‘Eddie and the Cruisers’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

The dark side's callin' now nothin' is real. The guys head to the Jersey Shore to watch Eddie, Wordman, and the gang in ‘Eddie and the Cruisers' starring Tom Berenger, Michael Paré, and Ellen Barkin. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

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• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order, 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it's a Rewatchables podcast. They would appreciate that. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:01Speaker 01

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• 2:07Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables is brought to by The Ringer Podcast Network. Where you can find Ringer Tailgate with Van Lathan.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:15Bill Simmons?

  And Higher Learning.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  And Higher Learning.

• 2:17Bill Simmons?

  And Midnight Boys.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  You guys gotta raise the roof.

• 2:20Chris Ryan?

  Do you guys have, is this like a, this is like the thing you guys do for it?

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Well, Joel invented raising the roof.

• 2:25Chris Ryan?

  Okay. We investigated that on the NFL Draft Show and, and he's right. I believe he did invent raise the roof.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Joel invented raising the roof.

• 2:32Chris Ryan?

  Didn't Arsenio Hall raise the roof?

• 2:34Bill Simmons?

  No, it was Joel.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  No, Joel invented it.

• 2:36Bill Simmons?

  Ringer Tailgate is like the, what was the album Michael Jackson put out before Thriller?

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Off the Wall.

• 2:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41Bill Simmons?

  It's in the Off the Wall stage. Thriller's happening this season.

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  I feel like it's like the Velvet Underground first record. Like, everybody who hears Tailgate's gonna start their own podcast.

• 2:49Bill Simmons?

  Anyway. CR, just came, coming off CR Month. Uh, America was captivated.

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Where do I go from here?

• 2:57Bill Simmons?

  Sad. America wants to know when it's happening again. You know what we did? We kept CR Month going. We brought the little chocolates out at the end of the dinner.

• 3:06Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 3:07Bill Simmons?

  Put it on the check and we said,

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:09Bill Simmons?

  Hey, here's a little extra free chocolate. I know you already paid.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  I thought, hold on for a second. You said we brought the little chocolates out at the end of it. I thought it was like, am I the little chocolate? I'm like, what's happening?

• 3:19Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:20Bill Simmons?

  That's what I was saying.

• 3:21Chris Ryan?

  He kind of gestured.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  He gestured to me, we brought the little, I'm like, wow.

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  Dylan and I were like, you know what we need for CR Month is like an Amaro after the big meal.

• 3:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like a little after dinner drink. Compliments of the house.

• 3:33Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no. Drinks are on the house.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  The house.

• 3:37Bill Simmons?

  A movie we've circled for five years. And this is a victory lap for us because this is only a couple of times this has ever happened.

• 3:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Bill Simmons?

  Where we badgered America and the streamers and the companies to just basically revive movies that we love.

• 3:50Chris Ryan?

  One thing about corporate America is they listen.

• 3:52Bill Simmons?

  They do.

• 3:54Bill Simmons?

  Eddie and the Cruisers is next.

• 4:10Bill Simmons?

  All right, Eddie and the Cruisers. Best musicals ever, Grease, Eddie and the Cruisers, and that's it.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  There's only two.

• 4:17Bill Simmons?

  Drops off right after that. Those are the big two. There's no even big three, it's a big two.

• 4:22Chris Ryan?

  All that jazz, there's a lot of really big musicals.

• 4:24Bill Simmons?

  Grease, Eddie and the Cruisers, drop off. Chicago, I don't want some Oscars.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:32Bill Simmons?

  I know my story with this, Van. I was surprised you liked this movie because we'd never talked about it. And then you were like, I love this movie. So what was your history with it?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  The film beat me into submission.

• 4:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Because it was on for eight straight years?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  It was on so much. This is the biggest fuck your algorithm movie ever. Everything now is controlled by an algorithm. You get told what to watch. My 80s and 90s algorithm was just superior. Because they kept, it was probably not even a computer program, it was some guy named Jim. That would be in charge of programming what was on HBO. Some dude, right? And they put this movie on until I had watched like Major League and all that. That's a guy from time until I had watched stuff with Ellen Barkley. So I'd go, you know what? Fuck it, I'm gonna watch it. And then after that, I watched it every single time it was on television, every time.

• 5:20Bill Simmons?

  Same for you?

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  I have a weird relationship to this movie, which is I'm sure I watched it in its heyday on HBO when it was on in the 80s, like every other minute. But I think that like, if I remember correctly, one day I was in the car and I was like, whatever this song is rules, and it was Dark Side.

• 5:37Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 5:38Chris Ryan?

  Because the soundtrack popped off in the mid 80s because of the HBO revival of this movie. So I think Dark Side, I was like, what's this band? And it was like, it's a band with a movie about it, but the band isn't real. And that blew my mind.

• 5:55Bill Simmons?

  My background was 1984, flipping channels and watched the last six minutes of this movie, including the surprise ending.

• 6:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 6:03Bill Simmons?

  And I was like, huh.

• 6:06Bill Simmons?

  Week later, watch it from the beginning. Now I'm furious. I know the surprise ending. Think about how long it was on cable though. And then it was on over and over again. And I think it's one of the 20 movies I've seen the most of my life. Yeah. I know all the words to everything. I know all the scenes, like, and I'm not proud of it. It was just on all the time. We had less channels and they didn't have a lot of movies. Like CR, you have the HBO little guides next to you.

• 6:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:31Bill Simmons?

  On that, uh, on that little stand over there. They didn't really have a ton of movies. They, cause they only had licenses for whatever. So they would just rerun the same, like they ran either the first or the second Rambo was just on. All. Three times a week.

• 6:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 6:46Bill Simmons?

  Nine o'clock at night. Back to school with Rodney Dangerfield, all the time. So this was just, and the thing, and the thing with music movies is, you know, you, ah, I'll just watch this part. And all of a sudden you've watched a half hour. The middle of this movie, there's what 15 minutes in the middle when he goes to the lounge to see Sal Amato.

• 7:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:05Bill Simmons?

  That is just like one of my favorite 15 minute stretches in a movie. And, uh, I'm taking you back to HBO, 1984, Craig. Here's what they had boxing. This is when, when Tyson was, was coming into his own. They had the comedy specials because they had Eddie Murphy, Delirious and George Carlin and some of those guys.

• 7:24Chris Ryan?

  When is comic relief around now?

• 7:25Bill Simmons?

  Not yet. That's 86. Not necessarily the news that started, which was like their answer to SNL. The Hitchhiker.

• 7:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Bill Simmons?

  Which had nudity in every episode. Basically the premise of The Hitchhiker was somebody fucks somebody else and then they die. And that would be the episode.

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  Is there any hitchhiking involved or?

• 7:42Bill Simmons?

  At the end, the guy would, the guy would have his little, he would have his little fortune cookie. Right. Thing. CR thought CR month would give him immortality. What he didn't realize is it would kill him. And then he would just walk away with the stomach out. Uh, first and 10 with OJ. They would have some concerts. Diana Ross had a pretty famous concert around there every once in a while. Um, and then just movies, lots and lots of movies. They weren't really making the original movies yet at this point. I think that the Terry Fox story, maybe one or two others. So something like Eddie and the Cruisers, once it got in the rotation, that was it. But what's crazy is this movie bombed when it came out and found life on HBO.

• 8:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 8:20Bill Simmons?

  Which led to On the Dark Side, Finding Radio, Radio Station, what, a year after it came out?

• 8:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and the fact is, is that the band Eddie and the Cruisers from the movie almost mirrors the story that Eddie and the Cruisers tells. Where people are like, wait, what's this band? And like even, you know, John Cafferty winds up getting like a cup of coffee because of this band, because of this movie, but like, it's essentially the same story as the movies minus the possibly missing Bob Dylan-esque figure.

• 8:50Bill Simmons?

  So you think John Cafferty should have done that?

• 8:53Chris Ryan?

  Tried to fake his own death?

• 8:55Bill Simmons?

  For like 10 years, yeah.

• 8:56Chris Ryan?

  Been interesting.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Interesting move. But it doesn't just become like a regular hit. The song like goes like number three.

• 9:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  It's like a gigantic.

• 9:04Bill Simmons?

  Yes, I actually have it. It became, it was the number one song on the rock billboard charts. It was number seven overall.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Number seven overall.

• 9:13Bill Simmons?

  Um, there was a week where it was number one, The Fix was number two, Bruce Springsteen, Lindsey Buckingham, David Bowie, and U2 were the top six.

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Bill Simmons?

  That was the level it was at. It was, it was on all the time.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Consider that though. Consider how much, I mean, obviously the song starts to get radio play and stuff like that. But think about how much the movie has to be on for that song then to make it from the movie.

• 9:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Into people's minds, then radio, then, and this is a year after the film, has already, it's like, that's almost would be impossible for it to happen now.

• 9:47Bill Simmons?

  Also a crazy music year. It's not like 1980. I think 1984 was like a real achievement. That was like so many major stars at that point.

• 9:54Chris Ryan?

  The, uh, I was reading, The Washington Post did an article about this movie's staying power.

• 9:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:59Chris Ryan?

  And they talked to the writer, Sherman Alexie, who's this great novelist who wrote Reservation Blues. And he actually had this great quote, it was, "The VCR turned movies into songs, into hit songs." So movies that you could play over and over and over again. And that's basically what this pod was originally about, was about movies that you wound up. Just walking in midway through, maybe only sitting down for one or two scenes. I don't want to get up and go to dinner yet because this might happen in this movie. And that's kind of like what happens in any of the cruises is if like you're passing by and you're like, oh, wait, is, are they about to go to the writing of Dark Side?

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay, I'm gonna stick around for, watch them write Dark Side.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Interesting. What is the pod about now, CR?

• 10:40Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's just about, I think it's more about great movies, right?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:43Chris Ryan?

  Or movies.

• 10:44Bill Simmons?

  I, but that was the initial conceit of the, of the pod. To me, it's like, there's maybe like five or six moments where HBO became like really part of pop culture. And the fact that it could take this movie that bombed and was nothing and turn it into a iconic rewatchable movie for everybody who grew up in the eighties and nineties. That's like up there with the Eddie Murphy Delirious concert that really like pushed him to another level. Comic relief. Them having like real boxing, like I, I think I watched, I want to say I watched Cooney Holmes or one of those in eighty one. Maybe it was Prior Agüero, just fights that they would have just, you would have to go closed circuit.

• 11:24Bill Simmons?

  And instead they were on HBO and, and some of the comedy specials they had, it just all of a sudden felt like, it's like, holy shit, they're mainstream. And they got inside the NFL. That was a huge deal.

• 11:34Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of the model Netflix is doing now, right?

• 11:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it's funny because I was, I was going back and reading the perception of HBO in eighty three, eighty four, where they were like, we don't want people to come to theaters. And it was basically all the same Netflix dialogue we'd have forty years later.

• 11:51Bill Simmons?

  Michael Prey in two thousand and eighteen, talking about this movie, said, "The whole idea is to leave your mark on the world and impact people, to make them think." And in that way, I think the movie was pretty successful. We didn't get much of a theatrical run, but we've got history.

• 12:07Chris Ryan?

  Is that your Michael Prey voice?

• 12:08Bill Simmons?

  I didn't do my Michael Prey voice yet. But this movie is so beloved that they end up making a sequel that for some reason Van watched recently. I don't acknowledge the sequel. I didn't like the sequel.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  I've seen it before. The sequel, just like, it wasn't even on as much. They didn't put it on, on, on cable as much.

• 12:24Bill Simmons?

  He had a must, Eddie has a mustache in it. The music's not good.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  You could tell that, obviously, like most sequels, they thought, hey, there's fertile ground to continue this story, but they didn't think of actually a way to actually story first, continue the story.

• 12:38Bill Simmons?

  So Craig, we've talked about this movie for five years. You don't have to tell us what you thought yet. But what was in your head? What did you think it was gonna be versus what was it?

• 12:48Speaker 04

  I gotta say, when you texted, I didn't know what the movie was about at all. And when Bill texted us saying, "It's a 95-minute musical drama," I was kinda thrown off my tilt there a little bit. You and musicals, I don't usually put together. I don't even know if I'd really call this movie a musical. It just has music in it.

• 13:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's fair. There's like eight, nine musical moves though.

• 13:07Chris Ryan?

  The musical performances are legion and they're like, we're doing the whole song.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  Yes. I mean, the movie opens with pretty much that full song.

• 13:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  The movie.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  No, you go ahead.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  I call something a musical if the music drives story. So if the music in the movie drives story, a lot of people think that it's a musical if the dialogue is sung at some point.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  But if the music, like in this movie, the musical numbers drive different story points. And to me, that makes it a musical.

• 13:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, we gotta talk about Michael Perre.

• 13:38Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 13:38Bill Simmons?

  This was, this was literally the apex mountain for him. And he had a couple other at bats, but Eddie became his signature guy. He's lip syncing everything.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:49Bill Simmons?

  And it's one of the best, I'm trying to think of a better lip syncing where it really seems like he's singing. The voice of the band sounds like his voice. He's got the charisma of a leading guy. The way he moves around the stage. Really convincing. The only other one I can really think of is Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  Which won him the Oscar.

• 14:10Chris Ryan?

  I thought, I think Shalhoub is pretty good as Dylan, doing like when they're like recording.

• 14:14Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was actually singing though, wasn't he?

• 14:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just mean like the way he moves around with a guitar and like, like.

• 14:20Bill Simmons?

  But I'm saying Michael Perre never sings in this.

• 14:22Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 14:23Bill Simmons?

  Like Shalhoub sang, Val Kilmer, who we talked about in The Doors, was incredible, but he's actually singing. This is him lip syncing the whole time and it actually works. It shouldn't work.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  He also pulls off mysterious rock star, super awesome. The whole movie is based around this mystery.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  That there was just more going on with Eddie than we thought there was. Right? And even in death. And for your first role, this is his first big deal, right?

• 14:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  For your first role.

• 14:50Bill Simmons?

  They found him.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, for him to be like, brooding, rock star, mysterious guy, he really sells that really well. And if he doesn't work, then obviously the whole movie's.

• 14:58Chris Ryan?

  Being an actor in a band is probably like being an actor in a basketball movie. Like, you can either choose to get the guy who looks right playing music, or the guy who's like, the good actor who you can like, cut around. Like, I don't think, I know Berenger like, learned a bunch about like, playing keyboards. But they are cutting around Berenger's, they never show Berenger's hands, really.

• 15:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Chris Ryan?

  They are, they got Eddie like, in full wide shots, like, walking around with the guitar, his guitar moves.

• 15:25Bill Simmons?

  Going into the crowd at one point?

• 15:26Chris Ryan?

  Kind of mimic, like, they're pretty close. Like, I don't know how, whether he learned to play guitar for this, but it was, it looks pretty good to me, I mean.

• 15:33Bill Simmons?

  He's also, carries himself like, the leader of a band. Like, you actually buy that he's in charge of the band. He's ordering these guys around. And the movie taps into, I don't know, there's some pretty cool themes in this that I don't even really fully know if they, what they were getting into when they wrote this. I don't know how much thought they put into the script, but about the concept of like, how great can somebody be?

