Pod Insights The Rewatchables ‘The Blues Brothers’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey About this episode The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and they’re wearing sunglasses as they rewatch the 1980 classic ‘The Blues Brothers,’ starring Jon Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
Watch this episode on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel!
Producer: Craig Horlbeck
Video Producers: Jack Sanders and Chia Hao Tat
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 19,444 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:06 Bill Simmons? All right. So when this runs, this will be SNL 50 week. This was the first SNL movie, the Blues Brothers, a movie that we've been saving for the right time. I feel like this is the right time. I love this movie. I don't know how it stands for people under 25. I know how I feel.
0:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
0:23 Bill Simmons? It's an OG. I saw it in Chicago in 1980.
0:28 Chris Ryan? Get the fuck out of here.
0:29 Bill Simmons? And we walked out and Daily Plaza was there and my head almost exploded. That is a true story.
0:34 Chris Ryan? Are you serious?
0:34 Bill Simmons? Baseball park trip with my dad. We saw Blues Brothers. And we're in that theater and we came out and I was just like. This episode is brought to by Ethos. As a parent, life insurance feels like a no brainer. It just gives me peace of mind knowing my family will be taken care of. And Ethos makes getting it fast and easy. Apply online in minutes. Get up to 3 million in coverage with no medical exam, just a few simple health questions. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/rewatch. That is E T H O S dot com slash rewatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.
1:16 Speaker 02 Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Whether it's hot yoga, over 100 degree weather, or too much sun. Gator Light, with a specialized blend of five electrolytes, was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration. Shop now at retailers nationwide. Gator Light hydrates faster than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.
1:44 Bill Simmons? I was like in The Matrix.
1:45 Chris Ryan? And then a bunch of Nazis were also there. Carrying Fisher and a missile launcher.
1:51 Sean Fennessey? How old were you?
1:52 Bill Simmons? 1980, so I was 10.
1:53 Chris Ryan? Wow.
1:54 Sean Fennessey? Whoa.
1:55 Chris Ryan? So even back then, at 10, you would already like, were you just obsessed with Balushi?
2:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah, so the Belushi thing for me, he was like my first favorite, but it started, they used to rerun the SNL's in primetime.
2:07 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
2:07 Bill Simmons? So I think it was season four and that's when I started seeing it because I wasn't allowed to stay up late. And then, um, I think somewhere around there, I started watching a little bit, but Belushi was the one. I mean, especially if you were a kid.
2:19 Sean Fennessey? In seventy-five, when they started the show, how did you become aware of it if you weren't allowed to stay up?
2:23 Bill Simmons? Didn't, didn't know about it.
2:24 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
2:25 Bill Simmons? I didn't really know about it till season three, season four.
2:27 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
2:28 Bill Simmons? And then anecdotally, just people like my parents, friends doing the wild and crazy guys and stuff like that. But you didn't, you almost didn't know what it was and it was on so late. It was like, someday I'll stay up late and I'll watch SNL. I think season four was probably when I snuck up a couple of times, but them rerunning the primetime stuff, uh, was huge, but this was, I mean, I was looking at some of the ratings numbers for this show. And it's just massive, like season four, thirteen point one rating, thirty-nine share. And it was getting twenty-five million people an episode.
2:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Yeah.
2:59 Bill Simmons? Which is like, there's no sporting event that gets that now, except the Super Bowl.
3:02 Sean Fennessey? Airing at eleven thirty.
3:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
3:04 Chris Ryan? Cause there was the Saturday Night Live part of it and then like the Belushi thing was really interesting to read about this movie and read either contemporaneous pieces or like pieces that were written just about its legacy. And just to try to wrap your head around like how big he was and what he meant to people and the practicality of his stardom, because so much of his legend is like, and then Belushi closed the bar down.
3:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
3:26 Chris Ryan? You know, which is like a kind of celebrity thing that if people are doing that now, like it's almost going to be a problem because they're going to get in so much trouble, but you know, Belushi was really, literally like he was America's guest.
3:38 Bill Simmons? Right.
3:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
3:39 Bill Simmons? One of a kind. Uh, the guy that didn't jump off the show initially because Chevy Chase did, but then when Chevy Chase leaves, then Belushi and Aykroyd kind of take over the show. And then season three was their big year and then they started dabbling around with the Blues Brothers and eventually led to them leaving. There's been great books written about SNL. And especially like this was the first test case. Chevy was the first one and then these guys of like when you outgrow the show and Hollywood comes calling, but then there's cocaine too, which became a big part of the legacy of this movie. They talk about it and everything you'd ever read about this movie was about how much cocaine was involved.
4:15 Chris Ryan? They're so candid about it.
4:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
4:17 Sean Fennessey? It's weird how much this movie is instrumental to his legacy too, because he just didn't make very many movies.
4:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
4:23 Sean Fennessey? You know, his, it ultimately, when you look back on his career, like the body of work is pretty small, in part because he died so young, but he just didn't, because he was on that show from 75 to 78, he was just on the show.
4:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah. That was one of the big problems with season four for him, the last SNL season, was he started filming 1941 at the same time. He was flying back and forth and, uh, you know, doing a ton of drugs and his, his, uh, performance started to fade. But yeah, it's, I remember seeing Neighbors in the theater that was after Blues Brothers. And it was just so disappointing. They switched roles and Aykroyd was the crazy one and Belushi was like the, the straight man. And then near the end, like his eyebrow goes up and he got, but it just, this was kind of the movie that became, this and Animal House were the two that, uh, became the Belushi movies. But that Animal House wasn't a Belushi movie. He was in it. It made him a star.
5:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
5:12 Sean Fennessey? So I think for somebody like me, when I see, I don't know, Chris Farley, Jack Black, Will Ferrell, like all of the guys who were in the lineage of what Belushi started or carved out.
5:25 Chris Ryan? Do anything for a joke.
5:26 Sean Fennessey? Yes. The like, the super physical, like very emotionally animated, but also kind of like balletic and had like theater background, you know, like that weird combination of this guy's a maniac, but he's a real artist at the same time.
5:38 Bill Simmons? And charismatic.
5:39 Sean Fennessey? Super charismatic. So when he hit, were, were people like, there's never been anything like this before?
5:46 Bill Simmons? I mean, that's as a little kid, that's certainly how I felt, but I think Hollywood felt that way too. He was such a phenomenon. I mean, well, there's so much to talk about, but he did the triple crown in 78. He had the number one movie, he had the number one album, and he was on the number one most important show at the same time, which is like never, I don't think anyone's done that again.
6:05 Chris Ryan? I, I don't think so.
6:07 Bill Simmons? People have done two and three.
6:08 Sean Fennessey? The weekend is going for it, you know, with the idol and the album and the movie coming out later this year.
6:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah. But he, between the show and then Animal House, he hit some level of stardom that just, I don't think is, you can't, you can't compare it to anything now because it can never happen. Especially when we had so few TV channels and programs and fame was just completely different back then. But I think the thing that you feel in this movie with him was, he was just so talented. Like, he's actually a really good musical performer, like, for what he is. When you feel like he's an actor, think of all the actors we've had moonlighting as singers. And this guy is like commanding, you know, they toured with Steve Martin in seventy-eight after, I think, season three. And Steve Martin was at the height of his fame, right?
6:52 Chris Ryan? He's doing like nine nights in LA.
6:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah. And the Blues Brothers are opening up for them. Like, can you imagine having, like, a ticket for that?
6:59 Sean Fennessey? That Universal Amphitheater show that they, first one that they did with Steve Martin, became that album that you're talking about.
7:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
7:05 Sean Fennessey? And sold almost four million copies in nineteen seventy-eight of just them doing The Blues Brothers review for an hour.
7:10 Bill Simmons? And then Aykroyd was kind of a freak, too, because he was smart enough. Like, he loved Belushi, defended him, stuck up for him. But was also really talented in his own right and was the perfect straight man for him. Like, they didn't really care if he got the credit. It was all about kind of platforming the two of them together, but also pushing John and...
7:28 Chris Ryan? Kind of uses him as a, like, a vehicle to get a lot of his ideas expressed, right? Because, like, a lot of the stuff that's in Blues Brothers is directly from Aykroyd and Aykroyd's interests and all the stuff, like, of, of, these are the musicians that we need to feature and the songs that need to be featured. It's, I just cannot believe this worked.
7:47 Bill Simmons? I know. I had that. That was one of the first things I wrote down. A movie that shouldn't have ever worked, probably didn't totally work, and yet became one of the great pop culture documents of this entire era. Like, you're, the people you're getting, and you're getting Belushi and Aykroyd at their peak.
8:03 Chris Ryan? Mm-hmm.
8:03 Bill Simmons? You're getting James Brown and Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin and then all these randos like John Candy and Carrie Fisher. It's like an amazing document.
8:12 Sean Fennessey? Right place, right time. I still don't, I have some theories as to why it was a success. But I don't have an, I don't think not being there takes it away. Because to me, the, the success of this movie and Belushi's power is a little bit like hearing, like, Orson Welles is the greatest dark hero of all time. Like, someone tells you that, someone tells me that when I'm twelve, and I'm like, well, that just must be true.
8:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
8:34 Sean Fennessey? You know, like, there's a kind of received wisdom about the greatness, and this is one of the only documents we have of the greatness. But then, when I think about the movies that were really popular in the seventies, and I'm like, okay, so Smoking in the Bandit. Cannonball Run, before that Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
8:50 Bill Simmons? Some of his weird Burt Reynolds movies.
8:52 Sean Fennessey? Those movies are like this movie, where it's like, cool person pops up every five minutes, you got a musical number, car chases, car crashes.
8:59 Chris Ryan? It's like a variety show.
9:00 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, and it kinda has all the pieces that you're like, yeah, this is kinda what movie going was like, and it had the two stars from one of the biggest shows of that era. So it does make sense in that way.
9:10 Bill Simmons? And an incredible amount of cocaine.
9:12 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
9:12 Chris Ryan? And that's the thing that kinda jumps out is like, everything about this movie is 1970s, but the bloat is pure 80s. Like, the, the, the excess.
9:21 Bill Simmons? It bridges the two decades. It's made in 79 and released in 80.
9:25 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
9:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Um, I don't like musicals.
9:28 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
9:29 Chris Ryan? Okay.
9:29 Bill Simmons? This is my favorite musical.
9:32 Bill Simmons? By far, I don't even know what's second. What's your favorite musical?
9:34 Sean Fennessey? Singing in the Rain. Um, I love The Wizard of Oz. I, I really love classic musicals. I am almost allergic to modern musicals.
9:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
9:41 Sean Fennessey? Um, I think that this is a cool version of a musical. I think the people who made it, what did they describe it as? Oh, as a musical in camouflage, one of the producers said, which I thought was a cool way of describing it, which is like, yeah, there's a lot of musical numbers here and the movie is basically a series of set pieces, like you said, but no one breaks out into song to explain the story.
10:02 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
10:02 Sean Fennessey? Which is something that a lot of people who don't like musicals tend to blanch at.
10:06 Bill Simmons? What's your favorite musical?
10:07 Chris Ryan? Uh, it's a little bit of a cheap, but all that jazz, the Roy Scheider movie.
10:10 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's a good one.
10:11 Chris Ryan? More about choreography than it is about music, but it has a lot of.
10:14 Sean Fennessey? Also about drugs.
10:14 Chris Ryan? Yes, and also about drugs.
10:16 Bill Simmons? Going back to the Belushi thing, cause you're asking like, what was it like? Like, what, how, how was he perceived? Cause you'd think of all the lineage of the guys, especially Farley. Farley became like the son of Belushi and just talked about him constantly and was from Chicago and, you know, was almost, in some ways seemed like he just wanted to repeat Belushi's fast life and quick death.
10:37 Bill Simmons? I, the only thing I can compare it to is like athletes. When you, like, somebody comes in and like Dr. J comes in and it's just like, whoa, you can do that? Like, I, I just don't feel like Belushi, he wasn't, he was like a complete original. And even in the first SNL, he's the first person you see. He's doing the one where he's like, I'd like to feed you fingertips to the Wolverines. But I remember this skit that I saw when I was like, who is this guy? It was the, it was the, uh, when he played the Incredible Hulk in the Superman sketch. And he blew out the bathroom. It was one of the first SNL sketches I'd ever seen. I was like, I was like, what's going on? What world is this? Could I just go into this world? But that was it. He just, he just had it. Some people just have it.
11:18 Chris Ryan? Some stars are, they're inconceivable. Like you can't really imagine being around them like Julia Roberts, like for something like that, where you're like, I would never see this person in any place that I would ever go. They exist on another plane of existence. And Belushi is like the, the Olympian of the funniest guy in every bar in America. And the fact that tragically, I guess, but he truly was like a man of the people. It's a kind of stardom that I just don't think we have that much anymore where it's this idea that people would have like, oh, I was out at one in the morning and John Belushi came in with like 15 people and they took over the jukebox
11:58 Chris Ryan? and they bought the entire, like round for the entire house. And I just, I think that that has something to do with his charm.
12:05 Bill Simmons? And they said he was like the all time, all time king of the city in Chicago. Like just kind of just moved around, probably never had a wallet.
12:13 Chris Ryan? Cop car to take him home from a bar.
12:15 Bill Simmons? Putting cocaine in his pocket.
12:16 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
12:17 Bill Simmons? I think what, when you think of how like short Belushi's career actually was, like you mentioned, he really didn't make that many movies.
12:23 Sean Fennessey? And not that many good movies.
12:25 Bill Simmons? He was only on SNL for 80 episodes, you know, but I think part of the legend and the stuff that I used to love when I was, you know, in the eighties after he died. It was like one of the first really sad deaths for me. It's like, oh, man, I fucking love, but he's dead. But a lot of the legend was all these stories and just these larger than life and people trying to save him and people trying to help him. And, you know, he was just like this comet that wasn't, wasn't going to last. It was kind of part of the point of him.
12:52 Sean Fennessey? I feel like his iconography though, is a little bit of an inaccurate representation of what kind of a performer he was though.
12:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
12:59 Sean Fennessey? Cause he's like, I'm actually a much more serious actor in almost everything that he's done. And even in this movie, this is not a Chris Farley performance. I mean, dancing, but.
13:10 Chris Ryan? It's almost more, it's, Will Ferrell's more applicable because it's the idea of playing something deadly serious. It's so absurd.
13:18 Sean Fennessey? Yes, but he's not pratfalling.
13:19 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
13:20 Sean Fennessey? You know?
13:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah. The best, he did some really good stuff on SNL, but the best one, one of the most famous sketches they ever had was that Star Trek one. When they cancel Star Trek and his Kirk. Yeah. And it's like a nine minute sketch and he's just like rating it, but he could, he could basically do anything. I, one thing that I, I always thought with him after the fact was like the, all the movies he didn't make. You know, like, cause about last night came out in eighty six, which is a movie CR and I love and Jim Belushi played the part that was supposed to be the Belushi part. There's this whole other era where he's just like randomly the, he's the rom com buddy in one movie. He's like a sports GM and another, like he just, I feel like his career could have been great. Obviously that's part of the.
14:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah. You wonder what his aspirations were. You know what I mean?
14:06 Bill Simmons? I don't know.
14:07 Chris Ryan? Like, could he, could he have played, I, he couldn't have done Raging Bull maybe, but like you could see him playing like a boxer. You could see him playing.
14:14 Bill Simmons? Like how Jamie Foxx almost did that turn when he was in Ali and all of a sudden started, I, I don't know what.
14:20 Sean Fennessey? I think you could see it even, I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen Old Boyfriends.
14:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
14:23 Sean Fennessey? You know, but like, but that Tally Shire movie, which is directed by Joan Tewksbury, written by Paul Schrader.
14:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
14:29 Sean Fennessey? And he has like a, it's a funny part, but it's a really serious part, you know, like he obviously was drawn to a kind of intense pathos in the characters while also being able to be Blutarsky. You know, like he, he could do both of those things. So I guess, I think he would do a lot of serious stuff. He's a trained theater actor.
