‘Animal House’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan go on double-secret probation after rewatching the 1978 classic ‘Animal House’ starring John Belushi, Tim Matheson, and John Vernon. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic The Ringer is committed to responsible trading. Please visit https://fanduel.com/predicts to learn more about the resources and helpline. 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.

• 0:05Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find The Watch with Chris Ryan. What are you watching these days, CR?

• 0:12Chris Ryan?

  Widows Bay.

• 0:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I couldn't, it just hasn't taken from me.

• 0:16Chris Ryan?

  One of the best shows of the year.

• 0:18Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 0:18Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. And then I'm riding Euphoria out to the finish.

• 0:21Bill Simmons?

  Me, too.

• 0:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 0:23Bill Simmons?

  I like Euphoria. Have I done my ruin impression for you yet?

• 0:27Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 0:30Chris Ryan?

  Better than I thought it was gonna be. Nice job.

• 0:35Bill Simmons?

  Craig's here as well, and we're joined by special guest Murph. It's a three man pod. Hey, Murph. Been waiting for this one for a long time.

• 0:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 0:44Bill Simmons?

  One of the most influential comedies ever. The last one we're doing for Netflix is a joke month. It is still on Netflix. Animal House is next. This episode is brought to by Ethos. As a parent, life insurance feels like a no brainer. It just gives me peace of mind knowing my family will be taken care of. And Ethos makes getting it fast and easy. Apply online in minutes. Get up to 3 million in coverage with no medical exam, just a few simple health questions. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/rewatch. That is E-T-H-O-S dot com slash rewatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.

• 1:40Bill Simmons?

  CR, hard to explain what this movie meant in the 80s. We just didn't have a lot of comedies. It was the only comedy about college. Probably had six, seven, eight. You would just rewatch over and over again. The lines, it reached the point, the famous lines from this movie, and then there's like a whole separate subsection of lines from this movie that you could just do shorthand with people. And I think this comedy had as big of an influence as any comedy that has come out in the last 50 years, Animal House.

• 2:09Chris Ryan?

  Almost like a, it's got like a crater where it landed. And it like starts all these different like micro genres, it kickstarts these careers, basically launches like three different filmmakers into the world with Reitman, Ramus, and Landis had already worked, obviously, but like, it's, it's importance almost dwarfs its like entertainment sometimes, but I, I still really like enjoy having it on a lot.

• 2:33Bill Simmons?

  What was the movie you said is like putting on an old sweatshirt?

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Ghostbusters.

• 2:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I, I feel that way about Animal House.

• 2:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:40Bill Simmons?

  I've just seen it so many times. I know every section of it. It's got Belushi, who's

• 2:45Chris Ryan?

  Who's right here, actually.

• 2:46Bill Simmons?

  One of my favorites of all time.

• 2:47Chris Ryan?

  You know what I wanted to ask you about was what, what kind of relationship you had to National Lampoon as like an institution outside of just the Hughes movies and, and this?

• 2:56Bill Simmons?

  Only knew it from Animal House.

• 2:58Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:58Bill Simmons?

  From all the people that kind of went on, and then from reading the books about it. You know, when, when you started reading the, like even the Bob Woodward book about Belushi.

• 3:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Bill Simmons?

  The Senator Lab book that came out in 84, 85. Just in general, I had no idea until I started reading how impactful it was. I didn't know as a kid.

• 3:18Chris Ryan?

  It's just kind of fascinating because, you know, it's not dissimilar from a lot of upstart media stories that you read about from the last 20 years. Like, it's not that much different than Vice in some ways or something where it starts out as this like small time production house or, you know, like magazine based out of Harvard and then branches out into all these different things and takes advantage of

• 3:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Chris Ryan?

  corporations looking for basically, for lack of a better term, content at the time.

• 3:48Bill Simmons?

  It's like Grantland. Just these little underdogs.

• 3:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no, we work for ESPN. It's a before, after for comedy movies. Just felt like Blazing Saddles was, what, seventy-four, seventy-five range? This movie comes out and it leads to two different eras. Cause you have the rambunctious comedy era, right? That's Animal House, Meatballs, Caddyshack, Blues Brothers, Airplane Stripes. Like, big stars, big set pieces. Just felt, felt like it was for everybody who was twenty and older in the seventies. And then people like us who were growing up after jumping in. But it also ushered in the raunchy comedy era.

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  Sex comedy, yeah.

• 4:29Bill Simmons?

  Which, which then Porky's really capitalized on. But we've talked about that in the past.

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  Revenge of the Nerds, yeah.

• 4:34Bill Simmons?

  Zapped, Class, Losing It. This was like a whole cottage industry. So it spawned two separate industries of comedy.

• 4:42Chris Ryan?

  It also pretty much invents the modern college comedy.

• 4:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:45Chris Ryan?

  Which maybe doesn't even really, like, take flight until the nineties. Like, I grew up with Kicking and Screaming.

• 4:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Chris Ryan?

  Everybody Wants Some is later, but PCU was a big one for me. Like, that is a really reliable subgenre of comedy.

• 5:02Bill Simmons?

  I feel like it was the first college movie. I'm sure there were others, but this is the first one I can really think of that I saw. Where it was like, is this what it's like to go to college?

• 5:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Did you think that?

• 5:14Bill Simmons?

  Kinda, yeah. I was, I was on a text thread last night with, uh, two of my best friends from high school went to Colgate.

• 5:20Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:21Bill Simmons?

  And they were in a frat in Colgate with two of my other friends who became good friends. And we were just texting about this movie and, um, how much, like, they had seen Animal House for years. And they, when they went into college in the late eighties, it was like, I wanna be in a frat. You're just making the Animal House jokes as you're in the frat.

• 5:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Bill Simmons?

  And that's just kinda how the eighties went. I have some takes on this later, but this movie was like, someday I'll go to college and I'll be like the Animal House guys. It's hard to explain.

• 5:50Chris Ryan?

  I admit, that's how I felt about high school with Ferris Bueller. Where I was just like, I'm gonna go to high school, I'm gonna have my own room, you know? Which I did, I was only a child. But like, I'm gonna have like this universe within my room. And I, like, these are gonna be my friends, but one day, like, I'm just gonna have like the coolest day ever, like, in high school. When I'm like cut in class.

• 6:09Bill Simmons?

  Craig, you, you're later than us. There's a million college movies that are out by then. Right?

• 6:15Chris Ryan?

  Less than you'd think, though.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  It's mostly high school more than college.

• 6:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  You know, like, old school and stuff. It's usually like joke, that's like neighbors, but those are more like plays on adults interacting with college.

• 6:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Less than college kids.

• 6:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  It's themselves, yeah.

• 6:27Bill Simmons?

  So when you watch this movie, first of all, the movie takes place in nineteen sixty-two.

• 6:32Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 6:32Bill Simmons?

  Which now feels like a kajillion years ago.

• 6:35Chris Ryan?

  Crucial kind of thing that they did, which was made a movie about when, I think honestly, the writers were like, this is when America had its innocence, is like before Kennedy, uh, Kennedy assassination.

• 6:46Bill Simmons?

  Before Vietnam, before Watergate, before everything.

• 6:49Chris Ryan?

  Very, very, very, very like aggressive, modern sensibility of like raunch, you know?

• 6:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Chris Ryan?

  And so they like, they infuse it basically with like late seventies debauchery, but it's about like when everything was still innocent.

• 7:03Bill Simmons?

  So they catch lightning in the bottle when this movie comes out. They film it in late seventy-seven, comes out, summer of seventy-eight. SNL is on at that. SNL is the biggest it's ever gonna be because this movie comes out, makes pollution even bigger star. You have all this nationally important stuff happening where all of these people, it's like this comedy factory, now they're all going out, getting hired by Hollywood. You have the seventies comedy movement in general, which is happening on two separate coasts, right? And that, this is like the Letterman, Seinfeld, Jay Leno, all these people are in LA too. And then you have young people pushing against old people, which is a thing that's happening all through the seventies.

• 7:44Bill Simmons?

  And finally trickles into comedy with Saturday Night Live and some other stuff and just kind of people lampooning, people older than them, pushing the envelope, trying to be raunchy, trying to offend people.

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  There's one more thing.

• 7:55Bill Simmons?

  Let's go.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  You're starting to get late fifties and early sixties nostalgia because of American griffiti and Happy Days. So it's people who are probably in their late thirties or early forties, thinking about when they were kids and the music that was on and the way people dressed and the way, the different archetypes of people that were around.

• 8:14Bill Simmons?

  Why can't that come back?

• 8:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, it does. I mean, we just do it for the nineties now, or we do it for the early two thousands now.

• 8:19Bill Simmons?

  Are we doing it correctly for the late nineties? It feels like we should be nostalgic for pre-social media and what life was like.

• 8:26Chris Ryan?

  I think that's due soon. Like, we're kind of like, there is like a kind of early two thousands, like, you know? Like that era, like nostalgia going on and we'll probably.

• 8:35Bill Simmons?

  There you go, Craig. You're coming back.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  I mean, people are wearing corded headphones again because it's cool and nostalgic. And like.

• 8:43Bill Simmons?

  I never stopped.

• 8:44Chris Ryan?

  You never stopped, but you also.

• 8:45Bill Simmons?

  I knew people would circle back around there.

• 8:46Chris Ryan?

  Remember you were like, Ben said that everybody likes the Strokes now and stuff like that that is his age like that's that's another sign of that kind of thing.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  People are dressing like the 90s again too.

• 8:55Chris Ryan?

  It runs in these cycles. Yeah.

• 8:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you could see a little bit with the with the JFK, Carolyn Bissette too, with the early 90s. People going backwards, but it seems like music, there's a huge nostalgia movement now for that early 2000s stuff that we loved.

• 9:08Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 9:08Bill Simmons?

  And then the comedies is the other one, mainly because we're not making comedies the same way we have, which we've talked about a million times. But that whole that whole Appetow generation run and then the late 90s stuff, I feel like is as big as ever.

• 9:23Bill Simmons?

  So many running lines from this movie.

• 9:26Bill Simmons?

  And I think there's like levels of this, right? These are lines that just have become part of like the lexicon. We're in like, in my everyday life from college on, like,

• 9:39Bill Simmons?

  when when Flounder comes in, he's like, you guys playing cards? That was something we would just say and you you knew somebody was doing a flounder. Major League Yabo's, we called boobs Yabo's in college because of this movie.

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  I had that What's What's Age the Best.

• 9:55Bill Simmons?

  And that foot is me. That was another one. You would just do it. Thank you, sir. May I have another? The toga, toga, like anytime like, should we have a party Friday night? And just be like, even though we weren't having a toga party.

• 10:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Bill Simmons?

  It's like toga.

• 10:11Chris Ryan?

  My parents used to make double secret probation jokes.

• 10:14Bill Simmons?

  That was that was, this movie probably created that, right?

• 10:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

• 10:18Bill Simmons?

  There but there were stealth ones too, like,

• 10:22Bill Simmons?

  wait till wait till Otis sees us. He loves us. You throw that one out. Otis, my man, when we had Otis Nixon on the Red Sox, there was like a whole bunch of Otis, my man jokes because everyone knew Animal House.

• 10:38Chris Ryan?

  There's one that I actually from that the Dexter scene that I really like is when Peter Riger, I think, says, you girls come here often.

• 10:49Bill Simmons?

  He's great in this movie, by the way. You mind if we dance with your dates? Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, sir, is was the one that became the biggest one along with Was It Over? When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.

• 11:04Bill Simmons?

  He's on a roll. Keep him going. Niedermeyer Dad became another famous one and then, um, then the remain calm, all is well. But, I mean, I just listed, that's 12 lines from this. And they really did become part of the way people talk. It's hard to explain.

• 11:22Chris Ryan?

  There's also, um, I think I was watching the Chandler Lavack movie Roommates a couple of weeks ago, the Netflix thing.

• 11:31Bill Simmons?

  Twenty year old.

• 11:31Chris Ryan?

  It's basically, it's basically Animal House. You know what I mean? Like the idea of like taking a really good formative setting in someone's life and doing it more in like a vignette style. And having a lot of gags within gags, within gags. And I think that there's a way that this is like, this movie feels like magazine articles in a way, or it feels like paging through a magazine. It doesn't feel like one scene influences the next scene necessarily. And that is like, kind of like Kentucky Fried Movie. It's kind of like SNL and Lemmings and the other things that they were doing around. It's like Monty Python. It's very much like out of sketch and out of magazine writing.

• 12:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it's funny that all these people kind of indirectly or directly knew each other from the seventies. These comedy people and it didn't matter. Like they know each other from Second City, Groundlings, Lemmings, SNL. They went to college together at Harvard.

• 12:25Bill Simmons?

  And they were all kind of interconnected. Like in this movie, Landis didn't know any of these guys. John Landis, this is his first big movie. Harold Ramis, this is his first big credit. And he knew, I think he was the one that knew Belushi from Second City. So he was like, we gotta have Belushi's Bluto. Ivan Reitman's first big movie ever. Another one, he might be taking the producer lead for us.

• 12:46Chris Ryan?

  Reitman.

• 12:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is like at least his sixth or seventh one.

• 12:49Chris Ryan?

  I would bet Brooke Heimer's number one.

• 12:51Bill Simmons?

