Speaker 07

  John Malkovich in the line of fire. Pete Postlethwaite for In the Name of the Father and the Oscar goes to Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive. I knew that was an elevated train, dude. That's a lineup.

• 26:02Bill Simmons?

  And there's other stuff from that year, too, that's even, uh, that's even worse. So he was in the 92 Oscars. Here's what we have for that one for best actor.

• 26:12Speaker 07

  Give me.

• 26:12Bill Simmons?

  Hopkins Sounds the Lambs, not gonna argue.

• 26:15Speaker 07

  No.

• 26:15Bill Simmons?

  De Niro in Cape Fear, no argument.

• 26:17Speaker 07

  Max Cady.

• 26:19Bill Simmons?

  Robin Williams in The Fisher King, pretty good. Nick Talty, Prince of Tides. Maybe, I don't know. Warren Beatty in Bugsy, but Bugsy's just infuriating. Bugsy's all over the place in the Oscars and it's like, really, Val Kilmer? He sings all of the music as Jim Morrison in The Doors, not to mention everything else. So I think that was the one for him that he got boned on personally.

• 26:42Speaker 07

  And remind me, that, that would have been before everyone started shitting on how hard difficulty was? Or maybe that's part of that.

• 26:49Bill Simmons?

  No, that's before. Because he made it through a movie with Oliver Stone, who I don't exactly think was Mr. Drummond from Back to Life.

• 26:56Speaker 07

  No, I think it worked and I, we get to the, we talked about this, but we get now up to The Saint where I remember the story about it was more than about the movie. It was about like Val Kilmer is an asshole. That was just, it was like the, the story was written about it. Sometimes this happens, especially back then before internet. Like Waterworld, it was just, is expensive and it's not that good. Like, don't even like it. Or like, we're even seeing it now with, with like with Snow White. It's terrible, it's terrible because of all these reasons. You don't even have to see the movie to know it's a disaster or at least be told that it is. The Saint had some of that going on where it's just, it's the Val Kilmer asshole project and it's not good, but it is pretty cool.

• 27:33Bill Simmons?

  And it's also a really good Elizabeth shoe movie and, um, I thought she's a really important 90, 80s, 90s person. We also have Ivan Tretiak, played by the bearded bad guy from Taken 2, all those years later. Um, still evil, younger, but just as evil. And then more importantly.

• 27:49Speaker 07

  Don't you just smile when you see that guy?

• 27:51Bill Simmons?

  I love that guy. I love him.

• 27:52Bill Simmons?

  I'm not even gonna say his name because I don't care what his name is. I just know him from The Saint, Taken 2, but he's been in 40 things.

• 27:58Speaker 07

  He's in everything. You need a Russian guy who's kind of evil, but charismatic and has a cool beard.

• 28:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 07

  Is your guy.

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  And then his son Ilya.

• 28:06Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 28:07Bill Simmons?

  Who's also really good because he has a sleazy ponytail. He's got a cocaine watch. Didn't even know those existed.

• 28:15Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:15Bill Simmons?

  But most importantly, an evil cane. When did, do we just not do props enough with action with our action movies? Like, I don't know why he's running around with the cane. He's using it. It's like, almost like you would use it if you're walking on a tight rope, crossing buildings and you need that.

• 28:32Speaker 07

  A balance beam.

• 28:32Bill Simmons?

  You need that balance thing. But the cane, I guess you can, I guess he can hurt people with it. It's made out of metal and it's never explained. He never talks about it. What is it?

• 28:42Speaker 07

  He's totally able bodied. He certainly doesn't need it to walk. It's this and this is, this is a little window dressing, a little lipstick to put on him. They even occasionally he'll do the like, like, and they'll add the sound effects when he does it. Like he's Zorro or something. And then at the end, you knew there was going to be a weapon and there's like this little sticker that comes out of the end. That guy like, let's just say we can revisit that actor when it comes to recasting. And I think they're like, we gotta give this guy some, we got the ponytail and we got the cane and the cocaine watch. Let's dress him up a little bit.

• 29:10Bill Simmons?

  At least if you're going to carry the evil cane around all movie, I need you to do some nunchuck stuff with it. Or like be able to flip it around and like be, just be a little more intimidating. He's carrying it. It's like, is this guy disabled? Is he doing this so he can get a better parking space? What are, what are his reasons?

• 29:27Speaker 07

  The ironic thing was Kilmer's last movie before this is Batman Forever, in which Jim Carrey has a cane that Carrey has talked about. He worked for months to get to do all those like the baton twirling thing. And he does it the whole movie. That's what you're looking for from the young Tretiak.

• 29:43Bill Simmons?

  You know, I haven't revisited Batman Forever in a while. It is kind of crazy how loaded that cast was. They basically, they basically 2024 NBA Dream Team, the Olympics with the cast. We have, you mentioned Tommy Lee Jones.

• 29:56Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 29:57Bill Simmons?

  And, and Carrie coming off 94, when he had the three monster movies.

• 30:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:02Bill Simmons?

  Nicole Kidman's in it, right? As she's doing. And then Chris O'Donnell was like basically.

• 30:08Speaker 07

  Big deal.

• 30:09Bill Simmons?

  Gonna be Matt Damon and then Matt Damon's like, fuck that market corrects him with Good Will Hunting. But the five of those people were pretty massive.

• 30:16Speaker 07

  No, that movie played. It's that that movie got the plane down. It's the next one that came out was the disaster with Clooney and Schwarzenegger. And that one is just unwatchable garbage.

• 30:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, Schwarzenegger is Mr. Freeze. Yeah, it's like a career ender.

• 30:28Speaker 07

  Everybody chill. And it was just, and by the way, like Kilmer has looked back and at the time they're like, you said no to a Batman movie. Nobody does that. He made the right choice. He dodged that bullet and he gave us the saint instead, which is way better than Batman and Robin.

• 30:41Bill Simmons?

  So the biggest thing from this movie.

• 30:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:44Bill Simmons?

  And the legacy after it came out, other than, I kind of like that movie.

• 30:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:49Bill Simmons?

  The music was amazing at the, at the time. It's amazing now. There was a real moment and I was a big like, I was a big, at the same time simultaneously, like hip hop rap, but also obviously grunge.

• 31:03Speaker 07

  Of course.

• 31:03Bill Simmons?

  And both of those things are exploding at the same time and I love that. And I wasn't really, the electronic scene, I was about a year late too. And I had a couple of friends that were in it and there was a couple of clubs in Boston that had it. And I was like, I don't get it. I don't get it. And this movie kind of got me into it. That we have Orbital does the theme song, which I think is in one of the better action theme songs. It's got the sneaker pimp song, Six Underground, which I think is so good. Anytime you hear that movie, it's so good.

• 31:31Speaker 07

  I love it.

• 31:32Bill Simmons?

  Daft Punk does the funk. Moby has oil one. Underworld Chemical Brothers and Fluke is in it. And then Duran Duran's in it as like the old guys trying to play this music. And there's more stuff in there, but uh, there was a specific moment. And I think this is the only movie that hit it correctly. Because by the late nineties, that moment kind of moved into something else. But um, all of them, and it's all in there and it's, I think it's a big. Drawing car for this movie. This wasn't your music. You were more Pearl Jam.

• 32:03Speaker 07

  Oh, well, I was more Pearl Jam, but listen, and this is my, what's the most 1997 thing about this movie? He's sitting around on his like shitty 1997 computer negotiating with the mafia, just blasting some smashing pumpkins in his apartment. No problem. And then he's in a chase scene with a shootout and he puts the pumpkins back on as he drives. And it's like, there was some exec bill that went to the filmmakers are like, we gotta get some pumpkins in, they're hot, just put them in. And we're like, it's a movie in Russia. It doesn't really fit. Fucking put them in. It's a cover of a car's song and they're driving a car. It makes sense. Just put in, and I, I'm bobbing my head, the year all I've got tonight.

• 32:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:45Bill Simmons?

  It was a really important CD in the mid 90s.

• 32:47Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 32:48Bill Simmons?

  It, because, you know, we didn't have Spotify back then. We didn't have Apple. We didn't have anything. And it's like you, you had to buy CDs that had as many possible songs that you might've liked as possible. And this one was great.

• 32:58Speaker 07

  So listen, if we're 90s soundtracks, if you want to put it up there, um, The Crow is up there for me. Last Action Hero.

• 33:05Bill Simmons?

  Singles.

• 33:06Speaker 07

  Judgment Night and like those, and singles, obviously, like singles is probably the number one, but those are the ones you had to have.

• 33:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Above the Rim, I'd throw in too. Directed by Philip Noyce, who did Dead Calm, a really good movie with Nicole Kidman that made her not a star, but put her on the radar for everybody. Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger.

• 33:25Speaker 07

  Hell, yeah.

• 33:25Bill Simmons?

  The Saint and Sliver. With, with Sharon Stone. So he was busy in the 90s, but I have some thoughts.

• 33:33Speaker 07

  Basic Instincts, also known as Sliver. Tough one.

• 33:36Bill Simmons?

  I have some thoughts on him for later. Let's take a break and then I want to tackle the plot really quick.

• 33:41Speaker 07

  Let's go.

• 33:59Speaker 06

  It's me, the.

• 34:02Speaker 06

  We don't need the jingle twice. Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights and rental cars.

• 34:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.

• 34:20Speaker 06

  Fine. No one deals more deals than. Please stop. Touche. Priceline.

• 34:27Bill Simmons?

  All right. So I watched this movie with my wife.

• 34:30Speaker 07

  Oh, good.

• 34:30Bill Simmons?

  Who really likes it. She loves Val Kilmer. We've watched this movie a couple of times. I think we might even been dating when it was on pay-per-view or we or maybe was on HBO, but I I would I was always into it and she was she just likes Val Kilmer. So we're watching it and I look over and she's smiling and I was like, you like this movie? And she's like, I really like it. I don't know what it's about and I don't really care. And I was like, that's perfect. You should have been on the movie poster. I'm gonna try to explain what it's about.

• 34:59Speaker 07

  All right, go.

