‘Rollerball’ (1975) With Bill Simmons and Brian Koppelman

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Brian Koppelman record the first podcast without penalties, substitutions, or time limit as they revisit Norman Jewison’s 1975 classic ‘Rollerball’ starring James Caan, John Houseman, and John Beck. Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Ronak Nair Free eBooks library. It’s on Prime. 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?

  This episode is brought to you by Truvia. Sweeteners are like movies. The best ones don't leave an aftertaste. That's why Truvia Allolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener is a smooth, balanced tri blend that delivers sugar like sweetness with zero calories per serving and no aftertaste. If you're looking for a better way to enjoy sweetness with zero calories per serving, you really need to try Truvia Allolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. Available online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer. The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network where this guy has not been on in a long time, Brian Koppelman. He's very busy. He's making TV shows, movies. What else are you doing? You're doing a bunch of stuff.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  You know, I'm just honestly returning your texts. That takes up some time and it's fun.

• 0:50Bill Simmons?

  You had a Knicks run. You had a big Knicks run. You had to divest yourself from emotionally after they beat my team, but then fell apart next round. You had that.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  You know, I didn't anticipate and I should have because you know, we did this. You already gave me, you, you basically told me what I saw you like two days before. I was at your house two days before the Knicks lost or something. And you were like, just so you know, this is ending now. And I was like, what do you mean? And you're like, it's gonna end now. So I, I, I knew.

• 1:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, you'll have Yanis, he'll be fine. We are still doing one word movie month, and this is a movie you and I have talked about for a long time. It's finally happening. 50 year anniversary of this movie coming out. I think two months ago, Rollerball is next.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  In the not too distant future, wars will no longer exist, but there will be Rollerball. Imagine a world without nations.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Few of us making decisions on a global basis.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Controlled by corporations.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  No sickness, no needs and many luxuries.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  A society that has abolished love and hate, aggression and individuality. We replaced them with the most fantastic entertainment of all time.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Televised to 2 billion hypnotized viewers. It is more than a game. It is Rollerball. James Caan, John Houseman, Rollerball. Rate it or...

• 2:22Bill Simmons?

  This episode of the Rewatchables is presented by Prime. You listen to this podcast for the movie talk. So let's set the scene. Our lead, tall, dark, stranded at the airport. Hours of delays. He's scrolled, strolled, and loitered by every overpriced snack stand, but just when all hope seems lost. Plot twist. He remembers he has Prime and without a whole library of free eBooks ready to read right from his device. Cue the triumph and score. Roll, credits. Free eBooks library. It's on Prime.

• 3:08Bill Simmons?

  Brian Koppelman, no player is greater than the game itself. The message of Rollerball, which we've now spent a half century unwinding and completely going in the opposite direction. Not to mention all the other crazy things about this movie. Unbelievable.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  The individual, Bill, is not... The whole point of the game is that the individual is not better or more important and can influence the game.

• 3:36Bill Simmons?

  Disposable athletes. It was the opposite of the player empowerment era. Now we live in a world 50 years after this movie was made where Devin Booker is signing a $150 million, two-year contract extension and Patrick Mahomes is making $500 million. And there's so many fun sports elements to this. This movie's been in my life, my entire life, much like with you. I'm sure you can't really even remember a life without Rollerball. Are we gonna talk later about when you saw this? Or you undo it now?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Anyway, no, we can talk about it anytime you want. I mean, this is the thing. This was the first R-rated movie I got my dad to take me to.

• 4:09Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I was nine years old, 1975. So, because the commercial, which I want to talk, I'll talk about later, and what is most watchable, most rewatchable, but I remember, I like, from the moment the first commercial aired... Because James Caan was Sonny and James Caan was Brian Piccolo. And it was like him, I was a pro wrestling fanatic. And this looked like every, all those things just lined up. And then you're just sitting there in the movie. It was like a few years later, this other friend's dad took us to see Apocalypse Now, which was a terrible mistake. But this also was like a real holy shit first R rated movie in the theater.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  I don't, I would love to tell you that I remember that, you know, that ticket taker looking at my dad like, don't do this. But they didn't, but I just remember holding my dad's hand going in to see that movie. And my mind was blown by it.

• 5:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't remember, I don't remember the first, not in the theater.

• 5:12Bill Simmons?

  At some point it was on cable. Probably like a lot of other people just got drawn into the games because there's three giant games in this movie. And I don't know which one sucked me in, but over the years just became the most rewatchable movie. And the games are like basically an hour apart. It's the first 10 minutes and then it's like right around the hour mark. And then the last 15 minutes, obviously. And it's really one of the great first sports movies. It's if you go through the lineage of it, it's the longest yard in 74, it's rollerball in 75, it's Rocky and Bad News Bears in 76, Slapshot in 77, and we're off. Like we're, we're just ripping off sports movies and classics. And there's at least one good one a year.

• 5:53Bill Simmons?

  And this is, you know, an all time sports movie for me and an all time James Caan. I can't wait to talk about, was he good in this movie? Was he great? Was he spotty? It's all over the place.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  But it's also a paranoid, the movie's also a paranoid thriller.

• 6:09Bill Simmons?

  Oh, good. Oh, yeah. In the whole Parallax View, Three Days of Condor, whole world.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  It's a now, it's this movie. So it was so fucking unbelievable to me. About the movie when you it's like it is like parallax view network. It goes it's a year before network. And if you think about what the movie's about, it's it's as much. Yes, it's totally a sports movie, but it's also a paranoid thriller in the shadow of fucking Watergate in Vietnam, man.

• 6:38Bill Simmons?

  Right, well, and the the corporations.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:43Bill Simmons?

  And these shadow shadowy figures are taking over and they're just gonna drum out all the individuality that we have. Listen, there's been a lot of science fiction movies over the years. This this universe we go into, there's pieces I like. Like, as I was growing up, I'm like, you know, this might not be bad if this is the future. Just get together, there's hot seventies babes everywhere. There's weird parties where we get to set pine trees on fire. And then there's a really violent sport that I could follow. I might be OK.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, they make a really fascinating choice to show like they only show these couple like classes of people. Where life doesn't you can tell that there's in the way that, you know, yeah. Yeah, at first, right, you're a kid watching, and you're like, oh, look at that. He gets his pick of women. And then you realize, well, except the women have not only they have no say in it. They just get moved around like not even like chess pieces like checkers. But then also he doesn't even get to he's like, I'd like to keep that one. And they're like, no one executive wants an executive wants her. And then shoot, sucked out of his house.

• 7:48Bill Simmons?

  It's basically Raya, the dating app Raya, but you don't have choice in who you end up with. Look, it's it's trying to say a whole bunch of things and we can get into all of them. But I think ultimately, the reason I love this movie so much is it invents this world. But it invents a sport. It just invents this sport, this sport. It's hockey, it's football, it's roller derby, there's some judo in there. From scratch, the sport doesn't exist, there's no pieces of it. They're just kind of figuring out in the fly. And the sport becomes so convincing that after this movie came out. They actually, the producers and Norman Jewison, the director got approached to be like, "Hey, let's do rollerball leagues." And he was like, "The fuck are you talking about?

• 8:32Bill Simmons?

  The whole point of this is this sport's too violent and this is where pro sports is going and we can't have sports like this." But that's how realistic it was.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  They use a heavy steel ball that nobody can, uh, nobody could pick up. I mean, and that kills you if you get, uh, if you get hit with it, you know?

• 8:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  So yeah, it would've been tough to, it would've been tough to, uh, make it happen. But of course, as a fucking 10-year-old, I mean, I would've.

• 8:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're like, "Sure."

• 8:57Speaker 01

  "Let's go, let's watch it." Because what's the difference between that and when you're watching pro wrestling? And also, I'm sure, I know you've talked about this before, but you know, I mean, there were three channels and one of them would sometimes have roller derby on.

• 9:09Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, and then we would get, we would get all of those garbage sports on the weekends, the trash sports, superstars and there's a million versions of those.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Why couldn't Brian Oldfield have played? He could've, he could've played rollerball, he would've been great at it, right?

• 9:23Bill Simmons?

  We, I really wish, uh, Producer Craig, who, by the way, a rarity, I don't know if this has ever happened before, he declined his flex category and said, "I don't want to weigh in on this film until the end of the movie." So I don't even know what that means. But, uh, I wish Producer Craig had been there in the seventies as we had all of these ridiculous sports that they fed us, because we had three networks, we didn't have enough pro sports to go around, nobody had figured out any sort of scheduling and we would just, that battle of network stars, every TV star in the universe was just competing against each other in these weird events and that was just what we grew up with.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  But we watched them so closely, dude, and they were all recorded and cut like probably months in advance.

• 10:04Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  And now you'd know everything before it happened. You would know when it was happening, someone would've leaked, uh, a piece. But I mean, I'm sure you watched Unreal and it's incredible how they're even planning. We're not going to put this on TV, but we know social media will catch this and put, but we were just like suckers sitting at home going, "I hope Kyle Root, Root Jr. is able to beat..." You know.

• 10:26Bill Simmons?

  Gabe, Gabe Capo would have been like, just beat Bob Conrad in the 100 yard dash, like doing a selfie. Yeah, it would have ruined everything. But yeah, so roller derby was a sport that was on. So was pro wrestling. I remember watching the NASL and if, if people are competing, I was probably watching. This seemed like an insanely great version of it.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't even think Craig could picture like what we had to eat when we were watching that, like pizzas that were like a puck. They weren't even like, right? That had like the pizza on the inside. I mean, we were living like animals, Bill.

• 10:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we had Stouffer's mac and cheese. That was a big one. Or those little Swanson turkey dinners. Yeah, it was just spaghetti and meatballs, whatever we're doing. All right. So I think this movie's set maybe 45 to 50 years in the future. What do you think? They never really say, but it's somewhere like.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  2018.

• 11:16Bill Simmons?

  2018 is officially.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:19Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Cause I had that in my notes and I wasn't, I didn't feel a hundred percent on it.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  I think so. And I, I.

• 11:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think you might be right.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  I dug out the original, I dug out the short story that it was based on too.

• 11:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, nice.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Doesn't say 2018, but it gives some context for it. It feels like it's probably set in that.

• 11:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So that's like 40 plus years in the future. Free speech discouraged. No more schooling. Now we have conditioning. Just about everybody making meager wages, but poverty is basically gone because everybody makes the same amount.

• 11:50Bill Simmons?

  We have, I guess, controlled television. We have weird food situations where there's just like envelopes. I don't even know what's, I guess that's like pre-postmates.

• 12:02Bill Simmons?

  There's no kids anywhere. There's no kid in this entire movie. There's no babies or kids. I know they're having them, but we never see one, right?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you have to get, it's like, you have to get permission to have kids. That's in the story, but you can see in all those futuristic movies like that. It's very right because the resources are scarce and they want to control. And so not everyone gets permission to have kids.

• 12:22Bill Simmons?

  There's no dogs. There's no rescue dogs. Like now rollerball would just be like Jonathan E has three dogs.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  There's no last names even.

• 12:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true. True. So anyway, rollerball emerges and it symbolizes the futility of individual achievement because people just die. I can't wait to talk about the stats from this later, but uh, just people routinely die. Multiple people die in a game. And yet here's our guy Jonathan E, played by James Caan, who's transcended a game. What is he? He's Brady crossed with Michael Jordan crossed with Ali? Is that what we're supposed to think? 10 years, just winning every year?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, Tiger, Jordan, Brady.

• 13:05Bill Simmons?

  He's on that list. Never gets mentioned with the greats, in my opinion.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  I think Jonathan, but I would say as a kid that that stayed stayed with us also because everything James Caan brought to it. I mean, you and I have talked about James Caan when we did Misery.

