‘Airplane!’ With Bill Simmons and Bill Hader

Looks like we picked the wrong week to quit rewatching movies. The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by actor, writer, and director Bill Hader to revisit an all time comedy classic, ‘Airplane!’ starring Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, and Robert Stack. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, and Ronak Nair Chad Powers - Series Premieres Sept. 30 on Hulu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 2:15Bill Simmons?

  All right. The man, the myth, the legend, Bill Hader is here. We haven't done this since COVID. It's been almost a half decade drought for you on the rewatchables.

• 2:23Speaker 05

  That's true. That's very true. Yeah.

• 2:25Bill Simmons?

  But you're back and I asked you, let's do a movie. I sent you a bunch of titles and you saw Airplane and you were out of your mind excited to discuss it.

• 2:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I've talked about Airplane and others. I'm in that book that came out about Airplane, but that is such a formidable movie for me, you know? So yeah, it was, yeah, that was, that was the one that my eyes immediately went to. Yeah.

• 2:48Bill Simmons?

  So you didn't see it when it came out, did you? You saw it after, probably? Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 05

  No, that movie came out when I was like two years old or something, but I can't remember a time when that movie wasn't in my life. You know, it's like, you know, whatever, like Star Wars or Indiana Jones or something like that. It was just always, I don't know if I can like remember the exact moment when I saw it. It was just always there.

• 3:16Bill Simmons?

  Cause it was on cable for thirty straight years.

• 3:19Speaker 05

  And then it was also like on TBS and WGN and where I grew up in Oklahoma, like we got those channels. And so it was like edited for those. And so I mean, it was just constantly on television and I'd watch it every time it was on. And still to this day, I just, I just showed it to my girlfriend. Ally hadn't seen it and since she was a kid, she said, and we watched. I was like, oh, we gotta watch Airplane.

• 3:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 05

  We watched it and I'm still, I know every word to it and I'm still like dying laughing, you know? Just watching her reaction to it was really fun.

• 3:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's funny reading the book. The book came out, I think two years ago and it's like a mix of an oral history, but there's a lot of people like you in there. Cause I saw this movie in the theater. I think I was 10, the summer of 1980 and just immediately was like, this is, I can't believe this happened. And then it was in my life, like you, like for the next 45 years. And I always felt like it was one of the great movies, like the great comedies, influential, the whole thing. But I didn't know, I didn't know how many other people felt that way. And then you see that book and it's like a who's who of all these people are like, yeah, that was the moment.

• 4:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was the movie that like, you go, oh, that's how you do it. You know, there's certain films like that for me, like. Spinal Tap, or Monty Python, the Holy Grail, or Life of Brian, you know, these things where you went, oh, or, or those, or, you know, um, uh, Young Frankenstein in Blazing Saddles, and then the early kind of Woody Allen movies like Love and Death and some of those things. I, there were always, they were just kinda like, oh, that's how you're supposed to do comedy, and then you would see other, whatever, more famous comedies, and they wouldn't do it for you because there wasn't this kinda edge to it.

• 5:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  But Airplane is different because, I don't know if you could do, because my friend Akiva just did that Naked Gun movie, which was really fun, and, but the, the, the thing is with this movie, Airplane, which is so hard to replicate, is that everybody, whether it's Saturday Night Live, or just whatever, a- a- all these people do a funny version of themselves, you know?

• 5:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  Hell, Airplane, I remember my dad telling me, he's like, if you, if you, that movie's funny, but if you grew up watching like Sea Hunt, and watching with Lloyd Bridges, or those movie, you know, Forbidden Planet, or Poseidon Adventure that had Leslie Nielsen in it, like, all these movies where they were always the straight guy.

• 5:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  Robert Stack watching The Untouchables as a kid and being like, I'd never seen them be funny, I only knew them as that specific kind of, uh, character, which isn't even like around anymore, those very super serious.

• 6:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:03Speaker 05

  Things, and, and them playing it straight, and actually having the real people instead of comedians, he was like, it was, uh, you know, yeah, it was, it, it, it wasn't, uh, it, it was like a hallucination or something, it was, wait, you're allowed to do that? Like, it was, it was crazy.

• 6:23Bill Simmons?

  Well, they cracked the secret sauce, right? Because if you think you're doing a movie like this, you're gonna have Harvey Korman as, in the Leslie Nielsen role, and he's gonna be him, and you have Chevy Chase in the Robert Hays role, and they're trying to be funny.

• 6:35Speaker 05

  Somewhere in there. The only comedic actor I think in the whole movie is Jimmy Walker, and he doesn't have any lines, he falls off.

• 6:43Bill Simmons?

  Texas, yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, he just, he's a guy, he's a gag in the background, you know, but, I mean, Peter Graves. I mean, that that uh thing of him talking to a little kid in a cockpit is one of the funniest things ever and it's so disturbing and funny when you watch it now or he's like you like movie like bad idiot. I mean, I don't know what time in my life where my friends and I weren't quoting that, you know, you ever hang around the gymnasium like we would go into the gym.

• 7:14Speaker 05

  In elementary school, you go, you ever hang around the gymnasium?

• 7:19Speaker 05

  Just so weird. And and also a comedy too, that those is like, you know, Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrams and you could just tell these guys like grew up in Milwaukee and they're just following their intuition. Cause there's some of it, it's like, not like jokes, like when we, you know, you work at SNL or something where it has to kind of have some sort of meaning or

• 7:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  Just you could tell they were just watching Zero Hour, that movie and then just like riffing on it and just being stupid and making themselves laugh. And they just trusted their instincts to be like, well, if we find this funny, we'll just go for it, you know?

• 8:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's funny. There's, there's two things going on at the same time. One, it's like a high volume joke movie, right? They're just getting off stuff left and right and sometimes you don't even catch it right away, right? So it's like they're almost like firing a bunch of threes in an NBA game. But then on the other side, there are these long, well-constructed, minute-long, where nothing seems to happen, but it's all leading to some joke they want to get to, like hold, like hold five and keep, what is it? The ham on the mayo, whatever that one is. Yeah, yeah. But he said it, they set it up for like thirty-five seconds. You're like, what are they doing? And then it's like, oh, that's why they did that. And they have a million of those.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's this whole long lead up to, yeah, and I had, and so I had seen this movie first and then I saw Naked Gun, the original when it came out.

• 8:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  That came out when I was ten and I saw that in a theater and I remember that was like.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  You know, I'd never, I, I, I, to this day, I've never experienced a theater, a comedy theater experience like that. Like, people were genuinely losing their minds. Like, the whole baseball sequence at the end of that movie, people were going. When he sang the National Anthem and then when he gets stoked on saying strike and he starts dancing as the ump. Do you remember like?

• 9:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 05

  People like lost their minds. I mean, like, literally, like, people jumping up out of their seat and going crazy. And like that, you may see her, like, falling in the aisles, like, people were genuinely falling all over the place. And I had never seen anything like that. So I was a big fan of theirs and then I went back and saw Kentucky Fried Movie. And I brought that to a sleepover when I was in fourth grade and the mom.

• 9:41Bill Simmons?

  Ooh, sub nudity, yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah, Catholic high school girls in trouble. They're like, whoa, what's this? And I was like, I haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen, it says it's the guys who made Airplane and the director of Animal House. And they're like, what is this? You know? Um, but yeah, this, that style is so, they had, they just kind of made up their own thing.

• 10:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's funny you mentioned that theater thing, because we did Naked Gun a couple of years ago. And I told the story about seeing that in the theater. And the baseball scene like almost caused a riot.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  It did, yeah.

• 10:12Bill Simmons?

  People fucking lost their minds. I only remember two comedies, because the other one was There's Something About Mary.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:19Bill Simmons?

  There's two comedies and then the, the, the closing credits in The Hangover was the other one.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  Oh, right.

• 10:26Bill Simmons?

  People were just like, could not believe what was happening and just laughing their asses off. But for the most part, you kind of remember when the whole theater is dying laughing at the same time. It's such a unique experience.

• 10:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's such a, it's a wonderful experience and, yeah, you miss it. And that's what was nice going to see the new one with Liam Neeson that Keith directed. Because I was like, oh, my God, I'm in a theater and everybody's laughing. I haven't, they don't make comedies really anymore. So it was kind of awesome just to have that experience where you're like, I mean, you can go to the theater and get scared. You know, but you can't really go to the theater and like laugh as much like that anymore. And I was telling my, you know, my kids, I was like, okay, we're gonna watch the original one. And, yeah, that baseball scene, I go, you guys have no idea. From beginning to end, the place was going nuts.

• 11:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially using real announcers.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, every joke killed. I remember I went, when I, I had to go to, when I got Barry, the head of HBO was like, you gotta look like you were once in the military, so you gotta go to the gym. Cause you don't look like you're in the military. So I went to this gym in LA, this small gym, and Dave, David Zucker was there. And so that's how I met him. And I was like, you know, over there going like, oh my God, that's David Zucker, holy shit, you know? And he was so nice. And I, I, I mean, he answered all my questions where I was like, how'd you guys get, you know, all these people to do it? What was it like with the announcers? What was, you know?

• 11:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  And then, and then airplane too. And then I once had lunch with Jerry Zucker and they're so open about like, oh yeah, Robert Stack totally got it. And like, he loved it and just was totally on board. Lloyd Bridges is a little bit confused. You know, Peter Graves is like, wait, what'd you guys get me into? And then like Leslie Nielsen like immediately got it and was like, a pro, you know, and, and it was just, it was just really cool getting.

• 12:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the, the secret sauce of this is the using the non-comic actors, which now it seems, now we've been doing that for forty-five years, but back then, nobody thought that way.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  One of the SNL episodes that I was a part of that was like, one of the hottest episodes ever was when it was Brian Williams. Cause he, they had only seen him, you know, do the news.

• 12:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  So seeing Brian Williams, I remember he was on a Bronx beat, uh, that sketch with Maya and Amy. And he was just like, hey, how you doing? And like, the place was going crazy. Cause they had no, they had never seen him. They were like, I didn't know you could do that. Or like when Jon Hamm first hosted, I don't think anybody knew that Jon was funny. They only knew him as like Don Draper.

• 13:07Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  Remember that episode when he came out and was being funny? The place was like, no, like they just went crazy.

• 13:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, The Rock was like that too, where we had just seen him as a wrestler, but nobody realized that he actually was funny.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's very funny. Yeah, he's very funny and like, has great timing and, and like, yeah, all those guys could do that. And. But even like that Leslie Nielsen knew, like they just, that's why I asked those guys, I was like, did they know how to play that? You know, and they're like, yeah, Leslie Nielsen, like, we didn't have to tell him anything. Like when he has the stethoscope on and he's like, yes, I'm a doctor. Like he knew not to like be weird or like, yeah, I'm not like, he just, the stethoscope and him being straight was what the joke was. You know, and that it's a.

• 13:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's, that's why these movies have had trouble because people have been trying to do this format ever since. And there's, this is the one that played it straight the best. And I always felt the silliness kind of seeped in over the next forty five years when people did this.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Well, that's like this insecurity thing of like, oh God, will people know if we're joking or not, or I don't know if that's just. I, yeah, I don't know what, I mean, that was a thing I remember early on, like twenty years ago. When, you know, you go, I got the SNL and I would go on these meetings with people. About silly movies and there was like, I remember people were like, there's smart. Someone told me there's smart, it's easy to do a smart comedy. Like, you know, at the time, like Knocked Up.

• 14:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 05

  A dumb comedy, like. At the time it was Hot Rod was with the guy because I was in that movie and he was like, like Hot Rod, he goes, it's really hard to do smart dumb comedies. Like airplane and Naked Gun were like the best one where it's like, it's dumb, but it's smart, you know? Like those are really difficult and, and those guys just had the. I think what they just naturally found funny is what made it work. I think. The best comedies for me always felt like. I've said a hundred times, just like, oh, that the group who made it, they're just trying to make themselves laugh.

• 15:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  Like they're, they're like, I don't know, this is like funny to us, you know, and then suddenly. You know, I showed my kids when they were young, this movie, A Naked Gun, and they they were dying laughing. I mean, I have three daughters and the scene where the woman knocks the, where she's playing the guitar and she knocks the little girls tube out and she starts dying, they thought that was hilarious.

• 15:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 05

  They were like crying laughing and the face she's making and everything like they just thought that was great.