• 35:00Bill Simmons?

  Just for the people who've watched this and kind of sort of understood. So we see Simon when he's dressed like the gimp. He steals a microchip from a Russian oil company. He's caught by Tretiyak, by his son, Ilya. All right, who's Tretiyak? He is an oil billionaire.

• 35:20Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 35:21Bill Simmons?

  And this plot, which is really hard to figure out because they don't have like somebody actually explaining it to you. He's withholding energy from the Russians and they're like having the worst summer ever because he's trying to make the president look bad because he wants to overthrow the president.

• 35:36Speaker 07

  And people are freezing to death because they can't heat their homes.

• 35:39Bill Simmons?

  Yes. So he gets this microchip and then Tretiyak and his son hire him. Instead of just killing him, which I guess is a nitpick, they could have just murdered him. But instead they're like, no, we're gonna use him. He's gonna try to get this cold fusion thing from us and then we'll be able to use it. And then he's gonna kill Simon. So Simon figures this out. He learns that this guy, instead of selling the cold fusion formula, he's gonna sell a fake formula to the president. The president's gonna have this rally and he's gonna show how the cold fusion works. Then it's not gonna work.

• 36:18Speaker 07

  Right.

• 36:18Bill Simmons?

  And the Russian people are gonna go, what the fuck? I thought you said we had cold fusion. We've got to overthrow you. And now Tretiak is gonna take over. What he doesn't realize is the saint has 12 hours and he, he gets the real formula in. So when the president shows them how cold fusion is gonna work.

• 36:36Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 36:37Bill Simmons?

  It works. And then Tretiak, who's been saying it's not gonna work. He basically becomes the Nico Harrison of this whole thing. And he's like, you traded Luka Doncic? We fire Nico. Fire Nico. He's the fire Nico. And his career's over. And that's how the saint wins. That's what happens in this movie. I watched it 15 times before I understood it.

• 37:00Speaker 07

  Same with me. I think you just said some things that explained it to me.

• 37:03Bill Simmons?

  He might not have even still understood.

• 37:05Speaker 07

  I'm supposed to pretend I know what you're talking about and I'm not. And I'm like, oh, that's what happened? But you know, it's, it's the same thing. The same reaction to Mission Impossible the year before was no one understood what the fuck the plot is. And, and why is this guy alive now? And he wasn't, and it was very, very hard to follow. And in the meantime, in this movie, it's like, what is this cold fusion? What is, I had no idea what that is and what that means, especially me seeing it at 17. And I know the girl who was on the soccer team with Daniel LaRusso invented it. So it's very confusing and I don't know where we're going. But thank you for explaining it to me. Nevermind the people, I'd never gotten it.

• 37:39Bill Simmons?

  So it actually on paper, sounds great. I don't know if they executed that. I don't think if they executed the narrative, as well as maybe they could have. And if you're gonna nitpick, maybe one or two more set pieces. Like that, you know, one of the best scenes that we'll get to is when they're running along the river and he has to go in the water.

• 37:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 37:59Bill Simmons?

  It's like two scenes short of stuff like that.

• 38:04Bill Simmons?

  But this is what makes me so mad, why we didn't have the Saint Two, because I think the Saint Two almost would have been like John Wick one versus John Wick two, where John Wick two, they're like, we've learned, John Wick one worked, some stuff didn't work, let's fix it for John Wick two and it'll be incredible. And I think the Saint Two would have been incredible. I really do. It's like a huge missed opportunity.

• 38:22Speaker 07

  It would have been a, anything you can do, I can do better with Mission Impossible. It would have been a Cold War, because they would try to one up each other every time. And, you know, Mission Impossible, Cruz is hanging from the wires above the floor. Like, it was really cool. Saint Two would have been there.

• 38:37Bill Simmons?

  Also, owned by the same studio, and there's this alternate universe where the Saint and Mission Impossible kind of crossover in a movie and we get Maverick versus Ice again. Maybe they're trying to do the same thing. Yeah, why not? Hey, this movie had a $90 million budget and made 169 million, so it wasn't a failure. That's another thing. Like, this movie made money. Why, what the fuck? What are we doing?

• 38:58Speaker 07

  I'm just mad that they didn't have the crossover and that Ethan Hunt and Simon Templar didn't have like a shower scene in their towels where they're just nipping out and looking at each other and telling them, you're everyone's problem. Like, that's the scene we need.

• 39:10Bill Simmons?

  Rick Brassovich is there for no reason at all. Goose is there. Roger Ebert, two stars. He called it a James Bond wannabe, which is an irony since James Bond in a way is a Saint clone. Says the fight scenes go on too long and are not interesting. The villains aren't single minded enough. What does work is the chemistry between Kilmer and Shu, who seems to have a certain charm. There's a Siskel and Ebert TV review of this, and Siskel goes, Siskel hated it. He goes, I think the disguises are a big mistake. I think it becomes the nutty saint, if you will. And my response to that, instead of fuck you Rog is fuck you Gene.

• 39:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:50Bill Simmons?

  Nobody asked you. Yeah. Sorry to like disguises and, and locations and action. Fuck you.

• 39:56Speaker 07

  And I like the nutty saint. Did you not like the nutty professor? Because it was hilarious. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 39:59Bill Simmons?

  If I had, the nutty saint sounds great. I would watch that right now.

• 40:04Speaker 07

  Missed thirty.

• 40:05Bill Simmons?

  Most rewatchable scene. So our choices are Moscow Microchip Heist, which is the Gump from Pulp Fiction disguise, but then bushy mustache, English accent disguise, where he's basically like a hockey coach. Looks like he's like coaching the Buffalo Sabres in 1996, kind of, kind of a look.

• 40:29Bill Simmons?

  But he's, this is where we find out Tretiak Gas and Oil Industries, you know, we're in good shape there. We get the Russian National Anthem. I know that's always

• 40:38Speaker 07

  Always brings it to your feet.

• 40:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you think of Nikolai Volkov, you

• 40:41Speaker 07

  Red October.

• 40:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Red October. And we get the jump off the roof into the pit.

• 40:47Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  Which these movies will do, it's just the truck is lined up down, you know, and that there's just enough padding that you can fall 16 stories and it's fine. I don't know if it works this way in real life, but I'm not going to question it.

• 41:00Speaker 07

  How about the flex on Simon as he's falling down? He removes his mustache as he's falling. I don't know if that's totally necessary, but he lands on him where it looks like an inflatable truck. And then every time he fucks over the Russians guys, you get that

• 41:17Speaker 07

  It's pretty badass.

• 41:18Bill Simmons?

  When he takes off his mustache, you think like it's going to turn into a parachute. And it's like, no, he's just, it's just, he's just fucking with him. Uh, next one, Longhair Val, your favorite character. What's this guy's name? Thomas Moore?

• 41:32Speaker 07

  Thomas Moore, the artist who is like, he does the South African accent, which is very difficult to do. You saw the, uh, Damon pulled it off in the soccer movie. And then Kilmer learned it on set and Ghost in the Darkness. And he showed up, it's very difficult to do. And he, the way, and the whole, I mean, we're gonna, I have a lot to say about this scene from start to finish with shoe and the painting and the sculpture and the wine. It's fantastic. It's, it's why you watch this movie.

• 42:00Bill Simmons?

  So he seduces her at dinner?

• 42:02Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 42:03Bill Simmons?

  There's an uneaten entire plate of spaghetti and meatballs next to, in front of shoe for the first part of this. I don't know if, I don't know if my hot cold fusion scientist was really a spaghetti and meatballs person. I don't know, I'll allow it, I guess, but she never touches it. And then, uh, it all leads to seduction, seduction, seduction, abrupt departure.

• 42:25Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 42:25Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna go smash a wine bottle against the wall for no reason. I'm gonna blade like I'm Bruno Se Martino in Shea Stadium in 1978. Just bleeding, um, bleeding, and that's just too much for her. She has to have sex with him.

• 42:38Speaker 07

  It's full Bret Hart, Stone Cold, razor, cut yourself. And when he falls, there's that awesome moment where before he cuts himself, he goes, What are you doing? And then he just does it and he's like, I was weeping and I was thinking of you. She just paused for it. I have this unanswer, unanswerable questions, but it, first of all, cause this comes after the badass move with the wine where he's like, sir, that's 400, duh, duh, duh, duh. Which no waiter ever does. And he goes, let's take two of them, you count it. If you did that entire sequence to a woman, like, would that work in 2025? Like, would it just go disastrously? I don't know. If you're bleeding and cutting yourself, probably not, right?

• 43:19Bill Simmons?

  I think it only works in Phantom Thread, the Paul Thomas Anderson movie with Daniel Day-Lewis. It's the only other time that works. Yeah. It's, there's some sort of, you're preying on, on a, a woman who's very professionally busy.

• 43:32Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  But has no self-esteem with men, which I, I think is the way they drew this character.

• 43:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:38Bill Simmons?

  That smoking hot, but nobody's ever hit on her. Cause she's just, all she's doing is the cold fusion every day. Hasn't had time to meet anyone and this guy just hits it. By the way, I skipped over a scene with her. That's one of my favorites. Dr. Emma Russell answers cold fusion questions.

• 43:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, let's go.

• 43:55Bill Simmons?

  The raw natural power just waited to be harnessed. You could drive your car 55 million miles. It would be the end of pollution. She's going and going and I'm just like, I'm in. This, this all sounds great. At the same time, I, I, I'd still feel like, you know, Brian Flanagan.

• 44:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 44:15Bill Simmons?

  Talking about cocktails and dreams with him. I still feel like is a 10 out of 10 for her as a career apex. This is pretty good though. Her laying out cold fusion.

• 44:25Speaker 07

  This is, I guess, one of the smartest, most progressive scientists in the world. She gets up in front of students and she goes, I don't really have anything to say. Like, do you have any questions? And then they don't, of course, she's like, please. And finally, one of these students is just like, how's it work? And then she starts spouting this shit about, well, positively charged deuterons attached to the palladium cathode. It's like, is this like a 12th grade science project? Does she have a diorama? It's the most unsophisticated shit ever. And Val just sits back and he's just got hard eyes. He's like, I'm going to give away my entire style of living for this girl. I love her. And I guess still Bill Simmons did too.