• 13:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  But then also when he died, you had me come on the pod and we talked about him on the pod, I think. And so, but you started already by asking, what do you think of the performance? I have a lot of thoughts on it. So, but what, how do you, how does it hit you, man?

• 13:37Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna do my hottest take right now. So this is my CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. Of all the sports movies, this is my single favorite, great one minute, terrible the next minute performance anyone's given. It's, there's entire scenes where he just seems checked out and he's just muttering his words and I have no idea what he's going for. And then there's other scenes where he becomes Sonny Corleone as a rollerball player. He's carrying the mystique and charisma of an A++ list athlete perfectly. And yet I don't really understand what he's doing with some of the, he's just kind of muttering his, his lines like this and seems kind of vaguely drugged

• 14:19Bill Simmons?

  out. I don't really understand the performance, but I love it. I really love it.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  I love the performance. First of all, I think it's important. And like, if you think about it, he's the most credible, over and over when he did this, he was the most credible athlete, like in a movie when.

• 14:36Bill Simmons?

  Him and Reynolds. I would say him or Burt Reynolds were the two where I actually felt athletically, they could hang in any situation.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's amazing in The Gambler when he loses the basketball game because like you're so used to seeing James Caan win and be amazing at sports. But also in this, just the physical condition he came in at to do this movie, he basically has like that V taper. He looks like Roman Gabriel or something like that, the way he's built. And it, right? I mean, it's amazing how. Fucking you just don't question because that's the first we've talked about this a lot like in life too. The moment you see an actor throw a ball and they can't really throw the ball. Or hit a tennis ball and they can't really hit it. It takes you right out of the movie and there's not a second of this when he's doing the sports. Also like the look in his eye when he's playing the sports. And just, you know, the entire like fucking capability.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  And then I have a slightly different take. I think he's a guy who's been kind of asleep. lulled into sleep by this world that he's been put in.

• 15:39Bill Simmons?

  And that's why he's playing it that way. I think you're right.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Come to life when he's playing the sport. And don't ask questions and don't think about anything. Your, your, your houses are delivered to you, women are delivered to you, money is delivered. You have to get to the game and you have to be in game shape. And that's basically all you have to do.

• 15:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, what's your take on the white pill they give them? Because that seems like at least part of like why they, everybody seems a little zonked out.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Well, the executives take it to dream of being athletes and the athletes take it to dream of being executives, right? And I don't think MDMA before MDMA probably. I, I think it kind of just makes you just kind of just makes you float, right? And, uh, and feel good.

• 16:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, this is like what we talked about after Khan died, like just such an alpha. Just the kind of when they, when we always talk about, why don't we have like lead actors anymore? You know, where are they? Or we have pieces of these guys, but not a hundred percent of them. And, and I think back to Reynolds and Longest Yard and then in Deliverance and then Khan in this movie. And him as Sonny Corleone, nobody pulled off the sleeveless white T-shirt. Which we called 50 years ago, the wife beater, no longer allowed to say that. But the sleeveless white T-shirt, he looked the best in it. He just had the best shoulders and just always looked like he was about to either bring his gumar over or go outside and get in a fight in an alley with somebody.

• 17:08Bill Simmons?

  He just, he always had it and he had it in this movie, just alpha all the time.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  It's the show, yeah, the shoulders to hip ratio. Uh, nobody else had that, but I also, I think, you know, it's funny, you texted me and you were like. Because I don't want to undersell this to people listening who don't know the movie. You text me and say, it is like the most batshit insane. There's no other movie really that's like this because it is half a sports movie and half a paranoid thriller. And it's a dystopian.

• 17:36Bill Simmons?

  It's a science fiction movie.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  It's a dystopian, science fiction future that's supposed to telegraph what's going to happen in the world. And in the middle of it is the greatest made up sporting contest ever. And so you have this, I think in the times, people didn't understand it. It's actually.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  I think it's a great movie and like a not just like super fun movie. Like I think on reflection, it got so much shit right about. Yes, who, whether the player, because the end, the end of the movie does introduce. The player empowerment era. The whole point is they're trying to stop the player empowerment era.

• 18:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  And the human empowerment era of people who were just workers. Because it's a worker revolt movie too. And at the end, the whole point is the individual can. And I, it is, this movie is super fun. You could fucking get stoned and watch it or drunk and watch it, but you could also watch it with like. A class of philosophy majors and pencils and pens. It, that's what's so incredible about it. It kind of can hit you wherever you are.

• 18:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And so usually when a movie like this works, they put so much thought into everything. So I even think about this fake sport they created. There are all these little wrinkles with it that are so fucking cool. Like when the guys, when the guys are skating around in the pregame warmups. And they all have their little gimmick. It's almost like the Warriors and the, you know, and they, and the gang, when each gang has their different gimmick. Like the Tokyo team does this and then the Houston team, they, they have like, they, they swerve more. But they say of that, you have like, I really feel like they put thought into like, we're going to have six skaters. There's a guy who scoops the ball up and then there's three guys on motorcycles. And you're going to see the rosters and the lights are going to go out if somebody got hurt.

• 19:25Bill Simmons?

  And there's going to be subs and they, and it's going to move like a sporting event. And you watch and you're like, how the fuck did they come up with this? They created a sport.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  That's the other thing that's so amazing, the motorcycles. Like when you were a kid and suddenly there were motorcycles mixing in and guys getting knocked off their motorcycles. It was like the one of the most, uh, first it's so fucking dark and brutal, but they, you know, they show you the bloodlust of the audience and you get caught up in it when you're in the movie theater. And, uh, and yeah, I mean, you know, obviously that scene when the coach comes in, the specialist coach comes in to tell them about the Tokyo team and the players don't want to listen. I mean, that is so much like the way you hear about players now not wanting

• 20:14Speaker 01

  to be coached sometimes, but also totally racist. And the movie's super got a ton of that racist shit.

• 20:20Bill Simmons?

  It's mid 70s, it's 50 years ago.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  But like that moment, when you were a kid in the theater, well, at home, watching the commercials. And yeah, when the Tokyo team does that turn, that one move toward the, the center of the floor, you were just like that. I gotta see that. Like anything I have to do to see that. And everyone walked around imitate. I mean, didn't you walk or, I mean, you just walked around trying to do that thing like that they do when they go low.

• 20:45Bill Simmons?

  Alright.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  It's so cool.

• 20:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, it combines so many things we loved as kids, right? Cause even you have like, like the, the roller derby, all these stupid sports that we were watching nonstop. Then you have the, the uniforms. Then you have like an easy, easy sport to follow. It's like, there's only a couple of goals in every game, right? So it's like a little like soccer cross. But then it has the violence of football, which is really what I think this movie, I don't know if it's about the violence of football or the violence of sports in general, but now I think 50 years later, UFC is 25 years, 20 years away from being created.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:22Bill Simmons?

  The power slap league is 45 years from being created. Football, by the time we get to the late seventies, there's that famous CBS montage of, of, uh, football, the pregame show, and it's just guys getting nailed. It's on YouTube every once in a while. It's like,

• 21:40Bill Simmons?

  it's the Brett Musburger. And each, each, each thing is just a football player getting demolished. And this is what sports was kinda like, but nobody was, was putting in any perspective. So I think that's what they're trying to say.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, they're, I mean, they're, yeah, they're, they're, they're trying to say that, uh, the Gladiator thing never went away. It's never that far away, right? That will always show up for the Gladiators. And we're always trying to find a way to kinda justify like.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  You know, Bloodsport and we are right. I I watched, I mean, I I'm no bet, I'm no better. I watched USC one, literally watched USC one, two and three. I could tell you what those fights were like, like, ah, we all locked in. And um, that was the closest thing was really close to rollerball. I'm not sure you're gonna talk about Norman Jewison, but you know, when you you said, oh, they really were careful. I mean, one of the most fascinating director runs, uh, because this guy made absolute Stone Cold Classics and then he missed wide, you know, and uh, but was a great, in the end, a really, really important filmmaker. I mean, I, listen, the guy made Cincinnati Kid, which as you can imagine, real important.

• 22:45Bill Simmons?

  Right. That's nineteen sixty-five.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he is almost a four decade run, cuz he, you know, he has, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, in the heathen night, Thomas Crown Affair, and it's like, wow, this guy's doing great. Then he has Fiddler in the Roof and Jesus Christ Superstar, back to back, that's weird. Rollerball Fist and Justice for All. And then it just kinda keeps going, does Moonstruck? He ends with the hurricane in nineteen ninety-nine, I mean, he's had like a forty-plus years.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  As like, you know, right there toward the end. I mean, I'm wearing, I'm wearing my Expos hat as a little salute to Canadian Norman Jewison.

• 23:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, important director.

• 23:24Bill Simmons?

  I think it's fascinating that he thought people would be appalled by the violence in this movie. And then they were like, yo, any interest in starting a rollerball league? And he's like, what's going on? Uh, the ending in this movie is one of the better endings in a sports movie with the, the, the dead silent crowd. The ball goes in and then Jonathan like skating faster and faster and the way they do it, the music, some of the opera stuff they use.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Uh, and then the cut, the cut to, uh, you know, the, the terrible ineffective coach, uh, suddenly chanting Jonathan with everybody. Yeah, I agree with you.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  That's good, dude. Yeah, it's a really perfect, uh, it is a perfect ending, but it leaves you, does that ending, uh, did it always leave you feeling good? Cuz the ending leaves me feeling, um, not a little bit. I mean, you're so happy that Jonathan lived, but it's not like it's, um, everybody else is dead.

• 24:31Bill Simmons?

  I love the ending and I'm in on Jonathan. I think he's back for year 11. It's like LeBron. Jonathan, he's doing Instagram things over the summer. Get ready for rollerball year 11. I'm gonna miss all of my teammates because they're all dead. Hopefully I'll have other teammates. Can we talk about the corporate autocracy? So the population is now concentrated in the six corporate global city-states. Transport, food, communication, housing, luxury and energy. And Houston's in the energy sector, which and Houseman seems like he's the head of all these people. But basically, we learned the executive class rules all. All the nations are bankrupt and gone.

• 25:14Bill Simmons?

  It's just these six places. And then I think each one has a rollerball team was my take.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  I think that's right. That's not, I mean, it's not, it's not said super clearly, but I think that's right.

• 25:27Bill Simmons?

  So if you, so transport, food, communication, housing, luxury and energy. Which one do you think New York was? Because New York's the final team in the movie.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Maybe transportation.

• 25:37Bill Simmons?

  Transportation. Luxury, maybe. Because they also said there's a Rome Pittsburgh game they mentioned. So maybe the league has more than, I don't know, we know of six cities. So could Pittsburgh, New York and Houston have been the three American cities? And then we have Madrid, Tokyo.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  You know, it's a big online argument, right? That's a big online argument right now is what are the four major cities? You know, that's a huge TikTok thing right now. The four major New York.

• 26:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh, like a Mount Rushmore for major cities?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, people are really arguing about it. So now you can introduce this into it that maybe there are just three Pittsburgh.

• 26:13Bill Simmons?

  Pittsburgh, New York, Houston. We've already solved this, guys. And then Los Angeles just gets cut out completely and rollerball, apparently. We have no LA team.

• 26:23Bill Simmons?