  Brooke Heimer. Yeah, you're right. Brooke Heimer's probably one. Belushi's first mainstream movie. We'll talk about him in a second. Kevin Bacon and Karen Allen. Karen Allen about to go on a just a.

• 13:01Chris Ryan?

  She's supposed to be in Raiders.

• 13:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Meteoric rise for her. Tim Matheson, Bruce McGill, Tom Hulse.

• 13:08Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 13:09Bill Simmons?

  Bruce McGill, like, just became a different human being, like, 20 years later?

• 13:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he became like, like, the legendary middle-aged character actor.

• 13:16Bill Simmons?

  Wipe that smirk off your face! You would, you would have no idea he was D-Day in this. I have a lot of Tim Matheson thoughts later. And then Stephen first is Flounder. And then Maggie from Caddyshack, who I can't wait to talk about later.

• 13:28Chris Ryan?

  Is that the 13-year-old?

• 13:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:31Bill Simmons?

  And then randomly, just three Donald Sutherland scenes for no real reason.

• 13:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and it sounds like they basically needed him to, like, get the movie, B.

• 13:40Bill Simmons?

  They kinda had to, uh...

• 13:41Chris Ryan?

  It's like, imagine a world where Donald Sutherland is like, "I'll do it." That's what gets it over the hump.

• 13:46Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to think of the equivalent now to that, which would be like if,

• 13:51Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, you just got, like, Ryan Reynolds or somebody.

• 13:54Chris Ryan?

  Probably.

• 13:54Bill Simmons?

  Just like, "We need to make this movie."

• 13:56Chris Ryan?

  I mean, he's not, I don't know if they're, they're...

• 13:57Bill Simmons?

  No, but it's somebody at that level. He was famous enough that it was a big deal, he was in the movie. Alright, so Belushi only received 35,000. Paid a bonus after it became a hit. They created the character as a cross between Harpo Marx and the Cookie Monster. I don't know the Harpo, I don't remember Harpo Marx's work.

• 14:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, you never did Marx Brothers?

• 14:16Bill Simmons?

  No. No. Was he like the crazy one?

• 14:20Chris Ryan?

  I always, like, associated a lot of this comedy stuff with Stooges. Like, a lot of the, like, that kinda stuff.

• 14:25Bill Simmons?

  Big exaggerated, cuz he was doing comedy on stage forever and you had to do a lot of, like, dramatic. Did you ever see anybody who ended up becoming famous in A Groundlings or A Lemmings or anything like that? Second City?

• 14:37Chris Ryan?

  Um, in New York, like, back in the day, I saw Human Giant, which is Aziz Ansari and Paul Scheers group. Yeah.

• 14:45Bill Simmons?

  So I saw, I was dating a girl who moved to Chicago and we went to Second City and Horatio Sanz

• 14:51Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 14:52Bill Simmons?

  was on the cast and I don't, he, I don't, he hadn't made SNL yet, but was just clearly really funny.

• 14:57Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 14:58Bill Simmons?

  And was like, and then when he went to SNL, I was like, "That was the guy we saw in Chicago." And then the other one, little different, but when, the first year I was working for Jimmy's show, he used to have Zach Galifianakis on all the time. He had, like, this fake character. He, we all loved him. We thought he was like a genius. And he, he would come on, I think he used to play his brother Seth. He had this fake brother.

• 15:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, but we would always like pitch stuff like we gotta get this and Zack and but no, you know, he wasn't famous at all. And then he became Zack Al.

• 15:28Chris Ryan?

  You know, one of my favorite bits reading about Animal House was?

• 15:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Chris Ryan?

  Was reading about Landis going on Carson, I think. Was it Landis who went on Carson? And he did like a movie called Schlock, but Carson liked it. And like, just was like, I'm gonna have this guy on the, and he does like a great performance on Carson.

• 15:47Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like the idea that you could go on Letterman or go on Carson. And nobody knew who you were, but if he liked you and he had you on three times, people were like, that's a guy now, you know, like.

• 15:58Bill Simmons?

  That's what I try to do with my podcast, Craig.

• 16:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. When somebody comes on, it's like a papal blessing.

• 16:03Chris Ryan?

  A papal blessing.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  I feel like the modern version of like seeing Horatio Sanz do improv or something like that is now it's like being a fan of somebody's comedy YouTube channel. And then like three years later, they're in a movie or on SNL like.

• 16:18Chris Ryan?

  That girl Veronica who's on SNL.

• 16:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Veronica Slowak.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  I remember Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney. We used to love their YouTube channel, Good Neighbor Stuff.

• 16:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  And then like four years later, they were on SNL. We're like, holy shit.

• 16:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that is the equivalent. So 78, our guy, Belushi.

• 16:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Bill Simmons?

  He pulls off, we talked about this during the Blues Brothers pod. He pulls off one of the great trifectas ever in the history of Hollywood. He's on SNL, which is the most important comedy show and, and probably the most influential TV show. He's in this movie, which finishes third for the year. It's the biggest comedy movie ever. And then releases the Blues Brothers album.

• 16:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Bill Simmons?

  And that goes to number one. And he has all of that going at the same time in the winter of 1978. And, uh, now Murph's.

• 17:05Chris Ryan?

  What happens when this happens?

• 17:06Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. What hap- what's going on here, Murph? You wanna get down?

• 17:12Bill Simmons?

  You didn't like something. This is what happens when you work with the animals.

• 17:14Chris Ryan?

  Just not professional.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Let him out?

• 17:16Bill Simmons?

  Uh, no, he'll, he'll lie over there.

• 17:21Bill Simmons?

  So Belushi, um, he flew too close to the sun, Sierra.

• 17:27Chris Ryan?

  So to speak, yeah.

• 17:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this was it.

• 17:29Chris Ryan?

  I think he invented flying close to the sun. People think it's Icarus.

• 17:32Bill Simmons?

  No, it was Belushi. He had already was prone to maybe having some, some issues.

• 17:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, this happens and he becomes as white hot famous as anyone we've ever had. This is it. This is like, he becomes too famous to be on SNL. He gets every single comedy you could possibly be offered to you. And he's touring with a band in front of sold out crowds.

• 17:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Bill Simmons?

  Too much.

• 17:56Chris Ryan?

  One of my favorite things is the, he has to do, like, he does three days a week on Animal House.

• 18:03Bill Simmons?

  He's flying to Oregon to Animal House.

• 18:04Chris Ryan?

  Tells all of them, like, all these, like, bits and jokes he's thinking of. And then they would watch SNL on Saturday night. And those things that he was joking about on like Tuesday would be on the show on Saturday.

• 18:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was another, he was allegedly clean when he was doing this movie. And, uh, he moved there with his wife and he's, he's living in some house. He's not living with the, with the cast, trying to stay clean.

• 18:30Chris Ryan?

  They host Thanksgiving, yeah.

• 18:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and he's like, and then I think he went off the rails right after. And that was that. There's been a lot of stuff written about this, but nobody, really Farley's the only one like Belushi that I can think of.

• 18:42Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 18:43Bill Simmons?

  Like that could just, physical presence, the pratfalls, the facial expressions, the comedy, like, the moment you see him, you're just like, I'm just laughing already, hasn't done anything yet.

• 18:54Chris Ryan?

  And the, the same kind of thing that Farley, everybody always used to say about Farley was that they would just do anything for a laugh.

• 19:00Bill Simmons?

  Yep. I wonder, who else is, would you say Danny McBride, even though he wasn't physically like that, is a little like that, or no? Like where you just see him and you're like, I'm ready to laugh.

• 19:11Chris Ryan?

  He can say anything and you'll laugh. The physical side is maybe not as much there with him. I don't know, Robin Williams, I feel like had a little bit of that.

• 19:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Chris Ryan?

  That was, but that was as much like, I'm just gonna do 15 minute bits, like, off of one thing that you say. Um, this was like, I'll jump through a plate glass window. And, and didn't care if, I mean, the, the Farley story about Chippendales, Sandler didn't want him to do it because he's like, people are just gonna laugh at you.

• 19:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:32Chris Ryan?

  And he, Farley was like, I don't care.

• 19:34Bill Simmons?

  There's something, it's such a small group of people that have had this. And it happens with athletes, too. If you just go to a game or a comedy event or whatever and you sit down and somebody comes on the stage or the court, wherever, and your eyes just go to them, that's what Blue, everyone said that's what Blue She had. Like when he's, the years before SNL, every time he came on stage, he just owned the stage.

• 19:58Chris Ryan?

  And it's also like, it has an almost Beatles-like concentration of like, it was just a few years.

• 20:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Chris Ryan?

  You know, it was, it was not like this 20-year career. It was like, it was basically six years, right?

• 20:10Bill Simmons?

  Pretty much. I mean, SNL's 75, he's dead in 82.

• 20:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Bill Simmons?

  It had an interesting effect on SNL, because it made, Animal House made the show bigger. The fourth season of SNL, which starts in 78, the 78, 79 season, the audience increased to the point that the Lorne Michaels and the writers kind of resented it.

• 20:32Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:32Bill Simmons?

  Lorne called it the undeserved audience. It was like, we were doing this, where were you guys before? Now you're just here because of Animal House.

• 20:39Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's also like, they thought that they were like hipsters essentially, and that now all of a sudden, like, all the squares were like, I watched this, you know?

• 20:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And there's a lot, a lot of the research from this was, once Animal House happens, all these guys now can get jobs. Everyone's looking for the next Blue She, Animal House. Everyone's looking for the next person to write that. So National, PJ O'Rourke had this whole thing about it, killed National Lampoon immediately. Because everyone who wrote for it was now being approached to write something.

• 21:05Chris Ryan?

  Like, how can I get a script going?

• 21:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it just like demolished, um, basically this counterculture thing, they became the culture.

• 21:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Although by the time PJ O'Rourke is running National Lampoon, like, I, it's, it's probably like, its sensibility is more conservative than you would be, you'd be surprised to find out, like, how conservative, like, their, their worldview was, I think.

• 21:28Bill Simmons?

  I was never a big National Lampoon guy. I always, probably like Mad Magazine more, as weird as that is, but Spy was the first one where I was like, finally a magazine for me.

• 21:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:38Bill Simmons?

  You know?

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Have either of you read that National Lampoon, like, yearbook parody?

• 21:42Chris Ryan?

  I looked at like, some of the pages just online for this, but it's a kind of ingenious, I'm sure other people had done it beforehand, but it's basically, um, Boone's yearbook?

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Chris Ryan?

  With like, notes scrawled, and then there's-

• 21:55Bill Simmons?

  Some of the characters from the movie.

• 21:56Chris Ryan?

  Couple of the characters from the movie are in it, yeah.

• 21:59Bill Simmons?

  There's a really good, uh, National Lampoon documentary. That was made kind of in the early days of when we were good at documentaries. I'm gonna say it's like late 2000s, early 2010s. I thought they did a good job. They interviewed a lot of people.

• 22:13Chris Ryan?

  Is it called Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead? 2015.

• 22:16Bill Simmons?

  Yep, yeah, that documentary is good.

• 22:19Bill Simmons?

  So this was based on Ramis's experience, Ramis's experience at Washington University. Miller, Chris Miller's experience at Dartmouth. And then Ivan Reitman at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Not on my radar.

• 22:34Chris Ryan?

  That was in one of your safety schools?

• 22:36Bill Simmons?

  And then Doug Kenny, who was, you know, one of the writers, pretty legendary Lampoon guy, died in Hawaii with Chevy Chase. Chevy Chase and him were on vacation. Fell off a cliff, unclear what happened, big mystery. You know, you're not, the Doug Kenny thing's a really interesting one.

• 22:52Chris Ryan?

  I didn't know about this.

• 22:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, big rabbit hole.

• 22:54Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was, he was like.

• 22:56Bill Simmons?

  Involved in Caddyshack.

• 22:57Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 22:58Bill Simmons?

  Lot of cocaine.

• 22:59Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:59Bill Simmons?

  Back then, obviously, in all kinds of ways. And a death that they still don't know what happened. And some people wonder if he killed himself or he didn't.

• 23:07Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 23:09Bill Simmons?

  But anyway, he graduated from Harvard. He was, his frat experience was closer to the Omega side. And the three characters from the yearbook you mentioned were Larry Kroger, Manny Pepperidge, Vernon Wermer.

• 23:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, so it's probably Larry's yearbook then, I guess.

• 23:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you mentioned this earlier, they picked 62 because they thought that was the year before JFK, the year before Vietnam gets going, kind of the last innocent year in America.

• 23:37Chris Ryan?

  It's like, but it's like, almost like right around then. Because I remember my earliest memories of like the car radio are my parents listening to like Big Chill style oldies. So for them, this is like, kind of almost like that they're freezing that time in amber and they're starting to make money off of it with Happy Days and stuff.

• 23:57Bill Simmons?

  So the original script and there was a lot more vomiting, there was a lot of crazy shit. They did like nine drafts and then finally got greenlit at three million bucks. And the National Lampoon guy, Matty Simmons, no relation, said, screw it, silly little movie will make a couple bucks.

• 24:17Bill Simmons?

  Landa said he thought it was the funniest script he'd ever read, really offensive. He said, "There was a great deal of projectile vomiting and rape and all of these things."

• 24:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Bill Simmons?

  I don't even know what that meant for a comedy, but um, they get Belushi and they're off. Three million dollar budget made a hundred and forty one point five million dollars. Feels like probably more since then. This is just.

• 24:39Chris Ryan?

  Well, also a hundred and forty million dollars off three million dollars is an insane profit.

• 24:44Bill Simmons?

  Craig, they did, it made one twenty.

• 24:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Bill Simmons?

  They did the re-release a year later in seventy nine, made another twenty one million just because Belushi was more famous.

• 24:52Chris Ryan?

  Let me ask you this. Did you watch this? What, had, did you watch this after you'd seen Caddyshack?

• 24:57Bill Simmons?

  I don't remember when I first saw this. Um, I saw Caddyshack in the theater. I don't think my parents let me see this in the theater. So I probably saw it after Caddyshack, but I love Belushi, so I probably figured out a way to see this at some point. This is one of those where it's like, this movie's been in my life for fifty years. I don't remember when I saw it. Other ones I do remember.

• 25:17Chris Ryan?

  It's interesting to think about this kicking it all off, but a lot of people, most people, who are listening to this podcast probably saw it in and around, maybe even after they saw Revenge of the Nerds, or maybe even after they saw Porky's, or maybe even after they saw like PCU and Dazed and Confused. I mean, you, you might have an experience where it's always sitting there on the shelf. Like, I remember really being drawn to the um, the cartoon poster.

• 25:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Chris Ryan?

  And like that style of like, kind of caricature. I was just like, what is this? You know?

• 25:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, the part I don't remember from the eighties is how we saw the unedited version. Because we didn't really have the VHS stuff until like eighty three, eighty four range. So it was probably edited for a couple of years there on the different channels and then became unedited again?

• 26:02Chris Ryan?

  Well, this is definitely a, a sleepover movie.

• 26:05Bill Simmons?

  No question. I feel like everybody had a copy of it.

• 26:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but if you, I remember when I was like, I, I must have been like eight or nine maybe or something. And it was just like, we're gonna watch Animal House tonight. My older brother got it, you know?

• 26:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Top eleven movies in nineteen seventy eight, Craig? Grease.

• 26:22Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:23Bill Simmons?

  Superman, Animal House. It's our top three.

• 26:27Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 26:28Bill Simmons?

  Every Which Way But Loose.

• 26:30Chris Ryan?

  Is that a rewatchable?

• 26:32Bill Simmons?

  It is for me. Say the word. Clint Eastwood in an orangutan in a truck? Um, Heaven Can Wait, Hooper.

• 26:42Chris Ryan?

  If we do August one for us month, it should be Every Which Way But Loose, Lincoln.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  What else?

• 26:52Bill Simmons?

  And there's so many one for us's. Jaws 2 is seventh, Revenge of the Pink Panther, The Deer Hunter, Halloween and Foul Play.

• 27:00Chris Ryan?

  Deer Hunter.

• 27:01Bill Simmons?

  Top 11.

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  Bring up the rear.

• 27:02Bill Simmons?

  Deer Hunter, cranking it almost 50 million bucks.

• 27:04Chris Ryan?

  Rewatchable, come on.

• 27:06Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's definitely, that's not even a one for us month.

• 27:08Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 27:09Bill Simmons?

  No, that just came out on.

• 27:10Chris Ryan?

  That's Russian roulette month.

• 27:11Bill Simmons?

  That came out on Steelbook.

• 27:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Ebert, four stars.

• 27:18Chris Ryan?

  Fucking loved this movie.

• 27:20Bill Simmons?

  It's anarchic, messy, filled with energy. It assaults us. Part of the movie's impact comes from its sheer level of manic energy. It's better made than we might at first realize. It takes skill to create this sort of comic pitch. Probably caught Ebert at the right time of his life, too. I wonder if 1998 Roger Ebert loves it as much.

• 27:40Chris Ryan?

  He's come in, he still has a little bit of like Russ Meyer vapors coming, coming out of it.

• 27:44Bill Simmons?

  No question.

• 27:45Chris Ryan?

  But I do imagine if you saw this in 78, it would feel like punk rock. It would feel like he describes it as anarchic, you know?

• 27:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, we'll talk about it when we do rewatchable scenes, but there's seven minutes in the middle of this movie where Belushi just goes to another planet.

• 27:58Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 27:59Bill Simmons?

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• 28:44Bill Simmons?

  Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. Restrictions apply. See terms at fanduel.com/predicts/bonus-offer/terms.

• 28:55Bill Simmons?

  So Murph's gone.

• 28:56Chris Ryan?

  Deeply offended by this concept.

• 28:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's not a Belushi guy. Most rewatchable scene. Really good entrances for Bluto, Otter, and D-Day in the beginning.

• 29:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Bill Simmons?

  I like a good entrance. See Bluto, he's just drinking a beer, peeing on people.

• 29:13Chris Ryan?

  Eric Stratton, Rush Chairman, damn glad to meet you.

• 29:16Bill Simmons?

  I can't wait to talk about Matheson. I really like him in this movie. The pledge recruit sequence, when they're naming everybody.

• 29:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Bill Simmons?

  You're Weasel. You're Muffball. You're gonna be Pinto. Why Pinto? Louis Louis. I like, Belushi just probably looks, I don't know if he was really drunk for that scene during the Louis Louis.

• 29:35Chris Ryan?

  They all look absolutely hammered. Yeah.

• 29:37Bill Simmons?

  And then we go to the other frat for the, thank you, sir, may I have another? Alright, so those are two. Flounder kills a horse, followed by the dean meeting.

• 29:46Chris Ryan?

  Holy shit!

• 29:49Bill Simmons?

  The cafeteria scene.

• 29:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the food fight.

• 29:54Bill Simmons?

  The food, Belushi in the food line, first he's eating out of the garbage, basically.

• 29:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:58Bill Simmons?

  And then he goes through the food line.

• 30:00Chris Ryan?

  That's just like also a six-minute Buster Keaton scene. Like, it's silent for the most part, until he goes, everybody goes and sits down with the preppy kids. But like, all of that stuff with him.

• 30:12Bill Simmons?

  I like when the donut falls off the tray. He just keeps going. Just grabbing stuff, putting things on top, eats the Jell-O. And then he makes the horse sound at that guy.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 30:21Bill Simmons?

  And then does the "um, is it?", which I think for me, at age 10 or 11, was the height of comedy for me. Yeah. It's the funniest thing of all time. Entirely improvised in the cafeteria. And then they just kinda went. The "um, is it?" thing was apparently improvised too. They didn't know that was coming.

• 30:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Bill Simmons?

  Just a home run. It's up there for me. It might be my most rewatchable. We do have the ladder scene, which I guess is probably a little problematic these days.

• 30:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but what was-

• 30:52Bill Simmons?

  It's a little bit of a voyeur thing.

• 30:53Chris Ryan?

  I mean, but that basically is, it invents Revenge of the Nerds and Porky's.

• 30:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Bill Simmons?

  The turn to the camera eyebrow raise.

• 31:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Bill Simmons?

  All-timer. The ladder falling backwards is just fucking funny.

• 31:08Bill Simmons?

  He just goes back.

• 31:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Bill Simmons?

  I had, so this seven minutes of Belushi just taking over the movie. I almost wonder, is this a new category? The Victor Wembanyama Award for when somebody just completely annihilates four minutes of a movie.

• 31:21Chris Ryan?

  There is no defense for this?

• 31:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's like, what's happening? He just scored 12 points in two minutes, blocked five shots. But that was just a total Wemby. Does that Belushi thing? It's still funny for your generation, right?

• 31:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 31:35Chris Ryan?

  What, the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor thing?

• 31:37Bill Simmons?

  Just every, everything Belushi did, but especially the cafeteria. I just feel like that's, it's gotta be timeless comedy for whoever old you are.

• 31:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think, I think some people might find it like a little, it's juvenile humor that like hasn't aged in like a clever way. But I still think it, it's really funny.

• 31:54Bill Simmons?

  Okay, good. The grocery store scene is underrated?

• 31:57Chris Ryan?

  I really like the grocery store scene.

• 31:59Bill Simmons?

  Flanders just catching 15 things?

• 32:01Chris Ryan?

  Also, my cucumber is bigger.

• 32:03Bill Simmons?

  The flirting? There's something about those mid 70s horny housewives that they would have in these movies, like in Slapshot or this movie. They really did it for me.

• 32:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Bill Simmons?

  Toga party. I like when Otter takes their coats and throw, just throws them on the ground.

• 32:21Chris Ryan?

  There's so many good little like, just blink and you miss it visual sight gags in this movie like that.

• 32:26Bill Simmons?

  Guitar guy gets demolished. We get shout, this is the Kid Cudi pursuit happening, this word for needle drop. I think this is my most rewatchable scene because I really love the shout performance. I love how it cuts back and forth with the audience. I like, little bit louder now, like, little bit louder.

• 32:44Chris Ryan?

  Oh my God, yeah, it's so good that Wedding Crashers was like, let's just do that again.

• 32:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, they did the homage. The road trip to the bar to see Otis Day.

• 32:55Chris Ryan?

  Yep. Dexter's.

• 32:57Bill Simmons?

  Wait, Otis, he loves us.

• 33:01Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Wormer reading the grades?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:04Bill Simmons?

  Zero point two. Fat, drunken, stupid.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  That guy has an amazing voice.

• 33:11Bill Simmons?

  And he had like, almost like it seemed like a glass eye or something.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Vernon, John Vernon?

• 33:17Bill Simmons?

  But I know he didn't, but he had a way of like, he just always seemed like he was about to say something evil.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Just like the way he says, "Double secret probation." It's so good.

• 33:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Chris Ryan?

  If you're a character actor in the seventies, you just are like, "What I do is wear a suit and I do the same part in every movie."

• 33:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:32Chris Ryan?

  So I just show up. I just nail it.

• 33:36Bill Simmons?

  The big Bluto speech, which I think is the most famous scene for this movie because it lived on in sports.

• 33:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 33:42Bill Simmons?

  Jumbotron's for 20 years after.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  It's kind of the first, "Hold on, let him cook."

• 33:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know?

• 33:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  He's like, they're like Germans, and he's like, "Hold on, let him, he's cooking."

• 33:51Bill Simmons?

  Groggy and Dougy and some of the other Hitler Youth underrated line.

• 33:57Bill Simmons?

  Every, every part of that Bushid thing is great. The, uh, the parade scene's fun.

• 34:01Chris Ryan?

  The parade scene is like a precursor.

• 34:03Bill Simmons?

  It's a mess.

• 34:04Chris Ryan?

  Blues Brothers, where it's like, "We don't really know what to do here, so let's have a giant set piece."

• 34:09Bill Simmons?

  Blue she just climbs on top of a building for no reason.

• 34:12Chris Ryan?

  I could have, I could have fixed it though, but that's in a category coming up.

• 34:15Bill Simmons?

  Okay, great. Um, and then the closing credits, which I think this movie probably invented.

• 34:22Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's certainly Apex Mountain for Z-Want and Neo title cards.

• 34:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what, nobody did this before this movie.

• 34:30Chris Ryan?

  I have no idea.

• 34:30Bill Simmons?

  And I feel like everybody's ripped it off since. There's so many good ones. The Marmalade became a rude Nixon White House aide and was raped in prison in 1974. Otter became a gynecologist in Beverly Hills. Senator and Mrs. John Butarski.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:47Bill Simmons?

  Just like fucking home runs all over. I like that D-Day's whereabouts were unknown too.

• 34:53Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for most rewatchable?

• 34:54Chris Ryan?

  The most rewatchable scene for me is the toga party with Shout. Yeah.

• 34:58Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 34:59Chris Ryan?

  That's just the most fun to watch.

• 35:00Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 1978 slash 1963 thing about this movie? I think we have to go with 1978.

• 35:06Chris Ryan?

  Well, I just had the, the prominence of National Lampoon as a comedy brand. It's like an umbrella that like was doing all this different stuff and was launching all these careers.

• 35:15Bill Simmons?

  I have a smoking pot in a dark room as a secret. Clandestine event.

• 35:21Chris Ryan?

  And that you are afraid you might get schizophrenia from it?

• 35:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's like, oh, try that. Um, I had that. And then Pinto's girl revealing that she's 13 is just insane.

• 35:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 35:31Bill Simmons?

  It was insane in 1978.

• 35:33Chris Ryan?

  It's out of control. It's fucking crazy, Bill.

• 35:37Bill Simmons?

  Go 16 or 17, maybe it's still borderline insane, but 13, it's like.

• 35:42Chris Ryan?

  She's like, I'm 13 and he still goes for it. He's just like, I guess I have.

• 35:46Bill Simmons?

  No, no, no, it's after.

• 35:48Chris Ryan?

  But he's, he asked, he has to get, oh, because he has to get married to her first, right?

• 35:52Speaker 02

  And she's like, hey, mom and dad, this is the guy that molested me.

• 35:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Bill Simmons?

  I think doing, in 1978, obviously, nobody in the room or no notes or edits were like, hey, make her older. 13's crazy.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the when would I have died award? I would have killed myself after that girl said I was 13. Yes.

• 36:09Bill Simmons?

  13. Also, she, I mean, I, the real actress is probably like 20. I just.

• 36:15Chris Ryan?

  Let's hope.

• 36:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I don't know if they thought 13 was funny. Or like, oh, it'd be funny if she says she's 13. It's just insane.

• 36:23Chris Ryan?

  Begin to imagine. Yeah. It's, it is the craziest thing in this movie.

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  Because old school basically does, old school ripped off multiple parts of this movie.

• 36:31Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 36:32Bill Simmons?

  But they do the.

• 36:33Chris Ryan?

  Old school is almost a remake. Yeah.

• 36:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but they do the same thing with, uh, with Luke Wilson when he's with Alasha Kuthbert. And it turns out she's in high school.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  It's crazy. I mean, this girl is lying topless in this movie. And then an hour later, she's 13.

• 36:47Bill Simmons?

  It's just, it's just nuts. I don't understand it.

• 36:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Uh, she was 20, the actress.

• 36:54Bill Simmons?

  It's just.

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  It's weird that you nailed that.

• 36:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, she looked like she was at least in college.

• 37:02Bill Simmons?

  But I think they thought.

• 37:04Chris Ryan?

  He's like, got a great scout's eye.

• 37:06Bill Simmons?

  Funny. Hey, you know, I sized her up. Oh.

• 37:10Bill Simmons?

  I think they thought 13 would get a big laugh.

• 37:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Look, John Landis.

• 37:14Bill Simmons?

  This was 1978.

• 37:15Chris Ryan?

  Well, Landis takes some big swings, man.

• 37:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. In terms of big swings, probably not as big as the Twilight Zone.

• 37:21Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 37:22Bill Simmons?

  Um, no. The Floyd Gondole Butter in My Ass and Lollipops in My Mouth Award for something I just enjoy.

• 37:28Chris Ryan?

  Man, I just like Louie Louie and Shout. Those songs are undefeated. They still go really hard at weddings.

• 37:34Bill Simmons?

  They still play Shout at weddings?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I think that was gonna make my, my category would have just been what's aged the best. I have not been to a wedding where Shout is not playing.

• 37:42Chris Ryan?

  Also, you may think you're better than Shout, but every time you go to a wedding and Shout plays, you're like, this is the thing that really set the wedding off.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  It is the single best moment of every wedding is Shout. It still plays. Live band, DJ, doesn't matter. Everybody loves Shout getting on the floor. Like, it is still so fun.

• 37:57Chris Ryan?

  It's the time when everybody's like, let's get fucked up.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  The question for, I was gonna ask though, is did the wedding thing happen after Wedding Crashers? Or were people doing that in the eighties after Animal House?

• 38:06Bill Simmons?

  After Animal House.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Really?

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  Every wedding I went to from the early nineties on, there was Shout.

• 38:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Bill Simmons?

  And I assume that was the case in the eighties too.

• 38:13Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I mean, the weddings that I have been to have all had Shout.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  But pre Wedding Crashers.

• 38:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:19Bill Simmons?

  Oh, fuck yeah. Oh, no. Every, every single.

• 38:21Chris Ryan?

  Shout's a fucking wedding staple.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  No. Well, cause I just didn't know if like, everybody liked the song watching Animal House, but that has nothing to do with a wedding. I didn't know if Wedding Crashers made it popular at weddings.

• 38:30Bill Simmons?

  No, Shout was, you would, no, no, no, no.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  It was a thing before?

• 38:34Bill Simmons?

  No, you would go to a wedding even in the early nineties and it was like, can't wait for Shout. You just knew it was coming. And you knew the band was gonna play it. The, the thing is like, it's the undisputed champ.

• 38:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:45Bill Simmons?

  It's like, who's the best quarterback of all time? It's Tom Brady. Like, there's no argument.

• 38:49Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's chocolate ice cream. There's just like very few people who are like, I don't like Shout. I don't wanna do that. Like, then why'd you come to the wedding?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  It's just like the most, it's a complete communal experience. Everybody knows the moves. It's the best.

• 38:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cause you, the fact that you have to like go down to the ground and then come back up and get happy again is the key to Shout.

• 39:05Chris Ryan?

  Now, the question is, have you ever done Gator? Where you jump on the floor and, and shake it like.

• 39:10Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't remember doing that one. No. Um, yeah, it's like. Shouts Michael Jordan and every once in a while a new song comes in and tries to be LeBron. And then we have an argument about it. It's like, no, no, it's still shit. My Floyd Gondoli, I like when a movie gets made because it wasn't going to get made until some random star from the time period agreed to be in it for two scenes and then they're like, now we can make it.

• 39:37Chris Ryan?

  Sutherland's here.

• 39:38Bill Simmons?

  Sutherland, he worked for two days. He was offered $25,000 for the two days or 2% of the film's gross.

• 39:47Chris Ryan?

  He took the 25, didn't he?

• 39:48Bill Simmons?

  And he took the 25K because he thought the movie was gonna bomb. It's amazing. We've done 437 rewatchables at this point, 438, something like that. It's amazing how many times the movies were like right on the fringe of not being made until some random.

• 40:02Chris Ryan?

  Do it, yeah.

• 40:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And Donald Sutherland, it's not like he was famous, but even I said Ryan Reynolds before, he wasn't even as famous as Ryan Reynolds. It was.

• 40:11Chris Ryan?

  I just think it's a different kind of fame. I mean, he's also like doing.

• 40:14Bill Simmons?

  It's a credibility fame.

• 40:15Chris Ryan?

  Still doing like three movies a year, pretty much around him. I'd have to look at like his actual filmography, but those people like worked a lot, you know?

• 40:22Speaker 02

  And I love in the opening credits, I love when it says at the end, "And so and so as Jennings."

• 40:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  And Donald Sutherland as Jennings. It's great.

• 40:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, I have him in What's Age the Best too, because I'm convinced he's wearing just his same clothes from Invasion of the Body, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

• 40:38Chris Ryan?

  It's the same outfit.

• 40:39Bill Simmons?

  He's wearing the same outfit that he wears for an hour of the movie and he was probably filming the other movie.

• 40:43Chris Ryan?

  He probably showed up in a corduroy suit and they were like, you know what, honestly, that's perfect.

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  It's hilarious. And he looks the same. He's got the same hair, the same mustache. It's like he just got pulled out of a movie.

• 40:51Chris Ryan?

  So what does he do? Does the John Milton speech? He does the my novel is a piece of shit scene and then he's in the last scene with Katie. Yeah.

• 40:58Bill Simmons?

  He's in two and a half scenes, basically.

• 41:01Bill Simmons?

  The biggest What's Age the Best for this movie is Bluto's speech.

• 41:07Bill Simmons?

  Became an incredibly impactful home game sports movie.

• 41:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 41:11Bill Simmons?

  Let's get the crowd going. During this era that I think is basically over now, but from late nineties, let's say like ninety eight, ninety nine range through the two thousands. There was like five or six different movies where they would play the scenes. They would do Rudy, they would do Hoosiers. And this one always brought the house down.

• 41:30Chris Ryan?

  I feel like Three Hundred.

• 41:31Bill Simmons?

  Three Hundred's a good one.

• 41:32Chris Ryan?

  And Gladiator. And like, what's another one that's kind of replaced this as like a staple?

• 41:38Bill Simmons?

  But I don't feel like they do this anymore. Cause people during the timeouts are just playing music.

• 41:43Chris Ryan?

  I think the Lakers used to do three, like to have Three Hundred playing when they would do the starting lineups.

• 41:47Bill Simmons?

  The Celtics would, they got to the point where they just wouldn't run the clip. They would.

• 41:52Chris Ryan?

  Just play the speech.

• 41:53Bill Simmons?

  They would, they would do the speech, but they would intersperse it with, you know, Celtic shit. And they would like do like the next level recut of it. But Animal House was a major one. And you would just see Baloo, it was like, nothing is over.

• 42:05Chris Ryan?

  Have you ever heard this at a game? I don't think so.

• 42:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they don't do it anymore.

• 42:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:09Bill Simmons?

  This was like a ten year run. Uh, I have more, but what do you have for what's age best?

• 42:13Chris Ryan?

  The way that they depict the, what is essentially like Smith College, like the, the Seven Sisters schools.

• 42:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Chris Ryan?

  The girl who dies in a kiln explosion.

• 42:25Bill Simmons?

  Fawn?

• 42:26Chris Ryan?

  And Otter's like, she was gonna make me a pot.

• 42:29Bill Simmons?

  We were engaged to be engaged.

• 42:31Chris Ryan?

  Um, but just the whole, that whole segment, it's not necessarily a rewatchable scene, but it's so nailed on. Like that whole like women's college thing.

• 42:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's somebody working at the front desk.

• 42:42Chris Ryan?

  I had the same thing. Baloo, she destroying the acoustic guitar. I feel like I've seen like a billion times and like is still like, I think of it. Every time I'd, I'd ever go to a party and somebody would be like, there's a guy in the corner playing Dave Matthews and you're just like, how funny would it be to just smash this thing against the fucking wall and be like, sorry.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  I have a. I think Matheson is tremendous as Otter.

• 43:05Chris Ryan?

  Unbelievable this time around.

• 43:07Bill Simmons?

  I think he's so good in this movie and it's like, kinda looks like Craig, by the way.

• 43:10Chris Ryan?

  That's really a compliment.

• 43:12Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand why Tim Matheson didn't become a bigger star.

• 43:15Chris Ryan?

  I had him coming up, but we could talk about it now. Like, he is actually the could have been Harrison Ford. Cause he was another guy up for Raiders.

• 43:25Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 43:25Chris Ryan?

  And like, he's a little like, I think he is like a Hollywood native, like, whole life. Like on western TV shows when he's a little kid and stuff.

• 43:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Chris Ryan?

  But.

• 43:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, I wondered, did he get, it's in Cast and What Efs, I'll do one now, where they tried to get Chevy Chase, Chevy Chase for Otter and he ends up doing foul play. I wonder if he just got market corrected by Chevy Chase.

• 43:47Chris Ryan?

  Well, he's in Fletch with Chevy Chase.

• 43:48Bill Simmons?

  Hilarious, because in Fletch, he plays the guy who hires Chevy Chase because they look like each other.

• 43:53Chris Ryan?

  But it's funny to watch him be Chevy Chase's straight man in Fletch, but he's just doing Chevy Chase in.

• 43:59Bill Simmons?

  I think Otter is so fucking funny in this movie.

• 44:01Chris Ryan?

  It's great, man. His speech at the trial.

• 44:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:03Chris Ryan?

  Where he's like, if the fraternity system is on trial, then the entire system is on trial. I won't have you besmirch the United States of America.

• 44:15Chris Ryan?

  And they walk out singing Star Spangled Banner.

• 44:18Bill Simmons?

  I love how horny he is too. Like, he meets Flounder's girlfriend.

• 44:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  And he's like, here, come over here. And he's just like, clearly gonna try to get Flounder's girlfriend to go up to his room. He's always trying to have sex with whoever he's in the room with. But he's like, there's something charming about him. I don't know. That's why the gynecologist thing's so funny at the end.

• 44:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Bill Simmons?

  It's like, of course.

• 44:37Chris Ryan?

  It's hysterical.

• 44:39Bill Simmons?

  I thought Matheson just killed it. Crazy college rotsey kids?

• 44:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Bill Simmons?

  Niedermeyer, when they're all in the thing, like.

• 44:47Chris Ryan?

  That's also an underrated, rewatchable scene is.

• 44:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Rieger and Matheson playing golf.

• 44:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're just trying to hit this?

• 44:54Chris Ryan?

  Don't think about it as work. Think about it as something you enjoy.

• 44:58Bill Simmons?

  This is a small one, but at the beginning, when Flounder and Pinto go to the thing to meet the other people, like the, basically the first scene in the movie. And he lets Pinto in and then slams the door.

• 45:10Chris Ryan?

  On Flounder.

• 45:11Bill Simmons?

  And it's like a great, like, it actually seems like he hits him in the thing, but it's just like, just immediately sets the tone.

• 45:17Chris Ryan?

  When Flounder goes over to Greg and starts talking to him, and then Greg's like, kind of guides him back to the four rejects and he's just like.

• 45:24Bill Simmons?

  Why don't you talk to him some more?

• 45:25Chris Ryan?

  I've already met these guys. And he's like, great, you'll have plenty to talk about.

• 45:30Bill Simmons?

  Handjobs with latex gloves?

• 45:34Chris Ryan?

  You think that's aged the best?

• 45:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's hilarious.

• 45:38Bill Simmons?

  Flounder in Silent Rage, four years later? Silent, that is a one for us month.

• 45:45Chris Ryan?

  Silent Rage?

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Bill Simmons?

  We're finally gonna end up doing that, but Flounder is Chuck Norris's sidekick in Silent Rage.

• 45:50Chris Ryan?

  That would be an amazing collection of films. It's just if we did, if we did Lincoln Silent Rage.

• 45:58Bill Simmons?

  And we tried to time it with Netflix, it was like, hey, so I'm not sure how you're gonna promote this in the carousel, but it's, it's one for us month? Toga parties did become a thing in the eighties.

• 46:09Chris Ryan?

  I'd never.

• 46:10Bill Simmons?

  I was at the tail end of it when I was in college. I don't think I ever went to one in college.

• 46:13Chris Ryan?

  You weren't in a frat?

• 46:14Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 46:15Chris Ryan?

  Courthouse, were, did you, were you?

• 46:16Speaker 02

  I was in a fraternity for two years and we did throw a toga party in college.

• 46:19Chris Ryan?

  Did you, like, you were a junior and senior or freshman and sophomore?

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Freshman sophomore.

• 46:24Chris Ryan?

  Why'd you stop?

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Eh, I just like honestly didn't like it.

• 46:28Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 46:29Bill Simmons?

  Wow, sounds like he got hazed.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  I, I did go through that, but eh, just not for me.

• 46:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Um, we threw the toga party out of house, senior year actually, not in the frat.

• 46:39Chris Ryan?

  Was it fun?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  It's great. It's the best.

• 46:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:41Bill Simmons?

  The toga thing became a, a big thing for about, I would say, 10 years.

• 46:45Chris Ryan?

  Never, never got it.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  It's also like the easiest dress up party you can go to. Like it's, everyone just wears a bed sheet. It's the easiest thing in the world.

• 46:52Chris Ryan?

  You gotta wear like shorts underneath the bed sheet though, right?

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Not, not me. Not Otter.

• 46:58Bill Simmons?

  And then, this is my high school buddy, Jim Grady, who went to Colgate and I think was president of his flat. He texted this yesterday. Little known secret, I wanted to be rush chair at Sigma, Sigma Chi, just so I could say, hi, Jim Grady, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you. Not joking. Apparently really did that.

• 47:17Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god.

• 47:18Bill Simmons?

  Um, yeah, um, this is a, a great what's aged the best. So they, they had this bit in the original script, but they didn't film it with the JFK float. And they had the four people dressed like Jackie Onassis on the day he got assassinated.

• 47:33Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah.

• 47:34Bill Simmons?

  But they had this, uh, they, they were gonna have a car go through his head. And it was gonna be in the exit wound spot of when he got assassinated. And then Landis is like, fuckin', we gotta cut this, it's too offensive.

• 47:45Chris Ryan?

  So that's what he was like, we can't do that, but can we? What if she was 13?

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  Right. Somehow the 13 was fine. If they had had the car zoom through his head in the exit wound, I think that would have aged pretty funnily. In my opinion.

• 48:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Bill Simmons?

  It's just like, holy shit, they were really going for it in 1978. But they decided not to do it. And then, uh, you mentioned the other what's aged the best, Louis Louis, Shama Lama Ding Dong.

• 48:14Bill Simmons?

  Shout.

• 48:14Chris Ryan?

  Music's great.

• 48:16Bill Simmons?

  I had one last age the best. It's Sarah Holcomb's IMDb.

• 48:19Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Sarah Holcomb is Colette, the, the young girl?

• 48:23Bill Simmons?

  Sarah Holcomb is the, uh, yeah, who ends up being Maggie in Caddyshack. Oh, tanks for nothing.

• 48:30Bill Simmons?

  She's in four movies and then apparently sadly had some issues and was out of the industry. Her first movie ever is Animal House. And her last movie is Caddyshack.

• 48:42Bill Simmons?

  Her second to last movie is some movie called Happy Birthday Gemini.

• 48:45Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 48:46Bill Simmons?

  And then she makes one other movie. And she's the star of Walk Proud. Do you know what Walk Proud is? I'll just read you what it's about. Robbie Benson plays Emilio Mendez, a young Chicano, Chicano gang member in Los Angeles who begins to question his gang life when he meets and starts to fall for a white girl who encourages him to try and leave. Robbie sang the theme song, Adios Yesterday.

• 49:12Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  He was a blue eyed Caucasian in real life, but made up in dark face and wore black contact lenses. So he would look like a Latino for the movie. And then all the research is, this movie was reviled. This is considered one of the most offensive movies of all time.

• 49:28Chris Ryan?

  Robbie Benson, passion project, though.

• 49:31Bill Simmons?

  Walk Proud.

• 49:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:32Bill Simmons?

  Robbie Benson as Emilio Mendez.

• 49:34Chris Ryan?

  But if you're like, I'm also doing the song, like you gotta be believing in the material.

• 49:39Bill Simmons?

  Do we do this for Politically Incorrect Month with Soul Man and a couple others?

• 49:42Chris Ryan?

  What if we did Walk Proud with Van, but just like made no comment about how weird it was?

• 49:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, see, I love this.

• 49:51Chris Ryan?

  Benson is just sitting his back in this movie.

• 49:54Bill Simmons?

  So, but this ties back to them thinking it was a good idea to have a 13 year old. This is 1978, the start of the cocaine era.

• 50:01Chris Ryan?

  Their radar is off.

• 50:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, people are just, it's like, yeah, we got Robbie Benson. He's gonna play Emilio Mendez.

• 50:08Chris Ryan?

  That movie was released by Universal.

• 50:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. By the way, Robbie Benson was like a star because he was coming off one on one. This was like his next big project. So yeah, that did not go well. Anyway, those were her four movies. Great Jack Gordo Award, what'd you have?

• 50:22Chris Ryan?

  I had the freeze frame of when the horse has the heart attack.

• 50:28Chris Ryan?

  There's fucking nothing better. I would say this goes into one stage the best. Putting animals indoors, like large farm animals indoors.

• 50:38Chris Ryan?

  When you see the four legs just up and the guy brings in the chainsaw. Carmine's like, I'm gonna break your legs if you ever try to like say. He's measuring the doorway. Oh, it's good.

• 50:49Bill Simmons?

  Kahuna Burger for best use of food and drink. It's gotta be Amazit.

• 50:53Chris Ryan?

  It's the buffet or Amazit, yeah.

• 50:55Bill Simmons?

  Chess Rockwell Brock Laners Award for best character name. I could give you John Blutarski. What about Mandy Pepperidge?

• 51:04Chris Ryan?

  It's pretty good. I have Gregory Marmalade.

• 51:06Bill Simmons?

  Gregory Marmalade raped in prison?

• 51:11Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for a flex?

• 51:13Chris Ryan?

  Oh shit. Uh, I had the Dennis Beck relationship test for honor.

• 51:21Bill Simmons?

  Honor as Dennis Beck?

• 51:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Bill Simmons?

  With Flounder's girl?

• 51:23Chris Ryan?

  Butch is coming in and being like, Dennis Beck, Los Angeles PD, damn glad to meet you.

• 51:33Bill Simmons?

  Butch's girlfriend award weak link in the film, other than the 13 year old.

• 51:38Chris Ryan?

  Um, I have, mine is, uh, the Greg, Mandy, Babs love triangle. It's just, the, the hand jobs are funny.

• 51:47Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if it is the second handjob.

• 51:48Chris Ryan?

  About this and I'm just kinda like, all right, guys, like this is not your main to why I'm watching animals.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  The handjob scenes kill me.

• 51:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Bill Simmons?

  Why is it soft?

• 51:57Speaker 02

  And he's like, sorry, just this, this Delta thing's on my mind.

• 52:01Bill Simmons?

  Kid's 19. All you wanna do is get laid when you're 19.

• 52:05Bill Simmons?

  My weak link was 1962 is now 64 years ago. It feels like a fucking lifetime.

• 52:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  I mean, I.

• 52:14Chris Ryan?

  Did Ben watch this?

• 52:16Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Zoe Simmons, my daughter, who's home right now. I, it was on, she was on her phone the whole time and thought it was too slow, but did enjoy Belushi.

• 52:27Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 52:27Bill Simmons?

  That was her review.

• 52:28Chris Ryan?

  Had she seen it before?

• 52:29Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 52:29Bill Simmons?

  No. But yeah, if you're remaking this, I guess we did remake it as old school, basically.

• 52:36Bill Simmons?

  The Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot.

• 52:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Bill Simmons?

  I'm going with, uh, so they filmed this at University of Oregon and, uh, they weren't supposed to interact with the students. But then one day, these girls out of fraternity invite them to a fraternity party. All the Delta actors go. They're greeted with hostility from the Oregon students. Guy Widows, who played Hoover, throws a cup of beer at drunk football players and then they're having a brawl. And McGill gets a black eye. Widows got, uh, you know, had some loose teeth. And then Belushi was filming SNL, came back, found out about the fight and they had to like physically restrain him from going to find the football players and fight them.

• 53:24Chris Ryan?

  He's a fucking real one.

• 53:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I love the detail in the New York Times Oral History. I think Widows says he was basically like hooking up with a girl whose dad was a dentist. And he, so he got in at eight in the morning, the next morning, get his teeth fixed.

• 53:40Bill Simmons?

  The Ed Norton reverse dunk award for did this movie need a random sports scene? So can I, can I get rid of like one of the two handjob scenes and just have like a intramural football scene or something?

• 53:51Chris Ryan?

  Rugby? This is exactly what I was gonna say, which is this movie needed to end. With a flag football game or a football game, intramural football game to decide whether or not they could stay in college. And I went as far as to just break down.

• 54:06Bill Simmons?

  Oh, let's go.

• 54:07Chris Ryan?

  1962.

• 54:08Bill Simmons?

  I didn't even know you did this.

• 54:09Chris Ryan?

  1962 football position. So you've got quarterback, halfback, fullback, center, garden, ends.

• 54:14Bill Simmons?

  So Otter's QB.

• 54:15Chris Ryan?

  Otter, definitely QB.

• 54:16Bill Simmons?

  Probably a good QB.

• 54:17Chris Ryan?

  Incredible pocket presence.

• 54:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, a little Brady-ish, charisma.

• 54:21Chris Ryan?

  Stafford-esque, you know?

• 54:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, sure.

• 54:22Chris Ryan?

  Kind of Jimmy G a little bit.

• 54:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Chris Ryan?

  But like would excel in the McVay system. Unfortunately, back then it was like 90% runs, but.

• 54:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:30Chris Ryan?

  Halfback, you go Boone. Um, I like Rieger.

• 54:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:32Chris Ryan?

  I think he's crafty.

• 54:33Bill Simmons?

  Probably some speed.

• 54:34Chris Ryan?

  Going between the tackles. Fullback, obviously Bluto. Center, I go D-Day, kind of calling it all out, Kelsey's style, seize all the comforts.

• 54:41Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. I could see him as a tight end, too.

• 54:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and then guard flounder, you gotta put him somewhere. And then my wide receivers are Hoover and Stork.

• 54:50Bill Simmons?

  Stork.

• 54:51Chris Ryan?

  What is, what does Widow say, or no, Otter, when he's like, Stork? When you came here, everybody thought you were.

• 54:58Bill Simmons?

  Thought you were brain damage, he's like.

• 55:02Bill Simmons?

  That's Doug Kenny, by the way.

• 55:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Now, I don't know what the other team would.

• 55:06Bill Simmons?

  So, but this is basically revenge that the nerds decided, oh, we should actually, this will be our ending.

• 55:11Chris Ryan?

  If they just remade the end of The Longest Yard, I would have been like, that, that's great.

• 55:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so you could have gone football. Basketball would have been weird. Softball, eh.

• 55:22Chris Ryan?

  No, because it feels like it's fall there. It feels like it's, it's.

• 55:25Bill Simmons?

  So rugby would have been the other one, I think?

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Or you could have done track at Hayward Field at Oregon.

• 55:30Chris Ryan?

  That's true, but they're supposed to be at Dartmouth, right? Like, this is supposed to be the Northeast, isn't it?

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there's, there's a shot, the ROTC thing, you see Hayward Field behind them, the big track.

• 55:39Chris Ryan?

  Dude, what, among the things that has aged the best is Eugene as a college town.

• 55:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:43Chris Ryan?

  Been there a few times recently.

• 55:45Bill Simmons?

  So a 7v7, 1962 intramural football, something.

• 55:49Chris Ryan?

  And it's like, we'll let you stay in school if you win this.

• 55:53Bill Simmons?

  Belushi definitely scores the one touchdown.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  And old school does a big gymnastics scene.

• 55:57Chris Ryan?

  Basically do a decathlon or like Olympics.

• 56:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  This movie's still huge at Oregon. I mean, they play shout at, in between every third and fourth quarter.

• 56:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Woods age the worst. Um.

• 56:12Bill Simmons?

  I'm sure the Belushi voyeur stuff wouldn't go over awesome these days. We mentioned that 13 year old girl and then the angel devil scene.

• 56:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I had that one.

• 56:22Bill Simmons?

  Tough one.

• 56:22Chris Ryan?

  Angel devil scene, statutory rape, prominent Confederate flag on the wall.

• 56:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:27Chris Ryan?

  Attitudes about animal cruelty.

• 56:31Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, the angel devil scene really hits the jackpot of things that would never happen again, especially when we find out that how young the girl is, but I gotta say.

• 56:46Bill Simmons?

  The devil's like, fuck her, fuck her.

• 56:50Chris Ryan?

  I have one more, what's age the worst, which is a personal preference thing because obviously he was relatively successful around this. I just would love to have seen the Reitman or Ramus version of this movie directed. I think Landis is like, this one and Blues Brothers feels so flat to me.

• 57:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:09Chris Ryan?

  And he loves to do like a big master shot where there's like lots of sight gags and like recurring bits or whatever. But I just wish it had a little bit more pizzazz with the direction. And I like what he did with Trading Places, so it's not like I don't like any John Landis movies. And I mean, Kentucky Fried Movie was still like the hardest I ever actually laughed in my life up until that point. But these two, like Blues Brothers and, and Animal House are like, kinda like a little too static for my tastes.

• 57:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Landis, I'm trying to think of like, there's coaches over the years that get too much credit for the teams they had.

• 57:44Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 57:45Bill Simmons?

  But Casey Jones was like this, like what a coach. It was like he had Bird Parish, McHale and Bill Walton and, you know, we've seen football coaches like this too, where Mike McCarthy.

• 57:54Chris Ryan?

  Right. We're about to find out. How dare you.

• 57:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, Mike McCarthy that one year and it's like, Mike McCarthy, what a coach. And then, you know, he's available and starts bouncing around. And I wonder with Landis. The people he had on Animal House, now I'm sure he gets credit for some stuff and he's been really good in the different books of spinning stuff his way, making it seem like he was the hero.

• 58:14Chris Ryan?

  I think even in the oral history for Animal House,

• 58:18Bill Simmons?

  multiple people are mad at him.

• 58:18Chris Ryan?

  Ramus is like, he immediately started calling it his movie.

• 58:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Chris Ryan?

  And everybody was like, what the fuck, man? Like, we, like, this is all of our life stories.

• 58:26Bill Simmons?

  He's pretty famous for revisionist history stuff, and it seems like a lot of the people that have worked with him aren't that flattering about him after the fact.

• 58:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Bill Simmons?

  Like Eddie Murphy was another one that really turned on him.

• 58:36Chris Ryan?

  Eddie worked with him a bunch, though, right?

• 58:37Bill Simmons?

  I know, but the last one, Coming to America, he turned on him. And then, uh...

• 58:41Chris Ryan?

  But didn't Landis do like the Beverly Hills Cop that's set at like Disney World, basically?

• 58:46Bill Simmons?

  The bad one?

• 58:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, so I don't know. Obviously, he was talented, but I also feel like if if Reitman or Ramus had directed this, I'm sure, I'm pretty sure it still would have been funny. There's some racism stuff that probably makes sense because it's set in 1962, but that when you watch it, you're like, oh, what's your major primitive cultures? And then it just cuts right to Otis. It's like, ah.

• 59:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, and like the mayor has the lawn jockey statue, the Confederate flag, yeah.

• 59:17Bill Simmons?

  Um, the only other woods age of worst, this inspired a lot of copycat stuff, including they made an ABC sitcom called Delta House.

• 59:25Chris Ryan?

  You ever seen it?

• 59:26Bill Simmons?

  No. Dean Wormer was in it, so was Flounder. McGill was in it as D-Day. Widows was in it as Hoover. Michelle Pfeiffer made her acting debut, and then Bluto's brother Blotto, played by Josh Mustel.

• 59:38Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. Zero Mustels, yeah.

• 59:41Bill Simmons?

  Yikes. Uh, then CBS decided to co-ed Fever about all female Baxter College, one episode. And then Brothers and Sisters on NBC, a frat and sorority sitcom, three months. I never watched any of these.

• 59:53Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 59:53Bill Simmons?

  And in the late 70s, I watched everything. I was an only child. I did not watch this. The Hans Gruber scale villain ranking. Niedermeyer or Dean Wormer in the finals, who do you have?

• 1:00:02Chris Ryan?

  I think Niedermeyer's pretty iconic.

• 1:00:05Bill Simmons?

  Can I make the case for Dean Wormer?

• 1:00:06Chris Ryan?

  Please.

• 1:00:08Bill Simmons?

  He hates these guys so much that he fails them out of college and then says, "And I notified the local draft boards that you are now eligible." That is like as evil as it gets. He's like, "I'm actually gonna send you guys off to be murdered."

• 1:00:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Bill Simmons?

  So I'd vote for him. Niedermeyer did try to shoot somebody during the parade chaos.

• 1:00:28Chris Ryan?

  I will give, so then if you say that, I'll do the Ruffalo Hannah Rubenek Award. I'll give it to Mark Metcalf for Niedermeyer's spittle champion, like spitting in Flounder's face during a rotsie.

• 1:00:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, he, they Twisted Sister had the, uh, "We're not gonna take it" video. And they bring Niedermeyer back to basically play Niedermeyer again yelling at Dee Snider. And that, that actor Mark Metcalf basically.

• 1:00:53Chris Ryan?

  Played Niedermeyer.

• 1:00:54Bill Simmons?

  He became Niedermired.

• 1:00:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Bill Simmons?

  It was like, we've talked about, I think that's a rewatchables category, actually, in the flexes. Did you, can you escape this?

• 1:01:02Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 1:01:03Bill Simmons?

  This character. Um, all right, we'll take a break and then we'll do, uh, hottest take.

• 1:01:08Bill Simmons?

  All right, the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford, hottest take award. What do you got, CR?

• 1:01:12Chris Ryan?

  Can we just talk this out for a second?

• 1:01:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Chris Ryan?

  Is this movie, or is Belushi's career different if he plays Flounder? If Belushi doesn't do like a Belushi, like mega performance.

• 1:01:27Bill Simmons?

  He saves Bluto for the next one?

• 1:01:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, or maybe like in, you do Animal House 2 and Flounder becomes Bluto or something like that. I know he's probably a little old to play a freshman.

• 1:01:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Chris Ryan?

  But I would have loved to have seen Belushi like try one different, like sort of speed there.

• 1:01:42Bill Simmons?

  He does that in Neighbors, which I saw in the theater where he plays the straight man, basically.

• 1:01:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Bill Simmons?

  And you're just sitting in there the whole time waiting for him to explode.

• 1:01:50Chris Ryan?

  The other, the only other one was like literally the Tim Matheson thing where I was just like, this guy does this movie, he's got like, like literally like the platonic ideal movie star looks. Goes up for Raiders, it's him, Tom Selleck, Jeff Bridges and Harrison Ford.

• 1:02:05Bill Simmons?

  Just got market corrected a couple of times. Ended up like, by the time we got to the nineties, he's in a lot of those Lifetime type of movies. Where he's like the dad who's attracted to the nanny.

• 1:02:14Chris Ryan?

  He is like later period probably highlight would be when he's the VP on West Wing.

• 1:02:21Bill Simmons?

  My, uh, my hardest take. I think this movie caused more copycat damage than any other movie ever made.

• 1:02:28Chris Ryan?

  Damage?

• 1:02:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it completely wrecked two generations of college kids trying to, basically, this was Give them the blueprint for like, let's go fucking crazy tonight. They would have done it anyway, but this movie gave them a map.

• 1:02:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Bill Simmons?

  To be like, well, we could have a frat, like they, like, all this stuff was kind of happening anyway, but I think this movie like was, was the gasoline and the fucking match for an entire generation.

• 1:02:52Chris Ryan?

  The argument that even outside of Animal House, like outside of the Greek system, there's some influence of Animal House on interior design in houses lived in by like three or more men. Three or more guys, like where you have, we just put an air hockey table that we found on the sidewalk and hung it on the wall. You know what I mean? Or like, the TV is on a milk crate and we have three movies and we watch them in, on a loop.

• 1:03:16Bill Simmons?

  I think this movie killed more brain cells than any other movie ever.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  In terms of the impact it had on kids going to college in the future?

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think just kids being like, someday I'm going to college, I'm gonna be like the Animal House guys and just going fucking nuts. Casting whatevs, the initial cast wishlist, Chevy Chase is Otter, Bill Murray is Boone, Brian Doyle Murray is Hoover, Dan Aykroyd is D-Day and Belushi is Bluto.

• 1:03:39Chris Ryan?

  And Lorne wouldn't let?

• 1:03:41Bill Simmons?

  That Lorne thing's not true.

• 1:03:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:43Bill Simmons?

  I don't think he ever would have not let somebody do a movie. It like, Aykroyd is said, because they based D-Day on Aykroyd because he rode a motorcycle and he feels like he should be in this movie. But they're filming it during season three of SNL. And Aykroyd was like a huge part of the show and he felt like if both him and Belushi were flying back and forth doing a movie, it would hurt the show. And that's why he said he didn't do it. I believe that story more than, I just don't think Lorne would be like, you're not doing this.

• 1:04:11Chris Ryan?

  I would love to try and see how I did now. I mean, I'm a little too old probably, but like, I would love to try and do like bi-coastal potting and just see like if I could do.

• 1:04:20Bill Simmons?

  Oh, CR's in New York, Monday to Wednesday?

• 1:04:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and then I'm back here to do rewatchables Thursday, Friday.

• 1:04:25Bill Simmons?

  Dead.

• 1:04:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:26Bill Simmons?

  Like, the rewatchables have been canceled this week because Bill died from flying back and forth. Chase turned down the film for foul play and there's, of course, Landis and Chase disagree on what happened.

• 1:04:36Chris Ryan?

  Like, just absolutely busting each other's balls in the press.

• 1:04:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Landis. Who I think does spin stuff toward his version of things. He's like, I didn't want Chase to be in it. I told him it was gonna be an ensemble and then.

• 1:04:48Chris Ryan?

  You should do foul play, yeah.

• 1:04:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was like, you're not gonna be the star of this movie. And I Jedi mind tricked him into saying no. And Chase was like, I was offered foul play with Goldie Hawn. Like, of course I was gonna do that.

• 1:04:59Chris Ryan?

  And I think he was like, as usual, John Landis is full of shit or something like that.

• 1:05:01Bill Simmons?

  John Landis is full of shit as he usually is.

• 1:05:07Bill Simmons?

  Ramus wrote the part for Boone for himself, but they decided he looked too old, which is funny because half the people in this movie look too old.

• 1:05:13Chris Ryan?

  And I think that was another Landis call and Ramus was pissed off about it.

• 1:05:18Bill Simmons?

  Still mad about it.

• 1:05:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Bill Simmons?

  Landis wanted Jack Webb from Dragnet and Kim Novak to play the wormers and Jack Webb thought this movie is not funny. Bigger question is, does Craig know who Jack Webb is?

• 1:05:33Chris Ryan?

  I don't.

• 1:05:34Bill Simmons?

  Did you ever see? The star of Dragnet.

• 1:05:35Chris Ryan?

  Tom Hanks did Dan Aykroyd, Dragnet?

• 1:05:38Bill Simmons?

  No. Yeah. Two generations removed from not knowing who he is. Reitman wanted to direct but had no directing skills and they said, no, thanks. That's that guy word. Really tough because this movie came out 48 years ago, but.

• 1:05:50Chris Ryan?

  I went with John Vernon.

• 1:05:52Bill Simmons?

  I think Flounder is that guy. I don't think people know what his real name is.

• 1:05:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I guess, but he's not in a ton of stuff.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  Niedermeyer would be the other one.

• 1:06:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:05Bill Simmons?

  Dion Waiters, I could offer you Donald Sutherland for two and a half scenes. I could offer you Dean Warmer's wife. I could offer you Otis Day. Or I could offer you Shelley. The, uh, the, the girl who is Fawn's roommate. Who really wanted Otter to feel better about things.

• 1:06:24Chris Ryan?

  The girl who's Fawn's roommate cracks me up.

• 1:06:25Bill Simmons?

  Great. She's really good.

• 1:06:26Chris Ryan?

  She's really good, but I'm gonna go with Sutherland just because it is like a classic Dion Waiters of like, I'm in two scenes. Everybody's like, that's Donald fucking Sutherland. He's in Mash. And then, yeah.

• 1:06:36Bill Simmons?

  I have Dean Warmer's wife.

• 1:06:40Bill Simmons?

  You could get your finger out of my ass.

• 1:06:42Chris Ryan?

  You love a drunk witchy.

• 1:06:44Bill Simmons?

  I love drunk and witchy. Great stuff.

• 1:06:49Chris Ryan?

  Can I, is this for casting what ifs? I mean, I guess this is also casting couch director city. The, it's pretty legitimate research that this movie was offered to a bunch of major directors.

• 1:07:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Chris Ryan?

  So John Schlesinger, who did Midnight Cowboy.

• 1:07:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Did you believe this?

• 1:07:05Chris Ryan?

  It's in the New York Times oral history. So I was kind of like, maybe this is true, but it went out at least to Schlesinger, Alan Pacula, Mike Nichols and George Roy Hill and Bob Raffelson.

• 1:07:14Bill Simmons?

  I didn't understand that at all.

• 1:07:15Chris Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 1:07:16Bill Simmons?

  George Roy Hill directed this would just be crazy.

• 1:07:18Chris Ryan?

  I mean, he was probably, he directed Slapshot. It wouldn't have been completely out of the question.

• 1:07:23Bill Simmons?

  I just can't imagine why any of those people would have done this.

• 1:07:26Chris Ryan?

  Which of those directors do you think would have been like, so the 13 year old?

• 1:07:29Bill Simmons?

  Pacula.

• 1:07:29Chris Ryan?

  Are you sure about that?

• 1:07:30Bill Simmons?

  What are we doing?

• 1:07:31Chris Ryan?

  Do I hear 15?

• 1:07:34Bill Simmons?

  I forgot to mention Shelley, two IMDB credits.

• 1:07:38Chris Ryan?

  What's the other one?

• 1:07:40Bill Simmons?

  An episode of Charlie's Angels.

• 1:07:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:07:42Bill Simmons?

  That was it. I thought she was good. I would have liked to have seen more stuff.

• 1:07:45Chris Ryan?

  She was Robbie Benson's Chicano girlfriend and walked out.

• 1:07:50Bill Simmons?

  She dated Emilio Mendez before somebody else. Uh, recasting couch director city, would you have?

• 1:07:58Chris Ryan?

  I think I would like to see Reitman do this one.

• 1:08:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'd have Reitman as director. Craig, Flex.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Jamie Lee Curtis, Unnecessary Nudity, but I think all of the nudity nudity in this movie is defensible because it's all at the service of these like loser horny college kids.

• 1:08:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  So I actually think all of it's fine for 1978 and I, and it's totally fine. There's one scene where I'm like, Karen Allen's just bare ass in that one scene. Just, I don't know why that's in the movie.

• 1:08:25Chris Ryan?

  And that's why Sutherland's ass is out is apparently he was like, I, if she was gonna have to take her pants off, I was gonna take my pants off.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  Wow, like, like it's in solidarity, Sutherland.

• 1:08:35Bill Simmons?

  Ass solidarity.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Cause the rest is like, sure, Blue, she's a creep. He's looking in it. All of it actually kind of works. And then there's just the beginning of a scene Karen Allen's just putting on a dress.

• 1:08:43Chris Ryan?

  We didn't, we haven't really talked about her and Riger.

• 1:08:45Bill Simmons?

  In what sense?

• 1:08:46Chris Ryan?

  Just as like, they're like in kicking and screaming in this movie. Like they're in the most like relatable, normal relationship.

• 1:08:53Bill Simmons?

  Could have used like one more scene with that.

• 1:08:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  One less handjob scene.

• 1:08:56Chris Ryan?

  Karen Allen, she looks great in this.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  Looks great.

• 1:08:58Bill Simmons?

  Great. Really? One of a kind?

• 1:08:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Bill Simmons?

  Something really just like fetching and approachable.

• 1:09:02Chris Ryan?

  Did you have a girlfriend in college when you were like, I love the Boston Red Sox and drinking beer and hanging out with my friends who was just like, when are you gonna grow up?

• 1:09:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Her like pouring beers at the beginning of the movie behind the bar at Delta, you're like, fuck. But is all, yeah, like, like, that was also, she's also like the coolest thing ever. Yeah.

• 1:09:22Bill Simmons?

  That's what I like about the character is I'm not positive she exists in real life.

• 1:09:26Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:09:27Bill Simmons?

  Trying to think of any friend, girlfriend I had who was.

• 1:09:29Chris Ryan?

  No, she's like the platonic ideal of a woman in that.

• 1:09:36Bill Simmons?

  Half ass center of research, we mentioned University of Oregon, allowed them to use the campus for 20K, but they were like, don't mention us. And then all these years later, they have like a tour when you go.

• 1:09:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Bill Simmons?

  Here's all the filming locations that you shout between the third and fourth quarters of every football game.

• 1:09:50Chris Ryan?

  Just don't watch the movie, but know that we were in it.

• 1:09:53Bill Simmons?

  Black extras had to be bussed in from Portland due to the scarcity around the college campus.

• 1:09:58Chris Ryan?

  Christ, wow. In 78?

• 1:09:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Landis brought the deltas five days early so they could all bond. And they all bond and then Bruce McGill's room became party central and then the omegas were another part and they all didn't really like each other.

• 1:10:12Chris Ryan?

  Like, it's weird that on a movie like Animal House, they're doing like method acting rules. Cause I think I read that like Greg, Greg wanted to party with them, but it was like, you know, I couldn't really, so like it just put me more into character. And I was like, come on, man.

• 1:10:25Bill Simmons?

  Do you think they took movies more seriously in the 1970s? Cause we made less of them, right? So if you're in this, it's like, this is a big deal. We have to, now I just feel like, I'd be like, yeah, I'm in Animal House, then I'm gonna do a, a thing on friends and neighbors. And then you're just kind of bouncing around.

• 1:10:40Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I think there's also something about like, you know, that this, these movies back then like also excelled at like finding unknowns. And so people were probably like, this is my big break. I'm gonna take it seriously, even if it's Animal House.

• 1:10:53Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 1:10:55Bill Simmons?

  Belushi went to local nightclubs during filming, checked out bands, became fascinated by a musician named Curtis Salgado, who wore sunglasses and loved the blues and it became the Blues Brothers.

• 1:11:07Bill Simmons?

  They almost did a sequel, Craig. It was gonna take place during the 1967 Summer of Love. A reunion at Otter's wedding.

• 1:11:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16Bill Simmons?

  Which is funny in itself. Otter was gonna get married. Um, but then when more American graffiti bombed the box office. I saw that movie in the theater. Universal stalls the project, Belushi dies and they're done.

• 1:11:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this would have been, it was gonna be set at Hay Ashbury. I don't know if it necessarily would.

• 1:11:31Bill Simmons?

  It's kinda into the idea. I don't know.

• 1:11:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I, it's like, it's a different sensibility than the one that was in this one. This kinda like Ivy League prick sensibility.

• 1:11:39Bill Simmons?

  Dwayne Jesse played Otis Day.

• 1:11:41Chris Ryan?

  This is my favorite piece of research.

• 1:11:43Bill Simmons?

  Purchased the rights to the character name. They made it up and became Otis Day in the nights.

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  But he doesn't do the music in the movie. He's lip syncing.

• 1:11:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Chris Ryan?

  And Landis finds out like 25 years later that this guy has been just touring the country doing Otis Day. He's like, good for him, I guess.

• 1:11:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, Steven Bishop, no relation to my buddy Bish, who was also named Steve Bishop. Um, this is a running joke for us that there were two Steve Bishop's.

• 1:12:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:09Bill Simmons?

  He was the guy with the guitar.

• 1:12:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:12:12Bill Simmons?

  Keys had a, he had a career in his own. Started dating Karen Allen after they met in the set.

• 1:12:18Chris Ryan?

  No way.

• 1:12:18Bill Simmons?

  Dated for years. Wrote the song Separate Lives, based on their breakup that became a hit song for Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin.

• 1:12:26Chris Ryan?

  Huh.

• 1:12:26Bill Simmons?

  And was in the movie White Nights.

• 1:12:28Chris Ryan?

  I remember Separate Lives. Yeah.

• 1:12:32Bill Simmons?

  Emotional. Not a great karaoke song.

• 1:12:34Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  Bruce McGill and Tim Madison starred in Black Sheep. They're the only actors to star with Chris Farley and John Belushi.

• 1:12:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:12:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then, um, Universal's film president, Ned Tannen, wanted them to cut the entire black bar scene. Thought there would be riots across America. Big argument back and forth. They sent the movie to Richard Pryor. And he sent, um, Ned a note saying Animal House is fucking funny. White people are crazy. And I ended up saying, this movie really, really hit the gamut of weird things to touch. Apex Mountain, Belushi, yes.

• 1:13:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Bill Simmons?

  Tim Matheson. I'm gonna say yes. Felt like, like the world was his oyster after this movie.

• 1:13:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yes.

• 1:13:22Bill Simmons?

  Cafeteria scenes.

• 1:13:23Chris Ryan?

  Is he also in 1941 with Belushi? Is Matheson in that?

• 1:13:26Bill Simmons?

  I think he is. Cafeteria scenes?

• 1:13:30Bill Simmons?

  Spent some great cafeteria scenes.

• 1:13:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah. Dining hall scenes, but this is probably up there. This is the best food fight I've ever seen.

• 1:13:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it narrowly edges just one of the guys. They make Greg Tolan.

• 1:13:44Bill Simmons?

  Craig didn't like that movie.

• 1:13:44Chris Ryan?

  It just beats it out, yeah, barely.

• 1:13:47Bill Simmons?

  John Landis?

• 1:13:48Chris Ryan?

  I think Trading Places personally.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  Yep. I agree. Handjobs?

• 1:13:56Bill Simmons?

  Why is it soft?

• 1:13:57Chris Ryan?

  I kinda wanna Google greatest movie handjobs, but I'm a little worried this is more computer.

• 1:14:03Bill Simmons?

  Steven First?

• 1:14:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, definitely, definitely. It goes on to play Dorfman again multiple times, right?

• 1:14:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Peter Riegard?

• 1:14:12Chris Ryan?

  No. But I can't off the top of my head think of what it is, maybe?

• 1:14:19Bill Simmons?

  I think it was Animal House for years, but now I think it's Sopranos.

• 1:14:22Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:24Bill Simmons?

  He dates the Russian hooker, and then Tony beats the shit out of him.

• 1:14:27Chris Ryan?

  Crossing Delancey and Local Hero are the two that I remember, yeah.

• 1:14:30Bill Simmons?

  College movies, I'm gonna say yes. Toga parties, yes.

• 1:14:33Chris Ryan?

  Do you have a second favorite college movie?

• 1:14:35Bill Simmons?

  Old School.

• 1:14:36Chris Ryan?

  Do you have a third favorite?

• 1:14:39Bill Simmons?

  Road Trip.

• 1:14:41Bill Simmons?

  I think Road Trip's excellent. I really like that movie.

• 1:14:43Chris Ryan?

  I think Everybody Wants Some is like way up there for me now.

• 1:14:46Bill Simmons?

  It's getting there. It's, it's aging really nicely.

• 1:14:48Chris Ryan?

  Were you ever a PCU fan?

• 1:14:50Bill Simmons?

  Never really, I never really loved Piven.

• 1:14:53Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Chris Ryan?

  You've only watched his, his television series nine times?

• 1:14:57Bill Simmons?

  Lloyd!

• 1:15:03Bill Simmons?

  Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:15:06Chris Ryan?

  Hanks.

• 1:15:08Bill Simmons?

  I think Hanks.

• 1:15:09Chris Ryan?

  I think Hanks could do Otter.

• 1:15:12Bill Simmons?

  Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:15:14Chris Ryan?

  This is really tough. Neither of them, obviously. It's two different, entirely different films.

• 1:15:18Bill Simmons?

  I think it's definitely Spielberg. He basically tries to do this in nineteen forty-one to some degree. Right? Scorsese would be like, there's cocaine, there's all kinds of shit going on.

• 1:15:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like when Belushi's on the ladder, he's just like staring, yeah.

• 1:15:33Bill Simmons?

  Pick a net. I have a few.

• 1:15:35Chris Ryan?

  Um, does Dean Wormer really need to go digging into the school's constitution to find a reason to expel these guys? They're clearly like, like a disaster.

• 1:15:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they don't go to class, they're all good at zero point zero.

• 1:15:45Chris Ryan?

  He's like, we gotta put him on probation. We have to look for all these reasons to get him out of here.

• 1:15:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're the dean. Just fucking kick him out. A few of the actors too old for college, no question, but I think that's part of the joke. Wouldn't Mandy hear Bluto on the ladder or see him?

• 1:16:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:16:01Bill Simmons?

  He's moving the ladder over. And could you actually even do that? It's like a twelve foot ladder. Could you jump it up and move it like that?

• 1:16:09Chris Ryan?

  Uh, if, um, Flounder's brother was also, had been in the frat, wouldn't he kind of understand if his car got destroyed on like a frat road trip weekend?

• 1:16:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 1:16:20Chris Ryan?

  And also like, I'm not sure I totally understand why Boons being such an idiot with Katie. Like, guy, Karen Allen, man, like, what are you doing being like?

• 1:16:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just lock that down. Come on, Boon.

• 1:16:30Chris Ryan?

  I gotta go on a date with a bunch of like Smith College girls for a weekend.

• 1:16:34Bill Simmons?

  Mrs. Wormer goes to the Delta party?

• 1:16:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:38Bill Simmons?

  It's insane. There's no way that happens.

• 1:16:40Chris Ryan?

  She's like, get me a drink.

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Fawn dies in a kiln explosion.

• 1:16:46Chris Ryan?

  Awesome.

• 1:16:46Bill Simmons?

  What? I just need more information. I looked up kiln. Yeah.

• 1:16:51Chris Ryan?

  So you do your, you do, you do shape the clay and everything, you put like a lacquer on it?

• 1:16:55Bill Simmons?

  And it just exploded and killed her?

• 1:16:56Chris Ryan?

  But it's like a fucking super oven. Yeah. And they used to have those in my like arts and crafts classes.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  I just wanted more information.

• 1:17:02Chris Ryan?

  And they would always be like, it was really weird now that I think back about like shop and arts and crafts class when I was a kid, because we were around like table saws and kilns and all these chemicals for black rooms for, for dark rooms for photos.

• 1:17:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Chris Ryan?

  And it was like, yeah, you guys just don't drink that and don't put your hand in the oven.

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  Right. Why didn't we see Flounder puke on Dean Wormer? Big miss. I think if this movie's made 20 years later, we see the puke.

• 1:17:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:30Bill Simmons?

  He's like just covered in puke. They'll figure it out. Can you really just buy 10,000 marbles? Flounder buys 10,000 marbles. Like, think how many marbles that is.

• 1:17:39Chris Ryan?

  I love that. That scene is literally one second long. He like cuts them. He's like, 10,000 marbles, please.

• 1:17:46Bill Simmons?

  And would a store have 10,000 marbles?

• 1:17:48Chris Ryan?

  I don't even know.

• 1:17:48Bill Simmons?

  Could you go to a store right now, buy 10,000 marbles?

• 1:17:52Bill Simmons?

  How did they see out of the, uh, the float car, the eat me float car?

• 1:17:57Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it was like a, it's like a tank, basically. I don't, I don't know.

• 1:18:01Bill Simmons?

  Every time they cut to it, it's just completely covered with float stuff.

• 1:18:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:05Bill Simmons?

  And they're, Bruce McGill's just, just driving it around like he's-

• 1:18:09Chris Ryan?

  It's insane. That whole, that whole sequence is so nuts.

• 1:18:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast or untouchable? I think a sequel could have worked if Belushi hadn't died.

• 1:18:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Bill Simmons?

  I think a reunion thing would have been really funny.

• 1:18:22Chris Ryan?

  I think they could have just like, this could have just been a franchise where they just kept making animal houses set throughout the decades, but-

• 1:18:28Bill Simmons?

  Big mistake.

• 1:18:28Chris Ryan?

  I guess they just let-

• 1:18:29Bill Simmons?

  I mean, we had four American pies?

• 1:18:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the florist, Zane Lowe, Robert Evans, or somebody else?

• 1:18:39Chris Ryan?

  Boone, here you are, man. Higher education, but we find you at an all time low. Committing statutory rape.

• 1:18:48Chris Ryan?

  Binge drinking, not taking your studies seriously. My, my Zane is rusty. I'm sorry. I should probably-

• 1:18:56Chris Ryan?

  Where do we go from here? And where's your 13 year old child bride gonna go with you?

• 1:19:03Bill Simmons?

  We even spoiled by Jerry Lee Lewis.

• 1:19:07Bill Simmons?

  I had, uh, I had Dr. Charles Nichols.

• 1:19:13Bill Simmons?

  You'll have to excuse my friend, John Butowski. He's not feeling well.

• 1:19:19Chris Ryan?

  That'll be good.

• 1:19:21Bill Simmons?

  Just one Oscar who gets a Belushi?

• 1:19:23Chris Ryan?

  I guess so, yeah.

• 1:19:24Bill Simmons?

  Sure.

• 1:19:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions. Did this movie create double secret probation?

• 1:19:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Bill Simmons?

  Was this a term that existed before this movie? I'm gonna say it did not exist.

• 1:19:36Chris Ryan?

  Maybe it was taken from col- like their college experience, but it is very funny. Yeah.

• 1:19:41Bill Simmons?

  What'd you have?

• 1:19:41Chris Ryan?

  Uh, did this movie invent not only the sex comedy, but the college comedy? And what were these guys majoring in? Communications. Was that a major back then in 1962?

• 1:19:53Bill Simmons?

  It would have been funny if Bluto was a big political science guy. It's like Middle East, man, stuff's happening there.

• 1:19:58Chris Ryan?

  Doesn't, uh, he's pre-med, right? But pre-law, same thing.

• 1:20:03Bill Simmons?

  Did the Omegas create the Illuminati?

• 1:20:07Bill Simmons?

  That frat, the frat hazing was pretty, pretty fucking creepy.

• 1:20:09Chris Ryan?

  I think they tipped us off and it's really real, you know?

• 1:20:11Bill Simmons?

  Kubrick got eyes wide shut from that scene. This is my big one. Was Greg gay?

• 1:20:18Chris Ryan?

  I guess so. I guess it's possible.

• 1:20:20Bill Simmons?

  Two of the hottest girls that that-

• 1:20:22Chris Ryan?

  Mandy and Babs, that's, those are your hot-

• 1:20:24Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't have, was, was against premarital sex and could barely get it up for a handjob in the car or on a thing. Just I have some suspicions. Seemed really, really interested in the, in feuding with the Deltas. I don't know, Craig.

• 1:20:37Chris Ryan?

  Very repressed.

• 1:20:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, something's going on with him.

• 1:20:42Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, memorabilia you'd want from this movie, so many choices.

• 1:20:45Chris Ryan?

  This is easy for me. It's, uh, the fishbowl boobs. From behind the bar.

• 1:20:51Bill Simmons?

  I had the, uh, the college sweatshirt Belushi wore.

• 1:20:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's a great one.

• 1:20:55Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. Which you can get, uh, I mean, everybody ripped that off since you can buy that. I was actually gonna try to speed rush that to wear that for the part.

• 1:21:04Bill Simmons?

  Couldn't figure it out. Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi, best life lesson, don't get mad, get even.

• 1:21:08Chris Ryan?

  You know, I had your only young ones.

• 1:21:12Bill Simmons?

  Double feature?

• 1:21:13Chris Ryan?

  Old school.

• 1:21:14Bill Simmons?

  I have Revenge of the Nerds.

• 1:21:16Chris Ryan?

  I've never seen Revenge of the Nerds. I, I don't know if that would ever be a rewatchable. Hard to find.

• 1:21:23Bill Simmons?

  As soon as it's streaming again, it's gonna be a rewatch.

• 1:21:25Chris Ryan?

  Come on, Ted Sarandos.

• 1:21:26Bill Simmons?

  Come on, Ted.

• 1:21:27Chris Ryan?

  Do the right thing. You love comedy, right?

• 1:21:30Bill Simmons?

  Big comedy fan. What do you have for double feature?

• 1:21:32Chris Ryan?

  Uh, God, I guess it's old school, yeah, probably old school. Another one, a good one would be Project X. Project X for the debauchery, yes. You can go neighbors, I guess.

• 1:21:42Bill Simmons?

  It's a great one.

• 1:21:42Chris Ryan?

  But yeah.

• 1:21:44Bill Simmons?

  Fucking Ben had a Project X party at our house.

• 1:21:47Chris Ryan?

  He did?

• 1:21:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Chris Ryan?

  Was it a, what do you mean though? Like a themed party or it was like a project?

• 1:21:53Bill Simmons?

  It was supposed to be a hundred and twenty-five people and it turned out to be four hundred in the police game.

• 1:21:56Chris Ryan?

  When did this happen?

• 1:21:57Bill Simmons?

  Eh, two months ago.

• 1:22:00Chris Ryan?

  You fucking kept that under the rug, really?

• 1:22:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was mad about it and Ben was, and Ben was, uh, not happy about it and then six months later he's like, it's like when I had my Project X party.

• 1:22:11Chris Ryan?

  Wait, did Ben try to do that? You motherfucker! Did Ben try to do that? Looked at, no one's more disappointed about this than me.

• 1:22:16Bill Simmons?

  He did, he played all the fucking tricks.

• 1:22:18Chris Ryan?

  Was it like, kids from other schools started showing up?

• 1:22:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was people throwing up in the street.

• 1:22:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god, that's fucking amazing.

• 1:22:24Bill Simmons?

  Disaster. But he, Ben's a mastermind and I think he did all of it.

• 1:22:28Chris Ryan?

  But did anything go wrong? Did anything burn down or did anything go awry?

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  We're still here. Nothing burned down, um, the cops did come.

• 1:22:35Chris Ryan?

  Are you still finding like cigarettes in random places and stuff?

• 1:22:37Bill Simmons?

  It's the maddest I've ever been in him. But I should have known. But now, the thing is, he can never have a party here again.

• 1:22:45Chris Ryan?

  I should have showed up like the dean's wife.

• 1:22:47Bill Simmons?

  You probably, I honestly would have been surprised.

• 1:22:49Chris Ryan?

  It would have been amazing if we were like, I heard about this party tonight, weird, it's a bill.

• 1:22:56Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie?

• 1:22:57Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Belushi.

• 1:22:58Bill Simmons?

  Belushi. Craig, give us your thoughts.

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  I love this movie. I like it more now than I ever have. When I watched it, whatever, ten years ago, closer to Zoe's opinion, I was like, okay, it's a little underwhelming maybe, it's, the pacing is just different, the way it's cut. But I don't know why, watching it, I, I had an absolute blast, it's such a great hang. Cause it's a hang movie, which is rare now, it's not really, there's not like a lot of like, hard jokes, punchlines in this film, it's more like Dirty, Dazed and Confused?

• 1:23:28Chris Ryan?

  It's, you know what it is too, is it's, uh, it's just short stories, so like until the last thirty minutes, there's basically no coherent. It's not really a plot, you know, it's like,

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:23:38Chris Ryan?

  Here's all these funny things that happened to these guys in college and then at the end it's like, they have to stay in college, so there's gonna be a parade, yeah.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  It's just more about the hang and the movie, this movie, for all of it's, you know, it's like, it hasn't aged well in certain ways, but it's just like your fun drunk uncle who is hilarious and you just put up with like,

• 1:23:54Chris Ryan?

  Had you, when was the last time you'd seen it before you watched it for this?

• 1:23:57Bill Simmons?

  Every couple of years, so I'll, I'll jump in. Um, I like the, the interplay between the guys, like there's real friendship in this movie, which I think a lot of movies have borrowed since.

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  I think it's actually just quite well acted. I, I think it's underratedly well acted across the board, for how dumb this movie seems like it is.

• 1:24:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Matheson, um,

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Rieger.

• 1:24:15Bill Simmons?

  Rieger's great.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  They're all really good in it.

• 1:24:17Bill Simmons?

  I think he's really funny in this.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  And I think movies back then compared to comedies now, like, I don't know, e- even though this movie's about a lot of stupid stuff, like, there are a lot of commentaries on society and what's going on across the country and now I think comedies are a little bit more siloed in what they're trying to say and they're more just about like the punchline on the screen.

• 1:24:36Chris Ryan?

  There's also like, comedies are a little bit more high concept now, so it'll be like, this is a comedy about how like, a guy will die in five days if he doesn't meet the love of his life.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  I just watched a com- a, a college movie on Hulu, Pizza Movie, which is starring a Stranger Things kid and it's all about like a kid in a dorm who takes drugs trying to get pizza. And it, I mean, it is what it, but it's like, i- it's not saying anything, it's just a fun, crazy comedy about a guy taking drugs in college, but it's not, it's, it's not wider than the very narrow scope of the movie.

• 1:25:03Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  And these movies back then were just, were different.

• 1:25:07Bill Simmons?

  They're, they're sneaking some Watergate, Vietnam, Nixon stuff in here too. In, in smart ways, that's not over the top, like what we have now.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that the, their sort of umbrella excuse for the way that this movie and I, you know, the thirteen year old stuff is almost so beyond the pale, but like, they're like, it was an equal opportunity, we made fun of everybody.

• 1:25:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  You know, kind of thing. I also think sometimes when you have to work within parameters, the movie gets better. Like, you know, the script was apparently way, way, way raunchier than it actually was, but Universal kind of putting-

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  Like, like guardrails on the movie. I actually think ends up, you have to make it work and actually make it funny for it to validate being in the film. Yeah. And it can't just be raunchy for raunchy's sake. There's like rape scenes apparently that they cut. Yeah. So I think sometimes when you have kind of the off the wall style and you pair it with a studio and you have to kind of land in the middle, sometimes it is the best outcome. It's movie magic, baby.

• 1:26:00Bill Simmons?

  It's a classic. That's it for comedy month. We ended up doing four quote unquote politically incorrect movies.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  Something About Mary, Tropic Thunder, Borat, Animal House.

• 1:26:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, four movies that definitely pushed the envelope for different ways.

• 1:26:12Speaker 02

  For you to go back and revisit, which is the one that you feel like?

• 1:26:15Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, Borat.

• 1:26:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Bill Simmons?

  I was just, you missed that episode.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  You were at Hifitz's wedding. Borat just, I was on the treadmill and I almost fell off like four times. I don't know why. It just fucking kills me.

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  It's really.

• 1:26:29Bill Simmons?

  But all of them, I thought, held up really well.

• 1:26:33Bill Simmons?

  I think there's something about Mary is, has, we've been with that movie now for 28 years. So you know all the bits, but it's still, Warren still makes me laugh. Especially when Warren came back in the last Survivor episode. Did you see that? Jonathan's brother came back dressed like Warren.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:26:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was amazing.

• 1:26:52Bill Simmons?

  Com- comedy month though, pretty fun.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  What's next?

• 1:26:55Bill Simmons?

  So we're doing, um, we're gonna do Summer from Hell, starting, uh, starting next week. All movies that are dot, dot, dot from hell. We've talked about this for a long time.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  You wanna announce the June 1st movie or no?

• 1:27:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we're, so the first one is gonna be 2001, Computer from Hell. And then Netflix, Netflix, uh, licensed a bunch of movies for this, so it's gonna be, and I don't know if we're gonna do all of them, but Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Single Way Female, Good Son, Pacific Heights, which I don't know if they're able to license.

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  That's the one I was most excited about.

• 1:27:28Bill Simmons?

  You're excited about that one. Domestic Disturbance, which is in the running for funniest, unintentionally funniest movie of the 2000s.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  And a bunch of others, so they're, they're all on there. So From Hell, it might be, lasts longer than a month.

• 1:27:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:27:43Bill Simmons?

  Might be like a month and a half.

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  What a way to ring in the World Cup.

• 1:27:47Bill Simmons?

  Some mailbags as well, yeah. In and out of our World Cup people. All right. Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Gahow. Thanks, Chris Ryan. See you next week in the rewatch.

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  Later.