• 45:02Bill Simmons?

  You know, I thought it worked. I, I think, well, here's the thing. I think they were, they were, they probably look at it like, all right, this lady's specialty is nuclear cold fusion.

• 45:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 45:15Bill Simmons?

  These people probably aren't the greatest hangs. So, and how do we, how do we excuse the fact that she's also beautiful?

• 45:23Speaker 07

  Right.

• 45:24Bill Simmons?

  And fun to hang out with. So what's going to be her vice? I'd be like, oh, I can see why she hasn't found anyone. I just think they made her like, try to be super insecure.

• 45:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 45:32Bill Simmons?

  She's doing the thing, right? And I guess, I guess on the positive side, mission accomplished. Cause she looks like she's a 13 year old giving a seventh grade project.

• 45:44Speaker 07

  This is my book report on, are you there, God? It's me, Margaret. Like, what, what are you doing? There's no gravitas at all. But like, listen, I know we're jumping around. One of the key character moments for her is when they're about to do it and she goes into the bathroom and she's like, this is really happening. This is really, I'm like, are you a fucking virgin? Like, what is this? Why do I feel like you're 16? The homecoming dance. This is so weird. You're like in your 30s, I think.

• 46:09Bill Simmons?

  She's like, you guys, this is about cold fusion, but Judy Blume's one of my favorite authors.

• 46:15Speaker 07

  What are we doing?

• 46:17Bill Simmons?

  All right. Couple more rewatchable scenes. The mouse race club.

• 46:20Speaker 07

  Let's go.

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  Anytime there's evil Russians, you know, there's going to be a fun club. And you know, they're all going to be hanging around a table with their arms around hot Russian women. And there's going to be some sort of weird gambling event. And in this case, it was a mouse race. And I gotta say, I was kinda in. Like, I know ESPN's trying to come up with counter programming, like.

• 46:37Speaker 07

  Fuck. Yeah.

• 46:38Bill Simmons?

  Pickleball. And, uh, what's that one? Cornhole? Mouse races, I was really intrigued by.

• 46:45Speaker 07

  Bad news for ESPN though. Uh, Dana White's already adding it to his slap fight repertoire. We're gonna race rats.

• 46:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 07

  Listen, I, I had this, I had this for, for, um, Benihana. This is a movie that features Red Square in Moscow. And I'm still like, I don't know, the Russian mafia rat race prostitute coke den is pretty badass. Bill, they have a fucking mariachi band inexplicably there. I don't know why.

• 47:09Bill Simmons?

  It's great.

• 47:09Speaker 07

  That place is wild. I want to party there.

• 47:11Bill Simmons?

  I love this scene. And then we have Simon dressed up like Cheddyak going, you know what the hardest part of being you is? Pretending to be bad in bed. It's like, oh, whoa. Um, next one is Emma confronting Simon after he's escaped.

• 47:26Bill Simmons?

  And she somehow uh figures out right away where he is, which we'll get to in picking nits, but uh she says, I would have given them to you if you asked, being in the cold fusion. Um, I like calling it cold fusion. I don't even know if I'm right. Is that what it's called?

• 47:41Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 47:41Bill Simmons?

  It's cold fusion, right?

• 47:42Speaker 07

  Cold fusion. Yeah, exactly. That's like the whole thing.

• 47:45Bill Simmons?

  Why doesn't Starbucks use cold fusion ice, ice instead of doing the cold brew? Why don't they add like a cold fusion? It is because it doesn't, they couldn't even, doesn't even necessarily exist or be the right thing.

• 47:57Speaker 07

  We have a cold fusion macchiato, no sugar for Bill, for Bill.

• 48:03Bill Simmons?

  With three, with a triple nonfat vanilla. It sounds like something my daughter would order. Um, okay.

• 48:11Bill Simmons?

  Here's my favorite scene. I'm just going to tell you, this is um my most rewatchable. Simon and Emma escape from Ilya and his crew, the wide shot of the river, and they're running alongside the ice on the river, which is just fucking cool. It's definitely one of those, how did they do this? How did they not fall in?

• 48:28Speaker 07

  Hell yeah.

• 48:29Bill Simmons?

  And then Val has to go in the water. I think this also gets great shock order award. Val's, I think, going to be dead in two minutes, maybe 30 seconds in that water. Um, he's looking up, he's looking up again. She pulls him out. Really good stuff. We needed like two more of these scenes in this movie.

• 48:47Speaker 07

  I remember being in the theater in this scene and people were losing their minds. They were, they could not believe that they were pulling this off. And I just had, I, I hate to have this angle on it. I'm watching it yesterday and I was like, Tom Cruise does this before he has breakfast now. It's, it's, I've seen this so many times done way bigger. At the time in 97, I was like, wow, Kilmer's holding his breath for that long. Like Tom Cruise holds his breath for an hour while he's like spelunking. It's, it's, it's just, it's, the game has changed since back then. You know what I mean? It's like now everybody's running 4-3. The linebackers run 4-3. It's different now.

• 49:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Cruise is doing this for real.

• 49:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 49:25Bill Simmons?

  And there's 17 doctors on hand because he can only be in there for three minutes and 22 seconds before his body will shut down, but Cruise wants to do it.

• 49:33Speaker 07

  Yeah. And he's 25 years older at this point. Like it's, it's, he's just outdoing everybody.

• 49:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, we also get the Emma stripping to warm him up. Great gimmick. I have hypothermia. Can you lie on me with just your bra? Warm me up?

• 49:47Speaker 07

  Can you make sure it's like a smoking hot black bra? Like make sure it's not just some like entry level thing. Like I need something sexy. So that's, that's a landmark scene for me.

• 49:56Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, escaping the water log tunnels, heading to the embassy is good. Get a good little embassy run.

• 50:02Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 50:02Bill Simmons?

  Not quite an angry run that you've patented. Um, cause, cause she's little, little sloppy. Ilya comes in for the grab, but she gets in and then, uh, then we get a little Russian roulette with Valder in that scene as well. I like when we do a gimmick that's named after the country that we're actually in. I think they get bonus points for that. And then, uh, last one I have is a cold fusion parade rally. That's the actual ending? Question mark? Sure. That's how they end this movie with a cold fusion rally.

• 50:32Speaker 07

  They do. And I, Bill, I don't know if you have this here or somewhere else, but you sent me the link of the alternate ending that they did.

• 50:38Bill Simmons?

  I have it somewhere else.

• 50:39Speaker 07

  Okay, good. Because.

• 50:40Bill Simmons?

  I'm happy to discuss it now.

• 50:41Speaker 07

  Well, discuss it because I had never seen that before and I watched it rivet it and it's, it's radically different what they did.

• 50:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So it's a big, it's on YouTube and it's in Russian for some reason. It's not an American. I don't know how it got out. Um, but it's a whole action thing where Kilmer goes in and it's like, people are getting shot and it's building, things are blowing up and, uh, Ilya dies. It's kind of seems more like a Mission Impossible movie and I have no idea why they didn't include it. The only thing I can think of is, did they decide they didn't want the saint to actually kill anyone in this movie? Cause he doesn't kill anyone in this movie.

• 51:23Speaker 07

  Yeah. I, I don't, I think that they pivoted to the bigger love story because there was reshoots and I know Shu was in a bunch of them. And after the light comes on in the red square, it turns into a Nicholas Sparks novel. And it's like they're in a cottage making love and like kissing each other in bed. They ended it with the love story and that was a choice. And they're like, let's have more shoe. And I, I saw, I watched the video. It looked like a kind of a Pierce Brosnan and Eric James Bond ending. It was fine. It was fine.

• 51:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, well, how they ended it, uh, it made somebody like my wife happy. She was just like, I really like this movie.

• 51:56Speaker 07

  I know.

• 51:57Bill Simmons?

  I like, I like it ending in the cottage. So what do you have for most rewatchable?

• 52:01Speaker 07

  I, I still like my guy, Thomas, the artist, when he's just like, uh, just a traveler searching for truth. What are you searching for? And she's like, I'm, I found it. I'm, I'm looking for you. Let's jump in the sack. That's my scene.

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 97 thing about this movie? I'll give you some options.

• 52:17Speaker 07

  Go ahead.

• 52:18Bill Simmons?

  The soundtrack we talked about.

• 52:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  A movie not realizing that Mission Possible also existed as they were making it. I think their choices are a lot different. Every scene involving the internet, like all of them.

• 52:32Bill Simmons?

  My personal winner is the Nokia 9000 communicator.

• 52:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 52:37Bill Simmons?

  Which was a cutting edge phone in 96. It was a handheld, but it was also a clamshell pocket computer. And it had a little keyboard and apps. And I did not have it because it was expensive.

• 52:50Bill Simmons?

  And I might not have known anyone that had it, and I might not have ever seen it until this movie.

• 52:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, this was still paging people 911, call me like that. This, that was, nobody had that thing. And that's why it was so cool. I do like what you said about everything about the internet. How come when they email each other in this movie, it looks like a Wheel of Fortune screen? Where there's like six words at a time. That's all you can do. And it blew our minds back then.

• 53:12Bill Simmons?

  We could have done a rewatchables month of just how they got the internet wrong with movies in the nineties and disclosure and this movie and the net. Like it's, there's a four year window.

• 53:22Speaker 07

  I know.

• 53:22Bill Simmons?

  Where they're like, the internet, we gotta work it in. And they have no idea what they're doing with any aspect of it.

• 53:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, this is up there. It's, and it's, he's constantly on the computer and they're in their car and the computer. And there's like one of those antennas that comes out of the car to get internet signal. The emailing is very strange, but.

• 53:37Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for this category?

• 53:39Speaker 07

  I, I'll go with the phone. I had smashing pumpkins earlier, but I like the phone that turns into a computer.

• 53:44Bill Simmons?

  New category, just for you.

• 53:45Speaker 07

  Oh, what do you got?

• 53:48Bill Simmons?