  Houseman, another guy we grew up with, his eyebrows, I don't know if you got to watch this in a nice big HDTV. His eyebrows are a supporting actor in the movie. It's unlike anything I've ever seen.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  I did not, I watched it on TV. Like I watched it on a big TV screen. Again, I've watched it on computer too, but I just watched it on the big screen thing. That moment, Houseman's whole career, he never had a moment like when he enters the thing with the two girls. You've never seen Howson, he's usually like, you know, behind a desk, teaching a law class, or

• 26:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  barking at somebody about business. And then here, he gets to in that same corporate thing, but he's entering with just these, you know, these two courtesans, because that's what they are in this movie. They're courtesans. And, and I, I thought that was, I'm just picturing him doing the small, like when they said, cut, I was thinking about when they said, cut, you know, Howson turning to them and just whatever that conversation.

• 27:13Bill Simmons?

  Hey ladies.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was that? You know, because that party is one of the strangest scenes in any movie I've ever seen in my life.

• 27:19Bill Simmons?

  I cannot absolutely wait to talk about it. Um, Howson, James Mason, James Mason, it's been disallowed. Like the, the, just the distinct voices that we don't have guys like that anymore either. Who's our distinct voice English actor guy in 2025? Do we have one?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  I think there are a couple of them. I mean, we did. Yeah, we have, uh, um, a couple of them.

• 27:41Bill Simmons?

  As good as Howson, like Howson calls you and, and you're trying to convince them to be on your new TV show. And you would just be in awe, the entire zoom of every sentence he said.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I guess Dame Judi Dench is probably like that person in a way. If you think about it, she has that. You know, it's like from, from that point of view. And um, yeah, most of the British actors now, they act in American accents so frequently. So it doesn't feel like that, right? They would have had that guy be American. Uh, now.

• 28:10Bill Simmons?

  How did you feel about the corporate autocracy that they lay out now that we're in 2025 and we're being run by a bunch of corporations? It's kind of weird. I mean, literally, we're being run by like five corporations.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  I mean, literally, there's not one person listening who wants to hear me talk about this.

• 28:27Bill Simmons?

  Okay, we're gonna move on then. James Caan, 1971 Brian Song, 72 The Godfather, 74 Freebie and the Bean, 74 The Gambler, 75 Funny Lady with, uh, with Barbra Streisand, 75 Rollerball. That's all in five years.

• 28:45Bill Simmons?

  The wheels come off a little bit, I think, for our guy Jimmy. There's some Playboy mansion.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  I was gonna say.

• 28:49Bill Simmons?

  It's early cocaine era.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  He started really living like Jonathan.

• 28:54Bill Simmons?

  The IMDb gets rocky. There's a brief comeback from 79 to 81 with Chapter Two and Thief. And then in 82, he's in Bolera with Bo Derek and some movie called Kiss Me Goodbye.

• 29:08Bill Simmons?

  Disappears for five years, stops acting. And I think when people talk about who was the craziest during the cocaine era, he's always mentioned as a how is he still alive guy? What's interesting about his movie career, he turned down the following movies. French Connection, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Close Encounters, Superman and Kramer vs Kramer. This guy, after Redford and maybe Newman was the third call, I think, and maybe Reynolds, maybe it was 3A, 3B?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Jack also, but Jack turned everything down.

• 29:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think people knew not even to call Jack. Yeah, but he was in that world though, where he's just, I mean, if he has two of those, his 70s are even elevated.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  But then it's so great because he gets the amazing comeback then, right? He gets his own TV series, he gets misery. I mean, it all turns around. He does get a great sort of last bunch of years, I think, where he got to be James Caan again, and he got to watch his son become a television star and all that stuff. But yeah, the lost years of him and some, you know, then a bunch of unsavory guys hanging around at the Playboy Mansion, you know, trading, getting a hang with James Caan for coke. I agree. It's a tough, it's a tough moment for the guy. It's tough.

• 30:28Bill Simmons?

  Have you ever, have you and Levine ever kicked the tires on a Playboy Mansion late 70s scripted series or no?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  People, yeah, that's for the next time we see you. That's our one meeting with Oliver Stone. I'll tell you another time.

• 30:43Bill Simmons?

  Okay, that sounds great.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Oliver Stone wanted to make that Hugh Hefner.

• 30:47Bill Simmons?

  It's one of those great ideas that'll never happen. Yeah. One other thing about Rollerball, I forgot to mention, Juison and the production designer, John Box, what a combo. They designed the track. They wanted it to be like a roulette wheel crossed with a pinball machine. And they found this guy, Herbert Sherman, who had previously designed the track at the 72 Munich Olympics. And they came up with that thing, which now, like, when you watch the Summer Olympics, they have those velodomes or whatever those are called.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:19Bill Simmons?

  It's a little like that, same thing where it's like a unslanted.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  And it was in Germany, right? They built it in Germany.

• 31:25Bill Simmons?

  Right. And they filmed all the stuff. They made it seem like it was different cities, but it wasn't. It was so realistic, they would play it between takes and on off things and the stunt people and. People just making the movie, they're like, hey, do you want to play a little rollerball for a half hour? Like, it was so much fun to skate around and that was it.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  The, uh, I, I, today I was listening to a, a behind the scenes thing that Norman Jewison and a few of these other guys talked on. And one of them, they said that the production designer, that I, uh, he was the production designer of Lawrence of Arabia. So he, that guy had done in, you know, truly like incredible shit. And this is the first movie ever that the stunt people were credited on individually.

• 32:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  And they made sure of it because it was so hard. Like, and James Cundt did a lot of his own stunts.

• 32:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, when you watch it and you know, there's no CGI.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:19Bill Simmons?

  Half of the stunts, you're like, man, that looks like that guy got hurt. I don't know how they did it. Half the time their heads just bouncing against the track.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I found this thing this afternoon, I'll send it to you, of the behind the, some behind the scenes footage that shows the, like the ball getting released and where they were all standing. But yeah, they released the ball, obviously. And, and then, I mean, they did all that, like, yeah, there's no CGI, like a guy had to bend down and pick it up in his glove. They really did that. They really had the motorcycles and they really had the dudes behind motorcycles. Like they were practical, doing all that.

• 32:49Bill Simmons?

  There's no Steadicam back then either. So I don't know how they filmed some of the camera stuff because the Steadicam didn't come till the year later. Hey, that's the other thing with this movie that now it seems like, oh yeah, it makes sense. They did this in 1975, they weren't making movies like this because you had the, the football scene, the longest yard, which we covered previously, we watched balls. And you had this and it was like, there was nothing like this in a movie theater before. It was a little like the French Connection car chase and, you know, these seminal moments in the seventies.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you couldn't understand.

• 33:16Bill Simmons?

  I can't believe that happened.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't understand how the hell, uh, you, you can't really understand when you're watching it, how the hell they shot some of these sequences. The, not just the fights, but like when, you know, Moon Pie, uh, has that little tough moment. I mean, that's just incredible, the way that they, uh, the way they shot it and the way that they staged it. And you really feel it, you know?

• 33:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, because we've taught, we did Close Encounters, we've done Jaws, obviously. There were these, how the hell did they do that moment that you had in the theater? Cause you, you just had never seen anything like it. Now I feel like that shit in 2025, I don't think those exist anymore. And we're just so conditioned to CGI and crazy stuff. I can't remember the last time I sat in the theater. That's what was so cool about F1. When seeing that in the theater, it was like, wow, how'd they do this? You know, like, how'd they film that crash like that? And then you felt like you were in the race. It was a rare time of having that excitement in theater.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Have you seen that? That's so crazy. Have you seen that moment where Stallone is talking about? How he wouldn't consider.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Michael B. Jordan, a real member of the Rocky family.

• 34:36Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Michael B. Jordan told that story on my podcast like 10 years ago.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I've seen the clip. I mean, there's a clip. And I guess it was, and it wasn't Andrew Tarver, right? It was one of the, one of the, one of the spark, like one of the sparring partners. But they, yeah. I can't even believe 10 years ago that happened. They would not, I mean, there's no.

• 34:56Bill Simmons?

  No, they would have seen you had everything. You mentioned William Harrison wrote Rollerball Murder in September, 1973 Esquire. They didn't mention the sport that much, but, uh, but that's how this all got going. Juice and got excited about it. His goal was to show the sickness and insanity of contact sports and their allure. Mission not accomplished. Football became way bigger right after this movie. Not because of the movie. There's a United Artists things I just wanted to mention quickly. The production company that made this. They were bought by a bigger company called Transamerica in 1967. They rolled off in the heat of the night, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Last Tango, Cuckoo's Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall. And then in 79, Rocky II Manhattan, Moonraker and Black Stallion.

• 35:41Bill Simmons?

  But then Heaven's Gate happened, which was immortalized in the final cut. But they were on the cutting edge with some of these movies, including this one. I almost felt like they were a little 824 ish, like taking crazy, crazy risks. Like I can't imagine anybody even green lighting this movie.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Well, this is the 70s movies that people talk about. And once, you know, I'm sure you know this, but he said it on my podcast for the first time. And then I think he's talked about it on the thing he does with Avery. But you know, Quentin Tarantino is still saving this movie to watch.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Of all the seventies movies, this is the one that's like canonical that he's never seen. And he's saving it.

• 36:20Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. That's like me and the big Lebowski. Still haven't seen it.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I don't understand it with him.

• 36:24Bill Simmons?

  I've owned it on, on, on 4K Blu-ray. I'm, I'm just saving it.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Have your kids watched Lebowski?

• 36:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saving it for the perfect day and I'm going to dive into it and get really into it.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. You got, I mean, yeah, you gotta watch it. But same thing. Quentin, for whatever reason, talks about the seventies more than anybody else. Right? Written all the, the one, he still hasn't watched Rollerball. He's still saving Rollerball.

• 36:45Bill Simmons?

  Weird because this combines so many different things of movies that he loves.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  I know.

• 36:50Bill Simmons?

  Like a great alpha star performance, like a weird sport, a weird world, a good director. Uh, most critics were lukewarm in this movie. It was $6 million budget made $30 million. Vincent Canby, New York Times, Rollerball isn't a satire. It's not funny at all. Not being funny, it becomes instead frivolous. Uh, he can fuck off. Gene Siskel, two stars. A movie in love with itself. Vapid, pretentious and arrogant.

• 37:20Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Raj could not find a review, but he did give this movie three and a half stars. Um, but the review is not online. James Caan in 1977 rated all his films. And rated Rollerball on eight out of 10, but said he couldn't do much with the character was his scouting report on himself. So there you go. We're going to take a break and then we're going to do, uh, most rewatchable scene. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Sure. We're called the rewatchables. And yeah, we usually rewatch movies obsessively, but every now and then we trade screenplays for eBooks. Some moments just call for it. Like when the credits roll and you're still in movie mode, but your watch list is empty. Or when everyone says the original story is better than the movie and you gotta see what the hype's about.

• 38:04Bill Simmons?

  Prime gives you access to a whole library of free eBooks. So you can swap the rewatch for a reread or try something new. Free eBooks library. It's on Prime.

• 38:16Bill Simmons?

  Most rewatchable scene, uh, the opening, everything, first 10 minutes, the, the opening credits with the music. We got a little box to cut. Fugue in D minor. I was practicing this.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  I gotta give a shout out.

• 38:30Bill Simmons?

  Pre-game warmups?

• 38:31Speaker 01

  I gotta give a shout out because the most incredible thing, one of the most incredible things of my childhood was our friend Peters is out, figured out how to play box to kind of fugue D minor on electric guitar like Eddie Van Halen. So shout out. For real, it was incredible. Yep.

• 38:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, we get.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  That's why I know who that is.

• 38:46Bill Simmons?

  We get pre-game warmups, Houston, Madrid. By the way, we forgot to mention they created the corporate national anthem for this and it's pretty good.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  It's crazy though. That's a crazy thing. And it's an amazing moment. Yep. Agreed.