• 15:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, so in that book, there was a bunch of people that weighed in. These are some quotes, Trey and Matt. They said, "Airplane was sort of the Star Wars of comedy. The tone of it was just something we'd never seen. We went to see it several times with different friends and everything. It was a big deal." That's true because Caddyshack came out a couple of weeks later and it was, these were when you would just go to the same comedy movie like four times. Like we had like, we had like five channels, like, so if something funny was out, you just kept going back to it.

• 16:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Now those would be like, like a TV show or something. They're like, well, how can we make this a TV show or something? But when it was a movie, yeah, you would go out, you'd see it over and over again. And I do think it was that Star Wars thing is kind of apps where there, you, you can't kind of make a delineation of like before and, and after Airplane in some ways. Even the look of Airplane, I saw in other movies where it was, Airplane, I think purposely was kind of like, like harsh light and the sets were like obviously kind of fake and it has this thing. And then you see eighties movies, like comedies just become that, you know, like these kind of lower budget movies.

• 17:06Speaker 05

  There's one called like Jekyll and Hyde Back Together Again with Mark Blankfield and then um Crime Wave, Sam Raimi movie Crime Wave, but like, there's a bunch of them where they have that look, you know?

• 17:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:19Speaker 05

  That's, but yeah, that's very much like, oh, it's like an early eighties comedy. But I don't know. Yeah, I, I, I just, I, yeah, I agree with those guys. Uh, there's nothing.

• 17:30Bill Simmons?

  Here's another one. Here's Apatow. "When you make a list of the best movies of all time, you're always going to put Airplane on it. If somebody made a movie as funny as Airplane right now, it would make a billion dollars."

• 17:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that was that time though, you know, that's like. Like they apparently, I guess, showed it to Michael Eisner, who was the head of Paramount at the time.

• 17:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 05

  Michael Eisner's kids loved it. Like, they were like, we don't know if he liked it, but his kids, like, cracking up. And so I think we all owe a owe a debt to Mike Michael Eisner's kids.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  They were the ones that were like, holy shit, this is so funny, you know?

• 18:12Bill Simmons?

  Patton Oswalt said, um, a lot of comedies in the last thirty years have wanted to be airplane. There were gag, gag, gag, where airplane is really structured, driving the story along the whole time. You've got to play comedy as if it's deadly serious. You've got to play weirdness as if it's the most normal thing in the world. That's something you've been good at.

• 18:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:30Bill Simmons?

  And a lot of the stuff you've done is like, people are being weird, but it's, it seems completely normal as they're being weird.

• 18:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's probably got, got it from watching airplane a lot as a kid. That's what I mean. It was like, you don't, you don't like showcase like, oh, this is, um, but it's people ignore stuff, which is funny. Like in comedy, you always have that where, at least in my experience, where it's almost, you know, they go, well, that guy should react, right? And it's like, no, no, no, no, just you keep moving, you know? That's like one of the things that screwed up where, you know, you say, you know, whatever, uh, you know, like that scene where it's like, are you a doctor? Yes, I'm a doctor. He has a stethoscope. If you cut back to that girl going, well, that's weird. He has a stethoscope. It kills the whole thing.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  And I've been in those situations where a producer or somebody's like, well, wouldn't they, in reality, this would happen. It's like, right, this isn't reality.

• 19:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 19:25Speaker 05

  It's like its own weird universe, you know, and it's like a weird movie reality, but.

• 19:32Bill Simmons?

  Um, Letterman said.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  Oh, Letterman. Oh, yeah. Letterman auditioned for it.

• 19:36Bill Simmons?

  Letterman auditioned for it and was relieved he didn't get it because he didn't think he was a good actor. And he loves this movie. And he said, my son and I, when we're driving the city, he will say to me, just move over a lane. And I'll say, I'll move over, but quit calling me a lane. It just goes on and on. Film comedy became different after that movie. And it makes so much sense that he loved that movie because I'm like an early Letterman guy. And a lot of the absurdist, like deadpan people being weird, but not knowing they're weird. All that stuff was like in the first couple of years of his show.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  It's definitely a movie where you could see the filmmakers grew up on television and like grew up on like,

• 20:14Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 20:16Bill Simmons?

  Watching Streets of San Francisco.

• 20:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. Or like, yeah, like watching the stuff from the early sixties and late fifties. That's what I mean, you know, watching Sea Hunt or

• 20:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  Those film, those shows were so deadly serious, but it's all like, Jimmy, we gotta get you home because you know, it's all very wholesome and stuff. I mean, having June Cleaver do Jive in it, you know, Leave It To Beaver's mom is doing Jive. And I mean, it's very clear, like all these dudes like grew up on TV and just sitting around like making fun of it. And, and, and, and that's why it's like, oh no, it's gotta be those guys, you know?

• 20:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, the story of it was that they, they randomly taped this movie Zero Hour because they would tape TV and look at the commercials. And they were trying to figure out all this different comedy stuff and stumbled across this movie that came out in the late fifties. And the structure of it is basically identical to Airplane. There's a really good YouTube video, some crazy person did.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  They, they do the comparison.

• 21:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And they're just like the scenes of like the, the nun singing to the, um, to the little girl. Like there's like five scenes that they just take, somebody coming into the cockpit.

• 21:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, you gotta have like, those things are so specific, they had to come from another source. And it's fun because I didn't know about the Zero Hour thing. And then one time I just had TCM, I would just have a plane in my house. And then, yeah, I was watching that and I was like, God, this movie is like Airplane.

• 21:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 21:46Speaker 05

  No, and I go, and then looking it up and go, oh yeah, this is what Airplane is based on, you know?

• 21:51Bill Simmons?

  The other one was Airport 75. It ripped off a few things from that.

• 21:56Speaker 05

  But I hadn't seen any of the airport movies. And that's what, again, my dad and my uncles, his brothers were the ones that were kind of like the older brother kind of guys for me of like, well, it's the airport movies, but it's also this, and it's also this, like they were giving all the context of why it like. Was even a bigger thing for them than it was for me. I was just like, oh, this is hilarious and weird and you know.

• 22:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz when I was little in the seventies, this was a whole industry. They Poseidon invention, Poseidon Adventure, all the airport movies, Towering Inferno, Black Sunday.

• 22:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, they were like the superhero movies of the seventies. Yeah.

• 22:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and they all played the same way. There was always famous people in it, like OJ, I think was in Towering Inferno.

• 22:41Speaker 05

  I'm sure, yeah. And also there was one called The Swarm. It was like Burt I Gordon movies and, and, um, yeah, all those guys. Uh, I'm blanking on the other guy's name, the big guy, but, uh, um, but yeah, the, the, there's one about bees with Michael Caine called The Swarm.

• 22:58Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 22:59Speaker 05

  That's got a bunch of big name actors.

• 23:03Bill Simmons?

  Just people going, ah, ah.

• 23:05Speaker 05

  Fighting bees. Gotta get away from these bees. Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 05

  It's, it's, it's crazy.

• 23:13Bill Simmons?

  Keenan Avery Wayans said they took what Mel Brooks did to a whole other level. They not only made fun of the genre of the main story, but within that they, they made fun of ten other movies, which is true. Nobody had done that either. I think that's a good point. Like all of a sudden Saturday Night Fever is being parodied in this out of nowhere and you know.

• 23:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes, it was Saturday Night Fever and, um,

• 23:37Speaker 05

  I mean, there's so many other things in there. And then Keenan Wayans, I mean, I'm gonna get you stuck is a great movie and I, I think it's very, very funny. Um, but, uh, but yeah, they, they encompass, yeah, cuz again, like, Mel Brooks was doing the parody thing, but it was all comedic actors and those movies are great, but it was all comedic.

• 23:57Bill Simmons?

  And they're hamming it up. Yeah.

• 23:58Speaker 05

  And they're having fun and they're going crazy. I mean, I, I mean, I, I love Harvey Korman and Blazing Saddles is so funny to me, but, but, uh, there, yeah, it's definitely big. And then you, they were, that's why I mean these, the Zucker Brothers and Amos, like they were savvy enough. But it's also the thing you find, like they were just, they just watched a lot of shit. I, I guarantee it just were fans of stuff and they're like, why would we do that? They already did that. Let's do this thing.

• 24:21Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 24:22Speaker 05

  You know, Matt and Trey are very much like that where it's like, well, why are we gonna do this when that's what everybody's doing? Let's try to, let's make it, you know, puppets like Thunder, you know, whatever, you know, Team America, we'll do it all, you know, fuck it, let's do that. Cuz it, it, it's more exciting for us.

• 24:38Bill Simmons?

  This last quote was from Katzenberg, who was one of the execs on the on the movie because he worked for Eisner. And he said, what happens to the movie business today bears no resemblance to the movie business 70s and 80s. We were always determined to do unique and original. There was no franchise business, sequel business. It was all about original ideas. And you look at, I was looking at the movies that came out in 1980 and there's like, you know, barely any sequels. There's no, really no superhero movies. And it's all these original idea movies. Some of them fell by the wayside, others stuck. But, you know, I feel like that's starting to come back a little bit now in 2025, but not totally.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  I hope so. I mean, yeah, I think, I was just talking to Patton the other day and he was like, you know, it says something that the Indiana Jones movie, the last Indiana Jones movie lost to Five Nights at Freddy's or something that, I sound like an old man, but, but like, but that that movie is so clear. People are like, oh, he likes something, just something somewhat original and not like your mom and dad's sequel. It's like, we want the original stuff.

• 25:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I feel that definitely. And you can feel it in some superhero movies now where you can feel the filmmakers and the writers trying to like, get things, you know, artistic and try to get things through, but in the superhero way, you know, it's kind of like, I guess Scorsese called them smugglers, but you know, it's like the filmmakers like, like Douglas Sirk or something, he would make these melodramas that were women's pictures, quote unquote, but were really his, he's just, you know, German guy who fled the Nazis and it was all his kind of like, you know, thinking how America was so, you know, it's about America, like, American

• 26:27Speaker 05

  life, you know, he was getting all these ideas and this kind of, you know, critique of, of America within this like Rock Hudson, Jane Wyman movie, you know? And, and I feel like you're starting to see that with some superhero movies. Hopefully, yeah, there'll be more and more original stuff. I mean, that's why it's so great when stuff like Weapons and Sinners does well, you know, like, it's always nice when that happens, you know?

• 26:57Bill Simmons?

  We'll take a break and then come back. One more thing to throw you before we get to the categories. This episode is brought to you by Hulu. Glenn Powell is Chad Powers, coming September 30th to Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ eight years after flushing his college football career down the toilet. Hot shot quarterback Russ Holiday makes a comeback disguised as Chad Powers, an oddball athletic talent who walks onto the struggling South Georgia Catfish, strong name, determined to once again take college football by storm. Our guy Glenn Powell, we are Glenn Powell supporters here at the rewatchables. Watch the hilarious new Hulu original series Chad Powers, September 30th streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+

• 27:41Bill Simmons?

  for bundle subscribers, terms apply. 1980, Blues Brothers comes out June 20th. Airplane comes out July 4th and Caddyshack comes out July 25th.

• 27:53Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 27:54Bill Simmons?

  And, and I look through because I'm a psycho. I went through every year and tried to figure out, is there anything remotely approximating that? And there just isn't, like, there's been stretches, and you were even involved in one where it was like an 07, Knocked Up and Superbad and Tropic Thunder all came out in the same year. But nothing like, nothing like this, these three like influential, where we hadn't had a lot of rewatchable comedies.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  Like I remember Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder came out like a week apart or something. I remember that, like.

• 28:24Bill Simmons?

  There was a couple, there was like.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  And Knocked Up and, yeah, Knocked Up was at the beginning of summer and Superbad was at the end of the summer. But nothing like that where you're like, well, those are three massive comedies that we're still, you know, people still talk about and they were all like within two months.

• 28:41Bill Simmons?

  Like influential ones, because I was looking at like the comedy eras. And like mid 90s, that was all of a sudden, we had all those Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley movies, but they're pretty spread out. In the late 90s had The Farrelly Brothers and American Pie and Austin Powers and multiple Sandler movies and 8mm, which I now consider a comedy. Yeah, I didn't machine was arguably the best comedic actor we had.

• 29:07Bill Simmons?

  But nothing, the, the only other, and you were involved in the, the era that was like the last, like distinct era when it was Apatow. It was for, you know, uh, pineapple express. It was the hangover and it just felt like for five years there, we were just firing out these classic comics.

• 29:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, bridesmaids was in there.

• 29:26Bill Simmons?