  The Fatal Attraction guy gets framed award for original ending that the test audiences hated so much they had to reshoot it.

• 53:57Bill Simmons?

  In the original version of this movie, Dr. Russell collapses and dies during a lecture with about a like a half hour of the movie to go. And what happens is Ilya is she's doing a lecture and Ilya comes from behind and stabs her with his evil cane. And it's got poison on it. And, um, and that's how it goes. And then the last 30 minutes is the saint just wreaking havoc on any everybody, John Wick style. And the test audiences did not like it. And they had to do two giant days of reshoots over eight days in December 96. And then another eight days in January 97 that costs 2 million bucks.

• 54:41Bill Simmons?

  As they turned it into what you just mentioned. And that's why I think that Russian ending was in there because he's getting his revenge.

• 54:49Speaker 07

  Because in the last 30 minutes, it turns into Death Wish and he just starts kicking ass. Yeah. I'd always heard that at the end of Pretty Woman that Edward was gonna die or something before he goes back and gets Vivian. And they're like, no, no, no, give us a good ending. It's the 90s. People want this type of thing.

• 55:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, we just did the Good Will Hunting one and Gus Van Zant was saying that, uh, he wanted Affleck to die in a construction accident. Right before Will went to see about a girl and they, they like wrote the scene out and they're like, this definitely doesn't work. Let's get rid of this. Yeah. Bad ideas.

• 55:20Speaker 07

  No, don't do that. Cause then we, we needed to bring shoe back for the sequel that we never got to. Sucks.

• 55:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, anyway, so that happened. And then that leads to another category that we never get to, um, give out that often. Named after Elizabeth Shoe. The Elizabeth Shoe, the Elizabeth Shoe is an Oxford Electrochemist Award for most ridiculous casting. Emma Russell, she's hot. She has a heart problem.

• 55:44Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 55:44Bill Simmons?

  And she's making big strides in cold fusion. Um, I, I wrote down, I love when hot, single woman with unbelievable jobs can't resist the movie hero who's obviously horrible for them.

• 55:56Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 55:56Bill Simmons?

  It's, it works every time I'm always in.

• 55:59Speaker 07

  It's a great, great little thing that happens and you and I, we've been on this a lot lately because you and I in CR, we did Nicole Kidman in Days of Thunder as the brain surgeon. We obviously had Roadhouse and Kelly Lynch is like the 10, she's the local surgeon to stapling up guys from the Double Deuce in Jasper. And it's, it's the Kelly Lynch scale, not to say that incredibly beautiful women couldn't have positions like this, but the, it's a very small percentage. I also don't think the male neurosurgeon is going to be like a Legends of the Fall Brad Pitt. Like that's not going to happen either. You're not going to look like that.

• 56:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, there was the Peacemaker had one of these too. I think Nicole Kidman might've been in two movies where she had crazy jobs.

• 56:39Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 56:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:40Speaker 07

  And she and Clooney both together, just sultry on the screen, but they're trying to disable nukes in the middle of New York City.

• 56:46Bill Simmons?

  I love it. It's so rare that we get to give out the award for the actual movie we're doing. We're going to take one more break and then we'll do what's age the best.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  Make them remember you.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  The Hunger Games Sunrise on the Weeping, November 20th, rated PG 13.

• 57:08Bill Simmons?

  All right. What's age the best? I'll start us off with crazy, wild, wild west, 1990s Russia. And then, uh, post USSR Russian villains. Hollywood's just trying to feel its way out here in the mid 90s and they eventually settle on, let's get a guy who looks like the taken, the eventual taken two bad guy, big beard, kind of handsome, charismatic, and he's going to have an evil son with a cane. Let's go.

• 57:33Speaker 07

  Um, I love it. The second I see that guy, whatever, where his name is, we'll get to it later. He makes me happy. He's, he also shows up in Eyes Wide Shut with Tom Cruise. He runs the costume store.

• 57:42Bill Simmons?

  Great call.

• 57:42Speaker 07

  He's the guy who always runs it. Um, I have one, I always like when there's any kind of laser force field you have to navigate to get through to steal something very securely.

• 57:52Bill Simmons?

  The red lights and you're like, oh my God, how did he do that? So many red lines.

• 57:56Speaker 07

  And he has that cool suit that puts his like this, his body temperature to the like, that shit always works. I also like when someone says, kill him, but bring her back alive. That sets up a great dynamic and there's always a follow-up line where someone's like, he's set alive, you idiots, watch where you're shooting. That always happens. It's so fun.

• 58:15Bill Simmons?

  I do love that too. Uh, using Catholic saints as aliases?

• 58:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 58:20Bill Simmons?

  Great work. They have a Ku Klux Klan Knights?

• 58:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, what was that?

• 58:25Bill Simmons?

  Moment out of nowhere? It's so weird. I kinda like it. It's like they were like, hey, are these guys evil enough? Well, can, when we do the reshoots, can you just do a quick scene? Just work the Ku Klux Klan in there. Why? Just do it. Don't ask. Just put it in.

• 58:40Speaker 07

  Uh, I rewound. I was like, what is that a Klan poster? What is that doing here? No idea. Not, not a clue, but I guess that's just make them evil or something. Don't know.

• 58:51Bill Simmons?

  I have watching someone put on cool disguises. I just enjoy.

• 58:56Bill Simmons?

  Russian bad guy cruise. Love it. Opening credits produced by Robert Evans.

• 59:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, baby. Here we go.

• 59:03Bill Simmons?

  Elizabeth Shoe, she had the kind of lips that wouldn't quit.

• 59:09Bill Simmons?

  Apparently he was trying to develop this for years. And when they finally ended up making it, he wasn't involved at all. They paid him off to go away, but he got to keep his credit.

• 59:16Speaker 07

  Oh, well.

• 59:17Bill Simmons?

  Bob Evans. Bad guys with a prop we mentioned. Um, cold fusion. Just, I, I think it had a moment, which we'll get to later. And then, uh, runs to an embassy. I think is my favorite with Sage the Best. When the embassy is right there and it's like, uh, 75 yards, just somebody sprinting to the embassy. Like what other aspects of life are like that where? You have 75 yards to get there. If you don't get there, you're basically getting killed, but not really. You're just getting captured.

• 59:46Speaker 07

  I had this under unanswerable. Bill, is this the way it works? If I'm in some place with conflict, can I just sprint to the US embassy and start screaming? I'm an American. I'm an American. And then it becomes this game of Red Rover and you have to like run through them. Do they, cause if I'm screaming, I'm an American, I feel like they would gun me down or something. That's alarming. I can't work that way. Right?

• 1:00:06Bill Simmons?

  I'm an American just seems to work. It just seems to be the secret, the secret key to getting into the embassy.

• 1:00:12Speaker 07

  Do they know you're American? Like you have a Springsteen t-shirt on or something like, how do they know?

• 1:00:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Why couldn't a Russian pretend they were American and get into the embassy and then start killing everyone?

• 1:00:20Speaker 07

  Cause you know they're Russians. They can't hide that shit. You know? Like there's not a chance. They're, they're trained to spot those guys.

• 1:00:27Bill Simmons?

  Any more of what's edge of best? Cause I want to get to the big Kahuna burger award for best use of food and drink.

• 1:00:31Speaker 07

  No, do it, do it. I, we covered it.

• 1:00:34Bill Simmons?

  Simon breaking the wine bottle and then blading San Martino style. That would be my pick, but I do want to shout out the uneaten spaghetti and meatballs in Russia. Why is that your order in Russia?

• 1:00:47Speaker 07

  Is that in Russia or is it in England? I lose track.

• 1:00:49Bill Simmons?

  Or England, wherever, wherever she was, it was not a spaghetti and meatballs area. Or she was in England, I guess.

• 1:00:55Speaker 07

  I think Dr. Emma eats her feelings a little bit. She's, she's very lonely and she goes to that restaurant. It's right down the block from her apartment. That's like, she's like, oh, Emma, you want the regular spaghetti meatballs again? Yes, please.

• 1:01:06Bill Simmons?

  Isn't it like shepherd's pie or something or?

• 1:01:08Speaker 07

  Fish and chips?

• 1:01:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, fish and like you're in England.

• 1:01:12Speaker 07

  By the way, I know you're a kind of wine guy adjacent like I am.

• 1:01:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Speaker 07

  It's the Latour 1957 and apparently all the wine snobs online, did you see this? They, they say that it stops being, it was last drinkable in the mid eighties. So him ordering it in 1996 is like you're a decade late. So they're odd on this movie, loses all credibility. I don't give a shit about it, but.

• 1:01:33Bill Simmons?

  You know, that's the kind of thing my mom would have picked up. I should probably should have made her watch it. So that's my bad. We should have had that earlier. The Den of Thieves Benihana where it's seen stealing the location. I still think it's that river unless you have somewhere else.

• 1:01:45Speaker 07

  No, unless it's the, the, the rat race coke den with the prostitutes and mariachi band.

• 1:01:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh, good one. Yeah, one of those two.

• 1:01:51Speaker 07

  Lot of great scenes in this movie.

• 1:01:53Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi Pursuit Happiness Award for Best Needle Drop. It's either the pumpkin song or Sneaker Pimps, Six Underground. I like how they weave in the sneaker pimps. So I'd probably personally vote.

• 1:02:04Speaker 07

  It's a little more subtle than, than, than Kilmer blasting on his Bose speakers in his Volvo with the pumpkins. So Sneaker Pimps is cool. Six Underground, Take Me Down, it's awesome. Great song.

• 1:02:14Bill Simmons?

  The funny thing about him, yeah, totally. Him, him blasting pumpkins. Billy Corgan and Val Kilmer together probably would have lasted about four minutes before one of them offended the other. Two of the all time, uh, be careful around those guys, guys.

• 1:02:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, I wouldn't go there and it's, it's not even like a cool pumpkin song, like something out of Gis or Disarm.

• 1:02:37Bill Simmons?

  It's starting to turn.

• 1:02:38Speaker 07

  It's a Cars cover I never heard of since then.

• 1:02:42Bill Simmons?