• 38:58Bill Simmons?

  And then Jonathan has three goals. We get to watch what the game is. Did he do a nice job? Some wide shots, close up. And it's like, what? And by five minutes, you understand everything. And then we have Jonathan scoring over and over again. And then with Moon Pie. I love this game, Moon Pie. What are your Moon Pie thoughts? Played by John Beck.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  The swooper? Moon Pie, the swooper?

• 39:19Bill Simmons?

  No, John, Moon Pie was the mustache guy. Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  But he's also the swooper, right? Because he's the one who he, they call him his position. It's the only position that's stated in the movie is swooper, which is just because he comes swooping down from the top and knocks the guy off the motorcycle.

• 39:35Bill Simmons?

  Right. He's like, I don't know. Is he like a left tackle? What is it?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  That's his move, right? His move is to.

• 39:40Bill Simmons?

  Defensive end?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Come. Yep. Yeah. Well, then stay close to me. Stay close. You're right. He's got to stay close. Protect Jimmy Khan and then Khan.

• 39:49Bill Simmons?

  Lot of charisma on Moon Pie. So I got that one. I got Jonathan's lecture to the team when Tuffy decides to make a run at him and we had see Khan in a sleeveless white T-shirt. I have the, the interview with Jonathan and his latest girlfriend with the stats guy. When we find out most points in a game was 18. The guy says, I'm a big stats guy. This is 1975. Nobody, like Bill James hadn't even written the baseball abstract yet. So this might've been, this guy might've inspired Bill James for all we know. Most velocity shot out for the ball was 120 miles an hour. Most deaths, nine.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Caused by, yeah, this was for me, the, if you had a category that was like, you know, the Moneyball category for the greatest stat. I mean, to me, I, you know, the best sort of war kind of stat was that Jonathan had nine deaths in a game.

• 40:43Bill Simmons?

  So Jonathan had the record for most injuries caused by one guy, 13?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  13. Yeah. 13 injuries caused by one guy.

• 40:49Bill Simmons?

  And then most deaths was nine. Rome versus Pittsburgh. What happened in that game?

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  Because they had penalties and they had all the old rules. The Rome Pittsburgh, obviously a lot of bad blood.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  We see that could be twice.

• 41:02Bill Simmons?

  The crazy futuristic party. I wrote down, it's like Eyes Wide Shut crossed with Ice Storm, crossed with The Shining. I don't know what's happening in this party. They're screening Jonathan's special retirement show, but he doesn't actually retire. They have like a prototype for a big ass plasma. It's about as big a TV as you've seen in a 70s movie. People, are they escorts? Or is it like a call girl parties? It's like a prototype for Heidi Fleiss in the 80s?

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I think it's the scene that pulls back. If you're watching that movie and you just are kind of going along thinking, oh, it looks like things are all right. I think that's the scene that really shows you that you're living in one of those futures that is super fucked up and dark and that very few people have any rights at all. And like, not in the, I think the point they're trying to make in that, in that really so fucked. First of all, everybody's on these super designer drugs that probably were barely invented, some combination of Quaaludes and Molly. And they're all taking them and passing them around and kind of drifting into this place you described James

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Caan's performance as being. But each of those women and men are just kind of describing that

• 42:24Speaker 01

  the women were kind of shuttled to the men, kind of ordered to be with them. And nobody, like you said, there's no kids, but I would say there's no love. It's a world that almost has prescribed love, you know, gotten rid of love. Because like, I think that's part of what you're supposed to feel in that scene. Because if you think about it, even by the, when Jonathan thinks and at first convinced himself he used to be in love, he realizes, no, that's not true either. And I think that's part of what's going on in that scene. And that one shot to the woman is just crying, randomly crying. It's fucking insane. And it is one of the strangest scenes. It goes on forever. And like, at first, you're like, this is going on four minutes too long. But by

• 43:09Speaker 01

  the end of it, you're like, I think they might have earned it. I think it might have been okay. Like, I think they somehow earned it.

• 43:14Bill Simmons?

  Once we get outside, shooting a fire gun at pine trees.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Then it suddenly becomes like this environmental movie, like where you're supposed to understand these people don't give a shit. It's like, it's like they say all this, but what's different than the way someone would do that movie now is, is someone would take a half hour to make a lecture about why these people are bad. What's so great about this movie is it lets you just to watch it and decide. Watch the movie.

• 43:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  He's not lecturing at you. You just see a cut to these like naked, wild, beautiful people or whatever. And suddenly they have super weapons, like, you know, a cartoon, like a Men in Black level weapons, like the little tiny, you know, and uh.

• 44:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we don't have those now.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  No, they don't exist. Now you just flick the thing and then whoosh, yeah, trees go up. Uh, it's crazy, totally crazy. I, I, for me, the best scene.

• 44:13Bill Simmons?

  Wait, we're not done yet. I have a couple more on. But for that futuristic party, I'm adding a special category. We don't give, get to give out very often. The Mallory Rubin Award for did this movie need a better sex scene? Or in this case, did this movie need a sex scene? You've already given me the hard R. Um, it's a rated R in 1975. I just feel like this party could have been a little friskier. Like who's judging, Norman Jewison, we're not judging you.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  It must have been.

• 44:44Bill Simmons?

  Everyone's, everyone's drinking and they're hanging and it's feeling very ice storm key party-ish. And then we just all of a sudden we're shooting trees. Yeah, I think we missed, I think we missed out.

• 44:57Bill Simmons?

  Couple more Tokyo versus Houston, no penalties. What a monkey wrench. Can you imagine if the NFL is like AFC championship game, no penalties. We would be like, what?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  But that's.

• 45:10Bill Simmons?

  No penalties.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  That's also the moment that like, that's the toughest as a, I'll just say. Screenwriting wise, that's the toughest moment in the movie is all John Houseman wants, and he's the most powerful man in the world. Yes, there's these three people or four people you find out who are above him, but basically they, he is the acts out the wishes, right? He is, he's the most powerful man in the universe. And all he wants is to get Jonathan to quit playing the game. And the whole movie is about how do I convince Jonathan to quit? I just, I'll do anything. Jonathan, there's nothing you can't have. And it's like one of those old jokes, nothing? And then Jonathan looks at him and goes, okay, but all I need is that my, I will quit. I'll do everything you want. I won't destabilize the entire

• 45:53Speaker 01

  world you built by proving the individual is the better. I will quit. All you have to do is put the rules back in the game. And Houseman's like, well, I can't do that. We, that's, that's, well, we've already announced it. We've already announced it. You see, if people can't have babies, the women are ripped out of housing to go to other, you can do anything you want. You don't want to disappoint the fans? It's like Bud Selig calling that, that game in whatever inning. It's like, you can do anything you want. What inning was that where he just decided you can't keep going?

• 46:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he just stopped. Yeah.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Like one of the worst moves in the history of sports.

• 46:29Bill Simmons?

  That's a great one. That's a very good weak link for this movie. I had one as well. Um, the Tokyo versus Houston, I mentioned, I love the warm up. The, uh, this game gets more and more violent, culminating in the Jonathan just gets pissed. He starts wreaking havoc and they knock that one guy down and he drags the guy over to where the roller ball is getting released and thing just nails his head. It's like, oh my God.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  That was the night, the moment that nine year old me, that very moment was the moment nine year old me was like, I might not belong in this movie theater.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  You know that moment where you're not like nine or 10, you're watching something that's above your grade? I, like above your, like, I just remember that guy, that ball hitting that guy's head and killing him like that. And you're just like, Jesus Christ.

• 47:19Bill Simmons?

  That was me at The Shining at age 10, when Scatman Crothers took the axe. It was like, It's like, what just, what?

• 47:26Speaker 01

  I love, I love that guy. Well, that's, that's particularly cruel because he's the most lovable character in the history of cinema. If you made a list of them, 10 most lovable characters in the history of cinema, Scatman Crothers in The Shining is like number four.

• 47:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  It's terrible moment. I agree. Horrible.

• 47:41Bill Simmons?

  He has two naked lady paintings on each side of his bedroom and wherever the hell he lives. I love that guy. Uh, well, and then Tokyo versus Houston, we get the Moon Pie death, which is just an absolute gut punch. It's up there with, for me, I mean, not everyone knows this movie, but for me, it's up there with Goose and Top Gun and like some of the great Sonny getting shot at the toll booth. Like it's, I just fucking love.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  All right. I gotta be Christian. I gotta be Christian Sean in this moment. No, it's not. It's not in that, it's not in the lead in those moments.

• 48:08Bill Simmons?

  I love this movie. Oh, it's like they kill Moon Pie. Like, don't kill Moon Pie. I love Moon Pie.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Hilarious.

• 48:14Bill Simmons?

  You're not giving me Goose?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Goose is one of, no, I mean Goose, I could, I could, if you just talked a little bit more about.

• 48:20Bill Simmons?

  As Goose.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  If you talked a little bit more about Goose's death, I could cry right now. Like Moon Pie, I can just, Moon Pie's a murderer. They're all murderers. All these fucking dudes are murderers, man.

• 48:30Bill Simmons?

  They have no choice. They're in a capa, capa, capatocracy. What's it called?

• 48:34Speaker 01

  No, yeah, they are in what, caca, yeah, caca, no, it's KAK, right? Yeah.

• 48:38Bill Simmons?

  Cap, cap.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  No, you're saying claptocracy, but no, the other one is the cacaestocracy, which is the one where it's, uh, the entire thing is just rigged up like that. Yeah.

• 48:49Bill Simmons?

  Two more. Jonathan, uh, finally realizes Ella, the lady that he's loved forever, that the whole thing's fraudulent. She's trying to convince him to come back and he erases his, her videos that he always watches right in front of her. Good breakup. Uh, Maude Adams. Wow. Wow. Just, just looks fantastic.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  But also gives you, yeah, that gives you a hint though, that what James Caan is doing in the movie is what was asked of him because all those scenes, everybody's kind of playing those scenes that way. The only one who doesn't really is in that little world of that stuff. The only one who doesn't is, you know, his former player coach who's now an executive, the guy he has the, you know, the meeting with, he's constantly asking, he's constantly asking him to get him information. But everyone else plays the whole thing. Like they're just slightly under being awake. They're just not quite awake.

• 49:40Bill Simmons?

  The final game, the last thing, Houston versus New York.

• 49:45Bill Simmons?

  I love, there's so many great things about this game. I love when the game's going on, there's no penalties and it's basically like, there's only gonna be one person alive at the end of this. And then the coaches are getting mad about cheap shots? It's like, this is a fight to the death, where you can't be upset that somebody's got clothesline. They're not gonna call anything. There's no penalties.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Do you, do you have the, um, the, you know, best quote of the movie category coming up at all? Because-

• 50:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, we can put it right here. Game?

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it, right? That's gotta be, I mean, that's-

• 50:19Bill Simmons?

  It's supposed to be meant to be a game, ever!

• 50:22Speaker 04

  Nobody's gonna win this game!

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  Game! This wasn't meant to be a game! Never!

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Cause it's not a dialogue heavy film. That's the line. That, to me, that's the number one line in the film. Yeah.

• 50:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, everyone goes down in the first period. One of the great first periods.

• 50:43Bill Simmons?

  Terrible game plan. We get some strategy. It's just Jonathan. He's already banged up. Got a guy and then his buddy with the motorcycle and there's a fire and they just, they basically Buffalo Bills it. This is like watching Josh Allen against the Chiefs. Like, it's like, you have everything. It's fourth and one. Just get the first down. They overthink it. They do a one at a time thing and Jonathan just demolishes them.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  You think it's like Pete Carroll, though?