  And it just kept going all the way through. Like basically this is the end of neighbors, but, um, but nothing like this stretch of just three movies in a row that became like iconic.

• 29:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy that those are all that close together. And, um, but I, I mean, I will say I've watched those films a lot and, and airplane is the one, nothing against those other movies, but airplane is the one I keep going back to because it's just so unique, you know?

• 29:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it feels the, the least dated for some reason.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's just, it's like, it's its own thing that you can't, and then Blues Brothers is very funny and it's so like extravagant. That movie, like the car chase scenes at the end, you're just like, they had so much money for a comedy.

• 30:11Bill Simmons?

  And, and cocaine, there was a lot of cocaine decisions.

• 30:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of coke decisions. Um, but, and I mean, Blues Brothers is so funny because of all the shit in that movie. The thing that I, the only thing I hold on to from that movie is orange whip. I mean, my friends, orange whip, orange whip, John Candy.

• 30:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  That's like what we say, we'll say that like orange, when I'm asking people if they want stuff and then I'm like, orange whip, you know? Um, but, uh, and then Caddyshack is so, you know, it was really funny, but the, the, the, the, I was just as a side, Caddyshack for all the comedy. I mean, again, it's what we're talking about. When I watched Caddyshack, there's so many funny people on that movie and obviously they're all amazing. But the person I always think about is Ted Knight in that movie is so fucking funny because he's not, he's not, he just feels real. He feels like such a, like, you know what I mean? It has that when he's talking to his golf club at the end, like, oh Billy, Billy, like it's so funny and weird.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  And he has like all the states of the movie are in his eyes like he's so like his son he fucking hates and like all that I just I think he is so funny in that and and yeah so

• 31:25Bill Simmons?

  It's it's one of my favorite characters of any movie ever Judge Smills.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  Unbelievable.

• 31:31Bill Simmons?

  A tour de force.

• 31:31Speaker 05

  It really is like he he really again because there's something rooted in reality that's very funny to me, you know?

• 31:42Bill Simmons?

  Um. Oh Billy Billy Billy.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  Oh Billy.

• 31:46Bill Simmons?

  Um, I was thinking with airplane, one of the things that's crazy and different than Caddyshack has it, especially if you play golf, but this movie had so many bits that just became part of conversation like in my family, my friends, like you had a story about good luck. We're all counting on you that you told them about.

• 32:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, that's what Alec Berg would say. And yeah, or I think it was Alec would say that to me or I would say.

• 32:11Bill Simmons?

  No, you would say that he was.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  I would say it to Alec.

• 32:13Bill Simmons?

  He was like writing, he had some deadline or pull up some scene and you would just keep opening his door.

• 32:19Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, I keep opening his door going, good luck. We're all counting on you. And then I would call him in the middle of the night. Well, good luck. We're all counting on you. Just keep it going.

• 32:31Bill Simmons?

  But we had that. We had the the surely must be serious. Stop calling me Shirley. That was the running thing.

• 32:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's huge.

• 32:38Bill Simmons?

  What a big one for my.

• 32:39Speaker 05

  The other thing is, oh yes, I had the fish. That was the other thing that we would always say, like, if it wasn't on the menu.

• 32:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 05

  Another thing in my family, we'd be like at a, you know, what'd you guys have? Oh, I had the burrito. I had taco. I remember. Yeah, I had the fish.

• 32:52Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 32:53Speaker 05

  You know?

• 32:54Bill Simmons?

  A big one in my family was the.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  I had lasagna. Sorry, I fucked it up.

• 32:57Bill Simmons?

  I had the lasagna.

• 32:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, the lasagna.

• 32:59Bill Simmons?

  The the people that are sitting next to the Robert Hays character who are committing suicide because the stories are so long. We've had that as a running joke of my dad's family for forty five years because we have a couple of relatives where you're just like and you see them trapped in the corner and we start looking and like pulling out the same right sword.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  And also all those care actors are so good. That old lady is so funny. Where, where, I mean, after she says like, oh, she's lovely, you know, supple breast, amazing figure, you know, and all that. But then when he starts talking, the way she takes her glasses off, like, oh, no. Like, oh, God, I didn't want, oh, this guy's gonna get into a story, you know?

• 33:41Bill Simmons?

  I like my coffee black like my men. That's lasted forty five years.

• 33:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's huge.

• 33:46Bill Simmons?

  Have you ever been in a Turkish prison? Has just been undefeated.

• 33:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:50Bill Simmons?

  Leon's getting larger.

• 33:52Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, Leon's leaning larger. Uh, the fog is getting thicker in Leon. And then, uh, and then it, it looks like I picked a bad week to quit doing blank, you know?

• 34:01Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 34:02Speaker 05

  Or whatever. Yeah, that was always.

• 34:04Bill Simmons?

  That keeps going forever. It's like a long, pick the wrong week to stop sniffing glue, whatever you want. And then the other one my wife and I do, I don't know if this is enough, but anytime I do something, because we've been together since like nineteen ninety eight, where if, if I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna have coffee today. And she's like, hmm, Bill always has coffee in the morning. It's like, that's like eternal. I feel like that keeps, that's gonna keep going.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  That was based on a commercial that was.

• 34:29Bill Simmons?

  It was. Yeah, it was based on a coffee commercial.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  I have a coffee at home.

• 34:33Bill Simmons?

  Um, quickly before the categories. So we mentioned all the stuff that they borrowed from Paramount bought it. Um, and a big thing was them convincing the studio that they didn't need comedy actors, that they wanted to get people like Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen and all that stuff. Um, and it's funny, McKay says this in the book, which is along the lines of what you just said with Brian Williams about anytime we had older, high status, white dudes on the show hosting when they weren't really actors, they were the easiest to write comedy for because they could fall a lot further. And it was so fun to hear them say crazy, crazy things.

• 35:08Speaker 05

  It's true. I mean, think of when William Shatner says, get a life at the Star Trek convention sketch. People still think about that because it was William Shatner going, get a life, like him.

• 35:20Speaker 05

  It's like, and you were shocked. You're like, oh my God, I've only seen him be Captain Kirk and him actually doing that. Uh, I will say incidentally, when I rewatched the movie, the thing that and Kenan Thompson and I would talk about this all the time. I think maybe my favorite part of the movie now, when I watch it, there's so many favorite parts. I really liked the end of the movie when Robert Stack is talking on the, on the record and to Robert Hays and Robert Hays leaves and he keeps talking. And he goes, I mean, yeah, it was a childhood. It was a living hell, you know, he was get kicked in the head with an iron boot. And then he gets in his head. He goes, of course you don't know what that's like Ted. No one knows. I forget I said it. I don't know why.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  He's just completely spinning out and he's like municipal bond Ted, like he's just like, that thing was so weird. And that Robert Stack played it straight. Being Ken Thompson would do that all the time. We go kicked in the head, an iron boot.

• 36:24Bill Simmons?

  So written directed by the Zucker Brothers and Jimmy Abrahams. The original title was Flying High. And then it was called Kentucky Fried Airplane and they're like the script process. They knew they were gonna call that.

• 36:34Speaker 05

  It's a favorite part of the Kentucky Fried Theater.

• 36:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then they did Kentucky Fried movies. So that's, anyway, three point five million dollar budget. It made a hundred and seventy one million dollars. It was the fourth biggest movie of nineteen eighty and, uh, and obviously a massive hit for Paramount that. Yeah. Helped the eyes in peace. Roger Rebert, our guy, three stars. Said it was a comedy in the great tradition of high school sits, skits, the Sid Caesar TV show, Mad Magazine, blah, blah, blah. Um, the reason it's funny frequently is because it's sophomore predictable, corny, et cetera. But he liked it. All right. Categories. So I tried to narrow down most rewatchable scene. Red zone, white zone argument. Listen, Betty, don't start with your white zone shit again. Uh, that whole part.

• 37:23Bill Simmons?

  Um, the Jive Guys boarding the plane.

• 37:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, the Jive Guys with, um, June Cleaver is, is, was pretty shocking. Like, it's still like, it just, you don't expect that bit to take that turn that leave it to Beaver's mom's gonna show up and be like, I speak Jive. And then I, I saw on like, Patton sent me this thing that was funny, which was, on the making of Airplane, like the 25th anniversary or something, they had those two actors who played the Jive Talking Guys, and they were speaking, you know, obviously like, uh, like,

• 37:59Bill Simmons?

  Normal people.

• 38:00Speaker 05

  But underneath it, they subtitled them in Jive, so it was like reversed to the movie.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  It's like, oh, that's funny. So, yeah, and they made up a lot of that stuff. Those two guys, yeah, that, that's what one of the, Zucker's said, they were like, oh, those guys deserve a lot of credit for that, because they were just making stuff up.

• 38:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they unleashed at least one of the actors, I think his name was Al White, and had a, just like, hey, can you write this?

• 38:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:29Bill Simmons?

  Like, somehow.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was so funny.

• 38:33Bill Simmons?

  Kareem loved it. I was surprised. Kareem said, I loved the Ebonics scene, because they poked fun at a very real subject without

• 38:39Speaker 05

  Oh, that was funny. When he says, the hell I don't to the kid, that is very funny.

• 38:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I got that one.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  It's not, because you don't see that coming either.

• 38:49Bill Simmons?

  So I have Ted's story about meeting Elaine when we're in the disco. There's a stunt woman fight that just keeps going and going.

• 38:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, two, uh, Girl Scouts or something. It makes, yeah, I don't know what it's about, but it's so funny.

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  And that goes right into.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Gets stabbed and he starts like pointing to the knife in his back and

• 39:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 05

  Julie Hagerty thinks it's a dance. I worked with her once too, and I asked her about it, and she was like, oh, I go, were you guys laughing a lot on the set of that? And she goes, well, you know how it is? No, you're kind of like trying to get it right. You know, and then they go cut and you'd be like, oh God, I hope that was all right, you know?

• 39:25Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 39:26Speaker 05

  So there wasn't like, oh, we're having a hard time keeping it together because the tone was so weird. So she's like, I had a great time. I just remember trying to like, keep my, she's like the nicest human being on the planet. Julie Hagerty is and she was like, I was just trying to like, make sure I was getting the right tone and everything. It was very, very sweet.

• 39:45Bill Simmons?

  Did you have a movie where everybody was just laughing on the set the entire time? And almost being able to, or is it just serious comedy every time?

• 39:54Speaker 05

  No, I mean, I mean, super bad. We laughed a lot on, I remember super bad. I mean, it's on DVD. There's a whole scene I couldn't get through because I kept laughing.

• 40:04Bill Simmons?

  What scene was it?

• 40:06Speaker 05

  When I tell McLovin, I'm sorry, I blocked your cock. I couldn't get through this line. I just kept laughing. I just could not stop laughing because I didn't realize Christmas plast was going to be naked in the scene. And like under the covers and we walk in on him with this girl. And so just seeing this nerdy guy with, you know, it was just a whole image of him and me as this cop apologizing to him. Uh, it just, it just, I was like, guys, I don't think I can do this. And from being funny to then, you know, people like, you know, like, dude, get your shit together.

• 40:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, people are getting mad at you. Come on, man.

• 40:45Speaker 05

  Please get it like, get it together, dude. Uh, but that one was a lot of fun. I remember I was laughing a lot on that. Yeah.

• 40:53Bill Simmons?

  Um, couple more rewatchable scenes. Well, the kid bringing the coffee to the girl when they're both like little kid adults.

• 41:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, Republican kids.

• 41:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't know. That just was a funny idea. Um, Captain Over meets Joey and Roger meets Joey too. We get all, we're playing all the hits on this one and then it goes to the Kareem, which I gotta say, when I saw this at age 10, and I knew Kareem as just this guy who had no emotion when he played basketball, just shot the skyhook, had the goggles. You had no feel for him at all. He was the biggest star in the league. And then to see him in airplane, it like broke my brain because I love basketball.

• 41:31Speaker 05

  Fan, do you think the kid's dad has a point?

• 41:35Bill Simmons?

  That was the, that was what was great about that scene was that was the rap on him that he only tried in the playoffs. And that he was on autopilot during the season.

• 41:44Speaker 05

  As a sports, you know, you know, sports, you know, master, what, what do you think about what Kareem said back? Do you think his like, have your old man, I've been hearing that shit ever since UCLA, have your man drad.

• 41:58Bill Simmons?