  The Chess Rockwell and Brock Lenders Award for Best Character Name. I mean, Simon Tempah is pretty good, but I really enjoy Ivan Tretiak. I don't know, that guy could be, he could be a Russian mob boss. He could be the best goalie in the NHL right now. He could be the person who overthrows the government. He's like every, he could be a wrestler. What's, what can Ivan Tretiak do?

• 1:03:06Speaker 07

  I think he might be in MMA as well.

• 1:03:08Bill Simmons?

  Right. He's, he's, he's fighting Pereira next week.

• 1:03:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Bill Simmons?

  It's like, he didn't want to take the fight with Ivan Tretiak because he's a ground game guy, but he's gonna do it anyway.

• 1:03:18Speaker 07

  Tretiak, ground and pound is lethal and Joe Rogan is just talking about, in stand up, he's a little vulnerable, but you get him down.

• 1:03:23Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:03:24Speaker 07

  It could be anything. He could definitely be standing on his head, winning the Con Smythe for the Buffalo Sabres too. Like it's, that's a great, great name.

• 1:03:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Butch's girlfriend, a word. Weak link of the film. What do you got?

• 1:03:36Speaker 07

  We've hit a lot of them already. Um, it has major third act problems as we know, but I just, when he's not in costume, Simon's not great. It's, it's, he's not terribly charismatic. He's underplaying it. He's doing this puppy dog love thing. It's, I don't love when Kilmer is just being Kilmer in this movie. I like it when he's dressed up.

• 1:03:58Bill Simmons?

  Is it better if he's just doing Tom Kaczynski the whole time?

• 1:04:02Speaker 07

  The whole fucking time.

• 1:04:03Bill Simmons?

  Like arrogant, like just super arrogant spy guy with like frosted hair.

• 1:04:07Speaker 07

  Yeah. She's like, you stole my code, cold fusion. Like what's your problem? And he goes, you're everyone's problem. I don't like cold fusion because it's dangerous. It's unsafe. That's, that's what I want. The whole fucking, with aviators too.

• 1:04:18Bill Simmons?

  I agree. I had a weak link in this similar, similar area. Um, Val Kilmer, master of disguise in this movie.

• 1:04:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Bill Simmons?

  I, you can recognize him every time. There's not one disguise where you're like, that's not Simon Temple.

• 1:04:32Speaker 07

  And those British police, they're like, uh, it looks same build as our suspects.

• 1:04:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's like, no, he's definitely, there's like, there's a couple that are just basically like his hair is longer or shorter. What's age the worst? Do you need the first seven minutes in the orphanage for the, for the back setup of?

• 1:04:49Speaker 07

  If you haven't watched this movie in a while, you might've forgotten the first seven minutes in which a kid gets caned by like a priest. And then a two 10 year olds kiss and one falls to her death. I don't want to see dead kids in the first five minutes of my Val Kilmer movie. What is that?

• 1:05:02Bill Simmons?

  A dog pushes that. And it's like, okay, if you want to give them the superhero origin backstory, um,

• 1:05:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Bill Simmons?

  I just need more information then. So this girl fell to her death and this is why you became a thief?

• 1:05:14Speaker 07

  I think so. And listen, when Michael Keaton does Batman and they kill his parents, it's not the opening scene of the movie. First, he's gonna kick a little ass as Batman.

• 1:05:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Speaker 07

  Like, I don't want the dead kid to start the movie.

• 1:05:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Speaker 07

  That sucks.

• 1:05:26Bill Simmons?

  This is definitely a start the movie seven minutes in. Um, it's, it's on a bunch of places like Paramount all over the place. But I would, I would start at seven minutes in. The internet in 97, we mentioned as an age the worst.

• 1:05:39Bill Simmons?

  Philip Noyce said afterwards that he made a mistake casting Val Kilmer and that he should have chosen Russell Crowe instead. And I just wanna tell him to fuck off. He chose correctly, maybe direct a better movie. Maybe, maybe that's, this is why your career hasn't gone that great the last 28 years. Maybe look in the mirror a little bit.

• 1:05:57Speaker 07

  Well, Noyce, who sounds like a Keon Peel sketch, he is just coming off working with Harrison Ford for two straight movies. And maybe he liked that experience a little bit better. Now, listen, Bill, let's not pretend that the idea of like, a young badass, like LA confidential heir, Russell Crowe, wouldn't have killed it as the same. Let's not pretend. No, no disrespect to Val. We're here for Val, but would have been pretty cool.

• 1:06:18Bill Simmons?

  Uh, how about this? I love both.

• 1:06:21Speaker 07

  You're standing for Val. You're right.

• 1:06:23Bill Simmons?

  No, I love both.

• 1:06:24Speaker 07

  It's Val week.

• 1:06:25Bill Simmons?

  Listen, we've done proof of life on the rewatchables like that. If you wanna know how I feel about Russell Crowe, you just go there. That was what, one of the four most stunning movies we've done. I love Russell Crowe. He would have been great in this movie.

• 1:06:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Bill Simmons?

  But I also think it's an important Val movie because all the reasons we talked about at the top, it's such a weird movie like, if Russell Crowe's in it, it actually has a chance to be a better movie that's probably not as memorable.

• 1:06:52Speaker 07

  I know. It's, it's bad form to, after it's, it's not looked down great to blame Val. I mean, you tell me, is this, this is JJ Reddick not losing on the playoffs and being blaming LeBron? Like, isn't that like, it's the coach blaming the player?

• 1:07:03Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't like it. And then, uh, we mentioned this earlier, but Kilmer constantly pressing for more disguises.

• 1:07:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Bill Simmons?

  But Paramount was nudging him off because they really like that gimmick from Mission Impossible.

• 1:07:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. Hurts my feelings. Um, any other What's A Jabezca's? We'll move on.

• 1:07:20Speaker 07

  What's A is the worst.

• 1:07:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh, What's A Jabezca's?

• 1:07:22Speaker 07

  The, the stunts aren't up to par in 2025. The stuff they do in this movie, Cruz does, isn't his personal life for free. It's just, we've seen so much since then. It's, it hasn't aged great.

• 1:07:32Bill Simmons?

  Great point. Ruffo Hannah Rubinek Partridge overacting award. I could honestly couldn't find anything. I think there's been, there was some underacting.

• 1:07:40Speaker 07

  Uh, the underacting award would be interesting. The Val Kilmer is the same underacting award. It's, um, I'm a reach. Like Kilmer after he comes out of the freezing water is really going for it, but he should be going for it. He's freezing to death. I again, Elizabeth shoe, who is probably 35 years old and acts like she's never had sex before or kissed a boy in her life in her bathroom, fixing her hair and say, this is happening. This is happening. Take it easy. You've been down the, it's a little much.

• 1:08:04Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford at How to Stake Award. I already gave mine. So if you don't have one, we can move on. Or do you have one?

• 1:08:11Speaker 07

  I have a How to Stake.

• 1:08:12Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:08:14Speaker 07

  I was gonna go Val, but I just, all roads lead to shoe for me. Uh, that shoe always fits. I, I think Elizabeth shoe is the greatest movie kisser of all time. I think she's the goat. She is fucking going for it in this movie. Every time she and Val kiss, it's intense. It's kind of an open mouth. And then I had the pleasure of going down a YouTube wormhole and just go in every time she could cocktail, she and Cruz in the water and Cruz is real weird, but like, there's like full tongue and everything. It's intense as hell.

• 1:08:42Bill Simmons?

  Cruz like felt like he got a boner under the water there. They were really kind of going at it. Yeah.

• 1:08:46Speaker 07

  And if you look at her and LaRusso outside the arcade, they're like really young and it looks like it, but big time, like no little tight lip thing. I even watched Leaving Las Vegas in which she's kissing someone drinking himself to death and it's still gorgeous. I think she.

• 1:09:00Bill Simmons?

  Wow. You really did some scouting for this.

• 1:09:02Speaker 07

  Yeah. I, and it was just, just Elizabeth shoe kissing. My computer was like, wow, this stuff's light for you. This is great. I can handle this. This is PG rated. And I think she is the greatest kisser of all time. She goes for it so much in this. It's.

• 1:09:13Bill Simmons?

  I love it.

• 1:09:13Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:09:14Bill Simmons?

  Great one. Casting what ifs, we'll go through this quick. Mid eighties, Pierce Brosnan allegedly attached, didn't work out. Ninety-four, we have Robert Evans, Steve Zallian writing, Sidney Pollack directing. Ralph Fiennes offered a million dollars to be in it and passed.

• 1:09:32Speaker 07

  Oh, Schindler.

• 1:09:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And Ralph Fiennes, actually, I have it because it was in, I went and found the piece where he kind of shit on it. He said, this is in a premier magazine, nineteen ninety-four.

• 1:09:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Bill Simmons?

  He's red hot, quiz show's coming out.

• 1:09:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Bill Simmons?

  He's in demand. It's like, yeah, I turned down the saint. Quote, "We've all seen the sort of sophisticated, smooth tuxedo gent working his way from gambling tables to sports cars, to helicopters, to beautiful women in bank vaults and villains with funny voices and mustaches and mountaintops and grease or whatever," says Fiennes. "I just think it's been done. It's boring." How about this? Fuck you, Ralph Fiennes. Double fuck you in this episode. Right there, buddy.

• 1:10:15Speaker 07

  Gene Siskel and Philip Noyce. So Voldemort.

• 1:10:19Bill Simmons?

  Triple, triple crowd of fuck yous. Why are you shitting on things that I like in movies? Who, who invited you to the party?

• 1:10:26Speaker 07

  Just pass and say it wasn't for me. That's all you need to say.

• 1:10:29Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, sorry, your little fucking snooty career. You didn't want to like, you jump from a helicopter to a casino table with beautiful women and villains with the bad mustache. Sorry, buddy.

• 1:10:40Speaker 07

  You don't want to save cold fusion? That's, that's your business, but somebody else can play the role.

• 1:10:44Bill Simmons?

  What a jerk. I'm glad he didn't win the Oscar.