• 15:55Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 15:56Bill Simmons?

  You know, that, like, they're making these, they're selling out this club every night, everyone in the band is delighted to, to be there. And Eddie's like, pursuing something that's a little higher than everybody else that he's with. And that's really all he cares about, and the other guys don't see it, it's kinda cool. We've seen this theme in some other movies and TV shows, but I, I like how they do it in this.

• 16:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Well, it's based on a novel, right?

• 16:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  It is.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  And.

• 16:21Bill Simmons?

  The novel's more of like, a mystery.

• 16:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like, somebody is like.

• 16:24Bill Simmons?

  Did he get killed?

• 16:25Chris Ryan?

  There's like a murder, like, was Eddie murdered?

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Interesting, I have thoughts on that at the end, by the way. Um, but, i- it seems as if, the, the, from what I've researched, the novel is like, uh, incredibly important, like, people were saying it's one of the best rock and roll novels ever. So there was some.

• 16:41Bill Simmons?

  PF Kluge?

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:42Chris Ryan?

  Klug?

• 16:43Bill Simmons?

  Kluge, something like that. Uh, I give Michael Perey two possible awards that we have in flex categories we never use. The Sasha Jenkins Award for Actor, you can't believe that it become a bigger star.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:56Bill Simmons?

  And the Ted Levine Award for a performance so good and distinct it might have inadvertently ruined his career.

• 17:01Chris Ryan?

  Ted Levine also on something very bad is going to happen.

• 17:04Bill Simmons?

  Oh, really?

• 17:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Bill Simmons?

  Were you surprised when you watched this that this was his peak, Michael Perre?

• 17:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, I had that same category written down as a flex possibility. I think he has incredible stage presence that like his physicality is so good when he's the scene where Eddie's at the college. He's talking to the crowd, there's like that edge, there's a suspense where you're like, I think this could turn dark, he's angry.

• 17:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  And he kind of like commands the attention of everyone there and is holding you on that like edge of I don't know if something's gonna happen. It's pretty impressive.

• 17:33Bill Simmons?

  He's really good.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  He's good, he's good on stage, the stuff offstage where he's just delivering lines, he's not as great.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  I mean, he's, he's limited in that.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  But on stage, he's great.

• 17:42Chris Ryan?

  Director gave him hell too, so it sounds like it was like a tough shoot in that regard.

• 17:46Bill Simmons?

  Because like in Grease, Travolta is just really good. Like you watch that and you're like, yeah, that guy's good at this.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:52Bill Simmons?

  And that's how I feel about Perre, except he's somehow not singing. And then you have Berenger, you mentioned, Wordman, who did this and Big Chill in the same year.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  The word man.

• 18:02Bill Simmons?

  Big Chill, massive movie, like kind of a generational adult movie.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 18:07Bill Simmons?

  He's with all these actors, he's with Lawrence Kasdan, but he's also in this, which doesn't do well. And he's probably a little embarrassed by this one and then somehow they both live on.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Do you put Berenger in the William Peterson, like what happened? Because he, both guys, William Peterson, of course, you know, I love William Peterson. Both guys seem like they have everything to be just like one notch higher.

• 18:31Bill Simmons?

  So I would argue he actually delivered on some of that.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 18:34Bill Simmons?

  Cause he, Platoon, he gets nominated, that's a great part. Someone to Watch Over Me, Ridley Scott, we love that movie. He's in Shoot to Kill, Betrayed, Last Rites and Major League, all in like two years. Like he had like, I don't know, a seven year run of like he was leading movies.

• 18:48Chris Ryan?

  It's not unlike, if you take the, the group of guys who was in, uh, Big Chill, you know, he and William Hurt had really good eighties.

• 18:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Chris Ryan?

  And then started to fade.

• 18:59Bill Simmons?

  And get passed by the cost, there's this whole next couple of guys.

• 19:02Chris Ryan?

  Goldblum and Klein pushed through the nineties, pretty much.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  So that's what I'm saying though, I'm saying that like, uh, I mean, when you think about it, the nomination for Platoon is like a big, huge deal and he's fantastic in that movie, like terrifying, but. Klein and Goldblum is what I would have thought, just like a little bit more. Cause he gets to a point then, by the time you get to the sniper era, he's almost out of, I love that movie.

• 19:26Chris Ryan?

  And a substitute, yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, like he's almost out of gas and being taken seriously.

• 19:29Bill Simmons?

  Think possible he led a mildly hard life?

• 19:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, he still has.

• 19:33Bill Simmons?

  He looks pretty rough and sliver, and that's 1993, and it looks like he's 20 years older than this.

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  He's in Inception, which no one is seeing, he's in Inception. I haven't seen him much recently.

• 19:44Bill Simmons?

  There's an amazing what if with him. Do you know what TV show he turned down?

• 19:48Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 19:49Bill Simmons?

  Sonny Crockett.

• 19:50Chris Ryan?

  No shit.

• 19:51Bill Simmons?

  He turned it down.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  That straight up doesn't work. In no way, shape, or form.

• 19:56Chris Ryan?

  It doesn't work if he's Sonny Crockett?

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Nah.

• 19:59Bill Simmons?

  I think he has too much baggage at that point, cause he's been in movies and we know who he is. Don Johnson had no, nobody knew who he was.

• 20:05Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Don Johnson is.

• 20:06Bill Simmons?

  I think Berenger could have done it, though.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Aw, man, Don Johnson is, he's beautiful, he's a little slimy, he's a little mysterious. Like, it's a completely different show with Tom Berenger.

• 20:16Bill Simmons?

  Don Johnson's funny. No, you're not, you know I love Don Johnson.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 20:20Bill Simmons?

  But I think Berenger, it would have, it would have been okay.

• 20:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Bill Simmons?

  I always liked him. I always thought there's some, there's some Costner with him, there's some leading man stuff, like, like he, he's good in this role, he's good at playing a cop. Platoon's probably the biggest, I don't know, swing he took. But major league, he's just kinda like the good guy. Like, you're like, that guy's a solid guy, I trust this guy.

• 20:42Chris Ryan?

  He's like Kevin Costner with, like, with, with like a more, like, weathered face, you know what I mean? But he can play sports, he can play action, he can do that stuff, yeah.

• 20:54Bill Simmons?

  Tell you one thing.

• 20:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Bill Simmons?

  Pretty incredible chemistry with him and Ellen Barkin.

• 20:59Chris Ryan?

  Him and.

• 20:59Bill Simmons?

  She's ready to fucking hop on him in every scene.

• 21:02Chris Ryan?

  They're like four, seven and seven deep.

• 21:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. She's just sitting on his desk. Like, every, like, every scene she's bringing it, she's not in the movie, for some reason, I remembered her being in the movie more than she was.

• 21:12Chris Ryan?

  I know, it's like she's in three scenes that seem to have been shot, like, in a completely different set.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:17Chris Ryan?

  You know, it's wild to go back to movies like this and watch it when, like, everybody in the film is probably like, it's, like, Matthew Lawrence is in this movie, he's like, got more screen time than Ellen Barkin, right?

• 21:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:29Chris Ryan?

  To go back and be like, can you tell that Joey Pants, Ellen Barkin, and Tom Berenger are the ones that are really gonna pop out of this cast?

• 21:36Bill Simmons?

  Right. So he, she was in Diner the year before, and this year was in Tender Mercies and Eddie and the Cruisers and. Started coming up. Uh, the smoking is, I don't know when we're gonna cover that. I don't think she doesn't have a scene where she's does isn't.

• 21:53Chris Ryan?

  And Berenger's always.

• 21:54Bill Simmons?

  Banging a cancer stick.

• 21:55Chris Ryan?

  The only place Berenger doesn't smoke is school, is, is, is high school, it's class.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  Elite smoking movie. And everybody is like really smoking. They're not like, don't give me the fake cigarettes. They're, they're sucking them down.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  It makes sense too, sucking them down. Wow. It, it, it, it, it, uh, it makes sense too. Rock stars.

• 22:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  The life they live, making them seem cool. She's pretty cool. She's a cool character. She's not in the movie that much.

• 22:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  She's smoking at that time that was seen as a little bit sexier. It's a character a little something to do.

• 22:22Chris Ryan?

  Do you like this movie ironically at all? Or are you like sincerely Eddie and the Cruisers is like just a great film?

• 22:29Bill Simmons?

  I'm a hundred percent sincere with it.

• 22:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, it taps into something else that I really like. The, well, I love, I love bands kind of on the rise. And bands coming up with songs on the fly in scenes that make no sense. They're two minutes long and they come up with a hit song. But I like the concept of, and this, we did this a little bit in the Counting Crows documentary when it seemed like he did the first album. And then Duritz like kinda goes off the deep end and it doesn't seem like they're ever gonna record again. And the guys in the band are like, I just was almost touching the sun.

• 23:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Bill Simmons?

  And now I'm just back to my life? Like what just happened? And I like the theme of like these guys for like 18 months had it. And now it's like Sal Amato's at the fucking Holiday Inn Lounge with Eddie Ripoff guy.

• 23:14Chris Ryan?

  And Joey Pants is drinking Pepto.

• 23:16Bill Simmons?

  He eats pizza in the locker room, in his dressing room. They're followed by some lady on the piano who's like, um, but I, and the guy Kenny's a blackjack dealer and it just doesn't kinda work out for anyone. I think that happens a lot.

• 23:30Chris Ryan?

  Joanne's doing choreography.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  It happens. Yeah. You know, I think when I watch the movie again, to your point, it is dated, right? I mean, obviously it's dated. It came out a long time ago. And even in performance, like all these people grew so much as performers, like after this movie to me, like the,

• 23:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  The, the scene where, where there's a fight between Eddie and Joey Pants' characters and it just like does not look real at all. It doesn't look like there's any real rage happening. It's very demonstrative. But. The themes of the movie and like we were a part of this really amazing thing. And this was as good as it was going to get. And we really didn't know it. We thought it would go on for like a long time. And Eddie's, his search for greatness being the thing that actually sabotaged the run of the band. That, we see that.

• 24:17Chris Ryan?

  Or even like the idea that Frank coming into the band. And being like, let's do Rambo poetry and like really get deep. Is what breaks it up because that's always like one of my favorite moments is when Sal yells at him in the studio like. We were fine before you showed up.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  It was you.

• 24:35Chris Ryan?

  We could have played Tony Martz like. Forever, you know, like we, we could have just been the best band in Ashbury Park, but instead.

• 24:42Bill Simmons?

  I mean, you could make this movie every 10 years. You could have done a hip hop version of this movie in the nineties and said it. You know, said it was some group in like 1984 that. Self-combusted and we're ahead of their time.

• 24:54Chris Ryan?

  The hardest thing to do about. In movies like this is to make the song or songs, but the songs specifically, because there's always got to be one. A song that people want to hear.

• 25:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and this one has like four.

• 25:07Chris Ryan?

  But it has one main one and then it also had, and that's the same thing for that thing you do. Like that thing you do has some good songs, but what you want is to hear. All these different iterations of that thing you do and the same thing with Dark Side. You want to hear them do Dark Side three times.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  All you have to nail in a movie like this is the music. That's it. If the, if you nail, it's hard to even conjure a film. To where you like the songs, particularly the main song and in some way you don't respond to the music because. If like for that thing you do, which I'm gonna talk about later, that song is so good. It's so catchy that you could see why The Wonders got famous so quick.

• 25:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  And why they couldn't recreate it because it was such lightning in a bottle. And with this one, they sell you on the fact that Eddie and the Cruisers are dope. And that's really all the movie has to do to like create the mystery around the band.

• 25:58Bill Simmons?

  Did you watch Daisy Jones and the Six?

• 26:00Chris Ryan?

  I did.

• 26:01Bill Simmons?

  Did you watch it, Greg? Did you watch it?

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:04Bill Simmons?

  So that has some of the themes of this of like, you're watching this band try to put it together. It's going back and forth and it's trying to do all the 2020s. There's slight mystery to what we're watching, all that stuff. But for the most part, same kind of themes and not being able to keep it together.

• 26:21Chris Ryan?

  And good music in that, too.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Five Heartbeats, we'll talk about it later, like a movie like that, they got a banger of a song out of it. It makes, it orients the whole movie.

• 26:31Bill Simmons?

  Joey Pants was the other one we didn't talk about. Who has this in Risky Business, Guido the Killer Pimp in 1983. Goonies running scared of the bomba and then Midnight Run in 88. He is a full-fledged that guy in 1983.

• 26:45Chris Ryan?

  He's also, to my, my taste, blowing everybody off the screen in this movie. Like, he is clearly so good, and not only that, knows exactly who this guy is. I can't tell if he's wearing a prosthetic nose or not, or if he's just really young, but he looks-

• 27:00Bill Simmons?

  The hair is definitely a little weird.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  But he, he is the guy who's like, I, to your point, he's like, I had it for one second. Like, you bet on all these bar bands and you get lucky with one of them.

• 27:12Bill Simmons?

  Right. I struck oil, now I'm a DJ in New Jersey.

• 27:15Chris Ryan?

  And now I'm like, sitting in a overhead lighting in an overnight shift at a, at a radio station.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  So much so to where he pulls some Scooby Doo shit.

• 27:23Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Like, the desperation-

• 27:25Chris Ryan?

  We didn't get into that, yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Trying to, like, take on Eddie's persona and do all of that stuff. It's like, they sell that, they kind of create that at the beginning of the movie. Look, he's working in this small little room, word man comes in, he has all of these ideas. Maybe we can be technical consultants. First time I ever heard of a technical consultant on a movie.

• 27:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Maybe we can be in the movie. And do you know how desperate he is from that time on?

• 27:50Bill Simmons?

  So, I, I think my favorite Joey Pants in this is when they're on the roof, the, which is a great scene. And they're just, Frank's like playing that song and he's like, can't, can barely sing. And he's sitting there, he's like-

• 28:02Chris Ryan?

  Dark side coming.

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  And he's just a sound, he's there laughing, and he's like, and he's like, this guy can't sing?

• 28:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Bill Simmons?

  He can't write? He can't? And he just like eviscerates him, but it's just classic Joey Pants. And you can see all the seeds for, who's the Sopranos character?

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Ralphie? Ralphie.

• 28:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Ralphie, Cypher, it like, it's like all of the, the, the characters that like made him famous, there's a little bit of them in that role.

• 28:27Chris Ryan?

  Mark Coen, Bill Bonds is right there, yeah.

• 28:30Bill Simmons?

  Did you tell fucking Jack?

• 28:33Chris Ryan?

  Everybody's telling me to go fuck myself.

• 28:35Bill Simmons?

  Uh, the Beaver Brown Band we mentioned, they were found by Lou Eisen, the, uh, or Kenny Payne, the technical consultant for the film who was Lou Eisen, the executive who's like, bunch of jerk offs, $10,000.

• 28:49Bill Simmons?

  Found these guys and they wanted the cruisers to be this Jersey bar band. So there's some, there's some shades of Springsteen in this, which I think was a bigger deal in the eighties.

• 29:01Chris Ryan?

  Massive. You, you're like, I watched this a hundred percent seriously. I watched this like 70, 30. I think the 30 comes from the fact that there is a break in the space time continuum of rock history that happens in this movie that I cannot get over.

• 29:16Bill Simmons?

  What is it? Tell us.

• 29:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, Eddie and the cruisers sound almost exactly like Bruce Springsteen.

• 29:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Chris Ryan?

  Bruce Springsteen would have started in the, uh, early mid seventies and really starts to sound like Eddie and the cruisers or vice versa in the mid seventies. They make tender years in 62 or 63 and they're working on season in hell in 64. That predates the Bob Dylan record, Bring It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. It predates the Beatles doing Rubber Soul and Revolver. It predates.

• 29:51Bill Simmons?

  Eddie was ahead of his time, man.

• 29:53Chris Ryan?

  No, it's beyond ahead of his time. Like Ray Charles and the Shirelles is what was on in the radio. They would not have a rock band with a sax player doing rock opera seventies music. And you're asked to believe that like, this guy is basically Dylan going electric, but without Dylan having ever happened. Like the only thing that drives me nuts about this movie is that if they just said it in 73, then they would have been able to be like, yeah, we're trying to get like this feeling back. And then it's just 10 years later in, in 83, when they're like Eddie disappeared, but now 10 years later, there's a revival. But the idea that this is happening at like sock hops is kind of like Marty McFly going back and, and starting rock and roll in back to the future.

• 30:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  So all fair points. One of my favorite white supremacist scenes of all time.

• 30:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Marty invents rock and roll. I love that. Is this done to make Eddie seem like he is a once in a generation rock visionary?

• 30:51Chris Ryan?

  Book is set in like the doo-wop era.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  I see what you mean.

• 30:54Chris Ryan?

  And they made it more like, we want this to sound like Jay Giles Band, John Mellencamp.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Because they go from Runaround Sue, they go from covering Runaround Sue.

• 31:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Straight to Dark Side, and it's like.

• 31:06Bill Simmons?

  And then Season in Hell.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  And then Season in Hell, by the time Season in Hell comes out, they're like in excess. So it was like.

• 31:11Chris Ryan?

  But when Season in Hell happens, they're like, this is like avant garde, and I'm like, this sounds like an Eagles song from the long run. Like, it's not that.

• 31:19Bill Simmons?

  What other movies you want to ruin now, CR? The Warriors? Could we ever get 40,000 gang members in one spot?

• 31:25Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm just saying, this is an easy fix that they they chose not to make. I don't know why.

• 31:29Bill Simmons?

  I think they could have made, definitely could have made it three, four years later and probably not lost anything.

• 31:34Chris Ryan?

  I think they really wanted the innocence of the early 60s.

• 31:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Well, in that scene at the college, they literally pull up and Sleepwalk is playing, right?

• 31:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Which is the scene, the the song, the instrumental that you play to say, hey, we're in the 60s and the 50s, it was a different time.

• 31:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Stand By Me.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Stand By Me, and Sleepwalk is playing, and then they come on there and just their energy completely disrupts everything that the college has going on.

• 31:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  If they were playing that disruptive music.

• 32:00Bill Simmons?

  Way ahead of their time, CR.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  In 63, like what would they have been playing?

• 32:02Chris Ryan?

  It's just, these guys are doing.

• 32:03Bill Simmons?

  Would you have laughed at the Rolling Stones?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 32:05Chris Ryan?

  I wouldn't have, because they didn't exist in this universe. You know what I mean? Like, Eddie, apparently they don't go on Ed Sullivan. The Beatles are not on Ed Sullivan in this universe.

• 32:13Bill Simmons?

  Uh, they had the sax player from Beaver Brown, Michael Antunes, is the sax player in the movie. That was the only one they cast over Wendell.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:23Bill Simmons?

  No lines.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Tough. Well, he does, he makes an impact.

• 32:26Bill Simmons?

  He makes an impact.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  I got things to say.

• 32:27Bill Simmons?

  Zero lines. Um, they, uh, the album, they re-released the soundtrack in the fall of 84, a year after the movie came out. And it goes quadruple platinum and all this shit, and even Tender Years peaked at 31. So two, two top 35 hits, um, and it just kept going and going. So the director is Martin Davidson. He wrote the screenplay of the sister and, uh. Basically got screwed over by the studio who paid for it. Couldn't figure out how to release it properly and it ended up on HBO and he was like, nobody's ever gonna see my movie. Not realizing HBO was about to come.

• 33:03Chris Ryan?

  And not realizing that the rewatchables would force streamers to put it on. I did shout factory.

• 33:08Bill Simmons?

  The real reason we're doing this is because we need Kiss of Death back. And if we have an Eddie, we brought Eddie and the Cruisers back to life, much like Eddie Wilson at the end of this movie. And now Kiss of Death has to be next. Craig, 95 minutes, plus five on the Horrill Beck scale.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  Five under par, pretty impressive. This movie is as good as it is and is as enjoyable as it is because it's 95 minutes. If this movie is two and a half hours, it's unwatchable.

• 33:33Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Unwatchable. And it just goes to show you how much that matters. Like, the 95 minutes is a part of why this movie is so great.

• 33:42Chris Ryan?

  So that being said, for my probably answerable questions, I have some questions about what you would like to see more of.

• 33:47Bill Simmons?

  Hmm, yeah. So, one of the reasons it hit on HBO was it was 95 minutes. They could put it on an eight and it would be done at 9:35 and they could go right into a comedy special. Five million dollar budget made 4.7 million. Roger Ebert, two stars. Eddie and the Cruisers is all build up and no payoff. He wrote that. They could have had a good movie here. They had the cast for one, they even had the music. The soundtrack is terrific. But the ending is so frustrating, so dumb, so unsatisfactory. Gives a bad reputation to the whole movie. Um, I have a counter for Raj.

• 34:22Chris Ryan?

  Go fuck yourself.

• 34:23Bill Simmons?

  Wow. First, go fuck yourself, like with a capital F. Like to start there. I really liked the ending. I love that he lived. I mean, granted, I saw this first when I was 15 years old, but him coming back with the beard and being like, oh, my God, he's fucking alive.

• 34:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:39Bill Simmons?

  He was alive the whole time because they're hinting at it, but you don't actually think they're gonna do it. And then they actually do it and I don't know, I'm still into it.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  But to Roger's point, it doesn't really mean anything. By the time we find out that he's alive.

• 34:52Chris Ryan?

  It's the last second.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, by the time we find out that he that he's alive, what?

• 34:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, he wanted respect, right?

• 34:58Speaker 02

  He did want respect.

• 34:59Bill Simmons?

  Right. Now he's watching through a window on his TVs.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Season of hell and all of that stuff.

• 35:03Bill Simmons?

  I finally got my respect.

• 35:04Chris Ryan?

  It's too bad you saw it the way you saw it because I would like to know whether you thought watching the movie, you're like, is Eddie breaking into people's houses and looking for the season in hell tapes?

• 35:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I didn't see, I knew the ending. Well, let's find out from Craig, who knew nothing about the movie. So the twist ending, what did you think?

• 35:21Speaker 04

  Well, unfortunately, I I knew there was a sequel called Eddie Lives.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  I think it's tough. Um, I didn't have a problem with, I I thought, yeah, I I considered maybe, I I didn't know what was gonna happen in a nice way. I was, I was let down by the Joey Pants ending, to be honest, because I, they just signaled that way too clearly. I actually thought that was gonna be like a classic red herring, because he was so ridiculous, he would be my first culprit. I thought it was gonna be like Sal Amato, who wanted to be the leader, and that's why he killed Eddie, or it was Eddie coming back or something like that.

• 35:51Chris Ryan?

  Sal Amato cut his brakes, is that your?

• 35:53Speaker 04

  That was what I thought, yeah, cuz I thought he was like, you're screwing us up, I can lead us to the promised land by doing Run Around Sue for 20 years. Uh, but I didn't have a problem with the ending. To me, like, the movie's already over at that point, and it's just like a fun button at the end.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  It's definitely over. The movie kinda overs with the rekindled romance between Wordman and Eddie's girl. Classic Dirty Mackin, Hatton, Cucking, happening in this movie behind Eddie's fucking back. Wordman, are you crazy?

• 36:19Bill Simmons?

  It's tough, some guy code being broken.

• 36:20Chris Ryan?

  He's lucky he just called him Toby Tyler and and made him work for it, you know?

• 36:24Speaker 02

  But like, the the movie to me, it was always, there's no real story. Like, I I I enjoyed this movie. This is like, legitimately, this made me homesick for Louisiana. Like, I watched the movie, and it felt like it, I'm back in General Jackson, Baton Rouge, Gardere, it's night pizza, Eddie and Cruisers and so on. But like, it's not actually like a real movie in any way, shape, or form. She starts off, and she's gonna be looking for him. That just kinda goes nowhere.

• 36:52Chris Ryan?

  They get rid of that.

• 36:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Like, they just fucking go, okay, like, really, if the movie was driven by her trying to get this story.

• 37:00Bill Simmons?

  You're talking about Ellen Barkin.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Ellen Barkin, the the payoff would almost make more sense.

• 37:03Chris Ryan?

  It's two framing devices, because it's got, they've gotta get Ellen Barkin to Tom Berenger, but when they get to Tom Berenger, it becomes him going around, meeting people from his past, and having these reveries remembering his days with Eddie and Cruisers.

• 37:16Bill Simmons?

  I don't think we were putting a ton of thought into stuff in the 80s. But we were having fun, though. We were having a great time.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  And we were fucking having fun.

• 37:23Bill Simmons?

  Stuff didn't add up, we didn't care, cuz it was like, on the dark side of the movie.

• 37:26Chris Ryan?

  Somehow came out two years before Highway 61 revisited, who cares?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  But wasn't it better, though?

• 37:32Speaker 02

  But wasn't it better, wasn't it better sitting down and like finding reasons to like what the fuck you were watching?

• 37:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  It was better like to say, hey, this has great music. This is a cool story. You have an interesting lead, or I guess Tom Berenger's the lead. You have an interesting character here. Just sit down for, for 90 minutes and have a good time rather than get off and like pull everything apart and overanalyze it?

• 37:55Bill Simmons?

  Also, yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  It was more, you just had more fun with movies.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Well, it's like, and it's what you get out of it being 95 minutes. It would be, you could explain it more if they added 20 minutes to get into some stuff, but then is it as enjoyable of a movie? No.

• 38:06Bill Simmons?

  Probably not. Take a break, we'll do the categories. 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.

• 38:44Bill Simmons?

  All right, most rewatchable scene, opening credits. That's how it's done, CR. Yeah. Cold open. Dark side's coming now, nothing is real. And this is them To meet everybody. Doing Dark Side at the college, I would imagine, yeah. And then, uh, it cuts to Ellen Barkin on her like 17th sig of the day. It's like 12:30 in the afternoon.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:06Bill Simmons?

  Um, given Dog walking every guy in the

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Room full of guys, she's just dropping lady all over them.

• 39:12Bill Simmons?

  They're all in love with her and, uh, she does, you ever hear of a poet named Arthur Rimbaud?

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 39:17Bill Simmons?

  Committed suicide, not in the flesh. Put up the mind and soul.

• 39:24Bill Simmons?

  Pretty good hook. Yeah. Good song.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Everybody's skeptical. You're fucking crazy. Eddie fucking died.

• 39:31Bill Simmons?

  Who cares Maggie, what's the hook?

• 39:33Speaker 02

  What are you doing? What's the deal? And she's like, and that's why you think that the story's gonna be through her perspective. But the scene sets up the entire film.

• 39:41Bill Simmons?

  We got Wordman's flashback to meeting the cruisers at the Tony Mart. Wordman, Frank Ridgeway. Jersey Source 62. Needed a Cezor. Yeah. Timely pause. Barkin goes to see Frank at school, sits on his desk. Gives him a business card? The night Eddie died, the cruisers died with him.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:05Bill Simmons?

  He was my friend, you I just met. Fake cruisers band at the Sal Lounge, leading into the memory of being on the roof creating On The Dark Side. Which might have been the best seven minutes of the 80s. I don't know.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  The whole fucking decade.

• 40:20Bill Simmons?

  Hagler Hearns and this. Better than Danger Zone, better than. Hagler Hearns and maybe this. Get away from her, you bitch. I love Fake Eddie. Fake Eddie comes out with this 1983 lounge band and has the leather jacket and kills it. We get the whole Word of Music thing. Get the performance with the coming back to the cover guy wrapping it up. But we get to, I just love when, watching somebody create a song from scratch.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I also love any scene where a band is together creating a song and there's an unexpected missing ingredient. Like there's an unexpected look, style. So he does it twice. He does it when he's explaining to them, we're gonna marry what we do at bar rock with high literary concepts and all of that. But then he does it again. Listen, like he's got something that nobody else has. And the difference between Eddie and the rest of the band is Eddie can hear it and they can't.

• 41:19Bill Simmons?

  Michael Pare said, uh, the scene on the roof, which is awesome. He said, I've been told that that scene at Top of Tony Mart is the way rock and roll happens. You take a melody and just make it rock and it just sort of happens. It's one of the most flattering things you can say.

• 41:34Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's an awesome scene.

• 41:36Bill Simmons?

  Nothing is funnier than when a, when a hit song comes together in a movie in two minutes.

• 41:40Chris Ryan?

  I fucking love it.

• 41:41Bill Simmons?

  Like, hey, come in, play the.

• 41:42Chris Ryan?

  Pare is like, what, are you on vacation?

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Jump into this motherfucker.

• 41:47Chris Ryan?

  And he literally comes in on time, note perfect, and is like boom, boom.

• 41:51Bill Simmons?

  The sax guy comes in, he's got a solo already planned out. Girl comes in on the drums, Joanne banging the, banging the thingy.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  I love also when like, everybody catches the vibe.

• 42:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  And then they have to be a part of it. People start dancing, hitting the tambourine and adding melodies. Also, they got a song. When that Beatles documentary came out, did you watch that?

• 42:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was a little like this, actually.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  It was, it was. It was like.

• 42:12Bill Simmons?

  It just took 15 minutes.

• 42:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and there would be like lots of like dudes being like, did you watch the Johnny Carson show last night? That was really good.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Cause you think about Get Back and you think that like, when you think about some of the songs that the Beatles made, you think that these songs were like handed down from like the gods and given to Lennon and McCartney. And you just see him going, what sounds best, two song? Is it fucking two song or things? What should we put in the song? And after they fucked around till they hit on something that people will remember forever.

• 42:40Chris Ryan?

  But they just have this, like Dark Side comes out fully formed.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:46Bill Simmons?

  I thought Berenger does a good job, even though you never see his hands of like, he's got like this head knob and, and, uh, Pare in that scene where he's like, he's just so happy it's happening. And you can feel like the, uh, the Eddie charisma.