  I loved it. Well, the, I was gonna talk about this later. The funniest thing with the cream thing is it's, we have this category apex mountain. It's literally his apex mountain because they just won the 1980 title. He'd had the best game of his life in game five where he got hurt. He sprained his ankle. He came back, had this real game.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Oh, so he's like at the top of it.

• 42:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And, and he had just finished like this incredible 11 year run, you know, top of the mountain. He's playing with magic. He's in LA. But nobody had a feel for him. And then when he did this, it like, I, I, I actually think it really helped him from a public standpoint. People are like, oh, Kareem's not an asshole.

• 42:36Speaker 05

  Oh, he has like a sense of humor about himself.

• 42:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And also athletes weren't in movies like Bernard King was in Fast Break. Dr. J was in Fish That Say Pittsburgh, but they weren't in movies like this.

• 42:48Speaker 05

  Hockey guys in Slapshot, right?

• 42:50Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 42:50Speaker 05

  Little hockey guys in that and then long.

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  But it was, it was just so unconventional, like by, by the time.

• 42:56Speaker 05

  I guess it'd be like retired people, right? Like.

• 42:58Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, right. Yeah.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then you go 35 years later, you did Trainwreck and LeBron is in it, right? And at that time, we're used to athletes doing shit like that. But with Kareem, we were not.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:11Bill Simmons?

  You said LeBron was good, like good, like a good actor, though.

• 43:14Speaker 05

  He was really good. What I thought was funny about LeBron was that Judd, you know, he, he was pitching some kind of things like, I remember, oh, what if, you know, you go, you guys go to a, it was like bigger kind of set piece stuff, like more comedy stuff. And, um, and, and LeBron was more into like the idea that he was cheap. He thought was really funny. Like, and that was just the thing I was saying like to him, like I had met somebody who was like really famous and like had like really rich and had a deal with, I just had a dinner with them and I was like, and dude, they like, we split the check. It was crazy.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  It's like one of the most richest people in the world and we split the check and LeBron was like, oh, I should do that. Like that was like, he got really excited by that. And he was like, oh, let's do that, you know, which I like, I saw like, oh, man, he's funny. He's got like a real comedy, you know, brain and, and he played it great, you know?

• 44:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  And then, and Judd was so delighted by that. He was like, oh, he wants to do, oh, that's so awesome. You know, so, yeah, he was great.

• 44:17Bill Simmons?

  Couple more scenes, the, uh, the, the play in the song for the sick little girl goes right into Ted's story about living in Africa. When, when they're teaching basketball and

• 44:28Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:29Bill Simmons?

  The soldier ends up killing himself. That all stretched.

• 44:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:32Bill Simmons?

  My favorite part, we didn't talk about yet, uh, the inflatable pilot getting blown.

• 44:37Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, that's the kind of, yeah.

• 44:39Bill Simmons?

  When I was 10, that was the height of comedy for me. I just, it felt edgy. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to see it.

• 44:46Speaker 05

  Also, the funny thing about that scene is that some of the WGN and TBS, like my memory is one of them cut it and the other one didn't cut it. And I was like, I wonder if they understood what was happening in that scene. You know, I mean, the, the inflatable head smiles, like the guy smiles so clearly it's

• 45:07Bill Simmons?

  It starts going up and down at one point.

• 45:09Speaker 05

  Up and down, like this is awesome, but like, yeah, like I remember it got cut and some of them and the other ones it wasn't cut. And I thought that was interesting.

• 45:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, that goes right into the attack golden retriever. And then it goes right into the guy covering himself in gasoline.

• 45:24Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:25Bill Simmons?

  Holding the match and she's like, hey, Ted, you wanna, and the guy got

• 45:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, and he's like nod, like, please, please go.

• 45:32Bill Simmons?

  Um, couple more quick ones. The lady who freaks out and everyone lines up to hit her. That was borrowed from one of the airport movies where somebody's freaking out and somebody slaps her and they just decided to take that.

• 45:42Speaker 05

  How funny, like also Leslie Nielsen, it's so brutal. He slaps her and they go, doctor, they need you. And he slaps her one last time.

• 45:50Bill Simmons?

  He goes

• 45:51Speaker 05

  It's shocking. You're like, Jesus Christ. Like he, it's like so mean, like he, that's still shocking to me when I see it. Cause it's like, you're kind of used to this thing and then

• 46:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 05

  And for no reason, it's like, God damn it, that's awful.

• 46:10Bill Simmons?

  The stewardess I speak jive.

• 46:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. Here it is.

• 46:15Bill Simmons?

  This is a small one, but Randy breaking down when she's like, I'm 26 and I'm not married. And then other lady comes in and says.

• 46:21Speaker 05

  I have a husband.

• 46:22Bill Simmons?

  Classic. And then the landing the plane has the, I just want to tell you all good luck. We're all counting on you. I quit the wrong week to quit sniff a glue. All that's it's playing all the hits down the stretch.

• 46:34Speaker 05

  Oh yeah. Where he says, um, also there's that weird moment where, where Lloyd Bridges is talking and that, and he's, and that spear for no reason just flies into the. And then he goes, if we don't do it, this thing will go right down to the ground. And then a giant watermelon falls down.

• 46:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Like, what is happening?

• 46:55Bill Simmons?

  They were just throwing jokes at the end.

• 46:57Speaker 05

  I don't know. Watermelon falls like, you know, and.

• 47:01Bill Simmons?

  All right. So what's your favorite? What's your most rewatchable?

• 47:04Speaker 05

  I had that moment with Robert Stack where he loses it at the end where he's like municipal bonds Ted. I just reason I like it. Cause it really, it just, I get logically why those guys did it. But it's an intuitive thing that you realize that this guy who's like so cool just really wants a friend. And he's just trying to connect to somebody.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  And that he had a horrible childhood. It's just really funny to me. And no one's on the other thing. It's like, why would anybody? It's just that he picks that time to, to unload all his shit on Ted is very funny.

• 47:41Bill Simmons?

  I have inflatable or I have a, I have, um, the cockpit, obviously. I mean, the cockpit led to more jokes over the next 30 years, just in real life than anything. And especially those, it's just, uh, anyway, what's the most?

• 47:56Speaker 05

  Oh, I also liked, uh, at the time, because my grandmother used to listen to it all the time was the Ethel Merman. You will be swell.

• 48:04Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 48:05Speaker 05

  Like it's such a shocking thing that it's actually Ethel Merman. It was very funny.

• 48:10Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 1980 thing about this movie? All right. Nominees. The second cup of coffee being a parody of a coffee commercial that was in the moment, but nobody would know now. Somebody's saying, I haven't felt this awful since I saw the Ronald Reagan film.

• 48:25Speaker 05

  Or the Anita Bryant concert.

• 48:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Anita Bryant concert, Ronald Reagan film, like just some of the pop culture that's in here. They do a disco's dead joke. There are smoking and non-smoking sections to the airplane.

• 48:38Speaker 05

  That was, yeah, that was the, my dad and his brothers told me the biggest laugh of the entire movie and the Zucker Brothers told me too is when it's like, well, disco lives forever and it.

• 48:48Bill Simmons?

  And it hits the thing, right?

• 48:49Speaker 05

  People were so sick of disco, he said, that thing.

• 48:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  It like stopped the movie, like people were cheering for like the next two scenes because people hated disco so much to that point. It was so played out.

• 49:02Bill Simmons?

  A movie starting with a Jaws parody. The announcer going, pinch hitting for Pedro Borbone, many muta.

• 49:12Bill Simmons?

  I have Harry Krishnas in an airport because.

• 49:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's.

• 49:15Bill Simmons?

  There's just not people handing out stuff in airports anymore. I think that that era is long over.

• 49:20Speaker 05

  Also, I will say, I mean, people do cocaine jokes, but the old lady's sniffing the cocaine and the coffee.

• 49:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 05

  One, but Anita Bryant concert is pretty, and also just like the look of it. I don't know. For me, I'm always like, just the look of like,

• 49:37Speaker 05

  like the harsh lighting and their shadows and stuff, like very eighties to me.

• 49:41Bill Simmons?

  My answer is Kareem. Kareem still with hair, especially when they pull him out the end of the goggles and it's just like, that's clearly Kareem in 1980.

• 49:54Speaker 05

  In death, they just admit.

• 49:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was Kareem.

• 50:01Bill Simmons?

  All right, what's aged the best? So.

• 50:06Bill Simmons?

  The premise is just pretty good for a movie. A crew becomes sick with food poisoning and an erotic pilot must safely land the plane full of passengers. It's a good premise.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:18Bill Simmons?

  Being stuck to next to somebody on a plane who won't shut up, you just instantly think of airplane.

• 50:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally.

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  If you're like, so where are you flying? And you're like, oh, boy, here we go. Oh, no.

• 50:30Bill Simmons?

  All the hidden jokes we mentioned earlier that you don't maybe catch the first time, but like, for instance, in the newsstand, where it says whacking material.

• 50:40Speaker 05

  Whacking material is also the idea that the every time they cut to the model, you know, the exterior of the plane, those, the sound of the plane is, is that's not what the plane sounds like.

• 50:53Bill Simmons?

  It's a propeller.

• 50:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was very funny.

• 50:57Bill Simmons?

  The wordplay stuff of like, this woman has got, has to be gotten to a hospital, hospital. What is it? It's a big building with patients, but the fact that they just keep doing that over and over again, but that's not important right now. Nineteen different things.

• 51:12Bill Simmons?

  I thought that the theme music's pretty good.

• 51:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's Elmer Bernstein, right?

• 51:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's really good.

• 51:17Bill Simmons?

  Want to throw that in there.

• 51:19Speaker 05

  And the Zucker Brothers, uh, and they're in it. Yeah. Jim Abrams is, he's one of the Harry Krishnas. And then the two Zucker Brothers are the ones where the, you know, hey, Tony, yeah, they're the.

• 51:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, the, the air traffic guys.

• 51:33Speaker 05

  The air traffic guys, like where it's over there. Yeah.

• 51:37Bill Simmons?

  So Leslie Nielsen, being a comedy actor, has aged the best since this unleashed him into, uh, Three Naked Gun movies and Police Squad and all kinds of different things. And then, uh, I think the, the air Israel joke is really underrated. I can't believe they did that at the moment, but I think they felt like they could get away with that because it was Jewish. But it was just like, it's so stuck in where there's a plane and it's got like a beard on the bottom.

• 52:03Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:04Bill Simmons?

  It looks like a rabbi.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:08Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, the famous Jewish sports legends, Pimpfoot is funny.

• 52:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, very small. Yeah. Light reading material.

• 52:14Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, I gotta say, I'm throwing her in here. Lorna Patterson. Had a crush on her for like 45 years. I don't know how she is now, but she, she's great in this movie. And she had a great voice and.

• 52:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:26Bill Simmons?

  Home run all the way around. Any other one that's aged the best for you?

• 52:32Speaker 05

  I don't know, just like, just the things we've been talking about earlier, but just like, it's its own thing. It's like, I can't describe it. It's like, you can't, it's like,

• 52:42Bill Simmons?

  It's a one on one.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  It's a one on, yeah, it's like, you can't, I don't really know what else you can really compare it to.

• 52:48Bill Simmons?

  Um, zip it through some quick categories. The Big Kahuna Burger Award for Best Use of Food and Drink has to be the poisoned fish.

• 52:56Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, the poisoned fish and the whole reaction, him talking about it and him, yeah, Peter Graves is very good in that scene. He has to deal all the symptoms.

• 53:05Bill Simmons?

  We have a Great Shot Gordo Award for the most cinematic shot named after Gordon Willis. Um, the water nailing them in on the beach when they get covered in seaweed. Pretty good.

• 53:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's pretty great. Yeah, that's a good shot. I also like, there's a, the shot where they're in the cockpit and the, when he's telling them, you know, you have to land the plane and everything, that the light is very, it's all very dark.

• 53:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's good.

• 53:31Speaker 05

  And everything, it's very, like, the lighting in the cockpit suddenly changes.

• 53:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 53:35Speaker 05

  Horror movie is very funny.

• 53:38Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness Award for Best Needle Drop. Um, this has to be the Bee Gees, set up Bee Gees in the disco.

• 53:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:46Bill Simmons?

  Chess Rockwell and Brock Lander's Award for Best Character Name. Ted Stryker is really good, unless there's one you like more.

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, Ted Stryker is, yeah, and you hear it so many times throughout the movie too, and it's always funny. And Leon, I don't know what Leon's last name is, but I like that that guy's name is Leon.

• 54:04Bill Simmons?