14:46 Bill Simmons? The documentary was excellent about him. The best Belushi story was that one. They're like in the Hamptons and they're up at five thirty in the morning and they're like, the party's way over and it's just like Aykroyd and somebody else and they hear this like splashing and they look out and Belushi's just doing like cannonballs off the pool. And Aykroyd looks at whoever was with them and he's like Albanian oak.
15:08 Bill Simmons? Cause Belushi was Albanian. It's like pure Albanian oak. So you could feel some of that. Even when you watch this, like, I'm sure there are scenes when he's just zonked out. He's got sunglasses on the whole time. But when he turns it on, he turns it on.
15:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Sounds like a hard production.
15:25 Bill Simmons? Oh, I can't wait to talk about that. So the, from an SNL standpoint, this is a, these guys pop on the show twice. They're on for the, um, the fame. They, first of all, they were a warm up act. Then season three. March 78, April 22nd, Steve Martin's the host. This is still considered the best SNL of all time. And they're the musical guests and they did Hey Bartender and I don't know. And people are like, what's going on? These guys are on the cast. That led to the summer and everything after. Then they were on in November again. They did, they did for Carrie Fisher's show, they sang Soul Man. So when you look back at Belushi's 78, where he's on the biggest show,
16:09 Bill Simmons? he's opening for Steve Martin, who's the hottest standup comedian. Animal House comes out in late July, becomes a phenomenon and is going on, on magazines and stuff. Then they come back for season four and they're like, they've transcended the show. It's like, it happened to Eddie Murphy too. But then in, in December, they put out the album from the live thing and that sells out and goes platinum. And it all happens in like nine months. And I don't think, you know, he couldn't handle it.
16:36 Chris Ryan? There's a thing with SNL where obviously like, it's like, is it funny? Or, you know, like what sketches you like. But I think, and the movie Saturday Night tried to get at this. A lot of the discussion about SNL at this point has gotten at this where it's like, it's also this club you want to be a part of. And like this cool club. So the idea of these guys being like, what we really like is 60s soul and blues.
17:00 Bill Simmons? Right.
17:01 Chris Ryan? And so we would like to like form the greatest bar band of all time. And like, we'll gig around and we'll warm up before, but like, maybe you can find a spot for us here or here or here. That that actually is part of the SNL mission as much as like Weekend Update or making, like the, you, you want to see like this weird, like cool club that you want to be a part of. Like it's that idea of New York City, that idea of like,
17:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah, they build a blues bar and then all of a sudden it becomes one of the hot places in New York.
17:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
17:30 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. I think also it just underscores that Saturday Night Live at the beginning was a variety show.
17:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
17:36 Sean Fennessey? It wasn't 14 sketches consecutively. It was something a little different than that. And that something like this, which isn't, Like, there are no jokes.
17:45 Chris Ryan? It's weird because it's neither funny nor the best version of this music.
17:48 Sean Fennessey? Right. And there's something kind of entrancing about what they're doing where you're almost like waiting for it to be something other than them just singing a Sam and Dave song. But then you get to the end and you're like, that was cool. Yeah.
17:57 Bill Simmons? As a kid though, I loved when Belushi would do the somersaults.
18:01 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
18:02 Bill Simmons? I loved Aykroyd with the briefcase where they'd unlock it. I liked how he danced.
18:06 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
18:06 Bill Simmons? Just all the stuff they were doing.
18:08 Sean Fennessey? It had like bits inside of it that you were trying to figure out what they were doing and why they were doing it. But it was also really, because of Aykroyd, it was so sincere.
18:15 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
18:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
18:15 Sean Fennessey? I mean, he really like, just loves the blues and blues history, like really loves it.
18:20 Bill Simmons? That was one of the cool lessons from this whole thing. Like, these guys did it and they actually did it. Like, and part of it was because Belushi was so charismatic, but they went and got some of like the best, the best backup people in America. They took it super seriously. They really tried to like, you know, figure out their performances. It wasn't like some vanity thing.
18:39 Chris Ryan? No, Steve Proctor and Doug Dunn are in the Booker T and the M Gs. They're one of the great bands in American history.
18:44 Sean Fennessey? Hall of Fame sidemen. They're in the conversation for the best sidemen guitarist of all time.
18:48 Bill Simmons? So by the end of seventy-eight, Belushi's the most important funny person. He probably took the title from, from Steve Martin. It's probably them in the finals at that point. The other interesting part with Belushi and Aykroyd together is like, there's just not a lot of great tandems. Because I feel like if Belushi stays alive, these guys probably make fifteen movies together. Like Damon and Affleck, we saw there's a trailer for another movie with them. That looks great, rip, can't wait. But there's not a lot of tandems. You think like Laurel and Hardy a million years ago, Martin and Lewis.
19:20 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Adam and Costello. Yeah, there's a long, there's a lineage of it in American comedy before that.
19:25 Bill Simmons? Fifty years.
19:26 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
19:26 Bill Simmons? Like Farley and Spade made two movies and were in some SNL sketches.
19:29 Sean Fennessey? You know, there've been a couple of examples.
19:31 Chris Ryan? Steve Martin and Martin Short have done a bunch of stuff.
19:33 Sean Fennessey? Sort of doing, but it's not, it's not as common as it was. It was, because of Vaudeville, it was a thing that Vaudeville really pushed where you were coming out for teams. And teams had routines that you liked that they did for years together. And they're riffing on that.
19:45 Bill Simmons? Well, that's, you said that earlier about this, this is like something that belongs to the seventies in some ways. Those were a lot of the shows that I watched as a kid. Like, I loved Flip Wilson. That was one of my favorite shows. Donnie and Marie had a show, like Captain and Tenille had a show.
20:00 Sean Fennessey? All variety shows.
20:00 Bill Simmons? The Osmond, The Osmonds.
20:02 Chris Ryan? Crockett and Tubbs.
20:03 Bill Simmons? Mary Tyler Moore had a, Mary Tyler Moore had a variety show. These shows where you do sketches, but then you would also sing.
20:09 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
20:10 Bill Simmons? So they kind of made sense in that context, but this was, you know, I don't know how many SNL movies we've had since.
20:16 Sean Fennessey? I think it's eight since this.
20:18 Bill Simmons? And probably pieces of other ones or characters or.
20:21 Sean Fennessey? But like, based on characters that are in the show, I think it's nine total.
20:26 Chris Ryan? Okay.
20:26 Bill Simmons? So it opened the door for at least like, oh, they made it, they're making a Wayne's World movie. All right, I'll try it.
20:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
20:32 Bill Simmons? Um, and in this case.
20:34 Sean Fennessey? Is far and away the best Saturday Night Live movie?
20:37 Bill Simmons? I think Wayne's World's really good.
20:39 Sean Fennessey? I.
20:40 Chris Ryan? I think Wayne's World's more of a coherent movie.
20:43 Sean Fennessey? It's weird because I think this is a better movie, but Wayne's World is funnier.
20:49 Bill Simmons? How about this? Which one would you rather order as a 4K Blu-ray?
20:53 Sean Fennessey? Well, I'll take both when they issue Blues Brothers on 4K.
20:56 Chris Ryan? Update on your habit?
20:59 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, you're, you're slipping down the rabbit.
21:00 Bill Simmons? I watched this Blues Brothers movie on 4K Blu-ray.
21:04 Sean Fennessey? Did you?
21:05 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
21:05 Chris Ryan? And?
21:05 Sean Fennessey? How did it look?
21:06 Bill Simmons? Fantastic.
21:07 Sean Fennessey? Can I make a, okay, so I'm glad you brought this up.
21:09 Bill Simmons? Really good.
21:09 Sean Fennessey? Obviously, you know, I love to talk about this. I was, I watched the movie on Blu-ray. I don't own it on 4K. And then I watched the bonus material, like I always do when we do these pods. And the bonus material was all converted from VHS.
21:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
21:20 Sean Fennessey? And I was like, it looks better this way.
21:22 Bill Simmons? Interesting.
21:23 Sean Fennessey? This is a movie. Now, not all movies from the seventies and eighties are like this, but this is a movie that feels right to me.
21:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
21:31 Sean Fennessey? In VHS.
21:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
21:32 Sean Fennessey? Does that make sense?
21:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
21:34 Sean Fennessey? Like, I don't feel that way about Predator. Like, some people would say, oh, Predator is like that. I saw it on VHS.
21:37 Chris Ryan? No, but I feel that way about like Trading Places.
21:39 Sean Fennessey? Right.
21:40 Bill Simmons? There's a griminess that I think works for.
21:42 Chris Ryan? The cinema of John Landis is really appropriate.
21:45 Sean Fennessey? It is a VHS cinema for sure. That's the only time he was a true powerhouse in the industry.
21:49 Bill Simmons? Farrell and Riley?
21:51 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
21:51 Bill Simmons? I guess have been a couple, but nobody thinks of them as a tandem necessarily.
21:55 Sean Fennessey? It kind of fell out, right?
21:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
21:58 Bill Simmons? So the Chicago movie Renaissance is another piece of this CR. One of your favorite topics.
22:03 Chris Ryan? Sure.
22:04 Bill Simmons? Seventy nine and eighty, we have My Bodyguard, Blues Brothers, The Hunter, Steve McQueen.
22:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
22:10 Bill Simmons? Solid movie. And Somewhere in Time with Chris Reeve.
22:12 Chris Ryan? Oh, wow.
22:13 Bill Simmons? And then it was because they had a new mayor, Mayor Daley. And she's like, let's get grab some of that Hollywood. So eventually that leads to nineteen eighty one continental divide. Big chunks of Escape from New York.
22:25 Sean Fennessey? Filmed there.
22:26 Bill Simmons? And a movie called Thief. By the one and only Michael Mann. And then we're off. Risky Business, Sixteen Candles, Streets of Fire, Code of Silence, Class. We're just off. But Blues Brothers is one of the first ones. And I think probably the one that probably the biggest Chicago love letter, I would guess. Like, they even figured out a way to put Wrigley Field in there out of nowhere.
22:45 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, Ferris Bueller is a pretty good one.
22:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah, but I don't think there is a Ferris Bueller without Blues Brothers.
22:49 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I agree. I agree.
22:51 Bill Simmons? We also have musical numbers from James Brown, Cap Calloway, Ruth Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker. We have cameos from or extended parts from Carrie Fisher, John Candy, Henry Gibson, Twiggy, Steve Spielberg, Joe Walsh and Frank Oz.
23:10 Bill Simmons? There's a Jerry Orbach cameo in the beginning.
23:12 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah.
23:14 Bill Simmons? But, um.
23:14 Sean Fennessey? That's like, I do kind of miss that vibe in movies.
23:18 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
23:18 Sean Fennessey? Where it was like, this guy showed up for a day. That's the guy who does Miss Piggy. And then there's a Miss Piggy joke twenty minutes later.
23:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah, we should do, we should have like Paul Thomas Anderson should appear as a clerk in more movies.
23:27 Sean Fennessey? I would love that.
23:28 Bill Simmons? Famously troubled production, as CR alluded to. Akroyd, six months to write the script and it was three hundred and twenty four pages and incoherent. And then they had to like whittle it down.
23:38 Chris Ryan? He had never read a script or written a script and wrote a three hundred. Yeah, the three hundred is like a bible.
23:44 Bill Simmons? With like just tangents and his thoughts about like Catholicism and weird shit in there.
23:49 Sean Fennessey? Did you guys go into depth on Akroyd when you did Trading Places? Did you have like an Akroyd segment?
23:54 Bill Simmons? I don't know.
23:54 Chris Ryan? No, I don't think so.
23:55 Bill Simmons? I think we talked a lot more about.
23:56 Sean Fennessey? He's so interesting.
23:58 Bill Simmons? He really is.
23:58 Sean Fennessey? He has this crazy brain and this amazing career and he's still alive. And he's still showing up in Ghostbusters movies and he's still selling Crystal Skull vodka. And he's clearly a one of one. I mean, there's never been anybody like him in movies. He is a Canadian, but like he also.
24:15 Bill Simmons? Women loved him, by the way.
24:16 Sean Fennessey? Which is really weird, but when you watch.
24:19 Bill Simmons? Landed Donna Dixon, which was like, no small feat in the early eighties.
24:23 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, when you watch the Reitman movie, you know, he's got Dylan O'Brien playing him, who's like a young handsome guy. And it like, it's legit, you know, he's like kind of the hunk of that show, but what we know him as, I don't know, Ray from, from Ghostbusters, you know, goofball nerd.
24:37 Bill Simmons? What happened, all of a sudden he was Tommy Boy, like the big.
24:40 Sean Fennessey? Right.
24:41 Bill Simmons? Portly like Carson. Yeah, it's, I mean, he was so young when he was on SNL, I think he was like 22 or 23. And then just does the Belushi. It's always, I, I think he was a little more, a little more Randy in the late seventies, early eighties. And maybe, maybe Belushi gets too much credit for it and Akron, I think they were definitely running mates from time to time.
25:03 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
25:03 Bill Simmons? But I think everybody was like that back then.
25:05 Chris Ryan? And also like there's still an era where, uh, you know, the people who wind up on television or in movies have had a life before that. And he's like got a bar in Toronto and he, you know, is just obsessed with this music and has all these like.
25:20 Bill Simmons? He's invested in all these cool things.
25:21 Chris Ryan? Almost as like a public intellectual in some ways, but it's just translating it into the most absurd.
25:26 Sean Fennessey? But he's, he's in that, he's a great lineage of kinds of SNL guys that I love, like, like Hater, like Phil Hartman.
25:33 Bill Simmons? Could write for themselves.
25:34 Sean Fennessey? Had their own idea, had their own characters, were good at impressions and were like, their brains were traps.
25:40 Chris Ryan? And really, really good partners.
25:42 Sean Fennessey? And, and also sold people, like would do Straight Man, but also would do Julia Child, you know what I mean? Like he could do, he could do all that. I don't, he's, he's so interesting to me.
25:49 Bill Simmons? He created the prototype for Hartman, Hater, all those dudes. He was the first one. And, um, there's only a few people that have been on the show where everybody else was like, the guy was like a fucking genius.
26:01 Bill Simmons? He just was, it was clear he was going to outgrow the show and do something else and do more stuff. Anyway, he ended a 324 page script and there was no budget. And, uh, and it was a mess from the beginning, car crashes, the downtown scene at the end cost 3.5 million. Akron worked cocaine into the budget because they had so many night shoots.
26:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
26:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah. People were cool with that because it was 1979.
26:24 Sean Fennessey? I actually got that done for the show too. Just a heads up.
26:27 Bill Simmons? Belushi's party like the maniac.
26:31 Bill Simmons? I was gonna do cocaine before we did the category.
26:35 Chris Ryan? Is this the closest you've ever been to cocaine? Cause you famously were like, I've never, never been in a room with cocaine. Yeah.
26:42 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I mean, this is, you can feel the cocaine oozing off the Blu-ray when you put it in. You're like, oh, oh, yeah.
26:51 Sean Fennessey? If you could have, you would have done the line off of the Blu-ray.
26:53 Bill Simmons? Belushi could have talked me into it. There was so much drugs and partying that they opened a bar on the set called The Blues Club for themselves, crew and friends.
27:03 Chris Ryan? This is, why don't we have a private bar called like the, the war room? Like the draft war room or something called The Trade Machine?
27:13 Bill Simmons? Drugs and alcohol?
27:14 Sean Fennessey? That's good. Yeah. The Trade Machine as the Ringer speakeasy, people would line up for that.
27:18 Chris Ryan? Like a bar in the basement of this building at Spotify. They don't have to know. Daniel doesn't have to know.
27:24 Bill Simmons? Daniel. Well, it ended up being a 27.5 million dollar budget, which was like a kajillion dollars in 1979.
27:31 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. That's like a Fast and Furious movie now.
27:33 Bill Simmons? There's a lot of Lou Wasserman being completely pissed off about how much and calling and killing guys day after day about how the budget spiraled. They just kind of lost the control of this.
27:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And like, were, it sounds like there was documentation of the fact that this was going out of control and that Belushi was kind of out of control, but not in the TMZ, we have this on Filmway. It was more of a like.
27:56 Bill Simmons? Stealth.
27:56 Chris Ryan? Urban legend. Like, did you hear Belushi closed down like the old saloon last night?
28:01 Sean Fennessey? Right.
28:02 Bill Simmons? Well, it made 115.2 million. It was 10th overall in 1980. It's still to this day, the sixth biggest musical of all time. It was released on the same day as The Empire Strikes Back. What a movie theater day that was.
28:16 Sean Fennessey? Incredible.
28:17 Bill Simmons? That has to be one of the top. I remember we did that once about the best day in a movie theater. That's gotta be up there. They launched a Blues Brothers concert tour the same day.
28:26 Sean Fennessey? Do you know it was right above the Blues Brothers that year at number nine?
28:28 Bill Simmons? What?
28:29 Sean Fennessey? It also had the, the word blue in its title. The Blue Lagoon.
28:33 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
28:33 Sean Fennessey? So funny how some movies are remembered and others are forgotten, you know, in that time.
28:37 Bill Simmons? I think that movie's been canceled.
28:38 Sean Fennessey? It has been canceled.
28:40 Bill Simmons? LA Times, Charles Champlin.
28:42 Sean Fennessey? Great critic.
28:43 Bill Simmons? Called it a $30 million wreck, minus the laughs.
28:49 Sean Fennessey? Mixed reviews on the Blues Brothers.
28:52 Chris Ryan? Oh, Charles.
28:52 Bill Simmons? Pretty savage because people knew it cost a lot of money and they launched the tour the same day. And I think people were doing the whole ego's gone awry kind of thing.
29:00 Sean Fennessey? Didn't matter.
29:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah. And then, then the movie did what the, the champs of it were Ebert and Siskel.
29:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
29:05 Bill Simmons? Siskel loved it. Ebert gave it three stars. He said, "The Blues Brothers cost untold millions of dollars, kept throwing their girl completely out of control." But director John Landis has somehow pulled it all together. Belushi and Akrad come over as hard boiled city guys. Total cynics with a worldview of sublime simplicity. There's even room.
29:26 Sean Fennessey? Overread there.
29:26 Chris Ryan? They're on a mission from God.
29:28 Sean Fennessey? They're pulling, pulling a fantasy there. Yeah.
29:29 Bill Simmons? There's even room in the midst of the carnage and mayhem for a surprising amount of grace, humor and whimsy. Raj, he loved, he must've loved Belushi.
29:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
29:38 Bill Simmons? You know, Belushi, like Belushi probably turned up the charm with them at some point. So yeah, we forgot to mention that, or I forgot to mention the Landis directed Animal House and they got him for Blues Brothers and they were pretty tight and.
29:50 Sean Fennessey? Landis in the middle of an, an amazing run of movies.
29:53 Chris Ryan? Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House, Blues Brothers, Werewolf in London, Coming Soon, Trading Places, and then obviously Twilight, Twilight Zone.
30:00 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
30:02 Sean Fennessey? Coming to America.
30:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
30:04 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
30:06 Sean Fennessey? Of the top 10 movies that you're talking about this year at the box office, seven of them are comedies. That's.
30:12 Chris Ryan? It's a great time.
30:13 Sean Fennessey? Very different than how things are now.
30:15 Bill Simmons? Landis as a director, any movie nerd notes?
30:19 Sean Fennessey? Master of the comic set piece from that period of time. Obviously his career is seen in a completely different light because of the tragic events in the Twilight Zone movie. But I think he often, despite not having the nicest reputation as a person, got the best out of complicated comedy figures, including Belushi, including Eddie Murphy, like he really got, they're, they're, Chavy, he got really like their best movie performances most of the time. You know, Three Amigos, like he, he really captured something very special in them. And I think as part of it was because he created a lot of chaos and those people are good in chaotic environments.
30:55 Chris Ryan? It's a bummer that Craig's not here today, but I, it's, it's a, it's one of those things where you like, is what Landis does best? Is that what's aged the worst? Like is, is, does anybody find 80 car pileups entertaining anymore in that way?
31:13 Sean Fennessey? He, in this movie.
31:16 Sean Fennessey? He takes it to an art, like a level of art.
31:18 Chris Ryan? It's absurd.
31:19 Sean Fennessey? That is so funny and exciting, but.
31:22 Bill Simmons? Well, it's almost like they're making it like a comic book or something.
31:25 Sean Fennessey? Totally.
31:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
31:25 Sean Fennessey? And it like, but like through the first half of the movie, there's a part of me that is like, this is kind of boring. And then like, like, just like, just to like, to make us sit through like yet another car chase.
31:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
31:37 Sean Fennessey? But then, but what, by the time the car goes into the truck, I'm like, this is genius level stuff. You know, like this is, I've never seen this before.
31:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
31:43 Sean Fennessey? So I think it's pushing it like, like you're saying, like the pushing of the envelope is part of what makes him good at what he was going for.
31:50 Bill Simmons? One of the deleted scenes, they leave the gas station after Twiggy drives away. And Belushi's smoking a cigarette and he throws the cigarette and it blows up the gas station. I was like, why'd they cut that? Like they left ninety other terrible things in it.
32:03 Chris Ryan? In this movie or like things that happened in this movie that he was lampooning in Kentucky Fried Movie like a couple of years before, but it's almost like, no, this is what happens when you give this guy.
32:12 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. When you make a real movie.
32:13 Chris Ryan? Like thirty million dollars. Yeah.
32:15 Bill Simmons? What's the exact perfect gauge to see this movie? I thought about this long and hard. I think it's like late teens. It's like eighteen, nineteen.
32:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
32:23 Bill Simmons? I would say.
32:24 Sean Fennessey? Want me to tell my relationship to this movie?
32:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah, go.
32:27 Sean Fennessey? Uh, when I was sixteen years old, um, my uncle was an executive at Seagram's. And Seagram's, uh, was owned at that time Vivendi Universal. And nineteen ninety-eight is the year of Blues Brothers two thousand.
32:42 Bill Simmons? Unfortunately.
32:43 Sean Fennessey? For my sixteenth birthday, Chris has heard me tell this story many times. He, he, he lived in California and he flew me to Los Angeles for my sixteenth birthday. He was my godfather. And we went to the premiere of Blues Brothers two thousand and went to the after party and I met the entire cast. And that was the moment when I was like, I have, I have to move to Los Angeles. Like I have to be here. I, I was already obsessed with movies. And I watched the Blues Brothers like five times before seeing Blues Brothers two thousand. So I was like, I gotta get ready. Like I gotta.
33:12 Chris Ryan? Just in case Aykroyd is like you.
33:15 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, you never know. But you know, I was just really, really excited and we didn't know that Blues Brothers two thousand was going to be such a fiasco. Like there was kind of anticipation for it. And
33:24 Bill Simmons? It's a sad one.
33:25 Sean Fennessey? The movie is really rough, but you would never know at the after party. At the after party, it was like, we did it once again. Another masterpiece from Dan Aykroyd and John Landis, furthering this legacy of this franchise. But so I got the movie in my bloodstream because of that. And I was 15 going on 16 when I was watching it and getting obsessed with it. So that was going to be my answer for that question.
33:46 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
33:47 Chris Ryan? I have 16. I think it's a great age because you would be just getting into maybe like other kinds of music outside of pop music. So you'd be interested in like soul music. And this is what it was case for me is like, that was right when, you know, like Otis Redding box set was coming out, the Stax singles box set was coming out around then. And then you're also like, I like car crashes and I like watching things blow up.
34:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah, the correct answer might be 10 because I really love this.
34:18 Speaker 04 Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Gatorade zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.
34:47 Bill Simmons? Movie and I was texting, I'm on this text server with a couple of my best friends from high school and the guy they went to. And I was just like, hey, we're doing Blues Brothers. And they're just like, orange whip, orange whip, three orange whips. And all of a sudden they're just texting lines. New Old Mobile, the Old Mobiles are out.
35:05 Bill Simmons? The, uh, it's just one of those movies. And I think like Stripes was like that. Caddyshack, there's just a couple from the early eighties that they just lived on for four and a half decades now.
35:16 Sean Fennessey? I think it's probably a little tough to watch this after 30 for the first time.
35:21 Bill Simmons? For the first time.
35:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
35:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
35:22 Sean Fennessey? That's also like, what's the wrong age to watch this movie for the first time is an interesting counter question.
35:27 Bill Simmons? I don't know if, like, if you're 30 years old right now, watching this, I don't think you can.
35:33 Bill Simmons? Correctly capture the impact of like James Brown and Aretha and Ray Charles at that point of their career.
35:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
35:40 Bill Simmons? Where it just felt like a huge deal that.
35:44 Chris Ryan? They were still functional, like.
35:45 Bill Simmons? I didn't know.
35:45 Chris Ryan? They were still like working musicians at that time.
35:48 Sean Fennessey? But they, many of them were at an ebb, you know, they were like at a lower.
35:51 Bill Simmons? But it was just amazing that they were in the movie.
35:53 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
35:53 Bill Simmons? Cause it was like this whole genre of music that was like, holy shit. This is just like an SNL sketch.
35:58 Chris Ryan? Because they're characters. So it's like, there's the reverend, there's the waitress, there's the pawn shop guy. You know, it's like, they are being brought into the story rather than, hey, we found, we, we just happened upon a James Brown concert.
36:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Most rewatchable scene, I, I mean, the opening, when Jake gets out of jail and they hug and, and, uh, the way they shoot it with the two things.
36:19 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
36:19 Bill Simmons? All of a sudden, we're listening to Mule to Ride. Day I get out of prison, my own brother picks me up in a police car. We're just off. And then we do the bridge jump, like we're just coming out of the gate. Really good opening. Reverend James Brown.
36:36 Chris Ryan? Cleophas.
36:37 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. I've got Jake's epiphany written down here. I feel like that's an iconic moment from the movie.
36:43 Bill Simmons? Epic James Brown, epic Belushi.
36:45 Chris Ryan? Jesus tap dancing Christ.
36:46 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
36:47 Bill Simmons? Think stunt double for some of the somersaults.
36:49 Sean Fennessey? Oh, for the, yeah, for the hand springs, for sure.
36:51 Bill Simmons? The band. Um, this is gonna be a finalist for me, the, uh, the first railcar chase in the mall.
36:59 Sean Fennessey? The mall.
37:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Fucking kills me.
37:01 Sean Fennessey? Dixie Square Mall, yeah.
37:02 Bill Simmons? Here in imports. New World's mobiles are early.
37:09 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
37:09 Bill Simmons? It's a good. Just like they're all dead panning and it's just, people are running for their lives, diving.
37:15 Sean Fennessey? That is what malls looked like, though. I do feel like malls are simultaneously exactly the same and completely different. There's nothing really janky about malls in the 1980s. They're not like that anymore.
37:25 Bill Simmons? Baby clothes.
37:31 Bill Simmons? Belushi is like so zogged that it's like this place has everything.
37:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
37:35 Bill Simmons? It's so good. I also love any scene in a mall from like nineteen, like Fast Times had this too. It's just so funny to see the malls back then.
37:42 Chris Ryan? It's just not like that car chase needed to go up a level and they're like, what if we just drove through a mall?
37:47 Sean Fennessey? It's great.
37:48 Bill Simmons? That's what I had for the Dan Campbell skill for holy shit, are they really going for this right now? I think this is like at least an eight and a half.
37:54 Chris Ryan? Yep.
37:56 Bill Simmons? Ches Paul.
37:57 Chris Ryan? God, I love that scene.
37:58 Bill Simmons? Is my favorite scene. When they just destroy the French restaurant.
38:02 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
38:03 Bill Simmons? How much for the women? For the little girl.
38:06 Sean Fennessey? Paul Rubens.
38:07 Bill Simmons? The shrimp cocktail. Your life.
38:12 Bill Simmons? One of the criticisms I'd have of this movie is you probably needed two more scenes just to unleash Belushi. They really like unleashed Belushi in this scene and I wish they had just done it two more times.
38:20 Chris Ryan? So I guess in Aykroyd's quote unquote script, there was eight individual plotlines for the recruitment of every member of the band. And it was like, this is probably not like a functional story, but like.
38:32 Sean Fennessey? Right, right.
38:32 Bill Simmons? Donald Duck Dunn doesn't need like a five minutes.
38:35 Chris Ryan? Yeah, but it probably would have been a lot more like just let Belushi cook in this venue.
38:38 Sean Fennessey? Right. They compress it where you've got like, all of a sudden the fry cook comes out of the back in the restaurant and it's like, he's in the band too. They, we didn't get the individual origin stories.
38:47 Bill Simmons? Your woman, sell them to me.
38:52 Bill Simmons? Who else is pulling that scene off? I mean, he's asking the guy at the next table if he can buy his eight year old daughter and it's fucking hilarious.
39:00 Chris Ryan? I know. And he's like eating the, eating the wedge salad that they have. Yeah.
39:03 Bill Simmons? We're gonna come back here for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Soul Food Cafe. That whole scene where we start, we just get some John Lee Hooker.
39:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
39:12 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
39:13 Bill Simmons? Boom, boom, boom, boom. What movie is, what's the other movie that that's from? That's like, is that Risky Business?
39:18 Chris Ryan? Boom, Boom, Boom is that?
39:20 Sean Fennessey? I don't know. I mean, his, uh, his song.
39:22 Bill Simmons? That song's prominently involved in a movie we love. I think it's Risky Business.
39:25 Sean Fennessey? I always think of him with, uh, I need some money from Blue Chips. That's like a very famous scene. That's John Lee Hooker song. Yeah.
39:32 Bill Simmons? And then we get Aretha. Dry white toast and four fried chickens. Good, good name for a fantasy team.
39:38 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. The dried, the dried white toast bit throughout the whole movie always cracks me up.
39:43 Bill Simmons? She sings You Better Think and we get some of the best acting of all time from Mac Cattare Murphy, who just kinda has to move along. He's so confused and you know they're filming takes for 10 hours and he's just wearing an apron.
39:55 Sean Fennessey? There's a lot to discuss about the quality of acting from the backing band in this movie.
39:59 Bill Simmons? It's tough, but Aretha's great. She had the lip sync, I guess. There's some stories about she had a little trouble with the lip sync. Maybe they could have let her belt it out, but.
40:07 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Landis, John Lee Hooker was recorded live and I think he was the only singer who was recorded live for the entire movie.
40:12 Chris Ryan? Right. That makes sense.
40:14 Bill Simmons? The song's really good. I really enjoy it.
40:16 Sean Fennessey? Think?
40:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
40:16 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I mean, it's just like, it's just so much fun to watch that.
40:20 Sean Fennessey? It's an American canon.
40:20 Bill Simmons? Then we go right to Ray Charles.
40:22 Chris Ryan? Yes.
40:23 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
40:23 Bill Simmons? We go from Aretha right to Ray Charles singing and we're at Ray's Music Exchange.
40:27 Sean Fennessey? This is my favorite.
40:28 Chris Ryan? This has the best dancing, the best like, this is the best musical number.
40:32 Sean Fennessey? Musical, yes.
40:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:32 Sean Fennessey? Outdoor choreographed dance sequence right in front of the L train.
40:36 Chris Ryan? And the dancing in this scene is, I did not know or it didn't occur to me before, they just do this dancing during Twist and Shout and Ferris Bueller.
40:45 Sean Fennessey? Yes, the same choreography.
40:47 Chris Ryan? Basically the same choreography and like all the jumping up and down and stuff. Yeah.
40:50 Bill Simmons? You think Baby Kane was like, what the fuck?
40:52 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
40:52 Chris Ryan? That's a good question. What soul stars were like, what?
40:56 Bill Simmons? I'm right here.
40:56 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
40:58 Bill Simmons? Bob's Country Bunker.
41:00 Sean Fennessey? Got that too.