• 51:09Bill Simmons?

  The Malcolm Butler play. Yeah. You have it. It's two against one. This is a rap.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, the thing is though, that there's a great freeze frame in that if, when, when he kills the guy right up against the executives. And one of them, the younger one, has this look on his face.

• 51:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he's like, just like, bloodthirsty.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  It's just what Norman Jewison was going for. You can imagine his books that act like, he, he said to the assistant director, like, okay, that guy sitting next to John Houseman is very important. I need that guy to be awesome. Like, we need somebody good in that seat.

• 51:42Bill Simmons?

  That was like my son, my son ringside for UFC when Toporia knocked out, knocked out the guy in the main event. My son basically had that look on his face. I, this is too good for probably an answerable question. So I'm putting in here, is this the number one craziest sports movie sporting event you could have gone to? The Houston, New York rollerball finals, uh, no penalties. There's only going to be one live, one, one, like, where would you have wanted to sit? Would you wanted to been, would you have been right on the glass? Or would you live a little further back in case a motorcycle guy went in? Like, what would your move have been? Where would you want to sit? Luxury box?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  I, I don't think there's any, I, I grew love this question. This is like an amazing a whole pod. You should do a whole podcast on this. It's an incredible question. This is a round table. Get 80 of your good friends and this is the best. I can't believe you've never done it. It's amazing.

• 52:37Bill Simmons?

  I, we, we keep, we've intermittently done pieces of it and rewatchables.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Because to me, no, the Mr. T fight, you gotta go to Clubber Lang. Clubber Lang is the fight. If you could see anything, think about, think about what the buildup would have been to the Clubber Lang rematch. Like with me, just think about what the, what you would have been feeling in the world to go to the, to that, to go to that fight.

• 52:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, you could did the Drago fight when the Russian crowd turns. I, I think, I honestly, Creed Bauboa, the, the, the second fight.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Second fight, Rocky, yeah, Rocky II.

• 53:11Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty good. I was thinking, uh, I remember doing this as a mailbag question a million years ago. Um, I think the, the natural Roy Hobbs hitting the game pennant winning homer and then, and knocking the lights out, I think would have been pretty great.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Incredible. But Clubber, Clubber Lang because of what he said about Adrian and just how much he baited him in. And I think if you were a Rocky fan, which you would have been as a kid, right? And in real life, I think it would have been like Ali Frazier times 10. Like you just.

• 53:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, none of these is the actual answer because I think we did answer this once. It's the soccer game and victory.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 53:49Bill Simmons?

  It's Pele bicycle kick.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:52Bill Simmons?

  The moral victory of winning, but they call the goal back and then Stallone stopping the penalty kick and then everyone escaping. It's a sporting event mixed with the great escape. So you go to the game, you're under some sort of rule. You actually get to escape. I think that's the winner.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:11Bill Simmons?

  I also would have wanted to be there for shoot versus loud and swain.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. You know, I'm obsessed with, please, I've referenced, David and I've referenced that fucking movie and thing like everything we've ever, I'll go, agreed with you, couldn't agree more.

• 54:22Bill Simmons?

  Major League, those guys win in Frank Ducks, I think, beating Chung Lee in Bloodsport. I mean, you know, a little darker, but I think it would have been cool to see.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  I mean, and then you want to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's fight in the Bruce Lee movie. If you're going there, that would have been pretty amazing.

• 54:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they had no spectators for that, though.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm saying, wouldn't it have been great to be able to be there?

• 54:42Bill Simmons?

  Costner, Perfect Game and For Love of the Game?

• 54:46Bill Simmons?

  Yankee Stadium?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  You wish the movie was just one notch. You wish the movie was one notch better.

• 54:51Bill Simmons?

  I still don't mind it. Okay. What's the most 1975 thing about this movie?

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Sorry, we're really wrong, by the way. Obviously, it's the fight in the gym between.

• 55:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the secret third Creed.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  The secret fight between Apollo.

• 55:08Bill Simmons?

  Creed Baubau fight.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  I just, I just realized, right? I mean, that's where you got, I mean, you tell your friends forever, you'd never stop talking about it.

• 55:16Bill Simmons?

  Worst, worst sporting event to go to from a movie, the million dollar baby fight?

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Wait, what?

• 55:21Bill Simmons?

  Tough.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Oh, God, horrible. The worst thing ever. The dad.

• 55:25Bill Simmons?

  Can you imagine being like, ah, let's just go, let's get in our car.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  No, but you know.

• 55:30Bill Simmons?

  Would have been worse than that.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  But you know that I'm of the generation. You were too young, but I watched the boom boom and see Dook Kim in real time.

• 55:36Bill Simmons?

  I watched it too. CBS.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  I watched it in real time. I would, I swear, like, I'm not making it up. I got, because it's.

• 55:42Bill Simmons?

  CBS during the day? Yeah, it was awful.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Forget watching it. I'll never forget trying to track, because we couldn't, this is another thing nobody can understand. I'm sorry that we're old. I'm old. Like.

• 55:52Bill Simmons?

  You didn't know what happened the next day.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Track it till the newspaper. Like, you'd watch the news at night and hope they would tell you. And then you had to wait to read the newspaper the next day. And the next day, because it took two days, I think, like, you had to find that out like 48 hours later.

• 56:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:06Bill Simmons?

  Most 1970 thing about this movie, I'm either going with the 70s babes, just the look of the women in this movie, which is very Charlie's Angels, first season three's company. Or that they thought in 1975 that the future would not have cell phones or the internet. Because they kind of had that computer. It was like the cloud, basically, which is what we have now, but they just didn't. They felt like it was going to be in some in water, in some sort of factory in Geneva. And it's like, no, it's actually just going to be in the air. I'm going to be talking to my friend Koppelman right now on Wi-Fi.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  I think it's, I think it's, I think it's that they let, they let an actor hit a heavy bag with no, with just his bare. Nobody would let, they let an actor who's not in a boxing movie hit a heavy bag with nothing on his hand. Like, everything we know now, if you saw a friend of yours hitting a heavy bag, like, we all go to the wheel, but without something, it's, that's fully.

• 57:08Bill Simmons?

  That's a great one. You know, that's a great answer. I love it. What's aged the best? The conceit of rollerball as a sport?

• 57:17Bill Simmons?

  John Houseman as a villain with his crazy eyebrows. He's got his, his crystal thinking layer where he goes in his, does Levine have that? Where you go to see Levine, he's just surrounded by crystals in an all white room. In general, like how white and light everything is, is feels futuristic and fun to me. The huge TVs I mentioned earlier, that's about as big of a TV as you see in a movie. Here's one. Any moment in a movie where a hero is about to kill the last guy and does the thing where he holds the rock or the knife up and then decides, and they cut to the guy, the guy on the bottom, like, right, like, the

• 57:57Bill Simmons?

  bad boy champagne, S M Morales cut, but the guy doesn't kill him. It's just a winner. It wins every time.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Oh, what a movie you just referenced.

• 58:07Bill Simmons?

  Thank you.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  The best. The exploding boombox. Come on. The exploding boombox in that movie. One of the great things ever. Yeah.

• 58:13Bill Simmons?

  The 70s tracksuits that they're wearing. Like, I feel like those should come back.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  I'd wear them. I'd wear them tomorrow.

• 58:21Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to tell Craig to get one. We mentioned the white pills everyone took and whether this foreshadowed the mushrooms, Molly era that we're in now. We never see kids. We never see downtown. We never see a restaurant. Even when they go downtown in Houston, it's just this amorphous like buildings and I think this was just how they were able to shoot the future back then, but it also shaped my view of what the future was when I was a little kid. Did you have that? Where movies and TV shaped what you thought in your head the future was. And for me, it's just

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 58:53Bill Simmons?

  light and buildings and kind of emptiness.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was all that stuff at the Jetsons.

• 59:00Bill Simmons?

  Right, and flying cars.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  That's what we thought, flying cars.

• 59:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh, here's one.

• 59:07Bill Simmons?

  Bartholomew, Houseman's character.

• 59:10Bill Simmons?

  And Jonathan, parallels to Goodell and Brady in the Seattle Seahawks Patriots Super Bowl? When they, they're trying to get Brady and he won anyway, came back. Malcolm Butler wins it.

• 59:24Bill Simmons?

  Jonathan.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  I mean, I was gonna say, and honestly, you can, Craig, you can, you can, you can cut this out. But I mean, no, the, for me, the future is presaged because when John Houseman says to those guys,

• 59:38Speaker 01

  and it's great because you gotta be paying attention, but he says, listen, we've decided nothing special is gonna happen to Jonathan. They're, they make the decision, they're not gonna kill Jonathan, they're gonna let the game take its course. And I was like, that must have been the conversation that Skipper and Iger had about you.

• 59:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 59:55Bill Simmons?

  You should leave that in.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  We're not gonna let anything.

• 59:57Bill Simmons?

  I didn't know that's where you were going.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're not gonna, we're not gonna let anything special, we're not gonna, nothing special's gonna happen to Bill. We'll just let it take its own course. He'll, he'll take himself out soon enough. We don't have to take him. That's amazing.

• 1:00:10Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man. I didn't know you were going there.

• 1:00:16Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, the seventies babes of this movie, Maude Adams, Pamela Hensley, and Barbara Trentham. The big three. So, tell me if you agree with this for what's aged the best. Jewison said, "The movie could be taken as a metaphor for the creative artist struggling against the corporate mediocrity of Hollywood and the executive group think therein." Thoughts?

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Sure, I think so much of it aged. I think what's so incredible is I love when you read the reviews and even Siskel, like I think what aged the best, and it's always the thing, like the movie fucking aged the best. The movie's so good, and despite what maybe Craig's gonna say at the end, the movie's so good that as a whole, and it makes total sense to me that it wasn't in its, like in its time, it was kind of a modest hit, as you said, what it did, you said it did thirty on six, but, but I don't think people understood like that it was actually trying to do that stuff. It was actually trying to make someone think about something, and it got so much right. And like honestly, that energy, okay, so I'm not gonna, again, like the politics, no one's, I'm not gonna talk about this, but David Foster Wallace

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  making the years named after corporations and shit and people, you know, Venus, the year of Venus Williams. This movie did all this stuff. There's no doubt that all those writers who became like the huge writers in the nineties, they grew up watching movies like this, and it influenced the way that they thought about the world. And you just feel it. So I think it, I think the movie is what really lasted a long time.

• 1:01:49Bill Simmons?

  Um, book censorship and history getting erased sadly has aged the best. When he's watching the old Maude Adams DVDs, the music that's playing where it's like, it's so good.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Great call. I wouldn't have thought about that's a great call. Yes.

• 1:02:08Bill Simmons?

  The violence of football of the next fifty years. Then the last one, Dick Enberg, calling a game has always aged the best. Just great to hear his voice. Really miss that guy.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Amazing. And, and are you, I think that, I guess we can talk about the computer, we gotta give a little bit to that whole computer scene, but we can do that in the, unfortunately, it's terrible because you named that award after Teddy KGB, but we gotta do that, the actor being in his own thing, because I have.

• 1:02:35Bill Simmons?

  That was a, that's a compliment, though.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, but I don't want to ever reference my own thing. You know what I mean? It's like.

• 1:02:41Bill Simmons?

  Stop, don't be a jerk.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  But, no, but I'll say. Ralph Richardson, that guy, Sir Ralph Richardson, he's this legendary British, the first actor to be knighted in England is that guy. Laurence Olivier got knighted second after this fucking guy. And it's true, like one was 1946, the other was 47. And because that guy is in his own movie and it's a great movie, the movie he's in. Like he makes James Caan totally different.

