‘Tropic Thunder’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Van Lathan, and Joel Anderson

You never go full rewatch. The guys head to the jungles of Vietnam to revisit Ben Stiller’s 2008 action comedy, ‘Tropic Thunder,’ starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Brandon T. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Cruise. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic Get more value with the McValue menu at McDonald’s https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/download-app.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Angry Orchard Hard Cider. Halloween's just better with a scary movie and something good to drink. Angry Orchard's limited edition glow-in-the-dark thriller variety pack is the perfect companion. It even includes a mystery flavor can featuring the iconic ghost face from Scream. Don't get angry, get orchard this Halloween. Find Angry Orchard in a store near you or visit angryorchard.com. Angry Orchard, cider company, LLC. Angryorchard.com. Please drink responsibly. Angry Orchard is a hard cider with other natural flavors.

• 0:44Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables, maybe the last episode ever. This is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We can find the Press Box with Joel Anderson, find Higher Learning and Midnight Boys and Ringer Tailgate with Van Lathan. And then CR, we're taping this the day after game seven of Celtics Sixers. He's, you went, go ahead, enjoy yourself. Play your song, do your thing.

• 1:06Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no. I mean, I was just gonna say, you know, I wanted to play a little background music while I was talking and I just need you to do something for me. Take a step back and literally fuck your own face.

• 1:22Bill Simmons?

  CR pulled it off, Joel Embiid pulled it off. By the time you hear this, who knows if Joel Embiid will still be playing.

• 1:28Chris Ryan?

  Please post that before we lose four straight to the Nets.

• 1:32Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, Tropic Thunder is next. This episode is brought to you by Apple and AT&T. Scroll long enough and you'll hear it all. Miracle diets, fitness trends, you name it. But with iPhone and Apple Watch, you get meaningful insights from a very trusted source. Your body. You can track sleep quality, cardio fitness and more, then unpack all the information in the Health app on iPhone to get a picture of your overall health. These health insights are developed with clinical experts from start to finish. Find out more at apple.com/health.

• 2:14Bill Simmons?

  Apple Watch is not a medical device and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice.

• 2:36Bill Simmons?

  Wow, Joel Anderson. You're here. You did this.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Should I be offended that we're not doing it at your house?

• 2:42Bill Simmons?

  We've never done four at my house. We're starting?

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Already.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  I'm just saying. Van told me that when they do it at your house.

• 2:52Bill Simmons?

  It's three only at the house. We would have to bump somebody. You had to basically kill C.R. Van.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I mean, Van didn't have to be here. Just, you know what I'm saying? We could have put C.R. in blackface.

• 3:01Bill Simmons?

  That's true.

• 3:02Chris Ryan?

  Wait, don't spoil the second half of the pod.

• 3:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, come on. That's coming later.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, later. I just, you know, I'm glad to be here, though. Very grateful. I have a lot of gratitude for it. You know, he says you cater food and everything. Did you take lunch orders and shit?

• 3:16Bill Simmons?

  Never had that. Never had it.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  That's a joke.

• 3:18Bill Simmons?

  Can water, soda?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's like, you want some lemon in that?

• 3:21Speaker 03

  When we're watching the games and hanging out as friends.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my bad, okay.

• 3:24Bill Simmons?

  That hasn't happened yet. Because you're never here. You're on the East Coast.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 3:28Bill Simmons?

  You lived here, a lot of good things would happen for you.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  I love L.A. And in fact, they were so annoyed with me talking about how much I loved L.A. when I was hanging out on Saturday. They were like, man, be quiet. Stop talking about that.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  I don't know what you're talking about.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  You did, like Billy and Tate, they were just like, all right, man, we get it. You know, but I was just, I was talking about like, oh, man, the mountains, the fog, just everything. It was gorgeous. The fog.

• 3:49Chris Ryan?

  It was a lot. There was a little bit of a mist settling over UCLA's spring game this weekend.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Rose Bowl is beautiful, man. I love being out here.

• 3:56Bill Simmons?

  Can we steer toward traffic thunder?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yes, we can do that.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  What the fuck is happening?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Okay, sorry.

• 3:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 4:01Bill Simmons?

  It is comedy month here at the Rewatchables. We've had this one written down for a while. Craig has been pushing for it. I don't know for how long. Five years?

• 4:10Speaker 04

  Since day one. Since the first movie I did.

• 4:15Bill Simmons?

  It's finally happening. I can't wait to see how it goes. I didn't even know where to begin. This movie came out in 2008 and C.R. the peak of... How far can we push this comedies? This is it. This starts there. We did there. There's something about Mary last week.

• 4:30Chris Ryan?

  So that's like eight years before.

• 4:31Bill Simmons?

  We go all the way through the mid 2000s and then kinda 2008, 2009, we're near the end.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  This is a movie where if it didn't work, I wonder if they would have released it. You know, it's the, that's the stakes. It's like, if this doesn't come off, if this doesn't play, can you put this in movie theaters?

• 4:48Bill Simmons?

  Lot of big stars at the time.

• 4:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  And I think that was, obviously, this is gonna sound stupid, like a lot of big stars, that's intentional, but I think part of the charm of the movie is you know all of these guys. These are not the guys. You trust these guys. Look at the familiar faces that are a part of this movie. Even just people showing up, they get the complete buy-in cuz they do some really outrageous shit that you have to have trust in the performance for them to be able to pull it off.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  What's the first year that you start saying, oh, I don't think they can do it? I think whenever, I'm trying to remember like when aggrieved Twitter was at its peak? Like 2013, 2014?

• 5:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Twitter's basically rounding in a shape right around now. 2008, 2009.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I, I don't even think I'd been, I don't think I joined Twitter until like 2009.

• 5:34Bill Simmons?

  That's when I was too. I was like spring of nine.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  So like, yeah, it's not even moving the conversation. So I think like by the time that gets a little bit of, you know, motion and more people on there, then I was like, all right, 2013 to the 14?

• 5:45Bill Simmons?

  Here's what I got. There's something about Mary is 98. American Pie 99, fucking the pie. Forty year old virgin. The aristocrats, the whole Gilbert Gottfried, they make a documentary about it. Bored at, no question. Super bad, definitely. And then, um, and then this movie and they kind of, we're about at the end here.

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  What do you think ended it? Was it social media? Was it like the, the kind of, the open of the town square of, of discourse and criticism? Or was it, these guys all get too big and you can't mess with the money that much? Like what is it?

• 6:19Bill Simmons?

  There's, it was happening everywhere, cuz I felt like it was happening with TV too, right? Cuz Eastbound and Down's pushing the envelope same time, late 2000s.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  I mean, you know what? Some of the stuff that we're talking about is pushing the envelope. Is pushing the envelope in terms of how zany and daring a comedy is? This is different, though.

• 6:38Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Like, this is legitimately hitting at what some people would say are marginalized communities. Special disabilities, um, eh, special needs people, should I say? Black people, gay people.

• 6:50Chris Ryan?

  Viet Kongs.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  Viet Kongs. There's not a lot of-

• 6:53Chris Ryan?

  Viet Kong!

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Kong, yeah. There's no S. You wouldn't say Chinese. You wouldn't say Chinese. There's not a lot of movies in this run that you guys are talking about that go for this. Something About Mary is definitely one of them.

• 7:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Definitely one of them, but there are not that many movies that go directly where Tropic Thunder goes.

• 7:10Bill Simmons?

  Do you get credibility, though, when you have this many stars and proven people in it? Do they get to push the envelope more at that point?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  I guess it depends on who you get credibility with, right? Cuz like, yeah, Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller, like, all these, uh, Jack Black. They have credibility with people-

• 7:25Bill Simmons?

  Downey?

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Downey, yeah. They have credibility with a certain kind of comedy community, but, again, by the time we start getting to the height of Twitter, like, 2013, 2014, I don't even think they would be able to pull that off with them. Like, I don't think people would buy that shit from Robert Downey Jr.

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  And when you think about the fact that this is the same year Iron Man comes out, so this is the sort of completion of his renaissance, you know, his, his career revival. But he's not that far into becoming an insurable actor again when he does this. Which, on the one hand, is crazy that he did it, but on the other hand, it makes sense because you're like, he wouldn't do this today. You know, I don't think anybody in this movie would do Tropic Thunder today. Not because of, like, necessarily the content, it's too big of a gamble.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  You think of that as different from, cuz I, I saw an interview he did from like 2020, 21. He said, "Well, I don't regret it," something like that.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do a little prep, man. I told you I was studying tape.

• 8:21Chris Ryan?

  He was like, "I don't regret it, but I wouldn't do it again."

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. He didn't say, "I wouldn't do it again." He just said, "I, I, I don't regret it," basically.

• 8:27Chris Ryan?

  I think that they had a pretty s- serious, like, intellectual reasoning behind Kirk's, the Kirk character, which is obviously like the one that's like the thing that you'd be like, "Could you pull that off today?"

• 8:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, I like some of the quotes that Stiller had about it, it's just like, "Look, we're making fun of actors and how movies are made." And this is like the nth degree of all of this stuff.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:50Bill Simmons?

  We're just taking it as far as we can go, but that's the whole point of the movie. You're either with us or you're not.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  You know, I have this in, uh, what's the most 2008 thing about the movie? We were still in the era to where funny won.

• 9:04Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  If it was funny, then people would, there would be a certain group of people that would have an issue with it, uh, problems, and we could have conversations. But if it was funny, that was the most important thing. Everybody kind of got the joke together.

• 9:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  And if it worked that way, then it was cool. Now, obviously, we came out of that, right? We came out of that partly because Hollywood pushed us out of it. There were several egregious things that happened in the 2010s, like, uh, you know, casting Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell, like casting movies where everyone went, no, we need to have a conversation about the racial dynamics and politics that exist in Hollywood. And that kind of overshadowed a lot of the other stuff. But at this point, it was still like, if you went to this movie and you laughed at that character, that was enough.

• 9:51Bill Simmons?

  Craig has a theory.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Oh, here we go.

• 9:54Bill Simmons?

  Okay. What was your last, when did you think the last funny comedy was? Did we say This Is the End?

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, my joke was that This Is the End was the end.

• 10:02Bill Simmons?

  Neighbors?

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Of that era.

• 10:03Bill Simmons?

  Was Neighbors right after?

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Neighbors technically came after, but it's, it's that like 2014 range. I think it's mostly because, like, I think this movie is a great example of the Ben Stiller group. They were all in their early 40s at this point. They were at the peak of their powers. It was kind of like Apex Mountain for what can we get away with? And I think This Is the End was the same thing for the Seth Rogen crew. They were all kind of reaching 40 years old. They have kind of done everything. They're like, all right, what's one last thing we can get away with? And then there was no new group that came up below those guys, which is, which is why I think there's no Tropic Thunders or This Is the Ends now, because like, no group really like supplanted them and came after them. And then 2017, things changed, you know, culture got differently.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  The way you're talking, huh? I like to hear it, what's happening?

• 10:47Speaker 04

  At the end of the 2010s, with, culture changed for a variety of reasons.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  He's changed.

• 10:53Chris Ryan?

  There's also, but you know, there is also, there's a massive, massive sea change in Hollywood, which is a lot of the people in, several people in this movie, especially Downey, start participating

• 11:05Speaker 03

  In Marvel.

• 11:05Chris Ryan?

  In Marvel and in large scale superhero franchises. And you can't really fuck with the money on those, like, the next Tropic Thunder should have been about Marvel movies. Right? You would do like, I can't believe we're on movie 11 of this and you would have all the fake trailers and the documentaries and

• 11:23Speaker 03

  The Boys does that a little bit.

• 11:24Chris Ryan?

  It does a little bit, but not in a, this is a movie, and there was an HBO show like a year or two ago that kind of came and went, that was a little bit about this, but it's, it's, Tropic Thunder can make fun of something and you can be conversant in Platoon and Apocalypse Now, and be like, this is so funny, the way they're making fun of this, but even if you haven't seen it, you'd still laugh at some of the things that are happening.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Tropic Thunder 2 is like Scorch Your Eight then, right?

• 11:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 11:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:51Bill Simmons?

  I have a lot of Scorch Your questions coming later.

• 11:55Bill Simmons?

  I think I would have seen at least the first two in the theater, but I'm not sure the plot was. So this was one of the most successful Hollywood parody movies, I think, ever.

• 12:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Bill Simmons?

  And when you talk about Big Picture, The Player, Network, what else is in there?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Network, uh...

• 12:11Bill Simmons?

  Were they really flippant?

• 12:13Speaker 03

  There was a recent show called, um, there's a really, there's a really bad one called, uh, Burn Hollywood Burn that had some people in it.

• 12:20Chris Ryan?

  I think at this point now, it's like the

• 12:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, the studios, the

• 12:22Speaker 03

  Studios, the one, trying to think of more, but

• 12:25Bill Simmons?

  The studio, I think, probably was influenced by this movie to some degree.

• 12:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  The Kevin Bacon one, right?

• 12:30Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's another good one.

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  That's the Big Picture, is that?

• 12:32Speaker 03

  That's the Big Picture, that's the Big Picture, yeah, Kevin Bacon, Terry Hatcher, all those people in it, yeah, sure.

• 12:36Bill Simmons?

  Swimming with Sharks, was that one of them?

• 12:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that was the agent, there's been a couple of like agent, like hurly burly

• 12:41Speaker 03

  But then you know what you also have, like, around this same time is you have Entourage.

• 12:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  And. Lloyd.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  And Entourage is legitimately another thing that pushes it so far with some of the stuff that's happening that you probably couldn't do now, which is another reason why maybe that movie was like not well received when it came out. But Entourage is kind of doing the same thing at the same time.

• 13:03Chris Ryan?

  You know how you were, when we were doing Ghostbusters and we were kind of going through the montage that they have, the fame montage?

• 13:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the eighty-four montage.

• 13:09Chris Ryan?

  And you were like, this is just the fucking best. Like, I love the eighties. This was so great. Eighty-four. Do you feel that way about oh eight? Like when you wa- when you're rewatching Entourage or you're watching Tropic Thunder, stuff from back then, are you ever like, oh, eight was the best, man?

• 13:22Bill Simmons?

  It's just.

• 13:24Chris Ryan?

  Housing prices were low.

• 13:26Bill Simmons?

  You're talking pre-social media, though.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:28Bill Simmons?

  You're talking.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  You guys, this is hard for Bill to talk about. Cause he's, cause he's walking the line. He's gotta be sensitive to the concerns of the people now. But at the same time, that was your era.

• 13:38Chris Ryan?

  Doc and the big three.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  That was your time.

• 13:43Speaker 03

  That was your era, yeah.

• 13:44Bill Simmons?

  Obama.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Say it again.

• 13:45Bill Simmons?

  Sarah Palin, Tina Fey.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Like, oh, Obama.

• 13:49Bill Simmons?

  Sarah Palin and Tina Fey.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  You know what I loved about oh eight? Obama. Get the fuck out of here.

• 13:52Bill Simmons?

  Loved Obama.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  I mean, he wasn't even president.

• 13:54Bill Simmons?

  He inspired me.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. But see, he wasn't even president. I, you, I think you're right. It was like, this wasn't the last good year. But it was like the last, it was like the last year that everything didn't seem headed for a downward trajectory.

• 14:06Bill Simmons?

  It was also, there was enough, enough distance from nine eleven. And it just felt like, there, there was a hopefulness, I think, as we headed into late two thousands that now seems like it happened a million years ago.

• 14:17Chris Ryan?

  This movie benefited from being in oh eight because there was no like out of context commentary on it. Like, you had to go see the movie to really know what was in the movie. And if it came out now, there would just be clips and screenshots and it would just get destroyed before people even went to go see it.

• 14:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, that is true.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Now, I will say that throughout the mid twenties, we, I was still having a lot of fun twenty fifteen, twenty fourteen, twenty sixteen, like, I'm at TMZ going crazy, right? I'm still having a lot of fun.

• 14:41Chris Ryan?

  What do you mean?

• 14:42Bill Simmons?

  What kind of fun?

• 14:42Speaker 03

  We haven't, we, we're going nuts. We're going nuts in the city.

• 14:45Bill Simmons?

  Going nuts in the city?

• 14:47Speaker 03

  We're going nuts. We're going nuts, right?

• 14:49Bill Simmons?

  You touched it?

• 14:49Speaker 03

  But, but, shut up. But in this, with this movie, with these types of movies, like, a lot of stuff happened. First of all, some of these guys, not necessarily so much in this movie, but like, some of these guys started getting in trouble. Like, there's a comedy purge that happens once the Me Too movement comes out. And you start to see the way some of these guys, not necessarily in this movie, but around the way they acted in their personal lives.

• 15:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  And really, that ripped the heart out of like, what a lot of, I'm not saying that that was a bad thing. I'm just saying, you legitimately lost some of these careers when we're talking about some of these comedy dudes. Like, they didn't even last throughout the scrutiny of the mid to late 2010s.

• 15:31Bill Simmons?

  You know who was able to avoid this the entire time was Larry David with Curb? He was always able to push the envelope on whatever he wanted. And then even after everything else changed, he still kept cracking out seasons. And still even made seasons this decade and almost seemed like he got a hall pass for it.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 15:48Bill Simmons?

  Some people get hall passes. Like Barclay had one forever.

• 15:50Chris Ryan?

  There's a hall pass element to it, but I think that the thing that's crucial is if you're gonna make fun of other groups of people or basically anybody else, and this is what this movie actually does do, you have to be the body of the joke.

• 16:03Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 16:04Chris Ryan?

  And Larry is always the most awkward, difficult, funniest person on Curb. Like, no matter who he's making fun of, Larry is always the one you're like, I can't believe this guy needs a napkin that bad that he's gonna do this.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  And Larry always loses.

• 16:17Chris Ryan?

  And Larry always loses.

• 16:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Chris Ryan?

  And Stiller and Downey and Jack Black, like, yeah, they get a moment of heroism at the end. But the people who are most worthy of ridicule in this movie are the, are the stars of the movie.

• 16:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, it's just too bad, because I was thinking about the Palestinian chicken episode, right? And it was like, yo, like, I think he actually could still do that today, though. So I think, I think, I think we're, I don't know, I mean, again, I don't work in Hollywood, you know what I'm saying? This is one of my few times out here in LA. But I just kinda feel like they're still, wait, don't look like that. I just feel like I just felt a little energy.

• 16:48Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Just let me finish.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Just let me finish.

• 16:54Chris Ryan?

  Should we go?

• 16:56Speaker 02

  But no, it's just that, I mean, I think the thing is, is that you could still do that. I mean, the thing, the same kind of comedy that prevails in Tropic Thunder is still out there. You can find it.

• 17:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  On the internet or wherever. It's just not, you know, a big Hollywood, it might not be a big Hollywood movie or whatever, but you can still find people doing blackface and walking up on people, calling them nigger. That was, you know.

• 17:18Bill Simmons?

  About Chuck the Builder?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, Chuck the Builder.

• 17:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Chuck the Builder. Well, it's a different podcast. We'll talk about that.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's right. Sorry, I didn't mean to make it a comedy.

• 17:25Chris Ryan?

  That's okay.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  I also.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Bill, like, Joel said the N-word with the R. And Bill's brain detonated.

• 17:36Bill Simmons?

  I just find Joel to have a safe space to give his opinion.

• 17:38Chris Ryan?

  Bill's just like, I wore a different sweatshirt.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  That's a line from The Departed.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  I should have asked if I had permission to do that.

• 17:50Chris Ryan?

  You do.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Get your shit off, bro.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Alright, doc, come on. Do it up.

• 17:56Bill Simmons?

  I forgot what I was gonna say.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  I know you did.

• 17:59Bill Simmons?

  I had a good point. I'll remember it a half hour from now. So it's making fun of two different genres.

• 18:06Bill Simmons?

  All these Vietnam movies we grew up watching. And then all these Oscar bait movies that... I just feel like pre-social media, we were all making fun of this stuff and you might see it in essays and blog posts and... Whatever, but I don't feel like we made fun of some of this stuff enough. Like, have you ever seen I Am Sam? Like, some of these ones... These are like, regarding Henry, we've always talked about for dramas that are now comedies month, but... All these actors, they couldn't resist. And then when it would hit on Forrest Gump, then the next actor would feel like they had to do some sort of, you know, Oscar bait movie. But I always loved that this movie made fun of that.

• 18:43Chris Ryan?

  And the Vietnam stuff is like, I kind of think about the scene in True Romance when Clarence Worley is like, "Man, did you make coming home in a body bag?"

• 18:55Chris Ryan?

  It's like, this is almost making fun more of coming home in a body bag than it is like The Deer Hunter, you know? And coming home in a body bag is a fictional movie from True Romance, but...

• 19:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, and a lot of homage stuff that you know if you're like a diehard fan of all this stuff, like, even Stiller's character starting to lose it. At the end and thinking that half-squats his son.

• 19:17Bill Simmons?