41:00 Chris Ryan? Rawhide.
41:02 Bill Simmons? Right in the Stand By Your Man.
41:05 Sean Fennessey? It's really good.
41:06 Chris Ryan? Lucy's just like, move him up, move him out.
41:09 Bill Simmons? Would you live pod from Bob's Country Bunker and the Chicken Wire?
41:13 Chris Ryan? That's where Andy and I were actually doing our Landman recaps.
41:16 Sean Fennessey? I was just gonna say, this is perfect for Sheridan recaps. Exactly.
41:19 Chris Ryan? They're just throwing beers at us.
41:22 Bill Simmons? Mini the Moocher.
41:23 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
41:24 Bill Simmons? Palace Hotel. Both Blues Brothers songs. Carrie Fisher in the tunnel.
41:30 Bill Simmons? The iconic line, 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes. It's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Let's hit it. Boom.
41:37 Sean Fennessey? Let's hit it.
41:38 Bill Simmons? And then the final car chase highlighted by the Nazis falling to their death for like two miles.
41:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
41:44 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Is that a Pinto?
41:46 Bill Simmons? The Bluesmobile collapsing, which I used as a joke in columns for like the next 20 years. And then all the guns pointed to them at the end. What do you got? Most rewatchable scene?
42:01 Sean Fennessey? I'm gonna say Ray's music exchange.
42:02 Chris Ryan? Okay.
42:03 Sean Fennessey? And here's why. I think Ray Charles is the best actor who's not an actor in the movie.
42:07 Chris Ryan? Hmm.
42:08 Sean Fennessey? And he has comic timing, which we later learned watching Pepsi commercials in the 90s. And I love, that is like, that feels the most like a musical sequence, not just because of the dancing that you're talking about, but because they really do need instruments from him, like it's central to the movie plot. Now, it's not as fun as the car chase stuff, but I love the song that is played, I love the dancing, and I love the comedy. So that's my pick.
42:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah. I have Shay Paul as the funniest scene in the movie, and this is my favorite scene in the movie. So I don't know what's the most relatable.
42:37 Bill Simmons? I have Shay Paul or The Mall. The Mall kills me.
42:39 Sean Fennessey? The Mall's good.
42:44 Bill Simmons? The OK Motherfucker Award for the exact moment when the movie goes up a notch. Is that the same as the Dan Campbell scale? We really gotta, maybe I gotta pick one.
42:52 Chris Ryan? I have.
42:52 Bill Simmons? I think they'd win both of those.
42:55 Chris Ryan? In the, in the church with Ackroyds, or whoever's like, "And God bless the United States of America."
43:01 Bill Simmons? We're ready to go?
43:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:04 Bill Simmons? What's the most 1980 thing about this movie? Would you go with the 1970s police cars that are just getting destroyed left and right, or expensive soup being $10?
43:16 Chris Ryan? I think probably the, well, I have other ones, but I would.
43:19 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
43:20 Chris Ryan? I have that the other executive who was the rival from Paramount who wanted this movie and didn't get it was Don Simpson.
43:27 Bill Simmons? Oh, Jesus.
43:28 Chris Ryan? Which I don't know if anyone lives through production of Don Simpson is running it.
43:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah. A production where they already had cocaine in the budget?
43:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:34 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
43:34 Chris Ryan? And the other one was being so famous, you just decide you're a musician. Like, being so popular and so beloved that you're like, you know what we gotta do? Make an album.
43:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
43:44 Sean Fennessey? Mine is related to that, which is just an R&B musical car chase movie about two white felons. Like, I don't think that would get made today.
43:53 Chris Ryan? On a mission from God. Yeah.
43:57 Sean Fennessey? That's not the, you know, that reminds me of 1980.
43:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah. What's age the best Belushi and Aykroyd?
44:04 Bill Simmons? Elwood's Crappy Apartment, if you've seen this movie enough times, you really gotta study it when they're in there for, it's, it is like eight by 10.
44:12 Sean Fennessey? I got some incredible takes about that one. I've decided that I do want to talk about that.
44:16 Bill Simmons? Okay, we'll save it.
44:17 Sean Fennessey? We'll wait, we'll save it, yeah.
44:18 Bill Simmons? What's age the best? Shitting on white supremacists?
44:22 Sean Fennessey? It's a good, great one.
44:23 Chris Ryan? It's a great villain.
44:23 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
44:24 Chris Ryan? Learned that from Spielberg.
44:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Calling a head nun the Penguin?
44:27 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that was really funny. I don't think I got that when I was a kid.
44:31 Bill Simmons? Carrie Fisher's hair salon was called Curl Up and Die with a D Y E.
44:35 Chris Ryan? It's so good.
44:36 Bill Simmons? Sneak that one in.
44:36 Chris Ryan? Also, just like her bit of being like, I am learning advanced weaponry to kill this guy.
44:41 Sean Fennessey? Such a perfect thing to happen the year Vampire Strikes Back, you know, like she's not the damsel in distress, she's the destroyer.
44:47 Bill Simmons? Her being in this is what's age the best. The, uh, there, we see a wide shot of Chicago and there's a movie theater and the three movies are Escape from Alcatraz, The Warriors, and Up in Smoke.
44:56 Sean Fennessey? Ooh, that's a sick lineup.
44:58 Bill Simmons? Fucking unbelievable triple header.
45:00 Chris Ryan? We used to really make stuff here.
45:02 Sean Fennessey? That's a good trio.
45:03 Bill Simmons? Definitely not a triple header for a date. It's a, it's a, I'm not working today. I think I'll go see three movies in a row.
45:11 Sean Fennessey? The boys brought a six pack into the movie theater, yeah.
45:13 Bill Simmons? Ray-Bans, Blues Brothers and Risky Business, Supercharged, Chicago Movies and Ray-Bans. You mentioned Colleen Camp's Playboy magazine poster, which was also featured in Apocalypse Now, that they carefully put in Elwood's apartment, I think as a tribute to Apocalypse Now.
45:28 Chris Ryan? Were you able to like, kind of?
45:30 Sean Fennessey? You want me to do it now?
45:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
45:32 Sean Fennessey? Um, I don't know why I clocked that, but watching it this time, I did clock it, that the poster that is in Elwood's apartment is Colleen Camp from Apocalypse Now. She plays one of the Playboy bunnies. But in, in researching this, excuse me, that I was researching this, in researching this, I learned, and I don't think this is apocryphal, I think it's true, that it was Lynda Carter from Wonder Woman, who was originally cast in the role that Colleen Camp was cast in.
45:54 Bill Simmons? In Apocalypse.
45:54 Sean Fennessey? In Apocalypse Now. She went to the set of the movie and she filmed scenes, but Hurricane Olga hit during the production of Apocalypse Now. So she had to leave because they closed down the production, because the production closed down many times during the making of that movie. She goes back, and when she goes back, she gets cast in the TV series Wonder Woman. So she's not available to be in this movie. So Colleen Camp gets recast in this part. Thing is, by the time they recast, they had already done the Playboy photo shoot with Lynda Carter. So a very, I learned all this last night, I promise you. A very rare piece of memorabilia, movie memorabilia is the original poster-
46:34 Chris Ryan? Is the Lynda Carter centerfold?
46:35 Sean Fennessey? Of Lynda Carter in the centerfold. And Colleen Camp is also shot in the exact same pose, background styling, everything in the centerfold that appears in this movie.
46:45 Chris Ryan? The Lynda Carter centerfold going for on eBay?
46:48 Sean Fennessey? It just said sold on the site that I found. So I don't know, but Bill, if you want to try to contact the-
46:53 Bill Simmons? Sold to me.
46:54 Sean Fennessey? I thought that was a great movie arcana.
46:58 Chris Ryan? That certainly answers the, the piece of memorabilia you would want from this movie.
47:01 Bill Simmons? So that's a more important Lynda Carter picture than the Philippine Shakey's photo?
47:06 Sean Fennessey? I guess so.
47:07 Bill Simmons? One of the great photos of all time?
47:08 Sean Fennessey? Shakey's like the pizza place?
47:09 Bill Simmons? She's wearing Shakey's, a Shakey's pizza shirt, but it says Philippine Shakey's.
47:14 Sean Fennessey? Oh my god.
47:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Let's just say she doesn't, not look awesome.
47:17 Sean Fennessey? There's a lot of Lynda, like Lynda Carter prop memorabilia stuff out there.
47:22 Bill Simmons? All time.
47:23 Chris Ryan? Okay.
47:24 Bill Simmons? What a legend. City of Chicago for a Woods age the best. It just uses a lot of it and I really appreciate it. What else do you have, CR?
47:35 Chris Ryan? Conducting meetings in saunas.
47:37 Sean Fennessey? Oh yeah.
47:38 Chris Ryan? The reveal that the entire band is in the sauna with them and the way Belushi's like, how's Mrs. Slide?
47:49 Chris Ryan? I love that scene so much. And then, yeah, I had Curl Up and Die. I had the making of the movie being better than the movie itself, just stuff like that.
47:58 Sean Fennessey? I think also just SNL converting characters to movies.
48:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
48:01 Sean Fennessey? You know, really paved the way for a huge thing that became a big part of the show in the 90s.
48:05 Chris Ryan? Also, this is pretty basic, but this music, like the 60s R&B soul is arguably the best music America's ever produced.
48:14 Sean Fennessey? Never expires.
48:14 Chris Ryan? And it's just like when you hear them.
48:16 Bill Simmons? That's one of the big things for this movie, I think. The music has aged perfectly.
48:20 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
48:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
48:21 Bill Simmons? I had, I don't know if this is what's aged the best or what's aged the worst, but when Phil Hartman did the Sinatra Group sketch and Mike Myers as Steve Lawrence, and he, they're just, and him and Edie Gormare just sucking up to Phil. And he's like, you tell him, Chairman.
48:34 Sean Fennessey? Is it Jan Hooks who's Edie?
48:37 Chris Ryan? Wait, was it Jan Hooks? Who played Chanade?
48:39 Bill Simmons? No, she played Jan Hooks.
48:41 Chris Ryan? Okay.
48:41 Bill Simmons? Somebody else was playing Edie.
48:42 Chris Ryan? Cause he's like, cue ball.
48:45 Bill Simmons? But at some points Sinatra gets mad at Steve Lawrence, like, shut up. Guys are just swimming in my wake. And he's like, what's wrong, Chairman? And for some reason, anytime I see Steve Lawrence, I think of that now.
48:58 Chris Ryan? We should do a rewatchables for Phil Hartman sketches.
49:00 Bill Simmons? Oh, my God. That's my number one favorite.
49:03 Sean Fennessey? He's the best.
49:04 Bill Simmons? That's, that was the chunks of guys like you in my stool.
49:10 Bill Simmons? Great shot, Gordo. Most cinematic shot, Jake's footsteps when they're leaving prison, they go underneath for the shot up.
49:18 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
49:18 Bill Simmons? But I really like the, the very end when it scales back and there's 300 people pointing guns at them, that one shot.
49:24 Sean Fennessey? That's good too, yeah.
49:25 Bill Simmons? It's really good. What do you got? Anything else?
49:26 Sean Fennessey? I got the trooper going into the truck.
49:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
49:29 Bill Simmons? Okay. Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness were best needle drop. I don't know if the songs count when they're built in numbers, so maybe Jan Lee Hooker.
49:37 Chris Ryan? I had Boom Boom just because it's not one of their songs and it's also just so sick the way they shoot it and like see him.
49:43 Bill Simmons? Okay, I agree. The Chess Rockwell and Brock Landers Award for Best Character Name. I mean, Elwood Blues is pretty good.
49:50 Sean Fennessey? Juliette Jake Blues.
49:51 Bill Simmons? Juliette Jake Blues.
49:52 Chris Ryan? I like Matt Guitar Murphy.
49:54 Bill Simmons? So I had Matt Guitar Murphy.
49:55 Chris Ryan? And Blue Lou.
49:57 Sean Fennessey? Blue Lou Maroni?
49:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Matt Guitar Murphy, I go. All right, CR, flex category, what do you got?
50:02 Chris Ryan? Uh, when would, when would I have died?
50:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
50:05 Chris Ryan? I'm taking this from usually thriller and horror movies that we do. But one of the things you have to wrap your mind around when you're watching this film is just how many times you would have died. So I would have probably gone when Carrie Fisher detonated the SRO hotel and the entire room came.
50:22 Chris Ryan? Or I would probably be shopping for Wicker Furniture at Tuxedo Square Mall, Pier One, and got hit by an old automobile.
50:30 Chris Ryan? I'm like, oh, we could just put this right outside. That's a nice piece.
50:35 Bill Simmons? That's a good one. The Vincent Chaser Award for Are We Sure This Character Was Actually Good At His Job? The Clarion Records Head who just sees one song with his convicted felon.
50:44 Chris Ryan? $10,000, yeah.
50:45 Bill Simmons? So you said, here's a, here's a bag of $10,000 cash?
50:48 Chris Ryan? And I'm also gonna aid and abet your felonious escape.
50:51 Bill Simmons? I know everyone's looking for you guys, but here's $10,000 cash?
50:53 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. There's a few people who are eligible for this award, also maybe for the, for the next award, but let me ask you this.
50:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
50:59 Sean Fennessey? Are the Blues Brothers good at blues music? They're good at R and B.
51:06 Chris Ryan? Uh, yeah. When do they, do they ever sing a blues song?
51:09 Sean Fennessey? No, not really.
51:11 Bill Simmons? It's more like 70s blues, I think is the gimmick.
51:14 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, it's, I know it's like electric blues, but they're not singing Muddy Waters songs, really. They're singing like Sam and Dave songs. They're singing.
51:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
51:20 Chris Ryan? Well, and for the most part, they dance a bunch and do like speeches.
51:23 Sean Fennessey? Which is obviously not what blues musicians do.
51:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
51:25 Bill Simmons? You know, Sean, they're entertainers.
51:26 Sean Fennessey? That's, that's fair. They just, they called themselves the Blues Brothers.
51:30 Bill Simmons? Well, that is obviously your Butch's Girlfriend Award for the Weak Link of the Film.
51:34 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I guess this was, are they good at their job? They were good at entertaining.
51:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
51:38 Sean Fennessey? Were they great at blues music? Oh, are we sure that Burton Mercer? Was good at his job, the parole officer?
51:44 Chris Ryan? Well, I was gonna say, are we sure the Penguin was good at her job? It doesn't seem like a huge tactical.
51:48 Bill Simmons? How about this, nobody was good at their job in this movie.
51:50 Sean Fennessey? Good point.
51:51 Bill Simmons? My weak link, though, is wanted fugitives trying to sell out a benefit concert that they're headlining. Just seems like a bad idea.
51:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
51:59 Bill Simmons? Let me raise awareness for this thing that the cops are immediately gonna find out. It's a flaw in the movie.
52:04 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
52:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah. I think that there's probably one too many antagonists. So my weak link is maybe we could have consolidated some of the, some of the various people chasing.
52:13 Sean Fennessey? The rednecks and the cops?
52:14 Chris Ryan? Carrie Fisher and the cops, yeah, right.
52:17 Sean Fennessey? Could have made it just all three of them, you know, redneck Nazi cops.
52:20 Chris Ryan? Carrie Fisher Nazi cop.
52:22 Sean Fennessey? Right.
52:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
52:23 Sean Fennessey? That would be good.
52:24 Bill Simmons? What's age the worst? Would you go? I have some.
52:27 Chris Ryan? Manual steering.
52:28 Sean Fennessey? Hmm.
52:29 Chris Ryan? You really see these guys fishtailing around a lot and it makes you appreciate.
52:32 Sean Fennessey? Great thing.
52:32 Chris Ryan? You know, just responsive, responsive steering wheel.
52:39 Chris Ryan? I tried once when I was, uh, I was in high school, like end of high school. I, I saw a must, like a 68 Mustang, like sold, being sold out of a garage in Vermont. And I got my dad to let me like try and test drive it because it was only like five grand. I'm sure it was an absolute lemon, but I got like 10 feet before I was just like, why isn't, like, I don't know how to, how do you get this thing to respond to anything?