• 43:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  It's a good scene. That leads to Sal's last song with the fake Eddie band, right into, uh, Wild Summer Nights. We go back to 63. We go Wild Summer Nights, right into Tender Years. Really good parade performance again, but ending with the Berenger piano. The sax guy coming over.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's fucking awesome. Yeah.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  Putting the elbow on the piano, just like, yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  Do you have a favorite not dark side Eddie song?

• 43:26Bill Simmons?

  Tender Years is good. Tender Years is good. It's like just a flat out solid song. I don't know if you noticed this though, but it comes back to Sal after Tender Years and they're wrapping up. And they play some oldie book goodie song and all the people in the audience are holding cigarette lighters.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Lighting their lighters up.

• 43:44Bill Simmons?

  And he finishes it and it cuts to the crowd and there's this lady in the front row, it's like this.

• 43:51Bill Simmons?

  Could be a really funny social clip. This extra is just going for it. She's making like five bucks for three hours, just like throwing herself into it.

• 44:02Bill Simmons?

  Sound word man eating pizza I enjoy.

• 44:05Bill Simmons?

  I, so let me test drive this one for you. Cause Sal's really going for it. He's got the sweaty lip. Seeing pizza, he's about to start crying. I think he might be a Peter North Award for most effort loaded into one movie.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  Matthew Lawrence?

• 44:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's like he's got this nothing bass part. He's throwing himself into this full speed, a hundred percent.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  You kind of need him in this movie too.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, you do. Think about the little soliloquy that he does after a song and he's sitting down there and he's telling them. Remember when you used to driving around and things getting wild in the backseat and you're touching on her and all of this stuff. And everybody's starting to feel, remember that first time? Remember that first time?

• 44:41Speaker 04

  This is, this is my flex.

• 44:43Bill Simmons?

  What is it?

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Salamato, I, I used the Bam Adebayo, where the fuck did that performance come from?

• 44:49Speaker 04

  Mel from 90210, dude, nuts. Salamato in the nightclub, like he could have been at the Copacabana. He was smooth as butter.

• 44:56Chris Ryan?

  Because he always had that. He was just like, I can't be Eddie, but I'm really close.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  He's fucking nice on stage that night. He's pretty good.

• 45:03Bill Simmons?

  So he had, he was in, he was the gay guy in San Elmo's Fire. He lived across the hall from Demi Moore. And then peaked in 90210, he was David Silver's dad, David's pops. He served, he served Donna Martin champagne, got her drunk. She passed out at the high school graduation. And then wasn't allowed to graduate and they revolted and it was all because of Salamato. Salamato serving underage kids champagne. I thought he was great in this. The Toby Tyler move we mentioned into Frank and Maggie. Which I think, I think every scene with Berenger and Barkin is just really good.

• 45:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Bill Simmons?

  And I had this coming later, but Barkin like hates this movie.

• 45:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Hates it. She fucking.

• 45:44Bill Simmons?

  She shit all over it.

• 45:45Chris Ryan?

  She shit on it.

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  That was to pay the rent.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  That was to pay the rent. We didn't know who was in charge. The movie fucking sucks.

• 45:51Chris Ryan?

  Everybody was on drugs.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Everybody was on drugs, like, and she, she hints to being actually mistreated on the movie in a way. If you watch how viciously she treats the film.

• 46:02Bill Simmons?

  Hurt my feelings.

• 46:05Bill Simmons?

  Wendell dies right into Eddie crying and being able to sing Tender Years.

• 46:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Bill Simmons?

  My friend died last night. Season hell going sideways. This is what I've been waiting a year for. A bunch of jerk offs making weird sounds.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  That guy, that guy is funny as fuck. He's so fucking mad.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  Was that Lou Eisen?

• 46:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He said that $10,000.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  He gave him 10 grand and they came back with some experimental bullshit when he's trying to get the kids at the fucking sock hop to dance.

• 46:35Bill Simmons?

  Really funny. And, uh, we ain't great. We're just some guys from Jersey. If we can't be great, then there's no sense in ever playing music again, Sal.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  That's why I think before every tailgate.

• 46:47Chris Ryan?

  It does haunt Eddie through the sequel Eddie Lives. You know, he's like, I just don't want to get up on stage unless it's going to really mean something, you know?

• 46:55Bill Simmons?

  And then the ending.

• 46:59Bill Simmons?

  That's it for rewatchable. What do you got?

• 47:03Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna go.

• 47:04Bill Simmons?

  Rooftop?

• 47:04Chris Ryan?

  Writing Dark Side. Yeah.

• 47:06Bill Simmons?

  I think that's me too.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  That's what it is.

• 47:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Though, did you enjoy Eddie in the flashback in the fucking junkyard castle?

• 47:17Chris Ryan?

  Palace of Depression?

• 47:18Speaker 02

  The Palace of Depression.

• 47:19Bill Simmons?

  Which apparently actually exists.

• 47:20Chris Ryan?

  It did, yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Like, I love that scene because that's when Eddie, when Eddie starts to crash out towards the end of the movie, the middle to the end of the movie. Those are my favorite parts of the movie. He crashes out in front of.

• 47:30Bill Simmons?

  Comparing himself to the Edsel?

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 47:33Chris Ryan?

  I think it's cool because for the most part, it's all of Berenger's happy memories of it. And then it's like when Joanne is like, Kenny and Joanne are like the ones who were like, it wasn't all happy, you know? Like, it was like, there was some dark shit.

• 47:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then CR is like, this wouldn't have even existed. It's two years first Dylan, you dumb motherfuckers.

• 47:53Bill Simmons?

  What's the 1983 thing about this movie?

• 47:58Bill Simmons?

  No caller ID.

• 47:59Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 48:00Bill Simmons?

  Really jumps out.

• 48:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Bill Simmons?

  When Joanne keeps getting these calls, now you would just be like, who's this number?

• 48:05Chris Ryan?

  She couldn't even, I don't even think they had star 69 yet.

• 48:08Bill Simmons?

  Watching a row of TVs through a department store window.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 48:13Bill Simmons?

  Is very 1983.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:15Bill Simmons?

  That doesn't exist anymore.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  It's a trope that continued to come back up.

• 48:19Bill Simmons?

  Now it'd be like a homeless guy with no pants on, watching through a Best Buy and then peeing on the window. Now it would have been the end of it in the theaters.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 48:32Chris Ryan?

  Is Eddie the homeless guy?

• 48:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Eddie's a homeless guy.

• 48:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:36Chris Ryan?

  I have a couple here for the 83. One is, uh, Dark Side just sounds like Bryan Adams or South Side Johnny or John Mellencamp. So like very classic early mid 80s rock sound. And then Ellen Barkin working for Media Magazine, which is in fact a television news program.

• 48:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Chris Ryan?

  Was like a very big thing, at least in Philly, they had one of these, I think it was called.

• 48:58Bill Simmons?

  We had one too, in Boston.

• 49:01Chris Ryan?

  I think it was called like Entertainment Magazine or Entertainment Week or something like that, but it was like two hosts.

• 49:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Chris Ryan?

  And then they would be like.

• 49:07Bill Simmons?

  Hard hitting stories.

• 49:09Chris Ryan?

  Bruce Willis and Sybil Shepherd, they're back on screen for Moonstruck. See, Moon.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, and it's, it's, it was just like a really weird phenomenon back then, regional entertainment news programs.

• 49:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it would be the celebrities that passed through that they were in an interview.

• 49:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Bill Simmons?

  But then it would be like a hard hitting piece about some school that lost its funding for the school play.

• 49:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  One, the smoking, very 1983, how much smoking they have in it.

• 49:34Chris Ryan?

  Maybe even more than 83 was. They had non-smoking sections by then.

• 49:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  The, the smoking. Also, the fact that in this part of the 80s, they just did not give a fuck about aging or de-aging or anything like that in any way, shape or form.

• 49:50Chris Ryan?

  This is.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Like in, in no way, shape or form.

• 49:52Bill Simmons?

  Berenger's exactly the same age.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  They don't give a fuck. They would, they would take you, mess your hair up a little bit.

• 49:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Put you in an open shirt, you're 14 years old. Like you're fourteen, like you're fourteen, you're fourteen. He in this movie is eighty-three, right? He's thirty-four or whatever. So when he joined the band, he was fourteen or fifteen years old.

• 50:09Chris Ryan?

  I think it's supposed to be seventeen, thirty-seven, but this is, this is another problem with the space-time continuum.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Right, it's like Joey Pants. He looks the same, then they, they give him a little baldy. He's, he's twenty years older, the whole nine. Just in the eighties, he just didn't care. You're younger, it doesn't matter.

• 50:24Chris Ryan?

  Joanne barely looks different.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  She looks almost exactly the same, they just changed her wardrobe.

• 50:29Bill Simmons?

  She just looks great.

• 50:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they didn't put a lot of thought into this stuff. It almost makes you think they, they thought it was gonna be nineteen sixty-eight and then they decided in the editing to shave six more years out of it or something.

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I think it's closer to the book, yeah.

• 50:46Bill Simmons?

  Berenger basically looks exactly the same. There's no difference at all. Uh, for the Floyd Gondole butter on my ass and lollipops in my mouth for something I just enjoy. I said it already, but watching in a movie or a TV show, a band create a song from scratch gets to me every time.

• 51:01Chris Ryan?

  I have, when the quiet part of a rock song makes way for the loud part of a rock song via isolated guitar riff and hand claps.

• 51:07Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  It's just good stuff when it's just like,

• 51:11Chris Ryan?

  here we go, Dark Side's about to kick in.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Sleepwalk being a, like a fucking soundtrack for like the fifties and sixties.

• 51:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  It always gets to me, but also I like Frank's Dirty Mackin, man. Frank don't, Wordman don't even give a fuck. She walks into the bar, he, he sees her, he's like, oh shit, a little something walking in, what's going on right now? And then fucking Eddie comes in and he kinda tamps it down, but as soon as Eddie is gone,

• 51:36Bill Simmons?

  He's trying to get that ass though.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  He's right back on his shit, trying to steal Eddie's girl.

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  Some bad things happen.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:41Chris Ryan?

  I actually watched it like two or three times, being like, did I miss the part where she's like, me and Eddie are on a break? It's like, no, she's right back in Eddie's arms, like the second after he makes out with her.

• 51:53Bill Simmons?

  It's tough shit, man.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Can't trust them. Chris Rock will do a song about it.

• 51:57Bill Simmons?

  Woman empowerment, 1963.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  She can sleep with whoever she wants, Bill.

• 52:02Bill Simmons?

  She wasn't being shadowed.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  He doesn't own her.

• 52:04Bill Simmons?

  Uh, would take the best. Mentioned a couple already, but uh, I think Wendell is, is a home run in this movie cause he has no lines, but you feel him in the movie, which made me wonder, do we create the Wendell Newton Award for best performance with no lines?

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  Zero lines. Have we ever had a no line? It's weird cause it's not even like, hey, man, grab me a Coke. It's nothing. Doesn't speak.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:29Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't even say like, yeah. Nothing, not even one word. Heroin, very powerful.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  But you know his whole fucking life story by watching him play with Eddie and the Cruisers.

• 52:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  You know exactly. He's playing for a long time in a jazz band. Eddie heard him someplace, brings him into the Cruisers and changed his fucking life. Him and Eddie have a whole song. He even ta- taught Eddie some music. He was Eddie's like musical Obi-Wan to a degree.

• 52:55Bill Simmons?

  This was the Springsteen issue for this movie when they thought it was a Springsteen ripoff. Cause Clarence Clemons was the, probably the biggest he'd ever, most famous he'd ever had in 1930. Yeah. Um, Hall of Fame smoke we mentioned. I like Jersey Shore in the sixties. I have Jersey Shore. Also liked Jersey Shore in the seventies, the eighties and the nineties. It was really fun to go to.

• 53:15Bill Simmons?

  I like when Eddie gives Frank the green light to write songs and then he does the, that's the most you'll ever get out of me, word, man. The little like bonding on the beach. And then, uh, Berenger just is completely committed to this all the time. But I like at the end, the end's ridiculous when Jo- Joey Pants is like, I'm gonna get the tapes. We're gonna get, I'm gonna make the best deal we can. He drives away and Berenger comes flying in. He's like, go get him, dog.

• 53:45Bill Simmons?

  Just makes me laugh. What do you have for what's aged the best?

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Um, like, this is oriented around a conspiracy theory that Eddie is still alive.

• 53:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  That was very much alive then. That was the heyday of Elvis is somewhere hanging out in Montana. We did it again in the nineties.

• 54:02Chris Ryan?

  Was D.B. Cooper a big thing?

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Cooper.

• 54:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  We did it again in the nineties. Tupac lives in Jamaica.

• 54:07Bill Simmons?

  Tupac's the best one.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, all of this.

• 54:09Bill Simmons?

  Still like thirty percent. Thirty percent he might be.

• 54:12Chris Ryan?

  Andy Kaufman, people thought.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Andy Kaufman, like, the conspiracy theory that the movie is wrapped around, that's really aged good. I want to hear your Tupac theory, though. What happened to Pac? Pac's alive? Like, where is he?

• 54:25Bill Simmons?

  Just saying, I would believe that one the most.

• 54:27Chris Ryan?

  Did he get shot, though?

• 54:28Bill Simmons?

  Like, he's, like, in hiding. Um, no, sadly, he died, but that was the one I really wanted to believe. In the late nineties, I really tried to talk about that.

• 54:38Chris Ryan?

  It's a Bill Simmons exclusive. He can confirm that Tupac is dead.

• 54:42Bill Simmons?

  If you put Drinks at Me in, like, nineteen ninety-eight, I would have gone nuts for it.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  We all thought it. Like, everybody was in, and it was so funny.

• 54:49Chris Ryan?

  Because he was still releasing music.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Bruh, it was funny because, like, my mom caught me up on it one time. My mom goes, remember how stupid you used to say we looked? Where we would say that Elvis was still living or something like that. Remember how they all are doing the same thing? I was like, but this is different.

• 55:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  I got pieces of autopsy, music is still dropping, he said this on this song, if you listen to it right there, these Jordans that he's wearing in his video, mama, these Jordans wasn't even out.

• 55:13Bill Simmons?

  It was really good. It died, I'm gonna say, like, early two thousands. It became ridiculous, but it did have a really good two-year run.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:20Bill Simmons?

  Great Shot Gordo Award, most cinematic shot.

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  I don't have a specific cinematic shot. I want to give a shout-out. Really good extras acting in this movie. All the bar scenes with the crowd, everybody's, like, acting like someone at a bar.

• 55:34Bill Simmons?

  Concert's great.

• 55:35Chris Ryan?

  The college concert's great, yeah.

• 55:38Bill Simmons?

  Big Kahuna Burger Award, best used food and drink. Sal's pepperoni pizza?

• 55:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:43Bill Simmons?

  As you know, I love a good, old-school, greasy slice. He never takes a bite out of it, though.

• 55:48Chris Ryan?

  There's also a lot of people drinking what seemed to be seven-and-sevens, which is a very eighty-three, you know, like, that early, kind of like, eighties drink.

• 55:59Bill Simmons?