  And it's basically Apocalypse Now, right? But it's, they're not blatantly hitting you over the head with that. You have to kind of know.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  One thing that social media did was it allowed everyone to run to their corners, coalesce around each other, and then form things to get offended about, right? And I'm not saying that...

• 19:34Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Oh, you're saying people too woke, huh?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  No, I'm not saying people too woke. I'm saying like, even like, right now, like, the film bro community, the subjects of King Shang fantasy, the film bro community, right? They get offended. Like, they get offended about stuff like, "This movie is legitimately making fun of the culture of the Oscars." Of the culture of serious filmmaking being an endeavor that is completely cynical. This movie is making fun of that.

• 20:04Bill Simmons?

  I screenshotted and they have the they have the five movies nominees and Hanks is in Hanks is in a wheelchair with his arm like he won some sort of wheelchair race.

• 20:19Chris Ryan?

  Who's in the operating

• 20:20Speaker 03

  That's Sean Penn as a

• 20:24Speaker 03

  as a blind guy.

• 20:24Chris Ryan?

  And Jon Voight, right?

• 20:25Bill Simmons?

  Jon Voight and then Tobey Maguire in the Satan's Alley, which I own on 4K Blu-ray. It's pretty great.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  So like what I'm saying is like now there is a holy grail to some of this stuff. There there will be people that would be offended by some of this that think the Oscars now and the conversation around it because of podcasts and all of that stuff. It's just more different and robust than even I remember it from before. It's like it's the biggest part of somebody's here.

• 20:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think Oscarology was more of a niche pursuit and now

• 20:55Bill Simmons?

  No question.

• 20:55Chris Ryan?

  And now it's not uncommon. I mean, maybe we have bias because we live in Los Angeles and it comes up a lot, but like you'll hear people be like, oh, I heard that movie has a really good shot in the in the Oscars.

• 21:07Bill Simmons?

  Right. That was the dialogue. That kind of started in the nineties and then got even better in two thousands. I, as a movie fan, especially somebody on illegal cable box for years and years, who's watching all these movies, was offended by how bad some of the movies are.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  You said you had a what?

• 21:20Bill Simmons?

  An illegal cable box.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Don't try to like

• 21:21Bill Simmons?

  In Charleston for years.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  And try illegal cable but guy like your gym.

• 21:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  Don't try to like

• 21:26Bill Simmons?

  No, Big Al. We paid Big Al to come over. He souped up our box. We get all the pay per views for like

• 21:31Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 21:32Bill Simmons?

  Four years.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Now, this is interesting. This is interesting.

• 21:34Bill Simmons?

  I loved it.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  I've never heard you talk about your criminal exploits on any podcast.

• 21:38Bill Simmons?

  I've talked about it before. I've talked about it. Sierra's heard about this.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay, I've been making sure. I thought maybe you was doing this for me and Joe.

• 21:44Chris Ryan?

  As a younger person, I used to tell him about like you switch the channels back and forth really fast.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Oh, joint, yeah.

• 21:50Chris Ryan?

  To get Skinamax.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  What crimes have you committed?

• 21:52Chris Ryan?

  I can't really talk about it.

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  This was my favorite crime I ever committed because it would be the pay per views and they would be just on every two hours.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  That's fucking amazing, man.

• 22:00Bill Simmons?

  So these movies would come on like Patch Adams and they would just be on on channel, whatever. And you'd be like, what the fuck were they doing? Making the, how did anyone, What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams and Cuba.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Oh, I love that movie.

• 22:11Bill Simmons?

  You like that movie?

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 22:12Bill Simmons?

  I am, Sam. Like they would just make shit movies year after year. Oh.

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  But radio is based on a real person, though.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Some of these movies are.

• 22:20Chris Ryan?

  I mean, some of these movies are good, but it is.

• 22:22Bill Simmons?

  I don't find radio.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Some of these movies are.

• 22:25Bill Simmons?

  It's okay.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Some of these movies are, but also, remember, serious movies at a time were about serious topics. And sometimes, somebody's, when you, somebody's like, they don't fit into society for whatever reason. They're having trouble, like, that was a serious topic.

• 22:43Bill Simmons?

  But this started in TV in the, really the late seventies, early eighties, with the after-school specials and Different Strokes. And these shows were.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 22:52Bill Simmons?

  Somebody just sent me one today about the time Arnold and his buddy were on the street and somebody had this.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  They got molested.

• 22:59Bill Simmons?

  Not a molester one.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  They got kidnapped.

• 23:01Bill Simmons?

  Somebody had a seizure in front of them. And this, this lady just has a seizure for like a very special half. And it's, it was a special episode about seizures.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  I know you're gonna remember this.

• 23:09Bill Simmons?

  This is how you learned about stuff.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Do you remember, uh, the Ben Affleck one where he was taking steroids?

• 23:14Bill Simmons?

  The steroids, he punches the.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  You remember that one?

• 23:17Speaker 03

  You got a little bit of that.

• 23:18Bill Simmons?

  What about Helen Hunt jumping up?

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Helen Hunt jumping up and off.

• 23:21Chris Ryan?

  She was on acid, right?

• 23:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Bill Simmons?

  But like, that's how we live about this stuff. And then eventually it drifted into movies and better shows, but still. Um, the actors in this, so we've been still are wrapping an incredible eleven-year run as comedy leading man, which we covered in, uh, in the, There's Something About Mary. Jack Black, at a really weird point in his career, trying to stay on top. King Kong two thousand five, Holiday two thousand six, which I think has.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  A big one.

• 23:47Bill Simmons?

  Had a lot of legs. He did the Tenacious D movie. Is it Margot, The Wedding in two thousand seven?

• 23:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Bill Simmons?

  It's kind of like, am I a comedy actor or what am I? So he's at that point. Uh, and then Downey, as C R mentioned, putting together his comeback of Zodiac, Tropic Thunder, Iron Man, where all of a sudden he's an A++ lister again.

• 24:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's starting to finally.

• 24:05Bill Simmons?

  Really happening for him.

• 24:06Chris Ryan?

  Pick up after Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is sort of, is like, hey, I, I can be bonded, like.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  I had forgotten how close that was to the time that he had been in prison.

• 24:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  You know, like, yeah.

• 24:14Bill Simmons?

  And then couldn't get insured.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Right, that was, that, cause that was the thing, to a point, I think probably when I saw this movie, I thought of Robert Downey Jr., so that was the junkie. You know what I mean? Like, that was a guy who was a problem, that was what he was known for.

• 24:26Bill Simmons?

  What he was, that was what all the stories were. McConaughey.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Oh, McConaughey.

• 24:31Bill Simmons?

  Trying to hang on to the A-list.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  He was in the wilderness.

• 24:34Bill Simmons?

  After this movie, he does Fools Gold, Surfer Dude, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Lincoln Lawyer.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Like, it's not going well.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Well, The Lincoln Lawyer is a good movie, but it does, it, it, it comes on the heels of that. He's in the.

• 24:44Bill Simmons?

  Is it a good movie?

• 24:45Speaker 03

  All right, yeah, I think The Lincoln Lawyer is a good movie.

• 24:48Bill Simmons?

  Is Lincoln Lawyer a good movie?

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, I think it's a good movie.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  I don't know if I, I don't know if I remember.

• 24:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like actually a pretty enjoyable thriller.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  But it's like him kinda getting his footing back because he is flirting with obscurity during this time.

• 25:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Like Hollywood.

• 25:04Chris Ryan?

  After Sahara.

• 25:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, a couple, a couple rom coms that went sideways.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Don't know what to do with him. And then, then in the next decade, obviously Dallas Buyers Club, Interstellar, True Detective, all of these things are gonna bring him back. But him in this movie right now is him staying on the tips of people's.

• 25:19Chris Ryan?

  The actual start of the McConnessans. So like mostly people think it's Magic Mike, Dallas Buyers Club, Wolf of Wall Street, True Detective, Interstellar. In some order.

• 25:29Bill Simmons?

  No, it's this.

• 25:30Chris Ryan?

  But I actually think it's this and Eastbound are like, kind of like, they're like, oh, this guy has like a whole other gear that he can play with. And also.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  For us, it was two for the money.

• 25:39Chris Ryan?

  And he also is, crucially, yes, he's like, I'll play a supporting part.

• 25:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  Like, I don't have to lead everything I'm in.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  It's probably easier to tell them on that.

• 25:47Bill Simmons?

  Joel plays supporting part.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  All I gotta do is get some rebounds.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  That's Joel podcast.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  It's not.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Y'all not listening to Tellgate. Joel is out there every day.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  I'm a role player, man.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Like Jokic putting up rebounds, assists.

• 26:05Chris Ryan?

  That's the big board I come for.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Let me tell you, when we went to Rose Bowl, everybody's coming up the van in the motherfucker, man. I was like, oh, I just feel to be famous out here. All right, let's move on.

• 26:15Bill Simmons?

  Tom, we, more on McCona later. Tom Cruise, he's at another crazy point.

• 26:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Bill Simmons?

  We're three years after Oprah's sofa. We're in the middle of the Katie Holmes weirdness.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 26:27Bill Simmons?

  We're with that Weird Scientology interview he did. We have Paramount dumping him. And he's about to follow this up with Valkyrie and Night and Day with Cameron Diaz.

• 26:36Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask a question about whether we look back at this? In 08, there was a part of me that was like, is, is Les Grossman kinda cringy? Not cuz like I didn't like the character, but it was like he's trying really, really hard in this moment. Like, no?

• 26:53Speaker 03

  So, when I first saw this movie, this, this is the first movie I ever went to a screening of. It's Tropic Thunder. This is my first screening ever that I ever went to.

• 27:02Bill Simmons?

  You took shot. Sasha Grey.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  Boy. Don't get me started though. There's some people that like to find a special place. Um, you just, you, I almost forgot what I was about to say. Um, but I'm serious. Uh, cause there's this one.

• 27:18Bill Simmons?

  He's at a screening.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  She's in like a.

• 27:20Chris Ryan?

  No, just go back to Tom Cruise.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  So.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Well, I actually want the Sasha Grey screening.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  But it's in the movies, like it's a, this is still, so like, this is the first screening ever. This is gonna sound so crazy, y'all. Not till the end, I did not know it was him.

• 27:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Bill Simmons?

  That's a recurring theme in the research. Most people didn't know it was Cruise.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  I did not know it was him. And then, uh, the guy, Tim Wells, producer I was working with at the time, goes, stay, watch this. He's getting ready to leave and it's like, Tom Cruise, I'm like, what the shit? And I thought to myself that exact same thing, even back then, I'm like, why did he show up in this? But he was so universally reviled at that point.

• 27:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  Like, it's so difficult for people, I think the two biggest comeback stories in modern Hollywood memory are Rob, are both in this movie. Robert Downey Jr. And Tom Cruise.

• 28:09Bill Simmons?

  I think Travolta's in there too.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Travolta's absolutely in there, right? That's actually, that's a great point, but like, so three, but like, he was so universally the, the weird guy. Shut up, man. He was universally the weird guy.

• 28:20Bill Simmons?

  Did some good stuff in the 2000s. Oh, oh, oh. Did some, had some golf, had some celebrity golf.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  I mean, man, he was a correspondent on the camp, on Kyle's podcast.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  OJ Simpson, do you know who advocated for him at the Rose Bowl?

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Not advocate.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  We're going in there and Joe is making sure that OJ Simpson is in the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  It would be absurd if you went to the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame and you didn't mention OJ. That's what I thought. And I just wanted to make sure.

• 28:43Bill Simmons?

  I think that's fair.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah, this one, and he, and he was listed there among the people then.

• 28:47Chris Ryan?

  That had been there, yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  But I, I think that's fair, but I also think it's kind of interesting to walk into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame and the first thing you say is, where's OJ?

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Well, I think, I think that, I think what he's saying is true, but I think also.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  I think I asked about Prince Young first.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  No, you didn't.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  It's okay, let's, yeah.

• 29:05Bill Simmons?

  So you saw a screening, had no idea it was Tom Cruise, which was. Most people, did you know Tom Cruise was in this when you saw it?

• 29:11Speaker 04

  That's hard for me to remember in 2008, but I watched it with Liz, who had never seen this movie and she did not know it was Cruise until halfway through the movie. I said, you know, that's Tom Cruise, right?

• 29:18Chris Ryan?

  And was she like, what?

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's really good makeup.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:21Bill Simmons?

  And it's physically, it just doesn't seem like him.

• 29:24Chris Ryan?

  They also kept him from all promotional materials. Like they did, like they were, they, I think they sued like a tabloid for taking pictures of him going from like a, like his trailer to the set. I, but there was a moment there where like, maybe it's more like after the movie came out where I felt like he was obviously not a trained comedian because he was like overworking the joke a little bit. And it felt like for a second, you could get him to show up as Les Grossman. At like college game day. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, like Les Grossman was available. It felt like.

• 29:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I think he was just happy.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  He was one of people to clap for because he did it at MTV. He did it at the MTV Movie Awards. And it kinda didn't work that well, but he was just happy that people were like, oh, it's Tom Cruise.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  See, I thought instead of being reviled, I thought more than anything, people thought he was weird, you know? And that's more than, I mean, that's more, that's different than being reviled because people like, I don't even know.

• 30:17Bill Simmons?

  The Katie Holmes thing, I think, turned people off.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  The Katie Holmes thing, but also the Matt, uh, the, the, the Matt Lauer thing.

• 30:24Bill Simmons?

  When he was yelling at Matt Lauer.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  Yelling at Matt Lauer, the whole deal. Like people were like, this guy's an asshole. Like what is he talking about? He's too far gone.

• 30:31Bill Simmons?

  Paramount dumping his deal was, was a pretty crazy thing to think back on.

• 30:35Chris Ryan?

  And, and the Spielberg breakup had happened a couple of years before that too.

• 30:39Bill Simmons?

  And then the last one in this, Nick Nolte. Former A-lister from the seventies and eighties.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Most northern play Jack hates.

• 30:48Bill Simmons?

  Ah.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Are you shocked to know he's 85 years old?

• 30:52Bill Simmons?

  Nick, how is he still alive?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Eighty-five years. Yeah. I mean, he seemed like the guy that should have died at like 67.

• 30:57Bill Simmons?

  I think he's the only one that they had to replace on SNL when he was guest. And that was when the famous Eddie Murphy episode, because Nick would just party too hard and couldn't host it.

• 31:06Chris Ryan?

  The crazy thing is that he doesn't look that much older in Crime 101 that he did in Tropic Thunder. Like it, it's basically like he hit old age and just has been there.

• 31:16Bill Simmons?

  An amazing run for him. It's one of those that when he dies, nobody's gonna be like, what? No.

• 31:22Bill Simmons?

  He's worn his career.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  I mean, even we were talking about Downey, I mean, he had gotten arrested like a bunch of fucking times. Like going leading into this too. And I was just kinda, you just kind of expected that. Like, I felt like he and Gary Busey were kinda like the same person to me a little bit. It was just like, oh, those are the old guys from the eighties who are always like getting DUIs and shit like that.

• 31:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know what, there was like a weird thing, talking about the difference between now and oh eight. There was more of a distance, I feel like, with celebrity then. So like when Downey would get arrested, you'd be like, oh, and then you'd kinda keep it moving. But now it would be like, what's the first pod Downey's gonna go on after this? And like, people writing these parasocial posts about it, but yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  You would never be able to get away from it.

• 32:04Bill Simmons?

  Call her daddy.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  They would always, yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Come on. I will say, I will say that there was something about Robert Downey Jr. at that time though.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  All of the trouble that he was having, like Hollywood was mourning it. Like Hollywood was like, Hollywood was mourning it. He had been around for so long, yes, you know, going back to like Weird Science and the Pickup Artist and all of these movies and then he peaked with Chaplin. He's in the James Toback movie. He starts to get into the weird indie thing at the end of the nineties. Then he comes out on Ally McBeal and it's like, oh my God, he might be back, but then he can't stay straight for that. People were really sad, for whatever reason, you could tell, even in the tabloids, the way they would cover it, how well liked he was. And they were happy when he got it together. Like when he got straight and came back and delivered in Iron Man, delivered in Zodiac, delivered in this. People were, they rolled out the red carpet for him to strut back into the town.

• 32:57Chris Ryan?

  I'm just gonna see Downey in US Marshals every couple of years. And it'll be like, oh man, that guy could have been a contender.

• 33:03Bill Simmons?

  It was almost like an athlete.

• 33:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Bill Simmons?

  Where you think of like, oh man, Kenny Anderson, he only kept the shit together. It's like, how many of those did we have in basketball and football over the years? Dwight Gooden?

• 33:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Kenny Anderson was the man. He was.

• 33:16Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take a quick break and then more to discuss with this movie.

• 33:21Bill Simmons?

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• 33:57Speaker 05

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• 34:23Bill Simmons?

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 34:34Speaker 06

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common. Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis.

• 35:00Bill Simmons?

  Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 35:21Speaker 06

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 35:28Bill Simmons?

  All right, let's go through the characters. Ben Stiller as Tug Speedman. Hit it big with the Scorcher franchise. They made sex. I was getting to this later, let's do it now.

• 35:39Chris Ryan?

  What's Scorchur about?

• 35:41Bill Simmons?

  What's happening in Scorchur? Is it like a global warming?

• 35:44Speaker 03

  They tell you in the first trailer. The earth has stopped spinning.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  So in Scorchur, the earth has stopped spinning. So because the earth has stopped spinning, I guess volcanoes and the atmosphere.

• 35:56Chris Ryan?

  It's like a day after tomorrow kind of vibe.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Basically, so.

• 35:58Chris Ryan?

  But he's like, he's like commando, he's like Schwarzenegger or that.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  He's some sort of commando who is saving people in this post-apocalyptic deal. The earth has become a scorcher and it's destroyed.

• 36:08Bill Simmons?

  So each sequel, it's still the same premise? The earth has still stopped moving?

• 36:12Speaker 03

  It's colder.

• 36:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the last one was like, it was like literally like, yeah.

• 36:16Bill Simmons?

  I honestly not against the premise. Like I would at least give one, if it was Gerard Butler in Scorchur, I'm like, not, not pay-per-viewing that.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  I did not know what that movie Greenland was, okay? I did not know what it was.

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  You think it was Scorchur?

• 36:28Speaker 03

  I was going to the movies. Greenland I watched for the first time Saturday. That is legitimately a fucking good movie.

• 36:37Chris Ryan?

  Dude, Butler doesn't miss that often, man.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Legitimately a good movie. I expected Greenland to be corny, I'm watching it, they're trying to get on a plane, the whole, no, it's legitimately a good movie.

• 36:46Bill Simmons?

  So he, uh, Joel, he went serious after all the Scorchur. He was once the biggest star in the world. Ended up playing Simple Jack, a special needs farm boy who can talk to animals.

• 36:58Chris Ryan?

  I feel like we gotta do comps, right?

• 36:59Bill Simmons?

  You make me happy.

• 37:00Chris Ryan?

  Who is Tug Speedman in Hollywood?

• 37:02Bill Simmons?

  I think.

• 37:03Chris Ryan?

  It's Cruise?

• 37:03Speaker 03

  I definitely think.

• 37:05Chris Ryan?

  Cruise had all the prestige in the eighties and nineties.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  I think the reason why Tom Cruise is in this movie is because he thinks it's funny that Stiller is doing a riff off of him, because Stiller had been doing a Tom Cruise character for a long time.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  And then they had done the like, I'm Tom Cruise's stunt double thing, right?

• 37:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's definitely Tom Cruise to me.

• 37:24Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was like a cross between Cruise and the Mission Impossibles and like Stallone just trying to keep Rambo going. Crossed with not another Hollywood thing.

• 37:33Chris Ryan?

  Those guys would often make, now, none of them I don't think did something like Simple Jack, but they would every once in a while make like a family movie where you'd be like, what the fuck are you doing, man? You're Jean-Claude Van Damme.

• 37:43Bill Simmons?

  Is there a world where Simple Jack could have worked? Like was. Was Downey, right?

• 37:47Chris Ryan?

  I think Kirk Lazarus lays out how.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  Kirk Lazarus was like, he laid out the mistakes.

• 37:50Chris Ryan?

  I think Simple Jack needed a special skill. Yeah, you need to be good at blackjack.

• 37:53Bill Simmons?

  Cause if you could talk to farm animals, that's, you'd become an asset on the farm.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Is Forrest, I'm just, the thing I was just trying to determine, is Forrest Gump that far off Simple Jack or not? I couldn't tell, like.

• 38:03Chris Ryan?

  Good at ping pong.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Good at ping pong, talk to the president.

• 38:06Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Forrest break down his weapon.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  Charm Richard Nixon.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:11Bill Simmons?

  Started a running movement.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:13Bill Simmons?

  Uh, so Scourge of Six: Global Meltdown was supposed to be the comeback.

• 38:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Bill Simmons?