  Poor Leon. And then we don't get to give this out all the time, but the Sean Penn, I broke my, I brought my own pack award for excellence in on-screen smoking. Stack and Bridges are simultaneously just, just heating darts and just look like it is not the first time.

• 54:21Speaker 05

  No, that seems like they're just, yeah, they just, they were smoking off camera and they just were like, well, I'm not gonna, yeah.

• 54:30Bill Simmons?

  All right. The Butch's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film. I have one unless you want to go first. So.

• 54:39Bill Simmons?

  We never say this on the rewatchables. We always are mad that the movie's too long. I this movie's like five minutes too short.

• 54:46Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 54:47Bill Simmons?

  I could have, I could have, I could have gone a little further.

• 54:50Speaker 05

  I like it that it's so short. I like that they just are in, they leave you wanting more, you know?

• 54:55Bill Simmons?

  I had some ideas. I could add one more scene with the jab guys. I could have had Steven Stucker, who is trying to steal the second half of the movie in the first half of the movie, maybe for 20 seconds.

• 55:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:08Bill Simmons?

  I could have done one more round with the kids acting like adults.

• 55:12Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 55:12Bill Simmons?

  And then there's nothing with the airplane bathroom. That just seems like there could have been a scene in the bathroom, something.

• 55:18Speaker 05

  You got the mom, their mom, that's the Zucker Brothers mom is the lady putting on the

• 55:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 05

  the makeup and everything. I mean, I, I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't want to see more about the relationship of the, the guy's wife and the horse. I don't really.

• 55:33Bill Simmons?

  No, that.

• 55:35Speaker 05

  I like just knowing what we know.

• 55:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, fair.

• 55:39Speaker 05

  It's pretty good.

• 55:40Bill Simmons?

  Cause this movie's like 80 minutes. Wait, Craig, Craig, you're on this, right? You're listening?

• 55:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it's 88 minutes.

• 55:47Bill Simmons?

  Craig, cause Craig is the, Craig's the shepherd of this movie is too long. So was this movie the right length for you, Craig? Or could you go on five more minutes?

• 55:54Speaker 06

  I mean, if you're, if we're picking five minutes, sure, but I, I like that these, you keep people wanting more.

• 55:59Speaker 05

  I like it wanting more. Yeah. Most movies, especially now, I'm always like, how the heck was that so long? You know?

• 56:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, it's like a guaranteed two plus hours now, anything you go to.

• 56:10Speaker 05

  Hey, I've been in movies where like you're at the premiere and they're like, all right, the movie is two hours and 45 minutes and we're in it. And the whole cast goes, what?

• 56:21Bill Simmons?

  That was the, the second it movie was really long.

• 56:23Speaker 05

  Second it movie is that was it. We were at the premiere and they were like, yeah, so this movie is like over three hour or something. And it was really funny. The whole cast, we're all sitting in one row at the premiere. We all went, what? And how long? We all looked at the director and he was laughing and like put his head down. We're like, why is it so fucking long? What did you guys keep everything? Then afterwards be like, it was that long, but you cut the scene where we did the, you know? Somehow we still didn't, somehow we still didn't make, you know, the cut in some way. It was very funny.

• 56:54Bill Simmons?

  I only have a couple of what's aged the worst, but we'll do them right after the break.

• 56:59Speaker 07

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• 57:43Bill Simmons?

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• 58:27Bill Simmons?

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• 59:08Bill Simmons?

  Get free shipping on your order, 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it's a Rewatchables podcast. They would appreciate that. It's the best way to support the show. What's age the worst? So Robert Stack was offered an extra 20K or a percentage or a percentage of the movie and he took the 20K.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:31Bill Simmons?

  And he's been mad about it ever since, just kicking himself because the movie made almost $200 billion. Tough one.

• 59:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a tough one.

• 59:39Bill Simmons?

  Um, the jive scene when they dub it in other languages has caused complete chaos. And they said, um, when they do it in Germany, they use a thick Bavarian dialect. That, um, that's so, it sounds amazing.

• 59:55Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 59:57Bill Simmons?

  Yes. I don't know how that translates in French, Portuguese, whatever. And then the, uh, the shock impact of Kareem being in this, we mentioned earlier, which now in 2025, but it really was shocking to see him in this. And now as the years pass, that that's kind of faded. You know what I mean?

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. But I'm sure that was like, yeah, you couldn't believe it, how shocking that was at the time. I mean, and it's funny for me because I was so young. I probably knew him from this first and before.

• 1:00:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Speaker 05

  Player, you know, it was like later, I was like, oh, Skyhook. Oh, that's the guy from Airplane.

• 1:00:36Bill Simmons?

  Right. The only other one I have you mentioned already, which is when, uh, Leslie Nielsen goes in for that second smack.

• 1:00:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, when he hits that lady again, it's so shocking. It's like, I'm laughing because it's just like, Jesus Christ. It's so horrible.

• 1:00:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't know if that's happening in 2025.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  Good. Also, I mean, there's also like, I don't know about all the, the African guys and.

• 1:01:02Bill Simmons?

  The basketballs, the other one, yeah.

• 1:01:04Speaker 05

  Basketball is not, that, that doesn't, I mean, when I watched that with my kids, they were kind of quiet during that scene. They were like, mm, I don't know about this. Uh, I mean, that, that was the moment in any movie I watched, my kids always had to be like, it was the eighties, you know, like.

• 1:01:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 05

  Watching Back to the Future and when like Marty McFly's dad's like up in a tree, like watching girls undress. And my, my kid was like, he's a pervert. And I'm like, no, no, no, you're going to want to see him win at the end of the movie.

• 1:01:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just trust me.

• 1:01:33Speaker 05

  So just trust me. She's like, fuck this guy. I'm not watching this. Like this guy, that's disgusting. Fuck this dude.

• 1:01:41Bill Simmons?

  It's the eighties is a great excuse for a lot of behavior.

• 1:01:44Speaker 05

  It was the eighties, it was the eighties, it was all made by white guys for white guys. Sorry, I'm sorry. But, but yeah, they, they, uh, they lasted through this one, but some of them like Back to the Future and some of the other ones, they were like, no, we're not into those.

• 1:02:03Bill Simmons?

  The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford Award for the hottest take. I'm gonna throw this one at you. I think Lorna Patterson should have been a bigger star.

• 1:02:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Bill Simmons?

  I don't really get it. Cause she was in private, she was in this and then Private Benjamin, which was the TV version of it.

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Bill Simmons?

  And she was on that for three years and it never kind of happened and then that was it. Every guy that I knew had a crush on her in this movie.

• 1:02:29Speaker 05

  But it was a hard time though, you know?

• 1:02:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  At that time for, for actresses, you know?

• 1:02:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, they, they didn't have, there wasn't that whole rom com infrastructure yet that doesn't have to the late eighties. But I think if, if she's 10 years later, now, now there's like different types of things for her. Cause she would have been good in a rom com.

• 1:02:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. She was really good in this. I mean, everybody across the board. I, I mean, when I'm, I'm just thinking about the performances, there's no, I don't. There's, everybody's so funny in it. I mean.

• 1:03:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, this has more casting what ifs than any movie we've had in a while, including we mentioned Ted Stryker was written for David Letterman.

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Bill Simmons?

  And then he couldn't.

• 1:03:11Speaker 05

  For David Letterman. Yeah.

• 1:03:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he couldn't, uh, couldn't pull it off. The studio pushed Barry Manilow at one point.

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  But David Letterman, you can go on YouTube and he has the Zucker Brothers and Abrams on late night.

• 1:03:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the early eighties. Yeah.

• 1:03:24Speaker 05

  And they show his audition on the, and it's really, yeah, you could see the what if, like that's what the movie would have been if it was Letterman.

• 1:03:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the scene is him in the hospital as Ted Stryker.

• 1:03:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was, he spits the water. Yeah, that, yeah.

• 1:03:39Bill Simmons?

  I love Letterman. I'm, I'm.

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  George Zip, George Zip's another good name. Sorry.

• 1:03:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that was a good one. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad Letterman's not in this movie because I think as the years pass, it makes it weird. He kind of overpowers it.

• 1:03:51Speaker 05

  He should have been either. I think it's it's great as Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty. It's like, I just think the casting across the board is like, perfect. I can't imagine anybody else.

• 1:04:00Bill Simmons?

  Fred Willard said that he was offered the role of Ted Stryker and didn't really understand the script and turned it down.

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Bill Simmons?

  Tim Matheson was offered Ted Stryker, but was filming 1941. And then they said Bruce Jenner, at the time an Olympic gold medalist and trying to get into acting, audition for Ted, did not get it.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:04:21Bill Simmons?

  Now Kayla Jenner.

• 1:04:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, Robert Hays is just the one for me. I just think.

• 1:04:26Bill Simmons?

  Because he plays it straight and he's not trying at all.

• 1:04:30Speaker 05

  He seems like if they were making that movie now, like if they're making an honest version of like, like Paramount was like, hey, we want to do a straight remake of Zero Hour. Those are the two people they would cast as the lead.

• 1:04:41Bill Simmons?

  No question.

• 1:04:42Speaker 05

  You know, and how that works.

• 1:04:43Bill Simmons?

  Elaine's part was auditioned for by Sigourney Weaver and Shelley Long.

• 1:04:48Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:04:49Bill Simmons?

  Went to Julie Hagerty and Shelley Long had a quote where she's like, I thought I had it. It was like one of those, like she's kind of surprised she didn't get it.

• 1:04:56Speaker 05

  That's a terrible feeling. I know that feeling. It's the worst feeling.

• 1:05:01Bill Simmons?

  What's your number one? I thought I had it movie?

• 1:05:03Speaker 05

  Oh, I don't want to say what it is, but yeah, there's been a couple where.

• 1:05:07Bill Simmons?

  Tell me after the podcast.

• 1:05:08Speaker 05

  I'll tell you after the podcast, but there's been a couple where they're like, dude, they love you. Get ready. I mean, I've had the whole thing where I do the, you know, the wardrobe fitting and everything. And then they give you a call and go, oh dude, so and so read the script and their bigger name. Sorry. You know, or you just lose it. I will say forever, when I would audition, I could put money on it that Adam Scott was reading for the same thing. This is like 20 years ago.

• 1:05:33Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:05:33Speaker 05

  And I would walk into a room and he'd be walking out and we both just start laughing. I'm like, of course.

• 1:05:40Speaker 05

  I was like, God damn it. Adam read for this. There's no way I'm gonna get this. You know, he's so good. But yeah, that a lot of actors, you usually have that person that's always reading the same thing you are.

• 1:05:53Bill Simmons?

  Dr. Rumack, Leslie Nielsen's character, turned down by Dom DeLuise, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, and Jack Webb from Dragnet. And

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  Please.

• 1:06:04Bill Simmons?

  Christopher Lee and Vincent Price both said it was the biggest mistake of their career.

• 1:06:08Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. That'd be pretty amazing. It's gotta be Leslie Nielsen, though. He's just too.

• 1:06:13Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 1:06:14Speaker 05

  He's just perfect. Every line, everything he does, even the weird egg thing like he does. And when he cracks the egg and the bird flies out, he does that like almost like karate chop hand where he's like, where it it. It's unbelievable. Like, he's so good.

• 1:06:32Bill Simmons?

  Vincent Price does not. I don't see that.

• 1:06:34Speaker 05

  Well, it just makes it a different movie. It just makes it a different thing, you know? And he was He doing campy, funny stuff by then, you know, for years. So.

• 1:06:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:45Speaker 05

  It's gotta be Leslie Nielsen.

• 1:06:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, this would have made a different movie, too. They wanted Pete Rose for Roger Murdoch, but it was during baseball season. He couldn't do it. So they they got Kareem. Pete Rose.

• 1:06:56Speaker 05

  There's somewhere, there's somewhere, I think, in that book where they have the script pages for Pete Rose. I think it's in that airplane book where they have the scene that they wrote for Pete Rose. That would have been interesting.

• 1:07:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, it turned out to be Kareem and then Jibe Lady Translator was supposed to be Harriet Nelson from Ozzy and Harriet. She turned it down. They went to June Cleaver.

• 1:07:19Bill Simmons?

  And then this made me laugh, too. Peter Graves said no because he thought the film was the script was tasteless. But then they talked him into it and he still didn't really understand the cockpit stuff. And they told them later on in the movie, we're going to explain it, but they never did. And they just kind of rope a dope them to get them to say all the lines.