  Chet Swakwa, Brock Linder.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  They both come from that scene. The PBRs, though. The PBR tells you what kind of guys these fucking are. One of beers, the fucking PBR.

• 56:10Chris Ryan?

  And Schlitz, they're drinking Schlitz too.

• 56:12Bill Simmons?

  Yep. Ches Rockwell, best character name. Frank Ridgeway is pretty good, the word man Frank Ridgeway.

• 56:18Chris Ryan?

  I had Salamato, but yeah.

• 56:19Bill Simmons?

  Salamato's good too. Uh, Denethys Benihana Award scene stealing locations, gotta be the junkyard.

• 56:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks right.

• 56:26Bill Simmons?

  Uh, CR, you have a flex category.

• 56:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Vincent Chase Award, are we sure this character was good at his job? Frank.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Oh, Word Man.

• 56:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:34Bill Simmons?

  The Word Man?

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you were almost certainly gonna go with, with Joey Pantsy.

• 56:38Chris Ryan?

  I wouldn't say that Word Man is blowing my mind with his words. Like Dark Side's a good song, but I don't know if you deserve the title Word Man for Dark Side.

• 56:48Bill Simmons?

  Whoa, whoa, Tender Years, won't you wash away my tears?

• 56:52Chris Ryan?

  He also steals his bandmate's girl, which I know, it's a knock for me in terms of being in a band and having a bandmate, uh, and he kind of forces them into a life of obsolescence when you spring season of Hell, Season of Hell on them. If it wasn't for Frank, they probably would have made Tender Years Part Two and done fine.

• 57:09Bill Simmons?

  Barely play this synth.

• 57:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 57:11Bill Simmons?

  Had to be taught just how to do this.

• 57:13Chris Ryan?

  He's like, he's like, no, play these cool chords. He's like, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Word Man kind of a bitch.

• 57:21Chris Ryan?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, you, you know, I thought this, we talked about.

• 57:24Bill Simmons?

  I'm having a great time.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Like, Word, Word Man kind of a bitch. Word Man fucked up everybody's life, stole somebody's girl.

• 57:30Chris Ryan?

  Class traitor.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, exactly.

• 57:32Chris Ryan?

  He's basically like a little art.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Word Man is straight up hoe.

• 57:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Like, he, he, he gets to the college, he is like really slumming it. What did they say to the department, you're dropping your ass, hanging out on the, like, that's what Word Man is doing.

• 57:43Chris Ryan?

  Well, that's what Eddie says to him, he's like, I didn't say better, I said different.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 57:48Chris Ryan?

  You know?

• 57:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you'd like this movie.

• 57:50Chris Ryan?

  Of course I do.

• 57:51Bill Simmons?

  You're like ninety, ten.

• 57:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:52Bill Simmons?

  I didn't like the seventy, thirty. Butch's Girlfriend Award Week, Link of the Film. Doc's plan of torturing Joanne and everyone else for the tapes and wrecking their apartments over just asking them if they had the tapes. I don't know. I have some notes. Maybe just ask Joanne, hey, do you have the tapes?

• 58:10Speaker 02

  We never really come back to the fact that he walked into his apartment and it looks like someone was killed there, signs of a struggle, like going crazy. He was like, all that stuff, it just comes to the movie.

• 58:20Bill Simmons?

  It's just like, go get him, Doc.

• 58:21Chris Ryan?

  What's age the worst is Tom Berenger's acting when he sees that his apartment's been trashed. First of all, he's working at a, he's a school teacher.

• 58:28Bill Simmons?

  He's in a trailer.

• 58:28Chris Ryan?

  He was in a trailer park in Vineland, New Jersey, but he walks in, it's completely destroyed. He's like, okay, starts smoking a cigarette and answering his phone.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  What's age the worst? The sequel.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  Ah, tough.

• 58:43Bill Simmons?

  Why did they do this?

• 58:46Bill Simmons?

  They, eighty-nine for some reason gave us, wait, eighty-eight and eighty-nine gave us Caddyshack Two.

• 58:51Chris Ryan?

  Another forty-eight hours.

• 58:53Bill Simmons?

  Another forty-eight hours, which we've gradually decided we liked. There's just a bunch of bad ones where they were just, just trying to capitalize, I think, on the rewatchability of these movies on cable. And like, maybe these dumbasses will go see a shitty version of a sequel.

• 59:07Chris Ryan?

  You know how you don't remember the pods we did during COVID?

• 59:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:11Chris Ryan?

  Did we do another forty-eight hours like two, two months ago?

• 59:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  We did, we did.

• 59:16Bill Simmons?

  We did. Did you get the COVID vaccine again?

• 59:18Chris Ryan?

  No, I just.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Boy, Bill's going for it. I can't wait till what happens in a couple of months.

• 59:23Chris Ryan?

  What happens?

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Bill's right on the edge, guys. Here are the things that are being said.

• 59:26Chris Ryan?

  But what's gonna happen?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Did you get the COVID vaccine a little bit? It's going further. It's, let's watch.

• 59:29Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you think he's getting red pilled?

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 59:31Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't remember anything that happened in twenty twenty or twenty twenty-one.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  What you're saying is because of.

• 59:36Bill Simmons?

  Apparently the Bucks played the Suns in the finals.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  I'm telling you, it's getting, look, it, so what's age the worst is that, okay, so there's, how many black guys are in the group?

• 59:47Chris Ryan?

  One.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  It's one.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  He died.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  It would have been one thing if everybody in the cruisers like had a drug problem if they were sharing needles and the whole deal like it was the eighties they missed an opportunity one of the guys could have like become HIV positive I shared a needle with fucking Two black guys. Two black guys.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  The poor guy gets replaced and is just like, I just want to say that the greatest saxophone player who ever lived died. This motherfucker's holding his saxophone like, god damn, we're trying to keep up with this and that that's what's age the worst.

• 1:00:21Chris Ryan?

  Let me ask you a question, it's probably unanswerable. End of the day, Wendell goes home, you think he's like, man, I'm in this great band, saying the cruisers, I play sax, I don't talk a lot, but man, I love being in this band, or do you think he's like, shit, I gotta get back into a hard bop combo, I gotta get back to jazz.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  What a good question. Is he calling home being like, man, some of the stuff Eddie wants to do is stuff like I've never fucking heard before.

• 1:00:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Or is he like, fuck, how did this happen to me?

• 1:00:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, how am I playing?

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  I knew fucking Miles Davis.

• 1:00:51Chris Ryan?

  A 12 second solo.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:52Chris Ryan?

  Over a terrible blues rock band.

• 1:00:54Bill Simmons?

  So do you think Frank never would, it's realistic that Frank never would have known that he overdosed in heroin at the uptight motel?

• 1:01:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, man, it's, it's crazy. Like, like, I guess that's

• 1:01:03Bill Simmons?

  Cause Kenny the Blackjack there was like, where were you, man? When are you gonna wake up?

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  This goes into my hottest take later.

• 1:01:09Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Bill Simmons?

  What's age the worst? None of these characters ran into each other for 20 years?

• 1:01:15Chris Ryan?

  And they all live in the same state where there's not a ton to do.

• 1:01:17Bill Simmons?

  20 minutes apart?

• 1:01:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Bill Simmons?

  They never had some sort of 10 year reunion, nothing? I thought that was weird. The Springsteen shadow we mentioned, mentioned Alan Barkin hating this movie. I have one more big one. Does anyone have anything else?

• 1:01:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh, they hinged the entire insult of Eddie's insult of word man on stage at the college on the Toby Tyler character from like a Disney movie that was around back then. I don't really know if that's really hidden in 2026. People are like, oh, yeah, Tyler. Uh, and Van mentioned it, Berenger and Schneider look like they don't look at all day older than when they were in high school. Oh, one more thing. We gotta fix this. Amazon and Apple, their posters for this movie are the Sal Amato band.

• 1:02:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:02:02Chris Ryan?

  It's fucking crazy. It's Eddie and the cruisers and you're like, neither Eddie nor Berenger nor Barkin are in the poster. It's Sal Amato and his Holiday Inn band.

• 1:02:12Bill Simmons?

  That ties into, uh, what, by what stage the worst was. And then this is, I'd like to do this as a public service, um, to all the streamers watching this right now.

• 1:02:21Chris Ryan?

  All of them.

• 1:02:22Bill Simmons?

  Including Netflix. So this movie's ending, right? Surprise ending with Eddie in the window and he's got the beard. And the, and the closing credits come on. Amazon's counting me down in the bottom right corner because it's about to send me to the next thing.

• 1:02:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Bill Simmons?

  And now I really want to hear the ending and you have to like grab your phone or your remote, frantically try to stop it. So they don't send me to like fucking Harry Potter, season seven, or whatever they're gonna send me to. And it's like, fuck off.

• 1:02:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Bill Simmons?

  Let me enjoy the end of a movie for 20 seconds before you're sending me to your next thing. So you can bill your fake streaming hours to me when all I did was leave my TV on and you pretended I watched something else. Fuck you.

• 1:03:04Chris Ryan?

  Some of your best work, Bill.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  This is what, this is the fucking shit, bro. This is the shit.

• 1:03:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Bill Simmons?

  It's fucking bullshit.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Fucking can't stand it. Can I finish?

• 1:03:12Chris Ryan?

  God forbid they don't push you to the next show.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  You know what, Bill? Good for you.

• 1:03:16Bill Simmons?

  Thank you.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Good for you for saying it despite current business situation.

• 1:03:20Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  Cross the board.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Like, let me watch the fucking movie before you give me five different things to watch.

• 1:03:29Bill Simmons?

  Change my settings and be like, you know what? You can't do this for 30 seconds.

• 1:03:32Chris Ryan?

  I don't want to live in a country where we can't say, it's time for me to watch the next episode. I'll click over to that now. If you need someone to spoon feed you the next episode of the next movie before you've come to the conclusion of the artistic statement that you are taking in. We're done as a nation.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:03:52Chris Ryan?

  We're done as a country if that's the case.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  You know what? I wonder what the actual calculation is here because I bet they don't want it to get too deep into the credits before you've already.

• 1:04:02Chris Ryan?

  They don't even want you to think.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Bill Simmons?

  They want us on the next thing.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  They want you on the next thing to keep you on the thing. It's ruining.

• 1:04:09Chris Ryan?

  And for shows, if you end on a cliffhanger, you're counting on the fact that somebody's like, I have to see what happened to this nurse in the pit. Start the next episode.

• 1:04:16Bill Simmons?

  Anything to add, Craig?

• 1:04:18Speaker 04

  It's anti-below-the-line. I want to see who lit the movie. Let me see their names. Say their names.

• 1:04:22Chris Ryan?

  Who's the A D? Sorry, I care about these things.

• 1:04:25Bill Simmons?

  Stop telling us you actually care about the movie industry and you won't let us see closing credits for anything I watch.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  Who was Sal Amato's assistant on set? I want to know.

• 1:04:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It was the key grip. Really annoying. All right, we'll take a break and then come back with Van's Flex.

• 1:04:42Bill Simmons?

  Ruffalo Hannah Rubenek Partridge over acting word Kenny the drummer?

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  When are you gonna wake up?

• 1:04:48Chris Ryan?

  I had Joey Pants.

• 1:04:49Bill Simmons?

  What are you getting so mad at Wordman for?

• 1:04:50Chris Ryan?

  He really goes for it.

• 1:04:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Bill Simmons?

  He's like, this is my one scene. I'm gonna get really mad at Ridgeway.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  You guys are gonna like it. I have Eddie whenever they're not on stage.

• 1:04:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  Whenever they're not on stage.

• 1:05:02Bill Simmons?

  Just going for it?

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Eddie is just fucking going for it. He puts his whole body into when he shoved, what you call it? Like whenever they're not on stage, Eddie is dialing it up in the middle of it, man.

• 1:05:13Chris Ryan?

  My favorite part of that Kenny scene is when he's like, you remember those days in the backseat of a car balling some chick?

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Balling some chick.

• 1:05:21Chris Ryan?

  And then your song comes on.

• 1:05:23Bill Simmons?

  I should put ballin' in what's age the best.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  Ballin' some chick.

• 1:05:25Bill Simmons?

  When was the last time ballin' was said?

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  It was when they didn't, they didn't like they cut to the audience and all the guys in the audience are like, yeah, I remember that.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  That's Chris and Sean. You remember back in the day we were ballin' some chick? The watch comes on?

• 1:05:40Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Ben, you have a flex.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  All right, so it's a list. Top five fictitious bands ever.

• 1:05:46Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Okay, I do not have Eddie and the Cruisers in this just because we're doing the movies. Uh, number five is Josie and the Pussycats.

• 1:05:54Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  You gotta count them. Iconic shit. Number four, I got the Wonders, man. I'm a that thing you do truther.

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  Punch it in.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, I love that movie. It's almost lost time that I talk about as much as they should.

• 1:06:08Bill Simmons?

  Should we add it to the list?

• 1:06:10Chris Ryan?

  I think it's a really good rewatchable.

• 1:06:11Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that movie. Uh, number three, Spinal Tap. Gotta have Spinal Tap in there. Rest in peace, Rob. Um, number two, The Five Heartbeats.

• 1:06:22Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Now, this is an underrated fictitious band. The music is fantastic.

• 1:06:27Bill Simmons?

  Robert Townsend.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  The Robert Townsend, shout out to him. The story is very reminiscent of Temptations, obviously, but they're amazing. Their music was amazing, too.

• 1:06:36Bill Simmons?

  I like that movie.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Number one, for me, Stillwater.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Stillwater from Almost Famous. Fantat- they, they sound like a real band. They have the real band chemistry and angst. Stillwater.

• 1:06:52Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask a follow up question?

• 1:06:53Bill Simmons?

  Good lead singer presence, too, by Jason Lee.

• 1:06:56Chris Ryan?

  No, forget the movies that those bands are in. Best music of a fictitious band.

• 1:07:01Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  So, to me, it would be, excuse me, The Five Heartbeats, The Wonders, Eddie and the Cruisers.

• 1:07:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  They gotta be, they gotta be up there. And the Stillwater stuff is awesome to me. It sounds kinda like-

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  Stillwater's really good.

• 1:07:14Chris Ryan?

  I just don't think Fever Dog is as good of a signature song as Dark Side or-

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Dark Side, yeah.

• 1:07:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Or That Thing You Do.

• 1:07:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's fair. It was a good list. I, I wanna like nitpick and say you missed one, but I can't think of one that you missed.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  So there was one thing that I couldn't really decide. I went back and forth with Kim Berg about this, is- The Revolution in Purple Rain.

• 1:07:37Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't count.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Okay, because he's not playing Prince.

• 1:07:39Bill Simmons?

  Nah, it doesn't count.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  I think they're called the-

• 1:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Because Wendy and Lisa are in his other band.

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Everybody has the regular names, the time is in it, but we couldn't decide whether or not that was technically a fictitious band or not, because if they are, they're obviously number one.

• 1:07:56Chris Ryan?

  We just did an 80's soundtrack.

• 1:07:57Bill Simmons?

  And the time doesn't count either.

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Chris Ryan?