• 1:03:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's like in a Bond comedy. Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  He is in a totally different, he's on a talk show with Orson Welles. Like what is he, he's in Citizen Kane. What is he doing? And he's like, it's his own, like you could tell that guy was in a room. He's like, knows he's gonna be, he's playing a guy who spends a lot of time alone. Right? And this is an act, like thinking about what that guy did as an actor. He built like layers and layers and layers. And then it's totally wrong for the, it's amazing. It's just amazing to me. Perfection.

• 1:03:41Bill Simmons?

  I agree with him. Great shot, Gorder Awards. So many options for most cinematic shot. I really like when Jonathan scores that one goal against Tokyo. And then the guys, the fans behind him through the window are yelling and he just bangs.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Bangs at the thing with intent.

• 1:03:56Bill Simmons?

  It just feels 70s hockey. You mentioned Moon Pie's coma, the coma shot that when they lift the helmet up. I think that's the best shot in the movie.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  I think it's the one you mentioned, but I think it's the one you mentioned before, the ball hitting the guy.

• 1:04:11Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  I think the ball hitting the guy is like so, because you just feel it. It really is so effective because it stays with you for 50 years, dude.

• 1:04:22Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness Award Best Needle Drop. The ending, when the music kicks back in again.

• 1:04:29Bill Simmons?

  It's just great.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're like, somebody, you're like, someone's been watching some Stanley Kubrick for Norman Jewison, you know?

• 1:04:37Bill Simmons?

  Chess Rockwell Brock Laners Award, best character name. Moon Pie is pretty great. I need to bring that back. And then Butch's Girlfriend Award for the weak link of the film. You mentioned yours. Here's mine. I, I just think the corporation either kills Jonathan or just kidnaps him to keep him out of the final game. I don't think they go through this whole rigmarole trying to, oh, we don't, really don't want you to play. Now we're going to change the rules to try to kill you. Like, how about just killing him?

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  No, they're worried about-

• 1:05:06Bill Simmons?

  It's like, what happened with Jonathan? Oh, Jonathan had a tragic accident on a horse. He's dead.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  But they're worried about Marty. See, this is the thing. Why the whole thing about the individual is they don't want to make him into a martyr. So they can't-

• 1:05:18Bill Simmons?

  How would people know? He just died. They control the news. It's like sad news. Jonathan's dead.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:05:23Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no. I love that guy.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  All right. I can't argue with that.

• 1:05:25Bill Simmons?

  Just feels like an easier way to do it than to rig the game with no rules and, you know.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  I mean, the other weak link is sending a terrible, in the context of the thing, like, I'm not saying the woman who played her was a terrible actress, but the one, the one girlfriend, the blonde.

• 1:05:42Bill Simmons?

  The blonde.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  I mean, they're just, first of all, it's like the whole beginning of the Sharon Stone Schwarzenegger thing, where she comes in there and he realizes she's turned. She practically is going to wheel and kick him like Sharon Stone did in Total Recall. But that was pretty weak. That scene, and then when he almost, you know, Jonathan almost really hurts her.

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  I have that in What Stage Is the Worst.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  That's not a great, not a great moment.

• 1:06:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's in the What Stage Is the Worst. You know, Longest Yard had a random domestic violence scene too. I just think it's the seventies. I can't, can't explain it. We mentioned the super system memory pool, which now is just a cloud. The Tokyo team, there's some, some pretty apparent racist stuff with that. This is, what, 32, 32 years after World War II. Could still feel some of that.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  In the seventies was still-

• 1:06:35Bill Simmons?

  Some of that bad stuff. Yeah, we're still doing that stuff.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Very, yeah, very rough and racist.

• 1:06:40Bill Simmons?

  The CTE issues with Rollerball, I was thinking would probably-

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Hilarious.

• 1:06:44Bill Simmons?

  Probably not great. Like an outside the lines, the Rollerball guys, 20 years later, they're all like-

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  You don't want Bodley looking at this.

• 1:06:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Bodley's like, wow.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  You do not want Bodley looking at this thing. Hundred percent.

• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  But the number one in What Stage Is the Worst is that they remade this movie in 2002. It's one of the worst movies ever. I wrote about it for Page Two. I think it was one of my better early Page Two pieces. I like skewered it. It's really awful. John McTiernan made it, weirdly, which-

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  He made so many good movies.

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  It's really, really one of the worst. To me, it's like Bad News Bears Go to Japan, the Rollerball remake. It's on a short list of the worst ones we've ever had.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Among the worst, you know, I will, I've never, I watched 30 seconds of it, maybe 40 seconds of it, and never watched more than that. Shut it off. Wouldn't go to the theater because why do the, you know, why, why?

• 1:07:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, it also violates the rule of why are we making a movie that is still exceedingly awesomely raw? It was 27 years after they made the original. We're gonna take one more break and then we're gonna do a couple more categories. This episode is brought to you by Viori. All right, let's talk about a category we appreciate. Clothes that stay in the rotation. Viori earned that spot. Their core shorts are good for workouts, travel day, weekend, whatever. And the Strato Tech T ridiculously soft. It's the kind of gear you keep reaching for because it's comfortable while still looking put together. Get 20% off your first purchase at viori.com/rewatchables and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and

• 1:08:25Bill Simmons?

  conditions.

• 1:08:27Speaker 05

  Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease symptoms don't pause for the moments that matter. That's why understanding your treatment options matters. Discover what's possible with Trinphaya. Guselkamap. Trinphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections, or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Talk to your doctor and explore what's possible or call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more about Trinphaya and visit trinphyradiodotcom.

• 1:09:12Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island, Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters Friday.

• 1:09:56Bill Simmons?

  Get tickets now. The Ruffalo Hannah Group and Nick Partridge over acting award. So you, it sounds like you're leaning toward the coach on this, but I, can I offer you Jonathan's ex-girlfriend shooting the fire gun with that crazy look on her face?

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  I mean, I look, I think maybe nobody knew where they were. They spent a lot of time on the stunts and maybe, I bet you that Norman Jewison, great director, like I said, I mean, that guy made some really unbelievably important, great movies. But my guess is that so much of his time was spent on making sure the gameplay was right, that there wasn't a lot of energy in terms of making sure the performances were locked, you know, and that's hard. It's really hard.

• 1:10:33Bill Simmons?

  Do you have a flex category or we already did it?

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  I think my, my flex category would have been the KGB actor thing because that guy is so, I think that guy's in his own movie, but I think he's great. Like, I think he's just in his own movie.

• 1:10:47Bill Simmons?

  Okay. And do you have a CR thinks Luke Wilson would have been Harrison Ford hottest take award or no? Cause if you don't, we can move on.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  I mean, the hottest take would just literally be that, uh, yeah, I have a, I have such a hot take that I think it will get me, uh,

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  I think this movie is every

• 1:11:06Bill Simmons?

  So whole point of the category.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  I think this movie is better than Parallax View. I think it's more accurate. I think it more accurately makes you feel what a paranoid thriller is supposed to make you feel. Cause there's nothing else like it. Parallax View is like a million different things. And this movie, there's nothing else like it. And it tackles, none of us are going to be in a situation where we're thought to have shot the thing and they're pinning a giant murder on it. But all of us watch sports. All of us interact with these corporations. All of us have felt that feeling that the game was rigged and we don't quite know why. Or what was really going on in that game will never really learn what really happened. And this movie makes you feel all that shit. And so I think rollerball, and I think it's

• 1:11:48Bill Simmons?

  It's like LJ's four point play.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  And yeah, that was

• 1:11:51Bill Simmons?

  Who, who, who ordered that?

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  The second Knicks dig. I was at the game and it was so great. Just perfect moment.

• 1:11:58Bill Simmons?

  Continuation, pal.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Still haven't won a champ. I don't know if you noticed, but we still haven't won a championship since I was sad.

• 1:12:04Bill Simmons?

  It's been a while. At least the team's good again. I couldn't find any casting what ifs. The best that guy award. So Moses Gunn plays Cleet and Moses Gunn, who was in Shaft, but had a nice run in the seventies where he'd be like in Streets of San Francisco and he just was around. He was one of those guys. So shout out to him.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  But to me, Moon Pie, because I didn't realize that Moon Pie did, I like forgot that he's the same guy who did all those episodes of Dallas.

• 1:12:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I, I couldn't, he might be John, I mean, for Craig, he's Moon Pie. And Craig, we, we still don't know if Craig liked this movie, but

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  He was in six

• 1:12:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  60 episodes of Dallas somehow.

• 1:12:41Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 1:12:43Bill Simmons?

  Dionne Waiters, I think it's Maude Adams coming in hot.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Bill Simmons?

  Coming in.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  No argument.

• 1:12:48Bill Simmons?

  We just need you to shoot for two days. We're just going to shoot you laughing and looking really hot. And then we need you to do like three lines with James

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  But a special shout out. I think you gotta give a special shout out to the thankless. It's like, I wish that the most thankless role, the guy who has to come in, the Japanese guy that I think because it's the Tokyo team, has to come in there.

• 1:13:10Bill Simmons?

  And you just get interrupted.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  All he wants to do is share the science with them. And it must be like having a meeting with, you know, Robert Kennedy. And like, he just wants to tell them about the science and they don't want to, you know what I mean? They don't want to hear about the science.

• 1:13:23Bill Simmons?

  Recasting couch director city. Can I offer you Gene Hackman as the Houston coach? We just go up a level with Gene.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  And then yeah, he gets a lot more dialogue. Nobody else could have played, who else could have played Jonathan?

• 1:13:36Bill Simmons?

  Burt Reynolds. And I think James Caan's a better choice.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  Cause the smoke, cause James Caan was smarter. Like on screen, he read as smart. You think he's smarter.

• 1:13:43Bill Simmons?

  I think Burt could have done the athleticism and the swagger hero stuff.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  He probably would have enjoyed getting physical with the ladies, having love scenes.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Could Redford, could Redford have done it?

• 1:13:57Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Not a good enough, like not credible athletically, like as a violent athlete.

• 1:14:00Bill Simmons?

  I don't think he's got that dark, the snapping side. Warren Beatty would have been interesting. I don't know if he would have done it, but I think athletically, I think he could have done it.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  That's a good call. He's credible and heaven can wait. You believe he can throw a football.

• 1:14:16Bill Simmons?

  He could. I think he was a good athlete. Yeah.

• 1:14:21Bill Simmons?

  All right. Craig's flex category is here, but he's passing. Craig, just a mystery man for this pod. Half faster in the research. You mentioned they shot everything in Munich.

• 1:14:30Bill Simmons?

  A bunch of, a bunch of opera in this movie. If you want to go check out the different songs, some of it's online. Rollerball, the video game, which I waited for, for most of my video game playing life. And it finally was supposed to happen in 1998, got delayed and then the publisher went bankrupt. I don't understand why we didn't have a rollerball video game. I think it would have been amazing and maybe there's still time. Nobody died during the filming and the stunts, but we did have some major injuries. And then Devo saw this movie and ended up writing the Devo corporate anthem for their 1979 album.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Bill, somebody, somebody, somebody at Rockstar Games should just, there should be a moment in GTA. And if it delays GTA by another two years, who's going to care? But there should be a moment where you should walk into an arena.

• 1:15:21Bill Simmons?

  Get to play rollerball?

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  In Grand Theft Auto, you should walk into an arena and get to play rollerball. Think about, that's the most logical thing. It could be in GT, the next, it could be in the one that comes out right the month before I die. That's when they could, you know what I mean? 30 years from now, they'll get that one in.

• 1:15:38Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain, James Caan.

• 1:15:42Bill Simmons?