53:02 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
53:03 Chris Ryan? He was like, that's how cars used to be, is to fucking turn it all the way to go like two feet to the left.
53:06 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
53:09 Bill Simmons? No Paul Schaefer in this movie and there's a backstory to it. Where, uh, they have the Blues Brothers, they're about to film the movie. Lorne Michaels is doing this Guild the Live project with Gilda Radner, who's the other biggest star on the show. And Paul Schaefer is the one who's working on the concert album for it. Concert album's terrible. They're all upset about it. So they decide instead of, instead of trying to do it again, they're gonna do a live Broadway show and that will be the concert album. And they need Paul Schaefer for it.
53:39 Chris Ryan? Yep.
53:39 Bill Simmons? So Paul Schaefer tells Belushi, I'm out for the Blues Brothers movie. I can't do it. And Belushi flips out and is like, you're out of the band. Yeah, you're dead to me. And, uh.
53:50 Chris Ryan? SG style.
53:51 Bill Simmons? Anyway.
53:52 Sean Fennessey? I'll hit you with my car.
53:53 Bill Simmons? Identify.
53:54 Sean Fennessey? I'll hit you with my, my Blues mobile.
53:59 Chris Ryan? Going to fishtail you into a lake.
54:02 Bill Simmons? But Paul Shaffer would have been, he would have been like the.
54:05 Sean Fennessey? He put the band together.
54:06 Bill Simmons? Murph guy?
54:07 Chris Ryan? He landed on his feet.
54:08 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
54:09 Bill Simmons? No, it's just sort of been fun to have him in the movie.
54:11 Sean Fennessey? Sure.
54:11 Bill Simmons? It's a bummer.
54:12 Sean Fennessey? He would have been the keyboardist, but he's like, you know, he clearly with, with Aykroyd, they handpicked all the side guys.
54:18 Bill Simmons? It's sad that he's not in it, but it turned out fine.
54:21 Chris Ryan? Is it, what's age the worst is Howard Shore being like, you guys should be the Blues Brothers and then not being a part of this going forward.
54:27 Sean Fennessey? He did okay for himself ultimately, but yeah.
54:30 Bill Simmons? I had for what's age the worst, I wanted more SNL cameos. Like I just feel like Bill Murray could have been in this. I feel like Steve Martin could have had like a minute.
54:38 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
54:39 Bill Simmons? I think if they're doing that, knowing everything we learned in the nineties and two thousands, they would have probably.
54:44 Chris Ryan? Like Lorraine Newman could have been.
54:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah, they would, they just sort of worked in a couple of people.
54:47 Sean Fennessey? We love when Hartman shows up in So I Married an Ex-Murderer, right?
54:50 Bill Simmons? Right.
54:50 Sean Fennessey? Everyone here calls me Vicky.
54:54 Bill Simmons? In prison, Paul Lance, that was his bitch.
54:58 Bill Simmons? Blues Brothers 2000 I have as a what's age the worst. We've all agreed not to talk about anymore. Here's a great story.
55:03 Chris Ryan? I gotta say, I don't know if I saw it.
55:06 Sean Fennessey? Tough sit.
55:06 Bill Simmons? It's bad.
55:07 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
55:09 Bill Simmons? So the most powerful theater chain was Mann Theaters. Ted Mann was the guy that ran it and Landis tells this whole story about, um, he basically said, I'm not booking this.
55:20 Chris Ryan? I'm gonna play this in Compton.
55:21 Bill Simmons? No white neighborhoods at all. Like this will not be in Brentwood. He didn't want black patrons going there to see the film. He didn't think white people would want to go see a film that had all of these black musical stars in it. And the movie gets released and it has half as many theaters as it normally would have. And yet it still did really well, but uh, yeah, not great. That's a, that's a definition of a what's age the worst.
55:44 Sean Fennessey? It's just dumb as hell too, you know, like we're already coming off of like car wash and movies like that, that obviously a lot of people went to go see. So I don't know.
55:51 Bill Simmons? But you have to think of the, the era this was, when you think about who was on TV, who was in a movie, there were so few black stars. There was, I mean, there was like real racism back then.
56:01 Sean Fennessey? Of course.
56:02 Bill Simmons? So that it makes sense that it was like, no, unless it's like a stir crazy type of movie with Pryor and Gene Wilder, like I'm not putting it in Brentwood.
56:10 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, you could get it if it wasn't John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, you know, it's not.
56:15 Bill Simmons? It definitely hurt the box office. The Ruffalo Hannah Rubinek Partridge overacting award. I don't, I have one candidate and I don't feel great about it, but did you have one?
56:25 Chris Ryan? I mean, it's blasphemy to say it, but it's Aretha Franklin talking about blasphemy. Like her one like, like hammer line.
56:31 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's good.
56:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
56:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I like that.
56:33 Chris Ryan? Don't you blasphemy in here.
56:34 Sean Fennessey? I, I think the entire band is a little over their skis here.
56:38 Chris Ryan? But they're not overacting.
56:39 Bill Simmons? That's underacting.
56:40 Chris Ryan? Yeah. They're not acting.
56:42 Sean Fennessey? I guess they're, I guess so.
56:43 Bill Simmons? Matt Katara Murphy. Sean's Choice Flex Category, what do you got?
56:47 Sean Fennessey? I already fired off my, my Playboy magazine poster for the criteria orgasm. Which I just, you know, I'm happy to share another criteria orgasm here on the show. I'm really honored.
57:00 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
57:01 Sean Fennessey? You know, I just had one, but how did it look?
57:03 Chris Ryan? It was typical of a criteria orgasm.
57:05 Sean Fennessey? I was quaking, yeah. But yeah, I just can't, I couldn't believe that poster was on that wall in Elwood's house.
57:13 Bill Simmons? The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award.
57:19 Bill Simmons? I have a good one.
57:20 Chris Ryan? I think that Belushi's cocaine problem and Aykroyd's script probably led this production into disarray. But I wonder whether this would have come in under budget if they just cut the Carrie Fisher plot, which does not really have a whole lot to do with like anything. It's just like this chick chasing John Belushi for like one joke in a tunnel at the end.
57:37 Sean Fennessey? I love having her in the movie though.
57:39 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
57:39 Chris Ryan? It's great and it actually does, it basically serves as like a transition for each part of the film where she blows something up so that they can go off to do something else, but yeah.
57:49 Bill Simmons? There's some holes and Julia, Jake and this lady who owned a beauty salon apparently were engaged for three years. And then you know, showed the wedding and it's hard to imagine Jake being engaged to anything or anyone.
58:02 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
58:04 Bill Simmons? Did you have a hottest take?
58:04 Chris Ryan? Carrie Fisher dating Aykroyd at the time.
58:06 Bill Simmons? Right? One of the many people he was like engaged to.
58:10 Sean Fennessey? The sequel invalidates this movie's standing as the greatest SNL related movie of all time. Because Wayne's World 2 is solid and Wayne's World is great.
58:20 Chris Ryan? Okay.
58:21 Sean Fennessey? That's my hot take. And honestly, MacGruber is in the conversation, in my opinion.
58:25 Bill Simmons? Wow.
58:27 Bill Simmons? MacGruber!
58:29 Chris Ryan? Would you ever do MacGruber?
58:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
58:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
58:30 Bill Simmons? It's on the list. My hottest take, cocaine continues to be underrated. This is a great era.
58:38 Sean Fennessey? In what specific ways?
58:40 Chris Ryan? But you don't know, like, I, okay, go ahead.
58:44 Bill Simmons? Some of the stuff in the seventies and eighties is just so-
58:47 Chris Ryan? Cocaine is overrated?
58:48 Bill Simmons? Underrated.
58:49 Chris Ryan? Underrated, okay.
58:50 Bill Simmons? As a creative slash cultural force that wrecked, that wreaked so much havoc-
58:56 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
58:56 Bill Simmons? And ruined lives and careers and killed people and all that stuff. It led to some fucking crazy great shit like this movie that I just don't think is made if everyone wasn't on cocaine.
59:06 Sean Fennessey? Right.
59:06 Bill Simmons? They're just like, "Yeah, let's have Carrie Fisher." "Oh, do you know her?" "Yeah, I'll write in a part where she, it's Jake's crazy girlfriend." And he's just shooting grenade launchers at him. And like, this would just never happen in any other window than nineteen seventy-eight to nineteen eighty-six.
59:20 Chris Ryan? Do you regret not having a cocaine era?
59:23 Bill Simmons? For yourself? Personally, I think it would've been bad.
59:26 Sean Fennessey? How, how, how-
59:27 Bill Simmons? I could barely handle Vegas.
59:28 Sean Fennessey? How good would your columns have been?
59:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah, can you imagine your draft diaries?
59:32 Sean Fennessey? Up until 5 a.m.
59:33 Bill Simmons? I would've been like fucking Taylor Sheridan, just cranking out, cranking out nine thousand words a day.
59:41 Bill Simmons? No, but it's just, it led to, it led to movies and TV shows and choices-
59:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
59:47 Bill Simmons? That would just be inconceivable unless everybody around you was on cocaine.
59:50 Sean Fennessey? You should just get into it now.
59:52 Chris Ryan? That would be funny. When you're an empty nester.
59:54 Bill Simmons? But nobody knew any better and they, and back then it was like if we thought cook, coffee was cocaine.
1:00:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:00:00 Bill Simmons? We're like, "Oh man, Sean's had two coffees."
1:00:04 Sean Fennessey? A little concerning for me. Sir, I'm sorry, but you've been using coffee your entire life?
1:00:10 Bill Simmons? Casting what ifs. Tough to find good ones. The only one they wanted Olivia Newton-John to be either Twiggy or- I think the Twiggy part, but she was unavailable because she was working on Xanadu.
1:00:23 Sean Fennessey? Tough beat. Right after Grease.
1:00:25 Bill Simmons? Yikes. And then uh-
1:00:27 Chris Ryan? So the idea with Twiggy is like, just we're gonna get Elwood on love interest, right?
1:00:32 Sean Fennessey? Guess so.
1:00:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:00:32 Bill Simmons? I'm trying to think what the equivalent now of Twiggy is. It's like a Kardashian, not even like Kim. It's like having Kylie Jenner.
1:00:41 Sean Fennessey? Like a professionally famous cute girl.
1:00:43 Bill Simmons? It girl from like seven, eight years ago, who wasn't even really totally a it girl anymore.
1:00:47 Sean Fennessey? I think it's more like, um, like an Addison Rae type or something, you know?
1:00:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:00:51 Sean Fennessey? TikTok star.
1:00:53 Chris Ryan? Did you see Julia Fox made it onto the Charli XCX?
1:00:55 Sean Fennessey? I did. It was her birthday. I learned on that telecast.
1:00:59 Bill Simmons? The studio wanted younger acts. They weren't happy with Aretha and Ray Charles and James Brown. And we're trying to get Rose Royce from Car Wash to get in there.
1:01:08 Chris Ryan? Seems kinda like, didn't you guys know what you were buying? You know, of all the things that I think went wrong, it's probably, it's in the, it's in the title.
1:01:16 Bill Simmons? Best that guy?
1:01:18 Bill Simmons? Charles Napier doesn't count, I don't think, cause he's Charles Napier.
1:01:21 Chris Ryan? He would, this would be his third or fourth victory of that guy.
1:01:24 Bill Simmons? I think when you win three times, you're not allowed to win anymore.
1:01:27 Sean Fennessey? Retired.
1:01:27 Bill Simmons? But he does have the same scream that he does when Lecter's coming at him.
1:01:31 Sean Fennessey? Ah!
1:01:32 Bill Simmons? When the cars, when the giant Winnebago's about to go in the water. If you look in the driver's seat, he's like, ah!
1:01:41 Chris Ryan? That scene is so needlessly complicated by like the whole union thing. Where it's like, have you like paid your union dues?
1:01:47 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:01:47 Chris Ryan? Like that, that whole, like, that whole layer to it.
1:01:51 Bill Simmons? Henry Gibson of that guy or no?
1:01:53 Chris Ryan? That's who I had.
1:01:54 Sean Fennessey? If you're a movie fan, like a hardcore movie fan, he's not. But I think he, I think he's probably a that guy.
1:02:00 Bill Simmons? I have an incredible that guy for this.
1:02:02 Chris Ryan? Go for it.
1:02:02 Bill Simmons? The young kid who tries to steal from Ray's guitar shop?
1:02:07 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah?
1:02:07 Sean Fennessey? Who's that?
1:02:08 Bill Simmons? He, he grew up, eight years later, was the chauffeur in Die Hard.
1:02:13 Sean Fennessey? Oh!
1:02:13 Bill Simmons? Deborah, whatever his name is. Yeah.
1:02:16 Sean Fennessey? No way.
1:02:16 Bill Simmons? I recognized his face. I was like, I've seen that guy. And then, yeah, it's the Die Hard chauffeur.
1:02:21 Chris Ryan? Oh, my God, dude.
1:02:22 Sean Fennessey? Great one.
1:02:22 Bill Simmons? What a fucking combo for that guy. I don't, I don't know if.
1:02:25 Sean Fennessey? It's a great TV.
1:02:26 Bill Simmons? I don't know if a lot of great things have happened in his life.
1:02:29 Sean Fennessey? Okay, that's not good.
1:02:29 Chris Ryan? He's had some issues.
1:02:30 Bill Simmons? Die Hard, yeah.
1:02:31 Chris Ryan? There you go.
1:02:31 Sean Fennessey? I had Kathleen Freeman, the Penguin. Yeah. I feel like she's been in a ton of stuff.
1:02:37 Bill Simmons? Well, she's also eligible for the Dion Waiters Award, along with James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Carrie Fisher, Steve Lawrence, John Candy, probably a bunch of other people we could mention. Who do you got, CR?
1:02:50 Chris Ryan? Spielberg in this?
1:02:52 Bill Simmons? He can be in it.
1:02:53 Chris Ryan? I have, I have an Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles tie.
1:02:57 Sean Fennessey? Is Henry Gibson in it too much?
1:02:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he's in a little too much.
1:03:01 Sean Fennessey? Cause he's going for it.
1:03:02 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:03:03 Sean Fennessey? In a big way.
1:03:06 Chris Ryan? I think Aretha and Ray Charles just deliver, you know, like you're like, wow.
1:03:09 Sean Fennessey? Paul Rubens? As the waiter?
1:03:12 Bill Simmons? He's barely in it, though.
1:03:13 Sean Fennessey? He gets one scene, but he communicates the entire Paul Rubens experience that we will soon be getting in America.
1:03:19 Bill Simmons? I would go Aretha Franklin.
1:03:22 Bill Simmons? Recasting couch director city, just Paul Shaffer, just CGI in here as the band leader.
1:03:29 Sean Fennessey? Can I do a recasting director idea?
1:03:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:03:31 Sean Fennessey? I think if John Landis directs 1941 and Steven Spielberg directs The Blues Brothers, they're both better.
1:03:37 Bill Simmons? That would have been a good hot take.
1:03:38 Chris Ryan? This is actually my possibly unanswerable question is if Spielberg directs 1941 and goes right into Blues Brothers and Blues Brothers goes out of control, does he ever direct Raiders?
1:03:50 Sean Fennessey? Probably not.
1:03:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:03:52 Sean Fennessey? Probably not.
1:03:52 Bill Simmons? Does he ever direct Poltergeist?
1:03:54 Sean Fennessey? Well, I mean, how dare you?
1:03:56 Bill Simmons? Inside, I relate that joke.
1:03:57 Sean Fennessey? Please, please, respect Toby Hooper, please.
1:04:00 Bill Simmons? Half assed research, they used 13 different Bluesmobiles cars. They were all bought at an auction. And then 60 other police cars cost $400 each.
1:04:12 Speaker 04 Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.
1:04:42 Bill Simmons? They had 40 stunt drivers. They had over 500 extras for the next to last $3.5 million seen in Daily, Daily Center.