• 1:07:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, they told me Jerry was usually the person that had to talk to the actors.

• 1:07:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Speaker 05

  Jerry Zucker was the one that was really good at explaining what they wanted and that. And that they had it. The thing they always say is that they had explained to Robert Stack, like, remember this scene, Robert Stack's like, it's his ballgame now. He's the Yeah. He's the head honcho, the blah, blah, blah. He goes, you know, it's like what you do and, and, um, like he was doing it wrong and, and Jerry Zucker was like, no, you know, it's like, when you did, uh, you know, this scene from this movie you did, and he goes, I had to do Robert Stack to Robert Stack.

• 1:08:11Bill Simmons?

  To get him to be Robert Stack.

• 1:08:12Speaker 05

  To be Robert Stack. He goes, no, no, it's, it's that, da da, da da. It's you looking at a list. You do that a lot in your stuff, you know? And, uh, he didn't get it and then he nailed it and they, they loved it.

• 1:08:24Bill Simmons?

  You probably had moments like that on SNL with different actors, right?

• 1:08:28Speaker 05

  Sometimes, yeah, yeah. Where you're like, hey, so, um, I was wondering, my thing I always had to do is I would have to do an impression of somebody to them. Like I had to go in like, like John Malkovich or Christopher Walken or Robert De Niro would have to go into their dressing room and say, hey, I'm doing you in the sketch. You know, so, um, I just want to do it. So we're not just out there. I hope you're okay with this, you know? And I would do the, that was very weird.

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  Because you were worried that if you did it out there, it would throw them off or something?

• 1:08:59Speaker 05

  Throw them off like, well, it's just like, I just felt like that was a respectful thing to do instead of like in front of a ton of people and like, not like on live shows when we're doing rehearsal, like in front of a bunch of people, like surprise them by doing them.

• 1:09:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Speaker 05

  Sometimes you would do an impression of people and they didn't, they didn't appreciate it, even if, you know, it was like not bad. You know, I, I would have people, you know, stop heading like that or whatever. Not a lot, but it, it happened a couple of times. So, with those guys, I respect them so much. I was like, hey, do you want to, I would say, hey, do you want to hear it or whatever? And they go, yeah, yeah. What is it? And so you do like to Christopher Walken. Christopher Walken was like, oh, everybody does me. Don't worry about it.

• 1:09:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  I had to do Malkovich to Malkovich and he was so sweet about it. He was like, oh, that's good. That's good. You know, like, he was very nice.

• 1:09:45Bill Simmons?

  Not many people have gotten mad. Like I remember Mark Wahlberg got mad at the Andy Samberg.

• 1:09:49Speaker 05

  And Mark Wahlberg got mad and he got really upset at that. Yeah. He got really.

• 1:09:54Bill Simmons?

  He had to like come on the next week to. Get his turf back.

• 1:09:59Speaker 05

  He came on the uh, he was at the, the show that Sarah Palin was at, which was like the most watched show, my time there was most watched show of the, of the.

• 1:10:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Speaker 05

  My, uh, uh, like in the history of the show or something, but yeah, that, that I remember that was weird. Or yeah, he was, he was really upset. I think that was probably of all the impressions I saw. And I don't know, I don't think Palin liked Tina's Palin, you know, which made sense, but uh, my stuff was always like, I would go to a restaurant and the person would be there, you know?

• 1:10:29Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:10:30Speaker 05

  They'd come over and be like, I didn't like that or whatever. And you're like, oh, sorry.

• 1:10:34Bill Simmons?

  Oh, somebody would say that to you?

• 1:10:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that happened twice. And then.

• 1:10:39Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 1:10:40Speaker 05

  But it, it wasn't, and then usually it's fine. I would say 98% of the time it's totally fine. You know, and Elliot Spitzer, I saw him and I like, kind of, it was at this event and I kind of froze. Like, oh my God, Elliot Spitzer. And he immediately went, I'm not mad at you.

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  And he gave me a hug. And then just about three months ago, I finally met Pacino and I met Al Pacino and he came up and he was like, oh my God, that was, I, I never got a chance to meet you. That was great. Like he was.

• 1:11:10Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:11:11Speaker 05

  He was so sweet. Like it was, it was crazy. I was so starstruck. I was like, oh my God. I called him sir. Sir, thank you. So nice meeting you, sir. Like, I was just like, holy shit, you know?

• 1:11:24Bill Simmons?

  You ran into Ted Levine and Ted Levine was furious about Buffalo Bill.

• 1:11:28Speaker 05

  That's been ruining my life. I don't, I don't talk like that. Why'd you do that? Why? You know, you're acting like a big, great fat person.

• 1:11:41Speaker 05

  No, not, yeah, but yeah, it is very rare that that happens.

• 1:11:46Bill Simmons?

  Next category is best that guy word. And this movie's filled with that guys, but I wanted to shout out. That guy from Breaking Bad is working air traffic controller who ended up having like an awesome career. Yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 05

  One of the best line, Mike from um.

• 1:11:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:59Speaker 05

  Breaking Bad.

• 1:12:00Speaker 06

  Jonathan Brooks.

• 1:12:01Speaker 05

  Jonathan Brooks.

• 1:12:02Speaker 06

  No, sorry, Jonathan Banks.

• 1:12:03Bill Simmons?

  Jonathan Banks, yeah.

• 1:12:05Speaker 05

  Jonathan Banks from.

• 1:12:06Bill Simmons?

  Also in Midnight Run. He's had, he's been in a lot of good stuff.

• 1:12:10Speaker 05

  He's a, but yeah, he's got like, well, he's going from like, what, eight thousand feet to 200,000 feet? What an asshole.

• 1:12:19Speaker 05

  And then he's great.

• 1:12:21Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, the guy who gets sick, who's married to the lady who was like, Jim never has a cup of coffee.

• 1:12:27Speaker 05

  He's the, he's the dad on Parker Lewis Can't Lose, right?

• 1:12:30Bill Simmons?

  He's the dad in Risky Business.

• 1:12:32Speaker 05

  Oh, that's right. He's the dad.

• 1:12:33Bill Simmons?

  Joel.

• 1:12:34Speaker 05

  Joel.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  He was the chancellor in nine oh two one oh. He's, he was in there for twenty years.

• 1:12:40Speaker 05

  He was not on Parker Lewis Can't Lose. Take, take that back.

• 1:12:44Bill Simmons?

  He was Risky Business, better.

• 1:12:45Speaker 05

  Risky Business, that's way better. I'm thinking of another guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was in Risky Business and that's, yeah, Joel.

• 1:12:52Bill Simmons?

  So he's our winner.

• 1:12:53Speaker 05

  You noticed something, Joel?

• 1:12:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, Diane Waiters Award for the best heat check in the movie. Our nominees are Ethel Merman.

• 1:13:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Bill Simmons?

  Kareem, the Jive Guys, Lloyd Bridges, or Steven Stucker.

• 1:13:10Speaker 05

  I think Steven Stucker is just.

• 1:13:12Bill Simmons?

  I think he wins it.

• 1:13:13Speaker 05

  I think Steven Stucker wins it because he comes out of nowhere and just, he does, he just owns the movie.

• 1:13:19Bill Simmons?

  He starts just stealing scenes out of nowhere.

• 1:13:22Speaker 05

  And you could tell, like, he was in there, he was in the Kentucky Fried Theater with those guys and he's in Kentucky Fried Movie. He's really funny. He's this stenographer in this one sketch, um, in a courtroom sketch and, um, you could just tell they just loved him and they're just like, yeah, do whatever you want.

• 1:13:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, go nuts.

• 1:13:41Speaker 05

  And he's, um, I mean, for what is arguably one of the funniest movies ever made, he steals one of the funniest movies ever made.

• 1:13:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Speaker 05

  I think he's one of like the, uh, like what could have been, he died unfortunately really young and he could have been like massive, that guy. He was so funny.

• 1:14:00Bill Simmons?

  Recasting Couch Director City. I'm gonna give you this one as a thought experiment. One more character on the plane, a famous actress.

• 1:14:12Bill Simmons?

  And it's Lynda Carter. We just get Lynda Carter in an airplane for no reason, just for 90 extra seconds. Maybe there's an autograph thing. Maybe she sits next to Ted and kills herself dressed as Wonder Woman. I don't know, something, just some sort of era specific.

• 1:14:25Speaker 05

  It's always like, oh, era specific.

• 1:14:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like Cheryl Ladd, Lynda Carter, somebody from that era.

• 1:14:31Speaker 05

  Wasn't that usually the part for like, you know, uh?

• 1:14:36Bill Simmons?

  It was always like a famous actress.

• 1:14:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then she has like an assistant who's like.

• 1:14:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. We needed some famous thing. All right. Some half ass internet research. The red zone, white zone scene. They hired the real life married couple who had recorded the announcement tapes at LAX and just had them do it because they couldn't find better actors.

• 1:14:55Speaker 05

  Perfectly normal thing. I mean, that you want me to get an abortion.

• 1:15:04Bill Simmons?

  Robert Hays said, the dailies were so funny that the studio had to add a second screening room for the dailies because so many people wanted to come to see the dailies.

• 1:15:15Bill Simmons?

  This was Ethel Merman's final acting role before she died in 1984 at age 76. You mentioned Elmer Bernstein. He did the scores for Ten Commandments, Magnificent Seven, Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Escape. And they went to him and they were like, can you do a goofy version of what you're normal? And he just immediately understood what they wanted and banged it up.

• 1:15:35Speaker 05

  Elmer Bernstein was the first famous person I ever saw in LA, like the day I moved to Los Angeles. My friend and I.

• 1:15:42Bill Simmons?

  Did you recognize him?

• 1:15:44Speaker 05

  So the way we know, we went to this restaurant with his like, so my friend, his, his, uh, cousin worked at Universal. It was like one of those things like you move to LA and it's like, I have my roommate's cousin works at Universal. So like, are in to get jobs or whatever. And we went to this restaurant and it was like the nicest restaurant I had ever been in. And we were just eating and this guy was playing the piano and this older gentleman walked over and starts talking to him and the guy at the piano goes, get out of here. And he goes, no. And he takes out his driver's license and it was Elmer Bernstein. And like the piano player went, ladies and gentlemen, this is Elmer Bernstein. And he sat down at the piano and went, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

• 1:16:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:16:28Speaker 05

  Started doing, and I was like, this is what Hollywood is? Like, people just sit out? Like, I'd never, and by the way, I'd never seen anything like that since, but he just sat down and like. He showed the guy his ID and then played stuff and the piano player was like, dude, you're the man. Like, yeah.

• 1:16:45Bill Simmons?

  You know what that sounded like in, in the basketball podcast? They always ask like, LaMelo Ball be the guest and they'll be like, what was your welcome to the NBA moment? And it'll be like, oh, I was playing LeBron dunked on me. That was like your welcome to Hollywood moment.

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was my.

• 1:17:00Bill Simmons?

  Being at a restaurant with Elmer Bernstein playing the piano.

• 1:17:03Speaker 05

  He just went over and started playing, uh, oh no.

• 1:17:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:17:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:15Bill Simmons?

  Hey, one other research thing. Um, the Kareem was in there because in Zero Hour, they used Elroy Crazy Legs Hirsch was one of the three pilots who was this famous wide receiver in the 50s. He was like the Amon Saint, Ross St. Brown of the mid 50s. And, uh, so that's why they did that. They wanted to, uh, do that. And then.

• 1:17:38Speaker 05

  Crazy Legs.

• 1:17:39Bill Simmons?

  Al White was one of the Jive guys. They asked him to write the drive and he went and got a couple of books. One was on Black English by J. O. Dillard. The other was on, another one on black language. And he basically created the sentences and just showed them to the Zucker's and Abrahams. They're like, okay, cool, man. Do your thing. Um, and he wrote Barbara Billings's stuff as well.

• 1:18:01Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 1:18:02Bill Simmons?

  So, um, and then this, this made me laugh for some reason. Jim Abram, Abram said that, uh, one joke was cut from the opening montage in the airport. A very attractive woman was walking through the airport. Suddenly she turned and hawked a loogie on the wall. And in the screenings, nobody laughed, so they took it out, but they thought it was like the funniest thing ever. Sounds like they should have put that back in.

• 1:18:29Bill Simmons?

  All right. Apex Mountain, uh, which I wouldn't even bother to explain to is that basically peak, is this the peak of somebody's career? Robert Hays. So he's on Angie at the same time on ABC?