• 1:10:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, he didn't. He lost. Did you see Bill, like, in the recastables or the, the, did you see Schwarzenegger's name? Was that there?

• 1:10:54Bill Simmons?

  I didn't believe it. So here's, here's what I believe. So they definitely, Noyce had Mel Gibson. That was for real. And they developed it for a couple of months and Mel Gibson decided he had just spent a bunch of time away from home for Braveheart. Didn't want to do it. Passed. Hugh Grant meets with Noyce. Didn't like the director's approach. Passes.

• 1:11:14Speaker 07

  Hugh Grant.

• 1:11:15Bill Simmons?

  And then after that.

• 1:11:18Bill Simmons?

  It's like Kenneth Branagh, Schwarzenegger, um, all these, I just don't know what, I don't believe in it.

• 1:11:24Speaker 07

  You don't believe in all this cold fusion mumbo jumbo, do you?

• 1:11:27Bill Simmons?

  We gotta save the cold fusion. I just don't see it.

• 1:11:30Speaker 07

  African accent. He can't even do an American accent. He's been here 50 years.

• 1:11:34Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't see it. Val Kilmer, um, then turned down Batman and Robin, made it easy. Uh, best that guy word, take a two guy we mentioned, I've never seen Ilya again, so he's been, but, um, in the crew, face scars guy, who's been in a couple of other movies, who has the big scars on his cheeks? And I swear, I don't even know where he's from, but I swear I've seen him in other stuff and he jumped out to me.

• 1:12:00Speaker 07

  Okay, he's in a lot of stuff. That's our guy Tommy Flanagan. He's in Braveheart, he's in, um, the game, he's around and he's in, and his character in this movie, it's, it's ridiculous. Character's name is Scarface, which is so on the fucking nose. It's like, I don't even know why they called him that. But, you know, I'm, I'm sensitive now with the bad guy. Ever since Craig got all sensitive and became like a Tom Hanks. I know Tommy Flanagan's name. It's like the Bob Balaban rule. So I don't know if that counts. I know Tommy. I mean, I know his name.

• 1:12:28Bill Simmons?

  It might be Ilya because I don't know if I ever saw him again, but I would have immediately said, Ilya.

• 1:12:33Speaker 07

  You wanna know something cool about Ilya? His, his real name, his first name is Valerie, V I E L E R Y, and he goes by Val. So he was two vowels on the same fucking set chasing each other. Isn't that weird? Yeah, you don't see it.

• 1:12:47Bill Simmons?

  Dion Waiters award, Emily Mortimer plays the stewardess.

• 1:12:51Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:52Bill Simmons?

  And she's just a minute and a half in and they had been together in The Ghost in the Darkness and I think she liked Val. So this is the case of like Val Kilmer, obviously not a bad guy. Some people liked working with him. She came in and flirts with him for 90 seconds and is out. So, um, who did you have for this?

• 1:13:08Speaker 07

  I thought you were gonna say Emily Mortimer did not enjoy working with you. You know what? Fuck you, Emily Mortimer.

• 1:13:13Bill Simmons?

  No, no, she doesn't get a fuck you. We're out of fuck yous. We've already hit the three fuck yous out. Ray Fiennes with the big one out of nowhere.

• 1:13:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, Fiennes competing in this one.

• 1:13:22Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 1:13:25Bill Simmons?

  Who asked you? Beautiful woman, bank vaults, villains with funny voices and mustaches and mountain tops and grease or whatever, or whatever.

• 1:13:35Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that sounds great, you dick.

• 1:13:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, or whatever is so snooty is get out of here, get out of here.

• 1:13:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, go make your little Vatican movie, do a little big twist at the end. Good luck.

• 1:13:49Bill Simmons?

  All right, next one is the recasting couch director city. What do you have for this?

• 1:13:54Speaker 07

  I mean, we can't change the city. It's post Cold War Russia looks fucking amazing. I watched the movie, I'm like, are they really there? They are really there. It's incredible.

• 1:14:04Bill Simmons?

  So do you say you have nothing?

• 1:14:06Speaker 07

  I wouldn't change the city.

• 1:14:09Bill Simmons?

  How about actor, director? I have director. I've done Phil Norris because he can fuck off.

• 1:14:16Speaker 07

  He's in the fuck you line with Gene Siskel.

• 1:14:19Bill Simmons?

  How about young Fincher? Let's bring him in.

• 1:14:21Speaker 07

  I'm always up for Fincher.

• 1:14:23Bill Simmons?

  Don't do the game, do this instead, then do the game after.

• 1:14:26Speaker 07

  This would have been right after seven, I think.

• 1:14:29Bill Simmons?

  He's doing the game, but maybe he could have snuck out the saint before the game, like right in between.

• 1:14:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, because Kilmer and Douglas are friends from the Lion movie. Like they would pass it along, like there's a synergy there. I listen, I would take Fincher, I'll always go with the Val Kilmer, Tony Scott. Like it's sitting right there.

• 1:14:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Tony Scott, that's a great one.

• 1:14:46Speaker 07

  Val's his guy. I mean, that's like those guys are tight.

• 1:14:49Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for flex category?

• 1:14:54Speaker 07

  I have, oh, I had a couple of them. I was gonna do the porn parody, but that's too easy. It's just called the taint. And then I was gonna do, I think, I think I'm gonna do Bill, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the Dan Campbell, holy shit, they're really going for it award. And that goes to, oh my God, Elizabeth, she was actually gonna strip down and press her body against freezing Val Kilmer in the black bra. We rewound that scene so much, that was in the 90s rewind Hall of Fame. It's sexy as hell. I love that scene and it kicks it up a notch because up to that point, Elizabeth shoes, the girl with the diorama and the spaghetti. Now she's like, all right, I gotta, I gotta become a woman right now. It's awesome.

• 1:15:36Bill Simmons?

  Great one. Half Fast and Research, voice of the radio announcer at the end of the movie is Roger Moore.

• 1:15:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:15:44Bill Simmons?

  Who knows if this is true, but this was in some of the stuff written while filming the set in 97, crew, the crew was allegedly instructed to avoid making eye contact with Val Kilmer entirely. I never believed this. This, anytime I see this in the research, I automatically don't think it's true. This is why it's half-assed. I'm just trying to think of like, imagine like you're doing Good Morning Football.

• 1:16:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Bill Simmons?

  Or like, let's say you're, you're doing the, the Sunday Eisen Show.

• 1:16:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Bill Simmons?

  And they're like, hey, um, we had talked to the crew, Eisen doesn't want anyone making eye contact with him. When he, when he's coming through the hallways, you just gotta look down. Like, that's insane. No, anyone who's actually been in a set or a crew, anything like that, and the amount of people you have to pass by constantly, how do you tell them to look down when they see the star? I've never believed this.

• 1:16:35Speaker 07

  Well, you're about to believe because your instincts were just off. It's not Rich Eisen, but I'm breaking some news here. The reason Peter Schreger left Good Morning Football, he had a no eye contact rule on set.

• 1:16:44Bill Simmons?

  Oh, shit.

• 1:16:45Speaker 07

  And eventually it rubbed the crew wrong and they kind of turned against, they said it's him or me. And then so he went to ESPN where I don't know if he has the same rule there, but Peter, I'm sorry to break this, but you know, it's true as well. No eye contact with the Schreigs.

• 1:16:56Bill Simmons?

  Fuck. I'd always heard rumors about that, but.

• 1:17:00Speaker 07

  I can confirm.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  That's a bomb.

• 1:17:02Speaker 07

  Our relationship is over. I'm just gonna burn it down now. It's over. I don't care. Screw it, Peter. Sorry, bud. You got stuff on me too. Air it out. No eye contact for Peter, ESPN. You hear me, Ben? Don't do it.

• 1:17:12Bill Simmons?

  It's a great feud. Make people take sides.

• 1:17:16Speaker 07

  I thought, I thought, Bill, you're gonna show up for this pod wearing a Team Schreigs t-shirt. I'm, I'm so relieved that you didn't. I thought for sure you were.

• 1:17:22Bill Simmons?

  No, I have complicated feelings about it.

• 1:17:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:17:25Bill Simmons?

  As you know, cause it's ESPN, the alleged worldwide leader. A, a May 96 Entertainment Weekly set report cited Val as being volatile on set, missing call times and putting out a lit cigarette in a crew member's face.

• 1:17:42Bill Simmons?

  Elizabeth shoe producer Mace Newfield denied the misconduct praised his professionalism dedication and pointed out how he eventually worked seven days a week during the researches, which were three months for the movie's release. We'll never know what actually happened.

• 1:17:56Speaker 07

  He put out the cigarette on the crew member's face.

• 1:17:58Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say that I'm gonna say that reeks of bullshit.

• 1:18:02Speaker 07

  That's like Red Foot flicking the cigarette in McManus's face in Usual Suspects. Like, you don't do that. If you do that, like someone gets killed. That's you can't do that.

• 1:18:11Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take one more break and we're gonna do Apex Mountain.

• 1:18:29Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain Kilmer, no, right? It's a no.

• 1:18:34Speaker 07

  I think it's I think it's 95 when he does Batman and Heat.

• 1:18:38Bill Simmons?

  I think Batman says Apex.

• 1:18:39Speaker 07

  When he's doing this, his reputation is in the gutter and people don't want to work with him. It's it's the year before this, I think. Two years before.

• 1:18:46Bill Simmons?

  Elizabeth shoe won an Oscar, so this can't be it. Disguise movies, probably not, because Mission Impossible, Mark, I corrected it.

• 1:18:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Bill Simmons?

  Post USSR Moscow movies? I need to see a complete list.

• 1:19:02Speaker 07

  Did Bourne ever go to Moscow? I feel like he went everywhere. Yeah, probably. It's up there. It's cool.

• 1:19:08Bill Simmons?

  The electronic music scene in the 90s, I'm gonna say this is right around the apex. This was the one that really did, and especially Orbital I had, Sneaker Pimps, definitely. Yeah. Moby's really feeling it right around now. All these people. It's all happening for the whole scene.