  The only one I would add to it is Sex Bomb from Scott Pilgrim.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  From Scott Pilgrim.

• 1:08:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  That's a fucking Miss Bavan.

• 1:08:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Bill Simmons?

  What about the Matt Damon band in Euro Trip? Scotty doesn't know.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  Scotty doesn't know.

• 1:08:14Chris Ryan?

  Dan Band, real band, right? The Dan Band? Oh, Hey, That's My Bike. Hey, That's My Bike from Reality Bites.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:21Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one.

• 1:08:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  Oh, CB4.

• 1:08:24Bill Simmons?

  So we never see Citizen Dick in singles, we just hang out with them.

• 1:08:27Chris Ryan?

  But they are Mud Honey, so they're pretty good.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wait, wait a minute. Oh, yeah, no, they're only fictitious band in singles, because everybody else is like Alice in Chains.

• 1:08:36Bill Simmons?

  They never perform, though.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  They do Trust Me, I'm Dick.

• 1:08:39Chris Ryan?

  Touch Me, I'm Sick, yeah, or Touch Me, I'm Dick, yeah.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Touch Me, I'm Dick, yeah.

• 1:08:42Bill Simmons?

  We see them on stage doing it?

• 1:08:43Chris Ryan?

  No, we just hear their record.

• 1:08:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, we don't see it, though.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  Touch Me, I'm Dick.

• 1:08:48Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award.

• 1:08:56Bill Simmons?

  I don't know how hot of a take this is, but if this movie had two more great songs in it, what happens?

• 1:09:04Bill Simmons?

  Does this become Grease?

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  The level to which Grease is better than this movie is difficult to articulate.

• 1:09:12Bill Simmons?

  So, no.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  I mean, Grease is better in every way, right?

• 1:09:15Bill Simmons?

  I'm aware. Except for, except for everyone in the movie is 38 years old, playing high school kids, yeah.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, true.

• 1:09:22Chris Ryan?

  So, would you want another song that was like Dark Side, or do you feel like we needed like another Joanne solo song?

• 1:09:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was gonna do this later for either nitpick or unanswered world, but you assume all the songs we hear on The Dark Side, Tender Years, they're all on some album, right?

• 1:09:40Chris Ryan?

  They're on Tender Years.

• 1:09:41Bill Simmons?

  That gets released in 63.

• 1:09:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they're on Tender Years.

• 1:09:43Bill Simmons?

  We don't know anything about the release of that album, how well the songs did, how famous were they? Did they get to go on the Ed Sullivan Show?

• 1:09:54Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:09:55Bill Simmons?

  We know nothing. We only know that they're back in the studio, that they got $10,000 to do their album after it.

• 1:10:00Chris Ryan?

  We don't know if John and Paul saw Eddie and the Cruisers on TV and were like, we should start the Beatles.

• 1:10:07Bill Simmons?

  Right, right. But there's this whole missing section. So Craig asked, like, I love that this movie's 95 minutes. I actually agree with them. I think you could maybe cut out seven minutes and add, I just wanna know what happens when the album comes out. And did it make them more successful? Did one of the songs become a top song? And then, so we have heard another song during that whole stretch.

• 1:10:29Chris Ryan?

  Here's my take on that, is that most records in the early 60s like that were a collection of singles for the most part.

• 1:10:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Chris Ryan?

  And so like, I think that those songs were probably like a collection of like the 10 things that they were playing that were the biggest original songs that they had when they were playing live, but it wasn't like, here's our LP. It was like songs people were pretty familiar with.

• 1:10:49Speaker 04

  So was, was The Dark Side on Tender Years? But I thought Frank helps them write Dark Side. So Frank knew them before Tender Years?

• 1:10:57Chris Ryan?

  I bet they don't do darks, I don't think they did Tender Years until after he had been in the band for a while.

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  So then what did Sal mean then when he was like, we were doing just fine without you?

• 1:11:04Chris Ryan?

  Cause I think he was like, we were just playing bars, doing runaround soup.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  They were already moving, like.

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  But Tender Years took them to a whole nother level.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  I know, but it seems like that.

• 1:11:15Chris Ryan?

  It was uncalled for from Sal.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, fuck Sal. It feels like that word man joining the band was the, uh, the final piece to them becoming like a mainstream kind of successful band. But to your point, we don't know how successful.

• 1:11:27Bill Simmons?

  If there's one more great song in this movie, I think it, I think something different.

• 1:11:31Chris Ryan?

  Can I do a hottest take with piggybacks off of this?

• 1:11:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Chris Ryan?

  Which is that the best part of this movie, which is also like the thing that I think fucks this movie up is that they play Dark Side first. And it's out of context of the entire movie, they just play the best song that these guys have to open the film.

• 1:11:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  And even though that happens at the college, which we know is a dark moment for the band, if you make us wait to hear Dark Side. And you get to see them do the big full band version of Dark Side after you've seen them write it. It blows the fucking top off the movie. It's so much better.

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  But that would denote that the movie had a regular story structure, which it doesn't because it really is not that concerned.

• 1:12:14Bill Simmons?

  So that's where if you had that extra great song, that song leads the movie and then it all leads to Dark Side, which is their biggest song.

• 1:12:19Chris Ryan?

  But if the movie starts with Tender Years.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Oh, you could start it with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:22Chris Ryan?

  I guess, but I think people would be like, yeah, it's a pretty good song, but it starts with Dark Side. You're like, whoa, holy fucking shit. This is pretty good.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  You know what? To, to your question though. At the beginning of the movie, I guess, is when they frame how successful of a band that they've become.

• 1:12:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  It's she's trying to talk about, but even as she's doing it, she's almost informing them of how big they were. It's not like they had, like, they, it's not like they were like, oh my God, it's Dark Side from Eddie and the Cruisers. It's still kind of ambiguous to a degree.

• 1:12:53Bill Simmons?

  There's a talk show, five minutes, them going on a talk show or an Ed Sullivan type show that could have been in this movie. That would have been fun.

• 1:13:01Chris Ryan?

  Do you have a hot take?

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  I do. Um, I think Word Man tried to kill Eddie. Um, I think he actually killed the saxophone player. I think this entire movie.

• 1:13:11Chris Ryan?

  He cooked up a hot shot for Wendell?

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  I think he did, because there's no way.

• 1:13:13Bill Simmons?

  That's why I lived in a trailer.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  To your point, there's no way he didn't know. I think actually his jealousy, because I watched this movie, this, it doesn't make any sense. He's openly trying, Word Man's fucking crazy, guys. He's openly trying to fuck with Eddie's girl. Can you imagine? We all work together. We're a band. Can you, can, can, can you, can you just imagine we're at like, I don't know, Ringer party or something like that? And I'm just over there with one, like one of y'all's wives, like trying to figure out what the fuck is up. Like what, like is, is, I, this shit is, it, it blows my mind every time I watch this. My dad used to fucking hate it.

• 1:13:47Bill Simmons?

  Also, maybe she didn't, Eddie didn't make her toes curl.

• 1:13:50Chris Ryan?

  Van is really on to something because if, if you come to the end and it turns out Word Man is the one who's been flipping people's apartments up and down. And it's Kaiser Soze. And he did his own, the reason why he didn't get upset when he saw his apartment is because he's like, I know I did it.

• 1:14:06Bill Simmons?

  Kaiser Soze ending at the end?

• 1:14:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, where he's just like, all I wanted was the tapes to get out of there so I could get out of my dumb teacher job.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Guys, let me tell you something. In Eddie and the Cruisers 2, Eddie is performing music, but he still refuses to let people know that he is Eddie.

• 1:14:22Chris Ryan?

  He's like, I'm Joe West.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  He's Joe West, right? Do you know why? Because he's fucking scared of Wordman. So the whole reason why Eddie has gone into hiding.

• 1:14:30Chris Ryan?

  Is that true? I haven't seen Eddie in the Cruisers, Eddie, Eddie lives in a long time.

• 1:14:34Bill Simmons?

  He's a pseudonym.

• 1:14:34Chris Ryan?

  But is he scared of Wordman?

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  No, this is in my brain. He's scared of Wordman because he knows Wordman tried to kill him, which is why he's hiding. This whole thing, Wordman is fucking crazy.

• 1:14:44Bill Simmons?

  So when we see Eddie at the end, Eddie and the Cruisers, one walking away, Wordman's behind him with a weapon.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  He's stalking him.

• 1:14:50Bill Simmons?

  But you don't see it because Amazon has already cut to the next Harry Potter season seven.

• 1:14:56Bill Simmons?

  Casting whatevs. Uh, Pare claims they were ready to replace him with Rick Springfield.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:15:02Bill Simmons?

  And that, uh, he had to do that first concert where he had to lip sync all the songs and act like Eddie. And if he sucked, they were going to replace him. And Rick Springfield admitted that he did, uh, he did think about trying to get the part.

• 1:15:17Chris Ryan?

  Would be cool.

• 1:15:18Bill Simmons?

  Instead, he lives on in Jesse's girl on Boogie Nights. That ends up being his legacy, even though we don't see him.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  If Rick was in it, it would have been a box office success, I bet. Would have more people would have seen it.

• 1:15:27Bill Simmons?

  Pare was discovered in a New York City restaurant working as a chef. So still hope for Dave Chang. Even in his mid 40s, he might still be an actor. Um, weird one. This isn't a casting whatev, but one of the people in the opening scene that when Maggie's telling them about Rimbo, Scott the Mustache, Barry Sand.

• 1:15:46Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:47Bill Simmons?

  He was an original Letterman producer in the first five years of the show and was on camera a lot.

• 1:15:53Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:15:54Bill Simmons?

  And I never understood why he was in this movie. It's really strange. I mean, that's like a deep, deep Letterman cut.

• 1:16:00Chris Ryan?

  That's it.

• 1:16:01Bill Simmons?

  The NBC.

• 1:16:01Chris Ryan?

  Only you would grab that, yeah.

• 1:16:02Bill Simmons?

  But it was just fucking weird. It would be like if Daniel Kellison was in the movie, just randomly, just in a scene. Best that guy, Joey Pants not eligible. Uh, John Stockwell is in this, the lead guy from Christine and also in Top Gun. He's the guy that knows.

• 1:16:15Chris Ryan?

  He's Wizard from Top Gun, yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:17Chris Ryan?

  The werewolf, I can't remember, yeah.

• 1:16:19Bill Simmons?

  But the winner is Mi- Mitchell Lawrence.

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  Mitch, yeah, for sure. Matthew Lawrence as a.

• 1:16:24Bill Simmons?

  Mitchell Lawrence was his brother.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Twin brother, right?

• 1:16:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  A twin brother.

• 1:16:28Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:16:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Matthew Lawrence.

• 1:16:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:31Bill Simmons?

  Not Mitchell Lawrence.

• 1:16:31Chris Ryan?

  Matthew Lawrence also now does, or did, sports talk radio in Lexington, Kentucky.

• 1:16:37Bill Simmons?

  Wow. How many episodes does David Silver's dad in 9020, do you think, if you had to guess?

• 1:16:43Chris Ryan?

  How many episodes is what?

• 1:16:44Bill Simmons?

  Was he on 9020? No.

• 1:16:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Bill Simmons?

  Thirty-six.

• 1:16:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:16:49Bill Simmons?

  You're basically on the show at that point.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Bill Simmons?

  They did over 200 shows.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  What we've never talked about is a 9020 parent ranking, because you have.

• 1:16:57Bill Simmons?

  He's the best one.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  What about not, what about, what about Dylan's fucking dad? Dylan's dad was the man.

• 1:17:03Chris Ryan?

  Who was Dylan, who played Dylan's dad?

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  That guy, that was the, that, we've seen this guy, that, that, that guy.

• 1:17:08Bill Simmons?

  Jack McKay.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Jack McKay was the man, he's shady, what is he?

• 1:17:11Bill Simmons?

  Blew up, though. Should've, should've looked out for his family better.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  But he was like some kind of fucking mobster or something like that, was he not?

• 1:17:16Bill Simmons?

  I would've thought you would like David Silver's dad, because he was like, constantly, uh, messed around with the dental assistants.

• 1:17:22Chris Ryan?

  You don't like Brandon and Kelly, uh.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  Brandon and Kelly's parents got on my nerves.

• 1:17:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they were terrible.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  They, they, they, they got on my nerves, the whole family I didn't enjoy.

• 1:17:30Bill Simmons?

  Actually, my favorite was Kelly Taylor's mom, because she had the drug problem and was.

• 1:17:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh, Brandon and Brenda, Brenda, is that where, Brandon and Brenda?

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  And then also Steve's mom, because she was like, famous.

• 1:17:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, famous.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  She was kind of cool.

• 1:17:41Bill Simmons?

  Dionne Waiters Award, Ellen Barkin? Unless you want to give it to the, I didn't pay for a bunch of jerk-offs, making weird sounds.

• 1:17:48Chris Ryan?

  No, I think Barkin.

• 1:17:49Bill Simmons?

  Uh, recasting couch director city, can I offer you Michael Keaton as Kenny the drummer? Just randomly being in this movie?

• 1:17:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I could take that, that's good.

• 1:17:57Bill Simmons?

  It's like a year after night shift, just looking for work still?

• 1:17:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Bill Simmons?

  Gets this big scene playing as a blackjack dealer?

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  It's going crazy.

• 1:18:03Chris Ryan?

  I like it when Kenny puts the comic book down and just gets on a kit and just immediately just like lays into it.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  The Van Lathan Award for, did this movie need more black people?

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  No, we were treated poorly. Um, it, it, but, but no, it doesn't. Perfect.

• 1:18:18Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  And that's another thing about these 80s movies. Don't fucking put it, not where we, just do the thing, okay? Just do the thing.

• 1:18:26Chris Ryan?

  It's a white band with a black saxophone player.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  It's a white band, black saxophone player, that's cool. You know what I'm saying? We don't need to, it's, it's, it's fine. I'm, I'm telling you, it's fine.

• 1:18:35Bill Simmons?

  Craig has a flex category.

• 1:18:37Chris Ryan?

  I did it, it was the, um, Bam out of bio, to Salamato.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, you did.

• 1:18:41Chris Ryan?

  Where the fuck did that come from? Him at the nightclub.

• 1:18:42Bill Simmons?

  First time somebody did Bam out of bio is a flex category. The eighty-three point game, it's gonna live on forever. Uh, half assed under research, Berenger said he did not try to learn piano. Did practice some keyboards in his trailer. It's, well, while he read Biggs, chilled that long.

• 1:18:57Chris Ryan?

  Is that a euphemism? Yeah. The practice and keyboards, don't bother me.

• 1:19:00Bill Simmons?

  Matthew Lawrence did learn how to play the bass.

• 1:19:04Bill Simmons?

  Um, they, Parry remembers that, uh, when they all played together, it was a little like Stillwater. It was a college concert. The extras were into it, everybody was going nuts and they were really pretending they were the band. And then, uh, the Palace of Depression, was a real place in Vineland, New Jersey. Uh, does not exist anymore. Fraternity House was at Haverford College, or is that?

• 1:19:26Chris Ryan?

  Outside of Philly.

• 1:19:28Bill Simmons?

  Tony Martz was an actual place until the early eighties and then demolished. And then, uh, we didn't mention this, Joanne, played by Helen Schneider, was a pretty famous, like, German music star in the seventies and eighties. Lot of, uh, lot of, like, success, apparently.

• 1:19:45Chris Ryan?

  I kinda like and wish there was, like, ten percent more of her losing it a little at the end. Where she's like, I have to get ready, Eddie's here. And it's like, kind of glorious, wantsing out. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this, do more of that. Like, she's been hanging on, waiting for this call for twenty years, that's great.

• 1:20:02Bill Simmons?

  Like, you go in her room and it's just all weird Eddie mannequin shit.

• 1:20:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Eddie voodoo dolls.

• 1:20:07Bill Simmons?

  Fake Eddie, did some research on him.

• 1:20:10Chris Ryan?

  John Cafferty? Or the Eddie that was with Salamato?

• 1:20:13Bill Simmons?

  The Eddie with Salamato, played by Joey Balin. Put out an album in 1994, if you want to download it on your way home. The Joey Balin's solo work. Apex Mountain, Michael Pare, definitely.

• 1:20:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh wait, I had one more, uh, half-ass internet research.

• 1:20:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Chris Ryan?

  In that same Washington Post article that I mentioned, Berenger claims that they filmed a scene in a roadhouse with the cruisers watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and making fun of it. And he has like a whole thing he talks about, and then after that, after this quote, Martin Davidson's like, we never shot that, that's Berenger bullshit. But I really like the idea that they at least thought about The Beatles in this movie. Yeah.

• 1:20:53Bill Simmons?

  I love when there's like violent disagreements like that.

• 1:20:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it just goes to show you like people were probably using substances while making it.

• 1:20:59Bill Simmons?

  Fucking high as shit.

• 1:21:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:01Bill Simmons?

  I mean, it was 1983.

• 1:21:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Bill Simmons?

  Apex, that's why we're, the Grandland Oral History will never happen.

• 1:21:08Chris Ryan?

  Cause of the amount of drugs.

• 1:21:09Bill Simmons?

  No, because of 20 years later, people can just start making up shit.

• 1:21:13Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:21:14Bill Simmons?

  Like Bill came back from the All-Star game and he got in this huge fistfight with C.R. Just like, after 20 years. You overrate submarine movies, dickhead. Apex Mountain. Michael Pare, yes. Tom Berenger, no. Ellen Barkin, no. Matthew Lawrence. I'm gonna say, uh, David Silver's dad. Probably. That show's pretty big. Beaver Brown Band, yes. Jersey Shore movies, no, but I also can't come up with a better one.

• 1:21:45Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna get killed for this for not knowing.

• 1:21:48Bill Simmons?

  Do you claim the Jersey Shore? What's your relationship?

• 1:21:50Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's adjacent, it's, it's like the summer destination for, for most of Philadelphia. But I don't know of a better Jersey Shore movie than this.

• 1:21:58Bill Simmons?

  Never really figured it out as a great location. Yeah, I mean, not, not a movie, obviously, but the Jersey Shore.

• 1:22:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yes.

• 1:22:05Bill Simmons?

  The show is probably. Oh, the show? Yeah. Yeah. Obviously. Did you like that show? No, no, of course not. Did you ever hang out with those people during your?

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  Early Hollywood days?

• 1:22:14Chris Ryan?

  I saw a couple of them.

• 1:22:15Bill Simmons?

  Do you in the situation ever go party?

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  See a couple of them. Nah, I never liked that show. As a matter of fact, that show to me is when I realized, oh, you know, I don't have to fucking, fucking like what everybody else likes. It never made this grotesque in a way.

• 1:22:29Bill Simmons?

  Wow, that got dark.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  No, no, I just, I never understood it.

• 1:22:32Bill Simmons?

  I get it.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  Like, everybody was so into it. No, everybody was so into it.

• 1:22:36Bill Simmons?

  I loved it for two years.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  See, I, I just never, I, I, everything else that, that had come from MTV, like, fucking Rolls Royce.

• 1:22:42Chris Ryan?

  Challenge.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  Challenge, all of that stuff into it. For some reason, Jersey George is never fucking.

• 1:22:47Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Arthur Rimbaud?

• 1:22:49Chris Ryan?

  I think that he's had bigger moments than this, yeah.

• 1:22:52Bill Simmons?

  Helen Schneider? Sounds like Germany was pretty hopping.

• 1:22:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  What happened? You would have thought that she'd have been around. She was like, what?

• 1:22:59Bill Simmons?

  Went back to Germany.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  1957 Chevys, probably not. Uh, Cruise or Hanks? What about Hanks as Wordman?

• 1:23:07Chris Ryan?

  I, I had Cruise as Eddie. Cause Cruise has priors of doing the outsiders. Do you have Cruise as Eddie?

• 1:23:15Speaker 02

  Cruise as Eddie.

• 1:23:16Chris Ryan?

  He basically played a greaser in the outsiders, and that's kinda the way Eddie dresses. Like, Eddie is just full outsider.

• 1:23:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Craig's all in on this one. Eddie and the cruisers, come on.

• 1:23:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:23:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Come on!

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  What are you doing?

• 1:23:27Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  That makes a lot of sense.

• 1:23:28Chris Ryan?

  And I think you could actually, this is one of the rare times where you could do Cruise as Eddie and Hanks as Frank.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:37Bill Simmons?

  Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Chris Ryan?

  I have Scorsese.

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  Scorsese.

• 1:23:41Chris Ryan?

  Tri-state area.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:43Bill Simmons?

  Best hang, worst hang. Best hang, Sal?

• 1:23:47Bill Simmons?

  See, you know, his pizza, fun dressing room.

• 1:23:50Chris Ryan?

  Best hang is absolutely Maggie.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  Like, I got Ellen Barkin as the best hang.

• 1:23:54Bill Simmons?

  Good point.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:55Bill Simmons?

  I gotta add Maggie.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  I got Ellen Barkin as the best hang. I got worst hang, Sal.

• 1:23:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, come. Just talk about the old days?

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  No, Sal.

• 1:24:02Bill Simmons?

  I had Doc as the worst hang.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  When you think about it.

• 1:24:05Bill Simmons?

  Doc. Doc's a tough hang.

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  Sal, you come in there, he, he offers you a slice of pizza, he sits down, the pizza's in his hand, he never fucking eats it, right?

• 1:24:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  Pizza's just hanging off, he's always fucked up.

• 1:24:15Chris Ryan?

  Crying and sweating.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  He's crying, he's sweating, he's doing the whole thing. Wordman, he's skeptical of Wordman, which is probably because he knew that Wordman was a psychopath.

• 1:24:22Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like.

• 1:24:23Chris Ryan?

  I think probably Kenny would be best hang.

• 1:24:26Bill Simmons?

  Playing, yeah, telling blackjack stories.

• 1:24:28Chris Ryan?

  Just talking about balling chicks.

• 1:24:29Bill Simmons?

  I busted these guys counting cards and then we balled in a car.

• 1:24:34Bill Simmons?

  Why didn't you have Maggie in the throw your life away area?

• 1:24:39Chris Ryan?

  That's a good question. You took it out of flex, but that's a really good one.

• 1:24:44Bill Simmons?

  Pick a Nits. Would there have been more interest in Eddie's disappearance or way more interest? I feel like this would have been one of the bigger stories of 20 years.

• 1:24:54Chris Ryan?

  I think that there is something to be said for how local news was back then. So I think it would be a huge deal in New Jersey.

• 1:25:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Chris Ryan?

  And maybe get to Philly, but I don't know if it cracks the Big Apple.

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  This speaks to the question of how big of a band they were, they were because that's a part of it. However, they never found a body.

• 1:25:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Being that they never found a body, it's always funny in 80s movies where they go, something, something happened, a body was never found. People would never fucking let go of it. That's the DB Cooper thing.

• 1:25:23Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  Don't know where he went or what happened to him.

• 1:25:27Bill Simmons?

  We mentioned Berenger's too old for Word Band.

• 1:25:31Bill Simmons?

  We talked about Word Band and Joanna Kiss, Joanna Kissing. So at the end, this is a super nitpick, but Media Magazine's doing their big feature on Eddie and the Cruisers and Eddie Wilson, how brilliant he was. And they're showing video of him at the college concert.

• 1:25:46Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  How were they filming that in 1963?

• 1:25:49Chris Ryan?

  Full color video with closeups is what I had. Probably no, no full color video with closeups and editing at the 1963 Spring Dance of Benton College.

• 1:25:58Bill Simmons?

  There were nine cameras apparently there and then, but they're showing the crowd.

• 1:26:02Chris Ryan?

  It's like Sunday night football. Yeah.

• 1:26:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Pretty tough. Come on, Ben. You're not stinking that by me after I've seen this movie 78 times.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  I love it. I agree.

• 1:26:11Bill Simmons?

  Any other nitpicks?

• 1:26:12Chris Ryan?

  Just that the one bit we hear of Season in Hell is pretty vanilla compared to like, they were like, this mind blowing avant garde noise. You can't put it out. It's like, this is just a slow blues song. Like this is not that complicated.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  I guess my big nitpick that I've always had is like, is Word Man fucking Mozart? Like, how you learn to play piano that fast? Where man's fucking around, he's know what he's doing, all of a sudden, he's playing piano, he's got solos?

• 1:26:37Chris Ryan?

  No, where man knew how to play piano, didn't he?

• 1:26:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he has the piano solo earlier.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  He has to play, I'm talking about earl, no.

• 1:26:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:26:43Speaker 02

  Earlier, like, if I'm not, doesn't Eddie, am I?

• 1:26:47Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no, no. Eddie, Eddie showing him rock chords.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  Oh, so he already knew how to play piano?

• 1:26:53Chris Ryan?

  I know how to do it, but Eddie's like, no, you have to groove down at this end of the keyboard.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's why I love this podcast, I've thought about it for thirty years.

• 1:27:01Bill Simmons?

  No?

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  No?

• 1:27:03Bill Simmons?

  Craig's ready to go.

• 1:27:04Chris Ryan?

  It's not the movie for nitpicks, sure.

• 1:27:05Bill Simmons?

  Um.

• 1:27:06Chris Ryan?

  I don't think any of these people would have hung out, like, this band makes no sense as humans outside of the band.

• 1:27:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I think Sal and Joey Pants would have hung out.

• 1:27:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:14Bill Simmons?

  And that's it.

• 1:27:15Chris Ryan?

  That's it.

• 1:27:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Sequel, prequel, Prestige TV, all black cast or untouchable, so Prestige TV, I think you could do this, and you'd probably make it an eighties band, and you set it in two thousand, or maybe you make it like

• 1:27:28Chris Ryan?

  Ooh, yeah.

• 1:27:29Bill Simmons?

  The Strokes? Like, that era, early two thousands, New York, and now, and then it's like today.

• 1:27:35Chris Ryan?

  Coming back today?

• 1:27:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, where it's like the, the

• 1:27:38Chris Ryan?

  Some song has gotten big on TikTok.

• 1:27:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  Think about what we already did. This is begging, begging to be like a Tupac situation. Begging to be like some big prestige deal, where some rapper that we thought was killed in a beef back, but he's alive in the whole nine This is begging to be remade with that exact spin to it.

• 1:28:01Chris Ryan?

  There is

• 1:28:01Bill Simmons?

  You would do it with the yeah, yeah, yes, because you'd change it and make it a female singer.

• 1:28:06Chris Ryan?

  The coolest thing to do would be to, like, basically try to Blair Witch it, where you're like, we've discovered these tapes.

• 1:28:11Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm. Oh.

• 1:28:12Chris Ryan?

  And it's like, and now this band, like, it would be basically like a viral marketing campaign.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  Blair Witch crossed with Eddie and the Cruisers, that's pretty good. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist? So many others, or Zane Lowe?

• 1:28:28Chris Ryan?

  Eddie, man. Here you are. You've just seen your own face on Media Magazine, the lovely Maggie reporting it out. Season in hell, never even came into fruition, never came to harvest, never came to flowering. But you, what's you, what have you been doing, man, since Palace of Depression? Tell me, take me to the palace, and let's get out of this oppressive zone.

• 1:28:54Bill Simmons?

  I'm so glad Zayn finally got to interview a musician.

• 1:28:58Chris Ryan?

  Instead of a cop.

• 1:29:01Bill Simmons?

  Bring me back to Tony Mark that day.

• 1:29:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. The other option would be Zayn interviewing Wendell, but like Wendell doesn't say anything back. Wendell, man, you played with Bad, you played with Dexter Gordon, now you're on junk. And Wendell's like, no one's ever asked me to record.

• 1:29:20Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man. Just what Oscar who gets it? Soundtrack or original song?

• 1:29:26Chris Ryan?

  I go original song, Dark Side.

• 1:29:28Bill Simmons?

  I'll give you a best music original song that year. Winner was Flashdance, What a Feeling, by the one and only Irene Cara.

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:29:36Chris Ryan?

  Banger.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  Fame, Irene Cara.

• 1:29:39Bill Simmons?

  Tough nude scene for her in Fame. Saw Fame recently. Really emotionally scarring as a 10-year-old.

• 1:29:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Bill Simmons?

  It's like, now take your shirt off, that creepy photographer guy. Do you like Fame?

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. Fame, like, well, at first, I watched the TV show first. That was the first thing I saw, TV show, then I went back and watched.

• 1:29:56Bill Simmons?

  I saw Fame in the theater, probably a little too early.

• 1:29:58Chris Ryan?

  Probably.

• 1:29:59Bill Simmons?

  H10. You know Fame? Really good idea for a movie. I'm actually surprised they haven't run that back.

• 1:30:07Chris Ryan?

  Are you a Flashdance fan?

• 1:30:10Bill Simmons?

  Not totally.

• 1:30:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12Bill Simmons?

  Maniac from Flashdance was also nominated, Over You from Tender Mercies, and then two Yentl songs. I feel like we could have stuck in.

• 1:30:22Chris Ryan?

  Dark Side?

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Dark Side in there.

• 1:30:24Bill Simmons?

  And to maybe bump the second best Yentl song?

• 1:30:26Chris Ryan?

  That would be incredible if it's like Academy Award-winning Eddie and the Cruisers.

• 1:30:32Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions. What happened to Media Magazine? Maggie moves on to where?

• 1:30:38Chris Ryan?

  I think she...

• 1:30:39Bill Simmons?

  Does she get that, like, doing like Live at Five in New York City, replaced with Sue Simmons?

• 1:30:43Chris Ryan?

  Maybe she moves up to People or Newsweek or Time.

• 1:30:48Speaker 02

  Um, did Eddie always-

• 1:30:49Bill Simmons?

  And then get lung cancer?

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, my question is, did Eddie always pull out, or did his boys not swim?

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  How did she not get pregnant?

• 1:30:57Chris Ryan?

  Who?

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  His girl.

• 1:30:58Chris Ryan?

  Joanne?

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, Joanne. They're on the road all together, music-filled, lusty, lovemaking-

• 1:31:02Chris Ryan?

  Falling in the back of a car, listening to your own songs.

• 1:31:05Bill Simmons?

  Or maybe not a lot of sex, because he was so driven by the art. That's why she was looking at the Word Man.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Or like, that's why she got with Word Man. But something doesn't make a lot of sense how there was no like Eddie baby at some point.

• 1:31:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, one of my possible answers was just like, what did Word Man think was gonna happen when he, like, when he shows up after his long date with Joanne? And he's like, is it time for us to play? Like, of course Eddie's gonna fuck with you now.

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 1:31:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Toby Tyler got off easy.

• 1:31:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:33Bill Simmons?

  What did Doc sell the tapes for and what happened next? This is an answer for-

• 1:31:37Chris Ryan?

  The musicals you want now. Uh-

• 1:31:40Bill Simmons?

  It's like-

• 1:31:40Chris Ryan?

  I think it's a, I think it is anticlimactic. I think people are like, this isn't that good. I like, I'd prefer Dark Side, and it just doesn't go anywhere.

• 1:31:49Bill Simmons?

  Does it come out on 8-track?

• 1:31:53Chris Ryan?

  In 83?

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  What were those things, not the CD, but between cassettes and CDs?

• 1:31:57Chris Ryan?

  8-tracks.

• 1:31:58Bill Simmons?

  8-tracks, yeah.

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  I think the 8-track is dead by 83 though, right?

• 1:32:00Bill Simmons?

  I think it's still around in 83. That was the last year.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, cassettes, right? No cassettes?

• 1:32:06Bill Simmons?

  I don't think Season Hell does that well.

• 1:32:08Chris Ryan?

  Me neither.

• 1:32:09Bill Simmons?

  And I think it's a big bust, and Doc probably, um, is arrested for fraud in some way.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  How do they position it? Do they do music videos where they get like, because this, this, the age of the video is starting to happen, they don't, but the cruisers are on it.

• 1:32:22Chris Ryan?

  Well, they have all that incredible footage of Eddie and the cruisers playing Bet in College. They could use some of that.

• 1:32:27Bill Simmons?

  Secret handshake club memorabilia that you'd want from this movie? I like the photo of Joanne with the two guys that's in her place.

• 1:32:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty weird one, just to have on the wall right now. People are like, what the fuck is that? Eddie and the cruisers, 1983?

• 1:32:41Chris Ryan?

  That's the original Staff of Grantland.

• 1:32:44Bill Simmons?

  Coach, Finstock, Mr. Miyagi work for best, worst life lesson. Guys like, guys like me and you, they strike oil under your garden and all you get is dead tomatoes.

• 1:32:54Speaker 02

  Oh shit.

• 1:32:55Bill Simmons?

  But that's pretty good by, by Salamata, philosopher.

• 1:32:58Chris Ryan?

  That's good.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  If we can't be great, then there's no sense in ever playing music again.

• 1:33:02Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:33:05Bill Simmons?

  Best double feature choice, that thing you do?

• 1:33:07Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:09Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie? Beaver Brown Band? And they're still dining on this, forty years later. HBO.

• 1:33:16Chris Ryan?

  Hmm, good call.

• 1:33:18Bill Simmons?

  HBO.

• 1:33:19Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna, I was entertaining Peré. But I think, I think you're right. I think it's Beaver Brown Band. Cause those songs still get played. Those guys still probably make money off this.

• 1:33:29Bill Simmons?

  Craig, let's hear it.

• 1:33:31Speaker 04

  Had a great time. Loved it. Super likable.

• 1:33:34Bill Simmons?

  Did you watch it with Liz or Solo?

• 1:33:35Speaker 04

  I tried to get her, I badgered her to watch the movie with me and she wasn't interested. Unfortunately.

• 1:33:40Bill Simmons?

  Just not, she doesn't care as much about The Ringer as she used to.

• 1:33:43Speaker 04

  I was like fifteen minutes in, I was like, you, you're, this would be fun. We can just throw this on and you can like half-watch it if she don't wanna do it. But, and I think she would've liked it.

• 1:33:49Bill Simmons?

  You should've told her there was like some sort of ad potential out of it. She would've done it at that point.

• 1:33:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, we could, there's a great sponsorship.

• 1:33:55Chris Ryan?

  She'd be like, Bill's actually in this movie.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  I was almost certain you'd hate it.

• 1:34:00Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:34:00Bill Simmons?

  No, I knew, I knew he was gonna like it. We don't, first of all, ninety-five minutes, you're eighty percent of the way there with Craig.

• 1:34:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, I, music provides such a high floor. Like, it's, you're like, you're just gonna win forty-eight games with a couple of good songs in it.

• 1:34:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  And, I don't know, there's a level of like, how much you take the movie seriously and then that allows you to be comfortable and enjoy it.

• 1:34:19Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:34:19Speaker 04

  Which is why I think like, I went into L.A. Confidential and I don't think I loved it as much as everybody else did, but my, the expectation versus reality. I didn't, I liked L.A. Confidential, I didn't love it.

• 1:34:30Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 1:34:30Bill Simmons?

  I'd say you need to watch it a couple times.

• 1:34:32Speaker 04

  I don't know why.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  L.A. Confidential?

• 1:34:33Speaker 04

  First watch, there's luck.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  You know what?

• 1:34:35Speaker 04

  Thought it was a little cheesy.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Can I be honest with you? I get it. It will be hard for me to understand that, because the movie was legitimately the biggest fucking thing in the world. Everybody was talking about it.

• 1:34:45Bill Simmons?

  Eight times.

• 1:34:46Speaker 02

  And I saw it eight times, I saw it in the theater.

• 1:34:48Bill Simmons?

  And you didn't go into it being like, this is Chinatown.

• 1:34:50Speaker 02

  That was, that was a boomer response. I could see that. I could see now it being a little tougher for people.

• 1:34:55Speaker 04

  Also, this movie, I love, I do, I'm, I've always been interested in like the second album theory of a band, you know? I always find that to be interesting. There's a little bit of like, Pet Sounds to this. Brian Wilson, Eddie Wilson.

• 1:35:06Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:35:06Speaker 04

  With the Beach Boys and like the controversial Pet Sounds album, nobody liked it and then, you know, down the road, it is a masterpiece. It, this movie.

• 1:35:14Chris Ryan?

  People liked Pet Sounds. It was like Wild Honey or whatever the next one.

• 1:35:17Speaker 04

  No, I thought Pet Sounds was considered. Very abstract and.

• 1:35:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, no, it has goodbye. I mean, it's abstract, but it was like it blew up.

• 1:35:23Speaker 04

  Oh, I thought it came out the gate and was and was not reviewed well.

• 1:35:25Chris Ryan?

  Oh, OK.

• 1:35:26Speaker 04

  I mean, you would know better than.

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  I mean, Pemberton is like that from Weezer, like albums that come out and people go, what the fuck are you doing? And they.

• 1:35:32Speaker 04

  But is is. And many of the closer to me was like, this is amazing.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, what the fuck is Pemberton?

• 1:35:36Speaker 04

  Is is this kind of movie, the eighties equivalent of like a current Netflix movie like Gaslit by My Husband? Which I have great disdain for and I a movie like that nowadays, but I'm like, is that just what this was in the eighties?

• 1:35:50Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. You know, Bill was like, what's the double feature? In a weird way, I feel like the double feature for this movie should be Legend of Billie Jean. Because it's kind of like the same kind of like regional, local sensation, huge story in my town. But wouldn't have, wouldn't have made it out to like LA where people were like.

• 1:36:09Speaker 04

  Good point.

• 1:36:10Chris Ryan?

  And I think, I think it's hard to almost replicate that now because of social media and.

• 1:36:14Speaker 04

  It's just weird that like this movie has looked like you guys are looking back on it with like charm and nostalgia. But I feel like a lot of the current like Netflix movie slop or the streaming movie slop is not looked at that way. Nobody it like honors those films anyway, and they will disappear even if people watch them. But these movies we look back on and we're like, oh, Eddie and the Cruisers, like such a fun, easy watch. But no one's gonna do that to Gaslit by My Husband.

• 1:36:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but we don't know what would happen with some of those movies if there were only seven movies on Netflix and they played them for a year.

• 1:36:40Bill Simmons?

  I would say give Gaslit by My Husband a chance.

• 1:36:42Speaker 04

  A couple of years to marinate.

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  To me, the difference in that is that like those movies, you, first of all, you have to be active in watching those films. You have to go search for the movie and then put it on. That right there means that there had to be a reason for you to do that, right?

• 1:36:57Speaker 04

  People weren't doing that to this movie. It was on HBO. Didn't it just come on?

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  That's the difference. So the difference.

• 1:37:01Chris Ryan?

  We didn't have as much else stuff to other stuff to do. Like people barely had Atari twenty six hundreds back then.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, with with Gaslit by My Husband or any of these other movies, there's like this cultural conversation that gets you to go watch the movie because you heard it. With Eddie and the Cruisers, there's none of that. Like I never had one conver- this is the first conversation I've ever had with friends about Eddie and the Cruisers, ever.

• 1:37:21Bill Simmons?

  My only my only was only my mom because my mom loved this movie. We would talk about it a lot.

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  Dad would watch it. My dad would be like, you watching them saying people again? Why do people always on TV? But like is is like with this movie was just on all the time and you just had a situation with it. It was almost like.

• 1:37:35Chris Ryan?

  You know what I would compare it to? You don't know if if you listen to an album a lot.

• 1:37:40Bill Simmons?

  You listen to it like 20 times and then like the eighth best song in the album, you're like, "Song's fucking awesome."

• 1:37:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:45Bill Simmons?

  "I really like this."

• 1:37:46Chris Ryan?

  I love when that happens. When there's that song where you're like, "I don't know about this one."

• 1:37:50Bill Simmons?

  Does that happen anymore? Cause every, these songs are just all released, almost like you can cherry pick them on Spotify now.

• 1:37:56Speaker 02

  I'ma keep it real with you. I don't know that it does.

• 1:37:58Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it happens in the summer.

• 1:37:59Speaker 02

  Cause I don't think the albums last long enough for them to like, for that to happen. Like, I think that the artists are dropping music so much, like you're getting so much more stuff. There's so much, I don't think that that happens.

• 1:38:11Chris Ryan?

  I think it happens here and there. Like, The Geese record's a good example of like, there was my original run through it. I was like, "I love these five songs." Then there was like two more, three more that came, became really favorites of mine.

• 1:38:21Speaker 04

  It's also crazy how much Hollywood screwed up. Like, I can't believe that John Cafferty and The Beaver, like, the fact that they didn't turn into anything is insane to me.

• 1:38:31Chris Ryan?

  It might have been because of the band name. And it might have been because they, people were like, "You're Eddie and the Cruisers." I mean, there's like a little bit of like a poison chalice to that.

• 1:38:38Speaker 04

  The song you said was number three in the Billboard charts that year?

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  Seven.

• 1:38:40Speaker 04

  Seven? I mean like-

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  Like a legitimate hit in a monocultural time.

• 1:38:44Speaker 04

  We're in a different, completely different world now, but like, nobody even knows who the singers are of the K-pop Demon Hunter songs, and yet, that's like the biggest band in the world. Literally, no one knows who sings it. And yet, they knew this band and these people, and they couldn't get them relevance? And they couldn't get them another album? That's crazy to me.

• 1:38:59Speaker 02

  Same thing happened to Eddie.

• 1:39:00Bill Simmons?

  When Jack O'N House were here like a year ago, you told me this was on TCM.

• 1:39:05Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:05Bill Simmons?

  And I recorded it.

• 1:39:06Chris Ryan?

  I was like, "Let's tape it, yeah."

• 1:39:07Bill Simmons?

  And we watched it in the morning and we were all like completely into it. I don't, I don't know, I just think that, I don't think there's a lot of these movies, which is one of the reasons why it's endured a little bit. There's just not enough music movies.

• 1:39:19Chris Ryan?

  If there are, like, or if they, they're in the works, I think all of it is based on whether the song, like, there's-

• 1:39:26Bill Simmons?

  And whether you like the band, right? Well, think about like Rock of Ages with Cruz, was a bomb.

• 1:39:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  So stupid, though. Like, you know what I mean? Like, this, that movie almost doesn't take itself seriously. This movie takes itself incredibly seriously. Like, you get the, there's a sincerity about this. Maybe, it's obviously not perfect, but there's a sincerity, like, about the movie.

• 1:39:48Bill Simmons?

  Would you watch a movie about done love story JFK Junior style? About Lenny Kravitz falling in love with Lisa Bonet? We get all the, Lenny's music.

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  Entire thing would love it.

• 1:39:58Bill Simmons?

  That'd be, it's a good idea, right?

• 1:39:59Speaker 04

  Zoe Kravitz plays Lisa Bonet?

• 1:40:01Chris Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  You like that type of shit? I'm into that.

• 1:40:04Bill Simmons?

  It's a good idea, right?

• 1:40:04Speaker 02

  I'm into Lisa Bonet.

• 1:40:05Speaker 04

  I'm into Zoe Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, sure.

• 1:40:08Bill Simmons?

  Everyone loves Lenny Kravitz. I don't even mind that I don't like the NBA NBC song.

• 1:40:13Chris Ryan?

  You don't mind that you don't like it?

• 1:40:15Bill Simmons?

  I just, I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna be mad at Lenny Kravitz for anything. All right, CR month. This was, it's no longer CR month.

• 1:40:22Chris Ryan?

  That's okay, man.

• 1:40:22Bill Simmons?

  The little chocolate right after.

• 1:40:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:24Bill Simmons?

  Little, little, what are those, those little gum things? What's the one that's, it's got the, there's like different ones that they'll bring out?

• 1:40:32Chris Ryan?

  Well, they've got the mints, you know, chocolate covered mints is usually.

• 1:40:35Bill Simmons?

  That's, I feel like that's lazy when the restaurants do that.

• 1:40:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:40:37Bill Simmons?

  I like when I felt like the dessert, the dessert chef made me something. I like when they, I feel like they prepare something for me.

• 1:40:46Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

• 1:40:48Bill Simmons?

  That's it. Uh, I don't know what's coming next week. This was fun. Good to see you, Ben.

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:40:52Bill Simmons?

  Good to see you, CR.

• 1:40:52Chris Ryan?

  See you guys in San Francisco if you're.

• 1:40:54Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:55Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:56Bill Simmons?

  San Francisco.

• 1:40:57Speaker 04

  Two days from now. If this will come out on a Monday, we're there Wednesday.

• 1:41:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'll do the, I'll do the little intro for that. But yeah, we're gonna be doing Basic Instinct, the three of us with Mallory at the Tony Rempe Theater.

• 1:41:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's, I think that's.

• 1:41:12Speaker 04

  Doesn't that guy play for the Rangers?

• 1:41:13Bill Simmons?

  San Francisco, Tony Rempe, he hit like 280 last year. Yeah, we will be there in San Francisco. Thanks to Gahad, thanks to Eduardo as well. And we'll see you next week in the Rewatchmas.