1:04:52 Bill Simmons? The final chase scene, they dropped a Ford Pinto from a helicopter at an altitude of 1,200 feet.
1:04:59 Sean Fennessey? It's amazing.
1:05:00 Bill Simmons? And the FAA had to give them a special certificate to be able to do it.
1:05:06 Bill Simmons? Just again, back to my cocaine theory, this just doesn't happen in any other decade.
1:05:10 Chris Ryan? The FAA is on cocaine. They're like, great idea. Let's do it.
1:05:13 Sean Fennessey? This was a time too, when directors were like, I don't care. I'm doing it.
1:05:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:05:17 Sean Fennessey? And you couldn't stop them somehow.
1:05:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:05:19 Sean Fennessey? Like they would just spend and spend and you couldn't stop them.
1:05:21 Bill Simmons? Well, think about it. There's no texting, emails, cell phones. So you could just lose communication with somebody for 18 hours.
1:05:29 Chris Ryan? Every day, my, my favorite piece of research, a lot of the behind the scenes stuff comes from this Vanity Fair article that was written about the, the making of the movie, but the, the chain of screaming that would happen every day when Lou Wasserman would wake up and find out what he spent the day before on, on Blues Brothers.
1:05:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:05:45 Chris Ryan? And then he would call Ned Tannen and yell at him. And then Ned Tannen would call Sean Daniels and yell at him. And then they would call Landis and yell at him. And then finally it would be like down to Aykroyd, who was responsible for getting Belushi to get to the set every day.
1:05:59 Bill Simmons? So I read the Bob Woodward Wired, all the Blues Brothers parts.
1:06:04 Sean Fennessey? Very controversial book.
1:06:05 Bill Simmons? Yeah. The SNL people are all like really upset about it because they were working on the SNL book by Helen Wengrad about the first 10 years. And they were like 80% through it. And then Wired came out and was just like a Belushi cocaine hatchet job book. Um, although it's not as bad as I think it was represented, but it definitely dwells on the drug stuff. But there's a lot of Blues Brothers stuff in that. And that, the Vanity Fair thing was basically a lot of that rehashing Wired. But, uh, but that's a fun reread. Cause it's just like, it's like, we're on the set and then Belushi disappeared and then we had to go find him and he was doing this.
1:06:43 Chris Ryan? Turns up he was like at this guy's house.
1:06:44 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:06:45 Chris Ryan? Like two miles away.
1:06:45 Bill Simmons? It's like, you almost could have made a movie about Belushi making this movie. It could have been the movie.
1:06:50 Sean Fennessey? Don't give anybody any ideas.
1:06:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah, seriously. They destroyed 103 cars, which was a record.
1:06:57 Bill Simmons? Matrix Reloaded in 2003 wrecked 300 cars, broke it. There's a whole thing about how Belushi got hurt on a skateboard near the end and Lou Wasserman had to get the city's top orthopedic surgeon. Maybe this would be in the movie.
1:07:12 Chris Ryan? That would be amazing.
1:07:13 Bill Simmons? The Belushi making-
1:07:13 Chris Ryan? He basically like patches together his knee enough to hold up for the end of the film shoot.
1:07:17 Bill Simmons? The guy had just like worked on Mitch Kupchak or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
1:07:21 Sean Fennessey? What would the movie be called? Would it be like Singing the Blues?
1:07:25 Bill Simmons? Just Blues.
1:07:26 Sean Fennessey? Blues. Yeah, that's good.
1:07:29 Bill Simmons? It would be a movie that just made people mad, whatever it was.
1:07:32 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:07:33 Bill Simmons? So they filmed the, uh, the big musical numbers was at the Hollywood Palladium, but they made it seem like it was Chicago. And then, um...
1:07:41 Sean Fennessey? You know, one thing to add about that, the crowds are just great. You know, like in some movies you're watching, like these crowds are not selling it.
1:07:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:07:48 Sean Fennessey? But they're really selling how much they love Jake and Elwood in those sequences. People were standing up, they're dancing.
1:07:52 Bill Simmons? The only thing I don't like is that they weren't into it the beginning of the first song. They kinda no sold it.
1:07:58 Chris Ryan? You guys came all the way out here. $2.00. What the hell?
1:08:01 Bill Simmons? You weren't excited at all? Dan Aykroyd said, "Many theaters in the American South refused to show the film because there are too many blacks in it and that, uh, it would have done better if not for the racism in the American South."
1:08:13 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:08:14 Bill Simmons? And then, uh, Elwood, his, his data readout, I freeze framed it. 116 parking violations and 56 moving violations. And then it said arrest driver and pound vehicle. 56 moving violations is a lot.
1:08:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:08:31 Bill Simmons? I don't even think I had that in college.
1:08:35 Chris Ryan? How many moving violations were you ever carrying at once?
1:08:37 Bill Simmons? I mean, I almost, I almost lost my license.
1:08:40 Chris Ryan? Speeding?
1:08:41 Bill Simmons? I had, it was like a point system.
1:08:43 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:08:44 Bill Simmons? And I had to go and it was, I was gonna be at 10 points. So I had to go fight the ticket and I had to drive to like fricking middle Connecticut somewhere.
1:08:55 Chris Ryan? Did you represent yourself in court?
1:08:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I was just gonna, I was gonna say they had like a faulty radar thing.
1:09:00 Sean Fennessey? I'm out of order, you're out of order!
1:09:02 Bill Simmons? The cop didn't show up. Cop, cop had like something and didn't show up. And I would've lost my license for my whole junior year.
1:09:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Maybe he recognized a future takesman in you and he didn't want to take it away.
1:09:12 Sean Fennessey? So you're saying he was a coward, that man? He wouldn't show up?
1:09:15 Bill Simmons? He wasn't expecting it.
1:09:17 Sean Fennessey? You've been, you've been in a car with Bill. What do you think of that?
1:09:19 Chris Ryan? Uh, I mean, I find the seatbelt thing distracting. Uh, but I think you're a pretty good driver.
1:09:25 Sean Fennessey? Your eyes just went very wide.
1:09:27 Chris Ryan? I think you're really a driver.
1:09:28 Bill Simmons? 329 from Vegas to Burbank.
1:09:31 Chris Ryan? 3 hours and 29 seconds?
1:09:33 Sean Fennessey? We're speed brothers.
1:09:34 Bill Simmons? 3 hours 29 minutes, Vegas to Burbank. Dropping off Corolla at his house.
1:09:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah, but you wear a seatbelt.
1:09:38 Sean Fennessey? I do wear a seatbelt.
1:09:39 Chris Ryan? And he's a big hangs a U-turn in the middle of Wilshire guy.
1:09:42 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:09:44 Bill Simmons? Listen, there's two ways to drive. Either you're a coward, or you're the king of the jungle.
1:09:49 Sean Fennessey? Busy living or busy dying.
1:09:51 Bill Simmons? Apex Mountain.
1:09:54 Bill Simmons? Belushi's an interesting one. I think it's probably 78 Animal House, SNL, when he's still on there. The combo of that would be my official opinion.
1:10:05 Chris Ryan? I think you're probably right. I do love the idea of him being both Apex Mountain, like, it's like not only his movie stardom, but his like city stardom.
1:10:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:10:14 Chris Ryan? Like, is this Apex Mountain of a famous person in Chicago?
1:10:17 Bill Simmons? How about a famous person in any city?
1:10:19 Chris Ryan? Is it Michael Jordan? You know, like, yeah.
1:10:21 Bill Simmons? Ooh. But Belushi was like a man of the people, though.
1:10:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:10:24 Bill Simmons? I'm sure like everybody who's in Chicago.
1:10:25 Chris Ryan? Michael Jordan Steakhouse was available, open to the public, you know?
1:10:28 Bill Simmons? He's sitting in the back. I'm sure Belushi from 75 to 81 in Chicago.
1:10:36 Bill Simmons? Probably everyone who lived there probably has one Belushi story, would be my guess.
1:10:40 Sean Fennessey? Like you said, he never carried a wallet. He ate for free, he drank for free every day.
1:10:45 Bill Simmons? It's like Dave Jacoby. Aykroyd? I'm gonna say no.
1:10:49 Sean Fennessey? I think Ghostbusters.
1:10:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:10:51 Chris Ryan? Is this Apex Mountain for getting your personal belongings back after leaving prison?
1:10:56 Bill Simmons? For that scene?
1:10:57 Chris Ryan? Just, the only other one that matches this is Rounders.
1:11:01 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
1:11:02 Chris Ryan? When Worm gets his toothpick.
1:11:03 Sean Fennessey? There's another famous one, though. I was reading about it. What is the other famous one?
1:11:07 Chris Ryan? Is it 48 Hours? Or does he, I don't think he gets anything special back.
1:11:11 Bill Simmons? So see our, when Red Art, yeah, he gets his suit back, though.
1:11:14 Chris Ryan? He gets the suit back.
1:11:15 Bill Simmons? The suit was $957, so I wore the shit in.
1:11:18 Sean Fennessey? Yes. There's like a, this kind of set the template for that move.
1:11:22 Bill Simmons? So when we read our heist movie?
1:11:24 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:11:25 Bill Simmons? We have a scene where they get their stuff back in the beginning?
1:11:27 Chris Ryan? And it's like, here you go. You know, it's like.
1:11:29 Bill Simmons? Pack of Marlboros.
1:11:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Your FanDuel account.
1:11:31 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. One soiled condom.
1:11:34 Chris Ryan? Ones when you's prophetic.
1:11:36 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:11:36 Bill Simmons? One same game parlay.
1:11:38 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:11:39 Bill Simmons? Chicago is a movie locale.
1:11:41 Chris Ryan? No.
1:11:42 Bill Simmons? Probably Ferris, right?
1:11:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah. I would say.
1:11:46 Bill Simmons? That's gotta be the greatest scene ever filmed in Chicago.
1:11:49 Sean Fennessey? I love Thief.
1:11:50 Bill Simmons? Well, but that's like a different.
1:11:52 Sean Fennessey? I know.
1:11:52 Bill Simmons? That's not the answer.
1:11:53 Sean Fennessey? It's my emotional apex.
1:11:55 Chris Ryan? It's it's either Ferris or or Fugitive.
1:11:57 Bill Simmons? Were you on the Thief rewatch?
1:11:58 Sean Fennessey? I was and I was so happy. It's one of my favorite episodes of all time.
1:12:01 Chris Ryan? That was a pandemic era one.
1:12:02 Sean Fennessey? That's, you know.
1:12:03 Bill Simmons? Let's get on with this big romance. Oh, that's right. You did your whole thing about the diner day.
1:12:07 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that's the best.
1:12:08 Bill Simmons? As you know, I don't remember anything after the vaccine.
1:12:10 Sean Fennessey? No, I love you.
1:12:18 Bill Simmons? The Blues. I'm gonna say no.
1:12:20 Chris Ryan? Probably not.
1:12:21 Bill Simmons? Bushy Sideburns.
1:12:22 Sean Fennessey? Ooh. I think Elvis in Vegas.
1:12:25 Bill Simmons? Okay. Carrie Fisher? This comes out same day as Empire Strikes Back.
1:12:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I guess this is.
1:12:30 Bill Simmons? Pretty good day for her.
1:12:31 Sean Fennessey? Wow.
1:12:32 Bill Simmons? Not bad.
1:12:32 Chris Ryan? She gets a little bit marginalized Empire, I think, right? It's more Luke's story.
1:12:37 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Yes.
1:12:39 Chris Ryan? I think Jedi is like her real, like she chokes out Jabba, you know?
1:12:43 Sean Fennessey? Right. She's sex slave in in Jedi.
1:12:45 Chris Ryan? Have you seen Return of the Jedi?
1:12:47 Bill Simmons? I saw it in the theater.
1:12:48 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:12:49 Sean Fennessey? Uh huh. Is that the last time you saw it?
1:12:50 Bill Simmons? Probably.
1:12:53 Bill Simmons? I remember being pleased.
1:12:54 Sean Fennessey? You remember being pleased?
1:12:55 Bill Simmons? I thought Jedi was my favorite of the three.
1:12:57 Chris Ryan? Big Uwok guy.
1:12:58 Sean Fennessey? Classic bill take right there. Come on.
1:12:59 Bill Simmons? I remember having a good time.
1:13:00 Sean Fennessey? Favorite of the three?
1:13:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:13:02 Sean Fennessey? Good lord.
1:13:02 Bill Simmons? Well, I remember I I really liked Han Solo and and Chewbacca. And I felt like they really got to cook in the third one.
1:13:09 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:13:10 Chris Ryan? The original Blues Brothers.
1:13:11 Sean Fennessey? Kind of McHale and Parrish of the Star Wars universe. Yeah.
1:13:15 Bill Simmons? JCPenney's? Has it ever gotten better than those guys going through the window and had JCPenney's?
1:13:21 Chris Ryan? For Pier One, right?
1:13:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah, probably. They these are stores that were it was right around their apex anyway.
1:13:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:13:28 Bill Simmons? The eighties, late seventies, early eighties.
1:13:30 Chris Ryan? But to have it called out by Jake and Elwood. Oh, Pier One.
1:13:35 Sean Fennessey? Imprinted on you. Now you shop there to this day.
1:13:37 Bill Simmons? Illinois Nazis, I think, definitely.
1:13:41 Bill Simmons? The theme song from Rawhide, I'm gonna say no.
1:13:43 Sean Fennessey? Probably the height of Rawhide as a television show.
1:13:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Orange whips. What is an orange whips here?
1:13:49 Sean Fennessey? I know.
1:13:51 Bill Simmons? Free of them.
1:13:52 Sean Fennessey? I think it's, I think it's like a Dole whip in that it's like a, kind of like somewhere between an ice cream and a drink.
1:13:59 Chris Ryan? It's like an Orange Julius, right?
1:14:00 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:14:00 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:14:01 Bill Simmons? Cocaine.
1:14:03 Chris Ryan? Nah. I think cocaine's had some big moments. I think Scarface is honestly like cocaine's apex mountain.
1:14:09 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I think a lot of just Richard Pryor in the seventies is kind of in the conversation.
1:14:15 Bill Simmons? It's a tough one. Cause it has to be like a positive apex mountain. It can't be like this person died doing cocaine. It's more like.
1:14:21 Sean Fennessey? Live on the Sunset Strip, this Richard Pryor is like him talking about being on cocaine, right? And getting high and then what he did to himself.
1:14:28 Bill Simmons? Might be like a Michael Ray Richardson triple double in like nineteen seventy nine, like a twenty nine, seventeen, fourteen. The new Oldsmobile is definitely apex mountain.
1:14:37 Chris Ryan? Absolutely.
1:14:38 Bill Simmons? It came out early. James Brown? No. Horrible apartments, probably there's been worse.
1:14:46 Chris Ryan? Has there been a worse apartment than Elwood's apartment that was next to the L?
1:14:49 Bill Simmons? My least favorite apartment ever in a movie is the seven one where the person was being starved to death.
1:14:54 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
1:14:55 Bill Simmons? That's my number one.
1:14:55 Sean Fennessey? Sloth?
1:14:56 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:14:56 Bill Simmons? That's, that's the one you don't want to rent right after.
1:14:59 Sean Fennessey? Sloth? It is.
1:15:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah, that's why.
1:15:02 Bill Simmons? Tough beat for the next tenant.
1:15:03 Sean Fennessey? Dicks!
1:15:07 Sean Fennessey? McKinley.
1:15:08 Bill Simmons? You know, we did Silence as, as basically a comedy.
1:15:12 Chris Ryan? Should we do Seven as a comedy?
1:15:13 Bill Simmons? Seven, ready to just have just fun with that?
1:15:16 Sean Fennessey? I'm so in.
1:15:16 Bill Simmons? What's in the box?
1:15:18 Chris Ryan? The re-Seven, a laugh riot?
1:15:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:15:20 Sean Fennessey? Detectives!