  I like that title too. Uh, all right. So that's him. Then we have Jack Black as Jeff Portnoy, a movie comic star with a stealth heroin problem. I described him as Adam Sandler crossed with later career Eddie Murphy, crossed with late seventies Belushi.

• 38:34Chris Ryan?

  And Farley maybe?

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Farley.

• 38:35Chris Ryan?

  And some Farley. Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:37Bill Simmons?

  Uh, recently the star of The Fatty's Fart Two. I absolutely would have seen this with both of my kids.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:43Bill Simmons?

  The Fatty's and The Fatty's Fart Two.

• 38:45Chris Ryan?

  I was trying to imagine like.

• 38:47Bill Simmons?

  It sounds great.

• 38:48Chris Ryan?

  Like Ben.

• 38:48Bill Simmons?

  It's a great idea.

• 38:49Chris Ryan?

  Ben Simmons' level of interest in Fatty's over Tropic Thunder would have been like off the charts.

• 38:55Bill Simmons?

  No question, we would have owned it on multiple platforms, streaming, DVD, great idea, still time.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  The white nutty professor, man.

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 39:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Bill Simmons?

  Robert Downey Jr. is Kirk Lazarus, Australian method actor.

• 39:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  Five time Oscar winner. That would be the record, by the way.

• 39:11Chris Ryan?

  It would be, it shatters the record. That was a good pick that they made him the all time leading Oscar winner.

• 39:16Bill Simmons?

  Star of Satan's Alley and then also played Neil Armstrong in Moonshot. Whenever they found out what the premise, what was the premise of Moonshot?

• 39:25Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, but he had.

• 39:26Bill Simmons?

  Is it like a thriller?

• 39:27Chris Ryan?

  Like he had to like re- re-acclimate himself to the earth's atmosphere coming back from that movie.

• 39:31Bill Simmons?

  Sounded great.

• 39:32Chris Ryan?

  And he's supposed to be a combination of Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell and Daniel Lewis.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:37Bill Simmons?

  It felt like a lot of Russell Crowe.

• 39:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, the Australian part, yeah.

• 39:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, like the, him naked on the balcony.

• 39:41Chris Ryan?

  But the method part is DDL.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Cause he was, he was supposed to be Irish. Um, in some of the research I saw, he would, the character was supposed to be Irish.

• 39:48Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, no, I can do Australian.

• 39:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Had controversial pigmentation alteration for Tropic Thunder. I like this shot of them in the operating room. He's like, yeah.

• 40:01Bill Simmons?

  Steve Coogan plays director Damien Cockburn.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Bill Simmons?

  The director of Tropic Thunder. I guess in the research it said this was inspired by director Richard Stanley's experience directing The Island of Doctor Moreau.

• 40:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:14Bill Simmons?

  A movie that I've wanted to do for the rewatchable for eight years.

• 40:17Chris Ryan?

  Did you watch Reigns of Madness, the hearts of darkness of Tropic Thunder?

• 40:21Bill Simmons?

  The, by Thoreau?

• 40:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh, so there's more Damien in that and he talks about how he's, was he 50% Werner Herzog? 50% Francis Coppola and 50% Peter Bogdanovich. And he's like, well.

• 40:36Bill Simmons?

  Stupid percentages.

• 40:39Bill Simmons?

  You guys in On Island of Doctor Moreau?

• 40:41Chris Ryan?

  I love it.

• 40:41Bill Simmons?

  In general as a movie?

• 40:42Speaker 03

  What I mean, some, oh, like Marlon Brando.

• 40:44Bill Simmons?

  Just that movie, how fucking crazy it is?

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, nuts. I love late stage Brando.

• 40:49Bill Simmons?

  See, I makes fun of me because I made it a gimmick when, at Grantland with the, the Island of Doctor Simbo.

• 40:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  But see, I thought it was the most, most amazing thing I ever did in the com.

• 41:00Chris Ryan?

  Although I came around to Burmester.

• 41:02Bill Simmons?

  It was just like a hodgepodge mailbag that I named after the Doctor Moreau movie because I was the only one that liked it. But that was another one with Big Al's cable box. We were just watching it over and over again and after like nine times, you kind of got it.

• 41:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Bill Simmons?

  I understand what they were trying to do.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:14Bill Simmons?

  Kellmer didn't want to be in the movie is the problem. I blame, I blame. That was one where Val mailed it in.

• 41:18Chris Ryan?

  There would be at Grantland, like Bill would come up with a gimmick and then walk off and then it would be up to us to kind of see it through. But like, he would be like, 93 days until the NBA season. Let's do a post every day about counting it down. And then he'd come back like day 61. He's like, oh, you guys are still doing that? Meanwhile, we're like, what the fuck are we gonna say? It's August.

• 41:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, we did that, remember for the, uh, we did that for NFL, right? Because we had two sports in a lockout.

• 41:44Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 41:44Bill Simmons?

  So we had to start doing a countdown to when we were going to actually get sports.

• 41:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:48Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man. Sad times. Nick Nolte as. Four Leaf Tabak.

• 41:55Bill Simmons?

  Danny McBride is Cody Underwood. Uh, big McBride run here.

• 41:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Bill Simmons?

  Hot Rod, Pineapple, Thunder, Eastbound, all in three years. He's just in our lives for real.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:05Chris Ryan?

  When he's about to do the explosives run, he's like, Damian, Damian, I need to put some Tiger Ball on.

• 42:14Chris Ryan?

  It's like, he's, he is really like, you can tell the vibrations coming off of him that he's like a significant guy.

• 42:20Bill Simmons?

  He's one of those that, Craig, did we, we have enough all NBA teams and MVP ballots for him over the years?

• 42:26Speaker 04

  He's like the funniest guy of the 2000s that never became a star.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 42:29Chris Ryan?

  Could a guy like that become a star?

• 42:31Speaker 03

  He became a, to me, he became like a force, like a force, not like a, not an A-plus lister. I know, 12 years of HBO shows and then also creatively because he was the creative force behind a lot of this stuff and stuff like that. To me, it got to a point to where he was the most consistently funny line reader in the town.

• 42:54Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Like, he said a line, the line was funny.

• 42:58Bill Simmons?

  That was, this is the end was his impact.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Like, everybody else is talking, when he talks, you laugh.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  First season of He's Spinning Down is all time.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Same thing, yeah.

• 43:06Chris Ryan?

  You know, the problem was is that when you would see him outside of that arena and like if you, if you watch Prometheus and Danny McBride's in Prometheus. Or he's in Covenant.

• 43:16Bill Simmons?

  You couldn't wrap your head around it.

• 43:17Chris Ryan?

  In Covenant, you're just like, yo, man, like, when is he gonna do Kenny Powers? And it's almost like too much.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 43:24Bill Simmons?

  I, I don't know where he ranks on the funniest people of the 21st century for me.

• 43:30Chris Ryan?

  Oh, he's top five.

• 43:31Bill Simmons?

  I don't think he's out of the top 10.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  His P E R is like top three. I mean, pound for pound, he's number one, maybe.

• 43:37Bill Simmons?

  I don't think he's out of the top 10 for me.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  I'm gonna mention a movie that like, not a lot of people love, but is legitimately one of the funniest movies that I love. Did you guys see Your Highness?

• 43:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, a long time ago.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  I haven't seen it.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  Hysterical, like legitimately, like it's stupid, but like hysterical.

• 43:57Chris Ryan?

  You know the great thing about him too is anybody who's in a scene with him, they also automatically get 10% funnier. So when he's in a scene with Will Ferrell, you're like, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. But he can make like John Hawks hilarious, you know, like the dude from Deadwood who's in Eastbound or Natalie Portman in Your Highness is like really funny. It's just, the only person I've ever seen make, not make more funny is Nick Nolte. It's just like, well, it's just, it's just Nolte.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Well, that was the thing. I was just like, well, I guess we'll talk about it later, but that pairing, I had a really high expectations for them, you know?

• 44:30Bill Simmons?

  When I showed my son Eastbound when he was finally old enough, he had the same look on his face for three episodes that Jack Black does when he sees the pile of heroin.

• 44:41Bill Simmons?

  It was just every funny bone possible, just slamming. It was everything he would want, Kenny Powers. Jay Barishow is Kevin Sandusky.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 44:50Bill Simmons?

  Not knowing that the Sandusky thing had not happened.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Man, that did not happen yet. That's five years.

• 44:53Bill Simmons?

  Unfortunate last name. I think he's really good in this movie.

• 44:58Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:58Bill Simmons?

  Hmm. I was thinking about casting couch later. I'm like, oh, who should, and I was like, you know what? I really liked him.

• 45:04Chris Ryan?

  He's also the only one playing in the lane lines. He's like, I know I'm not supposed to be the funny one in this movie.

• 45:10Bill Simmons?

  And then Brandon T. Jackson is Al Pacino.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  Al Pacino, yeah. It's my guy. That's my man. Brandon T. Jackson's a homie of mine. Like, he was on a run. He was on a run during this time, all big movies, Percy Jackson, Big Mama's House, like a lot of big movies was in. And this kind of was like, he was a very familiar face in Hollywood at the time.

• 45:32Bill Simmons?

  He's excellent in this movie.

• 45:33Chris Ryan?

  He's great.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  He is.

• 45:34Bill Simmons?

  I would not, he is not on my casting couch. I would not replace him.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Really?

• 45:38Bill Simmons?

  No. Cause there was some Kevin Hart stuff that we'll talk about later, but like, you know, like we're still kind of in Chappelle range where he could have, I think, played this, but there's, I think, I think he's actually really good. I thought he goes toe to toe with.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Everybody in the movie and he's good.

• 45:53Bill Simmons?

  Um, he also was a businessman with the Bust a Nut candy bars.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Booty sweat.

• 45:57Bill Simmons?

  Booty sweat.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Booty sweat.

• 45:59Bill Simmons?

  Drinks.

• 46:01Bill Simmons?

  We'll talk about him later. And then Cruz as Les Grossman. So the producer Stuart Corn, we did a oral history of Les Grossman for Greenland. And apparently Tom read the script. There was no Les Grossman. And he said, I think you need another villain. What about some greedy pig studio executive represents the gross part of Hollywood? And then Cruz like developed a lot of it. Um, wanted oversized synthetic cans. They put them in a fat suit. Bald cap.

• 46:28Chris Ryan?

  Kind of Joel Silver-ish.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, but they say it was Weinstein, Silver and one other.

• 46:33Bill Simmons?

  It's weird. They, in the research, they're like, it wasn't based on anyone, but I never believed that. I always feel like somebody's based on somebody. Yeah, Joel Silver is a good one.

• 46:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I think the screaming at people is rooting.

• 46:43Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, Bill Hader, early Bill Hader.

• 46:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Early, young.

• 46:47Bill Simmons?

  As his assistant. And then McConaughey as Rick Peck. Is there a third Peck?

• 46:53Chris Ryan?

  There was Walter.

• 46:54Bill Simmons?

  Walter Peck, Dennis Peck from Internal Affairs and Rick Peck.

• 46:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Rick Peck.

• 46:59Bill Simmons?

  Could have done Peck month.

• 47:00Chris Ryan?

  We should do another category. That's like which Peck should be in this movie.

• 47:02Bill Simmons?

  Best Peck?

• 47:05Bill Simmons?

  Uh, and then a ton of cameos. What's your favorite cameo in this, Joel?

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Man, you know, Tyra Banks. That's a good one.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Tyra Banks is great. I mean, cause first of all, she's playing.

• 47:15Bill Simmons?

  Dan just, I know that look.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Well, also, yeah, I mean, I have like.

• 47:18Bill Simmons?

  That was a nostalgic.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Speaking of 90's shit, like there's like, that was probably the last time I looked at Tyra Banks and I was like, that's it right there.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  God damn.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I'm not, she, nothing happened to her. I'm not meaning to be disrespectful. She's still a beautiful woman. But I mean, everything we know about her now.

• 47:35Chris Ryan?

  She was cruising back then.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  I've kind of. She was cruising.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:37Chris Ryan?

  I avoid, uh, for his reaction and not winning the Oscar.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I got Tobey Maguire, man.

• 47:45Speaker 04

  Little Wonder Boys throwback.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  Little Wonder Boys.

• 47:48Chris Ryan?

  Touching the prayer beads.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  That hilarious.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  Lance Bass just showing up. He's like, I'll do it.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Oh, Lance Bass, that was pretty good.

• 47:55Bill Simmons?

  They said they only had like three hours with Toby. Cause he was flying somewhere. So they had to film like all of his stuff. They had like this short window to get it done.

• 48:03Chris Ryan?

  He had like a poker game in Macau. He had to go through.

• 48:07Bill Simmons?

  Probably. It's a Gondola's game. Uh, the premise, which ten soldiers went, four returned, three wrote books, only one was turned into a movie about a secret assignment in 1969?

• 48:19Bill Simmons?

  Stiller developed it because he was shooting Empire of the Sun. He had a small part and thought some of the actors were very self-important and self-absorbed and self-involved and appeared to believe they were actually part of the military.

• 48:33Chris Ryan?

  So I'm trying to figure out who he was talking about. I mean, it's like Malkovich is the person he is in that movie with. Those are the two American soldiers who adopt Christian Bale when they're on this base in Japan. But yeah, it's hard to tell because I don't think of Malkovich as somebody who would be like, I'm a soldier now, but maybe I'm wrong.

• 48:53Bill Simmons?

  You know what's interesting about this, though? And I like Ben Stiller. I do think he has a reputation for taking himself a little too seriously. And it's funny that he came up with this movie because he noticed people taking themselves too seriously. Isn't that part of the rap?

• 49:06Chris Ryan?

  Well, kind of the genius part of this movie is people like, all these actors are beating people to the punch with the criticism you would level at them. You know what I mean? It's like Tom Cruise is gonna like lampoon Hollywood, so you can't really lampoon Tom Cruise. Ben Stiller is lampooning self-involved leading men. You know, that means he's kind of bulletproof about it. It's an interesting tactic.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  With the exception of Downey, though, don't you, I'm sure we'll talk about this later, don't you all kind of feel like they're playing basically a version of themselves?

• 49:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  And even Downey, Downey, they make sure to put in the character that this guy has like a bad boy off-screen image and stuff like that. So Downey is playing who people thought he was, maybe like 93 or 94.

• 49:47Chris Ryan?

  All right. Did you ever stiller on your pod?

• 49:50Bill Simmons?

  I think I did.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Who?

• 49:53Bill Simmons?

  In the late 2010s.

• 49:54Chris Ryan?

  After this. After Tropic Thunder.

• 49:58Bill Simmons?

  After Tropic, yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Wait, what?

• 50:00Chris Ryan?

  I was asking if he ever had stiller on his pod.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Oh, shit. Okay.

• 50:04Bill Simmons?

  All right, let's talk Downey and Kirk Lazarus. I'll just give you some quotes. Downey said, "At the end of the day, it's always about how well you..." You come into the character. If I didn't feel like it was morally sound. Where that would be easily misinterpreted that I'm just C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man.

• 50:21Chris Ryan?

  It's tough.

• 50:21Bill Simmons?

  I would have stayed home.

• 50:22Chris Ryan?

  C T H.

• 50:23Bill Simmons?

  C T H just like, what did I do? I'm over here. I'm just a working actor.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  I was thinking of because I, I think Soul Man was one of the first movies I saw on V H S tape. And we got it from Blockbuster. And at the time, I don't remember thinking it was all that offensive.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  My parents loved that movie.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  It wasn't bad.

• 50:42Bill Simmons?

  We laughed.

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  I saw that there.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  You guys, first of all, I'm just letting you guys know, I'm forty six. I'm telling you right, my parents loved that movie. They loved it. We would watch the movie and I remember as I got older. And I was like, one day I was like.

• 50:59Bill Simmons?

  You're like huh?

• 51:02Speaker 03

  Fuck, this is fucked up. Now, now here's the deal. It's interesting that he would take a shot at Soul Man. We'll talk more about Soul Man later. Because even in Soul Man. The movie is attempting in a really, really fucked up way to make a commentary and critique on race. The movie is attempting to lampoon someone that would go. Or make fun of somebody that would go that far and use something intended to help black people to help themselves. And, and the movie is an exploration about what that character kind of learns about black people. By doing this really stupid, silly thing. But you just can't get past what the movie does.

• 51:41Bill Simmons?

  Man, I would love.

• 51:41Chris Ryan?

  I don't think you can find it.

• 51:43Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it's streaming.

• 51:44Chris Ryan?

  I can't imagine that's the case with the way that four Ks and Blu-rays are now.

• 51:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm sure Sean probably.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  We've got to find that.

• 51:50Chris Ryan?

  Sean's got the special.

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  Sean got it from New Zealand.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's a big picture, a podcast about movies. Well, today we talk about Soul Man starring C. Thomas Howell.

• 51:59Bill Simmons?

  I vaguely remember what happens, but wasn't. He got a scholarship at Harvard. But it turns out Ray Don Chung should have gotten the scholarship and now she's putting herself through.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  He couldn't pay for it.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:11Bill Simmons?

  He couldn't pay for it.

• 52:12Chris Ryan?

  How about law school?

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  But he took it from Ray Don Chung, right?

• 52:15Speaker 03

  In to Har- he got into Harvard. But he couldn't pay for it. And for some reason, his dad wouldn't pay. Cause he didn't get a scholarship or something like that. So he got, he wanted to get the, the, the aid, the money. And he did blackface.

• 52:31Bill Simmons?

  Did you know about this movie? Craig?

• 52:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I've never seen it.

• 52:33Bill Simmons?

  Just because we talked about it.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  He took tanning pills.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  Tanning pills.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Tanning pills to get blabbered.

• 52:38Bill Simmons?

  So Brandon T. Jackson said, when I first read the script, I was like, what, blackface? But when I saw him act, he became a black man. It was just good acting. It was weird on the set because he would keep going with the character. He's a method actor. I bet that was weird. Stiller said, he's playing a method actor who's gone to great lengths to play a black guy. The movie is skewing actors and how they take themselves so seriously. And then last thing, Downey was so committed to it that he did the DVD commentary as the character instead of Robert Downey. All right.

• 53:07Chris Ryan?

  I would, go ahead.

• 53:09Bill Simmons?

  No, you go.

• 53:10Chris Ryan?

  I just think it's interesting that you could make the argument that he does not take himself seriously as an actor again until Oppenheimer. Like, he does Iron Man. I'm not saying he's not taking that seriously.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  You are, just go ahead and shit on it.

• 53:24Chris Ryan?

  But he's largely like, playing. Like, there is very few roles that he does in between this and.

• 53:30Bill Simmons?

  Like, he's playing the character of movie actor Robert Downey, just popping into movies?

• 53:34Chris Ryan?

  And it's like, I almost wonder if he got like too close to the sun on this one.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  Now, I'll say this. I actually think that there are a couple of movies where he tries it. I think he tried it in The Soloist. I think he tried it in, what's the one?

• 53:49Chris Ryan?

  The Judge?

• 53:50Speaker 03

  The Judge. And I just think he just got to a point to where, to fit those movies into something that audiences were loving so much.

• 53:58Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  He just went, I can't do it. Like, I'm taking some swings. I want to be, Robert Downey Jr. to me, always wanted to be taken, he's such a great fucking actor. He wanted to be taken seriously as a serious actor. Tony Stark was never going to be enough for him.

• 54:14Bill Simmons?

  But he also made insane amounts of money.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  Insane amounts of money. And getting while the getting was good. And even after this, right? He did Oppenheimer, he won. And then he goes back to the MCU. Because now that he's proven that thing to everyone. Go back, get another seventy, eighty, a hundred million dollars, you know what I mean?

• 54:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, I don't know, man. I kind of feel like. If he had just, if any, I'm trying to think if there's anybody else that would have been able to pull this off because.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  Really?

• 54:44Chris Ryan?

  I know, I'm, I was like honestly thinking of the people who he's supposed to be lampooning.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:50Chris Ryan?

  And how bad it would have been if.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Like Colin Farrell.

• 54:52Chris Ryan?

  If Russell Crowe or Colin Farrell tried to do this, it would have just been like, we can't, we gotta burn the negative.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Colin Farrell, I'm been with more black women than Robert Downey Jr.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Colin Farrell, we got proof.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, you've been into it.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  But like, you can watch it, but, but I'll say this.

• 55:09Speaker 03

  When you think about it, that's actually a good point, like a fantastic point. Downey is one of the most unique talents that has ever come out of town.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:18Speaker 03

  Like, super unique, he can charisma his way through a movie, he can straight act his way through a movie. He can comedy his way through a movie. He's like, he's got a weird Hanksian thing, not quite the everyman thing that Hanks has got going on, he can't get there. But he's, he's got like a really, really deep skill set.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  In my life, I didn't know that he had like a comedic background, like I didn't, I had not know.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  It's a Saturday Night Live.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  He was on Saturday Night Live.

• 55:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I had not know that was his background.

• 55:46Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, I, I think it's something, if you had probably gone back to like pre Chaplin, before Chaplin, like Less Than Zero, some of the stuff that he was doing in the eighties, you would probably be like, this is gonna be Dustin Hoffman, right? Like, this is gonna be, this guy could do anything and might do a range of comedic and drama performances. So for him to take fifteen years, almost twenty, when we get to doomsday.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:11Chris Ryan?

  To be like, I'm gonna basically play Tony Stark, a couple of Sherlock Holmes movies, a couple of throwaway kind of Hollywood dramas.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Trying to see if I can, try to see if I can bite the dramatic apple.

• 56:23Chris Ryan?

  I always think about like, I mean, PTA has debated about how real this was, but like, he was supposed to be in Inherent Vice. He was supposed to play the detective that Joaquin Phoenix played. And I was always like, man, what would, what would it have been like if Downey had done Inherent Vice? And like a really challenging, cool movie with, with, with PTA? And we'll just never know, and I don't know when he's gonna try again.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  He does three Ironmans and then once he's, he's not in those.

• 56:49Chris Ryan?

  Ten kajillion dollars.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  Then after he's with those, he's in Spider-Man, he's in all, he's in everything that they're doing.

• 56:53Chris Ryan?

  And the, and the stuff he's doing other than that is basically Sherlock.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:57Bill Simmons?

  So, two thousand twenty, it was interesting, who was the one who pointed out that on Letterboxd? This was like three and a half stars or something like this is a movie that some people are now against.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Tropic Thunder.

• 57:09Bill Simmons?

  Tropic Thunder.

• 57:10Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 57:11Bill Simmons?

  I think it's like not, were you the one that told me that?

• 57:15Chris Ryan?

  I did not.

• 57:15Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was like not well liked.

• 57:17Chris Ryan?

  Well, I said there's something about Mary has a.

• 57:19Bill Simmons?

  Or was it there's something about Mary?

• 57:20Chris Ryan?

  Something about Mary has like, it's either five stars or one star.

• 57:25Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I'm sure again, we'll probably get to this, but.

• 57:27Bill Simmons?

  Let's get to it now.

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Well, I just kind of feel like it didn't age quite as well as I thought. I, I walked away feeling very underwhelmed.

• 57:35Chris Ryan?

  But because of the movie, not because of like the missed, the jokes don't land anymore.

• 57:40Speaker 03

  Right. The movie itself.

• 57:41Bill Simmons?

  You're talking about the character.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  The char, the, well, cause like, again, like in retrospect, I, I probably thought Danny McBride and Nick Nolte probably made me laugh my ass off in two thousand eight. But as I was watching it again, I watched it twice this weekend. I was just saying, it just felt like there was missed opportunities all over the place.

• 57:58Chris Ryan?

  The.

• 57:58Speaker 03

  The, the movie depends so much on Robert Downey Jr.'s, Jr.'s performance to be a great movie.

• 58:03Chris Ryan?

  It's heroic.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  It's, it's a low bearing wall.

• 58:06Chris Ryan?

  I'll also say, I didn't remember this before, watching it this time around, the third act of this movie feels like they're making it up as they're going along. Like at, on the day of, they're kind of like.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  It was really bad.

• 58:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, let's have a shootout over here. And it's like, oh, you guys kind of almost stopped writing the movie at a certain point.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  I laughed my fucking.

• 58:26Chris Ryan?

  So fucking hard.

• 58:27Speaker 03

  Ass off. Like I laughed, I think when the war broke out, I was a saucier in San Antonio.

• 58:37Speaker 03

  I think that's the fucking scene. Back when the war broke out, ah, call up some greens. I think, I, I don't know why, like even in the theater, when that was happening, I was like, this is the funniest shit I've ever fucking seen. And then to watch Brandon, look at him like, what the fuck? This motherfucker is crazy. Like that's the funny, I laughed my ass to your point. You get to a point in the movie, almost at the point where they discover he's simple Jack, where the movie is just almost like, oh, watchable. You can't like even watch it. But all the trailers, that part, everything that led up, up to there, I thought it was hysterical. I laughed big ass titties for no reason. Like it's funny. The movie's fucking hysterical to me.

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had that on what stage is the worst. The last third of the movie could probably be half as long.

• 59:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:25Bill Simmons?

  And it's clearly they're just shooting from the hip in Hawaii and just filming shit, blowing stuff up and.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I just, I was surprised that it wrapped up as quickly as it did. Like, all of a sudden, I see Tom Cruise, just like, you know.

• 59:37Bill Simmons?

  He's dancing.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  Dancing and I'm just like, oh, wait, this is what, this is how.

• 59:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 03

  The last five, six minutes of this is gonna be. Okay, cool.

• 59:44Bill Simmons?

  Stiller directed, wrote the screenplay with Justin Theroux and Eton Cohen. So Stiller directed Reality Bites, Cable Guy, Thunder, Two Zoolander's and Walter Mitty. And then a bunch of Severance, right?

• 59:56Chris Ryan?

  Uh, he's done Severance and Escape from Dannemora, yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  Ah, Escape from Dannemora, great, yeah. Great fucking show.

• 1:00:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Chris Ryan?

  We fucking love that one.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Great show.

• 1:00:03Bill Simmons?

  That could have gone longer.

• 1:00:06Chris Ryan?

  Let these guys stay free.

• 1:00:08Bill Simmons?

  They just made that again?

• 1:00:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Bill Simmons?

  So they had an extensive marketing campaign, uh, fake websites, fake, fake stuff for the characters, fictional TV special. Sold the energy drink and then they did a simple Jack website and people were like, get this fucking thing down.

• 1:00:26Chris Ryan?

  They had multiple movie clips, even in 2008, people were like, no, no, the simple Jack website.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  And to be real, there were, like, there were protests then.

• 1:00:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I hope no one thinks that there weren't.

• 1:00:40Chris Ryan?

  At the premiere.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  There were protests then. There were protests from the black community. There were protests from the Shriver family and the Special Olympics. There were, there were protests then. There was heavy. There was talk about the Les Grossman character and whether or not that character was directly.

• 1:00:53Bill Simmons?

  A Semitic, right?

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. There were protests then. It's just that the funny one. And that, that, that, that is what happened with the movie. People went to the movie, they're like, it's funny and the funny one.

• 1:01:02Bill Simmons?

  Downey, best supporting actor, nom.

• 1:01:06Bill Simmons?

  Unfortunately, it was the Heath Ledger Dark Knight year.

• 1:01:08Chris Ryan?

  So let's play this out. How would that have worked if, if Robert Downey Jr. Had won an Oscar for this?

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  Over dead Heath Ledger? That would have been terrible. People would have fucking gone crazy.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Number one, the Heath Ledger performance is like.

• 1:01:20Chris Ryan?

  He was never gonna win.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  I mean, just imagine.

• 1:01:22Bill Simmons?

  If it was a different year, you mean?

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  Every year that, or every year around the, of the Oscars, there'd be tweets about how there's more, there's more people that won Oscars for, uh, oh, yes, sorry. I'm, I'm new to the. He has a microphone, brain blind spot. We were doing it at UCLA. The mic is down here and Joel is talking. I'm like, Joel, there's people in the stands.

• 1:01:45Bill Simmons?

  It was like, what was that SNL sketch with Bill Hader where he's the, he's the?

• 1:01:48Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:49Bill Simmons?

  He can't.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  I was not meant to be on camera in life. I was a writer. I told him, I was like, yeah.

• 1:01:56Bill Simmons?

  You're a late bloomer superstar.

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  So you were gonna say though, the Oscar thing?

• 1:02:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Every year around there, they'd be like, oh, a bunch of black people saying, there's been more people that have won Oscars for blackface and have actually, you know, won, so.

• 1:02:12Speaker 04

  It's not the craziest fucking thing in the world that he got an Oscar nomination for this? Like, if you tell somebody now that he got an Oscar nomination for that, it would blow their minds.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  I think the Oscar nomination is the thing that people most hold on to when they're talking about the negative legacy of the portrayal.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  Is the fact that he got nominated.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  It hurt, it hurt the movie almost that he got an Oscar.

• 1:02:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You know what else is interesting about it? And we talked about this, but there's Something About Mary. Like comedies never get nominations.

• 1:02:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:02:37Bill Simmons?

  And it was just weird that this one, it was like all the old, like, people in the Oscars were like, yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  But this goes back to my theory that sometimes the people in the Oscars be fucking with us. It's like, sometimes they go, they wa, they sit together and they watch The Help and they go, oh, yeah, we gonna piss them off.

• 1:02:53Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't even.

• 1:02:55Speaker 03

  Like The Blind, The Blind Side, oh, we gotta make sure they get one here.

• 1:02:58Bill Simmons?

  I would like to think it was trolling, but I think it's actually just old guys, you know? Be like, the shit was just better back then.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Well, Driving Miss Daisy, oh, that's when we got one. You know what I'm saying? So I just think something, they fucking with us sometimes, man.

• 1:03:11Bill Simmons?

  This was weird that it got nominated, le, less for the Downey character, but just the comedy getting that. It's not like this was a hit, but not like a phenomenon. Yeah, it's, to me, it's like, sort of made more sense for Matt Dillon to get nominated for There's Something About Mary or something like that than this.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  And my cousin, who else?

• 1:03:29Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's, it's not a long list.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  She's great, yeah.

• 1:03:33Bill Simmons?

  Google, Google comedy actor, actress supporting Oscar?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Where's the Tommy?

• 1:03:37Bill Simmons?

  If you're talking last thirty years, it's probably five or less.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Would you count Rod Tewill?

• 1:03:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:03:44Chris Ryan?

  No, that's kind of like-

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  That's a great character.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a great character, but he's-

• 1:03:48Bill Simmons?

  No, but that's not like necessarily like a comedy character.

• 1:03:50Chris Ryan?

  He has funny scenes, but I don't even think that they're being, they're very much like rooted in the story of Jerry Maguire.

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids nomination.

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, that's one, that's one.

• 1:04:00Speaker 04

  Gossiping Barbie.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Gossiping Barbie, that's one, that's one.

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  Uh, Jonah Hill, Wolf of Wall Street.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  I don't know if that counts much. Get that fucking shit out of here.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  Alright, relax. Um.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  You made it sad, you stopped researching.

• 1:04:18Bill Simmons?

  Tootsie, Terry Gar?

• 1:04:21Speaker 04

  Well, Hoffman.

• 1:04:21Bill Simmons?

  That was in the eighties, yeah, we had a couple in the eighties, yeah, it's pretty rare. Speaking of Craig, this movie was a hundred and seven minutes, a plus seven on the Horlback scale.

• 1:04:30Chris Ryan?

  Feels like a plus fourteen.

• 1:04:32Bill Simmons?

  The-

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  I care you.

• 1:04:33Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:04:33Speaker 04

  They, I mean, there's trailers at the beginning, you know, there's some bonus footage that they had to include.

• 1:04:38Bill Simmons?

  The unrated director's cut, which for some reason I own on Vudu, was like over two hours.

• 1:04:44Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:04:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  What's in there?

• 1:04:46Bill Simmons?

  Just extra stuff.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 1:04:47Bill Simmons?

  As you know, Craig, my rule is always deleted scenes were deleted for a reason. Uh, and it's a good example. Ninety million dollar budget made a hundred ninety-five point seven million. Roger Ebert. Three and a half stars. Considerably better than Stillers previous film, Zoolander.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Huh.

• 1:05:04Bill Simmons?

  Roger, if you didn't like Zoolander. It's the kind of summer comedy that rolls in, makes a lot of people laugh, and rolls on to video. Most rewatchable scene, let's go, categories. I fucking love the opening so much.

• 1:05:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Bill Simmons?

  I think the first twenty-five minutes of this movie are A plus, plus, plus, plus.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  The, the Access Hollywood segment was just great. It just, I, I can, I feel like I felt like-

• 1:05:26Bill Simmons?

  You're jumping ahead. Isn't that the first twenty-five minutes? No.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:05:30Bill Simmons?

  No, I, I have the opening.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:05:32Speaker 03

  Oh, are you talking about just the trailers?

• 1:05:34Bill Simmons?

  The trailers?

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Just the trailer, oh.

• 1:05:35Bill Simmons?

  Booty sweat?

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Booty sweat.

• 1:05:37Bill Simmons?

  Scorch your six global meltdown. Fatty's fart too and Satan Alley. We had, the movie hasn't even started yet.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 1:05:43Chris Ryan?

  And you know, it's probably a very complicated time for Kirk Lazarus because he's also on the trail for Satan's Alley, right? Right, he's gotta do promotion.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:05:53Bill Simmons?

  Forbidden Love in the 12th century.

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  Because he, because, uh, Tobey Maguire is nominated.

• 1:05:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Now, does Kirk Lazarus, who is very competitive, uh, did he get nominated?

• 1:06:02Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think after the Tropic Thunder experience, he's realized it's not about competition.

• 1:06:06Speaker 03

  It's not about competition.

• 1:06:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know.

• 1:06:09Bill Simmons?

  First big battle scene, Tug gets shot like 47 times. His hands are blown in the spiders. Danny McBride comes in hot.

• 1:06:19Bill Simmons?

  Mother nature just pissed her pantsuit. There's a lot of good stuff in there. I like his hands and the Jay Barish show, the, the intestines kill me.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 1:06:30Speaker 03

  What even is all this?

• 1:06:31Chris Ryan?

  I think I can put it back.

• 1:06:34Chris Ryan?

  I think I can put it back, kill me.

• 1:06:35Bill Simmons?

  Uh, the E.T. segment.

• 1:06:37Chris Ryan?

  Is this where Danny McBride goes tuck, tuck and Kim have blue balls? I wanna let him squirt it in.

• 1:06:43Bill Simmons?

  E.T. segment with Nunez, uh, the disappointing buddy comedy, Chitlin' and the Dude.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  I was gonna ask.

• 1:06:48Bill Simmons?

  So what was the premise of this movie?

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  Who was Chitlin' and who was the dude in this?

• 1:06:51Bill Simmons?

  I think Chitlin' was.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Martin Lawrence?

• 1:06:53Bill Simmons?

  No, that was Martin Lawrence, yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  So Chitlin' was, oh, man.

• 1:06:57Bill Simmons?

  And then the dude was Ben Stower and, or, uh, Tug Speedman in drag?

• 1:07:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, the art of parody.

• 1:07:02Bill Simmons?

  Or was he Chitlin'?

• 1:07:06Bill Simmons?

  I had so many questions for Chitlin' and the Dude, I wanted to know more.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  The art of parody, parody just works better than, cause the name of the movie.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Chitlin' and the Dude, man.

• 1:07:18Bill Simmons?

  It's a buddy cop comedy.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  It's a movie they would never make, but it's a movie that they made.

• 1:07:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they just call it something else.

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  They just call it, but it's really Chitlin' and the Dude.

• 1:07:26Chris Ryan?

  They call it like Money Talks.

• 1:07:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, they had, what was the Ben Vereen comedy that, uh, on TV was like 10 Speed and Brown Shoe? Something like that? But that was like an actual show, you can look it up. It's on ABC for multiple years.

• 1:07:41Bill Simmons?

  Simple Jackson this as well, and then we get to meet McConaughey, whose hair is just, I don't know what's going on.

• 1:07:47Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it's, it's.

• 1:07:48Bill Simmons?

  It is like a full-fledged Afro.

• 1:07:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  He looks great, man.

• 1:07:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't know if it's a wig or what he's doing.

• 1:07:55Chris Ryan?

  I think that was, um, maybe post a Turkey visit, you know?

• 1:07:59Bill Simmons?

  Post Harasans?

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 1:08:02Bill Simmons?

  Uh, we get Les Grossman's entrance. This is your fault, you limey fuck.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  Uh, my favorite, one of my favorites, hey, where's the key grip? Punch him in the face, because the key grip's gonna look the same on every production.

• 1:08:14Bill Simmons?

  We get Damian, the director, blowing up. I gotta say, this is a guilty pleasure favorite scene for me, because I like when he puts the head on the rifle.

• 1:08:21Chris Ryan?

  So great.

• 1:08:22Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:23Chris Ryan?

  Let's go and make the greatest wall movie ever.

• 1:08:30Bill Simmons?

  It's corn syrup, guys.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  Latex and corn syrup.

• 1:08:34Bill Simmons?

  Then, uh, the scene, the, I don't even know how to title this scene, but the Kirk talking to.

• 1:08:41Chris Ryan?

  Tug and Kirk talk about Simple Jack.

• 1:08:43Speaker 03

  Now, can we talk about this scene real quick?

• 1:08:45Bill Simmons?

  I'll just lay it out.

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  Okay, talk about this scene real quick, okay? So, obviously, the scene is hugely and ridiculously problematic, obviously, right?

• 1:08:53Chris Ryan?

  Is it?

• 1:08:54Speaker 03

  So, I'll tell you, it is just be, in the world that we want to live in, it is, right? However, the observation in the scene.

• 1:09:04Bill Simmons?

  However, I laughed for three straight minutes.

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  Yes, the observation in the scene was so deadly accurate. And even still, I wonder, when I watch it, how I never thought of that?

• 1:09:16Bill Simmons?

  Sean Penn blew it.

• 1:09:18Chris Ryan?

  He went too far.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  The observation in the scene is so deadly accurate that it is just a genius, brilliant piece of comedy writing. It is, it is. You can't take it away from people who look at that and go, you don't want that as part of a punchline and all of that stuff like that. I get it. That scene is hysterical and is just gorgeous writing.

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  It's the most memorable line from the movie.

• 1:09:41Chris Ryan?

  It's the most, this is the most rewatchable scene for me. It's also basically the sleep with me Quentin Tarantino rant about Top Gun. It's like the most dead on observation about like, it looks retarded, actually retarded, not retarded. And it like, the fact that like, that actually is the peak of Downey's performance to me is like, he's just so, he is pretending to be an Australian guy, pretending to be a black guy, who is also commenting on the like, the nature of Oscar like campaigns.

• 1:10:14Bill Simmons?

  Well, also his, the way he plays off Stiller, Stiller's like, there were times I actually felt like I became retarded in town. He's like, what the fuck?

• 1:10:23Speaker 04

  To be monarchical.

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  But he's also, but also in all of that, he's also fucking with him.

• 1:10:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  They're in a dick measuring contest for the starring role of this movie. So he's saying, you're a moron. You're like, monarchical.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  An imbecile.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  Being, being is going, yeah.

• 1:10:43Speaker 03

  Like the dumbest motherfucker, dumbest motherfucker alive. He's really, and then he, he gives him a little bit. He walks, he makes him follow, and he just continues to fuck with him the entire time.

• 1:10:54Speaker 04

  He does the same thing when he's commenting on his physique and he's like, any tips?

• 1:10:59Speaker 03

  Cause I'm trying to come up too. I'm telling you, I don't give a fuck what nobody say. He is throwing 117 miles an hour for the entire movie and it's still tickled me to this day.

• 1:11:11Bill Simmons?

  Couple more, uh, we get a couple less gross men scenes, including the ransom meeting. Take a big step back. You didn't really fuck your own face.

• 1:11:21Bill Simmons?

  Him dancing to Flo Rida, was it, did they have Flo Rida back, guys?

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  You like him?

• 1:11:24Chris Ryan?

  It was, it was fun to revisit.

• 1:11:25Bill Simmons?

  2007, 8ish.

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  I don't, you know, I don't know if I've ever been any place to play Flo Rida, man.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Have you?

• 1:11:33Speaker 03

  Well, it's like LSU, like, uh, I wasn't, I would go home. I wasn't, I was in, uh, fucking, uh, LA by this time, but you go home, you go around the campus and they love low around campus.

• 1:11:46Speaker 04

  A lot of Flo Rida at my high school prom.

• 1:11:47Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  I think it was.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  I got to avoid a lot of that. I was 30 years old.

• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was, I was close to that age too, but you're like, you go back, you go on campus and they're like, oh, apple bottom jeans.

• 1:11:56Bill Simmons?

  Forgot to mention Tug getting recognized as Simple Jack.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:12:00Bill Simmons?

  And they all, they all, they forget the VHS. The, uh, I think this is a top three for me, that the troops all hanging out when Jack Black is tied up. When he calls, says your mother's a cantankerous whore.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  Oh, when Jeff's detoxing?

• 1:12:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and the Lance, he's talking, Brandon T. Robb, he's talking about, uh, talking about Lance.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:25Bill Simmons?

  And we get, were you thinking of dangling the dice on Lance's forehead? I texted that to Craig this weekend.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  Do you think they always knew that that was going to be Lance Bass?

• 1:12:38Speaker 04

  Uh, that's a really good question.

• 1:12:39Bill Simmons?

  That probably was a late.

• 1:12:41Speaker 04

  Or they shot the Oscars already and they were like, Lance, it's a funny joke, it'll pay off at the end, yeah.

• 1:12:46Bill Simmons?

  Downey says, man, everyone's gay once in a while, it's Hollywood. And then Jack Black wants to blow him if he'll untie. I'll cradle the balls, stroke the shaft, work the pipe, swallow the gravy. Get it over here, buddy, let's do this.

• 1:13:01Speaker 04

  Can I, can I do my flex right now? Cause it's related to that line.

• 1:13:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's go.

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  It's the Steven Seagal shitting on himself word for the most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot. Apparently that line that Jack Black says tied to that tree is, this is from an interview with Jack Black. It was an homage to the urban legend about Sylvester Stallone going to his trailer with some lady. They were having sex in his trailer and as the legend goes, he still wore his microphone. And the sound guy turned up the volume and everybody outside could hear. And he was saying, stroke the shaft, cradle the balls, say my name, swallow the gravy.

• 1:13:32Bill Simmons?

  Forgot about, I think that is a true story.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  That's crazy. Wow. If I had that context, it would have been that much funnier.

• 1:13:45Bill Simmons?

  Cradle the balls. Uh, the shootout, Jack Black with the double cocaine hands kills me. I like when the hands come back. I like this, I have a sundae, half squat. As we said, the last third of this movie is not awesome, but, uh, there's a couple of fun things in there. And then the Oscars ending with Tropic Thunder. And less dancing. So what do you got, Joel? What's your most rewatchable scene?

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Well, actually, I gave it away already. I felt like the excess Hollywood scene just took me back to, I felt like I was, I am in a hotel room.

• 1:14:15Bill Simmons?

  Right now.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Right? You know, I'm staying in a hotel room because LA is not where I live. Uh, and it was just like sitting down, putting down your shit and being like, oh yeah, this is exactly what I would have expected to see.

• 1:14:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like sitting in an airport bar.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. On any TV from like twen- 2003 to 2011.

• 1:14:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  You know, and it just felt good like that to me. I don't know. And so then he said, you know, I didn't see that, somebody said they were close to me while I'm coming. I don't know. I felt like that was the best acting that Ben Stiller had done in the whole thing. Somebody said they were close to me?

• 1:14:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What do you got, Van?

• 1:14:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Kirk and Tug.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

  Saucy in San Antonio. I'm sorry, guys. Like, it's like-

• 1:14:51Chris Ryan?

  Oh, and he's talking about cooking for them?

• 1:14:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. He's like, he's like, we're gonna sit down. And he just, and there's something that happens in that scene. First of all,

• 1:14:58Bill Simmons?

  What'd he say? Hustle up some crawfish?

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  So Brandon, like, so I actually called Brandon about this. And Brandon said that they were losing the light, and now you can actually see it when you, when you see it, they were losing the light. And Ben Stiller told them, just do whatever. Just cook. Like, it was all improv. This movie has a lot of that kind of like Ghostbusters feel when we were talking about Ghostbusters. It was all improv. They were losing the light, Ben was getting cranky, and he's like, you guys just cook. Just do some shit. And so Robert comes off the top of his head with that. He starts going in on it, and Brandon T. Jackson just plays off of him. And the authenticity of it, it plays real to me. Because when I'm listening to him be a black man and talk about crawdads and like grab some collard greens and all, it's just, it's

• 1:15:45Speaker 03

  it's fucking unbelievably hilarious. It's hilarious to me.

• 1:15:49Chris Ryan?

  Did he say collared up? Collared up some greens.

• 1:15:53Speaker 03

  He says, y'all, y'all in for a treat. Back before the war broke, I was a saucy in San Antonio. Call up some of these greens. It's funny, bro. This shit is funny.

• 1:16:05Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, C.R.?

• 1:16:06Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'm gonna go with Kirk and Tug talking about Simple Jack.

• 1:16:11Bill Simmons?

  That's mine as well.

• 1:16:12Speaker 03

  That's the, that's the same.

• 1:16:14Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 2008 thing about this movie?

• 1:16:16Chris Ryan?

  I got a list. Rick Peck playing Wee Tennis.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  That's one.

• 1:16:20Bill Simmons?

  Wee's on there.

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  Oh, the Wee, yeah, I got the Wee.

• 1:16:22Bill Simmons?

  Tobey Maguire being credited as an MTV Best Kiss Award winner.

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  That's on there.

• 1:16:28Bill Simmons?

  Less reading Maxim magazine?

• 1:16:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  That's on there.

• 1:16:31Bill Simmons?

  Marine Manuño's entire banks?

• 1:16:33Speaker 03

  TiVo.

• 1:16:33Chris Ryan?

  TiVo.

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  Oh, man. The entire conversation about the format wars between HD DVD and Blu-ray.

• 1:16:41Chris Ryan?

  And Al Horan led the way.

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  Al Horan led the way.

• 1:16:43Bill Simmons?

  An important Lance Bass cameo.

• 1:16:46Speaker 03

  Sorry, yeah.

• 1:16:47Bill Simmons?

  Um, Qualcomm phones?

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  Yep. Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:52Bill Simmons?

  But the winner is TiVo, and the winner really is TiVo saving everybody at the end.

• 1:16:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:16:57Bill Simmons?

  It feels like the most dated fucking thing ever.

• 1:16:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:59Bill Simmons?

  Were you a TiVo monthly subscriber or lifetime?

• 1:17:02Chris Ryan?

  I never had TiVo.

• 1:17:03Bill Simmons?

  What?

• 1:17:04Chris Ryan?

  No, I didn't really get it until DVR on cable boxes.

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  What did y'all do?

• 1:17:08Bill Simmons?

  I had it. I mean, when I started fucking with it, your provider had the shit on it.

• 1:17:14Chris Ryan?

  Also, sometimes we would literally go to like, I would go to a friend's house to watch 24 on TiVo. Like, I got three 24s.

• 1:17:22Bill Simmons?

  TiVo really had a moment.

• 1:17:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Speaker 03

  Oh, man. It was like the most important thing in my house once upon a time.

• 1:17:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Bill Simmons?

  Would say it's the best.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  Well, a couple of things. The Spalding official NBA ball is in there.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:33Speaker 03

  That's 2008. The original iPod is in there. Um, and...

• 1:17:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, shit, you're right.

• 1:17:40Speaker 03

  The original iPod is in there.

• 1:17:41Bill Simmons?

  The first one, yeah, that was the first year.

• 1:17:42Speaker 03

  The first iPod is in there.

• 1:17:44Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man.

• 1:17:44Chris Ryan?

  They were so good.

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  There's also while he's, because it's, Tug is watching his iPod in the jungle, right?

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Speaker 04

  He pulls out a very specific brand of chapstick that is like only from 2008 that he's about to put on before the band attacks him.

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  And one thing about this too, last thing I'll say about 2008. Everybody in this movie is in the perfect spot in their career to be in this movie.

• 1:18:07Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:18:07Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  For like the, for the, the space it had.

• 1:18:10Chris Ryan?

  They're all big, but they're a little dinged up.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:18:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:18:13Bill Simmons?

  Still is the only one who's, but even he, I guess, is a tiny bit dinged up.

• 1:18:17Chris Ryan?

  Cable guy was like, it's a $600 million movie.

• 1:18:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  This is just his project, though. So it's not, you know, he's already kind of had his run, right?

• 1:18:24Bill Simmons?

  Would say it's the best.

• 1:18:27Chris Ryan?

  I have a list, but what do you got, Joel?

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  I said the portrayal of Les Grossman.

• 1:18:31Chris Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? Like, don't you think of him like, that is our CEO class in this country.

• 1:18:37Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? And like, he put, for what, even though people think that there was some anti-Semitic tropes with that. I didn't read that. I didn't, I didn't get that out of that. That may be my own ignorance on it or whatever, but I just thought that kind of executive has defined American culture as much as anyone over the past 20 years.

• 1:18:54Chris Ryan?

  Go ahead, Van. Your response.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  You disagree?

• 1:18:55Chris Ryan?

  Go ahead. Go ahead, Van.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  He doesn't give a shit if people die, he doesn't have to treat you nice, he's ridiculous, like he'll make you watch him.

• 1:19:01Speaker 03

  You ask, why you asking? You should be asking him.

• 1:19:03Chris Ryan?

  What does he say? He's like, and in the appropriate amount of time, we will file an insurance claim.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  I think that's actually true. That's all I said.

• 1:19:11Chris Ryan?

  It's a performance that like, honestly, in 08, you were probably like, huh? And then now it's like, oh, it's completely on the nose for that, that, that era of Hollywood exec.

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:19:20Chris Ryan?

  What do you have for What's Age the Best? Uh, the, the, the whole scene with his exploded hands, um, and the two of them trying, like, crying on each other. And Ben Stiller is still trying to cut like the arrogance of those guys and, uh, just putting Danny, Danny McBride in charge of explosives.

• 1:19:39Speaker 03

  Uh, fantastic. Um, YouTube, they mentioned YouTube. YouTube was still kinda.

• 1:19:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  YouTube.

• 1:19:45Chris Ryan?

  It's like two years in.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  That's Age the Best. Also, all of these guys are kinda still on top.

• 1:19:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  Like.

• 1:19:53Chris Ryan?

  Jack Black's the biggest one out of all of them.

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey.

• 1:19:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is back. Uh, Ben Stiller has Severance and the Knicks. Um, like, it's like, a, a lot of these guys, Robert Downey Jr., these guys are like still on top.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Let me ask about your boy, uh, what's Brandon doing right now?

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  He's doing great.

• 1:20:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:20:11Chris Ryan?

  So, so all the, all the brother, you know, I mean, you should tell the truth about.

• 1:20:14Speaker 03

  He's doing great.

• 1:20:15Chris Ryan?

  Your friend's experience, man. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:20:17Speaker 03

  Brandon's doing great. I talked to him, he's doing great.

• 1:20:18Chris Ryan?

  I love it. I mean, it's great.

• 1:20:20Speaker 03

  Say, watch Deadline is, uh, he's doing great. He's had a great career and it's still going on. I don't know why you're picking on him.

• 1:20:24Chris Ryan?

  Just glad Van was able to do a name drop.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  Been a couple of episodes.

• 1:20:29Chris Ryan?

  I called Brandon earlier.

• 1:20:30Speaker 03

  I could drop more, I could.

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, go ahead, what?

• 1:20:32Speaker 03

  You know the people, you talked about, don't, don't get used, don't, you don't do it.

• 1:20:37Chris Ryan?

  What?

• 1:20:37Speaker 03

  If somebody else could do that, you can't do that though.

• 1:20:40Chris Ryan?

  You gotta start just name dropping, like, be like, yeah, man, I was texting with Matt Dillon the other day, just see if he calls you on it, like.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  You can't do that. A lot of people could do that, but not you.

• 1:20:52Bill Simmons?

  Look at you doing the LeBron meme. Finger pointing. I have Vietnam movie parodies. I still enjoy even all these years later, even though they don't really make Vietnam movies anymore. But I still love that whole culture. We even did a podcast about them once. Sandusky's theory about porno movies validating video formats?

• 1:21:11Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was, I honestly, kind of brilliant.

• 1:21:13Chris Ryan?

  I was thinking about this the other day because we were doing a physical media pod on Big Picture and we were asked a question about whether or not there will ever be something above 4K. And the first thing that popped into my mind was from this movie. It was like, well, if porn, if porn leads the way, then yes.

• 1:21:27Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be 8K, right, Craig?

• 1:21:29Chris Ryan?

  Apparently the human eye can't process more than 4K.

• 1:21:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm barely can process 4K. Uh, how about an author lying about a personal experience to sell books?

• 1:21:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that says pretty well.

• 1:21:41Bill Simmons?

  See that?

• 1:21:42Chris Ryan?

  Right. James Frey?

• 1:21:44Bill Simmons?

  James Frey, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a personal one for me and it's so stealth, but it fucking kills me. Um, Rick, Rick Peck's loser son.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:21:55Chris Ryan?

  You got to choose.

• 1:21:59Bill Simmons?

  The dude with the picture thing he has in his office and the son's not even looking at the camera, he's just...

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Oh, but when they're on the plane at the end of the movie too. I was like, oh shit.

• 1:22:10Bill Simmons?

  This is so good.

• 1:22:14Bill Simmons?

  I have Peck's remedy for killing a hooker. For how to clean it up. Get your hands on some bleach, hydrogen peroxide, a shitload of lime.

• 1:22:26Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was a great little kid performance by the leader of the flaming dragons.

• 1:22:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Bill Simmons?

  That guy's good.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  He's really good, yeah.

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was excellent. He was like scary, he could do moves. And then I like when Nolte says, uh, let's bag and tag the bastard. You're in a world of hurt, Dumbo.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  That's funny.

• 1:22:43Bill Simmons?

  Let's bag and tag the bastard.

• 1:22:45Speaker 03

  It was like, you're in a world of hurt. I don't know why.

• 1:22:49Bill Simmons?

  That's what CR said about the self face after game seven. It's like, let's bag and tag the bastard.

• 1:22:53Chris Ryan?

  He's talking to Tatum.

• 1:22:55Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh.

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:22:57Bill Simmons?

  So, hmm, the five actors nominated for best actor leading role were Tug Speedman, Tom Hanks, Sean Penn, Tobey Maguire, and Jon Voight. Pretty believable.

• 1:23:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:09Bill Simmons?

  Fivesome.

• 1:23:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:23:10Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:23:11Chris Ryan?

  And you have to presume that Sean Penn consented to be, yeah, included in that group.

• 1:23:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Probably Downing, because he knew Downing from early in his, okay. Uh, the Floyd Gondoli Butter on My Ass and Lollipops in My Mouth Award for Something I Just Enjoy.

• 1:23:25Speaker 03

  Every time somebody says booty sweat, man, it does shit work for me, bro. Like, I mean, I was saying, you remember there was a time when people would say, Rick James, bitch, or whatever, we and my boys would just talk about booty sweat, you know what I'm saying? Let me get some of that booty sweat.

• 1:23:37Chris Ryan?

  Honestly.

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  Don't, see, don't, don't.

• 1:23:38Bill Simmons?

  I'm not doing anything.

• 1:23:39Speaker 03

  Don't do that. Don't do it. I saw your face.

• 1:23:41Chris Ryan?

  Anytime sympathy for the devil is used in a movie, I'm just kind of like, my, my spidey senses go off.

• 1:23:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I did a, I was gonna wonder, I was gonna do the hottest take on whether that's the best movie song of all time, but it wasn't less movies than I thought.

• 1:23:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I also give you shelter is, uses it a lot, yeah.

• 1:23:57Bill Simmons?

  But more TV shows. I have a, I really love well-done fake movie trailers in a movie.

• 1:24:03Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:24:04Bill Simmons?

  It's a fucking home run every time. Like, I, I honestly, I feel like we're short. Craig, we're like fifty short career.

• 1:24:11Chris Ryan?

  Fake movie trailers?

• 1:24:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just really well-done ones, just don't, like, why not just, if you're making a comedy, why not just put a fake movie trailer for no reason before the movie starts?

• 1:24:19Chris Ryan?

  In the second season of the studio, because the Paul Dano action movie that they did, which is really just the opening scene of that movie or the climax of that movie. And they did the one about, uh, like, the.

• 1:24:28Bill Simmons?

  Did they ever do the Greta Gerwig, not, yeah, the Greta Gerwig movie?

• 1:24:31Chris Ryan?

  The fartpocalypse, didn't they do that trailer in studio, in the studio with Johnny Knoxville?

• 1:24:36Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:24:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Bill Simmons?

  That's right. I miss those. What do you have, Van? Do you have one?

• 1:24:42Speaker 03

  Um, I like walking around the jungle. I, I just like movies in the jungle, uh, army action movies, just walking around in the jungle.

• 1:24:50Bill Simmons?

  Being scared?

• 1:24:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:51Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:53Bill Simmons?

  All right, we'll take a break and then we'll come back with Joel's first ever flex. This episode is brought to you by Trivia. Sweeteners are like movies, the best ones don't leave an aftertaste. That's why Trivia Alolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener is a smooth, balanced tri blend that delivers sugar like sweetness with zero calories per serving and no aftertaste. If you're looking for a better way to enjoy sweetness with zero calories per serving, you really need to try Trivia Alolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. Available online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer. This episode is brought to you by Viori.

• 1:25:35Bill Simmons?

  All right, let's talk about a category we appreciate, clothes that stay in the rotation. Viori earned that spot. Their core shorts are good for workouts, travel day, weekend, whatever. And the Strato Tech T ridiculously soft. It's the kind of gear you keep reaching for because it's comfortable while still looking put together. Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com/rewatchables and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

• 1:26:07Bill Simmons?

  All right, Joel, it's time. Your flex category. First, did you understand the assignment?

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  I did, I did understand the assignment and actually I had something for all three and now I'm going to decide right here based on the center of the conversation.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  All right. Because you know, sometimes, because either it's like I could have done something more ridiculous, but also I just don't want to seem, you know, this is a very highbrow podcast.

• 1:26:28Bill Simmons?

  Sure.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:26:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. There's a lot of intellectual heft here.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:26:31Bill Simmons?

  It's not in my house, but we're still doing good.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  Not with the catering and everything.

• 1:26:38Bill Simmons?

  Wow, Bill Sugarfish, thanks, man. Tell your chef, thanks.

• 1:26:42Speaker 02

  Maybe the next time.

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  The, the Needle Drop, Run Through the Jungle by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

• 1:26:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  Um, that, that shit is beautiful, like, and I expect to hear it in every Vietnam era.

• 1:26:56Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Movie.

• 1:26:57Bill Simmons?

  You're right. It's probably eighty percent of the Vietnam movies feel like they have to do it.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:01Bill Simmons?

  It makes you wonder why, why wasn't there more classic rock songs about jungles?

• 1:27:06Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I just, in general, I think Creedence has that vibe. So like Susie Cues and Apocalypse Now and I'm sure there's one.

• 1:27:13Bill Simmons?

  Are they the number one Vietnam movie band?

• 1:27:14Chris Ryan?

  They have to, alright?

• 1:27:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, Fortunate Son.

• 1:27:17Bill Simmons?

  Fortunate Son.

• 1:27:17Chris Ryan?

  Fortunate Son is huge.

• 1:27:19Speaker 04

  Bad Moon Rising?

• 1:27:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Chris Ryan?

  And then there's a lot of Motown, I think.

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  What's the most used song in a Vietnam movie?

• 1:27:25Bill Simmons?

  Probably anything from Creedence Clearwater Revival.

• 1:27:27Speaker 04

  I think it's Fortunate Son is the most stereotypical song.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  Allegedly, they say that song is about gun violence, though, like, which is crazy because this is from like nineteen sixty-nine.

• 1:27:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  Um, I was like, this really wasn't about Vietnam, huh? Okay, sure, whatever you say. But yeah, that was my shit. And maybe I actually downloaded that so I could listen to it.

• 1:27:44Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:27:45Bill Simmons?

  Great Shot Gordo Award, tug running in front of the bridge as it blows up, or would you do something else?

• 1:27:50Chris Ryan?

  I had the Great Shot Gordo slash the Sean Finacy Award for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm is the reenactment of the Willem Dafoe death in Platoon.

• 1:27:58Speaker 04

  Were you to do Platoon?

• 1:28:00Bill Simmons?

  It's on the list.

• 1:28:01Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:03Speaker 03

  Fuck that movie.

• 1:28:04Bill Simmons?

  Ches Rockwell, Brock Lander's Award for Best Character Name, it's gotta be Alpo Chino.

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  Alpo Chino.

• 1:28:10Speaker 03

  Kirk Lazarus is good, too.

• 1:28:12Chris Ryan?

  My silver medal is actually Hater's character is named Rob Slalom.

• 1:28:18Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if they ever actually say it out loud.

• 1:28:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:22Chris Ryan?

  But it's so weird to watch Hater because you keep waiting for him to completely break out in this movie and he's just like, kind of keeping it.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  Now, if you count Lincoln Osiris is the name.

• 1:28:32Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  The name's good, too. That's a good one.

• 1:28:33Bill Simmons?

  Link.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:35Bill Simmons?

  The Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness, Joel talked about the Needle Drop. There's a couple of really good ones in there, but it's, it's gotta go to Creedence.

• 1:28:43Chris Ryan?

  Is also another big Vietnam movie, one, yeah.

• 1:28:45Bill Simmons?

  What do you got for your flex here?

• 1:28:46Chris Ryan?

  I have Billy Bat's Jack Wolts Award for the most biting and scalable insult for first, first of all, take a big step back and literally fuck your own face.

• 1:28:57Bill Simmons?

  It's a great one. Butch's girlfriend word, weak link of the film?

• 1:29:01Chris Ryan?

  This is a really, this is a good one here. I think this is interesting.

• 1:29:05Bill Simmons?

  Mine is, we already discussed it. I thought the last third could have been seven, eight minutes tighter and we just could have gotten out of there.

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  Even halfway through, I was like, man, this is kinda going on.

• 1:29:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:29:16Bill Simmons?

  I wanted more, like, there's a deleted scene before they send the five into the jungle again. Where they're at some party at the set and they're talking to Al Pacino. Baruchel meets him and they're, I just wanted like two more scenes with that. Like the guys hanging out before it got weird, and less at the back end would be my note.

• 1:29:40Speaker 03

  I have Jack Black.

• 1:29:41Chris Ryan?

  Wow. You thought he just showed up and collected a check, huh?

• 1:29:45Speaker 03

  No, I think that the Jack Black stuff is funny at times. But I do think that beyond the scene of, there are two scenes that really work. Other than that, he's kinda just whacked out in the movie and pulling it away from the funniest parts, which is like Kirk and Tug and Al Pacino and some of the other stuff. I had Jack Black, and it's rare. Jack Black is normally a plus player in every movie he's in, but in this one, I had him as the weak link.

• 1:30:16Chris Ryan?

  I have, Steve Coogan is much funnier in Reigns of Madness than he is in Tropic Thunder.

• 1:30:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Chris Ryan?

  And I feel like they kinda hemmed him in a little bit.

• 1:30:26Speaker 02

  I have Ben Stiller, man. I was just, yeah.

• 1:30:29Bill Simmons?

  Ben Stiller?

• 1:30:30Chris Ryan?

  Wow!

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. I'm sorry, I just, again, I felt like, I was like, oh, I've seen this Ben Stiller before, over and over again. I didn't think he had that much work to do. I felt like he was, he got to be himself. And, you know, I mean, I didn't mean that he was bad, and I didn't think, I didn't think the acting performances were probably the, some of the best parts of the movie to me. And of that bunch, I thought, I would have said Jack Black, but I couldn't say Jack Black because you already said Jack Black. So I had Ben Stiller, like, right above that.

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  I get what you're saying. I think, we were talking about this a little bit earlier. Like, Ben Stiller has really good taste, and usually the movies he's involved in are really good and funny. But he's not always, like, the single best part of the movie as just particularly an actor.

• 1:31:11Speaker 03

  But there's something that he can do that is very useful in a movie like this. Is he can be a funny straight man.

• 1:31:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and he's making fun of himself.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  He's making fun of himself and his performances are nuanced enough to where he can be the straight man to a lot of other stuff that is crazy and happening at the same time in a movie.

• 1:31:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:32Speaker 03

  But he can also actually have you laugh at him.

• 1:31:35Chris Ryan?

  I enjoy him more as a character actor. Like, I think him and Happy Gilmore or even Zoolander is funnier than when he's just doing like the meet the parents thing.

• 1:31:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:43Bill Simmons?

  The Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot, which Craig already did. I have another one. This is Bill Hader. This is a story he had. Tom Cruise didn't know who I was and was trying to figure it out. I said Seth Rogen's a friend of mine. He said he went to your house. I did a Seth Rogen impersonation for two seconds, like, Tom Cruise is amazing. We rode motorcycles in his backyard. And it was like I did a magic trick. Tom Cruise started clapping and going crazy and he went, you do impressions and you're on Saturday Night Live. Meaning I was briefed that I know now who you are. I just would have loved to have been in the room for this.

• 1:32:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:21Bill Simmons?

  But can you imagine Cruise doing the over exaggerated, you're so funny, you're the SNL guy. Oh, I get it.

• 1:32:27Chris Ryan?

  Kind of like the politician who's just like, this is the Treasury Secretary and that's his daughter, not his wife.

• 1:32:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's been on SNL for two years. What's age the worst? Well, we covered a lot of the what's age the worst already.

• 1:32:40Bill Simmons?

  Including the the website for Simple Jack. All the other things that happened. Any other what's age the worst that we have?

• 1:32:47Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I would probably say it's just a, I would say the action in this movie is each the worst.

• 1:32:53Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:32:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  I would say that comedy is not the only thing that matters now anymore. Your movie is not just about whether or not it's funny. This is like really one of the last movies that was like, okay, it's gonna take all of these chances, these gigantic swings. And if it's funny, it's gonna work. Your shit can't just be funny now. It has to, there has to be more than that. You have to consider a lot of things before you put script to screen and then put it out. Or else people gonna not fuck with it, they're gonna summarize it before it even gets to the.

• 1:33:23Speaker 04

  Unless you're a stand-up.

• 1:33:25Speaker 03

  If you're a stand-up, it can still work, but even as a stand-up though, you have this almost sectioned off group of people who just came to see you. The movies, I think people react differently to them because they, I don't know why people still feel like that every movie is supposed to be for everyone. Uh, they don't feel like that way about stand-ups. It's almost like if you go to see Louis C.K. at this point, you know what you signed up for. But when a movie comes out, a lot of times people are offended because they feel like if it's in the theater, I'm supposed to be able to watch it.

• 1:33:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I think also it's just like, I've, uh, you've been selling me this movie for such a long time and it either is or isn't what I expected it to be.

• 1:34:01Speaker 04

  For a movie to get made, like a hundred people have to sign off on it, Louis, it's kinda just him.

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  Anywood stage the worst show? Yeah, but he would stage the worst for us, or did we cover?

• 1:34:13Speaker 03

  Oh, no, I was gonna say, I thought the comedy just fell flat, just totally. Like, again, I, it wasn't as funny as I remembered. I just, I thought, see, I.

• 1:34:20Chris Ryan?

  A rare case of Joel Trumpathunder.

• 1:34:23Speaker 04

  I don't like this movie.

• 1:34:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:26Chris Ryan?

  No, he did the work, though.

• 1:34:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did, I just, you know, again, I watched it, again, I think, I, I definitely remember thinking it was funnier in 2008.

• 1:34:34Chris Ryan?

  Can we actually, cause this is Joel's first time on the podcast, can we get a, a barometer of what would be a funny movie to you?

• 1:34:39Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:34:40Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, my favorite movie is Coming to America Friday.

• 1:34:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Funny, you know, so.

• 1:34:46Speaker 03

  Oh, you know what else I love?

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  I always talk about Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, cause nobody fucks, you know, I don't have any fuck with it, but.

• 1:34:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:34:53Speaker 03

  You ever see that one?

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  You ever seen Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins?

• 1:34:56Chris Ryan?

  Two thousands?

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  Something like that, yeah, I think it's the early two thousands, he goes back to his family reunion.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Um, and, yeah, it was in Shreveport, they filmed in Shreveport.

• 1:35:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, 2008?

• 1:35:05Speaker 03

  2008, see 2008?

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  I like stuff.

• 1:35:09Chris Ryan?

  I believe you do.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  I believe the laugh. I like the laugh.

• 1:35:11Chris Ryan?

  But I didn't know if you were gonna be like, to me Rushmore is funny, you know?

• 1:35:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  I mean, I like a lot of the, um, what's it called? Like the Best in Show.

• 1:35:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  Like that kind of stuff.

• 1:35:19Chris Ryan?

  Christopher Guest stuff, yeah.

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  Christopher Guest movies. Y'all love that stuff, you know? That, this one just, and look, I like Anchorman, like Anchorman's funny. Step Brothers, I could, if you put Step Brothers on right now, I will not get it.

• 1:35:29Bill Simmons?

  We got the idea.

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:35:31Chris Ryan?

  You know, we.

• 1:35:32Bill Simmons?

  I'm just fast forwarding, all the people are like, why'd you have the guy that was like Tropic Thunder on the rerun?

• 1:35:37Chris Ryan?

  But you know, we had this conversation with, about, with something about Mary, about its legacy.

• 1:35:42Bill Simmons?

  This is a complicated movie.

• 1:35:43Chris Ryan?

  Beyond, it's legacy beyond just like whether it was funny or not, right? And you just mentioned two movies that I feel like have a way bigger, like sort of mind share of like the current movie going public. With Anchorman and Step Brothers are way bigger than Tropic Thunder. I also think they're better movies.

• 1:35:59Bill Simmons?

  I think that, I think they have a much longer tail.

• 1:36:01Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Don't you think so?

• 1:36:03Speaker 03

  But I'll also say there's one, there's a reason why, because those movies edit for television better.

• 1:36:09Bill Simmons?

  There's another reason, like my kids didn't like Tropic Thunder, Travis Shockley.

• 1:36:12Speaker 03

  I get it, it's, it's an edgier, it's an edgier movie.

• 1:36:14Chris Ryan?

  It's a satire of like nineteen.

• 1:36:16Bill Simmons?

  They were just out, but they fucking love Anchorman and Step Brothers.

• 1:36:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, tho- those movies are more, I mean, there's some, you know, but those movies edit for television better, they're, those are more accessible films.

• 1:36:25Speaker 02

  Outside of Downey, did you think, I mean, I'm not, I don't, you know, people are gonna get mad at me, but that's fine. Did you think it, outside of Downey, did it seem like smart funny to you though? Like, did you like, you were just like, oh wow, that was some really complicated, you really thought?

• 1:36:37Chris Ryan?

  I thought that the conceit of the first like hour of the movie and especially like the trailers, the, the Maria Menino section, Peck and Grossman. Like all that first bit run through the Hollywood stuff is pretty.

• 1:36:49Speaker 03

  She's funny. She, at the end, at the end of it, she goes, lo, lo, lo, something like that. She's funny, like, all of that stuff leading up to it, to me, is really, really high level satire going on.

• 1:37:03Bill Simmons?

  Orchard over acting word.

• 1:37:04Chris Ryan?

  Jack Black.

• 1:37:05Bill Simmons?

  I had Jack Black.

• 1:37:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:05Speaker 02

  Jack Black, yeah.

• 1:37:06Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Van's Choice for a flex.

• 1:37:08Speaker 03

  Okay, a list, five movies not getting greenlit in 2026.

• 1:37:13Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:13Speaker 03

  Uh, number five, our namesake movie, The Ringer. Have you ever seen this?

• 1:37:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was problematic when it happened.

• 1:37:19Chris Ryan?

  That's Johnny Knoxville, right?

• 1:37:20Speaker 03

  That's Johnny Knoxville.

• 1:37:21Bill Simmons?

  We had a big debate about whether we named The Ringer The Ringer, wondering if The Ringer, the movie, would overshadow us with Google, and guess what, it didn't.

• 1:37:29Speaker 03

  It did not.

• 1:37:29Chris Ryan?

  I almost cost you so much money by calling the website Chase the Night.

• 1:37:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Chris Ryan?

  But it was like, we tried for two years, Chris, I gotta pull the plug.

• 1:37:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, seriously.

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  These are four, five movies we're not making. Number four, Tropic Thunder. I don't know if with all the stuff like that, the movie intact, the way it is, gets greenlit today. I don't know if they make it. Number three, Jawana Man.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  We, oh man.

• 1:37:51Speaker 03

  Not gonna happen. You're not in this day and age gonna have a movie where a guy goes and dominates the W I B A cuz he's a guy. We're having too many conversations, the W is coming too far. It's not gonna happen.

• 1:38:05Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:38:06Speaker 03

  Number two, I think is, could easily be number one, it's an easy one, The Birth of a Nation.

• 1:38:11Chris Ryan?

  Like the, the new Birth of a Nation?

• 1:38:13Speaker 03

  Bro, I know.

• 1:38:14Chris Ryan?

  The second one.

• 1:38:14Speaker 03

  The old.

• 1:38:15Chris Ryan?

  The 1915 Birth of a Nation?

• 1:38:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're not doing that right now.

• 1:38:18Chris Ryan?

  I think that would have been the case.

• 1:38:20Speaker 03

  Hey, you know what? They played it in the White House then. Alright, people were happy to go see it. Alright, so I would gotta say right now.

• 1:38:26Chris Ryan?

  That's because they were like, I can't believe a train is moving, right?

• 1:38:29Speaker 03

  That is partly true, it's also cuz they was fucking with that shit.

• 1:38:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're right.

• 1:38:33Speaker 02

  No, they kinda, I mean, they might, I mean, they might have that shit in the ball right now. I mean, that would, that would go over well.

• 1:38:38Chris Ryan?

  There might be a four K or two sitting around in the White House now.

• 1:38:40Speaker 03

  Might. Number one, despite the fact that we have tried on this podcast to change the legacy of this movie, there's no way Soul Man happens in 2026. Soul Man is an impossible movie to make.

• 1:38:54Chris Ryan?

  Lack of availability is probably a testament to that, yeah.

• 1:38:56Speaker 03

  So Soul Man is number one.

• 1:38:58Bill Simmons?

  I think Soul Man would.

• 1:38:59Speaker 03

  As a riot.

• 1:39:02Speaker 03

  Who's gonna be writing?

• 1:39:03Bill Simmons?

  Not just everybody.

• 1:39:03Speaker 03

  Do you think?

• 1:39:04Bill Simmons?

  I think all people riot.

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  Do you think it would? Do you? Cause actually, I mean, ultimately, the guy finds out that like racism is a real thing. Do you think that because of that, the people are like, what?

• 1:39:12Speaker 03

  We can't get to that point. I'm trying to say that we can't get to that point. At the end of Soul Man, Soul Man rounds out with him discovering just how terrible it is. But see Thomas, how the entire movie has, it's just not gonna happen.

• 1:39:29Bill Simmons?

  I would like to throw in The Crying Game into this talk.

• 1:39:31Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 1:39:33Bill Simmons?

  Fucking lose their minds now. They would have intentionally spoiled the secret. I think that movie gets submarine in an island.

• 1:39:38Speaker 03

  It's actually a good one.

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  That's a good one, yeah.

• 1:39:40Bill Simmons?

  People have been really mad at that movie.

• 1:39:41Chris Ryan?

  I'm trying to make like, just on twists alone. I mean, I know why you're saying crying game, but I wonder whether or not, if you tried to pitch Fight Club now, would they just be like, yeah, but we're not gonna be able to keep it a secret? Like, there's just too many people writing about movies. There's too many people who see movies too early. And they'll be like, make sure you stick around for the last 20 minutes of this, you know, like.

• 1:40:00Speaker 03

  Yo.

• 1:40:01Bill Simmons?

  Really tough.

• 1:40:01Speaker 03

  What a pro fun. Have we lost? Would Fight Club not work today?

• 1:40:07Bill Simmons?

  The ability to keep a secret, we've lost. Blair Witch is dead. No way. Doesn't work.

• 1:40:11Speaker 03

  Like Fight Club completely does not work in any way as a movie or as an experience. I remember when my homies was first putting me on Fight Club, cause I hadn't seen it in theaters. They were happy to like not spoil it.

• 1:40:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:24Speaker 03

  They would tell you everybody. I can't tell you what's going on and they just made you. I don't know if that would exist now. It would be all over. Kind of like what they did with the drama almost.

• 1:40:30Bill Simmons?

  I love Fight Club.

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  American History X?

• 1:40:32Speaker 03

  Ah, they could still make that one.

• 1:40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:34Speaker 03

  I think that one could still get made.

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:40:37Bill Simmons?

  The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. How to take a word? What do you have, CR?

• 1:40:41Chris Ryan?

  This movie did to Platoon what Walk Hard did to music biographies.

• 1:40:45Bill Simmons?

  Ooh.

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 1:40:46Chris Ryan?

  I tried watching Platoon this weekend and I need a little bit more distance from Tropic Thunder to like watch Keith David. Yeah, like, uh, you know, like we're going home, brother. You know, like it's just too close. And, uh, all the shots that they had, like, there's so many one for one shots from like Platoon in Tropic Thunder. So I think it kind of deflated the ball a little bit.

• 1:41:10Speaker 03

  My hottest take is this is legitimately the only time I have purely and sincerely, not even a half of percent at all been offended by black people.

• 1:41:25Speaker 03

  This looks bad. I'm like, I'm just like, I know that this looks bad. I just, I want to, I want to have been offended by that in this movie more. I want to be, I like, I'm, I, I interrogate myself. But as many times as I've watched it, as many times as I've seen it, I just have never even a little bit been offended by the usage of it in this. There's no blackface. If you do it, I'm gonna get on your motherfucking ass. Stop with the goddamn Halloween costumes. It's not a tribute to Beyonce. I'm, I can't, like, all of that stuff. But in this movie, for whatever reason, it's just never offended me.

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  Oh, that's some real shit. I actually agree with him. That, it does not, he, it had to be as good as it was.

• 1:42:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:42:10Speaker 02

  For it to meet that bar. And I'm just going to say like, alright, I have to, I'm gonna give Lincoln Osiris a chance.

• 1:42:15Chris Ryan?

  It's also like, if he had been doing, like, if he had been doing anything that was like contemporary, like if he tried to kick hip hop language in it or anything like that, it would have just blown up in his face.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  So when he did the saucy and set in tone thing, that's why they had Brandon's character go right back. Cause like, okay, you're leaning into the shit. You're doing a little too much right now.

• 1:42:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is too, too many times in between takes.

• 1:42:39Speaker 03

  But that, but that was the joke, all the time, the joke was, what do you mean you people? Like, they continuously remind you over and over and over again that the absurdity of this is that people take roles like this. The absurdity is that this is not so far out of the realm of what has happened or what did happen. So, I don't know, I just got it.

• 1:43:00Chris Ryan?

  What do you have?

• 1:43:01Speaker 02

  That was it. I mean, I actually, I'm not offended by the blackface at all. And again, I, again, I.

• 1:43:06Chris Ryan?

  You don't have a hottest take?

• 1:43:07Speaker 02

  That performance.

• 1:43:09Chris Ryan?

  That's not your hottest take?

• 1:43:10Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 1:43:11Chris Ryan?

  Do you have a hottest take?

• 1:43:12Speaker 02

  That's the hottest take, yes.

• 1:43:12Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you both had the, you separately came to the same hottest take.

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  I was not offended by the blackface at all. Because I get, I, I think, and like, this is my first time in front of a watchable's audience, right? And I know there's a lot of people on Reddit or whatever, that's like, oh, that guy's jokes, dude, let's go. But anyway, but I can laugh at shit like that. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's funny. Oh, they're gonna love you. If you're gonna be racist, like, at least be funny with your shit. Dog and like I felt like like become correct. I mean, I'm not even gonna talk about some of the shit I like on Twitter sometimes. I'm just like, oh, man, you know, sometimes Nick Fuentes. Oh, no.

• 1:43:48Speaker 02

  Said some shit, I'm like, I don't, I don't fuck with you. I don't like you. We would never be cool. But I was like, that's kind of funny though, dog.

• 1:43:57Speaker 04

  Do you want me to try and get out of this?

• 1:44:01Speaker 04

  Let's do, let's do how would Van get out of this one right now? Do it like a top ten blackface?

• 1:44:06Speaker 02

  You don't think Nick Fuentes is funny? Get the fuck out of my face with that. You said it before. Shut up, dog.

• 1:44:13Speaker 04

  I never wished we were live on Netflix.

• 1:44:18Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna try to follow that one. My hottest take. I think you could switch four actors, the parts of this, and it's a better movie.

• 1:44:26Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:44:28Bill Simmons?

  I think you could switch McConaughey and Stiller. And I think you could switch Jack Black and Bill Hader. And I think the movie's better.

• 1:44:34Speaker 04

  So Stiller, in that Tom Cruise.

• 1:44:36Bill Simmons?

  So Stiller's the agent.

• 1:44:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, and the Tom Cruise oral history.

• 1:44:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's still gonna play the agent. And I think McConaughey as the lead, I think would have been really fun. Cause I, my issue with this is it feels very Zoolander-y, the character. It feels like a Stiller character I've seen before, he's just like more jacked. Whereas McConaughey, I would have been interested. But I think Hader and the Jack Black part. When it was like, we hadn't really had Hader yet, we'd had Jack Black around for like 12 years at that point. I think Hader just would have added some improv stuff. I just think it would have been better.

• 1:45:09Speaker 04

  If you switch McConaughey out of Peck, though, you don't get Rum Tum Tug or Nuts.

• 1:45:15Speaker 04

  It's Pecker.

• 1:45:17Bill Simmons?

  What do you think? Did I break your brain with that, Craig?

• 1:45:19Speaker 04

  McConaughey as Tug, I think, really works. Hater, the physicality that Jack Black brings, I do think, like, add some sparkle to the movie when it's, it's just them walking through the jungle for like an hour. Jack Black does kind of bring that Farley energy that I do think kind of you need.

• 1:45:37Bill Simmons?

  Casting what ifs. Stiller wanted Keanu as Tug.

• 1:45:42Bill Simmons?

  Didn't happen.

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:45:43Bill Simmons?

  He was gonna play Rick Peck and Keanu was gonna be Tug. Tug, Keanu's tug is, I don't know, I don't know if that one would have worked.

• 1:45:50Chris Ryan?

  It's really, Keanu might be one of the hardest actors to like, assign roles to like this.

• 1:45:56Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:45:56Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's like, it's, you talk about like, Robert Downey Jr. Spending fifteen years playing Iron Man, like, I feel like Keanu's been John Wick for like fifteen years.

• 1:46:06Speaker 03

  I think it was like twenty fourteen or thirteen or something, it's getting close.

• 1:46:09Bill Simmons?

  He's in that Aziz movie, As an Angel or whatever, and I was.

• 1:46:12Chris Ryan?

  And he's in the John Wick movie, yeah.

• 1:46:14Speaker 03

  Is he one of those guys that when casted perfectly, is perfect, Utah, Speed, John Wick.

• 1:46:20Bill Simmons?

  Shane Falco.

• 1:46:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:22Speaker 03

  Shane Falco, Shane Falco works, and even in Parenthood, perfectly casted.

• 1:46:26Bill Simmons?

  Hardball guy, smoking, gambling, Little League coach.

• 1:46:32Bill Simmons?

  Kevin Hart turned down Al Pacino, did he want to play a gay character?

• 1:46:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:46:38Bill Simmons?

  Some tough research on this one.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

  He, he admitted though, I mean, he said, it's like my own insecurity along those lines, but still, it's just kinda, well.

• 1:46:44Bill Simmons?

  And then, Mo Stef turned it down because he wanted, he wanted to change a character to an R and B musician, he didn't want to make fun of rap.

• 1:46:52Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:46:54Bill Simmons?

  So ended up, I mean, did you get the sense, Van talked to today?

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  Well, did you get the sense that he was a rap star? Like, I don't know, I felt like that was the one thing that was kinda missing, like, I didn't get.

• 1:47:02Chris Ryan?

  I felt like he was like more like Nick Cannon or something.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, like.

• 1:47:05Bill Simmons?

  It almost felt like he was a rap star five years ago, who had now become.

• 1:47:09Speaker 03

  Nick Cannon is a rap star.

• 1:47:11Bill Simmons?

  This was sad, the, so Cruz vacated Rick Peck, Owen Wilson gets cast, and then Owen Wilson had,

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Oh, remember that?

• 1:47:19Bill Simmons?

  Had that meltdown in oh seven, suicide attempt sadly, dropped out, Matthew McConaughey comes in, so McConaughey was the third choice. Which is kind of where he was in his career.

• 1:47:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:30Bill Simmons?

  Best That Guy Award? I don't know.

• 1:47:33Chris Ryan?

  I have, uh, Yvette Nicole Brown as Peck's assistant, goes on to become.

• 1:47:38Speaker 03

  I think Yvette Nicole, Yvette Nicole Brown is, Yvette Nicole Brown, no?

• 1:47:42Chris Ryan?

  Now she is, I, it's like, I'm using a more of a like, oh, like the background player, and then it's like, she's like got one shot, where she's like, it's like hang up the phone.

• 1:47:51Speaker 03

  At that time, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, cuz like, she's, she's like a cultural mainstay.

• 1:47:55Bill Simmons?

  You know what's funny is Danny McBride, when they made this movie, wasn't that guy.

• 1:47:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:58Speaker 03

  Kinda, yeah.

• 1:47:59Bill Simmons?

  And then Eastbound made of Danny McBride.

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  Saint Christopher Walken was kinda like, I was like, oh yeah, just love seeing him.

• 1:48:04Speaker 03

  Christopher Walken isn't that guy, interesting.

• 1:48:08Bill Simmons?

  I did mine in my hottest take. Did you have any?

• 1:48:11Chris Ryan?

  Not really.

• 1:48:12Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:48:14Bill Simmons?

  Craig did his flex. We're moving to Half-Assed Internet Research.

• 1:48:17Speaker 04

  You do Dion?

• 1:48:18Speaker 03

  Dion, why you do Dion?

• 1:48:19Bill Simmons?

  I didn't do Dion, Jesus. Well, it's Cruise.

• 1:48:21Speaker 03

  It's kind of Tom Cruise.

• 1:48:22Bill Simmons?

  Tom Cruise, right?

• 1:48:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:24Speaker 04

  Are you? You test drive the bride?

• 1:48:26Chris Ryan?

  No, I had something for possibly answerable questions, but I'll bring it up for Dion. Now, it's not necessarily that less is in this movie too much for Dion, which is like a sliding kind of barometer sometimes. What would happen if there was just one less Grossman scene? Is it? Does it become like one of the great one-scene cameos of all time?

• 1:48:44Speaker 04

  You don't love Grossman. There's a little bit of you.

• 1:48:45Chris Ryan?

  No, I think Grossman is incredible on the fuck your own face one, and I'm like, you have to get a binding resolution. I think it's the mission returns, and it almost feels like midway through, they're like, man, this is incredible. We gotta do another Grossman scene.

• 1:49:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:02Speaker 03

  I think that it was probably Cruise's commitment to it. Like, oh, Tom's having a lot of fun. How much juice can we get out of him?

• 1:49:08Chris Ryan?

  It should have been Alec Baldwin and Clint Gary. It should have just been like, I'm speechless after that one scene.

• 1:49:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:15Chris Ryan?

  Maybe that should have been my hottest take.

• 1:49:16Speaker 03

  Fuck you.

• 1:49:17Bill Simmons?

  That would have been a good one. I mean, you could say he just could have been the one scene and then the end, but then we don't get him negotiating with the...

• 1:49:23Speaker 04

  That scene's great. When he goes, lots of money.

• 1:49:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, see, I thought the third scene was like really good.

• 1:49:29Speaker 03

  The scene at the very end, like, that was probably a little bit too much, and then he's dancing through the credits, but how do you guys feel about the dance through the credits? It was kind of...

• 1:49:36Speaker 04

  See, like, as a 14-year-old, I love that shit.

• 1:49:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I like shit like that for end credits.

• 1:49:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:42Bill Simmons?

  Half-Assed, they filmed in Hawaii and Kauai. It's the first movie in Kauai in five years.

• 1:49:48Chris Ryan?

  This is the beginning of people being like, you know, it's cool living in Hawaii for a long time.

• 1:49:53Bill Simmons?

  This is when Adam Sandler really figured it out. It's like, family friend vacation, Hawaii, tropical location, let's make a movie.

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  He got married down there, too, still, so I bet that was just like...

• 1:50:02Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:04Speaker 03

  Don Glover, big Kauai guy. Yeah.

• 1:50:07Bill Simmons?

  We mentioned most of this stuff, except Stiller, Downey and Black appeared on the seventh season finale of American Idol. Uh, as the Pips performing with Gladys Knight.

• 1:50:16Chris Ryan?

  And.

• 1:50:17Bill Simmons?

  They just, before the movie came out, they promoted the shit out of this movie. They went everywhere. They popped on every show. They did American Idol shit. Vans got Rick Baker designed and created the Downey makeup.

• 1:50:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, Rick Baker. I wonder.

• 1:50:31Bill Simmons?

  Further guy.

• 1:50:32Speaker 03

  Did he do the fatties as well?

• 1:50:33Bill Simmons?

  He probably did everything, right?

• 1:50:35Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if he did the hands.

• 1:50:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably did the hands, yeah.

• 1:50:37Bill Simmons?

  Who is like the second best Rick Baker?

• 1:50:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. If it's not him, who is the, who, if you can't get Rick Baker, then you go with.

• 1:50:44Bill Simmons?

  But then, who is the other guy who was almost as good as John Williams?

• 1:50:47Speaker 03

  Somebody, Hans Zimmer?

• 1:50:48Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:50:48Chris Ryan?

  No. Jerry Goldsmith.

• 1:50:50Bill Simmons?

  Jerry Goldsmith.

• 1:50:51Speaker 03

  I mean, there's a couple guys in that, like, if you depended on, like, if, but if you can't get Rick Baker, who's the, who's the second Rick Baker?

• 1:50:56Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. It feels like Rick Baker just annihilated everybody.

• 1:50:59Chris Ryan?

  I think it's Stan Winston.

• 1:51:00Speaker 03

  Oh, Stan Winston?

• 1:51:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:01Speaker 03

  Damn. Stan Winston, yeah. Stan Winston's way up there.

• 1:51:05Speaker 02

  Um. That's way right there.

• 1:51:07Bill Simmons?

  CR mentioned the, the mockumentary Reign of Madness.

• 1:51:12Bill Simmons?

  Downey at one and a half to two hours of makeup. And then, uh, they wanted, did you see the thing about how they wanted Nolte's character to be revealed like Quentin Jaws and they decided it was

• 1:51:24Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:51:24Bill Simmons?

  Too many homages. And then, um, Hater said he went in to audition for Tropic Thunder.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  Is Stan Winston black?

• 1:51:33Speaker 02

  He, he kinda got a Shel Silverstein going on.

• 1:51:36Speaker 03

  Situation happening. No, are we tripping about this?

• 1:51:39Bill Simmons?

  Stan Winston?

• 1:51:40Speaker 03

  No, I don't think, it's like a.

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  He kinda like, I don't, maybe he's just a little red here.

• 1:51:44Speaker 03

  No, but go back, go back to the last one. Like, are we missing out on Grady? Or we not, look at that.

• 1:51:48Speaker 02

  Kinda, yeah.

• 1:51:50Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:51:51Chris Ryan?

  I don't think so, because I think I would've known.

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  It's funny because when you said Stan Winston, I was like, Stan Winston's a black ass name.

• 1:51:57Speaker 03

  He's a black name. Like, if you look at him right there, click, go some, go to like some more, eh, like.

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  You want to get some more images?

• 1:52:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Speaker 02

  Okay, hold on, Doug.

• 1:52:04Speaker 03

  Oh, shit. I don't know, J, I don't know, bro.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  Look at that.

• 1:52:07Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know, bro. I don't think he is.

• 1:52:10Speaker 02

  That's a black man, bro.

• 1:52:10Speaker 03

  I don't, I'ma claim him though.

• 1:52:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:52:13Speaker 03

  All right, cool. Stan Winston.

• 1:52:14Speaker 02

  Shel Silverstein, man.

• 1:52:15Chris Ryan?

  I shouldn't have said anything.

• 1:52:16Speaker 03

  I'm looking at him. He's, I, I don't think that he is, but I don't know, dog.

• 1:52:19Speaker 02

  Look at, uh.

• 1:52:20Speaker 03

  It's, uh, nah, not in that picture. Okay, boy, yeah, nah, he's, nah, we, we lost him. We lost him. We had him, we lost him.

• 1:52:26Bill Simmons?

  You had him for.

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  Somebody who has the sun, maybe it depends on that. Some people with light skin, they shows up a little bit more.

• 1:52:34Bill Simmons?

  Hater, the last one is Hater went to. Audition for Tropic Thunder and saw a possible cruise playing Wes Grossman. And then all of a sudden was like, this is the most important addition of my life. I've gotten nailed this and was really nervous. Apex Mountain.

• 1:52:53Bill Simmons?

  Ben Stiller, no. Downey were in the ballpark.

• 1:52:58Chris Ryan?

  Oh, Apex.

• 1:52:58Bill Simmons?

  Because this is Iron Man same year. I think this is it, right?

• 1:53:01Speaker 03

  Unless you were to say it was the in-game time because he's the biggest star.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 1:53:05Speaker 03

  This is.

• 1:53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:06Bill Simmons?

  Vietnam War parodies, would you go, what was the Charlie Sheen one?

• 1:53:10Speaker 03

  Hotshots.

• 1:53:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Hotshots.

• 1:53:12Chris Ryan?

  No, I would say this.

• 1:53:13Speaker 03

  It's this, yeah.

• 1:53:14Speaker 02

  We're done with Vietnam now, right?

• 1:53:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, culturally.

• 1:53:16Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if he'll ever come back like World War II. Like, World War II is such an unambiguous, like, it's us versus evil, but.

• 1:53:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:23Speaker 03

  That's the thing.

• 1:53:24Chris Ryan?

  But people crave, like, war stories.

• 1:53:26Speaker 02

  They do.

• 1:53:27Chris Ryan?

  They crave the Band of Brothers experience.

• 1:53:30Bill Simmons?

  Cruise, no. Jack Black, no. Brandon T?

• 1:53:38Speaker 02

  Well, now you're.

• 1:53:39Bill Simmons?

  How do you want to call him?

• 1:53:42Bill Simmons?

  Should have asked him when you were on the phone with him earlier.

• 1:53:43Speaker 03

  I'll call him right now.

• 1:53:44Speaker 02

  Do it.

• 1:53:45Speaker 03

  I'll call him right now.

• 1:53:47Bill Simmons?

  Blind call to Brandon? It's kind of an awkward call.

• 1:53:49Speaker 02

  If you're gonna call anybody, call Sasha Grey.

• 1:53:50Bill Simmons?

  Was Tropic Thunder your apex?

• 1:53:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, it kind of is, but he's in a lot of big movies.

• 1:53:54Chris Ryan?

  Blind call, Sasha Grey.

• 1:53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're gonna call anybody, like.

• 1:53:58Bill Simmons?

  Tropic Thunder premiere together?

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:01Bill Simmons?

  Jay Barishow?

• 1:54:04Speaker 03

  What was his big breakout joint?

• 1:54:08Speaker 03

  Was it, what was, what was the name of the movie?

• 1:54:10Chris Ryan?

  He's the lead of Undeclared, right?

• 1:54:13Bill Simmons?

  I think this was the biggest thing he's been in. I mean, he's good in This Is The End, too.

• 1:54:17Speaker 03

  He's good in This Is The End. I'm trying to look, Million Dollar Baby, him as Danger, I remember.

• 1:54:22Chris Ryan?

  Oh, no, his fucking shit is How To Train Your Dragon.

• 1:54:25Speaker 03

  How To Train Your Dragon.

• 1:54:26Chris Ryan?

  That dude's caking.

• 1:54:27Speaker 03

  He's the man, so he's, he's the lead in How To Train Your Dragon, is he not?

• 1:54:30Chris Ryan?

  I mean, yeah.

• 1:54:31Bill Simmons?

  He's solid decade. I was surprised he wanted to move back to Canada and This Is The End.

• 1:54:36Chris Ryan?

  Apparently, that was based on real life, right? That whole relationship between all of them?

• 1:54:41Bill Simmons?

  McConaughey, no. Hater, no. Politically incorrect, but got away with it somehow comedies, probably still blazing south. Yeah, that was like the biggest comedy.

• 1:54:53Speaker 03

  But yeah.

• 1:54:54Chris Ryan?

  I mean forty eight hours.

• 1:54:57Speaker 03

  But so but you know, like, think about it. All of these movies in every single one, like, Ranger Nerds, Animal House, all of them, they're all insanely politically incorrect. Yeah, I didn't have them on the list because the premises aren't, you know, but like, I don't know, I guess so.

• 1:55:15Bill Simmons?

  Cruise or Hanks? A rare Cruise, by the way, is eighteen three watchable, just extending his lead. He's four above the next guy.

• 1:55:22Chris Ryan?

  How many Cruise movies have we not done?

• 1:55:25Bill Simmons?

  There's a few.

• 1:55:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:55:26Bill Simmons?

  We might be able to get to twenty five.

• 1:55:27Speaker 03

  What are the ones?

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  The last, we never did all the right moves.

• 1:55:31Chris Ryan?

  I'm actually a big Valkyrie guy.

• 1:55:33Speaker 03

  I love it. I don't understand. I never understood the hate. Maybe I I think people would just, there are a couple of movies in there that people just didn't like him anymore.

• 1:55:40Bill Simmons?

  Like.

• 1:55:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. Valkyrie is one of them. Obviously, Edge of Tomorrow is one of them. I think there are some movies that would have flown when he was on top. Like, I think Oblivion would have flown. I think there's a couple of movies in there that people were just like.

• 1:55:52Bill Simmons?

  Vanilla Sky, what did you think of Vanilla Sky?

• 1:55:54Speaker 03

  I mean, it's a good movie.

• 1:55:55Bill Simmons?

  But I think Reacher is the number one for me with this.

• 1:55:57Speaker 03

  The people were just like, we're just done with them. If the movie was cool.

• 1:56:00Bill Simmons?

  That movie's good.

• 1:56:01Speaker 03

  We're just not fucking with Tom Cruise. Yeah.

• 1:56:03Chris Ryan?

  It was also like.

• 1:56:04Bill Simmons?

  And they didn't like that he was playing.

• 1:56:05Chris Ryan?

  The whole idea was he was supposed to be six foot five.

• 1:56:06Bill Simmons?

  They didn't like that either. Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:56:09Chris Ryan?

  Spielberg.

• 1:56:11Bill Simmons?

  Spielberg?

• 1:56:11Chris Ryan?

  I think so.

• 1:56:13Bill Simmons?

  I would say Scorsese.

• 1:56:14Speaker 03

  I want to hear what you guys said. I really could not think of.

• 1:56:17Chris Ryan?

  I I just, I guess there's.

• 1:56:19Bill Simmons?

  Heroin in the last thirty minutes?

• 1:56:21Chris Ryan?

  I think it would be a darker movie.

• 1:56:22Speaker 03

  What's the funniest Scorsese's ever been?

• 1:56:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh, and Wolf of Wall Street.

• 1:56:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Wolf.

• 1:56:27Speaker 03

  Okay, that's good.

• 1:56:27Chris Ryan?

  Wolf, yeah.

• 1:56:28Speaker 03

  That's very funny.

• 1:56:28Bill Simmons?

  Goodfellas.

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  Hey, look, I found a wing. You want the, you want the breast of the wing?

• 1:56:36Chris Ryan?

  It's his hoof.

• 1:56:37Bill Simmons?

  Pick a Net. So Steve Coogan, the director, his plan was to, he filmed. The whole bunch of stuff and then got rid of everything he filmed.

• 1:56:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is the biggest nitpick is that he's.

• 1:56:49Bill Simmons?

  He's gonna put cameras in the jungle.

• 1:56:50Chris Ryan?

  But he's got, those are like high eight, like camcorders.

• 1:56:54Bill Simmons?

  And he's, and we're just, this is what we're gonna do with five time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus.

• 1:56:58Chris Ryan?

  Days later.

• 1:56:58Bill Simmons?

  What was this? What was his plan?

• 1:57:00Speaker 02

  Well, also, can I just, I'm confused because for Leaf at the beginning, I say, so there were 10 people in this unit. Four people wrote books, three get them published, two get, and two get movies out of that, right?

• 1:57:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:11Speaker 02

  Didn't nobody know he was a fraud before then?

• 1:57:14Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it didn't say there's people that died. So nobody was like, hey, man, you weren't there. What the fuck you talking about?

• 1:57:21Bill Simmons?

  Figured that would happen.

• 1:57:22Chris Ryan?

  It probably would have happened, but there was a little bit of a, it's like, I think people got away with a lot back then.

• 1:57:28Bill Simmons?

  I had, I don't know why Tug kills a panda. I don't understand that scene at all.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  That was weird.

• 1:57:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh, cause I think he's just scared that he's getting attacked by like a wild.

• 1:57:36Bill Simmons?

  Why is there a panda in Vietnam?

• 1:57:37Speaker 02

  Pandas, right? And that's like the thing he loved, you know, he took the.

• 1:57:40Chris Ryan?

  A panda? That's probably not even a real name.

• 1:57:44Speaker 02

  Well, I know the pandas aren't in Vietnam, but also like, are they violent?

• 1:57:48Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 1:57:49Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I didn't understand anything about that. Why didn't the first gorillas just kill Tug? Why'd they capture him? Wouldn't you just shoot him?

• 1:57:57Chris Ryan?

  To ransom him.

• 1:57:59Bill Simmons?

  They didn't know that he, that he was ransomable.

• 1:58:01Speaker 02

  They, they assumed he was DEA, right?

• 1:58:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:04Chris Ryan?

  Probably wants to see what he knew.

• 1:58:06Bill Simmons?

  And then nobody, none of these guys die. They get shot at for two hours.

• 1:58:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, nobody died.

• 1:58:11Chris Ryan?

  They're all shooting blanks.

• 1:58:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:12Speaker 02

  The only people that died were Bat, that panda, and, uh, you know.

• 1:58:17Chris Ryan?

  That hat.

• 1:58:18Speaker 02

  This entire movie is a nit, like the plot is just like, the whole movie is a nit. By the time they're walking through the jungle, like they're fake shooting a movie, it doesn't make any fucking sense.

• 1:58:28Bill Simmons?

  Downey, Downey's keeping that makeup on just for five straight weeks in the jungle, nothing's melting.

• 1:58:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, surgery.

• 1:58:34Bill Simmons?

  But he has, he has the. The other stuff that he pulls off.

• 1:58:36Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, all that stuff.

• 1:58:38Speaker 02

  Can you explain like, cause I, are his eyes blue like that naturally?

• 1:58:43Chris Ryan?

  No, his Australian, when he's in Satan's Alley, those eyes are fake. Those are contacts and then his eyes are dark usually. Yeah.

• 1:58:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:58:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I had, the only nitpick I have is like, just Kirk Wazir is having more Oscars than Hepburn and Daniel Day-Lewis.

• 1:58:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would have, three would have probably done the job. Maybe that was the joke. You have any nitpicks?

• 1:59:02Chris Ryan?

  Nah.

• 1:59:03Bill Simmons?

  Craig, you have any nitpicks?

• 1:59:05Speaker 04

  Don't you think, uh, Four Leaf should have died? I thought they were leading up to him sacrificing himself to be like, I'll, I'll, I'll die on, on the battlefield now. And they just keep him alive, which kind of just made no sense.

• 1:59:14Chris Ryan?

  Which is probably why like the third act feels a little bit like.

• 1:59:18Speaker 04

  Like, I just do not understand why he is.

• 1:59:19Chris Ryan?

  Cause there's just no, yeah, there's no consequences to it.

• 1:59:23Bill Simmons?

  I think, I think they're probably rushing through the last half hour of this. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast or untouchable?

• 1:59:33Bill Simmons?

  Prestige TV's, prestige TV's mildly interesting to me. But it's probably untouchable because I don't know if we can touch it. It's untouchable the same way plutonium is untouchable.

• 1:59:47Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 1:59:48Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess that's why, that's where Scorch Your Seven comes in for me. It's just like, he's moving on.

• 1:59:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:53Speaker 02

  You know, this is the next project. He's won his Oscar.

• 1:59:57Bill Simmons?

  So what do we do with Scorch Your Seven after global meltdown? Maybe it's like, uh, like a.

• 2:00:04Speaker 03

  I would do Scorch Your Seven, they go to another planet.

• 2:00:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Scorch Your Seven, like interstellar.

• 2:00:09Bill Simmons?

  I think that was Scorch Your Three, though.

• 2:00:11Speaker 03

  Is that, okay. They go to another planet.

• 2:00:17Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist, Zane Lowe, Robert Evans, Dr. Charles Nichols, or someone else?

• 2:00:23Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I like the ideas if, uh, Passa Wait played, uh, Grossman. You're gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I'm talking scorched earth, motherfucker. I will massacre you. I will fuck you up.

• 2:00:43Chris Ryan?

  The chemical way.

• 2:00:45Speaker 04

  And then he hangs up and goes, find out who that was.

• 2:00:49Bill Simmons?

  I had, um, I think Nell should have been in this. There was some simple Jack for a round.

• 2:00:54Chris Ryan?

  Nell and.

• 2:00:55Bill Simmons?

  Where it could have been like Nell two. When they're talking about possible Academy Awards and we could have got.

• 2:01:02Chris Ryan?

  Maybe it could have been a rom-com like they're.

• 2:01:05Bill Simmons?

  You got a movie, Joe?

• 2:01:07Chris Ryan?

  Now?

• 2:01:08Bill Simmons?

  Just Jodie Foster.

• 2:01:08Speaker 03

  With Jodie Foster going nuts?

• 2:01:09Bill Simmons?

  Jodie Foster in the, in the woods?

• 2:01:11Chris Ryan?

  Jodie Foster plays a woman who was like raised in the wild.

• 2:01:14Speaker 03

  Bruh. Nell made, Nell made a hundred and six million dollars?

• 2:01:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we used to really cook.

• 2:01:20Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna have to do it on the, on the pod.

• 2:01:22Speaker 03

  What the fu- are you fucking kidding me?

• 2:01:24Chris Ryan?

  That and regarding Henry, the drama is a now or comedy.

• 2:01:27Speaker 03

  That can't be right.

• 2:01:27Bill Simmons?

  Nell is another one that paved the way for Simple Jack, by the way.

• 2:01:30Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 2:01:31Bill Simmons?

  That was just be in the forest and be crazy.

• 2:01:33Speaker 03

  Hold on, Nell made thirty to six, thirty-three million domestic. For some reason, the world was fucking with Nell like crazy.

• 2:01:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, people, and it's huge in far east Asia.

• 2:01:42Chris Ryan?

  And France loves Jodie Foster.

• 2:01:44Speaker 02

  So, when I was in the newspaper, the, the person did a, a story on this woman who was raised by wolves. Like, she was like, and it became a big story. Did they do a movie on that? They never, did they ever do a mov- that sounds like something that should have been on a movie.

• 2:01:57Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Nell is just like, they find her in like the caves, yeah, right?

• 2:02:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she was raised by somebody.

• 2:02:02Chris Ryan?

  I haven't, I haven't fired Nell up in a while.

• 2:02:05Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions.

• 2:02:09Bill Simmons?

  Why do you think Cruise didn't do more Dionne Waiters type three-day roles? I always wonder about this with some of the most famous, like, would it have killed Leo to have done this like twice? You know, like Denzel? All the biggest stars we have, it's just a huge win if they pick the right movie and they just fly into it.

• 2:02:25Chris Ryan?

  But if they pick the wrong movie.

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, but isn't it just-

• 2:02:27Bill Simmons?

  Is that what it is? It's just a fear of-

• 2:02:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:29Speaker 02

  But I mean, also, I mean, these are people that really do take their craft very seriously, too. Like, it's just not fucking around, so. Maybe that, it could, it could, I wonder if it's just a simple as that.

• 2:02:37Chris Ryan?

  They were asking DiCaprio to be in Cliff Booth and he was like, no. Not, not for like a day.

• 2:02:42Speaker 02

  You think Michael Jordan's just playing in a pro-am?

• 2:02:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so he, he, he sued, yeah. But I, I just think you have to be at the right point in your career and like, these guys are chasing each other in terms of prestige and a miscalculation kinda looks bad. I, I always like to see it.

• 2:02:59Bill Simmons?

  So like, Chalamet right now? Just popping in a movie for two days that ends up being hit.

• 2:03:05Speaker 03

  Like Brad Pitt will do it.

• 2:03:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:07Speaker 03

  Matt Damon will do it.

• 2:03:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:08Bill Simmons?

  Matt Damon loved.

• 2:03:09Speaker 03

  Matt Damon loves to do it.

• 2:03:12Bill Simmons?

  He's in Euro Trip for reasons that remain unclear with a shaved head.

• 2:03:15Speaker 03

  But here's the deal though, like, and he shows up in some of the Marvel stuff is funny, but when you're in, when you're watching Euro Trip and he's up there, to me, he looks so cool.

• 2:03:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:25Speaker 03

  Just like popping into that movie.

• 2:03:27Chris Ryan?

  But there's a difference between like what he does in that and what he does in Interstellar. You know what I mean? Like there's like a supporting role and then there's like a 10 minute like cameo.

• 2:03:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Interstellar thing is actually like a really super important part of a very serious movie, so.

• 2:03:40Bill Simmons?

  What do you got for an answer, Bo?

• 2:03:42Speaker 02

  Oh, for me? Oh, uh, I would just like to know why Brandon Jackson was the guy. I'm sorry, no offense to your guy.

• 2:03:50Chris Ryan?

  Like what happened, what happened to his career after this?

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just like, what, I mean, why didn't, I mean, we were just talking about all these guys have gone on, they had like another thing and like, what? Again, I think that is, that is the problem of the black actor in Hollywood, not your boy. That's what I'm saying. It's like, you know, you, because oftentimes these roles, even if you get nominated for something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna go on, you know? So like Lupita, you know what I'm saying? Like what it didn't, it does not make her a huge star.

• 2:04:15Speaker 03

  Lupita is having a fucking fantastic career. Are you nuts?

• 2:04:19Speaker 02

  Do you think, do you think of her as like a, a top bill star?

• 2:04:23Speaker 03

  Lupita is having a great career.

• 2:04:26Speaker 02

  Okay, no, I'm not saying she's not having a great career. You can have a great career and not be like a top billing top actress, right?

• 2:04:32Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 2:04:33Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying.

• 2:04:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  It's gonna be like the roles are just not gonna come to her like they do some other people and I'm sure she would say that if you asked her.

• 2:04:39Speaker 03

  Okay, I mean, look, I don't know. I'm like, like, all I'm saying is.

• 2:04:41Speaker 02

  Well, you probably do know her, Carla. That's your homegirl, Carla.

• 2:04:45Chris Ryan?

  My unanswerable would be, what, if you were making Tropic Thunder today, what would you be lampooning? Like, and I guess it would be comic book movies.

• 2:04:52Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 2:04:53Chris Ryan?

  It's not really an answerable.

• 2:04:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like MCU type of.

• 2:04:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:57Bill Simmons?

  Something.

• 2:04:58Speaker 03

  If I was doing it, I would lampoon the high auteur movie. The MCU is gonna go further, but I think now the film that's directly, that's like.

• 2:05:10Chris Ryan?

  Like an 824 movie?

• 2:05:11Speaker 03

  Like, yeah, kind of the 824 film bro type of movie that like everybody has to love.

• 2:05:18Bill Simmons?

  I mean, I'd say the funniest thing would be to do with like a, the Smartless Guys. Like a movie about, like, yeah, some sort of big gigantic podcast.

• 2:05:29Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, that would be cinematic, yeah.

• 2:05:31Bill Simmons?

  Where you just dive into that whole world with the celebrities that come in, but you're really making fun of a couple of different things of that world. People trying, the people trying to make the guests cry and the dates, all that stuff.

• 2:05:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:44Bill Simmons?

  Although Charlize talking about how she didn't want to be married and just had sex with the 26 year old and it was great. I thought that was some of the best podcast content of the year.

• 2:05:52Chris Ryan?

  Didn't you, didn't you have Charlize on your show?

• 2:05:55Bill Simmons?

  I sure did. We never talked about her having sex with the younger man. That never came up.

• 2:05:59Chris Ryan?

  It was in a different phase of her life.

• 2:06:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:01Chris Ryan?

  A different.

• 2:06:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she came in the office, it was, it, it, most flustered I've ever been.

• 2:06:06Chris Ryan?

  You batted baby wings at her?

• 2:06:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. She's just, nah, she just sat down, put her arm in, she was just ready to roll. She was so cool.

• 2:06:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:13Bill Simmons?

  She plays big backgammon person. That's a good thing.

• 2:06:15Speaker 03

  I don't know how to play backgammon. I saw that about her.

• 2:06:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you would learn for Charlize, I bet.

• 2:06:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, probably. Two Days in the Valley?

• 2:06:21Bill Simmons?

  Uh, piece of memorabilia you'd want from this movie?

• 2:06:26Bill Simmons?

  The giant Simple Jack cardboard thing that McConaughey had?

• 2:06:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:30Bill Simmons?

  You know what I'm talking about?

• 2:06:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:32Bill Simmons?

  Was in the back and it had, it had like, it seemed like Simple Jack was moving back and forth on it.

• 2:06:37Chris Ryan?

  It was like a picture book.

• 2:06:39Bill Simmons?

  It was amazing.

• 2:06:40Chris Ryan?

  If you replaced Farrah Fawcett in your house with Simple Jack.

• 2:06:43Bill Simmons?

  I was thinking about that. Then I was like, oh, yeah, I can have that. But I thought it was hilarious.

• 2:06:47Chris Ryan?

  I think any number of the Bluetooth headsets or Blackberries or like old 2008 phones.

• 2:06:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the answer is the Qualcomm phone or, or the TiVo that McConaughey has, the box.

• 2:06:59Speaker 03

  I would love to have a can of booty sweat on my office desk.

• 2:07:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a great one. Yeah, the original movie worn booty.

• 2:07:04Speaker 03

  Busting up bar.

• 2:07:08Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Coach Finstock, Mr. Biagie wear for best worst life lesson? Porn sets the, sets the tone for everybody else.

• 2:07:15Chris Ryan?

  Porn leads the way.

• 2:07:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 2:07:18Bill Simmons?

  Best double feature choice, CR?

• 2:07:19Chris Ryan?

  I had Zoolander just as like a, a, another satire by Ben Stiller. I had Hot Shots.

• 2:07:25Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 2:07:26Speaker 02

  Dead Presidents.

• 2:07:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, good one.

• 2:07:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:29Chris Ryan?

  That's a good one.

• 2:07:30Bill Simmons?

  I had The Player. What do you have, Craig?

• 2:07:33Chris Ryan?

  Double feature?

• 2:07:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:34Chris Ryan?

  Hmm, I, I'd probably stick right in 08. Go Step Brothers right after.

• 2:07:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 2:07:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:07:39Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie?

• 2:07:40Chris Ryan?

  Downey.

• 2:07:41Speaker 03

  Downey, man.

• 2:07:41Chris Ryan?

  Downey to me.

• 2:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:42Chris Ryan?

  Downey.

• 2:07:43Bill Simmons?

  Craig?

• 2:07:44Chris Ryan?

  Go.

• 2:07:46Speaker 04

  I was fourteen when this came out, two thousand eight, just like, I can't, I, the summer of two thousand and eight. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Smart, Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, and Role Models.

• 2:07:57Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 2:07:58Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 2:07:59Speaker 04

  Like, in the year before that had five other hits, and the year after that had five more hits.

• 2:08:03Chris Ryan?

  You're fourteen, you're rolling right now.

• 2:08:05Speaker 03

  You're going nuts, yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:06Speaker 04

  This was like, everything in the world, like, this was just like the funniest shit ever, I mean, all of these movies, but, I, I couldn't believe how many quotes from this movie I remembered. I haven't seen it probably ten years, and I could probably have done the whole movie from memory. Um, I don't know, it, it's just fantastic across the board.

• 2:08:23Speaker 03

  What's the comedy summer of, of you guys' youth?

• 2:08:26Chris Ryan?

  It's probably like closer to like eighty-four or eighty-six or something like that.

• 2:08:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, mine's the eighty to eighty-two with like, you know, Caddyshack, Blues Brothers, Airplane.

• 2:08:37Chris Ryan?

  Cause sadly, when I'm Craig's age, it's just when like comedy is having like a little bit of like a drunken hangover, like, I'm more, like, my, my fourteen-year-old summer is probably more like another forty-eight hours, and that's like, that's not as good, it's Beverly Hills Cop sequels, you know?

• 2:08:51Bill Simmons?

  Uh huh.

• 2:08:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:52Speaker 02

  I'm probably like, two, two thousand, so like, I was a big Feral fan, so like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers. Like, that was, that was my shit, you know, I'll sit down and watch Talladega Nights.

• 2:09:04Speaker 04

  It, it really is just so different, like, what, what I expected at that age in a comedy, I mean, it was just the biggest stars in the world all together on a big set just fucking around.

• 2:09:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:13Speaker 04

  I mean, that is so foreign to what you see today.

• 2:09:15Speaker 02

  I mean, they, I mean, they were very much fucking around, like I said, at the end of the movie, I mean, it was just like, man, it's got tired.

• 2:09:19Chris Ryan?

  Like, yeah, just the idea of giving these guys ninety million dollars to do this is nuts.

• 2:09:23Speaker 04

  Also, you kind of got to give it to Tom Cruise a little bit, like, the performance itself is very funny, but the fact that he came up with the character, wanted the, like, came up with the look of the character, apparently it was his idea to play Flo Rida, it's kind of like. Tom Cruise?

• 2:09:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:09:38Bill Simmons?

  Plus having problems with Katie Holmes at that point?

• 2:09:40Speaker 02

  Well, I'm gonna say, he also hung out with Jamie Foxx around that time, too. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:09:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's right.

• 2:09:44Speaker 02

  They were all like part of, you know? Then Jamie moved in there.

• 2:09:48Bill Simmons?

  Dan's like, I have no comment at this time.

• 2:09:51Speaker 03

  I'm fucking with it.

• 2:09:52Speaker 04

  So what's the play now? Can I say I love Tropic Thunder or no?

• 2:09:55Chris Ryan?

  Of course you can.

• 2:09:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, like if I'm like, man, Downey Jr. and Tropic Thunder, hilarious, is that fine?

• 2:10:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I can't give permission. You on your own.

• 2:10:03Speaker 02

  You might have to ask a few more follow-ups. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:10:07Speaker 04

  You think so?

• 2:10:07Speaker 02

  People are probably like, well, you could get away from it the good way with it.

• 2:10:10Speaker 03

  The question is, could Bill? If Bill is somewhere in Southie, in Charleston, and he's talking to people and they ask Bill what's his favorite movie? He's like, I love Downey and Tropic Thunder. I think probably at that point.

• 2:10:23Chris Ryan?

  You gotta be able to name a wonderful movie featuring a great performance by a black person. You can't just be like, my favorite performance by a black guy is Robert Downey Jr.

• 2:10:32Bill Simmons?

  When Van does Boston, he becomes Australian. He becomes Kirk Blazer.

• 2:10:36Speaker 03

  You know, my favorite performance by a black guy is, my favorite performance by a black guy is Jay McDaniels in the first round against.

• 2:10:44Bill Simmons?

  Oh, ended the Joker?

• 2:10:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's my favorite performance.

• 2:10:47Speaker 02

  That was bad, so bad, motherfucker, man.

• 2:10:48Bill Simmons?

  Van loves it.

• 2:10:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:50Bill Simmons?

  Van loves when the Joker goes down.

• 2:10:52Speaker 02

  Oh, wait, is this a race thing? Are you, are you anti Joker?

• 2:10:55Bill Simmons?

  Do you realize what happened last weekend? Van Joker got eliminated, the Celtics got eliminated, and Great White freaked out at the Kentucky Derby. It was like a huge Van weekend.

• 2:11:03Chris Ryan?

  Van sees Joker as an extension of the one battle after another argument.

• 2:11:08Speaker 03

  That's not true. See, see, this is, see, this is how, you guys are turning into people, that's not true. All I'm saying is I understand he's a badass motherfucker. And by the way, the success just beat me down. I'm, I just heard that he was the greatest of all time, and I was like, can't we pump the brakes on that? That's all I said.

• 2:11:26Speaker 02

  So do you think, do you think like he got punked, by the way, too? Like when he ran up on Jaden and Jaden was like.

• 2:11:31Chris Ryan?

  He got punked.

• 2:11:32Bill Simmons?

  That situation.

• 2:11:33Speaker 02

  He didn't want to get thrown out of the game.

• 2:11:34Chris Ryan?

  He needed a.

• 2:11:35Speaker 02

  Nah, they don't want to, they don't want to run over there like he gonna do something.

• 2:11:38Speaker 03

  Don't want to run over there.

• 2:11:38Bill Simmons?

  Because as he was running over there intending to kill Jay McDaniels, he realized, I can't get thrown out for the series.

• 2:11:44Chris Ryan?

  And he was probably also like, oh, I just realized my brothers aren't at this game.

• 2:11:50Speaker 03

  He ran too far.

• 2:11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:52Speaker 03

  And while you running, you thinking if it would've been shorter. And then when he got there, Jaden did not.

• 2:11:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:57Speaker 03

  Jaden was like, oh, dog, we about to fight. Yeah. Like, if you come over and Yoko's just like, nah.

• 2:12:04Bill Simmons?

  If it beat it run over, he just would've run into him and then fallen down. The fur call. Still bitter.

• 2:12:10Speaker 03

  You letting him get that off?

• 2:12:11Chris Ryan?

  Get your shot, get your shot.

• 2:12:12Speaker 03

  Like, you letting him get that off, you beat him. You beat him.

• 2:12:15Chris Ryan?

  I'll do a Twitch stream later where I address it.

• 2:12:20Speaker 03

  Play by play. Look at this, they let everybody else push off, what about me? I can't push off? It's my favorite year ever where I played by myself and Jason Tatum wasn't there.

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

  I hate my Rockets so much that I don't even care that your Lakers won.

• 2:12:33Bill Simmons?

  That's it for the rewatchables.

• 2:12:35Chris Ryan?

  Thank you for doing this.

• 2:12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me on.

• 2:12:37Bill Simmons?

  Thanks to Gahan Eduardo in the back as well. Thanks to Joel, great to see you, buddy. That was awesome.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  I'm glad, thanks for having me on, man.

• 2:12:44Bill Simmons?

  You can hear Joel on the press box and watch him and on a Ringer tailgate. The best Ringer podcast that we have.

• 2:12:50Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:12:51Bill Simmons?

  At least in the top forty.

• 2:12:53Speaker 02

  It's probably, yeah, we're in the bottom quarter, I think, at least.

• 2:12:56Bill Simmons?

  Good college football season ahead. Lot of good arguments coming. UCLA football's return, Arch Manning.

• 2:13:02Speaker 02

  Is it important for me to, is it, should I, I shouldn't bring up UCLA right now, should I?

• 2:13:07Bill Simmons?

  We'll do it later.

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:13:09Bill Simmons?

  Good to see you, Sierra.

• 2:13:09Chris Ryan?

  Good to see you too, bud.

• 2:13:10Bill Simmons?

  Uh, next week, by the way, not sure what we're doing yet, but it will be a comedy. So there you go, see you next week.

• 2:13:27Bill Simmons?

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• 2:14:00Bill Simmons?

  Mendoza. You are worthy of financial security. Budgeting is not restriction, it's freedom. You are smart. You are capable. You are giving your money a purpose. You are learning the language of saving, of growing. Now streaming. Member FDIC Copyright 2026 US Bank.