• 1:18:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:40Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say yes. Julie Hagerty, it's probably the Albert Brooks movie, right? Modern Problems?

• 1:18:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, or Lost in America. And yeah.

• 1:18:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:50Speaker 05

  Her losing all the money in Lost in America is like.

• 1:18:53Bill Simmons?

  Lost in America. Yeah.

• 1:18:54Speaker 05

  That's like, she's so good in that movie.

• 1:18:57Bill Simmons?

  The Zucker's and Abrahams as, uh. As a combo, probably Naked Gun, just because now they had that police squad and airplane under their belt. And I feel like-

• 1:19:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't, yeah, I mean, Naked Gun's pretty amazing, but to me, it's this one's the one that's like-

• 1:19:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, when do you think they had their most juice? To do whatever they wanted, because that's kind of the category.

• 1:19:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I see. But I mean, Airplane, it's hard for me, because for me, Airplane and Naked Gun are very, it's like, it's like the two-

• 1:19:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're right. It might be Airplane.

• 1:19:29Speaker 05

  It's like, I can't, it's like, I can't say one's better than the other because they're both so special. But I definitely think this one, I mean, you do a movie that kind of like changes the thing, like, you know, you look at comedy differently, it's kind of hard to-

• 1:19:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's fair. How about, how about spoof movies? Did we peak with this one? Was this the best one we've ever made?

• 1:19:53Speaker 05

  I don't know. It's pretty amazing. I mean, Airplane's great, Naked Gun's great.

• 1:20:01Speaker 05

  I mean, I really, you know, Young Frankenstein, when I was a kid, I thought that, I mean, that movie.

• 1:20:08Bill Simmons?

  I'd vote for Airplane. Steven Stucker, yes. Kareem, we covered, yes. Lorna Patterson, unfortunately, yes. Unexpected movie nudity in an 80s movie.

• 1:20:19Speaker 05

  Oh, it's just the breasts that come across.

• 1:20:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was almost thinking like this summer, yeah, we have the, the, all of a sudden, we have bouncing breasts. We have in Caddyshack, they sneak in a couple, and then the shining-

• 1:20:30Speaker 05

  Caddyshack, yeah, Shining, yeah. Caddyshack, though, it's like, they actually tried to make it like, like a real love scene with my clothes.

• 1:20:37Bill Simmons?

  Like a raunchy, sexy, yeah.

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  Like an actual, like, it's like dissolves in the movie, everything. But this was almost like, okay, here's a pair of tits, because we're supposed, we have to have a pair of tits in the movie. It's so gratuitous and stupid.

• 1:20:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:51Speaker 05

  Also, what I like about that is like, it comes across, it makes no sense. There's no sense for it to be in the movie. And then it cuts those two guys sword fighting, like two passengers are sword fighting. And it's just kind of like, everything's crazy. And for, it's like, all right, here's the action, here's everything you guys want.

• 1:21:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:21:10Speaker 05

  It's like, it makes no sense. So, yeah, I like it. Yeah.

• 1:21:15Bill Simmons?

  Inflatable pilots, definitely. I have a section on that later. Bridges and cult, no. And then the last one- Lovable Elaines. The nominees would be Elaine Benes and Seinfeld or Elaine in this movie. I still my hearts with Elaine in Airplane.

• 1:21:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's pretty great.

• 1:21:33Bill Simmons?

  All right. Okay, next category, Cruise or Hanks? You could have either of them in this movie in any role at any point in their life.

• 1:21:45Speaker 05

  I mean Cruise, just because if you if Cruise play because Tom Hanks did so much comedy and everything and he can do everything. But Cruise being really like serious Cruise would be pretty funny.

• 1:21:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, initially I thought Hanks is Ted Striker. That's no brainer. Like early mid eighties Hanks. He's just playing it straight.

• 1:22:04Speaker 05

  Kind of funny about him, but yeah, it's like, yeah, I guess maybe, but I like.

• 1:22:08Bill Simmons?

  No, you're right. The answer is Cruise in like the Robert, Robert Stack part.

• 1:22:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, like like days of thunder era Cruise and something would be really funny in this, you know, just the whole. It's all there.

• 1:22:22Bill Simmons?

  How about Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:22:25Speaker 05

  The director.

• 1:22:25Bill Simmons?

  Only one of them can direct this. Yeah, just one. You have to pick.

• 1:22:31Speaker 05

  I don't know, man. That's a tough one. I mean, they both would make, I mean, part of what's so great about it is that it looks janky. You know, it's gotta be, you know, I mean, the thing is like when they both have done comedies like, you know, it's like Spielberg when he does 1941. It's so fun, but it's so bombastic, you know, so crazy.

• 1:22:52Bill Simmons?

  I picked Spielberg because it's.

• 1:22:53Speaker 05

  And of course, Hazy did it. There would be some sort of Catholicism, you know, or whatever. Uh, I don't know. Yeah, Spielberg, I guess. Yeah. If I had to pick one, Spielberg.

• 1:23:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I said Spielberg because he had kind of done this in 1941, you know, and he could have blown out. Um, all right. So normally this next category is what role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? I have to flip it because you're on here. What role would you want, would you have wanted to play if Time Machine, you could go backwards?

• 1:23:22Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:23:23Bill Simmons?

  And play any role in the movie at any point in your career, what do you pick?

• 1:23:27Speaker 05

  I, I mean, I would love to be Lloyd Bridges in the movie because I just think he just, I just like him just, and that you got to play this guy who's like, he starts out calm and then you watch him just slowly go crazy. That's always, that's very fun to do, you know, where he starts off like he's really got it together. And he's the guy in charge. And then he just, by the end of it, he's hanging, it's upside down, snorting glue and stuff. That'd be really fun.

• 1:23:52Bill Simmons?

  I gotta say.

• 1:23:53Speaker 05

  Lloyd Bridges, I, he, he, he, in Hot Shots, he is very underrated in Hot Shots. He's so funny in that movie.

• 1:24:01Bill Simmons?

  I gotta say, I'm shocked. I thought you were gonna do a different, have a different choice. I thought for sure you would have been Peter Graves.

• 1:24:08Speaker 05

  Oh, no, no. I, I, Peter Graves is great and Leslie Nielsen is great, but I just like Lloyd Bridges.

• 1:24:13Bill Simmons?

  I thought you would have wanted to be in the cockpit and just rattling off lines like.

• 1:24:18Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 1:24:19Bill Simmons?

  Would you have been in a Turkish prison, get to hang out with Kareem?

• 1:24:22Speaker 05

  I got to do so many, I, here's the thing, I've done things where you're, you're in a cockpit before.

• 1:24:28Bill Simmons?

  You would want to get out.

• 1:24:29Speaker 05

  It gets old fast, where you're like, dude, this is claustrophobic. Can I go to the bathroom? And they're like, no, no, you can't go anywhere. You know, in the newsroom, you get to hang out, you get to sit at, like, you get to like, you know, all that, but it really is just that character really goes off the rails. He gets to jump out a window, you know, like he really goes nuts and that's really funny.

• 1:24:50Bill Simmons?

  All right, picking nits. So Ted fought in World War II Korea. What war was he in? And he's like 27, but it's 1980?

• 1:24:59Speaker 05

  Eighty.

• 1:25:00Bill Simmons?

  Was it, yeah, supposed to be Vietnam, what's happening?

• 1:25:03Speaker 05

  And all the flashbacks are from World War II, but also like during the inventions of planes and I forget what the thing was, but then remember when he says like attacking their flanks and blah, blah, blah. She'd be like, oh, when are you leaving? He goes, I can't tell you. That's classified. After he's told her the entire mission. But I forget what the mission is, but I think it's World War, it's supposed to be World War II, I think.

• 1:25:25Bill Simmons?

  So the little girl, when they, in the singing scene and they knock out like the tubes and she immediately starts convulsing. That probably should have been just an oxygen mask, right?

• 1:25:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:36Bill Simmons?

  Why would she start convulsing? Cause the tube got like, what, what was, what was being fed into her body?

• 1:25:42Speaker 05

  I don't know, but I think visually it's nice to see that thing go and like.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:47Speaker 05

  And then you want to see her face making those faces.

• 1:25:50Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:25:50Speaker 05

  Gym mask on, you can't see her face and it's kind of probably more disturbing.

• 1:25:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:55Speaker 05

  You get to see her do a silly face. Cause I'm sure, I'm just guessing, but it's like, all right, we're doing a bit and the joke is that a kid dies. Like, we gotta make sure it's silly.

• 1:26:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:06Speaker 05

  Let her do that stu- like stu- stupid.

• 1:26:09Bill Simmons?

  This is why we call it picking nits.

• 1:26:11Speaker 05

  You know, that's why, yeah.

• 1:26:14Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't the, the poison fish have made people throw up or have diarrhea? Like one of them, like it seemed like that it was almost like all the pastures were roofied by the fish. But I think in real life, it's just like, I think the bathroom is just getting annihilated.

• 1:26:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it would just be throwing up or sick, but it wouldn't be, uh, passing out and yeah.

• 1:26:36Bill Simmons?

  You would be like, ah, I don't feel good.

• 1:26:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Just like us. And it wouldn't have happened that fast either, I think.

• 1:26:43Bill Simmons?

  No. And then where did they put all the sick people? Wasn't a giant plane?

• 1:26:47Speaker 05

  I always.

• 1:26:47Bill Simmons?

  Is that somebody who have all three pilots?

• 1:26:49Speaker 05

  When I was a kid, I honestly thought they were throwing them out of the plane.

• 1:26:54Speaker 05

  When I was a kid, I was like, oh my God, they just threw Kareem out of the plane into like the ocean.

• 1:26:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:59Speaker 05

  Oh, I also like the scene when Robert Stack goes, all right, all right. So we're going to show you everybody. Okay. So Ted, have you ever flown, you know, this kind of plane before? And he goes, no. And he goes, Jesus Christ. We're fucked. Just route them into Lake Michigan. Better than killing a bunch of innocent people like. There's been this buildup that Robert Stack's the guy can save the day and out of the gate, he's like, fuck it. This isn't.

• 1:27:26Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:27:31Bill Simmons?

  Sequel prequel prestige TV all black cast are untouchable. So they did make a sequel. I like the sequel. I'm in the, I know different people made it, but I think the sequel, even though they're running back a lot of the bits, I think it has some funny moments.

• 1:27:43Speaker 05

  I don't think I ever saw the sequel. I think I kind of stayed away from it because I liked the original so much.

• 1:27:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's not bad.

• 1:27:49Speaker 05

  And I think I was so kind of like, oh, did the original people have something to do with it? And if they didn't, I was like.

• 1:27:55Bill Simmons?

  You'd, you'd real honor even as a little kid.

• 1:27:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, even as a kid, I was like a, like a insufferable movie geek.

• 1:28:02Bill Simmons?

  They had, they reenacted the slapping scene, but it was with somebody who's like, I can't believe I'm going to die a virgin.

• 1:28:09Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  And then it was just the same line of guys, but so it was a couple of like the job guys were in it.

• 1:28:15Speaker 05

  Space?

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're going to space.

• 1:28:16Speaker 05

  All right.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  The cockpit guys back. That was the funniest part in Airplane two was the guy, the little kid brings a dog and scraps.

• 1:28:26Bill Simmons?

  And Peter, Peter Graves is like, do you like when scraps rubs up and down your leg? And he does that.

• 1:28:33Bill Simmons?

  Took it up a notch. Uh, next category, is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm? I think Buffalo Bill would have been nice.

• 1:28:52Speaker 05

  Chris Collinsworth?

• 1:28:53Bill Simmons?

  Chris Collinsworth, you want to do that one?

• 1:28:57Speaker 05

  Chris Collinsworth being like, I had the fish, you know?

• 1:29:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh man, I had the fish and it's making me sick.

• 1:29:05Speaker 05

  Oh, it's making me real sick. Oh, man.

• 1:29:12Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her who gets it? The writing?

• 1:29:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, I don't know. The writing's pretty great. Um, and I would.

• 1:29:22Speaker 05

  I mean, I would have Leslie Nielsen up there as like a supporting actor.

• 1:29:26Bill Simmons?

  Supporting actor, yeah.

• 1:29:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's so.

• 1:29:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, as you know, they don't respect comedy in the Oscars.

• 1:29:31Speaker 05

  I know. That was when I first was like, I don't know about these Oscars when I was a kid. Cause I assumed when I was nine, after I saw Planes, Trains and Automobiles, that John Candy was gonna win an Oscar. I was like, oh, he's gonna win an Oscar. I laughed super hard and at the end he made me cry. Uh, he's gonna win an Oscar, you know? And then I saw it and I was like, what the hell is this?

• 1:29:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, and it was, uh, yeah, it was Sean Connery for The Untouchables. And I remember like looking at my dad and I was like, John, John Candy wasn't even nominated? And my dad's like, no. And I go, why? And he goes, and he said, in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1987, he was like, they don't like comedies.

• 1:30:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12Speaker 05

  Like, he just knew it. Like, okay, God.

• 1:30:15Bill Simmons?

  Still the case.

• 1:30:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, still the case.

• 1:30:18Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions. So, did planes actually have inflatable pilots in 1980 or did they make that up?

• 1:30:26Speaker 05

  Uh, I think they made that up. I think, I'm assuming they made that up, but I don't know.

• 1:30:31Bill Simmons?

  Cause I would also believe it if it was like, no, they tried it.

• 1:30:35Speaker 05

  Or maybe they tried it and then, yeah, too many people were giving it blowjobs and they had to.

• 1:30:40Bill Simmons?

  That was it. This is a great one. This act question actually is unanswerable. The nude scene that we mentioned earlier, the topless scene.

• 1:30:49Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:30:50Bill Simmons?

  Nobody knows who the actress was and this actress who was like a soft playmate and a softcore porn person named Kitten the Tibby Dad claimed to have done it, but then on the internet, you can find people debunking this and talking about her body type and breast size. It definitely wasn't her and it's just this mystery who did this and I could not, I actually was like, I'm gonna fucking find out who, and I couldn't find it. So we'll never know.

• 1:31:16Speaker 05

  I think it's best left on, left to the, yeah, left to imagination.

• 1:31:19Bill Simmons?

  Can you imagine if it was like somebody's grandmother and she's like, hey, did you ever see the movie Airplane?

• 1:31:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like this weird secret she's holding on to. Like the people who killed Jimmy Hoffa. Just, just like, oh, you all watching Airplane in there?

• 1:31:35Bill Simmons?

  Why don't you wanna watch this, cribbo?

• 1:31:37Speaker 05

  Oh, it's all right. Like, that's putting you through school. You don't know it.

• 1:31:44Bill Simmons?

  Um, what piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie if you could take anything?

• 1:31:51Speaker 05

  I would like the model of the plane, like the one that they're using anytime it cuts to the exterior.

• 1:31:56Bill Simmons?

  That's a good, that's a good answer.

• 1:31:58Speaker 05

  I would like that. I think that'd be fun.

• 1:32:00Bill Simmons?

  I wanted the automatic pilot auto.

• 1:32:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:32:03Bill Simmons?

  But apparently they said, uh, it was in Jerry Zucker's garage for years and it disintegrated. And they didn't realize it just like it became like rubber dust. So it's just autos gone and they only had one version of it.

• 1:32:18Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock award for best life lesson. I would say just don't forget to zag when you're making a movie. These guys zagged on using, use playing actors playing it straight over doing comedy.

• 1:32:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, they just kind of stuck to their instincts, you know? And the fact that they just stuck to the instincts and made something new and you see that like now, like you see someone like Nathan Fielder or Tim Robinson, like those are guys that when I look at their stuff, I'm like, oh man, they are just making what they find funny. It's like they can't help it, but stuff come out that way, you know, and that, and I always, I always find those, those things really inspiring.

• 1:33:00Bill Simmons?

  Best double feature choice, you'd go Naked Gun?

• 1:33:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think airplane gun. Yeah.

• 1:33:07Speaker 05

  I mean, that might be just too much because if you're laughing so much during airplane and then you try to do another one.

• 1:33:13Bill Simmons?

  Or maybe it's zero hour.

• 1:33:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, zero hour and then airplane might be really fun, you know, to do that.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie?

• 1:33:24Speaker 05

  I, I'm gonna, I mean, Steve Stuck, I just love him so much in the movie, but Leslie Nielsen or him, I would say that.

• 1:33:32Bill Simmons?

  I would thought I was gonna say the Zucker's and Jim, but I actually, cause I think they did win in a lot of ways. Cause then it parlayed into a whole bunch of other things. But I think it's Leslie Nielsen.

• 1:33:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:44Bill Simmons?

  Cause he, it completely changed his career and then he ended up getting another 20 years out of doing this.

• 1:33:49Speaker 05

  Too, but I'm happy that people got to see Steve Stucker, like what that dude was, you know? And I think I just have heard other things about him where people were like, dude, you have no idea how funny that guy was. Like seeing him live and doing sketches and shit. Like he was somebody that. You know, you when you you meet other people and so it's so great that you have a record of like, oh, that guy was the look how funny that dude was.

• 1:34:15Bill Simmons?

  Right. So we gotta bring in, I always bring in producer Craig at the end for his take, especially when it gets to movies from the eighties. Gets super exciting. Craig, you have to join the zoom. There he is.

• 1:34:27Speaker 06

  Um, I actually have seen this movie many times. This is a movie that my dad showed me uh, growing up that I just adore. Um, cause I I grew up, you know, I grew up in the like, basically the early two thousands is when I was starting to watch comedy movies. So I was kind of around like the last great era of comedy movies. And so I was still trained to like, love comedy movies and it was something that I was still seeking out. So this movie is awesome. I mean, this and Naked Gun, just the the jokes per million jokes per minute style is something that, like the hard joke style is something that is completely gone now. And I love it. I just love it.

• 1:35:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:03Speaker 06

  It's so good.

• 1:35:03Speaker 05

  That's true. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's fine, because Woody Allen did stuff for like Love and Death. There's a Woody Allen movie called Love and Death that that is really silly. Like he did those silly movies and he would cast people that weren't comedians in like smaller roles, but he was always the lead of it. So you're always kind of like, okay, there's Woody Allen being Woody Allen or whatever.

• 1:35:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Speaker 05

  And but they were silly movies, but this one is the one where it like, yeah, he they changed the whole. It changes the whole game and like what you're saying, Craig, like hard jokes. You know, it was like, yeah, you see it on TV, you know, like you could still watch South Park and see like them do jokes, you know?

• 1:35:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, or even like Veep had a lot of just like hard jokes.

• 1:35:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:35:50Speaker 06

  But it's going away now and um, I don't know, I it's you know, Paramount, all these major studios taking risks on these movies. Uh, it's just great. I you know, I think the idea now is that you need a movie to appeal to everybody and they won't make it unless they think it can appeal to everybody, but I almost think you should go the other way.

• 1:36:07Bill Simmons?

  And I think comedies comedies are coming back.

• 1:36:10Speaker 05

  I hope so.

• 1:36:11Bill Simmons?

  I think it's gonna happen.

• 1:36:12Speaker 05

  Well, it's also like what you're saying, Craig, too, is like. It used to be, you know, I'm sure if you go through how many movies were made in the eighties and I remember when I was like late two thousands, when I was going out and like, you know, meeting on movies and stuff, there were so many things getting made. It was like, you know? And now it's just kind of like, I mean, this is like, it's like, we're gonna put all our eggs in like these four baskets and so they have to work.

• 1:36:40Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  You know, and if they don't work, we are so fucked, you know? So there's so much pressure and everything on those movies working and it's like. Yeah, when I worked at a movie theater in the late nineties, you would go like, oh, there's like indie movies next to like Armageddon and then, you know, this movie, there was such a variety of it. And now you have that on like a streaming service and now I watch my kids and it's like so overwhelming. There's like a mile of those choices, you know? So it's just a different, it's a different world right now, but I hope. I do hope that it was such a nice thing going and seeing that Naked Gun movie. And taking my kids and people laughing in the theater and how weird that was to be like, oh, I haven't heard people laugh in the theater

• 1:37:26Speaker 05

  like this in a long time.

• 1:37:27Speaker 06

  I also just, I respect that paramount, like this movie, you guys are talking about how it feels low budget and it is low budget. But it also makes the movie better, like there are, there's a, is it, is his name Robert Stack? Is that the actor?

• 1:37:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:40Speaker 06

  The, when he's walking through fighting everybody as they try to like pin flowers on him and give him clothes in the airport. You can see boom mics and you can see the

• 1:37:48Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, you see that, yeah.

• 1:37:49Speaker 06

  pads on the ground that he's like flipping people onto, but it, it's okay. And then they understand it's silly and it plays into it. To me, it's just, that's just something that would never fly now and I, I really respect it.

• 1:37:59Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, there's just people want their, it's just hard, yeah, because I get on the other end of it is you, you hire these technician, technicians to be in the movie and they want their stuff to be good, you know? And to be good, it costs money. So you have like a DP that's like, you, you can't go to your cinematographer and be like, hey, could we make it look kinda shitty? He's like, no, my name's gonna be on it. Fuck you. You know, or I, yeah, I mean, a good DP, like I had Palo Widobro in the first two seasons of Barry and she made everything look way better than I, I learned so much from her, you know? So it's like. I I get it, you know, but it's just so expensive now, you know, that's why it's it's all on television.

• 1:38:42Speaker 06

  Can I pu- can I point out one scene that you guys did in that is quietly one of my favorite scenes in the movie? It I I you could kind of use the Sean Penn, I brought my own pack award for excellence and on screen smoking. But the scene right after the blowjob with the autopilot. And it's just it just cuts to Julie Hagerty and the and the pilot, the odd the blow up doll just awkwardly sitting next to each other. And you can feel the tension between them and they're both smoking and she gives him like a glaring look. Yeah. And it's just you just hear like the hum of the plane. It's just a still shot of them for like five seconds. I that killed me.

• 1:39:17Bill Simmons?

  Craig, would you have squeezed Danny McBride into this movie?

• 1:39:21Speaker 06

  I'd squeeze Danny McBride into every movie.

• 1:39:22Bill Simmons?

  That's Craig loves him. Danny McBride pops in the movies.

• 1:39:25Speaker 05

  Oh, that's funny.

• 1:39:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he could have. He could have. I don't. That's the thing is nobody would have. There was no room for a Danny McBride because they didn't want like.

• 1:39:33Speaker 06

  He's so.

• 1:39:34Bill Simmons?

  Basically, Steven Stucker is the only one who's allowed to do stuff like that.

• 1:39:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it's it's kind of like, yeah, I guess Steven Stucker is the other him and Jimmy Walker. And I think that's a really that was a famous stand up comedian to or a big comedian at that time, who's the guy in the the Ethel Mormon scene. You remember it's like, oh, that's so and so. He thinks he's still and he's like, I found a hole.

• 1:39:55Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was like a Gong Show guy. I remember that guy.

• 1:39:58Speaker 05

  Gong show and stuff like that. So I think there was a couple of comedy people in it, but. Yeah, Danny would just say, I don't know what he would have done in it.

• 1:40:07Speaker 06

  Has your son seen this movie, Bill? Has Ben seen it?

• 1:40:10Speaker 05

  Who?

• 1:40:11Bill Simmons?

  Uh, my son, yeah. Um. Yeah, we I threw this one at the kids pretty early, probably a little too early. Um. But, you know. Yeah, that they the cockpit stuff really plays. It just does. The Turkish, the the gymnasium, all that stuff, because then we could just do the lines, anything where you can do the lines after you see the movie around the house is always a big way.

• 1:40:35Speaker 05

  You like movies about gladiators. I mean, Turkish prison is the ref, you know, I guess representing Midnight Express.

• 1:40:42Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:40:42Speaker 05

  Guys go to a Turkish prison and and have sex with each other. I mean, yeah, it's really.

• 1:40:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I thought Naked Gun did better with my kids, though, than Airplane.

• 1:40:54Speaker 05

  Oh, my God. Naked Gun with the beginning when OJ gets shot and he like falls in the paint and then the cake and everything. My kids like lost their minds at that. They thought it was really funny.

• 1:41:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right. Well, this podcast was produced by Craig Roelbeck. Thanks to Gahow and Ronic as well. And thanks to Bill Hader. Next time, uh, next time we have to do this in the studio.

• 1:41:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Bill Simmons?

  We'll bring a third person. It was great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. All right. We'll see you next week on the Rewatchables.

• 1:41:34Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan 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.

• 1:42:20Speaker 08

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 1:42:22Speaker 03

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 1:42:24Speaker 08

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

• 1:42:27Speaker 03

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 1:42:28Speaker 08

  Make them remember you.

• 1:42:31Speaker 03

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.