• 1:19:24Speaker 07

  You know, you know, it's big because the the Tretiak's guys, like his goons are driving around, blasting the electronic movie in their cars while they're looking for somebody like when you when you're looking for somebody, you turn the volume down when you get there like, I can't even make it through a Trader Joe's parking lot with music on and they're like zipping around looking. It's it's cool. It's energetic.

• 1:19:46Bill Simmons?

  I have one more Apex Mountain. So if you have any, rip them off.

• 1:19:51Speaker 07

  No, no, give me what you got. I feel like you're about to crow hop into this one.

• 1:19:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is gonna hurt.

• 1:19:57Speaker 07

  What do you got? Oh, no. What do you got?

• 1:20:00Bill Simmons?

  Cold fusion. I think this was Apex Mountain, and here's why. I did some research, and here's what the research basically came with. This is where it came out.

• 1:20:13Bill Simmons?

  This is from Wikipedia.

• 1:20:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:20:15Bill Simmons?

  There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.

• 1:20:22Bill Simmons?

  It's the entire premise of this movie, including the ending. And apparently, it's just not a thing that can actually happen.

• 1:20:30Speaker 07

  So I have this, it's impossible. And because it's the opposite of hot fusion, you just do it at room temperature. I always looked at cold fusion, Bill, like people look at hoverboards, like, when are we gonna have that shit? We've been, when are the flying cars? And where is free, clean energy for the entire world? That movie's been out for 30 years or something. There's still no cold fusion. I guess it never will be.

• 1:20:52Bill Simmons?

  It's not happening.

• 1:20:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:20:55Bill Simmons?

  Cruise or Hanks? Obviously Cruise, and it kinda hurts to give this one to Cruise to begin with, because he market corrected the saint. Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:21:06Speaker 07

  I have Scorsese because part of Kilmer's story when he was young, he would make audition videos for himself. And he made an entire short movie of him as Henry Hill, that he got to Martin Scorsese because he wanted to play Henry Hill. And this is after he gave Winna Kubrick to play Joker in Full Metal Jacket and also didn't get it. I think he was like completely obsessed with Scorsese, and I would love to see him do it. We'd have to do it probably in Rome instead of Moscow, or maybe Milan or something, but I think it works.

• 1:21:33Bill Simmons?

  I think with all the reshoots and rewrites, probably moving some stuff to Rome would have been pretty easy. The Oxford Cold Fusion Specialist is just now in Rome.

• 1:21:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, we'd have to upgrade Emma's pasta and meatballs too, to something that like.

• 1:21:46Bill Simmons?

  Then the pasta meatballs make sense. Yeah, now we're doing chicken parm, and there's like some.

• 1:21:50Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:21:50Bill Simmons?

  Arancini on the side. What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?

• 1:21:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the Cold Fusion Specialist is where I landed. The guy who has 12 hours to basically make it work.

• 1:22:05Bill Simmons?

  He's wearing a Scotty G, Scotty J t-shirt that's too tight?

• 1:22:10Speaker 07

  That's the problem with this category. I anytime, I either, for some reason, I just think of Scotty J, or I think of what's our guy's name and a talented Mr. Ripley.

• 1:22:17Bill Simmons?

  Freddie.

• 1:22:18Speaker 07

  I always try to put those two guys in, and those guys are so weird. Listen, my answer to this is I want to see him play the fucking saint. I want to see him do all those parts.

• 1:22:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:22:27Speaker 07

  Let's really let Phil Seymour Hoffman cook and be the Russian guy and the artist. Like, that's the artist part. That's what I want.

• 1:22:33Bill Simmons?

  Like, picking nits.

• 1:22:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Bill Simmons?

  A cold fusion scientist is gonna tell some random handsome guy with a bad accent that she met three minutes ago, that she's figured out everything with the future of the world at stake. Just volunteering this?

• 1:22:49Speaker 07

  And she's also gonna write it on some fucking Post-it notes and put it in her bra. What are, what are we doing? It's the secret of the world. Everyone's looking for it. Why don't you just put it in a safe or a computer, anything? It doesn't make sense.

• 1:23:02Bill Simmons?

  I, I have a bunch. So what, you rip off yours and then I'll go.

• 1:23:05Speaker 07

  All right. I have a couple. Doesn't his wig come off during sex? Like, they derobe and they go at it and he's got a wig on and it doesn't even become askew or anything? It just tells me that maybe the sex was kind of tame and the vibe I'm getting from Emma might indicate that. And then I have a similar one. Right after she's lying on him for like however long to warm him up, is it possible he can get up and run away from the Russians with a massive erection? He definitely has. There's no fucking way he's running up and down the stairs like that immediately after that. It always struck me as like, God, that's so hot. I don't think he'd be able to run afterwards. I think he's fully aroused.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he probably has some weird saint thing that he can like, put something, like a little like saint tack. Just push it against and the boner goes right down.

• 1:23:50Speaker 07

  Like a reverse Viagra. So those pick nits with me, and then the only other one I have is like, she's sitting there with those British detectives or whoever they are, and she starts listing saints and she's like, isn't it obvious? It's all saints' names. Are there any? It's like, you caught that that fast? That felt like the tone Loc, this slick thing is no joke moment from Heat where like the whole movie turns on that. It's a little much.

• 1:24:14Bill Simmons?

  I had that as well. I, first of all, if he's like this amazing state of the art spy, you, you probably don't want to leave a calling card of just saints. Anybody can crack that one in five names.

• 1:24:27Bill Simmons?

  Simon recovers from hypothermia in about 12 minutes.

• 1:24:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, it really fast. That's the power of shoe, man. It's just incredible.

• 1:24:35Bill Simmons?

  Pretty sure you're in the hospital overnight and they're feeding you intravenously and trying to bring your body temperature back up. He's fine. Clothes are still wet. Doesn't matter.

• 1:24:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:24:45Bill Simmons?

  He waltzes into the Russian president's office at one point.

• 1:24:50Bill Simmons?

  And is like, I'm an American. And the guy's like, I just believed this guy right away, even though he somehow got in here. Nothing, not afraid. It's very strange. Not enough disguises that we kept, we had mentioned before. How does he keep changing this many disguises when he's on the run all the time? And where does he keep them? What, what's in that backpack?

• 1:25:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Bill Simmons?

  He's got wigs, mustaches, hair pieces. Everything is like state of the art, perfect. Just in like a knapsack?

• 1:25:20Speaker 07

  The last kiss that he has before she goes into the huge like auditorium. He shows up two minutes later in the full Ernie McCracken wig, glasses and teeth and everything in a completely different outfit.

• 1:25:30Bill Simmons?

  Just perfect. Does that in a men's room?

• 1:25:33Speaker 07

  Or like a phone booth or anything. He just gets there really quick.

• 1:25:37Bill Simmons?

  During any of their, he's in cold water at one point. And then, uh, this is my big one. So Emma has a heart condition. We've established this right away.

• 1:25:46Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  This is a big, it's the first thing we see is she's grabbing for pills. She's running around the last half of this movie like she's fucking Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

• 1:25:59Bill Simmons?

  That, those heart pills are gone. The heart condition has been solved. She's just flying around. She's, she's a Zola Budd, just sprinting.

• 1:26:08Speaker 07

  She, when she gets to the embassy, she turns into DK Metcalf running down Buddha Baker. And it's like, Jesus, Dr. Emma, you're in the wrong field. That's the real.

• 1:26:17Bill Simmons?

  Heart is fucked up. Ridiculous. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast are untouchable. We covered this. Definitely a sequel. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treddor, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell Byer Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harley Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm? What do you got?

• 1:26:39Speaker 07

  Well, it is still the NCAA tournament going on, so I would like to hear Gus Johnson calling Elizabeth Shue warming up the Saints with her body heat. And I think it would sound like this. Simon Templar, young fella, ha, ha, freezing his ass off in the Russian slums. No shot clock. Dr. Russell strips down, going tit for tit for 98.6 Hot Fusion. Yes, sir.

• 1:27:14Speaker 07

  Gus, I love you. I don't know how you do it.

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  I love it. I gotta add Gus to the main thing. You've done it now three times. We love Gus.

• 1:27:21Speaker 07

  It's the best. I love Gus. Love you, Gus.

• 1:27:23Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna do, is this movie better with Peter Schreger fake laughing to a Mike Greenberg Jets joke in mid October? But I need to workshop it. I need like another month.

• 1:27:35Speaker 07

  All right. Well, I have not seen that happening because I'd be like that guy in the reality show who's watching his girlfriend have sex with the new guy. I can't watch Peter Schreger on Get Up, honey. Yes, I can't do it. I just, so I've heard it's happened and I'm glad it's happened. I'm very happy for Peter, but we had a nine year marriage. I can't see him with his rebound relationship or his new marriage. I just can't do it, Peter. Can't do it. I love you, bud. I'll tune in eventually. I just need an adjustment period.

• 1:27:59Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be a while for me. Just one Oscar. Who gets it? So probably the theme song?

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  That like the score?

• 1:28:11Speaker 07

  Listen, I laugh out loud when he drives past the British cops at the end. He honks the horn of this fucking Volvo and it goes.

• 1:28:19Speaker 07

  Like it's Dukes of Hazzard or something. Why does he have the signature honk?

• 1:28:25Bill Simmons?

  The probably an answerable questions for me ties into the Zouattine Award for what happened the next day.

• 1:28:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:28:31Bill Simmons?

  How long are these two lasting? She's just solved, killed fusion. He's a fucking really weird guy with clear damage from an orphanage who likes to wear disguises, who doesn't seem to have any sort of loyalty to anything. And now they're just in a cottage together and it's like, hey, should we adopt a dog? Have my an Irish setter.

• 1:28:52Speaker 07

  I've always wanted to start a winery. Should we do that together? No, I don't. I don't think so. Um, I can't see them playing Scattergories like on game night. But I don't know if he's gonna leave her. Like, isn't she the one who has all the power now and all the money? He's trying to get up to 50 million and she has like the trillion dollar idea. So maybe he's trying to stay with her because he's driven by money as much as anybody.

• 1:29:11Bill Simmons?

  But she's never kissed another man before.