1:15:23 Bill Simmons? Blues Brothers as a band. I'm gonna say yes.
1:15:27 Sean Fennessey? This is their apex over going platinum.
1:15:30 Chris Ryan? Is that?
1:15:31 Sean Fennessey? Or on SNL.
1:15:31 Chris Ryan? What was that one called? Bag, briefcase full of blues?
1:15:34 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it sold four million albums, which is pretty nuts. It's a lot of albums. Vengeful ex-girlfriends, no. John Landis, no.
1:15:42 Chris Ryan? What is Vengeful?
1:15:42 Bill Simmons? I had checking out of prison.
1:15:43 Chris Ryan? For Vengeful ex-girlfriends, just out of curiosity.
1:15:45 Bill Simmons? Fatal, Fatal Attraction. I will not be ignored.
1:15:50 Sean Fennessey? Is Coming to America Landis's Apex Mountain?
1:15:53 Bill Simmons? I think so.
1:15:54 Chris Ryan? It's a tricky one.
1:15:55 Bill Simmons? Unless you wanna go-
1:15:55 Chris Ryan? But that's post, uh, Twilight Zone, isn't it?
1:15:58 Sean Fennessey? Uh-
1:15:59 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
1:15:59 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:16:00 Bill Simmons? No, it's, it's, it's probably Animal House.
1:16:02 Sean Fennessey? Isn't it an Animal House?
1:16:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah. That thing was phenomenal.
1:16:05 Sean Fennessey? All three of them are in a similar range, box office-wise.
1:16:09 Bill Simmons? Cruise or Hanks?
1:16:10 Chris Ryan? Why not both?
1:16:11 Bill Simmons? No, that, you can't.
1:16:13 Sean Fennessey? That was my answer too, Cruise and Hanks.
1:16:14 Bill Simmons? No, don't be cowards.
1:16:15 Chris Ryan? Then Hanks is Elwood.
1:16:16 Bill Simmons? Hanks is Elwood's the answer.
1:16:18 Sean Fennessey? Okay, I won't argue.
1:16:20 Bill Simmons? Scorsese or Spielberg? Clearly Spielberg.
1:16:22 Sean Fennessey? Wait a minute, hold on, but we know Cruise knows how to do a back handspring because of The Firm, just like Jake does in the movie. Are we sure?
1:16:29 Bill Simmons? No, it has to be Hank.
1:16:31 Chris Ryan? Can you imagine Cruise being like, "How much for the women?"
1:16:34 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:16:34 Chris Ryan? "How much for this little girl?"
1:16:37 Bill Simmons? Spielberg for, versus Scorsese.
1:16:39 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:16:40 Bill Simmons? Although Scorsese's version of this, of, Scorsese gets to make the making of the movie.
1:16:44 Chris Ryan? The cocaine's in the movie, if he makes it.
1:16:45 Bill Simmons? He makes blues.
1:16:47 Sean Fennessey? They're doing the-
1:16:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:16:48 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, like you could see that.
1:16:50 Bill Simmons? Jennifer Brulette, Aniston Coolidge, Connolly, Garner, Lawrence or Lopez for the Carrie Fisher part? I had Lawrence.
1:16:57 Sean Fennessey? I had four question marks. I'm not sure that any of these women make sense in this movie.
1:17:01 Chris Ryan? I like the idea of like a younger-
1:17:02 Bill Simmons? I'm not sure I like the category, but trying it out.
1:17:04 Chris Ryan? Younger Lopez as Carrie Fisher is pretty cool.
1:17:06 Bill Simmons? Oh, just-
1:17:07 Chris Ryan? Or Jennifer Coolidge as the Penguin.
1:17:10 Bill Simmons? Oh, Jennifer Coolidge is the Penguin's good.
1:17:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:17:12 Bill Simmons? All right, Coolidge wins that one.
1:17:14 Chris Ryan? Are we, did you skip calling Rosillo? Are you, are you backing away from that idea?
1:17:17 Bill Simmons? No, I'll call him right now.
1:17:18 Chris Ryan? All right.
1:17:18 Sean Fennessey? I received a text from a friend today, who said the most exciting moment in podcast listening he's had this year is hearing that we were gonna call Ryan for, on Before Sunrise, and he was at the edge of his seat.
1:17:32 Chris Ryan? He's gonna think it's because Durant got traded.
1:17:36 Sean Fennessey? Oh, Brian, it's one.
1:17:39 Bill Simmons? Damn. Oh, for two.
1:17:42 Sean Fennessey? At least hit us with a, hey, you've reached Ryan. Not here right now.
1:17:45 Bill Simmons? I'll keep the phone on.
1:17:46 Chris Ryan? Cause he was like, you called, right? Before.
1:17:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:17:49 Sean Fennessey? Son of a.
1:17:50 Bill Simmons? What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played in the movie?
1:17:55 Chris Ryan? Uh, the John Candy role.
1:17:56 Sean Fennessey? That's what I was.
1:17:57 Bill Simmons? I had that as well.
1:17:57 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Burton Mercer.
1:18:00 Bill Simmons? The Ed Norton reversed Dunk Award, did this movie need a random sports scene?
1:18:04 Chris Ryan? I think that there's a, there's a even more coked out version of this where they, the 1980 Cubs come into play here. And they are like, that, like, we get, is Ron Say on that team? Like, what are we talking about in 1980?
1:18:16 Sean Fennessey? This is the height of Walter Payton. Where is Walter Payton?
1:18:19 Chris Ryan? Well, it's summer, right?
1:18:20 Bill Simmons? Those are both noble answers, guys, but you're both wrong.
1:18:23 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:18:24 Bill Simmons? It's a pickup hoops basketball scene where he goes to find one of, one of the band members, cause they're playing in a game.
1:18:31 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:18:32 Bill Simmons? And it's put, there's, there's cameos from like Mark Aguirre, Magic Johnson in the game.
1:18:36 Chris Ryan? Isaiah.
1:18:37 Bill Simmons? And we're just like.
1:18:37 Sean Fennessey? Who's on the 80 Bulls?
1:18:39 Chris Ryan? He's just saying local Chicago players.
1:18:40 Bill Simmons? I'm saying like, we use local Chicago dudes.
1:18:42 Sean Fennessey? Oh, Chicago guys, okay, okay.
1:18:44 Bill Simmons? And then that's how we get it.
1:18:47 Bill Simmons? Pick a Nits.
1:18:50 Bill Simmons? I have a million, so I'll let you guys go.
1:18:52 Chris Ryan? I, it's more just like of a general comment, which, this is a movie where if you subtract certain elements from it, there's no movie. There's, if you took out the car chases and the music, this would be like a 42 minute movie. Which is fine. I love, I like, love this movie, but it's just a note that there's not really much of like a plot.
1:19:13 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I have some.
1:19:14 Bill Simmons? If you took a cheeseburger out of a bun, it's not a fucking cheeseburger.
1:19:18 Chris Ryan? It's called Pick a Nits.
1:19:19 Bill Simmons? Jesus.
1:19:20 Sean Fennessey? I, yeah, I have some just questions about the money in general. So Ray lets them take out $1,400 in musical instruments on an IOU. Well, they say 1,400 is what they would return on, out of the $10,000. And $1,400 in 1980 is roughly like a hundred grand right now? Um, so he gave them a 100 grand IOU. I don't know if my conversion may be off. Let's just say for the sake of conversation, it's $50,000.
1:19:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:19:48 Sean Fennessey? He let them walk out with $50,000.
1:19:51 Bill Simmons? It's a good friend.
1:19:51 Sean Fennessey? That's not ideal. Um, on top of that, $5,000 in back taxes or the IRS is going to close an orphanage.
1:19:59 Bill Simmons? That was my biggest one.
1:20:00 Sean Fennessey? What?
1:20:00 Bill Simmons? It's a church owned orphanage that has to pay a property tax bill.
1:20:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:20:05 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna guess it's tax exempt.
1:20:07 Sean Fennessey? I think so.
1:20:08 Bill Simmons? Orphanage.
1:20:09 Sean Fennessey? I think so.
1:20:09 Chris Ryan? I guess there's-
1:20:10 Sean Fennessey? The whole movie on this, we could have done a little better.
1:20:15 Bill Simmons? How did nobody get run over in the mall as a picket net?
1:20:18 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:20:18 Chris Ryan? How did nobody die in any of Carrie Fisher's?
1:20:21 Sean Fennessey? But the, the way that they did it is great because that was a mall that was closed, then would never reopen where they shot. The Dixie Square Mall had been closed for two years and they shot it in there while it was closed fully.
1:20:31 Chris Ryan? But it had extras there, yeah.
1:20:32 Sean Fennessey? So it was, but yeah.
1:20:33 Bill Simmons? I'm saying in real life, if you're making this movie, somebody gets hit. How did Carrie Fisher's character get a rocket launcher? Could you just buy one of those in 79?
1:20:41 Sean Fennessey? Iran-Contra, let's go.
1:20:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah, get Gaddafi.
1:20:46 Sean Fennessey? Ready for that one?
1:20:48 Bill Simmons? This, uh, this is my wife who watched the middle half of the movie with me and then went to go watch Below Deck. Uh, the Soul Food Cafe, she felt like had 40 health violations.
1:20:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:20:59 Bill Simmons? It was disgusting.
1:21:00 Chris Ryan? Also, Matt Gitar Murphy, uh, as soon as he finds out Jake and Elwood are there, just leaves a live grill going. It's like Jake, Elwood.
1:21:08 Bill Simmons? And a wife in the business?
1:21:09 Sean Fennessey? Saxophonist standing on the countertop, not what you want.
1:21:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:21:13 Bill Simmons? I mean, the biggest nitpick in this whole movie, what happened to the good old boys? Why were they so late? They had a gig, they just showed up at the end, everybody at the bar is gone. They're like, we're the good old boys, we're here. It's like, yeah, you guys are four hours late.
1:21:25 Chris Ryan? Probably a lot of road closures because of all the car chases that have been happening. So just traffic was a bitch, you know?
1:21:31 Bill Simmons? How did the band drink $200 worth of beer at Bob's Country Bunker? It's a lot, in 1980?
1:21:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah, beers are like a buck.
1:21:37 Bill Simmons? Beers are like 50 cents?
1:21:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:21:38 Sean Fennessey? That is a lot.
1:21:39 Bill Simmons? Nine guys in the band?
1:21:41 Sean Fennessey? They had 400 beers.
1:21:44 Chris Ryan? That's like Wade Boggs numbers.
1:21:46 Bill Simmons? Is Twiggy really just like, I'm gonna wait at this motel for that weird guy who smells that, uh?
1:21:51 Chris Ryan? Did I give $94?
1:21:53 Sean Fennessey? Elwood, he had a magnetism, you know? He had game.
1:21:57 Bill Simmons? There's a nighttime daylight thing that's a little dubious in this movie.
1:22:00 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
1:22:02 Bill Simmons? They escape after the concert, probably 11 o'clock.
1:22:07 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:22:08 Bill Simmons? 10:30. Concert started like 8, maybe let's say 9:30. And they're on chase and they're in Chicago. They weren't that far away.
1:22:15 Chris Ryan? They're like two hours from Chicago, yeah.
1:22:17 Bill Simmons? But now it's the morning and people are at work at 9 o'clock, so there's 11 hours unaccounted for.
1:22:25 Bill Simmons? Again, cocaine.
1:22:26 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:22:26 Bill Simmons? Hell of a drug.
1:22:27 Sean Fennessey? Continuity errors.
1:22:28 Chris Ryan? That's how you lose 11 hours.
1:22:29 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:22:31 Bill Simmons? Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV all black cast or untouchable, uh, untouchable.
1:22:35 Sean Fennessey? Well, unfortunately, there was a sequel, so.
1:22:40 Bill Simmons? Or there wasn't.
1:22:41 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:22:41 Bill Simmons? You could apply Fletch to Rocky V rules and just live your life like it never happened.
1:22:46 Sean Fennessey? That's good.
1:22:47 Bill Simmons? Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, No, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harley Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm?
1:22:57 Chris Ryan? I was thinking that it would be amazing if Daniel Plainview was the third Blues brother and introduced them at the Palace Hotel. It was like, "We're so glad to see many of you lovely people here tonight, and we would especially like to welcome all the representatives of Illinois' law enforcement community that have chosen to join us here in the Palace Hotel Ballroom."
1:23:17 Speaker 05 You, me, them, everybody.
1:23:21 Speaker 05 Let's sing the blues.
1:23:24 Bill Simmons? I had, uh, Romo.
1:23:29 Bill Simmons? During basically any car chase.
1:23:32 Chris Ryan? The Nazis are falling, Jim. They're not gonna make it. They're falling about 130 stories, Jim.
1:23:40 Sean Fennessey? The same energy that he brought to Mark Andrews dropping that pass.
1:23:43 Chris Ryan? Oh, Mike, this is just a woman scorned with a heat-seeking missile launcher. You can get those from Gaddafi any way you want, man.
1:23:52 Bill Simmons? She's gotta move on. She's just gotta, I know it was three years that left her at the altar, but come on. Just want to ask her who gets it. The soundtrack? Acry?
1:24:03 Sean Fennessey? I'd say Belushi.
1:24:04 Bill Simmons? Belushi? Best actor?
1:24:06 Sean Fennessey? It just, nobody can do what he can do.
1:24:09 Chris Ryan? I was gonna say Acry for, for, not screenplay.
1:24:11 Sean Fennessey? For story?
1:24:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah, for inspiration.
1:24:14 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:24:15 Bill Simmons? Was was best movie that only makes sense if you know that cocaine was involved in Oscar category?
1:24:22 Sean Fennessey? They should add that.
1:24:23 Chris Ryan? That should be a rewatchables category. Does cocaine make this movie make more sense?
1:24:28 Bill Simmons? So the 81 Oscars, De Niro wins for Raging Bull, Duval, Great Santini, John Hurt, the alpha man, Peter O'Toole, the stunt man, maybe Belushi bumps Jack Lemmon in Tribute?
1:24:39 Sean Fennessey? Oh, I've not seen that.
1:24:40 Chris Ryan? I don't think I've ever seen Tribute. Otherwise, I don't know.
1:24:43 Sean Fennessey? Oscars. Probably not getting past Bobby D on that one. Yeah.
1:24:49 Bill Simmons? Probably an answerable questions.
1:24:52 Bill Simmons? The owner from Bob, Bob, from Bob's Country Bunker, just is now in a jihad trying to find Jake and Elwood. Like he just closed down his business. What happened?
1:25:01 Sean Fennessey? For 200 bucks.
1:25:02 Bill Simmons? Was was anyone working there?
1:25:05 Chris Ryan? I just think he hates being made a fool of.
1:25:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's it. He was gonna follow this guy all around. Why was Bob Country, Bob's Country Bunker so close to Chicago and Illinois? When it seems like it's in Arkansas?
1:25:17 Chris Ryan? Kind of in Indiana.
1:25:19 Bill Simmons? Is that what it is?
1:25:20 Chris Ryan? I think so. Cause India, like, it doesn't take long to get from Chicago to Indiana. Then, once you're in Indiana, you can get to some country bunkers pretty fast.
1:25:28 Bill Simmons? I have one more. Did they ever think of just having characters do cocaine in these movies when the movie is so clearly fueled by cocaine?
1:25:35 Sean Fennessey? It's funny. There's not a lot of, not a lot of cocaine use in the 70s in movies.
1:25:39 Bill Simmons? Ever.
1:25:40 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:25:40 Sean Fennessey? It's a good point. The 80s and the 90s, it changes.
1:25:43 Bill Simmons? Only like in Cruisin'.
1:25:45 Chris Ryan? That's like only when Scorsese gets to Last Temptation of Christ.
1:25:48 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:25:48 Chris Ryan? And he's got.
1:25:49 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:25:49 Chris Ryan? Judas.
1:25:51 Bill Simmons? Well, Cruisin', what is he doing in the handkerchief?
1:25:53 Chris Ryan? He's doing like formaldehyde or like he's doing, he's doing like, he's doing like uppers or something. Sniffers.
1:25:59 Bill Simmons? Re-Cruisin'?
1:26:00 Sean Fennessey? I'm in. I'm there.
1:26:03 Bill Simmons? Uh, I have an answerable question. Blu-ray soon. 4K Blu-ray.
1:26:06 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:26:06 Bill Simmons? It's like $70.
1:26:08 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, thank you, Arrow. Thank you for all your work that you're doing.
1:26:10 Bill Simmons? $70. Who's buying Cruisin'?
1:26:13 Chris Ryan? Not you, but you're gonna wait till it's 35.
1:26:15 Bill Simmons? I'll wait. There was a total recall was $10 the other day. I was like, all right, I'll take that down.
1:26:20 Chris Ryan? Cocaine Bill buying full price DVDs. That's a documentary I would watch.
1:26:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's what if I was doing cocaine, that's the kind of stuff I'd do. I'd be like, oh, my God.
1:26:29 Sean Fennessey? You should get a.
1:26:29 Bill Simmons? All the Hitchcocks.
1:26:30 Sean Fennessey? You should get a, you should get a GoPro, but only put it on when you start surfing for Blue Race. You know, when you're just like, do I add it to the cart? Do I not add it? Is $49.99 too much for me?
1:26:42 Bill Simmons? They had Eternal Sunshine was on and I almost bought it even though I don't really like the movie.
1:26:46 Sean Fennessey? You don't like that. See, this is what happens.
1:26:47 Chris Ryan? This is gonna be like, you're gonna have Lebowski and you're like, I've never seen it.
1:26:50 Bill Simmons? No, I'm not gonna, I'm not crossing that line.
1:26:53 Sean Fennessey? This is Bill. Bill is one of the great collectors and I knew this would happen one day.
1:26:57 Bill Simmons? What piece of memorabilia would you want?
1:26:59 Chris Ryan? Wait, I have a question.
1:27:00 Bill Simmons? Oh, go.
1:27:01 Chris Ryan? How bad did these guys smell?
1:27:03 Bill Simmons? Oh, Jesus.
1:27:04 Sean Fennessey? That's a really good one.
1:27:05 Chris Ryan? There's not a shower in sight. He gets out of Joliet. He's wearing the same clothes he wore going in. The guys at Shea, the family at Shea Paul is like, they smell. We want them moved. In 1980, can you imagine how bad, when you start smoking sections in restaurants?
1:27:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:27:22 Chris Ryan? How bad somebody has to smell to ask them to move?
1:27:24 Sean Fennessey? I think it, well.
1:27:26 Chris Ryan? In sewers.
1:27:27 Sean Fennessey? Were we more okay with people's body odor 40 years ago?
1:27:32 Bill Simmons? Good question. I talk about this with my wife a lot when we watch like 1883, 1923. We just watched American Primeval.
1:27:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:27:41 Bill Simmons? And I was just thinking of like the odors as somebody who, you know, has bad eyesight. So I have a super nose.
1:27:47 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah, Spiderman.
1:27:49 Bill Simmons? My wife said, the odors are just so bad all the time that eventually you kind of, your brain kind of phases it out. It's like if you hear a loud noise all the time, you don't hear the noise the same way.
1:28:00 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:28:00 Bill Simmons? That's what it is.
1:28:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I think.
1:28:02 Bill Simmons? You become overpowered, your brain like is able to shut off that scent.
1:28:06 Chris Ryan? In the Westerns, it's like, there's no indoor plumbing. So you have to imagine like anywhere where there are people, it's pretty, pretty bad. Right?
1:28:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah. The only way to compare anything to it now is the smell of a hockey locker room. That's it. That's how, if you want to know what the 1880s, 1880s were like.
1:28:22 Sean Fennessey? Pretty rough.
1:28:23 Bill Simmons? Just going to like after a triple OT game in a hockey locker room.
1:28:26 Sean Fennessey? My nephews play hockey. It's not ideal.
1:28:28 Bill Simmons? Wrestling's up there too, I think.
1:28:29 Sean Fennessey? I, why is the guy who invented deodorant not more of a saint?
1:28:34 Bill Simmons? A hero?
1:28:35 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Why is he not someone whose name we know? Or a woman, maybe it was a woman.
1:28:39 Bill Simmons? But way back when, they, they kind of liked malodorousness.
1:28:43 Sean Fennessey? A Musk. They like the man Musk.
1:28:45 Bill Simmons? There was that famous story about Napoleon telling his girlfriend or his wife, like, I'll be home in three weeks. Don't wash.
1:28:52 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's how you are.
1:28:54 Chris Ryan? But that was supposed to be like a kink. He's like, don't even bother getting clean for me because I'm about to kick Rush's ass and they didn't come home.
1:29:01 Sean Fennessey? It's tough to eat.
1:29:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:29:02 Sean Fennessey? Um, probably unanswerable, uh, to the point about the poster. Does this take place in the same universe as Apocalypse Now, this movie?
1:29:11 Sean Fennessey? Like, is there a?
1:29:12 Chris Ryan? Oh, it's like Captain.
1:29:12 Sean Fennessey? Is there?
1:29:13 Chris Ryan? Maybe going to see, uh, the good old boys when he gets back from.
1:29:17 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Did he have a copy of briefcase full of blues?
1:29:20 Bill Simmons? That would be.
1:29:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Could be.
1:29:22 Bill Simmons? It's like, oh, I didn't realize Elwood and Jacob planned.
1:29:24 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that'd be fun. Um, how many of these movies would Belushi have made it if he'd lived?
1:29:29 Chris Ryan? Hmm. So this is the question. I was curious about this as well as do you think that he keeps making reliably like blockbuster comedies? Or do you think he starts really pushing, pushing out his boat to do drama and stuff?
1:29:42 Bill Simmons? He's one of those, I want to be treated as a real actor people. So the all bets are off with that. But it's possible like that America's guest thing you mentioned earlier. It's possible that they're doing cocaine one night and they're just like, I wrote this script called America's guest. And all of a sudden they're making it. Cause I really think that's what the early eighties were like. I just think like, somebody had an idea. They had a typewriter. They're just like typing it out for eight days at the Chateau Marmont and then they're making a movie.
1:30:09 Chris Ryan? I had one more unanswerable, but just also just curious about. Do you think this is the reason why like Lorne became more hands on with people's adaptations of SNL stuff? Cause he wasn't really a part of this, right? And kind of turned it, didn't.
1:30:25 Sean Fennessey? He wasn't, but I, I could be wrong about this. You, you're more of an expert on this sort of thing, but when he came back to the show, I think he put some things into his deal that anything that was an SNL produced movie would be part of the universal agreement that they made and Broadway video would participate and it would all be licensed through the show. Whereas this was not.
1:30:45 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:30:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and also he had been on the show longer and I think by the 90s, people were more scared of him.
1:30:50 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:30:51 Sean Fennessey? Right.
1:30:51 Bill Simmons? So there was like the the famous story of when Conan did the Tonight Show. We took it over and he didn't kind of bring Lauren into it. And then Lauren couldn't protect him. Lauren's like a fucking mafia boss.
1:31:05 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:31:05 Bill Simmons? So then Leno was able to do the shit he did that if Lauren had been involved in the show, there never fucking would have been.
1:31:10 Sean Fennessey? Right. He could have been the shield.
1:31:11 Bill Simmons? So I don't think he had that kind of power in 1980.
1:31:13 Sean Fennessey? Right.
1:31:14 Bill Simmons? You read all the stuff you read from the late 70s is just him realizing like, oh, God, like you're just. Once these people hit a certain point, they're just gonna leave or I'm gonna lose them.
1:31:24 Sean Fennessey? Hmm.
1:31:25 Bill Simmons? Loyalty doesn't matter, the whole thing.
1:31:27 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
1:31:28 Bill Simmons? Um, what piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie?
1:31:35 Sean Fennessey? When I went to the Blues Brothers 2000 premiere, they gave everybody a hat and Ray Bans. And everybody wore them and looked ridiculous and I did and there's a photo of me wearing them and I look so stupid. Um, but, you know, Elwood and Jake's hat and Ray Bans would be a sick item of movie memorabilia.
1:31:55 Bill Simmons? So I researched this and apparently Belushi lost like 500 Ray Bans during the filming. So there's just no way to even know.
1:32:01 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah. There's no original.
1:32:03 Bill Simmons? I think the Accroyd, the briefcase that Elwood had, I think is seems reasonable. The car, the broken down car after the fact.
1:32:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:32:13 Bill Simmons? I think could be cool, but I think the answer is probably the poster. The Colin Camp poster, just because of the.
1:32:19 Sean Fennessey? Lot of history there.
1:32:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:32:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:32:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Like you basically would try to get that one.
1:32:22 Sean Fennessey? For you.
1:32:23 Chris Ryan? For sure.
1:32:24 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:32:25 Chris Ryan? Captain Willard cranking it to Colin Camp.
1:32:27 Bill Simmons? Or the harmonica would be another good one, like the harmonica they use in the, uh, the big scene. Coach Finstock, the word, best life lesson.
1:32:35 Chris Ryan? Sometimes you need a mission from God.
1:32:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah, mission from God trumps everything else.
1:32:39 Sean Fennessey? I got two.
1:32:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:32:40 Sean Fennessey? One, pay your parking tickets. Like this, they could have avoided a lot of problems if they'd done that. Two, I love that the sign in the prison at the end of the movie, it's never too late to mend. Yeah, that's what it says, like in the lettering above the prison. I feel like that's a good message to take away from this movie.
1:32:55 Bill Simmons? Don't leave your girlfriend at the altar?
1:32:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah, well, especially not if she's got an inroad to Gaddafi.
1:33:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Guns at the ammo magazine. Best double feature choice, Animal House?
1:33:08 Sean Fennessey? I got a weird one.
1:33:09 Chris Ryan? Wayne's World? Bertolucci's The Leopard?
1:33:13 Bill Simmons? Old girlfriends.
1:33:14 Sean Fennessey? There's a There's a very A little known Walter Hill movie called Crossroads.
1:33:22 Bill Simmons? Not little known.
1:33:22 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah, Ralph Macchio.
1:33:24 Sean Fennessey? Ralph Macchio and Joe Seneca.
1:33:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:33:27 Sean Fennessey? About Robert Johnson and the history of blues. That is a cool movie.
1:33:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:33:31 Sean Fennessey? And it is like, that's a movie about the real blues. This is a movie about
1:33:35 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:33:35 Sean Fennessey? Modern blues.
1:33:36 Chris Ryan? My, uh, my double feature would be The Commitments.
1:33:39 Sean Fennessey? Oh, that's good.
1:33:40 Chris Ryan? Yeah. That's a group of Irish kids who started 60s soul band.
1:33:44 Bill Simmons? There's a one A award for what happened the next day, for adding this in. How many years were Jake and Elwood in prison? What do we think?
1:33:51 Sean Fennessey? He just did a three year bid.
1:33:53 Chris Ryan? So he's a recidivist.
1:33:54 Sean Fennessey? Yep. So that's held against him. I think we're talking about 10 to 15 years here.
1:34:00 Bill Simmons? Lot of property destroyed. Lot of cop cars destroyed, a malls destroyed.
1:34:07 Sean Fennessey? Multi time offenders.
1:34:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Does he save the orphanage, though?
1:34:12 Sean Fennessey? You know, I think Blues Brothers 2000, doesn't it start with Jake getting out or with Elwood getting out? No, but that, but that would be 18 years.
1:34:20 Bill Simmons? Doesn't matter.
1:34:21 Sean Fennessey? The other thing I was thinking about last night is it, we are now further away from that movie than the sequel was from the original, which is like fucking devastating time wise.
1:34:33 Bill Simmons? Well, we also, we talked about Belushi movies he didn't make. He was supposed to be in Ghostbusters, which was the fork in the road with that movie. That was why.
1:34:41 Chris Ryan? What was he gonna play in Ghostbusters?
1:34:42 Bill Simmons? Aykroyd was writing that for the two of them.
1:34:44 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
1:34:44 Chris Ryan? So he was gonna be like Venkman?
1:34:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he was gonna be the Bill Murray part, character, I think.
1:34:48 Chris Ryan? Oh, my God.
1:34:49 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:34:50 Sean Fennessey? It's, it's time to do Ghostbusters. It's time to do Ghostbusters.
1:34:53 Bill Simmons? We were supposed to do it last year and I don't know what happened because it was the 40th anniversary last year.
1:34:57 Sean Fennessey? I just watched it randomly last year and I was like, this movie is sick.
1:35:00 Chris Ryan? The other month, I was like, this movie is perfect.
1:35:03 Bill Simmons? Well, it's another movie that got really helped by the widescreen. Cause it had a really strange cable TV run.
1:35:09 Chris Ryan? Now you can really see Slimer.
1:35:10 Bill Simmons? The way it was shot, it was like a lot of this stuff, yeah.
1:35:12 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, it's a great movie.
1:35:14 Bill Simmons? Who won the movie? We never do two people for this, but I, I don't think it, it has to be Belushi and Aykroyd.
1:35:18 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it's, it's Luca and LeBron.
1:35:21 Bill Simmons? Luca and LeBron. It's Luca and a Miller Lite. Yeah.
1:35:27 Sean Fennessey? I'm with you. I agree. It's both of them.
1:35:29 Bill Simmons? All right. That's it for the pod. Thanks to Jack Sanders. We did not have producer Craig this week because as we're taping this, he is.
1:35:35 Chris Ryan? At the Super Bowl.
1:35:36 Bill Simmons? At.
1:35:37 Sean Fennessey? Do we?
1:35:37 Bill Simmons? The Super Bowl.
1:35:38 Sean Fennessey? Know if he has seen this?
1:35:40 Chris Ryan? Well, I think because he's obviously become, he is something of a huge SNL fan. He'll at least respect it. But I think he might find it a little bit dull.
1:35:49 Bill Simmons? Got some great emails. I'm not sure when we're doing the next mailbag, but uh, got some really good ones at the [email protected] . You can also watch the Ringer Movies YouTube channel where uh, we put up, we Oscars are coming.
1:36:02 Sean Fennessey? Soon. Less than a month.
1:36:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Tell me what to bet soon.
1:36:05 Sean Fennessey? I don't fucking know. That's part of what makes this a fun one. It's a lot harder to make picks this year.
1:36:11 Bill Simmons? Fun one or not fun at all? It's one or the other?
1:36:13 Sean Fennessey? Well, I would say the scandals are a little unpleasant. The movies are okay, but not knowing is exciting.
1:36:20 Chris Ryan? It's time for the zag king to put all his money on Carla Sofia.
1:36:25 Bill Simmons? I'll never top. What was the movie in Gloucester two years ago? We hit that fourteen one.
1:36:30 Sean Fennessey? You hit Coda hard. You, that was maestro work from you.
1:36:34 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but there's no Coda this year where you'd be like, oh, that one's gonna win.
1:36:37 Sean Fennessey? Well, well, I, to me right now, it's a complete unknown.
1:36:41 Bill Simmons? The Dylan movie?
1:36:42 Sean Fennessey? The movie that everybody likes, even if they don't love it and has no scandal attached to it whatsoever and has been a box office success.
1:36:50 Bill Simmons? Man, that's hard for me to believe that would win the best.
1:36:52 Sean Fennessey? You can still get good odds on that movie right now. You can't get good odds on the other top three.
1:36:56 Chris Ryan? You think it's gonna be helped by uh, preferential, was it preferred choice, preferential choice voting?
1:37:02 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. A lot of people may have it at two, three, four. Maybe not as many at one, but that's what matters this year.
1:37:07 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's right. So you can just be like, third, fourth. God, imagine if sports worked that way. That'd be so stupid. CR, thank you. Fantasy, thank you. See you next week.
Previous ‘Before Sunset’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Mallory Rubin Next ‘Wayne’s World’ With Bill Simmons and Kyle Brandt Page updated November 4, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated