Pod Insights The Rewatchables ‘The Legend of Billie Jean’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan About this episode The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan shave their heads and go on the lam after revisiting the 1985 “one-for-us” hall-of-famer ‘The Legend of Billie Jean,’ starring Helen Slater, Christian Slater, and Keith Gordon.
Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Ronak Nai, and Chia Hao Tat
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Transcript 16,371 words · 10 speakers
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2:30 Bill Simmons? The Rewatchables, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. You can find the watch.
2:34 Chris Ryan? You sure can, man.
2:34 Bill Simmons? Chris Ryan.
2:35 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:36 Bill Simmons? We did 400 movies for the Rewatchables. Our 400th was American Gangster last week.
2:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:42 Bill Simmons? It's football season. It's the Monday of week one. All anyone cares about is football. And Steve Ballmer's legal pay cycles, possibly.
2:52 Chris Ryan? My Green Bank that's going bankrupt, yeah.
2:56 Bill Simmons? How are your, how's your aspiration stock?
2:58 Chris Ryan? You know what? I think they're, they're saying fair's fair, but who knows?
3:03 Bill Simmons? Well, we decided there's no better chance for one for us than this week. And it's a Tubi classic. It's gotten to the point when I go on Tubi. And by the way, this is not sponsored by Tubi. In fact, I don't think Tubi even likes us.
3:16 Chris Ryan? Why not?
3:17 Bill Simmons? I don't know. They've never really.
3:18 Chris Ryan? Because you tried to change their slogan to go Tubi.
3:22 Bill Simmons? Right. Every time I go there, they're like, hey, Legend of Billie Jean.
3:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
3:27 Bill Simmons? You haven't clicked on this in a while. And I watched it probably 700 times when I was a teenager and in college and, and now we're finally doing it. Legend of Billie Jean because fair is fair. Here we go.
3:55 Bill Simmons? All right, CR. Just, here's my first take. Just take me back. Just take me back to the mid 80s when life was simple.
4:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
4:01 Bill Simmons? And we just had malls and we could just have people get innocently shot in the shoulder and become heroes and then just get away scot-free. And I just miss it.
4:10 Chris Ryan? It's like, one of the most nostalgic movie-going experiences I could have right now is to watch, is to watch this. There's a, a run of movies from 84 to 86.
4:20 Bill Simmons? Yep.
4:21 Chris Ryan? That is essentially Last Starfighter, Maximum Overdrive, The Explorers, Big Trouble in Little China, Rad, and The Legend of Billie Jean, that I think I had. On constantly from 1985, whenever we first got a VHS player, through when cable got introduced at my house, which I think was in mid, late eighties. These movies were just the wallpaper. They were on all the time. The soundtracks are buried into like their brain worms in my head. And I remember every single scene and every single nuance and they still hit now. And it's like, they're not American cinematic classics, but they are like my VHS classics.
5:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah, there's like, I would have thrown in forty to forty-five other movies.
5:05 Chris Ryan? Sure.
5:06 Bill Simmons? Other than the ones you listed, just because I was watching like Karate Kid, Teen Wolf, all those. Um, they all had music. They all had a hero. They're all kind of innocent. There was all like these over the top villains. They all had a lot of flaws, which was fine.
5:20 Chris Ryan? Sure.
5:21 Bill Simmons? This movie has some flaws. Like I was surprised, the nitpicks. I was like, has anyone ever picked nits with Legitability Gene like this before?
5:29 Chris Ryan? You guys just let vigilante justice run amok?
5:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah. And the, the most important thing, other than the, the theme that we're going to talk about in a second was just, uh, we just in love with Helen Slater.
5:38 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
5:39 Bill Simmons? I was in high school. She was 22 when she filmed this movie playing a 16 year old, but she was just, I was just like, I'm in. I'll, I'll follow this person to the, to the end of the sun.
5:49 Chris Ryan? And she, she was in Supergirl, right?
5:51 Bill Simmons? Supergirl and then this one and was in a couple of other ones, but, uh, she's in there, Christian Slater. We had no history with him yet. He's the little brother.
5:58 Chris Ryan? Film debut.
5:59 Bill Simmons? Peter Coyote had been bouncing around in the eighties for a while and it just, it was a movie that kind of came and went. I think it was 14th when it, when it was released the first week.
6:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
6:09 Bill Simmons? And then was on cable for the next 15 years straight.
6:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
6:12 Bill Simmons? It was perfect length for TNT, TBS, where you could just do two hours. It was on HBO, it was on Cinemax. It just was never not on.
6:21 Chris Ryan? What is it? An hour thirty-five?
6:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
6:23 Chris Ryan? Hour thirty-five? Yeah.
6:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah, we told Craig, we told him, uh,
6:27 Chris Ryan? I think that's-
6:27 Bill Simmons? Craig, congrats on your new camera angle, by the way.
6:29 Chris Ryan? Thank you, yeah.
6:31 Bill Simmons? We told Craig, 1985, Legitability Gene.
6:35 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
6:36 Bill Simmons? Don't read anything about it. And he looked it up. What was it? A hundred and one minutes?
6:40 Chris Ryan? It's a hundred, it's an hour thirty-five, ninety-five minutes, ninety-seven minutes.
6:43 Bill Simmons? Minutes. He was like, I like that.
6:45 Chris Ryan? I thought it was going to be about tennis. It wasn't.
6:49 Chris Ryan? Sometimes even Billy Jean came or something.
6:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah. But what's interesting 40 years later, watch, I mean, there's, there's two major themes that we had, weren't talking about in the eighties, but there's a female empowerment hero piece to this.
7:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
7:05 Bill Simmons? That I think I liked when I watched it, but as the years pass, dare I say ahead of its time? It's like this, it's Sarah Connor, it's even Joyce Heiser and just one of the guys.
7:18 Chris Ryan? Sure.
7:18 Bill Simmons? Flipping tables and trying to show her newspaper editor that she could get a good story. But there wasn't a lot of these, and this was probably the most famous one.
7:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it's funny to go back and watch this through 2025 eyes, both for the feminism angle and also like the viral celebrity angle and like the idea of somebody becoming like an overnight sensation and taking over. Now in 1980s, it was more of a like a local thing that would then explode nationally.
7:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
7:47 Chris Ryan? Now it can just be instantaneously, you go viral for something and then like you're the biggest thing online for two days and then everybody forgets you. But with the, the, the part about like the female empowerment, it's, it's wild, but like there's so much casual misogyny in this movie. The whole thing basically gets rolling because Mr. Pyatt tries to like sexually assault her and then flip it on her.
8:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
8:10 Chris Ryan? And that's really what, and now the whole time she's just like, I just want to get paid back for the scooter. We're not getting even getting into you being a deviant.
8:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
8:17 Chris Ryan? Because that was probably taken for granted that that's what guys were like back then in some ways.
8:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah, there's no question. She's navigating this misogynist, uh, pretty like hairy world.
8:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
8:29 Bill Simmons? But she's just like, this is the world I'm in and I just know, kind of know, I can read this guy, I know what to do.
8:35 Chris Ryan? Knee him in the balls.
8:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now it'd be like, you know, this would obviously be a completely different movie.
8:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
8:41 Bill Simmons? Uh, it's weird to think that these characters made sense in 1985, but they kind of did. It's like, Mr. Pyatt, totally get it. Complete scumbag, taking a crack at a 16 year old in the attic of a store.
8:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
8:53 Bill Simmons? Uh, and we weren't like, wow, this is horrifying. What like this guy's Hannibal Lecter. But back then I was like, ah.
8:59 Chris Ryan? There's multiple cases of pretty casual child abuse in this movie where you're just like, oh, man. Potter's getting tooled up by her mom again. That's not like, hey, stop everything, call child services. It's like, oh, yeah.
9:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah, even the way the adults talk about her, that basically Peter Coyote's character, the police officer and then in the Mr. Pyatt where they're like, you're a good looking girl, Billie Jean.
9:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
9:22 Bill Simmons? She's 16.
9:24 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
9:24 Bill Simmons? And they're just, they're just like batting off. Craig, were you taken aback by that?
9:28 Speaker 06 Not for the eighties, right?
9:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
9:30 Speaker 06 I'm used to it at this point.
9:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's true. We have indoctrinated.
9:33 Speaker 06 Flames of the eighties.
9:34 Chris Ryan? That's right.
9:34 Speaker 06 For the last five years.
9:35 Chris Ryan? 19, 1980s movies. Yeah.
9:37 Bill Simmons? I think one of the things I really loved about this movie and still really enjoy when I, when I, I had such a great time rewatching this. And it's not like I hadn't seen it in the last, I don't know, five years, but she's such a good character. It's so weird to say this is a well drawn character because this is such a dumb movie. But at the, the first half hour, she's like, really innocent and shy. And she's like, yeah, obviously like coming into her own as a woman and guys are looking at her a certain way and she's still getting used to that. Like even when, when the four guys are hitting on her at the beginning.
10:08 Chris Ryan? Oh, and Hubie's like.
10:09 Bill Simmons? And Hubie's like.
10:10 Chris Ryan? Licking her milkshake straw. Yeah.
10:11 Bill Simmons? She's like, I'm kind of flirting, but I'm kind of horrified. And then by the end, she's the fucking badass.
10:17 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
10:17 Bill Simmons? All this stuff had like, had like, uh, seasoned her in a way for how to, how to actually make the world work in her favor.
10:24 Chris Ryan? At that time, like there was like, you know, obviously Pat Benatar was a pretty big artist, but like gets a huge hit out of this movie. With Invincible, but like Pat Benatar, Madonna, like there were kind of like these pop culture figures that weren't as traditionally, uh, not necessarily not beautiful or not, but like they didn't present as traditional.
10:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah, they were kind of badass.
10:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah, they were badass. They had like one glove and a spiked haircut or whatever. And it was like, things were changing a little bit. I think like that you could see that like people were becoming a little bit more self possessed through the images that they were seeing.
11:03 Bill Simmons? Cyndi Lauper helped.
11:04 Chris Ryan? Of course.
11:05 Bill Simmons? Pat Benatar.
11:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
11:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Madonna. And it was also right around the time when they were figuring out how to use. Famous pop music people, famous artists, whatever, to kind of, to kind of supercharge a movie.
11:18 Chris Ryan? Sure.
11:18 Bill Simmons? Right? And then Top Gun, they really put it all together. But 85 year vision quest, which they put Madonna in with the crazy for you and that great soundtrack. This was like, it's basically the stars of the movie are Helen Slater and Pat Benatar.
11:29 Chris Ryan? Yes.
11:30 Bill Simmons? They play this song three full times in 95 minutes.
11:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And it even.
11:34 Bill Simmons? By the way, I could have gone for four.
11:36 Chris Ryan? It's, it's used as like a theme in the, the score itself. Like they'll go into notes from Invincible.
11:44 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
11:45 Chris Ryan? That like, it's just a very like wise way to kind of build it up. And but that kind of speaks to this movie being right on the cusp of a change in media where, I mean, of course, like people used to, and Barbra Streisand would do the soundtrack for a movie that she might be in and she would sing the theme song or whatever. But this was really like, hey, we can put this on MTV. We can try and sell this girl as an icon. Pat Benatar. It was a sea change for that stuff.
12:10 Bill Simmons? It was like I was telling Craig the other day. This bloody road remains a mystery.
12:19 Chris Ryan? That's what they say with.
12:19 Bill Simmons? What are we waiting for?
12:22 Chris Ryan? That's Aaron Rodgers locker room speech.
12:25 Bill Simmons? It's when he came out holding the flag at that first Jets game. Uh, that song is a banger.
12:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
12:30 Bill Simmons? I have a lot of thoughts about the music in this movie. So you mentioned the, uh, the viral celebrity piece.
12:35 Chris Ryan? Yep.
12:37 Bill Simmons? Once upon a time, we made the case and I think we cemented it. And I think it's become fact and gospel that pump up the volume created podcasts.
12:44 Chris Ryan? Yes.
12:45 Bill Simmons? I think this movie created the internet.
12:49 Chris Ryan? Can I just say, I think that might be the most used trope on this podcast, the story of this podcast. I think Sean has said that three or four times, right?
12:58 Bill Simmons? That created the internet?
12:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Where it'll be like, Daniel Plainview created the internet.
13:02 Bill Simmons? This whole, her becoming a viral celebrity with the fair is fair hashtag.
13:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
13:08 Bill Simmons? And the thing and the, and the merchandising and it's just like, I don't think the movie realizes this because this is not, I wouldn't say this was, you know, this wasn't a Paul Thomas Anderson production, but this movie does see this world coming.
13:22 Chris Ryan? It does.
13:23 Bill Simmons? That is about to happen with Donna Rice and, and, you know, Monica Lewinsky eventually and,
13:29 Chris Ryan? But there's also a couple of-
13:30 Bill Simmons? Tammy Faye Baker, all of these people.
13:32 Chris Ryan? It points out a couple of things that I think are really important. One are, uh, first of all, we've kind of like slighted this movie a couple of times and I do think it's really silly in places. It looks way better than it has any business look.
13:44 Bill Simmons? Did we slight it? I think it should have been nominated for an Oscar. What do you mean? This movie's amazing. If we slighted it, I apologize.
13:52 Chris Ryan? You know, you are finding a generation of kids who are fucking obsessed with television. Like it's Yarley Smith's character. They're like, she's just obsessed with what she sees in TV. She's always like, I saw it on TV. You think I'll be on TV? And then the other thing happens later in the movie, which is kids are starting to get their hands on video cameras.
14:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
14:12 Chris Ryan? And they're starting to tape stuff more and there's-
14:14 Bill Simmons? Including this kid right here, Bill Simmons.
14:18 Bill Simmons? Had a video camera and the Honda Elite scooter.
14:20 Chris Ryan? Did you really?
14:20 Bill Simmons? This movie really resonated with me.
14:22 Chris Ryan? Inside of Your Two Wolves and it's Christian Slater and Keith Gordon.
14:25 Bill Simmons? I had the camera in high school. It weighed 25 pounds. It couldn't have been heavier and more unwieldy and you brought it around and you taped and you had these big giant videotapes.
14:34 Chris Ryan? Yes. And then you have this Keith Gordon character who's probably the first kid in Corpus Christi or whatever, who's like, let's start filming stuff ourself. Let's speak back to television. Like we'll send this tape to the TV stations. We'll take control of this narrative.
14:49 Bill Simmons? Craig, how expensive do you think those cameras were back then?
14:54 Speaker 06 Like, like not adjusting for inflation in 1985, how much do I think that cost?
14:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
14:59 Speaker 06 I have no idea. A hundred dollars?
15:01 Chris Ryan? I mean, that guy's AV setup was sick.
15:03 Bill Simmons? No, uh, doing this from memory, but I'm gonna say at least like $500.
15:07 Chris Ryan? Really?
15:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it was like, it was a luxury item.
15:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
15:12 Bill Simmons? I don't know what the equivalent would be like in.
15:14 Chris Ryan? I remember I got a Sony Hi-8 in high school in the 90s and I, it was like, this is the only present you're ever gonna get for the rest of your life.
15:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and it was like, if you, by the way, if you, if you dropped it or accidentally hit it, the thing was just, there was no way to fix it. It was just gone. Uh, the tapes were really expensive. They were 90, the batteries were like an hour.
15:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
15:36 Bill Simmons? You know, and that, it was just.
15:38 Chris Ryan? They weighed 20 pounds. Yeah.
15:39 Bill Simmons? Yeah, there are all these different ways it could go wrong. We filmed, I did a student project in high school and we filmed a, a movie about our school that was 40 minutes called The, called The Wick Hiker, based on the Hitchhiker, the HBO show.
15:55 Bill Simmons? And we filmed it with, with my camera.
15:57 Chris Ryan? Uh huh.
15:58 Bill Simmons? And, uh, it just was like, we've got to get the, it was almost like the sun's setting, we gotta get this shot now. That was what it was like with these cameras. It's like, we have 32 minutes before this thing dies.
16:08 Chris Ryan? You're like Coppola in the Vaklins now.
16:10 Bill Simmons? Go, go, go, see, action!
16:13 Chris Ryan? Did you have editing equipment?
16:16 Bill Simmons? I, I had the two VCRs.
16:18 Chris Ryan? Oh my god, yeah.
16:20 Bill Simmons? Plug it in with all of these like.
16:21 Chris Ryan? With the dial that you could move back and forth?
16:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I was pretty good with this stuff. And then I don't know what happened. Now I can like barely work a remote.
16:28 Chris Ryan? Well, we have experts now.
16:29 Bill Simmons? You'd have to edit the stuff, edit it the other way, and then, you know, it was just a huge pain in the ass. We had no equipment back then. So that kid's setup for 19, cause they filmed, this movie came out in 85, so they really probably filmed it late 84.
16:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
16:42 Bill Simmons? That kid's setup was, they had security cameras in the house, like, nobody had that back then.
16:46 Chris Ryan? And he had like a full kind of like basically home theater set up for 1984.
16:52 Bill Simmons? Fair is fair.
16:55 Bill Simmons? Great slogan.
16:56 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
16:57 Bill Simmons? I think Gavin Newsom, maybe as he heads toward battling the Trump infrastructure, maybe could start doing the fair as fair.
17:06 Chris Ryan? Honestly, there are worse slogans to use.
17:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah, fair is fair. The director, Matthew Robbins, he said, I was attracted to the screenplay because I hadn't seen anything like it. The empowerment of a female, everybody in the movie was young and powerless. The assumptions were being made by all the adult males. It's kind of a force field the kids are up against. So that was one theme. And then the other one he said was, because he wrote The Sugarland Express with Goldie Hawn. That was Spielberg's first big movie. He said, I was fascinated with notoriety getting confused with fame, which was exactly the same issue in The Sugarland Express. That's a really interesting concept. Notoriety getting confused with fame really starts right here in the mid eighties and goes through where all these people eventually like culminating in the OJ trial.
17:53 Chris Ryan? Someone definitely has a thesis paper that's like from Billie Jean to Hawtua, you know?
17:58 Bill Simmons? Right.
17:58 Speaker 06 I literally have that in my notes.
18:01 Bill Simmons? But that she's the Hawtua of 1985.
18:03 Speaker 06 My flex was like the earnestness, or my flex category was what happens the next day. And I was like, I can't help but think about what would have happened in 2025.
18:12 Chris Ryan? Oh, she would have just gotten.
18:13 Speaker 06 She would have gone on the Hawtua podcast, probably gotten to deal with like the unwell network. And then it's like releasing music by the time she's 25. But in 85, she probably goes back to Corpus Christi and becomes like a schoolteacher.
18:26 Chris Ryan? Comes out hard against the measles vaccine, you know, like.
18:30 Bill Simmons? Well, Kato Kaelin in the OJ trial, I feel like was the culmination of the start of this movie all the way. Where Kato Kaelin just became famous. And he, you know, in the OJ trial, he was just this dude that lived in the guest house. And he brought nothing to the table. He was like a wannabe actor. He'd been in a couple of things and then became like actually truly famous and was on The Tonight Show and was in game shows and was being cast in movies. In 85, that would have been inconceivable, but people were starting to realize like you could use cable TV to become famous right away.
19:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I think the cool thing about this movie too, is that is it starts. When after after she starts to go on the lam, the first reaction of like the kind of community is like, kids are running amok and we gotta put a stop to these kids who are just like terrorizing business owners and stuff.
19:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
19:25 Chris Ryan? And it's really like, whether it's organic or not, but it's really a youth explosion that leads to her becoming this folk hero and then the haircut obviously like makes it into a fashion statement.
19:36 Bill Simmons? There's another piece to this movie that was really particularly the eighties. I'm interested from Craig's standpoint, if he feels like it exists now, like that kids were the good guys and adults were just bad.
19:47 Chris Ryan? And they didn't understand.
19:48 Bill Simmons? That's a big breakfast club. Adults are bad. They don't understand us. They take advantage of us. In some cases, we're threatened by them physically or sexually. And adults are the bad people, but you have adults making movies about this. Like that, this doesn't really exist now in the same way.
20:04 Speaker 06 Uh, I think it's less ageist now and it's more about wealth. I think it's like the Luizzi Mangione in the United Healthcare. Like, I think that is, is the version of the, what's going on.
20:14 Chris Ryan? It's haves and have nots rather than.
20:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
20:16 Chris Ryan? And also.
20:17 Bill Simmons? Back then it was kids versus adults, adults don't understand and root for the kids.
20:23 Chris Ryan? I think there's also an element that this might be simplifying it too much. I don't know if you felt this way, but like in the eighties, it definitely felt like when you were a kid, you just couldn't wait to grow up. Like I, you know, like you really, really, you know, you wanted to meet girls or you wanted to.
20:38 Bill Simmons? I couldn't wait to have sex. Thought about that a lot.
20:42 Chris Ryan? I couldn't wait to get a, get a.
20:44 Bill Simmons? Really thought about that a lot.
20:46 Speaker 06 I bet.
20:47 Bill Simmons? You don't think you're having sex with another person.
20:50 Chris Ryan? I mean, but also like the music that was cool to like your older brother or cousin or the kids who were older than you, that's the music you wanted to like.
20:58 Speaker 06 Yeah.
20:58 Chris Ryan? Like you wanted to get out of being a kid.
21:00 Speaker 06 That's always been the case.
21:01 Chris Ryan? But now I think that there's more stuff for kids to almost stay perpetually young. Like they're served more culture that it's like, yeah, why would I ever just, I would never reject Taylor Swift. I can just listen to Taylor Swift for the rest of my life.
21:16 Speaker 06 Or like Disney adults. There's like a whole new era of these people who have kept the things they loved as, as children and just continue to like it.
21:23 Chris Ryan? Or they can just keep watching that stuff because it's saved in perpetuity rather than when we were young and it was like, well, you can keep renting Goonies. But it's not as easily accessible as like it is now where you'd just be like, oh, I have it on my phone and I can fall asleep to it every night.
21:37 Bill Simmons? And the flip side, Millie Bobby Brown is now a 45 year old. I don't know if you've seen her. She looks like a She's married. 10 year long Today Show anchor. Yeah. She's like 22.
21:52 Bill Simmons? Well, I gotta do it, CR.
21:56 Bill Simmons? Apex Mountain for hottest mid 80s high school babes that teenage Bill loved. Yeah. Right? This is 40 years ago. I still feel like it's fair game to talk about these people. And I, I checked. I'm talking about the love that I had. And Helen Slater was 22 when she made this movie. Yeah, I'm talking about, I'm not talking about me now. Yeah. I'm talking about the love that I had. That's okay. Go for it. In the mid 80s, the feelings that percolated inside me. And I narrowed it down to five. Did you give me a fucking Karl Malone cup while you're talking about this? The mailman. Yeah. Oh, I didn't even think about that. Jesus.
22:35 Bill Simmons? Oh no, that was accidental. Why do you have a Karl Malone cup? I had this from the Dream Team Club collection. I bet to give you Dr. J. I had a Dr. J cup for you. We switched cups. Well, it's almost better that you don't have the Karl Malone cup. Yeah, baby. For this topic. Yeah, but I'm going for how I felt in the 80s. Yeah. Already mentioned Kelly Preston in Secret Admirer and Mischief. Helen Slater and Billie Jean. Joyce Heiser in Just One of the Guys. I think she was like 30 in that movie in real life, but playing a high school. Elizabeth Shum and Karate Kid, we've discussed, and Mia Sarah, Ferris Bueller. Yeah. Those were the five for me. I also was pretty into Jennifer Grey, too. Oh, Jennifer Grey and Ferris Bueller? Yeah.
23:18 Bill Simmons? There were others, but just for like, these, these characters were all in high school. I was in high school and I loved all of them. Yes. And that was it. Rebecca Dimornay, Risky Business. Was she there? Not accessible. Yeah. She was like a 19 year old prostitute. Yeah. I don't, she doesn't count as a high school character. She was like from another galaxy in that movie. Yeah, just couldn't, couldn't get there with Molly Ringwald. Never, even though she was in multiple high school movies back then.
23:42 Chris Ryan? I really liked Sean Young in Stripes, but she was a little bit older.
23:45 Bill Simmons? She was an adult. Yeah. Now, this had to be like in your age where you felt like, like, was Winona Ryder Lucas?
23:52 Chris Ryan? Yep. Like you could meet her.
23:55 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it was like this per- oh, and then the other one, I guess this counts in mid eighties is was Amanda Peterson, Can't Buy Me Love. Cause we were the exact same age as her in that movie. Um, so anyway, it was quite an era. Helen Slater is in that mix.
24:09 Chris Ryan? She sure is, yeah.
24:10 Bill Simmons? She, if we had Dream Team cups for that era, she would have had one.
24:15 Bill Simmons? And, uh.
24:16 Chris Ryan? We should do that. That's good.
24:18 Bill Simmons? Those would be good cups.
24:18 Chris Ryan? That wouldn't be weird at all.
24:20 Bill Simmons? Seven eleven, Dream Team, mid eighties.
24:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I want to get a bunch of teenage girls on cups. Is that cool?
24:27 Chris Ryan? No, Bill. Yeah, no.
24:29 Speaker 06 Only Bill had them when you were in high school.
24:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Bill signed off. No, it's retroactive. It's fine. Uh, she did Supergirl, Billie Jean, Ruthless People, Secret of My Success with Michael J. Fox, and then City Slickers and, and, um, I think she was pretty fairly serious actress, but that was kind of her little run.
24:47 Chris Ryan? And then she went back to school. I think she went to like do other stuff.
24:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Um, and then Christian Slater. This is his first big movie. He's in Name of the Rose, Sean Connery, good movie actually. Tucker, Man in His Dream, and then does the Heathers Pump Up the Vine blows up.
25:02 Chris Ryan? And it's off to the races, Heathers.
25:03 Bill Simmons? But you could see the pieces in here. It's fun to actually watch fifteen year old Christian Slater.
25:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I mean, I, for the longest time, thought they were actually related. They were not. He was in love with her while they made it. Rightfully so. And.
25:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I read that in the research and I'm like, do I even put this in the document that fifteen year old Christian Slater was in love with twenty two year old Helen Slater? When they filmed a movie together for four months? Like, if he hadn't been in love with her, it was like, do you have blood in your body?
25:30 Speaker 06 I found out they aren't siblings right now. I thought they were siblings.
25:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
25:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah. No, they weren't. I think that was a confusing part of this.
25:36 Chris Ryan? You know, I don't have.
25:37 Speaker 06 Cause they kind of look, they're both like platinum blonde in this movie. They look similar now.
25:40 Bill Simmons? He dyed his hair though.
25:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah. You know how you were like, you started this podcast by saying, take me back, you know? Let's just do a list of the most popular movies of July of nineteen eighty five.
25:51 Bill Simmons? I can't wait.
25:52 Chris Ryan? Number one, Back to the Future.
25:54 Bill Simmons? Wow.
25:54 Chris Ryan? Number two, Cocoon.
25:55 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
25:56 Chris Ryan? Pale Rider.
25:57 Bill Simmons? Oh.
25:58 Chris Ryan? Rambo, First Blood, Part Two.
26:00 Bill Simmons? Sure.
26:00 Chris Ryan? Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, St. Elmo's Fire. This is just in the box.
26:04 Bill Simmons? St. Elmo's Fire?
26:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah, this is just stuff that was at the movies. It wasn't necessarily released then. E.T., Goonies, European Vacation. Emerald Forest, Silverado, Pritzy's Honor, Fletch. The Explorers. I know. Beverly Hills Cop, View to a Kill, Brewster's Millions, Red Sonja, Day of the Dead, Legend of Billie Jean.
26:27 Bill Simmons? And you left out like Vision Quest, just one of the guy. Oh, like so many other movies came out during the course of the year. We just had it all figured out.
26:34 Chris Ryan? Well, there was just volume. This is the thing is that the movies are actually in a really good place right now, but there's just not enough of them. There's not enough in the movie theater where you're like, I could go to the theater like four or five times in a week if I wanted to. Or all month, like I could go to the movies. It's like more like an event. You're like, I can't wait.
26:52 Bill Simmons? You just want the four receiver offense and a lot of passing and a lot of plays and hoping to get lucky.
26:57 Chris Ryan? Or it actually would be cool if we got two really good receivers and never pass to them.
27:01 Bill Simmons? You know, I was gonna say, we're in a space now where the Eagles offense of 42 seconds per play, run play, just chewing up clock.
27:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
27:12 Bill Simmons? That's movies in 2025. Back then, we're just chucking the ball.
27:15 Chris Ryan? Yes.
27:15 Bill Simmons? It's like Fletch or Chevy Chase. Yeah, let's make it go. Here's 10 million. This was produced by, uh.
27:22 Chris Ryan? This is hilarious.
27:22 Bill Simmons? John Peters and Peter Gruber. Peter Gruber, uh, who's still, still kicking.
27:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
27:28 Bill Simmons? Uh, part owner of the Warriors and, uh, still producing.
27:31 Chris Ryan? And John Peters immortalized in Licorice Pizza.
27:34 Bill Simmons? John Peters, hairdresser, Barbra Streisand's hairdresser, becomes a movie producer. These guys end up crushing it in the eighties. Not with this movie.
27:46 Bill Simmons? But crush in the eighties and then Sony gives them an incredible amount of money to run Sony and entertainment. And it's a disaster. There's a good book written about it. And John Peters never quite happens to get, but a character.
27:58 Chris Ryan? Yes.
28:00 Bill Simmons? And Matthew Robbins said that John Peters' biggest contribution was being completely obsessed with Helen Slater's hair in the movie and what the haircut was gonna look like when she has her, her famous haircut.
28:11 Chris Ryan? It's producing.
28:11 Bill Simmons? And, uh, he said it was a gigantic issue for him.
28:17 Bill Simmons? There you go.
28:19 Bill Simmons? No budget recorded for this movie.
28:21 Chris Ryan? Uh, yeah. It only made like, what, three, four million?
28:24 Bill Simmons? It made 3.1 million, which is, I don't know, Craig, top, top seven least grossing movies we've done on the rewatchables? What was Pump Up the Volume?
28:34 Chris Ryan? It did better than that.
28:35 Bill Simmons? I think that was low too.
28:37 Chris Ryan? But it did better than 3 million.
28:37 Bill Simmons? You think?
28:38 Chris Ryan? I think so.
28:39 Bill Simmons? I, we, we've rarely done movies that made less than like 5 million.
28:43 Chris Ryan? Did Kicking and Screaming, the Noah Baumbach movie make more than?
28:45 Bill Simmons? That did not make money.
28:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah. That was in like 11 theaters, it feels like.
28:49 Bill Simmons? It made $20 from you and me and another 10 from Greenwald.
28:54 Bill Simmons? And then 100 from the Baumbach family. Kicking and Screaming didn't even make a million.
28:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
28:57 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
28:58 Chris Ryan? Okay, that might be the lowest.
28:59 Bill Simmons? No budget recorded and no Roger Ebert review.
29:03 Chris Ryan? Where was he?
29:04 Bill Simmons? Raj was like, I'm good.
29:07 Bill Simmons? I actually think Raj would have really liked this movie. He would have loved the female empowerment stuff.
29:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
29:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah, all right. Lot to discuss in the categories when we take a break. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is full of decisions, big and small. Like, let's not throw to A.J. Brown this week. It's a small decision. Big decision, let's try to beat the Cowboys. Sometimes you make a decision you can really, really stand behind. I'm trying to think like, I guess when we formed The Ringer.
29:35 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
29:36 Bill Simmons? And we were like, we feel like we can pull this off. We don't care if we're independent. We feel like podcasts could be a big thing of this. And we'll, we'll see where it goes. Trusted our guts.
29:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah, used to behind us.
29:49 Bill Simmons? Spent a lot of time together, just brainstorming, figuring out, out stuff. State Farm gets it. Making confident choices can make all the difference. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to create an affordable price for you. Talked to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose the bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Let's get to the categories. So we got most rewatchable scene. Would you throw the, uh, would you throw the opening credits in here with the Divinyls boys in town?
30:33 Chris Ryan? Number one thing I have here, opening credits.
30:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah. In the running for most underrated mid eighties song?
30:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah, and it's also just like you're immediately like, they shot this movie entirely on location. So like they use like something like eighty five different real locations. It just feels like you're immediately transported and even though they shot it in the winter, it you're like, it is hot summer. Like this is so authentic feeling.
30:59 Bill Simmons? It's funny because Vision Quest starts with, uh, I think it's either Journey or John Waite, but it's same thing like, I'm in somewhere near Seattle. I'm outdoors. I'm watching a guy run and there's a kick ass song playing. It's like, all right, you got me.
31:13 Chris Ryan? Yep.
31:14 Bill Simmons? Uh, this one, same thing where we're just like, I'm in some weird part of Texas. There's guys and there's a gas station and there's a scooter.
31:22 Chris Ryan? You just kind of get the feeling like what's going on. It's like this guy, obviously he's very proud of his scooter, but these four jerks are chasing him around and his sister's hot and like, you know.
31:31 Bill Simmons? And then Hubie steals the scooter. We get the whole, uh,
31:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
31:34 Bill Simmons? whole swimming scene, which was a big thing back in high school way back when. Uh, next one. Billie Jean gets harassed.
31:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
31:41 Bill Simmons? By Mr. Pyatt, who is so fucking evil in this scene. Um, and then gets to come up.
31:48 Chris Ryan? You know what the funniest thing about this? I was gonna save this for later, but I have to mention it now. Is that in my memory, Mr. Pyatt was like an oil baron? And he sells like a, he's like a seashell and souvenir store on the boardwalk.
32:02 Bill Simmons? Right. What's how much is he making?
32:04 Chris Ryan? Didn't have six hundred dollars.
32:05 Bill Simmons? No.
32:06 Chris Ryan? I mean, it's just like, actually like, this guy is just like a piece of shit tourist trap.
32:11 Bill Simmons? Right. We're gonna have a little arrangement, layaway plan. It's like, oh my God, this guy's disgusting. Uh, she gets out of that. I always like when somebody picks up a gun.
32:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
32:23 Bill Simmons? In a movie. No, in a movie.
32:25 Chris Ryan? No.
32:25 Bill Simmons? And they're like, hey, what's this? And you just know somebody's gonna get shot. And you're like, ah, it's like, ah, boy, here we go. Somebody's taking a bullet.
32:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
32:33 Bill Simmons? Usually like the bullet right like.
32:34 Chris Ryan? That looks like it was like an inch above his heart.
32:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
32:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
32:38 Bill Simmons? Check with these movies, sometimes when somebody gets innocently shot, but they're fine. When you actually think about getting shot.
32:44 Chris Ryan? That was much more of an eighties thing. It was like, ah, just have like a, my arms are like swinging.
32:48 Bill Simmons? Spots and up here that you could get shot and maybe it's okay. Other than that, you're getting a shattered shoulder. You're shot in the heart and dying immediately. You're getting a shattered collarbone.
32:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And what's the response time for Corpus Christi paramedics? Like that's a lot of blood loss. He's like, I lost two pints.
33:04 Bill Simmons? Right.
33:07 Bill Simmons? The mall exchange.
33:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
33:08 Bill Simmons? The mall exchange gone wrong with a sped up rebel yell by Billy Idol.
33:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
33:15 Chris Ryan? Chekhov's marbles.
33:16 Bill Simmons? This could have just been the whole movie.
33:17 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
33:18 Bill Simmons? I could have spent thirty minutes in the mall.
33:21 Chris Ryan? The Sunrise Mall in Corpus Christi and I just, I wanted some more stores. We only really get floor shime in the background.
33:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I don't know where Spencer's Gifts was.
33:30 Chris Ryan? Where we, I guess they were probably in KB Toys when they're getting all the G.I. Joe walkie talkies and stuff.
33:35 Bill Simmons? KB Toys, there, there should have been like some sort of foot locker type.
33:39 Chris Ryan? You gotta have an Orange Julius store.
33:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah, where was Orange Julius? Where was a weird pizza place? But um, something about the malls back then, I don't know why, why people just haven't tried to recreate that.
33:51 Chris Ryan? Why they haven't recreated?
33:51 Bill Simmons? I know Craig, I know Craig, it's near and dear to his heart.
33:54 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I just in general, the mid eighties, the mall era, it's like the Duffer Brothers cashed out on this with Stranger Things. It's the most nostalgic era to go back to. It sounds wonderful. I caught the tail end of malls. Uh, in my childhood, I used to go to the mall in the Bay Area that was near me. But I gue- I guess kids still go a little bit, but it's just hard. Nobody, nobody shops in person anymore. There's no reason to go. Half of them are shut down.
34:15 Bill Simmons? Maybe they'll come back like movie theaters did. The people are going to movie theaters again. Maybe malls will come back.
34:20 Chris Ryan? Cause here it's like the outdoor malls like kind of pervert your idea of what they're supposed to be. But yeah, maybe. I don't know.
34:28 Bill Simmons? Couple of good things in this part. Uh, the two mustache guys that worked for Peter Coyote. There's like a whole separate movie going on over those guys. At one point he does the midnight run, like a couple punch to the chest.
34:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
34:41 Bill Simmons? And then they're just, they just seem like uh, it's a buddy cop that they just decided not to address. And then Hubie coming out of the plants is fucking hilarious. He was ah!
34:51 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
34:52 Bill Simmons? I can't wait to talk about him.
34:53 Chris Ryan? Please.
34:54 Bill Simmons? Uh, Billie Jean watching Joan of Arc get set on fire and unleashing her new haircut for the videotaping.
35:04 Bill Simmons? Iconic scene.
35:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And then that's where she, you know, they meet Lloyd there. You get some really great hallmarks of a rich guy house.
35:13 Bill Simmons? It's dark. There's no lights on anywhere.
35:15 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
35:15 Bill Simmons? If you're super rich, you apparently don't use electricity anymore. You've transcended it.
35:20 Chris Ryan? But it's also-
35:21 Bill Simmons? You have security cameras all over the place. You can't see anything because everything's pitch black.
35:24 Chris Ryan? He's got the slide from his bedroom into the pool. It's like one of the great dreams of my life is to have that.
35:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, except nobody would ever actually have that.
35:34 Chris Ryan? I know. It's probably a fire hazard.
35:37 Bill Simmons? Can you imagine when we were doing my house, if I said to my wife, so I'm thinking, out of Ben's bedroom, a giant slide, like-
35:45 Chris Ryan? It's the most 13 year old invention ever.
35:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
35:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
35:48 Bill Simmons? It's the best.
35:48 Chris Ryan? But it's like a perfect, like, probably divorced dad, for sure. Just being like, I gotta buy this kid's affection, so whatever he wants.
35:55 Bill Simmons? I got some money, like, yeah.
35:56 Chris Ryan? It's Corpus Christi, like, they'll do whatever.
35:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Also, for Keith Gordon's character, for being a pretty cool guy for the most part.
36:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
36:05 Bill Simmons? But yet is also like, basically, who's the guy who did the Michael Jackson thriller? All the creatures for that?
36:11 Chris Ryan? Oh, Stan Winston?
36:14 Bill Simmons? No, that guy, I can't remember the name, but he's-
36:16 Chris Ryan? Oh, Vincent Price.
36:17 Bill Simmons? No, no, the guy who like made the mask, I can't remember, who did American Werewolf in London and Thriller, all those. He's basically has this weird horror movie side.
36:26 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
36:27 Bill Simmons? And it's really weird.
36:28 Chris Ryan? Well-
36:29 Bill Simmons? It's not like normal weird. It's not like, come to my room.
36:31 Chris Ryan? That was what horror was back then, was like weird guys who would read-
36:36 Bill Simmons? But imagine that guy taking a girl back to his room that he's been dating.
36:40 Chris Ryan? Well, was it Rick Baker?
36:41 Bill Simmons? Rick Baker. Rick Baker. Yeah, it's like, yeah, come to my room. You can see my 20 horror movie mask characters.
36:49 Chris Ryan? He spends a lot of time on his own. I didn't, I mean, Lloyd probably has like a nice chunk of change in his pocket.
36:54 Bill Simmons? For the amount of time he's, I had this as a nitpick later, for the amount of time he spends on his own, he sure knows how to like vibe with the fucking super hot Billie Jean.
37:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And he's also wearing a pretty cool suit when she shows up.
37:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
37:07 Chris Ryan? It's just like hanging out in a suit.
37:08 Bill Simmons? That character's all over the place. It's like, is this guy, is this guy a loner dork? Is he cool? What is he?
37:15 Bill Simmons? Billie Jean's tape getting played in the police station with the Ferris fair is just great. And the little kid doing the arms. Uh, I think that's a really good scene, the actual, like, her talking to camera.
37:26 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
37:27 Bill Simmons? Mr. Pyatt, you sleaze.
37:32 Bill Simmons? I put in crazy couple chases Billie Jean and shoots at guns at her for the ransom.
37:36 Chris Ryan? I had that for one stage of the worst, but yeah.
37:38 Bill Simmons? Well, it's just so insane. I kind of enjoy it.
37:40 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
37:40 Bill Simmons? Like, like, I'm gonna shoot the tires. It shoots through the windshield twice.
37:44 Chris Ryan? But it also is like, kind of indicative of how these stories tend to get a grip on people and drive them kind of crazy.
37:53 Bill Simmons? I think this is my winner. Billie Jean gets exchanged around Texas as Pat Benatar cranks Invincible for five minutes. Also, Kid Cudi's Surto Happiness Award, Best Needle Drop.
38:03 Chris Ryan? By far.
38:03 Bill Simmons? It's like she calls, she calls the cops to kind of, she's like, I'm going on my own.
38:07 Chris Ryan? There's so many.
38:08 Bill Simmons? No one attached to me. And then it's like,
38:12 Bill Simmons? this bloody road remains a mystery.
38:19 Chris Ryan? There's so many great eighties cars in that scene. Like, there's like a Celica. There's like a good Mazda.
38:26 Bill Simmons? What are we waiting for?
38:32 Bill Simmons? Also, like, how did this exchange network work with no internet?
38:36 Chris Ryan? I don't know. With no cell phones?
38:38 Bill Simmons? What's going on?
38:40 Chris Ryan? I mean, it's pretty cool, though. It's pretty cool.
38:43 Bill Simmons? I didn't ask questions. I loved it.
38:45 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Then there's the one guy with the motorcycle.
38:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
38:48 Chris Ryan? Who's like, he's in the Sons of Anarchy, but looks like Fabio.
38:53 Bill Simmons? Then, at one point, she goes downstairs.
38:55 Chris Ryan? To a rave. Yeah.
38:56 Bill Simmons? And there's this like,
38:57 Chris Ryan? It's supposed to be a rave.
38:58 Bill Simmons? Whole thing. And it's basically a live podcast.
39:02 Chris Ryan? No, I think it was supposed to be like,
39:04 Bill Simmons? Billie Jean Davies, sponsored by State Farm.
39:08 Chris Ryan? Tonight on the Billie Jean Davies Show.
39:10 Bill Simmons? Today, I'm gonna talk to my brother Binks about his scooter.
39:15 Bill Simmons? But yeah, so everyone applauds, they go nuts. What's the next hour? There after that?
39:21 Chris Ryan? Meet and greet, step and repeat.
39:23 Bill Simmons? Just check, hey, good luck.
39:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
39:25 Bill Simmons? Great to see you.
39:28 Bill Simmons? And then Billie Jean burns down Pyatt Store. Joan of Arc burns down. People sadly throw Billie Jean merchandise into the, into the fire.
39:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
39:39 Bill Simmons? And the director's like, should we do Invincible for a third time? Yeah.
39:47 Chris Ryan? John Peters is like, yes.
39:51 Bill Simmons? The director's like, what about Love is a Battlefield? Maybe we switch Benatar and they're like, nope, nope.
39:55 Chris Ryan? We paid for Invincible, you can use it.
39:58 Bill Simmons? So what do you have for most rewatchable?
39:59 Chris Ryan? Uh, her coming out of the, the scene at Lloyd's house, like her coming out of the house and making the tape the first time. And that's got my favorite line of the movie where the Potter sisters really are like putters like, oh my God, you look. And then Christian Slater's like, you look famous.
40:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there you go. That's when the internet was created right there. That created Twitter.
40:23 Chris Ryan? Steve Wachyak was like that.
40:25 Bill Simmons? We gotta do that. I have an idea. What's the most 1985 thing about this movie? I mean, the answer is everything, but some nominees, the key musical moments for Pat Benatar, the divinels, Billy Idol.
40:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:38 Bill Simmons? The Honda Elite scooter. This is right when it was really climbing. In Pyatt's store, there's a huge stand of Panama Jack Sunstream.
40:49 Chris Ryan? With like negative five SPF.
40:53 Bill Simmons? It's basically putting gasoline on your body.
40:55 Chris Ryan? Pure peanut oil.
40:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I don't know if, I think Panama Jack, I think that it's all been outlawed.
41:01 Chris Ryan? What if Kennedy's like, we gotta bring back Panama Jack. That's a great American company.
41:10 Bill Simmons? We need Tanner people.
41:14 Bill Simmons? We see at one point, gas is a dollar and five cents.
41:17 Chris Ryan? Oh my God, that was probably high.
41:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah. We've seen this in a couple of other movies we've done. Multiple people don't know each other, watching a wall of TVs in a store.
41:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
41:27 Bill Simmons? I want to go back to that.
41:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And then like that being how you found out about like major events.
41:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, how you found out about major news.
41:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
41:35 Bill Simmons? An authentic beta movie camera, I think is the winner. I do want to shout out Hubie's shorts. In the scene when they steal the bike. We called them back in the day jams. Or at least we did where I lived, the shorts, they were like, had like these crazy patterns. They almost looked like they'd been electrocuted.
41:53 Chris Ryan? It was like, it was also like very indicative of in the summer, if you were a kid, you wore swim trunks all day long. Cause you never know, you never know when you might swim.
42:02 Bill Simmons? Right, but they were like, they were like, they could go swim, swim trunks, but you could also just wear them when you went out.
42:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
42:09 Bill Simmons? They, they all had like weird designs and colors and this was a two year run that I can't really explain.
42:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it was day to night. It was okay to wear to the beach, but it was also okay to wear to Chili's. You know, you missed the biggest 1985 thing and I can't believe we haven't talked about it yet.
42:22 Bill Simmons? Let's hear it.
42:22 Chris Ryan? Jimmy J. Judge, C101 Talk Radio.
42:25 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
42:26 Chris Ryan? Just taking calls about local crime and weather and playing hot tunes.
42:40 Bill Simmons? It's like, five years later, that makes no sense.
42:43 Chris Ryan? Also, the only thing anyone in all of Corpus Christi is constantly listening to is Jimmy J. It's how Banks finds out that they have to go on the run. It's like they listen to it all the time in the car. I don't think I ever realized until this viewing of this movie, they never leave Corpus Christi.
42:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
42:59 Chris Ryan? Like they don't even get out of town.
43:00 Bill Simmons? Right. I think it's Corpus Christi. Is it like London?
43:05 Chris Ryan? I know.
43:09 Bill Simmons? What was the most 1985 thing for you? What jumped out watching it, Craig?
43:13 Speaker 06 Oh, man. I mean, her hair, probably. The haircut choice has to be the most 80s thing.
43:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
43:19 Chris Ryan? I gotta say, Jimmy J. Judge is up there with my favorite movie radio DJs with Clint in Play Misty for Me.
43:27 Bill Simmons? Oh.
43:27 Chris Ryan? Steven Wright, DJ in Reservoir Dogs.
43:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
43:32 Chris Ryan? Uh, was it Lynn Thigpen in The Warriors?
43:34 Bill Simmons? Don't forget about Ellen Barkin in The Fan.
43:37 Chris Ryan? Ellen Barkin in The Fan and then.
43:38 Bill Simmons? Playing the fabulous Sports Babe.
43:39 Chris Ryan? Adrian Barbeau in The Fog.
43:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
43:41 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
43:42 Bill Simmons? That's a good one. Let's say it's the best. Mr. Pyatt is just an amazing eighties villain. I don't think he's gotten enough credit for how disgusting he was in every respect. Really, really like well drawn out. I fucking hate this guy. I'm glad his store is burning down by the end of the movie.
44:01 Chris Ryan? And also like the, it's perfect that he actually has this store that he has because that's the guy who would get T-shirts printed up as fast as possible.
44:10 Bill Simmons? I had, uh, exchange scenes in an eighties mall going wrong.
44:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
44:15 Bill Simmons? Feels like a recurring theme, like we'll meet there 12:30.
44:18 Chris Ryan? Meet me in public somewhere.
44:19 Bill Simmons? Always like places for the cops to hide and there's plants and weird stores and then chases and escalators and people could hop from the escalator going down and the one going up. Always worked. What'd you have? I had a few more.
44:32 Chris Ryan? Uh, young Christian Slater.
44:34 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
44:34 Chris Ryan? Uh, Billie Jean's haircut becoming a local phenomenon is pretty good.
44:39 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
44:39 Chris Ryan? And I love, um, in the mall after the exchange goes bad, the local TV doing man on the street responses. And the woman's just like, they're just picking on her because she's a lady. And he goes like, there you have a woman's perspective.
44:53 Bill Simmons? The female perspective. He's like kind of poo pooing it off. He's like, alright. Uh, I had any time in a movie when people shoplift with IOU notes?
45:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
45:04 Bill Simmons? That, I don't think it's ever happened in real life.
45:06 Chris Ryan? Isn't that basically Klarna?
45:11 Chris Ryan? You're gonna, it's like, I have a dollar. I'll be back.
45:16 Bill Simmons? The, the fact that the Slaters aren't related, but they actually genuinely look like their brother and sister.
45:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
45:22 Bill Simmons? Here's, here's one that I, I honestly could have used more of in the eighties and nineties. When characters found an empty, really nice suburban semi mansion to hide in for a couple of days.
45:32 Chris Ryan? Amazing.
45:33 Bill Simmons? Why did we stop doing this?
45:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
45:34 Bill Simmons? This is the whole plot of Beverly Hills Cop 2.
45:36 Chris Ryan? This is why, like, maybe Ring cameras were a mistake. You know what I mean?
45:41 Bill Simmons? That would have been a good hot take.
45:43 Chris Ryan? You don't get to find out. You don't get to find out that a bunch of teens have been living in your house while you were on vacation.
45:49 Bill Simmons? Seems great. I mean, it could have been the whole movie. They're just living there and ordering, uh, whatever, delivery, pizza delivery. I had, uh, eighties high school bad guys.
45:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
45:58 Bill Simmons? Like Hubie's crew, Cobra Kai.
46:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:02 Bill Simmons? James Spader's crew in Pretty in Pink, like just. They're some of the most evil people we had in movies.
46:08 Chris Ryan? Always a blonde guy.
46:09 Bill Simmons? Seventeen year old, yeah.
46:10 Chris Ryan? Always a blonde guy.
46:11 Bill Simmons? Always like super flirty and borderline sexual harassment. They're always chewing gum.
46:15 Chris Ryan? Named like Hubie or Bart or some shit.
46:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and at the end, they have some sort of realization that maybe this was the wrong way to go.
46:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:23 Bill Simmons? Hubie at the end of this movie is like, yeah, I'm gonna let my dad burn to death. I don't care. Go get a pizza.
46:30 Bill Simmons? Johnny Lawrence, the Danicratic Kid.
46:32 Chris Ryan? Fuck this, I'm going to TCU in the fall. It's too heavy for me.
46:38 Bill Simmons? This is a deep cut. What's Age of the Best? Movie characters getting mad that the ransom number for them wasn't high enough?
46:45 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah. Keith Gordon being like, huh?
46:47 Bill Simmons? Only 10K.
46:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:49 Bill Simmons? I like anytime that happens.
46:51 Chris Ryan? That's actually a ton of money for 1985 in Texas. Yeah.
46:56 Bill Simmons? I like anytime a movie character says, your money let you get away with anything.
47:02 Bill Simmons? Lloyd's hostage plan, which is ridiculous, but I also have it as a What's Age of the Best, like really inventive way to try to get laid.
47:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
47:09 Bill Simmons? She's like, I just, I just need to stay around Billie Jean and keep taking shots.
47:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah, he knows what he's doing. Also, like, just like him being like, I'm super into Houdini, so this is a chance to put my, my tricks into action.
47:22 Bill Simmons? Mark Saffin did the theme music for this. He also did the closing in song for the golf course chase.
47:30 Chris Ryan? Yep.
47:32 Bill Simmons? Do you know what song he did that's an absolutely all time iconic 80s movie song?
47:37 Chris Ryan? No.
47:40 Bill Simmons? Win in the End in Teen Wolf.
47:41 Chris Ryan? Really?
47:42 Bill Simmons? The whole basketball scene. Win in the end. I'm gonna win in the end. You don't remember that one, Craig? From Teen Wolf?
47:52 Chris Ryan? No.
47:54 Bill Simmons? It's like five minutes of, of him just singing Win in the End.
47:57 Chris Ryan? The, uh, the music in the scene where she walks out and, and, uh, she first gets her haircut, I'm pretty convinced is just like where Stranger Things got the music.
48:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I mean, this could have been a hottest take. I think Stranger Things really studied like three, four movies.
48:17 Speaker 06 It's like ET.
48:18 Bill Simmons? ET, I think they studied this movie.
48:20 Chris Ryan? Maybe Goonies in this, yeah.
48:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I think there was some Karate Kid in there.
48:24 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Eleven having the haircut.
48:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I, but I think that, I think if you gave true serum to those guys, I think they would admit they watched this movie.
48:32 Chris Ryan? I think they would admit it, yeah, yeah.
48:35 Bill Simmons? Big Kahuna Burger Award, best use of food and drink.
48:39 Bill Simmons? I just always enjoy when somebody dumps a milkshake on a movie billy. That's, that's just gonna win me over every time.
48:46 Chris Ryan? It's also very 1980s to be like, it's hot out, let's get like a big cup of milk.
48:50 Bill Simmons? Right, who would get a milkshake in 98 degree weather, 1:00 in the afternoon?
48:56 Chris Ryan? I had the, uh, the shopping cart full of junk food that Potter, Potter tries to buy in the convenience store. It's like all Butterfingers.
49:03 Bill Simmons? Right.
49:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
49:05 Bill Simmons? Great shot order award, most cinematic shot. There is a nice big wide shot of them lying on that, whatever that big wood thing is in the lake.
49:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
49:12 Bill Simmons? And it just seems calm and quiet and you're like, oh man, something bad's gonna happen.
49:15 Speaker 06 The hair reveal is cool when it starts down at the pool.
49:18 Chris Ryan? This is shot by Jeff Kimball, Jeffrey Kimball, who shot fucking Top Gun.
49:23 Bill Simmons? Wow, that makes sense, yeah.
49:24 Chris Ryan? It looks really, really good.
49:27 Bill Simmons? Chess Rockwell Brock Leonard's award for best character name. Billie Jean Davies is pretty good.
49:32 Chris Ryan? Awesome.
49:33 Bill Simmons? I do love Binks. And I, and I, but I, I think the winner is Hubie Pyatt. That's just somebody you wanna punch in the face, yeah.
49:41 Chris Ryan? We don't name kids Hubie anymore, do we?
49:44 Speaker 06 Nor Binks.
49:45 Chris Ryan? I think Binks is a nickname, right?
49:47 Speaker 06 Oh, is it?
49:48 Chris Ryan? I'd assume.
49:48 Speaker 06 For what?
49:49 Bill Simmons? So his name would be Binks Davy?
49:51 Chris Ryan? I would assume his name's like Bradley or Bobby or something like that.
49:55 Bill Simmons? What do you have for a flex category, Sierra?
49:57 Chris Ryan? Um, I have a couple, but I, I did, can we do Z, does he want now? Can we talk it out?
50:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
50:04 Chris Ryan? Does Lloyd get heavy into VHS porn? Cause I think it's a play.
50:09 Bill Simmons? He becomes like Buttman?
50:13 Chris Ryan? He's got all the equipment, you know? He's got a little bit of startup capital. He's had his taste of crime.
50:23 Chris Ryan? I think that.
50:24 Bill Simmons? He launches a competitor of Vivid Video.
50:26 Chris Ryan? Binks moves to Burlington, Vermont and becomes a scooper at an early Ben and Jerry's store. And kind of bums around the mountains, sells some bad acid at a Dead show and gets his ass kicked.
50:38 Chris Ryan? Lloyd's dad winds up having a low key role in the David Koresh standoff.
50:45 Chris Ryan? Hubie becomes lieutenant governor. And Billie Jean gets embroiled in a year long, years long copyright litigation.
50:51 Bill Simmons? He's the governor in Texas for like 28 years. What do you mean? I actually ironically put this in the rundown after Unanswerable Questions. And I had the Zouan air word, what happened the next day? Binks eventually becomes the father to Doug McCray.
51:06 Chris Ryan? That's good.
51:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Yeah, that's his dad. His dad is Binks.
51:12 Chris Ryan? I, his idea of what Vermont is like must be so fucked up because it's just that chick on a poster.
51:19 Bill Simmons? I mean, honestly, even people in Vermont are like, dude.
51:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah, don't get your hopes up.
51:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah. It's Vermont's fine.
51:26 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
51:27 Speaker 06 Do kids still hang up posters of hot women in their rooms growing up? Did Ben do that?
51:31 Bill Simmons? No.
51:32 Speaker 06 What a shame.
51:33 Chris Ryan? It's because it's all on their phone, right?
51:34 Speaker 06 Yeah. That's a bummer.
51:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I had some good ones.
51:38 Speaker 06 That's such a vibe.
51:39 Chris Ryan? I, Kathy Ireland.
51:41 Speaker 06 Sure.
51:42 Chris Ryan? On my wall.
51:43 Bill Simmons? I like Hubie being, uh, being in some sort of major political role in Texas.
51:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
51:48 Bill Simmons? Like playing off the Billie Jean thing.
51:50 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
51:50 Bill Simmons? I learned my lessons.
51:53 Bill Simmons? The Butch's girlfriend award, weak link of the film. It's either Billie Jean saving the Kenny, the random abuse kid. That whole section or Billie Jean getting shot at by these two people trying to get a ransom. That whole section of the movie. By the way, I like that whole section of the movie. It's just, we're, we kind of go sideways there for a second.
52:11 Chris Ryan? I know that Yardley Smith is like in, in, in an interview was like, I don't understand why my character gets her period. It's like in the middle of this movie for the first time. But I do think the child abuse section where it's just like, you gotta save Kenny. It's like, well, I'm on the run from the law, so I can't do that.
52:26 Bill Simmons? I like when she comes out of the house and she's like. Kenny's gonna live with his grandmother and the crowd's like, yeah.
52:34 Chris Ryan? And little we do know the grandmother's worse than the fucking dad.
52:37 Bill Simmons? Kenny has CT, but he's gonna live with his grandmother. Um, what's age the worst?
52:44 Bill Simmons? We mentioned earlier, but dreaming about someday living in Vermont.
52:51 Bill Simmons? Like, why not go, I don't know, like California?
52:56 Chris Ryan? Well, I think it's because it's 120 degrees.
52:58 Speaker 06 He hates the heat and he has, he's only seen one poster of Vermont. He probably can't name another city there.
53:02 Chris Ryan? He thinks all of Vermont is chicks who are naked underneath their ski suits.
53:06 Bill Simmons? It would have been funny if he had just saw Hot Dog, the movie.
53:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
53:09 Bill Simmons? And was like, this is my jam.
53:10 Chris Ryan? This is the jam.
53:11 Bill Simmons? Yeah, this is what I need. What do you have? I have a few.
53:14 Chris Ryan? I have a good old boy taking a shot at Billy with a hunting rifle while she's surrounded by kids in order to get the down payment for his house. Pretty fucked up.
53:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
53:23 Chris Ryan? And, uh, station wagons fishtailing a lot. You know, we, we just have better suspensions now.
53:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
53:30 Chris Ryan? But like, that was like, some of those fucking cars were really dangerous back then.
53:35 Bill Simmons? It's a good point because the chase scenes were just better back then, but it's because the cars were worse.
53:40 Chris Ryan? Cars would just like spin.
53:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
53:41 Chris Ryan? Out, but like now it's like.
53:43 Bill Simmons? Really good point.
53:44 Chris Ryan? Thank you.
53:45 Bill Simmons? Um, thanks. I would, what's age the worst? I would have toned down Benatar and Invincible, maybe by one song or brought it up by another three.
53:55 Chris Ryan? Here's a.
53:55 Bill Simmons? I don't think it was at the right number. Maybe five more or two less.
53:59 Chris Ryan? It's too bad that I think Pat Benatar has a strange relationship to this movie, but it would have been great if she would have recorded like an acoustic version. To play like during the sex scene, you know, or something.
54:09 Bill Simmons? So I read in the research, she didn't like this movie.
54:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
54:12 Bill Simmons? But then I don't, I didn't know if that was true because she still plays it at concerts.
54:15 Chris Ryan? Well, I mean, it's her song. I think she's just like, this is the song from the dumbest movie ever made. Come on, Pat.
54:23 Bill Simmons? That, I mean, that gets, I almost want to break out the fuck you Raj for that, for Pat.
54:29 Chris Ryan? Settle down, Pat.
54:30 Bill Simmons? Settle the fuck down, Pat. Like, what other song in a movie does she even have at this point?
54:39 Bill Simmons? The way adults talk to Billie Jean, we mentioned. The original title of this film was Fair is Fair?
54:45 Chris Ryan? Tough.
54:47 Bill Simmons? You like that more or less than Legend of Billie Jean?
54:49 Chris Ryan? I think if it had been called Fair is Fair, I wonder if it does better at the box office. But it does not become a cult classic the way it did.
54:57 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
54:57 Chris Ryan? Because it's called Legend of Billie Jean.
54:59 Bill Simmons? Here's my big one. So, and it makes sense because in the research, they said this, they had to do some reshoots. And her hair was different, so she had to wear a wig for some of the scenes. You could just, it's like, it's really bad. Like, she, she looks like, there's a couple of scenes where she just looks like she has Steve Kerr's hair and the 98 Bulls. It just makes no sense. And then it goes back to the old hair.
55:26 Bill Simmons? But man, I wish, it's funny that Peters cared so much about the haircut and then didn't care that that was the worst thing ever.
55:31 Chris Ryan? He was on to Batman by then, yeah.
55:33 Bill Simmons? He's like, whatever, I'm moved on to Top Gun. All right, let's do one more break and then we'll do the rest of the 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 conditions. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9.
56:15 Bill Simmons? 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. Get tickets now.
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57:27 Bill Simmons? All right, Ruffalo Han and Rubenek Partridge over acting word. Putter's mom? Who's just the worst person in the movie?
57:35 Chris Ryan? I was gonna go Kenny's dad.
57:36 Bill Simmons? Oh, Kenny's dad, okay.
57:37 Chris Ryan? It seemed like he was really methoding out there. Like, all right, so I've been living in the back of this trailer for like two months. They're like, hey, we just need you for one scene.
57:44 Bill Simmons? Can you just be evil and smelly?
57:47 Bill Simmons? CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. How does take a word? What do you got?
57:50 Chris Ryan? I think in my lifetime, mass media should have stopped evolving right at the moment of this movie depicts. So that would basically be early cable, radio.
58:03 Chris Ryan? You have some people who have like video cameras. So there is like, you're able to make your own stuff.
58:09 Bill Simmons? But not easily.
58:10 Chris Ryan? And it just basically means that I would never have a job and I would work at a record store for the rest of my life. But I'd be okay with that if we could go back to like. This moment, because it was just so perfect in my mind.
58:20 Bill Simmons? Movies, music, TV.
58:22 Chris Ryan? Probably most people who are like, I would like to go back to when it was like, I was 10. That was the perfect moment, like whether it was this game platform or this kind of like the cable TV. Like you had HBO, but that was it. Everybody probably thinks that for whatever they are. But it was like, this is just such a perfect moment in my mind. Like, I still remember sitting in the backseat of my mom's car and like, listening to W M M R or Eagle 106 and just be like, these, these are the only 20 songs I need to know.
58:49 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Eighty-four and eighty-five. You're right. We had it all figured out.
58:55 Bill Simmons? My take, Keith Gordon. widest range of excellent performance to horrible performance of any actor of the last 50 years.
59:04 Chris Ryan? In this film specifically or across the course of his career?
59:08 Bill Simmons? He has a run. I think he's really good in this movie. He's pretty good in Dress to Kill. He's good in Christine. He's horrific in Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield. It's one of the worst performances of the eighties. And Christine, he's kind of all over the place. I don't know what he's going for there.
59:27 Chris Ryan? And to be fair, the, I.
59:28 Bill Simmons? And then Jaws, Jaws two, pretty solid. But he's just all over. I don't have a read for him at all.
59:35 Chris Ryan? He became a director.
59:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
59:36 Chris Ryan? He did a midnight clear, which is really good. Did he direct Chocolate War? I can't remember who, or is he in Chocolate War?
59:41 Bill Simmons? He directed a bunch of ones.
59:43 Chris Ryan? Anyway, he's, but he's become like a very good director. Yeah, but good. That's, that's a hot take.
59:47 Bill Simmons? He was in kind of more movies than maybe he should have been. I think we would have been good with like three Keith Gordon movies, but he's in six?
59:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah. It's funny. He's like, kind of like the, uh,
59:58 Chris Ryan? he's like off-brand Matthew Broderick a little bit.
1:00:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah, like darker.
1:00:03 Chris Ryan? He has that, he has that like, kind of like a little bit of like, I'm, I'm a little bit of a nerd, but I can also be cool, you know?
1:00:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but I also.
1:00:10 Chris Ryan? Like I could see him in War Games.
1:00:11 Bill Simmons? Also might have tried heroin.
1:00:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:00:14 Bill Simmons? Um, casting what ifs, couldn't find any.
1:00:16 Chris Ryan? Nah, me neither.
1:00:18 Bill Simmons? Best that guy word. Yardley Smith as putter?
1:00:22 Chris Ryan? Lisa Simpson.
1:00:23 Bill Simmons? Is she Yardley Smith?
1:00:24 Chris Ryan? I think she's Lisa Simpson. She's Lisa Simpson. I had Barry Tubb, who was Wolfman in Top Gun, and he's QB in this movie.
1:00:32 Bill Simmons? I had Richard Bradford as Mr. Pyatt, because the only other thing, he's just one of those guys. He was in The Untouchables, apparently.
1:00:38 Chris Ryan? Yeah, he's the, he's the cop who's like, this is a cop's bar.
1:00:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I never knew that guy's name. I knew who Barry Tubb's name was from-
1:00:46 Chris Ryan? Let's do Bradford, you're right.
1:00:47 Bill Simmons? Barry Tubb I knew from Top Gun.
1:00:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:00:49 Bill Simmons? And he's been in some other stuff, too. Dion Waiters Award, I don't think the undercover mustache cops can win this. It's probably Putter.
1:00:57 Chris Ryan? It's Dean Stockwell, what are you talking about?
1:00:59 Bill Simmons? Dean Stockwell?
1:01:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:01:01 Bill Simmons? Really?
1:01:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah, he comes in, he's like, I'm fucking 10 months away from making Paris, Texas. He's like a really good actor and I'm just gonna be the District Attorney of Corpus Christi. And the scene he has with Peter Coyote in the beginning where he's like, yeah, this is pretty smart to do it this way. Like, if you were gonna do it, like, blah blah, really good scene. He's good.
1:01:21 Bill Simmons? I go with Putter, I think Putter's funny.
1:01:24 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:01:25 Bill Simmons? Recasting Couch Director of City, can I offer you young James Spader as Lloyd?
1:01:31 Chris Ryan? In the same city, or you want to move it to like Concord, New Hampshire or something?
1:01:34 Bill Simmons? No, I think he Texas's it up. By the way, Keith Corr had no accent in this movie, Corpus Christi.
1:01:41 Chris Ryan? I assume he goes to private school.
1:01:42 Speaker 06 What about young Cusack for Lloyd?
1:01:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:01:45 Speaker 06 18, 19 years old at this time.
1:01:47 Bill Simmons? There you go, Craig.
1:01:48 Chris Ryan? There you go.
1:01:49 Bill Simmons? It's a great one.
1:01:49 Speaker 06 I'm gonna crush that.
1:01:51 Bill Simmons? I have a rarely seen recasting a music scene choice.
1:01:55 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:01:55 Bill Simmons? Because I felt like this was one, one away from being a pretty great soundtrack. The golf course scene, the song's not good enough.
1:02:06 Bill Simmons? Pretty Persuasion by R.E.M.
1:02:08 Chris Ryan? Ooh.
1:02:09 Bill Simmons? Needed something with a little kick where they're running. And I think that was, I went through all of my 80's playlists trying to find the perfect one, and I think that's where I landed.
1:02:18 Chris Ryan? Can I just off the top of my head throw one at you?
1:02:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:02:20 Chris Ryan? When they are doing the like, let's help Billie Jean escape across the city with all the girls who look like Billie Jean.
1:02:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:02:27 Chris Ryan? Voices Carry by Till Tuesday.
1:02:28 Bill Simmons? Ooh. Female artists.
1:02:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Amy Mann. Female artists. Empowering women, that's what we're doing.
1:02:37 Bill Simmons? I like, because we got the vinyls in the beginning.
1:02:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:02:39 Bill Simmons? Craig, what, your flex category or did it?
1:02:42 Speaker 06 Oh, I want to, I have another one, though. I guess it's a, I guess I'll call it a weak link, maybe it's a picking it. I'm gonna double down as a feminist ally here with C.R. I don't know-
1:02:52 Bill Simmons? I don't get to be a feminist ally, what happened?
1:02:54 Speaker 06 After the, after the cup situation, yeah, you're canceled.
1:03:01 Speaker 06 You have to earn your way back. I don't know if Billie Jean needed a love interest. I feel like that kind of like she just fell in love with the first random dude she meets on the road. And I think it's a it takes away from the female empowerment that she needs this man and she immediately falls in love with this guy.
1:03:16 Chris Ryan? I fucking like that idea, Craig. And it also is kind of like the we don't get to explore the loneliness of fame.
1:03:22 Speaker 06 No, it's like she just falls in love with the first guy she sees and maybe mid eighties. They were like, she needs a love interest. I'm sure.
1:03:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:03:28 Speaker 06 But I thought they they should have held strong.
1:03:31 Chris Ryan? Little revision of that. What if it would have been a love triangle with her, Hubie? And and Lloyd and like she had had something going with Hubie and that's just his way of like communicating to her.
1:03:41 Bill Simmons? I mean, Hubie was the heir to this crappy tourist store in the middle of fucking nowhere, Texas.
1:03:46 Chris Ryan? All of these seashells.
1:03:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah, this could all be yours someday, Billie Jean.
1:03:50 Chris Ryan? Yeah. You'll work here with me.
1:03:52 Bill Simmons? That whole Panama Jack stand right there.
1:03:54 Chris Ryan? We can adopt Kenny.
1:03:59 Chris Ryan? Get skin cancer together.
1:04:01 Bill Simmons? Half ass internet research. The actress who played Potter's mother apparently slapped Yardley Smith for real.
1:04:07 Chris Ryan? Oh, my God.
1:04:08 Bill Simmons? And then the DVD commentary, that's why she went flying backwards and her face was numb after. They really went for in the eighties. Yardley Smith almost, uh, she refused to cut her hair for the part. So when they show her their haircut, she's got a ponytail.
1:04:21 Speaker 06 I thought she was great in this movie.
1:04:22 Bill Simmons? Yes, I thought she was really good.
1:04:23 Speaker 06 I obviously know she went on to do The Simpsons, but was she in a lot of other comedy movies? Did The Simpsons just kind of gobble up all her time?
1:04:29 Chris Ryan? I don't.
1:04:30 Bill Simmons? She was in City Slickers.
1:04:31 Chris Ryan? And she was in a, was she in a sitcom for a while before?
1:04:35 Bill Simmons? Man, she bounced around. She had a couple.
1:04:37 Speaker 06 I thought she had great timing. She could have been the friend in a lot of good comedy.
1:04:39 Bill Simmons? She's really funny.
1:04:42 Bill Simmons? The the miniature golf course is gone. It's now the Texas State Aquarium.
1:04:50 Bill Simmons? The mall is done.
1:04:51 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you can watch a 30 minute video of the guy, a guy made of just like going through this decrepit, uh, dilapidated abandoned mall.
1:05:00 Speaker 06 We should buy the Ringer should buy a mall. That should be our office is an old mall.
1:05:04 Chris Ryan? In Corpus Christi?
1:05:05 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:05:05 Chris Ryan? You ready to move?
1:05:06 Speaker 06 It's probably like 15 grand. To buy right.
1:05:09 Chris Ryan? Would it feel like Return to Work, like Return to the Office, but in Corpus Christi?
1:05:13 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:05:14 Bill Simmons? Do you remember when I seriously?
1:05:15 Chris Ryan? You can work in front of the husk of an Orange Julius, that'd be awesome.
1:05:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Were you working with us when I seriously investigated buying the Boogie Nights house?
1:05:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:05:22 Bill Simmons? Doing the video there?
1:05:23 Chris Ryan? Uh huh.
1:05:24 Bill Simmons? That probably would have been a mistake.
1:05:25 Chris Ryan? That's like very, very.
1:05:26 Bill Simmons? It's just too far away.
1:05:26 Chris Ryan? East LA, right? Where is it?
1:05:28 Bill Simmons? No, it's in, uh.
1:05:29 Chris Ryan? It's in Tarzana, isn't it?
1:05:30 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:05:31 Bill Simmons? No, no, it's, it's closer towards Chino.
1:05:34 Chris Ryan? Oh, oh.
1:05:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I forget what.
1:05:36 Chris Ryan? We should have done it.
1:05:37 Bill Simmons? It was, it was like a good 40 minutes away.
1:05:40 Chris Ryan? How close were you to actually doing it?
1:05:42 Bill Simmons? Not actually that close. And once I'd actually wazed it out and did a couple of different times.
1:05:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:05:47 Bill Simmons? Imagine Porkahow, like being like, hey, we're shooting the Boogie Nights house.
1:05:51 Chris Ryan? Great, rush hour.
1:05:52 Bill Simmons? Alright, I'll leave today to get there tomorrow.
1:05:53 Chris Ryan? Three hour drive.
1:05:54 Bill Simmons? Uh, the last research thing was just the, the Pat Benatar thing we mentioned earlier where she said this was from the worst movie ever made and then belted out Invincible. I hope that's not true, and if it's true, it's a borderline settle down, Pat.
1:06:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I saw a bunch of, uh.
1:06:11 Bill Simmons? It's not a fuck you Raj, but it's a settle down, Pat.
1:06:13 Chris Ryan? There's this really cool website called fast-dash-rewind.com and it's got like a ton of stuff about the kind of movies that we were talking about in the beginning of the 80s VHS classics. But their, their way of like posting, uh, behind the scenes information is like, you can just write in and be like, I was an extra on this movie and Helen Slater sucked. So I don't know like whether it's true or not, but it does sound like, uh, Helen Slater was like very opinionated about her haircut and about like how the movie was being made.
1:06:44 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
1:06:45 Chris Ryan? Good for her though.
1:06:46 Bill Simmons? Apex Mountain, Helen Slater.
1:06:48 Chris Ryan? Good for her though. Yeah, I guess so. This is Supergirl.
1:06:50 Bill Simmons? I think it's Secret of My Success.
1:06:53 Chris Ryan? Uh.
1:06:53 Bill Simmons? Because.
1:06:54 Chris Ryan? Wouldn't you say this is a bigger movie now and, no?
1:06:57 Bill Simmons? Because it bombed when it came out and Supergirl, Supergirl bombed too.
1:07:01 Chris Ryan? Uh, that's right.
1:07:02 Bill Simmons? Secret of My Success, she's in a movie with Michael J. Fox, he's on Family Ties, he's like one of the biggest TV stars in the world. That's a pretty good movie and it felt like she was headed for bigger things.
1:07:13 Chris Ryan? Well, by that same token, wouldn't City Slickers be your Apex Mountain then? Cause she's in, wasn't City Slickers like the biggest movie in the world for a little while?
1:07:21 Bill Simmons? I'll just tell you this, Ciara.
1:07:24 Bill Simmons? I know you had a lot of aspiration stock.
1:07:28 Bill Simmons? It was sad to see in the bankruptcy filings. I had a lot of Helen Slater stock.
1:07:32 Chris Ryan? C R L L C K two.
1:07:35 Bill Simmons? I had a lot of Helen, a lot of us did. We had a lot of Helen Slater stock. When she was in that Michael J. Fox movie, it was like, here we go. Same thing with Elizabeth Shue. When she's in Cocktail, it's like, here we go. Here, everyone on the bus, we're headed toward the Oscars and, you know, some of these people just never made it. Kelly Preston was another one.
1:07:53 Chris Ryan? If Helen Slater had been in Working Girl, what are we talking about today? You know?
1:07:57 Bill Simmons? Wow. Look at you. Christian Slater, no.
1:08:04 Bill Simmons? Honda Lead Scooters.
1:08:05 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:08:06 Bill Simmons? I think yes. This is right. This was somebody who Lou Reed did the Honda Lead Scooter ad in 85? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hundred percent. Lou Reed did a Honda Lead Scooter ad.
1:08:18 Chris Ryan? Like an endorsement or he did a song for it? Oh, the Walk of the Wild song? No shit.
1:08:24 Bill Simmons? Fuck yeah.
1:08:25 Chris Ryan? Oh, I had no idea, man. That's cool.
1:08:30 Bill Simmons? Self haircuts? Has anyone ever pulled off a better self haircut?
1:08:35 Speaker 06 No, she crushed it.
1:08:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah, she really did smoke it and it instantaneously becomes iconic.
1:08:40 Bill Simmons? Craig, who cut your hair during COVID, the first two months? Liz. Liz, Liz did it?
1:08:44 Speaker 06 Yeah, but it was like basically just, she didn't really touch the top. It was, you just kind of like shaved the sides, let it get long.
1:08:51 Chris Ryan? I just, I like pretty, I don't have to cut my hair very much.
1:08:54 Bill Simmons? My wife did mine.
1:08:55 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:08:56 Bill Simmons? And.
1:08:56 Speaker 06 It was kind of fun for a couple of months.
1:08:58 Bill Simmons? I had, my hair just goes up.
1:09:00 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:09:00 Bill Simmons? And it was just like, I just looked like a mushroom. And we were like, so we got this razor and she.
1:09:05 Chris Ryan? Just started.
1:09:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah, she somehow molded it. Cause we were doing pods on Zoom at that point and I think we were wearing hats most of the time, but.
1:09:12 Speaker 06 You should have kept it going for the Cast Away solo pod. You should have just had.
1:09:18 Bill Simmons? I wish that was on video. Could you imagine if that was just existed on YouTube?
1:09:23 Speaker 06 Oh, I should check.
1:09:24 Bill Simmons? No, I it's on a I didn't do it on video.
1:09:26 Speaker 06 Do you think?
1:09:27 Bill Simmons? I just turned the the recorder on and did it.
1:09:29 Chris Ryan? This is Apex Mountain for Peter Coyote, or is it narrating Ken Burns's Civil War?
1:09:34 Bill Simmons? What is Apex Mountain for him?
1:09:38 Bill Simmons? He's been in bed. No, it's E T, right?
1:09:40 Chris Ryan? I guess so.
1:09:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:09:41 Speaker 06 He's got great hair in this movie. He looks like Bob Myers.
1:09:43 Bill Simmons? I was like Peter Coyote.
1:09:44 Chris Ryan? I I think it's the Civil War.
1:09:46 Bill Simmons? Uh, Apex Mountain for Billie Jean's? We have the song Billie Jean. We have Legend of Billie Jean.
1:09:52 Chris Ryan? That's a great call.
1:09:52 Bill Simmons? And Billie Jean King.
1:09:53 Speaker 06 I was gonna ask about that, if the name was especially popular, if they specifically chose the name Billie Jean because of the.
1:10:00 Chris Ryan? No, it was actually, they were really annoyed about that, I think. I've read something about it.
1:10:03 Speaker 06 Oh, really?
1:10:03 Bill Simmons? I think Billie Jean.
1:10:05 Speaker 06 There's the the song.
1:10:06 Bill Simmons? More common name back then.
1:10:08 Chris Ryan? Is that right?
1:10:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I've also been a Billie Jean in thirty years.
1:10:10 Chris Ryan? I thought that this that was the name was supposed to be like a play on Billy the Kid. You know what I mean? Like, she's like a outlaw rises.
1:10:17 Bill Simmons? We had Billy Joe's and Billie Jean's, and now we'd have neither.
1:10:20 Speaker 06 No, Billie Jean, the song came out in eighty-three.
1:10:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:10:23 Speaker 06 So it was hugely popular.
1:10:25 Bill Simmons? Craig, I'm aware.
1:10:26 Speaker 06 Interesting. Well, I'm just saying, like, how could they have?
1:10:28 Bill Simmons? Moments of my life in eighty-three.
1:10:30 Speaker 06 I feel like.
1:10:30 Bill Simmons? Billie Jean video.
1:10:31 Speaker 06 The the producers being upset that people were comparing this movie to that movie or, you know, connecting the names is like, why would you do it then? It's super obvious.
1:10:39 Bill Simmons? Yeah, you've just named your character after one of the five biggest songs of the eighties. Maybe people are gonna be confused. Fair being fair. Apex Mountain?
1:10:49 Chris Ryan? I mean, it certainly isn't now. Yeah.
1:10:52 Bill Simmons? Short-haired eighties woman.
1:10:56 Chris Ryan? Benatar Slater. Who else had a cool short haircut back then?
1:11:03 Bill Simmons? I mean, it was the look for a while there.
1:11:05 Chris Ryan? It's yeah, it's kind of like it's going back to Veronica Cartwright in Alien.
1:11:09 Bill Simmons? Family Ties?
1:11:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah, yeah. Courtney Cox in Dancing in the Dark.
1:11:14 Chris Ryan? Short hair in that? She has, no, it's long, she has longer hair than that, right?
1:11:18 Bill Simmons? Nah, I think it was shorter.
1:11:19 Chris Ryan? Martha Plimpton in Goonies, right?
1:11:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:11:21 Chris Ryan? Was she longer than that?
1:11:23 Bill Simmons? Uh, Sturbi Beach had to have been Apex Mountain, the final scene. That's what it was called. Our radio guy's like, whoa, whoa, big day here, Sturbi Beach. Yardley Smith, it's The Simpsons, which made her probably, she's probably buying the Portland Trailblazers.
1:11:40 Bill Simmons? Corpus Christi movies, I'm gonna say yes.
1:11:45 Bill Simmons? Barry Tub, Top Gun?
1:11:47 Chris Ryan? Top Gun.
1:11:48 Bill Simmons? Keith Gordon?
1:11:51 Bill Simmons? Christine, who was built around him?
1:11:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:11:55 Bill Simmons? Joan of Arc, probably not.
1:11:56 Chris Ryan? No, I think it's got some other peaks.
1:11:58 Bill Simmons? All the other, all the other peaks she had.
1:12:01 Chris Ryan? Be defeating the English.
1:12:05 Bill Simmons? Cruise or Hanks? How about very young Tom Cruise as Binks?
1:12:10 Chris Ryan? Could see it.
1:12:11 Bill Simmons? Yeah, like all the right moves.
1:12:13 Chris Ryan? Cruise ever bleach blonde his hair?
1:12:15 Bill Simmons? Just for collateral, he grade it.
1:12:17 Chris Ryan? He grade it. Uh, yeah, you could also see if things had gone a different way, Cruise being like a good guy in Hubie's gang.
1:12:26 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:12:26 Chris Ryan? You know?
1:12:26 Bill Simmons? Like the guy taking the photos?
1:12:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:12:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Scorsese or Spielberg? Clearly Scorsese, we got cocaine.
1:12:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:12:34 Bill Simmons? Mr. Pius.
1:12:34 Chris Ryan? Mr. Pius running a coke.
1:12:36 Bill Simmons? He's selling cocaine in the top floor. I mean, they probably shouldn't have done that anyway, right?
1:12:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:12:40 Bill Simmons? It should have been, she burns this thing down, but then it turns out he's also the biggest coke dealer in Corpus Christi.
1:12:46 Chris Ryan? And like Lloyd is way more of like a, like a Paul Schrader character.
1:12:50 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:12:50 Chris Ryan? I never leave my house, I just, I just write my journal.
1:12:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah. What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? Clearly Hubie.
1:12:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:12:58 Bill Simmons? All right, picking nits, can't wait for this.
1:13:02 Chris Ryan? Let me go first for this one.
1:13:03 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:13:05 Chris Ryan? It just seems like there are a lot of detectives working this case.
1:13:08 Bill Simmons? In Corpus Christi?
1:13:10 Chris Ryan? There's like no other crime.
1:13:12 Bill Simmons? Scumbag got shot in the shoulder and is fine.
1:13:16 Chris Ryan? Um, but as a part of that, it's like, how many times does Hubie try to take matters into his own hands during a literal police intervention? Like?
1:13:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:13:27 Chris Ryan? Did obstruction of justice just not exist in Texas in the 1980s?
1:13:32 Bill Simmons? Pretty tough.
1:13:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:13:34 Bill Simmons? I had, my first pick in it is these kids would have been caught in 45 minutes.
1:13:38 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:13:39 Bill Simmons? They never left Corpus Christi. They went to the same three spots. Pretty sure we could have found them.
1:13:49 Bill Simmons? Would, alright, so they're living in a Corpus Christi trailer park.
1:13:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it's apparently still there.
1:13:53 Bill Simmons? Binks gets some money and he buys a really expensive Honda Elite scooter. I have some questions.
1:13:59 Chris Ryan? So what do you think he should be spending his money on?
1:14:01 Bill Simmons? I just had some questions.
1:14:05 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:14:05 Bill Simmons? That's like a, like a thousand dollar scooter. He wasn't worried he was gonna get robbed by somebody?
1:14:10 Chris Ryan? No.
1:14:10 Bill Simmons? He's just parking outside with no bike lock?
1:14:12 Chris Ryan? He's 15. He's like, this is as good as it's gonna get. I've been-
1:14:16 Bill Simmons? I support the choice, I'm just saying.
1:14:17 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:14:20 Bill Simmons? So they break into a house and it just happens to be the district attorney's house?
1:14:24 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:14:24 Bill Simmons? Out of all the houses?
1:14:25 Chris Ryan? A little bit of a fairy tale, yeah.
1:14:26 Bill Simmons? And the district attorney lives in Corpus Christi?
1:14:28 Chris Ryan? But isn't home.
1:14:29 Bill Simmons? But's never home?
1:14:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:14:30 Bill Simmons? He's somewhere else. He's in Dallas.
1:14:33 Chris Ryan? Okay. And he has a private shopper.
1:14:35 Bill Simmons? Why not just stay at Lloyd's house when you're hiding?
1:14:39 Chris Ryan? I don't think anyone would have looked there.
1:14:40 Bill Simmons? He's like, let me come with you and I'll be your hostage. It's like, or we could just stay at your house. Nobody knows we're here.
1:14:45 Chris Ryan? I think it's supposed to be that like, they have to get the two sisters home. Like this is, can't go on forever, you know? But it just seems like Lloyd probably could have given them a hundred bucks for gas and they could have gotten pretty close to Vermont on that.
1:14:58 Bill Simmons? But to stay at the house for a couple more days?
1:15:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:15:00 Bill Simmons? Maybe use the pool slide?
1:15:04 Bill Simmons? My number one, I have a couple more, but sharpshooters at the Billie Jean rally?
1:15:09 Chris Ryan? Insane. Insane.
1:15:12 Bill Simmons? Sharpshooters?
1:15:13 Chris Ryan? Sharpshooters who are also seemingly only taking orders from the district attorney, not from-
1:15:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah, not from the head of Corpus Christi police?
1:15:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah, the number one detective.
1:15:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Shooter in the head if you get a good shot. The, uh, the Binks hostage plan at the end is legitimately insane.
1:15:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:15:30 Bill Simmons? I don't know why anyone thought that was gonna work. And then at the end, they just let her leave.
1:15:35 Chris Ryan? I know.
1:15:36 Bill Simmons? All charges have been dropped?
1:15:37 Chris Ryan? Well, I think it's supposed to be that Mr. Pyatt has clearly done some bad shit. And so they're just like, it's like offsetting penalties.
1:15:44 Speaker 06 Do they think that Billie Jean shot Pyatt? Or do they know that Binks did?
1:15:49 Chris Ryan? I think they know that Binks did, but I think Billie Jean is, they've reported, Billie Jean has made like 600 robberies in two days or something.
1:15:57 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:15:57 Chris Ryan? So that's why he's like, this is ridiculous. All these robberies are happening at the same time, like.
1:16:02 Speaker 06 Also, if her goal is to not, I, I don't really know what she's, is she trying to be recognized or is she not? Because if she, if she wants to remain anonymous, she should have cut her hair after the video.
1:16:12 Chris Ryan? She wanted to be, remain anonymous until Pyatt and everybody started going on the news.
1:16:17 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:16:18 Chris Ryan? And talking about her.
1:16:18 Speaker 06 Cause if she didn't want to be recognized, you, you, you record the video for the news and then cut your hair. So you look different.
1:16:23 Bill Simmons? She realized she couldn't be anonymous, cause she was created in the internet.
1:16:26 Chris Ryan? And she saw, and she saw Joan of Arc and she was like, I'm gonna start the internet.
1:16:30 Bill Simmons? She called Al Gore and she was like, I have an idea.
1:16:33 Speaker 06 And she's like, now I'm the most recognizable person in Corpus Christi.
1:16:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:16:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Where we can just somehow drive around in a, in a station wagon with license plates on it and evade police for seven days. Just in different spots. Let's go back to the miniature golf course again. You have any other pick and nits?
1:16:51 Chris Ryan? I don't.
1:16:52 Bill Simmons? Sequel, prequel, prestige, TBL, Black Cast or Untouchable?
1:16:57 Bill Simmons? The prestige version of this is interesting. Written by Brad Inglesby?
1:17:03 Chris Ryan? Would you set it in Philly?
1:17:05 Bill Simmons? I'd set it in Corpus Christi.
1:17:06 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:17:07 Bill Simmons? Mr. Hyatt is, is the biggest coke and opium and heroin dealer in Texas, but he has this thing as a shell.
1:17:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:17:14 Bill Simmons? Ponzi thing. There's a shooting there, but he, he now has to kill her because.
1:17:19 Chris Ryan? Binks is on fentanyl.
1:17:20 Bill Simmons? Put police, yeah. Binks was, is tris fentanyl for the first time. And, uh, we just go.
1:17:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I like that.
1:17:26 Bill Simmons? I just call it Billie Jean.
1:17:28 Chris Ryan? I also like the, uh, sequel where, where Lloyd becomes like the Jack Horner of VHS porn.
1:17:37 Bill Simmons? Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog Russo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, now Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm?
1:17:50 Chris Ryan? I have a new addition to the category. And I want to say that this is out of the utmost respect, the deepest appreciation and love, but we have to add Peter Schrager to the category. Let's go, Bill. I've been talking to the Jackson sisters, Ophelia and Potter, and you know what they said? Billie Jean is even more committed to fairness. I know there are a lot of girls out there with the haircut and they are getting attention. And let me tell you, Billie Jean has been listening to C101 and she hears everything and it's just motivating her to get back to the top of the mountain.
1:18:29 Chris Ryan? You think he's gonna get mad at that?
1:18:30 Bill Simmons? Let's go. He'll love that. He'll love that. That was great.
1:18:36 Bill Simmons? I had Mad Dog Russo.
1:18:40 Chris Ryan? I mean, my kid's the DA. He's got sharp shooters at the beach rally. What's he gonna do? Headshot to Billie Jean Navy? What are we doing?
1:18:49 Bill Simmons? Just one Oscar.
1:18:50 Chris Ryan? I wonder how many people who are listening to the 57th minute of the Legend of Billie Jean pod know who Mad Dog and Schrags are.
1:18:57 Bill Simmons? Right. Probably not many. Just one Oscar who gets it. Probably Benatar?
1:19:03 Bill Simmons? With Invincible original song for the movie?
1:19:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah. I mean, it's hard to give Jeffrey Kimball best cinematography, but I think it's the best part of this movie.
1:19:10 Bill Simmons? I feel like I have to look at the 1986 Oscars now.
1:19:14 Bill Simmons? It could have been best original song, right? If she did the song for the movie, which I think she did.
1:19:18 Chris Ryan? I don't know that she did do this. I mean, the video is basically from the movie, but I don't know.
1:19:24 Bill Simmons? The winner was Say You Say Me from White Nights. Music and lyric by Lionel Richie. Power of Love from Back to the Future did not win. What an outrage.
1:19:34 Chris Ryan? Oh, my God.
1:19:35 Bill Simmons? And then three more of it. Whatever. I feel like she could have made it.
1:19:42 Bill Simmons? All right. We are near the end here because we have probably an answerable questions.
1:19:50 Bill Simmons? Is this movie better if Banks accidentally shoots Mr. Pyatt's head off at the beginning?
1:19:55 Chris Ryan? And he's a murderer?
1:19:57 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Ah, shot Marvin's head! Shot Marvin's head, whatever he said. If he just does, if he just actually like blows his head off and now they're on the run because they've committed an accidental murder.
1:20:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah, would it even be better if like the wolf came and helped them?
1:20:17 Bill Simmons? I had one more, but do you have any?
1:20:18 Chris Ryan? Do you, who do you think Mr. Pyatt had in the Danny White, Gary Hogaboom quarterback controversy from the Cowboys in 84?
1:20:27 Chris Ryan? He's got a Cowboys shirt on.
1:20:29 Bill Simmons? Did he have Mavs tickets?
1:20:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah. When did the Mavs, when did the Mavs come into the league?
1:20:34 Bill Simmons? Eighty.
1:20:34 Chris Ryan? Oh.
1:20:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:20:35 Chris Ryan? Wow.
1:20:36 Bill Simmons? They were, the 85 Mavs were good. I had, uh, did Mr. Pyatt create MAGA?
1:20:42 Bill Simmons? Like 30 years later, he's definitely like right in there with Trump.
1:20:45 Chris Ryan? I mean, he's, he's got every supplement.
1:20:48 Bill Simmons? It's like red hats and shirts. He's, he's, he's in.
1:20:52 Chris Ryan? But he's articulating a lot of that, like, you know, I'm just, I'm a voter and I just think these kids are running wild. You gotta clean this up.
1:20:59 Bill Simmons? Uh, what piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie?
1:21:02 Chris Ryan? Lloyd's AV setup home theater. That would have been sick. You know, fantasy was just like, oh, this guy, he's got all the, all the good stuff.
1:21:10 Bill Simmons? I would take the scooter and that was the exact scooter I had for like a year and a half before I crashed it.
1:21:15 Chris Ryan? The Honda Elite?
1:21:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:21:17 Chris Ryan? Was this a bad crash?
1:21:19 Bill Simmons? That was the one when I really got banged up.
1:21:20 Chris Ryan? Oh.
1:21:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah, cause I was driving that. Those things were fast. They went up to like 60.
1:21:25 Chris Ryan? Damn.
1:21:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but, uh, those things were great. Lou Reed was promoting them.
1:21:31 Chris Ryan? It was you, Lou Reed and Slater.
1:21:33 Bill Simmons? They were great. Uh, best double feature choice? I had the Terminator, so we could have female empowerment heroes from the mid eighties. Sarah Connor and Billie Jean.
1:21:45 Chris Ryan? I would pair it with Last Starfighter or Rad, which are just two classic cult VHS movies from this time period.
1:21:52 Bill Simmons? And Helen Slater won the movie?
1:21:54 Chris Ryan? What about the Coach Finstock award? Is it fair is fair?
1:21:57 Bill Simmons? Oh, I forgot the Coach Finstock. Yeah, fair is fair. Helen Slater wins the movie?
1:22:01 Chris Ryan? She did. Or you know what? Did Pat Benatar win the movie?
1:22:06 Bill Simmons? Is Invincible the thing that people remember from this movie? I think it's Helen Slater. Okay. Craig never saw it. What'd you think?
1:22:13 Speaker 06 I had never heard of it. I even asked Matt Bellany today as we were taking the town. I said, have you heard of the movie The Legend of Billie Jean? He was like, no. So I was like, all right, excited to get into this. We still got some tricks up our sleeve.
1:22:26 Bill Simmons? Every time they think we've we've zigged, we've zagged.
1:22:30 Speaker 06 Uh, I really enjoyed this movie. I thought it was a really fun 95 minutes. I thought the plot was entertaining. Uh, and and smart and, uh, you know, with these movies, I kind of always toe the line between genuine love and ironic love for them. But I kind of think that's part of the fun of these eighties movies is, you know, they're a little bit on the on the on the fringe, but I enjoyed it. That was good.
1:22:52 Chris Ryan? Sometimes they just feel like time capsules to me now. Like there's, I sent you guys that screenshot of like a bunch of the teens at at the beach in the end scene, like in the exchange at the end. And I'm just like, look at these fucking guys, man. Like, that's like a Life magazine photo. This is, I think I've said Life magazine twice now in two pods, but it's like, it is like a document of what kids kind of like used to look like and
1:23:13 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:23:13 Chris Ryan? how they used to hang out back then.
1:23:14 Speaker 06 And it's just like, this movie is aggressively representing culture at this exact time. And I think a lot of stuff now doesn't, maybe 30 years from now, we'll look back and be like, wow, The Summer I Turned Pretty really encapsulates what 2024 was like, but it it doesn't feel like it in the moment, I guess.
1:23:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's interesting. This movie comes down to the the four people are just a good hang. Billie Jean, her brother and the and the two sisters. It's just fun to hang out with them. And it's a cool setting. Yeah.
1:23:42 Speaker 06 Yeah, like the first, what is it, 20 minutes of Jaws 2? We were talking about like, this just looks fun. Fun hanging out here. It's a great setting. It's like, you know, you can
1:23:50 Chris Ryan? Roy Scheider's got some problems. He's dealing with them. It's fun. It's cool.
1:23:53 Speaker 06 He's probably using that tanning oil, Roy Scheider.
1:23:55 Bill Simmons? There was a lot of movies like this in the mid eighties, like Anthony Michael Hall made one. Where it's like wrong person now on the run. And I think this movie did it the best. Cause there's a lot of bad versions of this.
1:24:07 Speaker 06 Yeah, and a lot of the
1:24:08 Bill Simmons? Out of Bounds, remember that one? Anthony Michael Hall and Jenny Ray?
1:24:11 Chris Ryan? Wasn't there, what's the one, um, uh, Cloak and Dagger, where like the kid's on the, like, Daphne Coleman is like the spy.
1:24:18 Bill Simmons? Right, right, right.
1:24:18 Chris Ryan? And the kid goes on the run.
1:24:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:24:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah. It's a great, it's a great premise.
1:24:22 Speaker 06 I thought Helen Slater was great. I really liked her.
1:24:25 Bill Simmons? All right, there you go. Thanks to Gahow. Thanks to Ronic as well.
1:24:28 Speaker 06 Eduardo.
1:24:29 Bill Simmons? Thanks to Greg Rollback for producing.
1:24:30 Speaker 06 Thanks, Eduardo.
1:24:31 Bill Simmons? Thanks to Eduardo.
1:24:31 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:24:32 Bill Simmons? We got the whole crew. This is some crew. I don't know what we have next week, but it'll definitely be interesting.
1:24:40 Speaker 06 We have one banked, if you want to run that one.
1:24:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah. Or maybe we're filming another one next week. We'll see. See, our pleasure is always, I hope they throw to A.J. Brown more next week. We'll see. Good to see you.
1:25:01 Speaker 08 Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.
1:25:03 Speaker 09 Witness the beginning of the revolution.
1:25:05 Speaker 08 Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.
1:25:08 Speaker 09 Filmed for IMAX.
1:25:10 Speaker 08 Make them remember you.
1:25:12 Speaker 09 The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.
1:25:17 Speaker 08 Hey, listen. Power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2 and experience Link's legendary adventure, now reborn in vibrant detail on our fastest and most powerful system yet.
1:25:30 Speaker 08 And harness the power of the Ocarina with the built-in microphone. Hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm hmm.
1:25:39 Speaker 08 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.
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