• 1:29:13Speaker 07

  That's a problem.

• 1:29:14Bill Simmons?

  Find out in multiple scenes. So maybe she feels indebted to him.

• 1:29:17Speaker 07

  Remember in like in Wedding Crashers when Isla Fisher tells Vince Vaughn like that was her first time? Like, I feel that that scene was missing from this movie. Like, I just want you to know, that was my first time, Thomas. What? What do you mean? Like, that was, I think, I think that was her first time.

• 1:29:33Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Unanswerables, I, we've covered everything. I don't have any other ones unless you have any.

• 1:29:38Speaker 07

  I, I just had the question, is Thomas's seduction of Emma illegal or immoral? Where like he goes, finds out everything about her, completely seduces her based on like information from breaking and entering her apartment. It's probably not, not, not ideal, but they did it in 1997 and nobody batted an eye. And then we already covered running into an embassy and saying you're American.

• 1:29:59Bill Simmons?

  So I, I actually do have one. I, I wasn't looking at my document correctly. Cold fusion saves Russia.

• 1:30:05Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:30:06Bill Simmons?

  Keeps the president in charge.

• 1:30:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:30:10Bill Simmons?

  What are the ramifications globally of a warmer Russia?

• 1:30:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's tough.

• 1:30:17Bill Simmons?

  Where are we now all these years later? Is Putin even take over?

• 1:30:21Speaker 07

  Well, he takes over.

• 1:30:22Bill Simmons?

  Where are they getting? I think he grabs it anyway. Does he hoard the cold fusion for himself? Does Russia become more of a superpower? Like, are we speaking Russian right now? Is Ivan Drago, does he win in Creed 2? It's just a lot of ram. Does Trump ever get elected? Like, we could just keep this Peter Schrager event up on Get Up. Fake laughing at a Justin Fields joke in mid-October. Like, what, what, what happens?

• 1:30:48Speaker 07

  Peter, I didn't see the joke. I'm sure it was a very funny Justin Fields joke. I'm sure you're killing it. I love you, bud. I, I don't, I don't like the idea of Russia getting like this free unlimited energy, especially since Bill. That president is a beta. Like, that president is soft as hell. Like, he does not have the clutch gene. He's sitting there in his jammies while people are kicking his ass. He's gonna be out in seconds and some dictator's gonna take over. And I don't know what the translation in Russian is for Get Up, but I think we'll be saying it right now.

• 1:31:16Bill Simmons?

  Coming up next. Can LeBron use cold fusion to play 82 games next year? We're gonna find out with Monica McNutt. Come back Prescott, win the Super Bowl. We talked to Peter Schreger and get up.

• 1:31:34Speaker 07

  Love you. Great job over there.

• 1:31:36Bill Simmons?

  These are, these jokes are all out of love. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? Obviously, the cane would be just a huge win.

• 1:31:45Speaker 07

  Bill, you love that cane.

• 1:31:46Bill Simmons?

  You're the only other person who'd be excited I had it, but

• 1:31:49Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:31:49Bill Simmons?

  I also, the original Nokia phone, I think would be pretty good.

• 1:31:54Speaker 07

  I'm gonna look on the online if I can see and get you that cane, like the end of the year gift. Mine is always, if there is a film, and we do a lot of them, where there is a boot that has a hidden knife in it, I want that fucking boot. I want the boot, whether it's from Roadhouse, whether it's from Cyborg, there's a knife in a boot that is always gonna be my piece of memorabilia.

• 1:32:11Bill Simmons?

  You know, I didn't write this down.

• 1:32:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:32:13Bill Simmons?

  And I should have, and it would have been a great, probably an answerable question, because I thought it when he did it, and then I just forgot. I must have been distracted.

• 1:32:19Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:32:20Bill Simmons?

  How do you get the blade to come out of the boot?

• 1:32:24Bill Simmons?

  Is there, is it like, do you have to tap your heel a certain way? Is it like a little button attached to it? I've never understood how the bad guys can make the thing come out.

• 1:32:35Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:32:36Bill Simmons?

  Do you have to tilt your foot to the right? Like, what do you have to do?

• 1:32:40Speaker 07

  You couldn't, because it would come out when you're just walking then. The Roadhouse guy is so white trash that his blade is just out all the time.

• 1:32:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:32:46Speaker 07

  There's no retractable. But in the, I think for, probably for Simon, he has some, something digital, like a remote in his wrist or something. But I, I don't know, you flick it out with your toe? I don't, I'd like to find boots with knives. Do they make them, like for people who are self-defense and things like that in bars? I don't know if that's an actual industry.

• 1:33:02Bill Simmons?

  His life was even better. It could, you could remove it out of the boot.

• 1:33:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, you're right. It was just stored in there. Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:33:09Bill Simmons?

  I had a lot of questions.

• 1:33:11Speaker 07

  Same.

• 1:33:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:11Speaker 07

  Same.

• 1:33:12Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Nike will start making them.

• 1:33:14Speaker 07

  Please.

• 1:33:15Bill Simmons?

  The Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson. I narrowed it down to either, if you have an idea that can save the world, don't put them in cocktail napkins in your bra, I think is a good life lesson. And then, change up your aliases.

• 1:33:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:33:28Bill Simmons?

  Don't stick with the saint gimmick. Like, if I become a spy, it's, it's, I'm not just gonna use Dream Team basketball player names. It's like, today I'm Karl Malone.

• 1:33:39Bill Simmons?

  Tomorrow, I'm Christian Leitner. Oh, we saw there's a Kevin Love on a flight to Moscow. It's like, no, I'm not, I'm not, you're not gonna be able to solve my aliases. I'm just gonna use different aliases.

• 1:33:50Speaker 07

  It kinda looks like evil spy Bill Simmons. Nope, says right here, Clyde Drexler, let him pass. That's it. All right. It's airtight.

• 1:33:57Bill Simmons?

  It's ridiculous. Hey, you're doing it that way. You kinda wanna get caught. Like, what's the upside? The upside is, you guys are so stupid. I was using saint aliases the whole time and you didn't figure it out. Like, it's like this weird arrogance.

• 1:34:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's, it's, I think you hit it right. It'd be like, if you, you just did, you know, my secret thing is I do Red Sox outfielders. They'll never find out. Like, yes, they will. There's only so many Catholic saints. There's not that many.

• 1:34:21Bill Simmons?

  I'm using Get Up Partners of Peter Schrager.

• 1:34:26Speaker 07

  Do you wanna do a rewatchables of just tomorrow's episode of Get Up? I don't know.

• 1:34:32Bill Simmons?

  We're just gonna have to have him come on and do one with us. Yeah, he's probably not allowed. Double feature choice.

• 1:34:40Bill Simmons?

  Mine's controversial, so you go first.

• 1:34:42Speaker 07

  So is mine.

• 1:34:46Speaker 07

  All right.

• 1:34:48Speaker 07

  I think it's like, I'm bringing, we're bringing it full circle about Val Kilmer. Like, once I see this and I see him play these little characters and do these voices, I'm putting on Tombstone. I just, I'm ready to play for blood. I'm Huckleberry. I'm fucking ready. I, I, Invierno Veritas, I'm gonna watch Tombstone.

• 1:35:04Bill Simmons?

  Mine is the island of Dr. Moreau.

• 1:35:07Speaker 07

  Come on.

• 1:35:08Bill Simmons?

  No, it really is.

• 1:35:09Speaker 07

  Make the case.

• 1:35:10Bill Simmons?

  I'm the only person who likes this movie. I have nobody to do it on the rewatchables with. And the only reason I like it was because it was on that pay-per-view channel and I had it on all the time and I became fascinated by it. And just the concept of this island where they were, they were basically mating humans and animals. And then these hybrid kind of creatures were on the island. But then Marlon Brandt's there and it's the end of his career. It's falling apart. He's just fat and crazy in every scene. And then Kilmer's in it with this look like, what's wrong with my career?

• 1:35:44Bill Simmons?

  I think you might need to give it one more chance.

• 1:35:47Speaker 07

  Even as someone who hasn't seen it, I know there's one part of it that you're forgetting. Isn't it the world's smallest man is in it? Like a very small human being. Is that the guy who became friends with Pedro Martinez? Is it the same guy?

• 1:35:58Bill Simmons?

  Not positive. Yeah, or it's like his brother. Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:36:02Speaker 07

  So I know he's in it, but I've never seen it. I've got to say, Bill, probably not going to be seeing that movie at some point. I don't think.

• 1:36:07Bill Simmons?

  I might have to solo that pod. I might just have to do it myself like I did with Cast Away during COVID. I might just have to do the self Dr. Moreau.

• 1:36:16Speaker 07

  It's a better play. Any free time I have, I'm trying to allocate to Jim Corder. I can't dedicate it to Dr. Moreau. I'm trying to put it all towards Jim Corder. That's for you, too.

• 1:36:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was mailing you pictures of Billy Jacoby this week, trying to get you properly excited for that. We know that's coming down the road. We're definitely doing just one of the guys this spring is happening.

• 1:36:33Speaker 07

  Dude, listen, it was locked and then Val Kilmer passed away. Like it changed the whole schedule. I was, I had takes already. I was, I was ready. We'll get there.

• 1:36:41Bill Simmons?

  It'll happen. All right. Who won the movie?

• 1:36:44Speaker 07

  Val Kilmer, Val Kilmer, the late, I hate saying this, the late, great Val Kilmer.

• 1:36:50Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 1:36:50Speaker 07

  I miss you, Val.

• 1:36:52Bill Simmons?

  Thanks for doing this on short notice. Thanks to Jesse Lopez and Craig Horlbeck for producing. And don't forget, you can always watch these on video on the Spotify platform. And you can check out The Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. So next time you're on, probably just one of the guys, something. We're going back to the eighties. We've done too many modern, we're not modern people. Let's go back to our favorite decade. Kyle Brandt, great to see you as always.

• 1:37:16Speaker 07

  Thanks, man. You too.

• 1:37:17Bill Simmons?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 1:37:36Speaker 03

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  Film for IMAX. Make them remember.

• 1:37:48Speaker 04

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