  It's right around here for him because Godfather's been a couple of years. He's in a movie with Barbra Streisand the same year when she's probably the biggest female lead.

• 1:15:53Bill Simmons?

  I think it's right around here. The Gambler just come out. He's making a bunch of movies and he has the wheels haven't come off yet. So I would say maybe yes.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:16:02Bill Simmons?

  Plus this movie did well.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Can't argue.

• 1:16:03Bill Simmons?

  Fake, fake created sports in a sports movie. I'm also going to say yes. Unless you want to go dodgeball.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  No, you're this.

• 1:16:12Bill Simmons?

  Dick Emberg, no. Dick Emberg in a movie, also no, because he's better in Heaven Can Wait because you can see him. Maude Adams, she was in Tattoo with Bruce Dern, which I think I might've seen when I was a teenager and don't remember that much of, but it's probably this. She's a huge model, though. This is the era where the seventies, they would just grab a famous model and just throw them in a movie. Norman Jewison, no.

• 1:16:40Bill Simmons?

  It's probably In the Heat of the Night?

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  I mean Cincinnati Kid, Hurricane. No, you gotta say Moonstruck because the Oscars and stuff, it's gotta be Moonstruck.

• 1:16:52Bill Simmons?

  But I mean, that Poitier movie.

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great movie. Oh, no, great, great, great, great, great movie. Not, not, of course. But later, I always think that the guy later in the, I always think like, yes, but I always think a guy that had this happen when it comes back and it's Moonstruck. Like.

• 1:17:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  And everyone's celebrating this guy.

• 1:17:09Bill Simmons?

  But that's a career highlight. I'm talking more like, when did he have the most juice?

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Okay.

• 1:17:13Bill Simmons?

  Probably late sixties.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Sure. Yes.

• 1:17:15Bill Simmons?

  Houston as a sports city.

• 1:17:19Bill Simmons?

  Do you go here or would you go Hakeem Rockets, the Jonathan E. era?

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Dan Pastorelli and Earl Campbell.

• 1:17:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's like right after Jonathan E.

• 1:17:29Bill Simmons?

  John Beck, it's clearly 60 episodes of Dallas. John Houseman, no.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:34Bill Simmons?

  Probably Paperchase.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  It's gotta be.

• 1:17:36Bill Simmons?

  Setting pine trees on fire, 100%. And then just roller skating. Roller skating, maybe. Did we ever do better in a roller skating movie?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  No, no, this is, this is the coolest it ever looked for sure.

• 1:17:51Bill Simmons?

  All right. Most important part of the podcast for you. Cruise or Hanks for the lead?

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  It's Cruise in a walk. It's not even close. It's not even close.

• 1:18:00Bill Simmons?

  This would have been an amazing Cruise movie.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  No, no, but it's but Hanks, if he wanted to do the dark turn, could play the houseman role.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  He'd be amazing because you believe that he cared about Jonathan.

• 1:18:11Bill Simmons?

  Or how about young Hanks as Moon Pie? Like 19 bosom buddies Hanks.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  He was never, he was never, he was never the enforcer.

• 1:18:20Bill Simmons?

  No, it's definitely Cruise. Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  I mean, that says Martin Scors- Martin Scorsese.

• 1:18:26Bill Simmons?

  I had that as well. What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Oh, this is great.

• 1:18:32Bill Simmons?

  Probably younger Houseman?

• 1:18:35Bill Simmons?

  He's in the, he's in the corporatocracy.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but well, would this have been one of those? There's not really that showy, you know, young, young Philip Seymour Hoffman, like, you know,

• 1:18:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  in a heartache. There's not like that flashy little moment where a guy comes in like that in this movie.

• 1:18:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if there's a role for P A S, P S H in this. Picky Nits. So I had some questions about the rollerball penalties before they got rid of penalties. Karate kicking the motorcycle guys seems bad. That's three minutes. Headlock punch, okay. Headlock punch with the spike punch to the helmet seems fine. Motorcycle guy knocking the other motorcycle guy from behind, like spinning him out seems legal.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  I looked this up. I, this was my internet research. I looked it up. I looked up what, what rules penalty. So the violence. And you're right, you're so on this. It's the, you're completely on it. These penalties only existed. So all those things, you could do them all as long as it was in the course of the gameplay.

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's what they said?

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. When you, when I looked, when I looked.

• 1:19:50Bill Simmons?

  Sounds like Jewison came up with that at the 11th hour.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:19:53Bill Simmons?

  They're like, yo, what, what's the difference in these penalties? It's like, ah, course of gameplay.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Course of the gameplay. So, so that if instead, if, if, if Wally, let's say right after Jonathan scores and you're resetting, the ball hasn't shot out yet, you went and spike punched a guy in the head.

• 1:20:10Bill Simmons?

  Penalty.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Then that's a penalty. But if you spike punch a guy when he's about to score, we're good. I think that's never said in the movie and you're 100% right.

• 1:20:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I needed a little more, I, it's almost you needed the announcer to come in and like, as always, three minutes for that, that I just would have eaten it up. All right. So we have gambling in 1975.

• 1:20:34Bill Simmons?

  We know it exists because they're putting the spreads out. We've had football players, there's been gambling scandals. It just felt like an incredible missed opportunity not to talk about Lions at all during this movie. And then it sent me down a rabbit hole thinking like, who was favored in the last game? They would, like Fanduel would have had last man standing bets and I think Jonathan would probably have been the favorite, but it would have been like two to one.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  So it would have been like those Tiger, you know, it would have been like those Tiger years where you could bet the field for a certain number.

• 1:21:01Bill Simmons?

  Jonathan versus the field. I would have just banged Jonathan, but then you could also make the case like they're just gonna do everything. They kind of take him out.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  I think there was no betting lines. Dude, there's no betting lines because no one had any money. The money was only the executives. No one had money.

• 1:21:17Bill Simmons?

  But there was probably like a, like a stealth poker game with the executives and maybe they had a bookie. I don't know. There's a lot of gambling stuff that should have existed in this. You had any pick and nits or we cover everything?

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  No, we cover them.

• 1:21:30Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast or untouchable. Can we make the prestige TV case? It's been 50 years. I think that's fair game. And I, I do feel like there's some cool scripted series in here that I think would take added significance in the mid 2020s.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  You know, they're making, I'm sure you know this because it was announced and stuff. They're making, um, you know, the William Gibson novel, Neuromancer? They're making that into a series. That's that incredible futuristic thing. If that works, whoever does that show could then just come right in here and do this.

• 1:22:07Bill Simmons?

  I think the problem is the Rollerball remake was so bad

• 1:22:12Bill Simmons?

  that I think it scared everyone off the IP, but let's bring it back. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Consor, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm?

• 1:22:28Bill Simmons?

  Do you have, you can also throw in anyone else you want in this category.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  You know, you bring up Enberg a couple of times, but I just kept thinking how fun it would have been to just cut to Norm MacDonald talking about this game.

• 1:22:40Bill Simmons?

  That's, we should throw Norm in the category.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, Norm belongs in the category. He really does. Cause imagine Norm talking about when Moon Pie, like the thing you just did about, ah, so what, when can you hit the Moon Pie in the head with the spikes? I mean, you know, I just think that's a little bit, uh, yeah, I just think it would have been incredible. Like Norm would be just top for me.

• 1:22:56Bill Simmons?

  Too much, too much individualism. I think they would have just killed Norm. So I had, uh, I'm adding John Kazell to the movie.

• 1:23:07Bill Simmons?

  Because of the sunny ties, but especially after, after, uh, when Jonathan says no to Mr. Bartholomew at the party and he comes back out and then Kazell could come over and go, Johnny, you don't talk to a guy like Mr. Bartholomew like that.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 1:23:24Bill Simmons?

  And then they do the don't go against the family.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  But he could also be, his character from, um, the conversation just fits right in.

• 1:23:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just, it's right in the ti, it's in the Kazell. It's in the, the timeframe, 75.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Now you're talking, cause imagine if instead of Maude Adam, then I agree. What if it's Merrill walking into that room? 1975 Merrill.

• 1:23:45Bill Simmons?

  Get both of them.

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Imagine, how much better is that Merrill?

• 1:23:48Bill Simmons?

  Like our first movie.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, right after any, like 75 Merrill, right before that, yes, yeah.

• 1:23:53Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her who gets it.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Production design.

• 1:23:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would, I would have said stunts. Is stunts an Oscar? It is, right?

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Now they're giving stunts awards and things, but they didn't for years.

• 1:24:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Production design's good. Probably an answerable questions. This one might be answerable. Jonathan E's last name, I think it was Evans, because at the Eyes Wide Shut party, one guy says to the other guy, Evans is out. And I wonder if that means it's Jonathan Evans was his name.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  What are others? I've won. I've won an answerable question.

• 1:24:25Bill Simmons?

  As if rollerball just keeps going over the next 50 years, how would advanced stats have changed rollerball? Would people have thought, like the three point shot, like people firing from far away, it's a heavy ball. But could there have been like a Steph Curry that comes in? Who's like, this guy's like throwing it from basically the bottom of the track. He's completely changed rollerball.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Probably add up. Because the thing is, because there were very limited substitutions, if you killed somebody, it's kind of as beneficial to the team as scoring, to your team as scoring a goal.

• 1:25:00Bill Simmons?

  So, so the advanced stat would be more mania and murder.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  Murder plus points. It would be like points plus death, right? Because plus, you know, mauling someone till they're off, off the floor, I think.

• 1:25:14Bill Simmons?

  So you think the Moneyball move, like Jonah Hill comes in and he's like, I've been looking at the motorcycle and it's just the complete inefficiency. We're spending too much time getting the motorcycle guys and what's, what we really need. What was John Beck's role? What was his thing? A swooper?

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Swooper.

• 1:25:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The swooper is actually the most important position in rollerball. We gotta go all in and try to find better swoopers.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  So sick. I, I think, uh, yeah, for, for sure. Then there's this little, so my unanswerable question is, there are two references in it that maybe they're robots. Like in

• 1:25:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the androids thing at the eyes. Yeah, that they might all be androids.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  And one says, you know, they're all made in Detroit. And the other says they're robots. You hear these two lines and I and they're not, but but you know, you wonder if it's like the replicant thing like, are they replicants? Or are they? Is it possible? Because now I didn't remember this. This is I listened to some wacky podcast today, and I wish I would credit them. There's some guy who did some like, deep dive into the meanings of rollerball. It's crazy. I'll send it to you. I found it like, two hours ago. But the one thing is, he was talking about this possibility of them being robots and seemed to have some credible argument for that had to do with when when Jonathan is talking to

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Sir, the the computer guy. I did not pick this up. This guy in this podcast that I can't take any credit. But he says that when he's talking to him, the guy says, I've seen you so many times before. You've come so many times. And the guy was like, because Jonathan doesn't know, because John's fucking robot. And every time he gets destroyed, they rebuild him back. And then he comes to the point where he has this question at the end of his like life cycle. I have no idea if it's true, but I love it as a theory.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, how would that explain Moon Pie being in a coma, being kept alive with no vital signs?

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  That is a flaw in the theory. You've poked a great hole in it. Oh, to prove to the players. Oh, you know why? So the players believe it. The player doesn't know he's a robot.

• 1:27:21Bill Simmons?

  My other answer, well, do you think the Dolan family own the New York Rollerball team?

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  That's the best. Yeah, I I hope so. Because then I hope they go Owen, whatever.

• 1:27:37Bill Simmons?

  The Zouat, we don't get to give this that often. The Zouatne award for what happened the next day.

• 1:27:44Bill Simmons?

  So Jonathan survives. I think we're probably forming a rollerball players' union. There's probably a Donald Fear or whoever. Somebody's coming in and being like, we gotta, we gotta get these guys some benefits. Maybe, maybe some rules in place that you can't just wipe out the rules before the semifinals. Does the sport exist? Was that the last rollerball game ever?

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  I think Jonathan maybe takes the whole society down.

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  That's it. It's just complete chaos.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:28:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The easiest answer ever for what piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I mean, it would have to be the jersey, right? The number six orange jersey? Like, what would be a better thing?

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  That plus the glove, a glove.

• 1:28:32Bill Simmons?

  And the gloves?

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  And one of the motorcycles wouldn't be bad.

• 1:28:36Bill Simmons?

  Like a banged up?

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  Imagine in your garage, imagine if in your garage you had a rollerball.

• 1:28:40Bill Simmons?

  Banged up?

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Motorcycle. That'd be, I mean, come on. Pretty great.

• 1:28:44Bill Simmons?

  The Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson. Corporate society is an inevitability. Quote from John Houseman. Let's go with that. What's your double feature choice?

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Some Bruce Lee movie. Enter the Dragon.

• 1:29:00Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. Why?

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Because of the era. Like, just because I associate it with a time in, like, my life, basically. Otherwise, it's network. So I wrote down earlier, network's the other one that makes the most sense because one's about media, one's about sports and entertainment. Like, so, network on the highbrow, it's network. And on the less highbrow, I think it's Enter the Dragon. What's yours?

• 1:29:23Bill Simmons?

  I like your paranoid movie thing. I think that was fun. I would have said Longest Yard just because, like, those are the first two great sports movies. But I do like the idea of doing, like, Three Days of the Condor or something and just.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Is Brian's Song in your mind not a great sports movie?

• 1:29:37Bill Simmons?

  It is. It's a TV movie, though.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Okay, so it doesn't count?

• 1:29:40Bill Simmons?

  I've seen it 20 times.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  No, I know, but it's, it doesn't count for that reason for you.

• 1:29:44Bill Simmons?

  I still think that's Khan's best performance in any movie. I should have done that as my hottest pick. He's unbelievable as Brian Pickler.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course he is. He's incredible. That movie's, I mean, again, it's for dudes, all right. I mean, that movie's just the best.

• 1:29:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's really old. It's 55 years old. Who won the movie, James Khan?

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:30:05Bill Simmons?

  All right, it's time. Producer Craig coming in. He's been dead silent. I'm nervous.

• 1:30:10Speaker 06

  I, uh, I'm excited that Brian has no idea which way I'm going. He even thought that perhaps I was going the negative route. I am not. I can't believe this movie was just sitting here and no one told me about it.

• 1:30:25Speaker 06

  What the hell? I had heard of Rollerball. I think it's a weird title and perhaps I had no idea what the movie was about. I was transfixed by this movie.

• 1:30:35Speaker 06

  I mean, this is a dystopian science fiction movie disguised as a sports movie.

• 1:30:39Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:30:40Speaker 06

  I think it should be considered like one of the greats. This should be shown in film schools. There is so much going on. There's so much there.

• 1:30:47Bill Simmons?

  You're correct.

• 1:30:48Speaker 06

  It's basically gladiators fighting for public entertainment. It's like, maybe it's a little heavy handed. It's so weird. Jewison's making so many weird decisions. It's aged incredibly. I think the tree burning is like fascinating.

• 1:31:02Speaker 06

  I thought, I think this desperately, I'm usually not this guy, but I think this desperately needs to be a television show like, like Tony Gilroy turned Andor, like a Star Wars story about like, turned it into like a political story about fascism and imperialism or whatever. He, get him Rollerball next. Like, I want something at that level for Rollerball.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  Tony would crush it. Tony would do an incredible job with this. Yep.

• 1:31:23Speaker 06

  I thought this movie was unbelievable.

• 1:31:26Bill Simmons?

  Wow. I'm so excited. I was so worried that he didn't like it, but I was like, you know, I feel like I know Craig well enough to know he probably liked this.

• 1:31:33Speaker 06

  I couldn't look away. It was, it was everything. I want to watch it three more times. I, it's almost, it was almost the first time ever I watched it twice before we recorded, just because I wanted to do it again.

• 1:31:43Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:31:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Bill Simmons?

  What, so what was your most rewatchable scene?

• 1:31:50Speaker 06

  I think the argument between, is it Houseman and Khan while the tree burning is happening, that going back and forth, is really electric. And that whole party, I think the whole party scene is the most interesting part of the movie. But also, I mean, the stunts are unbelievable. I can't believe that they're doing that to these actors back then, these stunt court, uh, these stunt actors. It's ridiculous.

• 1:32:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, the music at the top and the bottom, the box, I mean, the whole thing is just, it's so original and unique and it's like, I love when a director just has his hands all over something. And if there's stuff that people don't like, I kind of don't care. I'm like, at least he just did whatever the fuck he wanted.

• 1:32:26Bill Simmons?

  So are you mad we waited seven years to do this movie?

• 1:32:29Speaker 06

  I mean, I couldn't have been mad because I barely knew it existed. But um, I, there's a, I have a couple knits, I will say.

• 1:32:35Bill Simmons?

  Let's hear it.

• 1:32:37Speaker 06

  Genuinely, the worst jerseys and helmets I've ever seen in a sport.

• 1:32:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was mid seventies, though.

• 1:32:43Speaker 06

  I mean.

• 1:32:43Bill Simmons?

  Like, if you go back to that era, every, we just lost the narrative with the way stuff looked.

• 1:32:48Speaker 06

  But that's what they thought jerseys would look like in 2008, 50 years in the future? And that's what they gave them?

• 1:32:54Bill Simmons?

  It was just that this weird concept of compliment can attest, like, the font that we thought was gonna be in the future was that specific, like, weird font, like, very, like, simplistic.

• 1:33:06Speaker 06

  Horrible, horrible.

• 1:33:06Bill Simmons?

  Terrible.

• 1:33:07Speaker 06

  It looked like high school warm-up football jerseys, terrible.

• 1:33:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a good call. What else did you have?

• 1:33:13Speaker 06

  Um, none of the actual guys look like athletes. They look like mechanics. I mean, what are we doing here? Like, these look like a bunch of normal dudes. I guess James Caan is in shape.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  You're making the J.J. Reddick Bob Cousy argument?

• 1:33:25Speaker 06

  These guys don't look like the premier athletes of the world in 2018.

• 1:33:28Bill Simmons?

  I swear I had that written down and I forgot to say it. I noticed that there's that shot in the locker room. And none of them look like.

• 1:33:34Speaker 06

  There's like four guys who look like Louis C.K. back there. I like, I don't know what we're.

• 1:33:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, but I wondered, did they do that because they couldn't get anybody to do rollerball or? Because then at one point they have the weight training scene and one guy is basically doing this 1984 gymnastics routine on the, on the parallel bars? And it was, but yet all these guys look like plumbers and electricians, as Craig said. So I don't know what they were going for with that.

• 1:33:59Speaker 06

  Awesome, man. Like, back then, men just looked different. James Caan in this movie was four years older than I am right now.

• 1:34:06Bill Simmons?

  Was he really?

• 1:34:07Speaker 06

  He was 35.

• 1:34:10Bill Simmons?

  You could have told me he was 50.

• 1:34:11Speaker 06

  100%.

• 1:34:12Bill Simmons?

  22, you could have given me any age for him.

• 1:34:15Speaker 06

  Easily guess 45.

• 1:34:17Bill Simmons?

  Do you agree with me that nobody has ever looked better in a sleeveless white t-shirt than James Caan? Like, something about his shoulders just.

• 1:34:24Speaker 06

  Men don't look like that anymore.

• 1:34:25Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:34:27Bill Simmons?

  You know, you know, it looks like sometimes you'll get the random little boy that looks like that you'll see like the three year old boy at a party that's built like James Caan.

• 1:34:35Speaker 06

  What's that?

• 1:34:35Bill Simmons?

  And then, but then nobody ever ages into it.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  I didn't anticipate this going there. That's.

• 1:34:40Speaker 06

  I was gonna say, what three year old boy at a party are you seeing?

• 1:34:43Bill Simmons?

  My son, when he was like three, kind of had one of those James Caan bodies for a little bit, but they have, you know what I mean? Like those really muscly little kids.

• 1:34:52Speaker 06

  Like they have like the T build, like the Michael Phelps T build.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  We used to joke that my son looked like a 1760s blacksmith. He would just walk around, he had this hard pot belly and was just walked around like Fred Flintstone.

• 1:35:06Speaker 06

  I was gonna make the joke that like we should do the Lloyd Howell Jr. NFLPA for worst league, league rep award for whoever the fuck was running.

• 1:35:20Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one.

• 1:35:22Bill Simmons?

  What'd you think of the seventies babes?

• 1:35:24Speaker 06

  Great. I know women don't look like that either, man.

• 1:35:28Bill Simmons?

  But it's like a specific look and I don't know what it was, but I know it's a, you know, when you see it kind of look.

• 1:35:34Speaker 06

  Middle part, long feathery hair, kind of like coming out, they look like Sharon Tate a little bit. It's like this.

• 1:35:39Bill Simmons?

  Blue eyeshadow.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  It's just a version, it's a version of, of, of Michelle Pfeiffer scarf face thing, which was later.

• 1:35:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was like the tail end of it. Yeah. It's really Charlie's Angels. Like if you go, you could click any mid seventies Charlie's Angels, Vegas, Three's Company, all the, every, it's just this look and then it just disappeared. Not sure what happened. So Craig, would you have played a rollerball video game?

• 1:36:04Speaker 06

  Absolutely. I still would.

• 1:36:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is some of the best IP nobody's taken advantage of.

• 1:36:09Speaker 06

  I have not seen the remake. I won't watch it, but I, it's been long enough. I think somebody could revive this and it's, it's so relevant now. I mean, man.

• 1:36:19Bill Simmons?

  Rollerball Fantasy League would have been interesting.

• 1:36:21Speaker 06

  Sure. Imagine if like.

• 1:36:22Bill Simmons?

  Cause you would have swoops, you would have had assists, you would have had goals, you would have had takeouts.

• 1:36:28Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, Derrick Henry in rollerball unstoppable.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  A problem is we only know one, uh, one player's name really, and the other guy's name, we knew he's dead. So.

• 1:36:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's like Rollerball 3 where like the Rich Paul character comes in and trying to get everybody paid more. All right, Craig, so happy you liked this movie. This was produced by Craig as always. Thanks to Ronic as well. And thanks to Gah for getting us on on the Zoom. Thanks to Koppelman. Great to see you. It's been a couple of years for you on the rewatchables.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  So happy to be back.

• 1:37:00Bill Simmons?

  Anything to plug? Got any plugs?

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  No, stuff's coming. Stuff's coming. You know, but nothing to talk about yet, but happy to be back for time number seven on the rewatchables. And we got to do quiz show someday. That's the one I'm holding out.

• 1:37:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're doing it in LA.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll be there for it.

• 1:37:16Bill Simmons?

  We'll do that together. And then Rounders 2, I'm just gonna be dead before it comes up.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  I mean, you'll be in if there is, if it ever, you know as much about it as I do. We've talked, how many hours have you and I spent talking about it with Levine?

• 1:37:27Bill Simmons?

  Every time we do a podcast, we mention it.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Enough time.

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  Craig's ready for it.

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  Let's, okay, we're all in.

• 1:37:34Bill Simmons?

  All right. Great to see you guys. Thank you.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  Great to see you guys.

• 1:37:48Speaker 07

  When you shop Kroger delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone.