‘Kindergarten Cop’ With Bill Simmons and Kyle Brandt

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Kyle Brandt just need to know one simple thing: Who is your daddy, and what does he do? The guys head to Astoria, Oregon, to revisit Arnold Schwarzenegger in ‘Kindergarten Cop,’ also starring Pamela Reed and Richard Tyson. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

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• 0:41Bill Simmons?

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• 1:22Bill Simmons?

  Get free shipping on your order, 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it's a Rewatchables podcast. They would appreciate that. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:40Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables is brought to by The Ringer Podcast Network. You can find us on Netflix as well as on Spotify and on a whole bunch of different places. You can find Kyle Brandt every once in a while on The Ringer Podcast Network. He's now belongs to NFL SPN, ESPFL.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  ESPNFL Network.

• 1:59Bill Simmons?

  ESPNFL Network. Hopped over there, he's popping up all over the place still on Good Morning Football. He's been coming on this podcast five years, six years?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Five, six years since we did Teen Wolf. I think it was in the COVID year. That was my first one.

• 2:13Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, a little light on Arnold movies for us.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  And we were texting Bill and we're like, we kind of miss Arnold. Kind of miss hanging with Arnold. I don't think we've done it since The Running Man. That was a long time ago.

• 2:24Bill Simmons?

  Long time ago, we're back. I'll be back. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kindergarten Cop is next.

• 2:44Bill Simmons?

  Kindergarten Cop, 1990. I was in college. Where were you in 1990?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Fifth grade, saw it in the theater.

• 2:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're kind of the audience for Kindergarten Cop.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 2:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Big time. Loved it. Fired up by it. Thought it was, the kids were hilarious. Thought the action was awesome. This is an important movie for me. Big time. You? You like it? Did you see it in the theater in college?

• 3:06Bill Simmons?

  Saw it on a date. I think it's one of those rare adults can go to the movie. College kids can go to the movie. Parents can take their kids or kids can just sneak in and go. And I think 1990, this movie now, I don't know what it is in 2026. I just think it's a horrible version of itself. Back then, you could end a kid's movie with an active shooter who set a fire and is now trying to kidnap a kid. And we're fine. Nobody judges it. We just go, we're scared for the kid. We figured Arnold's going to save the day. This movie feels very distinct, 1990. Let's not overthink this. Let's just give Arnold a job being a kindergarten teacher and let's go.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  So much of the fun in watching it now is just seeing, holy shit. How is this in the movie? It's, there's, there's 12 of those things. And it's like, you're, you're enjoying Arnold and wherever the kids and all that. But then you're also like, what is with all this child abuse? And then heavy-handed divorce lectures? And then like some weird thing with sexual identity? Like, everything is in this movie? And it always cracks me up that like, if you brought your kids to this movie, oh, great, Arnold's going to the kid's stuff. I can't wait. Bring the kids. Kindergarten, it's gonna be awesome. And you sit down like your eight-year-old or maybe your actual kindergartner. Like in the first three minutes of the movie, there is an execution style murder. And then a woman is handcuffed to a dead body.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  And moments after that, a man slaps a woman across the face and you're like, what is this? We should have gone to Home Alone again. It's nuts. And there's 50 things like that in this movie. It's hilarious.

• 4:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's like, is this an NC 17? No, no, it's probably was PG back then. I, this movie exists in this weird part of time for culture. Where like my generation, we grew up and we had those, you know, we had the kid shows, but we also had like the ABC after school specials.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:57Bill Simmons?

  And we had those warning TV movies that like CBS would do.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  After school, yeah, sure.

• 5:02Bill Simmons?

  It would be like Diary of a Hitchhiker. And it would be like some hitchhiker gets brutally murdered in the beginning and hitchhike. And basically the lesson was don't be a hitchhiker. Don't trust your uncle to take pictures of you. It was a lot of lessons. And then as we headed into the late eighties, early nineties. We flipped and there's this hybrid era, cause Home Alone is in this too.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:22Bill Simmons?

  Some of those sports movies that like the Little Big League. Sandlot, these movies where it's like they're kids movies. But they're crossing lines in a way that I'm not sure we would do now. And then by the time we get to the 2000s, all of a sudden we're like, hey, these should just be kids movies. And we're really careful.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  I know.

• 5:40Bill Simmons?

  And they do the Bad News Bears remake and they have to like check every box of it. And they take basically all the sauce out of it. And just now this movie has John Cena in it. Or The Rock. And it's really safe and it's like a really, really easy PG. And every kid is carefully cast. None of the kids make sense together. And I just think that's how we do it. But the early nineties, they didn't give a fuck. They just didn't care and I, I'm kinda here for it.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  I'm totally here for it. It, I, I assure you, if you're listening or watching, you've not seen this movie in a long time. Shit's gonna make your head spin when you watch it. And I think this movie is a flex. You already mentioned it once of the PG 13 rating. That you can push that shit really far and still not get under the R. Like just brutal shootings, drug deaths. Oh, like kids looking up girls skirts. I was like, shit, man, I was spit my drink out when I saw that. And they put that in the trailer for this movie. I went back and watched it in 1990. It was desensitized. I was fifth grade. I'm 10 years old watching this movie. There was no part of my parents in the lobby who were like, wow, that was a mistake. They were busting balls with me. They thought it was awesome.

• 6:51Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Totally different sensibility.

• 6:52Bill Simmons?

  The kid is getting, the child abuse kid is getting bullied by the class.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:57Bill Simmons?

  And then it turns out he's being abused. Never really resolved, but no, no idea how it worked out for him. This kid has had one of the most traumatic kindergartens you could possibly have. Ending with a fire and a school shooting and it's like, did he, did he come out of this? Okay, we'll never know. He's just kind of there. Did he make any friends? Probably not.

• 7:17Bill Simmons?

  This movie hinges around Arnold. I wrote down, to me, like, it's like Wemby. It's like a one on one, you go and you're like, I've never seen this before. Or you go see Otani and he pitches eight innings and hits a three run homer. And you're like, I've just never seen this before. I didn't even know how to explain Arnold all these years later because we've done a couple of these movies. It takes off with, for him with Terminator and 84. And he's bouncing around the action stratosphere there for a little bit. But in the late eighties, when he mixes like, I could be in a comedy, I could be in Twins. No, now I can be in Total Recall. Watch this, I'm going to be in Kindergarten Cop. I'm going to be in Terminator two again. He, he was basically these two people.

• 8:02Bill Simmons?

  Everything he says in this movie is hilarious.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Everyone.

• 8:05Bill Simmons?

  And maybe 80% of the time, I don't think it's intentional.

• 8:11Bill Simmons?

  But I think he knows, we think it's funny and doesn't take it personally. And is playing along with the gag, but it's also not intentional on his part. I don't even know, the line that he zags, I don't even know how he does it.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  I, I totally get what you're saying. You and I as people who love Arnold, spend most of his movies, a lot of them openly laughing at him. But we still love him. And dude, it's different though than, we do the same thing for Seagal.

• 8:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  And Seagal were like, is like a clown. Arnold is, I totally respect him. I don't look at him like Seagal at all, not to mention the bodybuilder, the self-made thing, the immigrant, all that. Like that stuff is very cool. But I, I'll watch most of his movies and like, I think he, Arnold's kind of the joke, but I just love him so much. I, I just get over it.

• 8:59Bill Simmons?

  And he's kind of okay being the joke because ultimately the joke's on everybody else. Cause he's making like 15 to 20 million a year, making movies at this point. He's hugely famous. Uh, I saw this in the theater and during the, it's not a tumor. It's not a tumor at all.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 9:18Bill Simmons?

  Just huge laughter in the theater. And I don't even know, like they, I, so Ivan Reitman directs this. He, we'll talk about the legendary run he had. He had to know what he had here. The same way like Bill Parcells knew what he had with Lawrence Taylor. It's like, this guy's a one of one freak. How do I just put him in situations where he's just attacking the quarterback with one on one blocking? Ivan Reitman, this whole movie is like, how can I just have? First of all, how can I have Arnold just saying lines? Arnold says more lines in this movie than I think in any other movies he's ever done. How do I have variation in the words? So instead of tumor, I know it's going to be funnier when he says tumor. I think Arnold knows it's funny, but maybe deep down he thinks we're just laughing at the delivery

• 10:02Bill Simmons?

  and not just how stupid he sounds. I don't know how they did it. And I think you can become self-aware with this stuff. And eventually he became self-aware, but I think in 1990, he wasn't a hundred percent self-aware yet.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  So it's a little bit of a heat check because Reitman and Schwarzenegger, they do twins and it works. And he doesn't have a giant machine gun and stuff like, holy shit, maybe we can do this. Now he's going to get a deeper heat check with Junior and he's going to miss, but this one hits again. And I think you're on to something like, I was watching this movie and I was finding myself, who is this for really? Because if you're there for the Arnold ass kicking, the kid stuff might be annoying. If you're there for the kid stuff, the Arnold ass kicking might be too much. And my answer is it's just for diehard Arnold heads. Like that you show up no matter what he does, because if you don't love Arnold Schwarzenegger, I mean, love, this movie could be too much for you. I also think, I agree with that. It's the most dialogue he's ever had. Dude, he's carrying five different genres.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  We have a buddy cop movie, a romantic movie, action, kids, and he's really, really doing well. I also think it's like, I think it's his most quotable movie that he has ever done, ever. Like every single thing he says is a gif. It's a soundboard button. It's just like. I I I'm going to ask you some questions. I want them answered immediately. It's all of those things. I'm a cop, you idiot. It's so fun to say and listen to. It's because he's just shouting out pearls every single scene. We've never seen him do that before.

• 11:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, we also had Total Recall six months earlier.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:33Bill Simmons?

  So we are now on like an Arnold addiction cycle where every six months, we need to go to a movie theater and just see him be Arnold. And he's, he's carrying this basically from 1987.

• 11:45Bill Simmons?

  Basically through True Lies. This is a pretty great eight year run. So I found the premiere magazine where they wrote basically a page about this movie. There are some gems in there.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Oh, great. I love this.

• 11:56Bill Simmons?

  He said, Arnold said, this was a high concept. He's been touting for a long time. This is a quote, "For 10 years, I've been telling writers, producers, directors, and studio executives that I would love to do a film where a kid or children are a very important part. Something like Jon Voight did in this boxing movie, The Champ. You change always when you're around children." See, if Arnold in these meetings, one of the biggest stars in the world, and they're like, what do you want to do next? He's like, I'd like to do something with children. Can I be in a kid's movie? Like, I can't. Now, we're still doing cocaine in the late 80s, and I'm sure people like that. Yeah, that sounds great. We'll put you in a first-class classroom.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I have one of the kids talk about penises. Yeah.

• 12:44Bill Simmons?

  So they just let him go to unleash him. It worked. Not only did this movie make a ton of money, but I, people love this movie. Like, I told a bunch of people anecdotally, like, what's next rewatchables? Oh, it's gonna be Kindergarten Cop. People are like, I love that movie.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  They love that movie, and everybody loves saying it's not a tumor. If you mention Kindergarten Cop to someone, they will and must say tumor. Like, Arnold took possession of the word tumor, which is a horrible, horrible word. When you hear that word, you think of Arnold. I used to think of him when I would watch Amani Tumor, and I would say, it's not a tumor. He took over that word. Question for you. I have it's not a tumor. I think it's his second most famous line in his entire career. I got, I'll be back number one.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  I'll be back has to be first.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  And I think it's not a tumor is more famous than Get to the Chappa, which is really well-known from Predator. I think it's all the way up there, this throwaway line he has with this kid. But it's fun to say, and everybody will say it if you mention this movie.

• 13:44Bill Simmons?

  I think you're right. I think. It took a second life when Amani Tumor actually showed up on the Giants, which was what, mid 90s?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:53Bill Simmons?

  And I'm 99% sure Berman, who was doing the nicknames, and the nicknames were funny back then. We didn't have the internet. We didn't know any better. Like, if you go back, some of them are pretty forced.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jeff Brown Paper Bagwell, Eric Sleeping With The Enemy.

• 14:07Bill Simmons?

  I gotta say, I really enjoyed the way back when, but when he was doing the, "Amani, it's not a tumor." It was the best one of all the ones, because so, "It's not a tumor" lived on through like Tumor's entire career, basically.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  But from my understanding is, is that Boomer, to this day, will have a nickname for everyone he encounters at ESPN. Did you ever get a nickname from Boomer?

• 14:30Bill Simmons?

  No, he didn't like me for a while, and then we, no, I think, I don't know what happened, but maybe I took it, made a joke about him in a column or something.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:41Bill Simmons?

  But we hashed it out at the 2013 ESPYS, had a great hang with, it was the year, I think, Jon Hamm hosted, that after-party at a hotel. And Boomer and I really put in the time, like 15, 20 minutes, and I just like kissed his ass, and it was genuine. I was like, look, man.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Did you initiate, or did he?

• 15:01Bill Simmons?

  I did, I initiated, and things were going awesome for me at the time at ESPN. And I went up to him, and I'm like, "Look, man, things are going great for me. I feel so indebted to you. You built this place. Like, people like me are just trying to keep it going, but you're the guy." And I really felt that way, and he loved it.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  I did too.

• 15:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. But I think, you know, as people get older over the years, sometimes you could take shit. Berman was, outsized incredibly important. So, anyway, "It's not a tumor", for him, was one of the, Sleeping With The Enemy was still the best one, though.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  An excellent one, probably my favorite all time.

• 15:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think that was the best one. Anyway, Arnold could be in any movie. So they're doing this movie, basically variations of it for the last, I'd say 15 years. And it would have The Rock or John Cena.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Vin Diesel.

• 15:50Bill Simmons?

  Jason Statham. Vin Diesel.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:55Bill Simmons?

  It's just a really hard one to pull off. And I gotta be honest, I think he's the only one that did it.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  He's the only one that nailed it. And I have to give it, I have to give credit, like, a lot of times those movies lose you because the kids are annoying. The kids are cute in this. Let's, let's call it what it is.

• 16:10Bill Simmons?

  They really are.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Really funny kids. And in 1990, we had these kids and we had Kevin McCallister, who were ruling the world. And it was really, really big back then. Arnold's interaction with him seems authentic. I like it and I like the way they use the kids and it's funny. I laughed, I still laugh at the kids, the dumb, the dumb kids are like, my dad can't wear hats. And I'm sitting there now in my 40s, just laughing and enjoying it.

• 16:32Bill Simmons?

  This also is a timeless movie. You know, it's like running on Netflix right now. It's 36 years old. And it's a movie that now you'd have, I don't know how many generations of kids in the age of like, hey, we should watch this. This will be a good one. There's not a lot of these that you could watch. I mean, I, I always showed these to my kids way too early. So my kids are probably like, you know, five or six when they watch this.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:54Bill Simmons?

  But it was perfect because it was, it's a little dangerous. It's funny. Arnold's funny. Some of the kid stuff is funny. It's just, it works. Can we go back to 1990 though?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Please. Let's go.

• 17:05Bill Simmons?

  So this, this movie ends, let's see, 10th in 1990. Some of the bangers from that year. Home Alone is number one.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:14Bill Simmons?

  Ghost, Dancing with Wolves, Pretty Woman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is fifth.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Fucking A. Love it.

• 17:21Bill Simmons?

  Hunt for Red October. Heard that's a good movie. Total Recall, Die Hard 2, Dick Tracy, Kindergarten Cop, Back to the Future 3, Presumed Innocent, Days of Thunder are our top 13. And what do all those movies have in common? Fucking huge stars.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 17:37Bill Simmons?

  Almost across the board. If Harrison Ford, Costner, Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Culkin becomes a huge star. Schwarzenegger's in two, Bruce Willis, Warren Beatty, Michael J. Fox, Cruise, like, we just, we knew what we were doing in 1990, Kyle.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Dude, a bonkers year. The craziest thing about that year is the Home Alone piece where Home Alone was the number one movie in America for 12 weeks, 12 straight weeks. Kindergarten Cop drops in, week eight.

• 18:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  And Arnold coming off Total Recall, they don't even make the McAllisters blink. They rattle off another month.

• 18:13Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  And here's the best part, the movie that finally took the number one spot from Home Alone, we've already mentioned it, a little movie you know called Sleeping With The Enemy, took the number one spot and knocked out Kevin McAllister. How good is that?

• 18:24Bill Simmons?

  Julia in danger.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:26Bill Simmons?

  So Arnold goes Predator, Running Man in 87, Red Heat in 88, turns down Die Hard, which seems like it's a mistake in retrospect.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:36Bill Simmons?

  Twins, 1990, Recall and Kindergarten Cop, 91, Terminator 2. And 90 is the year he takes the belt from Sly Stallone for real. It's, he, he co-owns it from 87 on, they're basically like co-champs.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:53Bill Simmons?

  Like when boxing where there's like the WBC champ, the WBA champ.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:57Bill Simmons?

  They're both champs. By 90, he has the belt. Sly's unraveled. He's doing Stop My Mom, I'll Shoot, and Oscar.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Oscar.

• 19:04Bill Simmons?

  He's doing Rocky V. Like he, it just feels like it's over until Challenger, which we've, not Challenger.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Cliffhanger.

• 19:12Bill Simmons?

  I don't know why I said Challenger. Cliffhanger, which we've already done. That was his attempt to just climb, literally, no pun intended, back in the conversation because Arnold is just killing everybody. But he was the biggest star we had. And I don't know if there's been another run like this.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  No, and listen, just to step on Apex, like, I, I think this is Arnold's Apex.

• 19:37Bill Simmons?

  Me too.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  You did the Wemby comparison. To me, this is the MJ 87, 88 season where he won MVP and Defensive Player of the Year.

• 19:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  To give us the Paul Verhoeven, super crazy, violent sci-fi Total Recall, which was awesome. And then this silly nonsense up in the Pacific Northwest with these kids in the same year is so different. And by the way, the best movie he ever makes is coming next in T2. I think this is the height of Arnold's everything. By the way, he's also deeply entrenched in the George H. W. Bush White House at this point. Like he has an official position, like he's in government, all of that is coming. He's running the world.

• 20:11Bill Simmons?

  I think he's with, he's with Maria Shriver at this point, too.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:15Bill Simmons?

  It's all happening. I wrote that, I had a little list. This is a tangent.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:22Bill Simmons?

  And so we didn't know how good we had it, celebrity list.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:26Bill Simmons?

  Like, I almost wish I could, I enjoyed it more in the moment.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  I'm melancholy already. What do you got?

• 20:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, you just figure like Arnold, oh, there'll be more of these. Arnold will be back in some other form. And it's just not, the closest we really got to was, I think Vin Diesel and the Fast and Furious movies. And it's just not, you can't compare it. Um, but I was thinking, just celebrities, I wish I had appreciated more in the moment. Arnold is one.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:50Bill Simmons?

  Michael Jordan, the whole run. Although I do think when he went away to play baseball, we did appreciate it and really did think about it. Tiger's a great one. Cause when it abruptly ended, it was like, oh man, that sucked. That was a really good 12 year run. Uh, 80s Eddie Murphy, Mike and the Mad Dog was like this for me. Always knowing that they were on in New York. Anytime you were there, suddenly they were gone. Dan and Keith on SportsCenter. Uh, late 90s WWE, the Attitude Era, just felt like it was gonna go on forever. It didn't. Randy Moss, part of me felt like he would just go until he was 45, just being able to run the straight down the, down the sideline. Uh, Serena Williams, just feeling like she was the mountain everyone had to climb in women's tennis.

• 21:34Bill Simmons?

  And then I gotta say, there was a Michael Jackson run there in the 80s where it was like, wow.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 21:39Bill Simmons?

  Holy mackerel. I mean, the movie.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Best entertainer of all time, most talented person ever lived. Definitely.

• 21:44Bill Simmons?

  Anyone else you would put on? Like for you, just like I, I wish I had appreciated a little more in retrospect?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, my mind goes to CR month. I, I was there and it was a beautiful month, but I wish I could have dug in further. It was beautiful though. I, I, I really enjoyed it.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  So CR month, Arnold, Tiger. Yeah, I got you.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I think you guys came up a little short and should have had the balls to do the Sicario pod in Juarez live, but maybe, maybe it's a re-Sicario.

• 22:09Bill Simmons?

  You were part of CR month though. So you get to put it on your Wikipedia.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  It was spectacular. Definitely.

• 22:14Bill Simmons?

  Mike Yanagita, um, the cast of this movie. Penelope Miller, that's the love interest. A small run for her here in the 90s. I think Carlitos and a couple others. Uh, Pamela Reed as the buddy cop.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 22:33Bill Simmons?

  Really nice performance by her in this. I thought, I thought she's excellent.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  She's a very good actress.

• 22:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, Linda Hunt, who was, I think, started out near Living Dangerously. She's the principal. She's the little lady who, um, has a couple of good scenes.

• 22:49Bill Simmons?

  Richard Tyson is the bad guy.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 22:52Bill Simmons?

  When do you want to do this? Now or later?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  You want to do some Chris talk? Cause I'm here for Chris. Let's go.

• 22:59Bill Simmons?

  What's going on here? Is this just like, uh, this is the NFL salary cap where we had to spend a lot of money on Mahomes? And we're just gonna keep our fingers crossed with the left tackle? And hope he doesn't get annihilated in the playoffs?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  You might say the same for the Patriots too. I don't know.

• 23:17Bill Simmons?

  You really could. But what happened here?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Uh, what happened is a lot of silk clothing, a ponytail and a brood. And he somehow got this part. He, and by the way, like, I'm not here to shit on Chris. I, I love Chris. I think he's really funny. I think he's a good villain. I don't think he's gonna win an Oscar, but he almost reminds me of Jimmy from Roadhouse. Like, he's just kind of this brooding guy who has a physicality to him. I, I like Chris. I, I think Chris is fantastic.

• 23:46Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing. He's a character from a Roadhouse Van Damme kind of a movie. But this is actually kind of an elevated movie with good actors.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:55Bill Simmons?

  And I don't know how they figured out that. I don't know what's going on with him in general. The relationship with the mother is just bizarre.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Spectacular.

• 24:04Bill Simmons?

  I don't really know what's going on there either. The other one, Kathy Moriarty's in this too, is like the MILF mom.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  What is that?

• 24:10Bill Simmons?

  Who's attracted.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Why? Why? Why is she in that for that role?

• 24:14Bill Simmons?

  Wrong actress, wrong vibe. It just flips the movie into this crazy direction. It doesn't pay off. I don't know what they're doing with that either.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  And her scene is unfathomable. She comes in and it's like, I'm really worried that my son is playing with dolls. And Arnold goes, no, she's using them to look up girls' skirts. And she goes, oh, that's a relief. And I'm like, what the fuck? She's like, I thought it might've been something else. Thank God he's only looking at kindergarteners' skirts.

• 24:41Bill Simmons?

  Thank God.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  It's so weird.

• 24:43Bill Simmons?

  Future sex offender.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  She read that. She's like, yeah, I was in Raging Bull, no problem. But like, I like this. I'll sign up for this role. I'd like to be in this.

• 24:50Bill Simmons?

  Crazy. Well, I have been Reitman directs. From seventy nine to ninety three, he rips off Meatballs, Stripes, Ghostbusters, Legal Legals, Twins, Ghostbusters Two, Kindergarten Cop, and Dave, the best movie of all time. I realized that about two months ago. Dave's the best movie.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  You like Dave? I love Dave.

• 25:05Bill Simmons?

  I think it might be the best movie of all time. Just comic touch. His movies always move. He has a knack for working with major, major stars and putting them in an awesome light. Over and over again, people are really good in his movies where you're just like, ah, I love that guy in that movie. And fifteen years, I mean, he made a shitload of money and then gave us Jason Reitman, who's had a really good career, too. Who's randomly in this movie. Yeah. And yeah, I've been Reitman thoughts, though, before we move on.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I think it's really cool that when they go to Dominic's bedroom at the end of the scene, if you look closely, there's some Ghostbusters pillows on Dominic's bed, which I think is just awesome. And listen, Ghostbusters is one of the most important movies of the last fifty years. Every single person in it, if you weren't there for that sensation, this was light years ahead of in Kindergarten Cop, which we love, but one of the most important movies ever made, I think.

• 25:56Bill Simmons?

  Twenty six million for this one they spent. It made two oh two. Finished tenth. Crushed it all the way around. Hundred and eleven minutes, plus twenty one on the Horlbeck scale. We don't have Craig for this podcast, but he is going to come on at the end with his review. He'd never seen it.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Really?

• 26:14Bill Simmons?

  So we'll find out what he thought.

• 26:17Bill Simmons?

  We do know what Roger Ebert thought. Three stars.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  That's great. Take it.

• 26:21Bill Simmons?

  The film is made up, quote, "of two parts that shouldn't fit, but somehow they do, making a slick entertainment out of the improbable, the impossible, and Arnold Schwarzenegger." That was Roger. Three stars. I was surprised. I would have thought two and a half.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Three stars is great, but it's more than two parts. It's, it's, there's six different parts. There's so much on Arnold's shoulders in this, and we laugh at his accent, his acting and stuff. Holds the camera for every single scene. And honest, I'm gonna get to this later, like, is this maybe the, some of the best acting he's ever done in his career? Like, there's stuff where I really believe that he's feeling, and I don't usually say that about him.

• 26:55Bill Simmons?

  I actually think it's the best he's ever been in a movie.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 26:59Bill Simmons?

  For using all his parts. And what's interesting, they make the decision near the end. Well, he basically loses the shootout. Like, somebody has to save his ass. He's gonna get killed by some psycho grandmother, but he gets shot by two different characters, and he's kinda cool with it. It makes him vulnerable, right? He's not like a superhero. I just don't know if Stallone and Van Damme and pick anybody from that era like, no, no, this guy seems weak because he didn't win.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Let's remember, Segal won't let himself get punched by anyone in any movie, even like a 300-pound bouncer. Arnold here is saved by a diminutive woman. Like, that was, that's a pretty cool decision to me. I don't know if that was happening back then.

• 27:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was the old, William Goldman always used to talk about this, how stars have to be stars in the movie. They don't wanna look weak. And he was using the example of Warren Beatty didn't wanna be in misery because of the crippling scene.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:51Bill Simmons?

  Cause the guy's crippled, he's a loser from that point on. He's like, I can't, I can't play that part. I'm not gonna be a loser. And Arnold, like, he ends this movie, he's shot by two different people. He's a kindergarten teacher with a limp, but he's like, I'm fine, I'm good. This is, this is a good movie. Uh, we're gonna take a break and then we gotta go through watchables. The categories are really fun for this movie.

• 28:13Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. Right now at McDonald's, you can get great deals all day with McValue. That's right. Jumpstart your day with the under $3 menu featuring a sausage McMuffin for just $1.50. Or grab the perfect lunch with the McDouble for just $2.50. Honestly, nothing pairs with a movie marathon like a McDouble in hand. Gotta love the McDouble's. Get even more value with McValue only at McDonald's. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wildhorse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller

• 28:58Bill Simmons?

  from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh.

• 29:02Bill Simmons?

  Writer, director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now. Most rewatchable scene? I'll offer you a couple.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  What do you got?

• 29:42Bill Simmons?

  The plane scene into the driving puke montage.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:46Bill Simmons?

  With Arnold and Pamela Reed. Unless you want to go with any of the stuff at the very beginning, the violent stuff when Arnold's got the beard and the sunglasses. I don't know if you're into that.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  I like the beard and sunglasses. I like Arnold in the drug den with a shotgun, just shooting everything. It feels a lot like Terminator 1 when Arnold goes into Technoir, the club. It's almost like a note for note. I really, really like that part. Arnold's kicking ass. The beard is preposterous. The hair is terrible. And that's part of the laughing at Arnold that we talked about. So I'm here for that for sure.

• 30:18Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna do this later. Let's do it now.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:21Bill Simmons?

  Patched on beard?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, terrible.

• 30:23Bill Simmons?

  Real beard? Is it possible he's just one of those? He grew a real beard and it just looks fake when he grows a beard? Because we know those people too. The guys who grow beards and it doesn't seem like a real beard.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  I think that they did not have a real beard. We've seen, we saw Arnold with heavy struff in Predator. We've seen with a beard in The Running Man briefly, and he looks fucking awesome. He looks like the brawny man. This is like this woolly, woolly, patch on, miscolored thing. It looks horrible, but we like it.

• 30:54Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was fake, but I wasn't. You also could have sold me like he dyed it or did something weird. Between that and the sunglasses, I don't know what's going on. It's like a parody of some of those other movies. So plane scene in the driving puke montage. We get Arnold threatening the kid by breaking the pencil. We get Angela Bassett as the flight attendant.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Out of the clouds with one line.

• 31:14Bill Simmons?

  Well before she became the queen. And we get Arnold repeatedly just watching his partner puke.

• 31:23Bill Simmons?

  And being confused by it, like he's never seen a human being struggle physically with anything before. Um, okay. Arnold's first day of school. We kick things off with one of the kids going, boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Gold.

• 31:38Bill Simmons?

  Killer line. Brought the house down in the theater. Penelope Miller tells him kindergarten is like the ocean. You don't want to turn your back on it. Good line. Comes back. It's fucking chaos. Leading to Arnold going, shut up, shut up.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Shut up. So sounds so fun. So fun.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  And then he has to get the ferret. Lot of ferret in this.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  The ferret with no name. Um, I mean, I, listen, I, is this Apex Mountain for ferrets?

• 32:09Bill Simmons?

  So I had that written down as a strong yes. Ferrets had a moment of about a year and a half before people realized they were just overgrown rats and not fun to hang out with. Kind of stinky. And then it was over.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Is the big Lebowski, there's a nice marmot, there's a ferret. And then, is that the Richard Gere one or is that something different?

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Was he a ferret guy or was that gerbils? I can't distinguish my marmots.

• 32:38Bill Simmons?

  But Arnold plays, who's your daddy?

• 32:42Speaker 01

  And what does he do?

• 32:44Bill Simmons?

  This has the, it's not a tumor, it's not a tumor at all. This has confessions from the kids, including my daddy is a gynecologist.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 32:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't think that they're playing who's your daddy now in 2026. I'm guessing that got vetoed by the school principal.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Especially what does he do? Like, that's none of your business. We're not doing any of that.

• 33:02Bill Simmons?

  One of the reasons this is such a good scene is we just get to hang out with all these different kids. There's like 10 kids and it's like, all right, cool. I'm actually, it's not just like this anonymous classroom. I feel like I'm learning.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  It feels like what they would now put in as outtakes during the closing credits. Here's this cute stuff we recorded, but it's actually in the movie. I actually think one of the faults is I think they should have done more of that. Like the kids are on fire. The kids are cooking, especially the girl at the end who has to go to the bathroom and can't do the overalls. Like that stuff is all, all gold. I wish they would have done more.

• 33:30Bill Simmons?

  I agree. And I think if, if I had notes, if they had sent me the script and I could have weighed in on some stuff, I probably would have cut down on crisp a little bit. I would have had Arnold trying to get the kids ready for a play or something like play it up more where he has to like run a rehearsal. No, you'd came in too soon and do that whole thing.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  We could have done that with the Gettysburg Address. And you're onto something, dude. My favorite word that Arnold Schwarzenegger says, he says like 12 times this movie is, "Come on, come on." He's, he was a fire, "Come on." And that's what he says in Predator, "Come on, kill me, I'm here." He hits that one so hard and every time he says, "Come on," I laugh and I want to run around with him.

• 34:12Bill Simmons?

  I have another idea for this that I have in a later part of the pod. Uh, the milk nap scene I really like, just like very tender scene, every, but just seeing kids drink milk. I don't know, do they do that anymore? Probably not.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 34:24Bill Simmons?

  Um, Arnold reads a book and we have the nightmare dose off. That seems good. Arnold almost kills Pamela Reed's fiance. And she goes right from, I think, having sex to just diving into a plate of pasta unexplained. Where was the pasta?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Burying pasta in bed, naked.

• 34:40Bill Simmons?

  Was the pasta next to her? Like, what happens there?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  It's a lot with that character in the eating. It's like four jokes too many. I get it.

• 34:48Bill Simmons?

  Four, 14.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it might be 14. It's, it's, I, that, that thing gets beaten to a pulp. And the fact that she just was having sex with her fiance is not eating like an apple or something. A plate of pasta with a fork. It's not realistic.

• 35:01Bill Simmons?

  What was the guy's name? Barry? Barry's a chef.

• 35:06Bill Simmons?

  Arnold beats up Zach's dad.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 35:08Bill Simmons?

  The child abuser. And then, uh, the principal, instead of saying like, "You're suspended for two weeks," is like, "How did it feel to punch him?" I loved it. This was great. Uh, most 1990s stretch of the movie. Teachers punching a parent.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Can you imagine the screenwriter at, at the computer typing out the line, "You hit the kid, I hit you." He was like, "Fuck yes, it's Miller time." Like, "That is gold. Let's go, baby." He goosenecked that thing right out of his office. And by the principal, the principal seems to know that that father was a child beater.

• 35:42Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  It's just that, it's just the thing that people know that he's beating up this kid. And afterwards, she's like, "Yeah, that was awesome how you punched him." Again, in front of the school, the teachers, everything, and he could have punched him again.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  What do we got?

• 36:01Bill Simmons?

  I'm just trying to think of somebody pitching that in a movie they're writing in 2026.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:07Bill Simmons?

  And the kind of notes they would get from, from, from the studio. So yeah, the child abuse, uh, that plot. So yeah, we're gonna have to maybe take that out.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Do we need to actually show the bruising on the child's neck? Yeah, we think it's key. I mean, that's intense.

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  In the research, Arnold was really passionate about touching a couple of real life stories, including the abuse of children and kind of push them to like, we have to have this in the movie. This is an important topic and that's why.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  See, that's the Arnold difference.

• 36:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Like, I don't think the action stars are like, how big's my trailer? How cool do I look when I punch the guy?

• 36:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  And Arnold's like, we really need to focus on the damages of divorce in the American household. Like, and that's the shit that he wanted. He's a genius, man.

• 37:00Bill Simmons?

  Two more, the fair, little Hartig's, Hartug's speech about Arnold.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:06Bill Simmons?

  From Linda Hunt, the principal. Little, gets a little touchy in the throat watching.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  I don't know what kind of police officer you are, but you are a very good teacher. I was like, am I crying a kindergarten cop? Holy shit, Mr. Kimball, we did it.

• 37:21Bill Simmons?

  Pollen in the room right now. And then, uh, we get the big fire shootout ending. Stranger, stranger.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  And that's what we did back then. We'd say stranger danger and don't pick up candy from kids. And they just learned that from the other cop before he comes in the hallway.

• 37:38Bill Simmons?

  So this guy, Chris, shows up at the school, has an interview with the principal for some reason, even though it seems like it's a public school, he could just join the school. Sees this kid.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  And he's like, all right, what's my plan?

• 37:52Bill Simmons?

  Could wait like eight hours, maybe tail him home.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Nah, let's do this now.

• 37:57Bill Simmons?

  Should I, should I set a huge fire to the kids library?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 38:02Bill Simmons?

  Burn thousands of books and cause mass panic and that's what I'm gonna do. And my mom's gonna wait in the car with a gun.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  And then when the kids scurry into the hallway and the sprinklers go off, I'll just kind of run in there and grab them amongst the 200 kids and then I'll just go upstairs.

• 38:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, go upstairs where there's no escape. Get up there. What could go wrong? It's a fire. There's water everywhere. It's really-

• 38:25Speaker 01

  The last 10 minutes of the movie are preposterous.

• 38:27Bill Simmons?

  It's really a bad plan.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  The plane is trying to land and it's just dragging sparks all over the runway, but you're here for it.

• 38:34Bill Simmons?

  What is the most rewatchable scene for you? It's not a tumor?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  I think it's Arnold's opening speech. Uh, I'm Mr. Kimbo. I want them answered immediately. And then the tumor and all that's the questions about what my dad does.

• 38:48Bill Simmons?

  For, yeah, Arnold's first day just could have basically been its own movie. Where he's finally like, I found a, I have a ferret in my car. I'm gonna go get the ferret. That's his last move. The ferret has no name. Said this ferret has never named the ferret. It's just, tis my pet ferret. It's not like this is-

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Doesn't make any sense. First thing kids would do is they name the pet.

• 39:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is Benny. Uh, I have that as well. What's the most 1990 thing about this movie other than, um, giving those little cartons of milk to each kid?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Each with a straw.

• 39:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, whole milk.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  That was when they would run those commercials when it said like, milk, it does a body good. And the kid who's getting bullied drinks milk and then he turns into six foot 10. And they were, milk was everywhere back then.

• 39:28Bill Simmons?

  I think that's the winner.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  I got, I got a one seed.

• 39:32Bill Simmons?

  All right, what do you got?

• 39:33Speaker 01

  All right. The opening scene of the movie is shot in a great American shopping mall, and that's not enough. Specifically Crisp, in silk clothes, a ponytail and smoking a cigarette is walking through the mall. And what does he pass behind him? A Brookstone store.

• 39:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  That is the shit. Brookstone, that is funded almost exclusively by divorced dads, who would pay $2,500 for a massage chair in $19.90. And you'd go in there and just fuck around and try stuff when you went there with your friends. Brookstone and their like, blood crypt battle with the sharper image. That was so 1990 and Crisp walking past it with a cig. Amazing.

• 40:12Bill Simmons?

  Incredible. Great job by you. I think that beats Milk. I think that beats Arnold's pet ferret. I think it beats the Cars. The Cars are very 1990 in this movie, including like one of those old Cabriolet. Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  She got a Geo Tracker. I looked that shit up. A red Geo Tracker. It's awesome.

• 40:30Bill Simmons?

  And then every single moment, second, everything with Richard Tyson in this movie just feels like it could only have happened in 1990. 1991, no. 89, no. 90, yes.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:43Bill Simmons?

  That's it. It's the only year he could have been in this. Uh, the Floyd Gondoli Butter in My Ass and Lollipops in My Mouth Award for something I just enjoy.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:52Bill Simmons?

  No surprise, but for me, it's, um,

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  it's Arnold just delivering, not the Arnold lines, like the home run money shot lines that they know are gonna crush, but him just saying normal, basic things.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 41:07Bill Simmons?

  I'm the potty pooper.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  So good.

• 41:10Bill Simmons?

  He uses the dolls to look up the girl's skirts. I coached basketball at an old girl's school in Rhode Island. There is no bathroom. Back to the carpet. If he does it again, I press charges.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  I like that one.

• 41:27Bill Simmons?

  Just, any line is perfect with him. And I was really fun to write those out as Arnold, like Arnold English versus actual English. But yeah, it's just, I'm always gonna enjoy it for the rest of my life, hearing him just say normal lines.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Did you have any thoughts, Bill, on what kind of system John Kimball ran when he was coaching basketball? Was it like a spread system? Was it a zone defense?

• 41:47Bill Simmons?

  Like a patino, like press trap?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  All up and down the court, full court press, slapping the floor, man to man.

• 41:55Bill Simmons?

  When did he ever even hold a basketball?

• 41:57Speaker 01

  I can't think of a time.

• 41:59Bill Simmons?

  He says in this movie, he says he grew up in Austria.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Well, that was my answer. I enjoy and I respect in Arnold movies when they take the care to address why the fuck this guy talks like this. And sometimes they don't do it. They're like, screw it. Jingle all the way. He lives in the suburbs, married to Rita Wilson. No reason at all for his voice or his physique. This one, they're like, well, he grew up in Austria and that's why he talks. I, I appreciate that. And sometimes they just ignore that shit, but I love that they do it here.

• 42:30Bill Simmons?

  They would be like, yeah, they'll have movies where he's just like Don Smith.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, no big deal. And he says, California. It's like, why does Mr. Smith talk that way? And why does he look like he does 275 for reps on the incline press? What the fuck is with Mr. Smith?

• 42:45Bill Simmons?

  What's age the best?

• 42:48Bill Simmons?

  I'll start us off with Astoria, Oregon.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  It just seems like the best place on earth. I have no idea if it is. Whatever, however they film this, it's just seems like the happiest, nicest place you could ever raise a kid, except for, unless Chris shows up and sets fire to your school library, sets off massive shooting.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Terrorizes the patrons of the local toy store too. I remember when he did the Rudy pod and we were just like, this is just an infomercial for the Notre Dame campus. Every person wants to apply to Notre Dame after this is so beautiful. And this is Astoria in the heels of several years earlier where the Goonies was, and it's on the beach and there's pirate ships. So like Astoria was a beautiful place back then. Never been, but it looks great in movies.

• 43:31Bill Simmons?

  I have Jason Reitman as the boy that Kimball catches kissing somebody when there's the fire. And Jason Reitman is the little kid that runs out or the, like, he's like a 13 year old. Arnold's beard we mentioned. Child abuse plots in the eighties and nineties as a plot device as we're just starting to figure out that child abuse might be bad. I would say that's age the best because now, now I think we have a better handle on that, that it's bad.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we have a zero tolerance policy now.

• 43:58Bill Simmons?

  1990, maybe not. Maybe it's like, hey, could look at it from both sides. 2026, we're anti.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  When they would say, coming up on a very special episode of Growing Pains.

• 44:10Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  And it would be like Mike Seaver tries drugs or like the Different Strokes article or episode where the guy who run the bike store is like trying to get with Arnold. Like they would do those things all the time and we, that's how we learned about this stuff.

• 44:20Bill Simmons?

  Different Strokes did two of them because there's another one. Now Gordon Jump as the pedophile bike shop guy.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:27Bill Simmons?

  Who really took some liberties with Dudley. We still don't really know what happened and we don't want to talk about it, but something bad probably happened and Arnold foiled it. There was another one with somebody who locked Arnold in a room and was trying to get it out with Dana Plato, who was like 12.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 44:45Bill Simmons?

  That was like the law, like Different Strokes went back to the well multiple times. And then Family Ties was the other one that

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:52Bill Simmons?

  Had no problem crossing the line with anything.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  This is how hard we're about to nerd out. I can think of a third Different Strokes episode in which the son from over the top, the annoying kid from the military

• 45:04Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  He's in it, and I think he's selling drugs to Arnold and his best friend. It's like they did him like once a month, they were doing a very special episode. Those were the normal episodes.

• 45:14Bill Simmons?

  Facts of Life did it too. This is what we grew up with. This is why kindergarten cop, we hit this point where everybody's like, fuck it.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  No big deal. Yeah, fine.

• 45:21Bill Simmons?

  Uh, any What's Aged the Best for you?

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a, I have two. Great poster. And you know what I miss, Bill? You'll totally get this. I miss when it was one name over the poster and just the last name. Schwarzenegger, Stallone, not Sylvester, not Arnold. And this is kind of cool because I saw the poster for Project

• 45:42Bill Simmons?

  Can you see that?

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at that. Look at that. They don't even need to say Arnold. But I just saw the poster for Project Hail Mary, and it just says Gosling. There's no Ryan.

• 45:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  That is such a status symbol that they don't even put any other actors. They don't even put your fucking first name, just the last name. And I feel like it's kind of throwback. Very cool.

• 46:03Bill Simmons?

  There was, it's a great point. There was some stuff in the eighties that we were just doing better. Another was Sports Illustrated covers.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:09Bill Simmons?

  They would just have the one picture with as tight of a headline as possible and the Sports Illustrated. And especially in the eighties, late seventies, eighties, it got to the point you couldn't wait to see what the cover was. And then they started cluttering it with all these other things on it. But the best covers they ever had were just a picture with like a small headline. Sometimes they wouldn't even have a headline. Same thing with the posters. I just think we started overthinking the posters. That's the kind of poster. Put your star, last name, we're ready to go. What's your other What's Aged the Best?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Ponytail villains. Like this, I have my handful of my favorites and Crisp is way up there. I got Ben Kingsley in sneakers, which we did. A guy, a man who's been knighted who has a ponytail.

• 46:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  My guy Julian Sands in the movie Warlock goes with a heavy ponytail. Sam Jackson and Jackie Brown is braided. And then one that's near and dear to you, I think you have to have Terry Silver on the list from Karate Kid 3, and then again in Cobra Kai. And then I got Crisp, the thick, side parted ponytail. It's really, really cool. I missed, they don't do that anymore.

• 47:17Bill Simmons?

  It's a great point. Did you have a friend who occasionally went ponytail and it would completely change his personality?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  I had a friend who went rat tail, which was much different. That was like shaved short and just a, an isolated ponytail. Did you have a ponytail or were you ponytail guy?

• 47:34Bill Simmons?

  No, I, my hair goes up, not down.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, same.

• 47:37Bill Simmons?

  No, we had, um, in my bar restaurant days, my roommate, actually, Richard, AKA Ricky, who was the guy who got us the illegal cable box that allowed me to watch, uh, four straight years of illegal pay-per-view movies. He had long hair and sometimes he could go ponytail with it. And it was a complete game changer. Like he would just immediately look like he was one of the villains in an early nineties movie. And then when he didn't have it, it was like normal. And then the ponytail would, would swing in and he became kinda like a little dangerous looking. I was always jealous of it.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Kids now call it aura.

• 48:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, I was like, what's up with this guy? Great shot Gordo Award for most cinematic shot. Uh, the nightmare scene is good. It's a good zag, cause you just think he fell asleep with the kid and then all of a sudden, uh, Crisp is there. Denethys Benihana Award, scene stealing location, obviously Astoria.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 48:26Bill Simmons?

  Big Kahuna Burger Award, best use of food and drink. It's gotta be the milk.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  It's a hundred percent the milk. And how about the, it's not easy to create sexual tension with a beverage like milk. And she straight up wipes it off his lip as there's 20 sleeping kids there. I mean, they're halfway to third base at that point.

• 48:44Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Penelope is so horny in this movie.

• 48:47Bill Simmons?

  She really is.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  She's, she's way into Mr. Kimball and God bless her.

• 48:51Bill Simmons?

  Turns out she likes big guys.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:54Bill Simmons?

  We have a special one, the Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  I always try to use this category. I'm so glad you have it. What is it?

• 49:04Bill Simmons?

  Always a pleasure, um, to put this on. So I have, this is from the premiere article and they asked the kids what they think of Arnold.

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  And Arnold claims kids love when they, kids love when they can teach a grown up. So of course they all started doing, no, no, do it this way. And then premier asks, what did the kids think of Arnold? According to Meta, a six-year-old girl, Arnold is strange as a teacher, but I like him. Says Jim Jim, another five-year-old with a giggle, he picks his nose. I saw him pick his nose lots of times. I saw him eat like a pig once.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 49:42Bill Simmons?

  Nonetheless, Jim Jim wants to grow up like Schwarzenegger, if only because he can lift everyone up. This is just in the premiere magazine, so in the movie, Arnold picks his nose? That's your anecdote?

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 49:55Bill Simmons?

  Um.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Giant nose.

• 49:56Bill Simmons?

  And then Arnold had some tidbits. He said he took his role seriously as the leader and the, on the set and the teacher. Um, I always gave them kind of the tough talk because they believed it 100%. A kid would be crying because she fell on her knees. I would say, why are you crying? Because my knee hurts. I'd say, but this sounds like a little girl. Real tough people don't cry. Really? Yeah, they don't cry. They fall on their knees. They look at it. Maybe tears come to their eyes, but then they swallow and say, to hell with it. So what? And the kid looks at me and says, it's a good idea. Whenever they're tuned into you and you can get a message through them, you can move on with, you can move in with something. So Arnold's basically, he's like, I really taught these kids how to be tougher on the set.

• 50:41Bill Simmons?

  I think he took real pride in it and he sounds like a psycho. Like there's no way now. People like, hey, the star of your movie.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:48Bill Simmons?

  Uprated my daughter because she fell and hurt her knee and told her to be tough and shake it off. Um, I'm calling HR. But no, 1990, we were fine.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  They wanted him to do it. I think Arnold was very intense about fitness and wellness and diet and all that stuff. There's that scene where he's got the kids doing the sit-ups and you could tell like, maybe those kids are getting a little tired, Arnold. They're like six years old. They can't really bang out 100 crunches and he was still coaching them to do it. I love it.

• 51:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, kids at this point, it's a miracle if they're potty trained and not like having meltdowns. Arnold's like, hey, I need you to do 100 sit-ups. He really was making them work out on, on the set, like trying to get, keep everybody exercise. All right. You have a flex category. What do you got?

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Well, I'm a little disappointed. I thought there might be a porn parody where Kimball sleeps with all the horny, single moms. But there, uh, I looked, there is no kindergarten.

• 51:41Bill Simmons?

  Sadly looked as well. Yeah, there was. We, one of my, uh, I don't know if we're both on a watch list now because, because Googling kindergarten cop porn parody. Probably immediately puts you on a watch list, but I did look as well.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  It's fine. In my next window over, my next tab, I have, is Crisp's ponytail real? I'm searching all kinds of weird shit for this. No, I went with the, um, the, uh, Bam Adebayo Award for where the hell did these 83 points come from?

• 52:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  I understand that Ivan Reitman had worked with Arnold, and I'm sure he had the highest hopes for how Arnold's acting might be in this big project. But when he's sitting there at that dinner scene in that fancy restaurant and Arnold is just throwing those eyes over at Penelope and there's real, actual chemistry and you feel like Arnold's in love with her, Reitman had to be like, "Cut, Arnold, holy shit! That was great! What? We're moving on, let's go!" And it's like, he had to be, that had to exceed his greatest expectations because that's real acting Arnold's doing.

• 52:36Bill Simmons?

  Wow, that's a good call.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  I'm proud of him.

• 52:39Bill Simmons?

  Should we do, should we cover another thing?

• 52:41Speaker 01

  No, no! Don't get mad. You're crazy? Did you see what he just did? No way.

• 52:47Bill Simmons?

  The Butch's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:52Bill Simmons?

  The mother-son relationship with Crisp and his mother in this movie is abjectly bonkers.

• 52:59Bill Simmons?

  To the point where, are we sure they were mother and son?

• 53:04Bill Simmons?

  Are we sure she wasn't like a sugar mama? And they were pretending to be mother-son, but it was just like some rich lady that he was having sex with? Because no mother and son interact like this, ever. In real life, in movies, there's like sexual attention with him, he keeps kissing her.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 53:23Bill Simmons?

  It's fucking weird, and I don't really fully understand what they're trying to do here.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Tell you what, young people out there, ladies, guys, whatever, if you meet someone, if you meet a man and they address their mother as "mother, run!", like, that is not a good thing. No one should be saying, "Mother!", all right, we, don't do that. I have one of my best friends from high school, we always joke about this movie that, with the two of them, he thinks that, um, he thinks that Crisp is still on the tit. Like, he thinks that he's, he's actually nursing still, and that there should be a scene with that. It's heavily Oedipal, it's so weird, and, uh, I think that they may like sleep naked and cuddle each other. It's so strange, man.

• 54:06Bill Simmons?

  When the 13-year-old was nursing?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  What is that guy?

• 54:11Speaker 01

  A kid who sits up from the nipple with the milk running, except this guy's like 30.

• 54:16Bill Simmons?

  That's amazing. I, yeah, I mean, I would believe that. I would believe any version of however you wanted to describe the relationship between these two people, but it's not mother and son. I don't know what's happening.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Let me drop one more on this. Cause I had this on What's Age the Worst.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  She goes to the local pharmacy. What's Age the Worst? Rectal thermometers? That was really a thing back in the day where you would come home and be like, Mom, I don't feel so good. And she'd be like, grab your ankles and spread your cheeks. I'm putting it right up your ass. 98.6. That, if you went into CBS today, do they still have rectal thermometers? Are those still a thing? No way, right?

• 54:54Bill Simmons?

  We really wish we had Craig here, cause this is like, especially to answer weird questions.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Craig, imagine you felt like you might've had a fever and you go to your mom and she takes your temperature, but not like under your tongue. It would go in your butt. And they would like lube it. And that was, I don't think it was even that strange. I think a lot of people did it.

• 55:11Bill Simmons?

  I know nobody who did this.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  You never had it?

• 55:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't think so. I, so my interpretation of that was rectal thermometer was to insinuate like how evil this person was. Cause it's like, she won't just take your temperature. She's gonna really take your temperature.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  And she did it to Chris though, Chris, when he was growing up. Like she, and I'm sure that at that pharmacy, there were many conventional thermometers available, including the digital kind by 1990. No, you can't get a true reading of the temp unless you go rectal. And you get to buy like lube, like how disgustingly sadistic is a rectal thermometer? Just, just feel your kid's forehead and move on.

• 55:49Bill Simmons?

  I'm glad we talked about this.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Definitely. Gotta, gotta hit it.

• 55:53Bill Simmons?

  Did you have, you had the same weak link?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  My weak link is Pamela Reed is a very good actress. I've, I got enough of that character. I don't need all of the eating and the puking. And I think there's a lot of it. And I just, it's not my favorite part of the movie.

• 56:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What's Age the Worst? The big ending with an active shooter arsonist in an elementary school?

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:15Bill Simmons?

  Just bizarre decision. I love it. Uh, playing who's your daddy, having a pet ferret. And, uh, there was a standalone sequel called Kindergarten Cop 2 in 2016 starring Dolph Lundgren, that I guess we're just not going to talk about.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  And Bill Bellamy. I watched the trailer yesterday and it was a terrible use of 60 seconds. Bad.

• 56:35Bill Simmons?

  Rectal thermometer wins, but what else do you have?

• 56:37Speaker 01

  I have rectal thermometer written down. I could have picked 50 different things. How about this?

• 56:43Speaker 01

  How about climbing the rope in gym class? That's not a thing anymore. You would climb thirty some feet, touch the ceiling of a gymnasium, and they would have a two inch pad down on the floor in case you fell.

• 56:56Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  It's a fucking preposterous thing to have. That's not it. My kids don't climb the rope in gym class. They had kindergartners doing it in this movie.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  Another one, which you mentioned earlier, was the little kid looking up little girl's skirts for comedy's sake.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 57:12Bill Simmons?

  Plus, like, the whole explanation of the mom being relieved that maybe he's not gonna wear skirts. Everything about that probably aged the worst. I'm trying to think what else. The hotel, like, just them staying in the same hotel room? I don't know if that's a nitpick or a would-sage the worst, but just get two rooms. You're in the middle of nowhere in Oregon. Like, you could probably get side by side with the doors that open and close. They're like roommates? Why?

• 57:38Speaker 01

  I'm not really sure. They have to sleep in the same room. They had no problem having the plane ticket. I don't think there's that tight of a budget, but it is a little weird. It just makes it so that he can walk in on there with the fiancee scene and the pasta, which is a very weird scene.

• 57:51Bill Simmons?

  Any other would-sage the worst?

• 57:53Speaker 01

  No, we've covered all of mine.

• 57:55Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take a break, and then we'll come back with the Hans Gruber scale, next.

• 58:00Speaker 02

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• 58:46Bill Simmons?

  Hans Gruber scale. So you could go Crisp or you can go Chris mom here. I don't know where you want to go.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  I would go Crisp. I like Crisp. I think he's weird and scary and he has that scene in the interrogation room. He's just like, your old, my old lady left me because of the money. Yours left because she couldn't stand the sight of you. And he's talking shit to Schwarzenegger and it works. But it's just like the ponytail does so much of the heavy lifting and the wardrobe. I'm here for it. I like it. I have it. I have him at like a six, five on the Gruber scale. He doesn't get as much to work with, but I like him. You want the mom?

• 59:20Bill Simmons?

  I'm at a four. I'm at a four for both of them.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  I, it's not. Chris isn't doing it for you. I expected to show up to this pod and you'd be like, I just want to talk about Crisp for 90 minutes. It's not doing it for you.

• 59:31Bill Simmons?

  Never did it for me. Well, there's also, there's baggage with him because he's in three o'clock, Richard Tyson's in three o'clock high, which he was good in. But then is in Two Moon Junction with Sherilyn Fenn, which was one of the pre Skinamax, like early nudie cable movies that was on. And it was just really weird to then just see him in this movie two years later. When you're just thinking of him over and over again, having slow motion sex with Sherilyn Fenn and now he's,

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Chris is the first person, first movie I ever saw him in, thinking of him having slow motion sex with his mom. So maybe that's the reason.

• 1:00:07Bill Simmons?

  I, uh, my issue with him. You like him more than I do.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Bill Simmons?

  Our guy, Brad Wesley from Roadhouse.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Bill Simmons?

  Who every scene he's in, he's equally like loathsome and I think he's supposed to serve the same purpose as Chris. But every scene he's in is hilarious. Everything he does is hilarious. The people around him are hilarious. And it's just like, he kind of plays it perfectly. I still don't understand what Crisp is doing in this movie. Exactly. Is he evil? Like, I guess he's evil because he steals the race car set from that poor guy who was just trying to bring it to his kid. That's like,

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:44Bill Simmons?

  And then he shoots somebody once, but it's, and all of a sudden he's burning a library. I just don't know what to make of Chris.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  And then in his final scene with Dominic, he goes for the Academy Award when he's just pulling him in like this and I knew you're my son. Like, he's really going for it. Whereas, as your point, Brad Wesley, you know, goddamn JCPenney is coming because of me.

• 1:01:03Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  That's, that's a line right there.

• 1:01:04Bill Simmons?

  I want him to actually probably be more evil. I think he's in kind of no man's land from an evil standpoint. They need like four more evil things.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  I read something that, that they thought that he wasn't evil enough and that they were actually sympathizing with him, test audiences. And so they added some nasty shit and probably including the totally gratuitous thing where he beats up some man who wants the race car.

• 1:01:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:27Bill Simmons?

  Ruffalo Hannah, Ruben Perchard, overacting award. We just did it. Richard Tyson.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  He's going for it.

• 1:01:32Bill Simmons?

  Dominic!

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  He's doing Streetcar Named Desire. Like, he is going for it in the monologue. He's trying to win the Academy Award. It's, and I don't think it's gonna happen, but I like Chris though.

• 1:01:42Bill Simmons?

  Special category.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:45Bill Simmons?

  The Ed Norton Reverse Dunk Award for, did this movie need a random sports scene?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  What do you got?

• 1:01:49Bill Simmons?

  This goes back to the earlier thing we were talking about. It's like, do we need one or two more scenes with Arnold and the kids?

• 1:01:56Bill Simmons?

  Like a recess? Like a game of tag or a little dodgeball, maybe Arnold playing dodgeball? I'm just not turning the channel for three minutes.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Not a chance.

• 1:02:05Bill Simmons?

  Yo, I hit you!

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Ah, come on, come on, boom! And they would have beat Billy Madison to it, who did dodgeball like a few handful of years later. That would be great. You could do, you could talk me to some kickball. Any sort of recess activity with Arnold grunting in a big shirt.

• 1:02:23Bill Simmons?

  Arnold ordering people around, like maybe child abuse kid is the hero of the dodgeball game. Falls, makes the catch, falls on his disturbingly bruised back, like.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Bill Simmons?

  Uh, I don't know. There's just, I just would have liked something. All right. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest Take Award. What do you got?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Bill, I'm Team Crisp in this movie. I sympathize with Crisp. I'll tell you why.

• 1:02:49Bill Simmons?

  I'm stunned by this. I thought we would be making fun of him way more.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  No, this, this character just wants to be with his son. He, you can't just take a child and run across the country. Fathers have rights. What is this alleged criminal past he has? He's not in prison. It sounds to me like Kimball is obsessed with him, is a loser. Remember, Kimball won't go and get his own son, who he's estranged from.

• 1:03:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Crisp just wants his son. So he executes some junkie who's trying to extort him for money. Not a chance. I think Crisp is actually the sympathetic figure here, and I think that Arnold is this sort of predatory teacher, and the mom is bipolar, and Crisp is like, I gotta get my kiddo out of there. Just me. And like, as soon as they get to town, he buys him a toy. The mom buys medicine. They're looking out for the child, and I'm Team Crisp in this. I think it's like a Johnny Lawrence Karate Kid thing, where we need to look at this way differently.

• 1:03:41Bill Simmons?

  So it's like, over the top, Stallone's the hero trying to reunite with his kid. No different here with Crisp.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Bill Simmons?

  This is, this is a divorce movie, like, over the top.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Listen, Arnold, when they took Alyssa Milano from you in Commando, you took a guy's head off with a saw blade to get her back. Like, you understand Crisp just wants his son, and I think that belongs in court and we can settle it.

• 1:04:04Bill Simmons?

  Arnold doesn't understand in this movie because he abandoned his child. We don't even know where that kid is.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Why is he okay with that?

• 1:04:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  My son Alex, I used to read him this book. Why the fuck are you in this story with these kids? Go find your son, man, like Crisp would do. The real hero of this movie. That's the hot take.

• 1:04:19Bill Simmons?

  It's a great one. Really impressive.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  What do you got?

• 1:04:22Bill Simmons?

  Mine is, uh, this movie spawned so many bad ripoff versions of it with famous actors trying to pull off Kindergarten Cop.

• 1:04:33Bill Simmons?

  It's almost better, I would sacrifice this movie and have it have never happened to save ourselves from the 40 terrible movies that came out after this.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Fine.

• 1:04:43Bill Simmons?

  It's a little like a Dr. Oppenheimer thing. Like, is it, if Dr. Oppenheimer just gets wiped out, are we saved from nuclear war? Does nuclear war happen anyway? Kindergarten Cop, if we just wipe it out.

• 1:04:57Bill Simmons?

  Are we safe 40 terrible movies that you and I have both watched with our kids and have just hated ourselves as we sat there wondering what happened?

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  See, this is why, this is why you're you, because you'll have nuclear war and we get to avoid the movie called The Tooth Fairy.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  It's, it's apples for apples. And I agree. You know what Arnold proves too? Like, he is so talented and so charismatic. It's hard to talk to children. I'm talking about you, me. If you go to a friend's house and like they have like a seven year old and they walk in, you'll be like, hey buddy. And you'd either do that dumb kid voice where you talk really high or you, it's just, it's hard to talk to kids that you don't know very well. And he does it in this movie beautifully. It's not that easy.

• 1:05:38Bill Simmons?

  Can I give a tip to the listeners, just in case they don't know how to do this? Because I, I feel like I'm great with kids and dogs. Kids and dogs are really my wheelhouse.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:05:48Bill Simmons?

  Just talk to them like a normal human being. Don't raise your voice. Don't treat them like they've had some sort of head injury. Just like, just try to interact with them and make eye contact with them. And guess what? They'll probably have a conversation back with you. This isn't hard. But it's one of those things you don't realize until you have kids and you watch how people talk to your kids and you're like,

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Bill Simmons?

  Why is this person talking to my five year old daughter like she should be wearing a helmet? Like, what's happening right now? My daughter can have a conversation with you. Like, she's not an idiot. Go, talk to her. Anyway.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  When the kid walks in, you go, hey bud!

• 1:06:24Bill Simmons?

  Hey!

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Dial it down.

• 1:06:26Bill Simmons?

  Heard you like the Lakers.

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  Do you like Luca?

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  I would give the same advice also for talking to seniors. Like, they've seen some shit. You can just talk to them normally, they'll be fine.

• 1:06:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. Get, get it on with them. Just, just say anything. They're ready to go. Bring up politics.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Give me your best punch.

• 1:06:47Bill Simmons?

  Bring up politics, they're ready to roll right away.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 1:06:50Bill Simmons?

  What do you think about this Iran situation?

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Let's talk immigration!

• 1:06:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're ready. Casting what ifs? Bill Murray and Patrick Swayze were considered for the lead role before Arnold.

• 1:07:02Bill Simmons?

  Bill Murray, no way. I can't see him interacting with kids. No way.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  That's not where my interest is. Let's get to the second one.

• 1:07:08Bill Simmons?

  Swayze could have done this. I think it would have been a really interesting movie for him, a year and a half after Roadhouse. Swayze had the unintentional comedy at least a little bit. I would still maybe lean more toward like a Keanu Reeves late 90s situation if I was gonna go out of the box with that.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Hardball.

• 1:07:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like a hardball, like I, but I think we were in the right hands with Arnold here.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's this crazy part where Crisp breaks into the school and tells Mr. Kimball that he used to fuck teachers like him in prison. And it was like, it didn't test well with audiences.

• 1:07:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they took that out.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  He did it. He already has that scene in, in Roadhouse where he's like, it is my way or the highway. You're the bounce. That's him talking to the kids. That would work. And then he rips Crisp's throat out.

• 1:07:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, could we, could we have merged those two movies together? Could kindergarten cop just been Dalton? Yeah, he's like the cooler. Sam Elliott shows up halfway through. So I, I don't understand. This is in the research and it seemed real. But Ivan Reitman did consider Danny DeVito and decided the height thing was gonna be too weird.

• 1:08:17Bill Simmons?

  I can't imagine why Danny DeVito would be kindergarten cop. It's a completely different movie. I'm also not against it. Because he's smaller, he's can relate more with the kids, but I, it just seems bizarre to me. I don't know.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Well, I, I just don't buy him as a police officer.

• 1:08:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  It's gotta be something else. It's funny that he's the same size as the kids. It's the opposite joke, but obviously they made the right choice.

• 1:08:38Bill Simmons?

  Catherine O'Hara was considered for the lead female role.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 1:08:42Bill Simmons?

  Was busy with Home Alone, couldn't do it.

• 1:08:45Bill Simmons?

  Sandra Bullock was considered for the role of Joyce, who I think was the child abuse mom.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  That's young, man.

• 1:08:52Bill Simmons?

  And failed to impress Ivan Reitman. Didn't get it. Elijah Wood also did not get the part.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Elijah Wood can't get in the classroom? He's great.

• 1:09:03Bill Simmons?

  Three years later, he's in The Good Son. Christian Slater was considered for Crisp because Ivan Reitman liked him in Heathers. And Slater turned it down. Did pump up the volume.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Great choice.

• 1:09:15Bill Simmons?

  Great choice.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  That's fun.

• 1:09:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Played hard Harry. I don't know if this is true, but Audrey Hepburn was offered the role of Eleanor Crisp, but turned it down because she loves children.

• 1:09:27Bill Simmons?

  Very strange. No idea if that's true.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Audrey Hepburn buying the rectal thermometer?

• 1:09:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  I think that's a little beneath her.

• 1:09:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Best that guy award. So the guy driving the armored truck in the beginning of Heat, who is also an LA confidential.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 1:09:41Bill Simmons?

  The first guy Arnold punches in this movie. Whatever that guy's name is. He wins again.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  You're referring to the legendary Thomas Rosales Jr. Who slaps a woman in the first few minutes of a PG 13 movie and is in everything. And he is the driver. We're being held up on the radio. That guy's a legend.

• 1:10:00Bill Simmons?

  See that shit coming out of their ears, slick?

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  I can't fucking, but I'd be remiss not to shout out Steven Park, AKA the legend, Mike Yanagida is in Kindergarten Cop. And if you don't know this, he's in one scene, he's looking over the dead body of the OD'd girlfriend and it's totally straight. And there's no Yanagida at all. But I was out of the couch, off the couch, on the couch, Tom Cruise style, when Yanagida showed up. I rewound it.

• 1:10:28Bill Simmons?

  That was Gus Johnson doing Yanagida might have been your highlight on Rewatchables. 30 episodes. Dion Waiters award, probably one of the kids.

• 1:10:39Bill Simmons?

  I, I think I might be partial to the girl who just seemed like she was in a different movie.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  The one with the overalls that she can't get off and has to go to the bathroom?

• 1:10:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then later she's kind of like battling Arnold and there's just something really funny about that kid. I don't feel like any of that stuff was scripted. I think they, they probably brought her in and were like, wow, this girl's a fucking wild card. Just keep the cameras rolling. She'll do something weird.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  It's that girl who is excellent, or it's, it's penis vagina, which he says vagina. The kid who plays penis vagina kid was the year prior in Pet Sematary as Gage, like the devil baby from the cemetery. And he was like three years old, like slashing Achilles. That kid worked. I think he still works.

• 1:11:19Bill Simmons?

  The kid who played Dominic, it was actually two twins, the cousin twins. And I think this was the highlight for them. Recasting Couch Director City. I have a lot of thoughts here. Well, I have three. Do you have one before I do mine?

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:11:33Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sitting right there. James Cameron. What are we doing? Let's do this thing. Let's get Jamie Lee as the other teacher. It's already Arnold protecting a kid as he's gonna do a couple of years later. Let's up the production value and the violence. Although James Cameron would probably see it and be like, yeah, but what if the students were like really tall and blue and had tails and some dumb shit like that? But at the time Cameron was in his prime and I would have liked to see him more with Arnold. What do you got?

• 1:11:56Bill Simmons?

  Arnold's one of the three biggest stars in the world at this point.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:12:00Bill Simmons?

  Ivan Reitman, I think, is one of the four most proven directors at this point for big budget movies that you know you're gonna make the money back. I don't know why the cast isn't like bigger and more ambitious. I'd like to offer you Julia Roberts as the teacher on the run. Why not?

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Bill Simmons?

  I'd like to offer you Nick Cage in the, in the Chris part. Nice point in his career.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  That's fantastic.

• 1:12:27Bill Simmons?

  I'd like to offer you Faye Dunaway or Shirley MacLaine as the mom. Let's go Oscar winners. Ellen Burstyn, come on down. Let's get somebody who's actually like been in the Oscar conversation. But this is the big egregious one. If I could change anything, it would be this. Kathleen Turner, can't you come in for two scenes to play the?

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Moriarty.

• 1:12:47Bill Simmons?

  The Kathy Moriarty part? Just come in and can you throw 99 for two scenes? Just hit the corners. Just do your thing.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  What about, what about Kimball's partner is, could you do Meg Ryan there? Or is she needs to be the female lead?

• 1:13:01Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it can be somebody you feel like Arnold is gonna try to fuck during the movie.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Bill Simmons?

  So you really like right on the line. You have to be, she has to kind of feel like she might blow him if you put two glasses of wine in her. Has that kind of vibe, but he's gonna stay away? Cause there's, she's flirting with him a couple of times. Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  She kisses him on the lips at the end of the movie. Yeah. It's kind, what is that?

• 1:13:23Bill Simmons?

  A little sweet on him.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:25Bill Simmons?

  So normally Craig has a flex category here, but he's not with us. So I'm gonna do a special category in his honor. The Rick Cicchetti Guard Meat Award for most memorable death by a security guard or other bystander who the movie treats as inconsequential, but who probably had a spouse and kids who love him. Poor guy goes to the local toy store to get a race car set for his kid. Miss Christmas, didn't really understand that part.

• 1:13:53Bill Simmons?

  I was late on Christmas. I gotta make it up to him, whatever was going on. I don't know how you're late on Christmas.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Did he say late on Christmas?

• 1:13:59Bill Simmons?

  He said, I miss Christmas. It was something about-

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  It's like spring, bro.

• 1:14:02Bill Simmons?

  Making up for Christmas.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Bill Simmons?

  Buys this race car set, won't get bribed for it, really committed to it. And then I guess just gets murdered on this, on this side of the road.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  He gets knocked out. He gets slammed into the door. Like, he's out, out cold, right there on the sidewalk.

• 1:14:19Bill Simmons?

  Maybe worse. Like, he might be, I don't know.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  He might be dead.

• 1:14:24Bill Simmons?

  I've watched a lot of The Pit the last couple weeks. He might be on the tube.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:14:27Bill Simmons?

  Like, he might be, like, the family's trying to decide whether to take him off the ventilator or not. All he's trying to do is just buy a race car set for his kid. So I think he wins that.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  And the guy who's refusing to sell it is polite. Like, he's not an asshole to him. And he's honestly, like, trying to make, maybe he didn't have much money around Christmas time. And now he scraped it together, and his kids always want this. And our boy Chris just knees to the balls, head to the door, and it's it.

• 1:14:49Bill Simmons?

  Really tough. Half-Assed Internet Research, they actually filmed all this at Astoria,

• 1:14:57Bill Simmons?

  at the John Jacob Astor Elementary School.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:15:01Bill Simmons?

  Great tidbit here. Arnold insisted on a private studio for daily workouts. They basically built him a gym. I love, I always love hearing this. Days of Thunder, I think, was the best one, when Simpson and Bruckheimer built, like, the three-story. They basically built an Equinox. They spent, like, $2 billion.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Bill Simmons?

  Steven Root is in five scenes that are cut out of the movie, for some reason, I guess, for time.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  Oh, he's awesome.

• 1:15:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't know. I know nothing other than that anecdote.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  My stapler.

• 1:15:32Bill Simmons?

  April Fools 2012 is a prank. The Criterion Collection said they were releasing this as a Blu-ray disc. And everybody's like, what's going on? And now it is on 4K Blu-ray, and Sean Fantasy probably owns it.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:15:48Bill Simmons?

  You mentioned the Goonies earlier.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:50Bill Simmons?

  Somewhere around 1.6 miles away from the school, the house.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 1:15:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Goondocks. Yeah.

• 1:15:57Bill Simmons?

  And then I like this Ivan Reitman invented the five Reitman rules of filmmaking for the kids. Did you see this?

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no.

• 1:16:05Bill Simmons?

  Here are the five rules. Listen, act natural, know your character, don't look in the camera, and be disciplined.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:16:13Bill Simmons?

  I think don't look in the camera is probably the big one. I'm sure half of these kids probably just look.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Everyone wants to look in the camera, even adults.

• 1:16:20Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain, Arnold, yes, we said that.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  We got it. That's it.

• 1:16:24Bill Simmons?

  Richard Tyson, I still think it's two Moon Junction. Felt like he was gonna be a big star after that. Penelope Miller, I don't know.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Let me tell you something about her. Let's give her a credit. She has a very cool factoid about her that she, in a very small period of time, was in movies with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Marlon Brandt. Like, all three godfathers. That's pretty badass. And she holds her own. And Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course.

• 1:16:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so she, I forgot to do her little run.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  She's perfectly lovely, very good actress, still in the game. Like, she does her thing in this movie.

• 1:16:59Bill Simmons?

  Her IMDB, the known for, a fun game to see what IMDB decides the four.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Bill Simmons?

  Carlito's Way, Kindergarten Cop, The Artist, and The Freshman with Brandt. Those are the four they went for. Uh, Apex Mountain, hybrid action kids movies? I think yes.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz we get so many kids' sports movies, like Mighty Ducks and stuff like that, but not with shooting and killing and shotgunning people. That's pretty rare.

• 1:17:25Bill Simmons?

  This is it. Ivan Reitman, probably Ghostbusters.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Have to be.

• 1:17:30Bill Simmons?

  Astoria, yes. Undercover cop movies, no. Tumors, I think, yes. Tuma.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah.

• 1:17:39Bill Simmons?

  Tumors in a fun way. Tumors in a fun way, yes.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Fun tumors. Honestly, if someone told you they sat you down and they're like, God, I have some really bad news, like they discovered a tumor. There's a sick voice in your head that would say, it's not a tumor. That's just how we're programmed at this point. Sorry. Those are the rules.

• 1:17:57Bill Simmons?

  And then I'm gonna add this. I didn't have this in my initial notes, but you nailed it. Brookstone.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Oh, fuck, yeah.

• 1:18:03Bill Simmons?

  Cuz Brookstone has When Harry Met Sally the year before. With sir with the fringe on top.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  It's not a mirror.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  Yes. Uh, but it has a whole, I think that's Brookstone. Is it Sharp or Image or Brookstone? In that.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  I don't remember. Cause those feel like the same stores to me. They basically were.

• 1:18:19Bill Simmons?

  Lemon's gonna crash into the taping right now. Be like, it's fucking Sharp or Image, you dumbass. Um, but yeah, Brookstone, it's right around here. And we all, I was in college back then. You would walk into Brookstone. You weren't buying anything.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Never. You couldn't.

• 1:18:33Bill Simmons?

  Walk around 45 minutes. Everything was like a hundred and eighty dollars or sixty dollars or ninety dollars. The person would always come over and say, can you help you? No, you can't. And then you'd be like, holding like a jelly can crunch to make your grip better. Like.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  You could do the grip and they would have those things where if you pull one marble to the right, it sets off the back and forth chain reaction of the marble.

• 1:18:57Bill Simmons?

  Try some headphones on. Whoa, these headphones are great.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Like there was the thing of nails where if you put your hand in the nail tray, it would like make the shape of your hand. It's like for douchebags to have in their office. Like we think that they're 1990s Don Draper. That's the specialty there.

• 1:19:12Bill Simmons?

  The chairs were really the key.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Massage chair.

• 1:19:14Bill Simmons?

  Sit in the massage chair for five minutes without getting yelled at. It was a big win. Cruise or Hanks? This is clearly Cruise. There's no question. You think it's Hanks?

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I, I can see Hanks with the kids. I want it to be Cruise for 50 different reasons. Why do you?

• 1:19:30Bill Simmons?

  Home run for Cruise. Uh, because Cruise never did a movie like this. And honestly, other than, uh, Jerry Maguire, I don't remember him interacting with kids.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  It's funny you say that cause I feel like he's in the full Jerry Maguire, like desperation mode. He's at the end of his rope and it's like, teaching you kids is an up at dawn pride swallowing siege. It's that Cruise. Plus then we get to pretend, we get to see him like try to connect with Penelope romantically. And that's always good sport.

• 1:19:58Bill Simmons?

  No, you left out first day of kindergarten Cruise. Him losing his mind.

• 1:20:05Bill Simmons?

  When he sits on the piano. Shut up, shut up. Yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Although I want Cruz's crisp too. Like I'm still here for that and Frank TJ Mackie mode. I could do that as well.

• 1:20:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I like that. Scorsese or Spielberg? Clearly Spielberg. Those were too easy.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  The Scorsese would just, there'd be just so many drugs. And I'm not talking about on Chris. I'm talking like Kimball would be strung out because his parents are or his family's not around or he wants to get revenge. Lot of drugs. Probably pretty good.

• 1:20:32Bill Simmons?

  What's your favorite picking nit from this movie?

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  I have, uh, the fact that here's, here's a crisp and Kimball should fight at the end. Instead of the gunshots and instead of the bloody killing, have a fight. If, you know, the ferret comes out and maybe Dominic gets away and then Chris is like, so I've always wanted to do this, Kimball. Let's go, you and me. And they have a big brawl in the shower room. Why don't, that's like standard operating procedure for these movies.

• 1:21:00Bill Simmons?

  Before anyone else gets there, yeah.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, they should fight.

• 1:21:03Bill Simmons?

  You think Reitman thought maybe, um, it just wouldn't be realistic for Arnold to lose or be in danger in a shower fight?

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Well, you do, there's the classic hack for that. You let Arnold take a bullet first.

• 1:21:16Bill Simmons?

  One arm. Great point. Yeah. So.

• 1:21:21Bill Simmons?

  It's a tough one because I'm trying to think like, I was talking about Chuck Norris movies. Chuck Norris died a couple of weeks ago. Never, never got his just doing rewatchables.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:21:29Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what the right movie, he doesn't, the most rewatchable movie for me that he made was Silent Rage. Um, but I think.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  I love Silent Rage.

• 1:21:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you like Silent Rage? It's, it's not a big list. People that like it.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  You know who turned me on to Silent Rage? I'm not making this up. Aaron Rodgers. Interviewed him years ago and he made a joke about Silent Rage was like, that's a cool reference. And I didn't know it very well. Went and watched it. Hilarious movie. Great villain. And I became a fan since then. That was like five or six years ago. He loves it. But Delta Force is probably the one, right?

• 1:22:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, Chuck, so I think I had. My favorites are Missing in Action 2, Code of Silence, the Chicago movie he made, which is like a really good Chicago movie and every Chicago actor is in it. Like all of them, every 80s Chicago actor. I don't know if you've seen it.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  I haven't. I don't know that movie.

• 1:22:18Bill Simmons?

  You're a Chicago guy.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:22:20Bill Simmons?

  You gotta queue that one up. I, I demand that you watch that. It's a, it's a Pluto 2B special.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  I'll watch it.

• 1:22:27Bill Simmons?

  Lomoff McQuaid, Mission Action, Mission Action 2 and Silent Range. And in three of those movies Chuck was at least, Chuck couldn't act. God bless Chuck. I enjoyed Chuck. I've seen all his movies. He couldn't act.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Not an actor.

• 1:22:38Bill Simmons?

  But he knew there had to be a showdown scene at the end.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Bill Simmons?

  He, and Missing in Action 2, which is not, really not a good movie, but it's better than Mission Action 1. It all leads to this evil sadistic Vietnam guy who's just torturing all the POWs. He's just the worst. You just want Chuck to kick his ass all movie. And then finally they end up in this cabin, like what, on stilts. It's like the second floor. They climb up and they're in there. And it's just like, all right, it's fucking Hagler Hearns time. Let's go.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Here we go. Ring the bell.

• 1:23:11Bill Simmons?

  And they fight in this thing and it's, and it's incredible.

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Bill Simmons?

  So you're saying Schwarzenegger versus Chris?

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:18Bill Simmons?

  What's like, let's go Chuck Norris style. Let's really like go three, four minutes here. They probably didn't want to do that in a kid's movie would be my guess.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Well, and the alternative was the bloody shootout. I just, I, I always liked the, the main event. We've sat here for two hours. Now let's see these guys fight. There's potential of them crashing into the shower and the pipe breaks and there's water. It could have been really cinematic. I like it.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  I had a couple of nits, including, uh, to pick, including.

• 1:23:47Bill Simmons?

  Why did we have to do this undercover sting operation in Astoria? Like, why not just have the FBI tail crisp?

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Bill Simmons?

  I assume John Kimball's like reasonably valuable as a police officer. He's got a cool beard and sunglasses. He's foiling drug operations and they're like. We think he might end up going to Astoria. We need two cops to go undercover. Don't really tell anyone what we're up to. And this is the plot of the movie, I guess. I still don't understand it. I don't know why they had to go.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Why don't also, if you did have to go, maybe just take 48 hours and let Phoebe like clear up the stomach flu and then she goes in as the teacher. You have Crisp is incarcerated. There's not that much of a rush.

• 1:24:31Bill Simmons?

  Right, true.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  But she gets this like, oh, my stomach. And so he goes in, just take it easy. Take some Metamucil and then go teach the school.

• 1:24:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, wait till Wednesday. Well, I had her too. What kind of food poisoning did she?

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:24:46Bill Simmons?

  Was this the first COVID case? This was?

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Could have been.

• 1:24:49Bill Simmons?

  30 years before COVID?

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  It was COVID 4.

• 1:24:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It was a prototype of the original COVID. She's out for a week and a half. This was like fantasy and Sundance in 2020. I don't understand why they get two hotel rooms. I don't understand what happened to Arnold's old family.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  So strange. They tried to give him something to work with. This like this subtext about why he's hurting and why he's gravitating towards Dominic. And he's like, yeah, they just moved on. I never see him. Why don't you have joint custody of him? What are you doing? I think the real answer is that should be that Crisp did something to mess up Arnold's family and that's why he's obsessed with Crisp like they do in Face Off.

• 1:25:26Bill Simmons?

  That makes way too much sense. Or my wife thought she was getting a work visa and couldn't get one. Then she took the kids back to Austria. Like, like, at least come up with some reason that's not like, yeah, I have a kid. I don't know where.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  No idea. Don't talk to him.

• 1:25:42Bill Simmons?

  How about a long distance call? Could we do that for like a minute?

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  It kind of makes Kimball look like kind of a piece of shit. Like, why are you so empathetic about your son? Why are you so obsessed with Dominic? You have your own kid. What is this?

• 1:25:54Bill Simmons?

  Here's my big one.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:57Bill Simmons?

  It's my nitpick. It's also the Vincent Chase Award for are we sure the character was actually good at their job?

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:03Bill Simmons?

  The ending. Arnold, fire drill, loses Dominic immediately. You have one job. Just keep Dominic there. You have one job. Just grab him by the back. He's walking with you. Where you go, he goes. Loses him in 10 seconds. Doesn't shoot the bad guy. Blows that one. Gets shot by two different characters.

• 1:26:25Bill Simmons?

  Get shot, get shot by the entire Chris family and then has to be saved by his partner who miraculously wakes up. Just an abomination of a job.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Terrible. His partner with a baseball bat who's not even armed. When, when that fire alarm went off, dude, just grab Dominic. The other kids for on purpose of this mission could die in the fire. Get Dominic out of here. Dominic, Dominic. It just grabs him like nothing. Pretty bad.

• 1:26:50Bill Simmons?

  They know the guy's out, that, that the witness is dead. Like they're, they're waiting for something. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast or untouchable. I can't say I wouldn't watch the first episode of a prestige remake.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  A remake?

• 1:27:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, I'd probably test drive it.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  You go, um, you go Alan Richson, who's Reacher a, as John Kimball in the Schwarzenegger role. And then, um, as Crisp, you have some badass actor, Paul Mescal or Barry Keoghan or one of those like sweet actors. Like it, it could work.

• 1:27:24Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna zag on you.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  What are you going?

• 1:27:27Bill Simmons?

  Can I offer you a little Travis Kelsey?

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Good. We need some more of this. The Kelseys, we gotta get that name out there. Maybe Jason can play Crisp and Travis can play Kimball.

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  I said, even athlete, like could I offer you Marshawn Lynch?

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  You're always selling Marshawn. I, I'm good with Marshawn. He lives on planet Marshawn. We tried to sell Marshawn for the Fireball role in Running Man. I'm good.

• 1:27:51Bill Simmons?

  Okay. I was trying to think of some athlete. Aaron Rodgers as Crisp?

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  No, he hasn't decided he's playing for the Steelers yet. We don't know what his future is.

• 1:28:01Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the florist, Ryan Ruko, Gus Johnson, Zane Lowe, or somebody else?

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  I don't know if you saw this, but at the very end, when they're having the face off, um, there's a quick shot in the locker room and there's, um, an announcer's table. And it says, and Gus is there and he's got an announcer and he's got his microphone and he, he just lets it rip. And it sounds like this. Dominic Crisp, young fella.

• 1:28:31Speaker 03

  His old man's got a gun to his head in the shower room. Barrett comes out of the sweater.

• 1:28:39Speaker 03

  Ignis to Kimball blows away Chris.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  I love you, Gus.

• 1:28:47Speaker 03

  That I love you, brother.

• 1:28:48Bill Simmons?

  That always kills you. Every time you do that, it kills your throat.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Every time it takes it six months off my life.

• 1:28:53Bill Simmons?

  Like two weeks. Great to have Gus back. Just want to ask her who gets it. I don't know. The score?

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  I think the hair and makeup people who do Kimball's beard and Chris ponytail.

• 1:29:04Bill Simmons?

  That's great.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  That's the people.

• 1:29:06Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answer for questions.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  I got a great one.

• 1:29:09Bill Simmons?

  Let's hear it.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Okay. This is, this is, you're gonna love this. So Moriarty comes in and she's talking about her son, who she is worried is playing with dolls.

• 1:29:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  The child's name, Bill, is Sylvester. This is in the middle of the Stallone Schwarzenegger feud. When they're going at each other and taking shots.

• 1:29:31Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  Do you not think that Arnold somewhere in a trailer is like, the one who plays with dolls, let's call him Sylvester? Is that not a veiled shot? He's a girly man, Sylvester. I don't think that's a coincidence.

• 1:29:45Bill Simmons?

  That's amazing. I mean.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Come on. Sylvester? That's not a normal name.

• 1:29:49Bill Simmons?

  I think you're right. I want to know Dominic, whether that was aimed at anybody too.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Maybe we call him Sly. Sly is the boy's son. His name's Sly. That's too much, Arnold. Let's stick with Sylvester.

• 1:30:04Bill Simmons?

  I have, was Pamela Reed the poor man's Laurie Metcalf or vice versa?

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  Both, both are great.

• 1:30:11Bill Simmons?

  You could have switched them in every role in the nineties. And I think Laurie Metcalf easily just could have been the partner in this.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  She's excellent.

• 1:30:18Bill Simmons?

  I think Laurie Metcalf's in Internal Affairs, the same year that Pamela Reed's in this movie. You could have just switched them.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, but both just like cool, good hangs. You can have a beer with, like sexy in their own way, good actors. I like.

• 1:30:30Bill Simmons?

  They can play cops and get shot.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:34Bill Simmons?

  The old kindergarten teacher who

• 1:30:37Bill Simmons?

  John Kimball takes her job.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Talk about it. What happened to her? She had tenure. Where'd she go?

• 1:30:43Bill Simmons?

  Gone for four weeks. They just tell her to take a hike. Comes back. Everything's fine. We fixed the school library. Maybe everybody donated some books. She finally has her job back. She finally has the kids. She's not as cool as John Kimball. She doesn't have a ferret. She didn't foil a crime. Probably trying to work her way back, you know, a little Ray Hanley on the giant style. How do you follow a legend?

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:31:06Bill Simmons?

  Just as it's getting good, here comes John Kimball, shows up again with a cane and kids go nuts. That's it. She's just working at the hardware store the next day. It's done. Teaching, no more teaching for you.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  And dunks on her with Arnold's repurposing his own line by saying, I'm back. And everyone goes crazy.

• 1:31:24Bill Simmons?

  Fuck you lady.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. The teacher's like, I'm trying to teach some simple two plus three math. Get out of here, Kimball. You're not even a real teacher. That is strange.

• 1:31:34Bill Simmons?

  Just some lady who, who lived in Astoria, probably put three kids through the school system. Kept her kindergarten job. She'd been there 28 years. Arnold just overnight takes it.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Beloved teacher, her life goal to educate young people and Arnold with his lats and traps comes in, they like him better because he has a stupid ferret.

• 1:31:53Bill Simmons?

  Last one for me. Is this a better movie if Arnold dies?

• 1:31:59Bill Simmons?

  He gets shot by the lady. He's just, he's just dead. He doesn't make it.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:04Bill Simmons?

  And we have like, we almost go, it's like hardball when, when G baby dies, we're just, it's a fucking swerve. We don't know. Oh my God, G baby's dead. They just killed John Kimball. It's, it's a rap. He's done.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  So play this out. Do we, do we, we get a funeral scene and the children are all black?

• 1:32:21Bill Simmons?

  The most emotional funeral scene. Just tears everywhere. This movie, this is now like the saddest movie of the 1990s. John Kimball, his legacy lives on. We're going to name the John Kimball library after him. The burned books. There's the statue. It's a collage of burned books in John Kimball's honor. The, the bathroom, there's some sort of statue of him, like. Yeah. Is it a better movie?

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Dominic takes care of the ferret. Don't worry about it. We'll do that.

• 1:32:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  There's a scene like in the end when Tony Stark dies and all the Avengers show up in their suits and it's very somber and then they just roll credits and that's it. I don't know how that would test, especially with the sobbing kids at the funeral.

• 1:33:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  But I like where you're going. It's a huge arg.

• 1:33:05Bill Simmons?

  And it's, we'd get the boys to men.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  The end of the road.

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we get the end of the road. It's right around the same time. Just tears.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  How about Chris lives too? And he gets away with Dominic. Like that's, let's do that. And he raises him with his mother.

• 1:33:19Bill Simmons?

  Kimball's dead. Pamela Reed stays to

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:23Bill Simmons?

  to take over the class and her fiance becomes like the Astoria lead chef and they kind of carry his legacy. I don't know.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dominic's mom hangs herself like that. We could do that. That might work.

• 1:33:35Bill Simmons?

  Secret handshake club memorabilia for the thing you would want from this movie. For me, it's something Astoria elementary hat, T-shirt. So something from, from that, that school, but I couldn't really think of one. What'd you have?

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  I just want a full head to toe outfit of Chris and I want to go to a Halloween party.

• 1:33:57Bill Simmons?

  Chris.

• 1:33:57Speaker 01

  And imagine the one person who would get, are you fucking Chris? And I'd be like, yeah, man, Chris, look at the ponytail. They would be like, that is, could I take a picture with you? That is the coolest thing. You're Chris, but yeah, I'm Chris. Anybody can take a picture. I'm Chris. That's what I want. Yeah.

• 1:34:12Bill Simmons?

  So you'd need like the big David Byrne suit.

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:16Bill Simmons?

  Ponytail wig and a bad tan and you're ready to roll.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Looks like the night at the Roxbury guys if they had like Paul Revere's ponytail. That's my look.

• 1:34:28Bill Simmons?

  Best double feature choice. I have Total Recall. Let's just, let's just show peak of the powers, 1990 Arnold. What do you got?

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  Your answer is better. I had Home Alone. They were running the world. It was all about kids then. It's Arnold. It's everybody. But Total Recall, this is the same actor screaming about, give these people air.

• 1:34:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  And then he's dating in the same year. That's a great choice.

• 1:34:52Bill Simmons?

  He also makes the same face in each movie when it is the eye bulging.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 1:34:58Bill Simmons?

  Come on.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  You think this is the real Quaid? It is. That's great.

• 1:35:02Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi word for best, worst life lesson. Kindergarten teachers still matter.

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  Look at you.

• 1:35:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Look at old Simbo getting soft.

• 1:35:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  That's thoughtful.

• 1:35:14Bill Simmons?

  It still matter. They could still make a huge difference in lives.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  They do. I had, I had, you're married, you're allowed to dress like slobs. I like that their moms say that because it's definitely true. And the athleisure revolution has enabled all of us married people to just dress like pigs half the time.

• 1:35:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and that's probably one of the only benefits from COVID. It's like, you know what?

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Pretty awesome.

• 1:35:34Bill Simmons?

  These pants feel great. I'm not going to apologize. I go out publicly.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  These $200 Lululemons, awesome. I'll just wear them all day.

• 1:35:41Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie Arnold Schwarzenegger?

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Arnold Schwarzenegger, twice in one year, dude.

• 1:35:46Bill Simmons?

  Craig's not here, but we are splicing a special

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 1:35:50Bill Simmons?

  of the pod. He's just gonna pop in with a little 90 second, here's my review of Kindergarten Cop, throwing it to him right now.

• 1:35:58Speaker 04

  Okay, Kindergarten Cop. I watched with my wife Liz. I would say easy watch. Liz and I shared a lot of eye rolls with one another after Arnold's cheesy lines. But by the end of the movie, you're kind of sold on the whole thing and you kind of come away feeling good. Arnold man is just, he's, it's like, watching Arnold in this is like watching like Bill Laimbeer in the 90s or Roy Hibbert in the early 2010s, where it's just like perfect for the era, no chance this works now at all. 90s movies just have a charming obliviousness to them. And that's why they work. And that's why Arnold works in this. I don't, you could, I don't, I guess it's The Rock today or something like that.

• 1:36:40Speaker 04

  Or like Ryan Reynolds, but there is, there is an aspect of this where Arnold is earnestly trying. And, and I don't know when his career pivoted from people realizing that it's just funny to watch him say funny lines. And maybe it was this one, but I, that, that obliviousness of the 90s is why those movies are so great. And we're too self-aware now for I think that to work again. I appreciate that they spent all the money on casting Arnold and didn't have much else. Which brings me to Richard Tyson, who

• 1:37:12Speaker 04

  My first question was, who the hell is this man? And what is going on? What's going on here? An unexplored relationship with his mother in this film that we could probably dig into a little bit more. I think, I think he's eligible to replace Judd Nelson for the actor that's just doing his, in his own movie award.

• 1:37:31Speaker 04

  I, I will have to give it to the hair and makeup department though, because the greasy ponytail was just an absolute perfect choice. They knocked that out of the park. His look, um, I have no notes. 10 out of 10 on the look. So, uh, great job by everybody there. My favorite line from this movie is probably when Arnold meets Pam Reed. And they get partnered together and there's just one line of exposition where she goes, so where are you from? And he goes Austria. And there's just no follow up and they keep moving after that. So, um, I really, I really enjoyed that. I still don't really understand why Richard Tyson needed his son so badly and was willing to like blow up a school for it. But that's not what this movie is about. It's about watching Arnold say tumor with a bunch of kindergarteners and in that respect, it succeeds.

• 1:38:15Speaker 04

  So I'm sure you guys are gonna make fun of me coming back here and you're gonna pretend that I said something insane. But sure.

• 1:38:25Speaker 04

  I'm in.

• 1:38:27Bill Simmons?

  Thanks, Craig. That was great.

• 1:38:29Speaker 04

  Craig, I'm fire.

• 1:38:30Bill Simmons?

  Can't believe you hated the movie that much.

• 1:38:33Speaker 04

  Can you believe he mentioned the runtime? I mean, incredible stuff. Great job, Craig.

• 1:38:37Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable. Um, all right. Kindergarten cop. So I don't, I don't know what's next for us.

• 1:38:44Bill Simmons?

  We're a little light on Van Damme. I feel like we addressed Arnold.

• 1:38:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:49Bill Simmons?

  There's a Seagal movie we haven't done yet that you don't like.

• 1:38:53Speaker 04

  We also. There's one that we haven't done that we both like though. And it's, it stars Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock. That's not been done. So there's, there's some meat on that bone. The Van Damme thing is gonna be tough. We'd have to go into like Lionheart and Bloods, Kickboxer territory. That might be tough. But I'm open for business anytime you are, dude.

• 1:39:11Bill Simmons?

  The Seagal, the, uh, Undeadly Ground, I've been circling a little bit.

• 1:39:16Speaker 04

  I know, yeah.

• 1:39:17Bill Simmons?

  I don't know from a comedy standpoint. Um.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  I've been looking, I've been looking at that and I'm looking at Mark for Death when he fights the Jamaican voodoo gangs and Screwface.

• 1:39:26Bill Simmons?

  That's in there for us as well.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  There's a lot of apples to be picked on the tree before we get to Screwface.

• 1:39:32Bill Simmons?

  There's also like some, some mid nineties Nick Cage that we could run back.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Bill Simmons?

  There's Point Break, which we did the first year of the show.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  I've been pushing for repoint.

• 1:39:43Bill Simmons?

  Repoint is in there.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  It's an unrecognizable podcast compared to what it is now. It's just very, very old.

• 1:39:48Bill Simmons?

  Lot of football stuff, everything else. All right, Kyle Brandt, any, any plugs you want to do before we head out of here?

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  No, not, not yet. Just listen to Rewatchables podcast, watch Good Morning Football and I get it all the time, Bill. People come up and, Bill, Kyle, Kyle, what's up, man? Hey, how you doing? Love you on Rewatchables. I love, no you don't. You love Cobra. That's why you love Man Rewatchables. That's what you love. It's so fun, man. Always.

• 1:40:12Bill Simmons?

  All right. Thank you. Great to see you. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahow as well. We will see you next week. Ironically, you're gonna miss it. I think Ghostbusters is happening next week.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  Oh, it's great. I'll be there listening. I can't wait.

• 1:40:24Bill Simmons?

  I think it's, I think it's time. We're due. We're headed toward Netflix is a joke month and we wanted to bang out like some sort of fun. I think, I'm not positive, but I think it's happening.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Okay. You got the lineup ready? Like you got, you got the dream team?

• 1:40:37Bill Simmons?

  You can be, gonna be studying it, watching it. Yeah, I think we have the right cast of people in place, but anyway.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  I'll be there as I always am.

• 1:40:43Bill Simmons?

  Kyle Brandt, great to see you.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  You too.