Pod Insights The Rewatchables ‘Tropic Thunder’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Van Lathan, and Joel Anderson About this episode You never go full rewatch. The guys head to the jungles of Vietnam to revisit Ben Stiller’s 2008 action comedy, ‘Tropic Thunder,’ starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Brandon T. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Cruise.
Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic
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Transcript 27,422 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by Angry Orchard Hard Cider. Halloween's just better with a scary movie and something good to drink. Angry Orchard's limited edition glow-in-the-dark thriller variety pack is the perfect companion. It even includes a mystery flavor can featuring the iconic ghost face from Scream. Don't get angry, get orchard this Halloween. Find Angry Orchard in a store near you or visit angryorchard.com. Angry Orchard, cider company, LLC. Angryorchard.com. Please drink responsibly. Angry Orchard is a hard cider with other natural flavors.
0:44 Bill Simmons? The Rewatchables, maybe the last episode ever. This is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We can find the Press Box with Joel Anderson, find Higher Learning and Midnight Boys and Ringer Tailgate with Van Lathan. And then CR, we're taping this the day after game seven of Celtics Sixers. He's, you went, go ahead, enjoy yourself. Play your song, do your thing.
1:06 Chris Ryan? No, no, no. I mean, I was just gonna say, you know, I wanted to play a little background music while I was talking and I just need you to do something for me. Take a step back and literally fuck your own face.
1:22 Bill Simmons? CR pulled it off, Joel Embiid pulled it off. By the time you hear this, who knows if Joel Embiid will still be playing.
1:28 Chris Ryan? Please post that before we lose four straight to the Nets.
1:32 Bill Simmons? Anyway, Tropic Thunder is next. This episode is brought to you by Apple and AT&T. Scroll long enough and you'll hear it all. Miracle diets, fitness trends, you name it. But with iPhone and Apple Watch, you get meaningful insights from a very trusted source. Your body. You can track sleep quality, cardio fitness and more, then unpack all the information in the Health app on iPhone to get a picture of your overall health. These health insights are developed with clinical experts from start to finish. Find out more at apple.com/health.
2:14 Bill Simmons? Apple Watch is not a medical device and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice.
2:36 Bill Simmons? Wow, Joel Anderson. You're here. You did this.
2:39 Speaker 02 Should I be offended that we're not doing it at your house?
2:42 Bill Simmons? We've never done four at my house. We're starting?
2:46 Speaker 03 Already.
2:47 Speaker 02 I'm just saying. Van told me that when they do it at your house.
2:52 Bill Simmons? It's three only at the house. We would have to bump somebody. You had to basically kill C.R. Van.
2:57 Speaker 02 I mean, Van didn't have to be here. Just, you know what I'm saying? We could have put C.R. in blackface.
3:01 Bill Simmons? That's true.
3:02 Chris Ryan? Wait, don't spoil the second half of the pod.
3:05 Bill Simmons? Yeah, come on. That's coming later.
3:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, okay, later. I just, you know, I'm glad to be here, though. Very grateful. I have a lot of gratitude for it. You know, he says you cater food and everything. Did you take lunch orders and shit?
3:16 Bill Simmons? Never had that. Never had it.
3:17 Speaker 03 That's a joke.
3:18 Bill Simmons? Can water, soda?
3:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's like, you want some lemon in that?
3:21 Speaker 03 When we're watching the games and hanging out as friends.
3:23 Speaker 02 Oh, my bad, okay.
3:24 Bill Simmons? That hasn't happened yet. Because you're never here. You're on the East Coast.
3:27 Speaker 02 That's right, that's right.
3:28 Bill Simmons? You lived here, a lot of good things would happen for you.
3:30 Speaker 02 I love L.A. And in fact, they were so annoyed with me talking about how much I loved L.A. when I was hanging out on Saturday. They were like, man, be quiet. Stop talking about that.
3:39 Speaker 03 I don't know what you're talking about.
3:40 Speaker 02 You did, like Billy and Tate, they were just like, all right, man, we get it. You know, but I was just, I was talking about like, oh, man, the mountains, the fog, just everything. It was gorgeous. The fog.
3:49 Chris Ryan? It was a lot. There was a little bit of a mist settling over UCLA's spring game this weekend.
3:53 Speaker 02 Rose Bowl is beautiful, man. I love being out here.
3:56 Bill Simmons? Can we steer toward traffic thunder?
3:57 Speaker 02 Yes, we can do that.
3:58 Speaker 03 What the fuck is happening?
3:59 Speaker 02 Okay, sorry.
3:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
4:00 Speaker 02 Sorry.
4:01 Bill Simmons? It is comedy month here at the Rewatchables. We've had this one written down for a while. Craig has been pushing for it. I don't know for how long. Five years?
4:10 Speaker 04 Since day one. Since the first movie I did.
4:15 Bill Simmons? It's finally happening. I can't wait to see how it goes. I didn't even know where to begin. This movie came out in 2008 and C.R. the peak of... How far can we push this comedies? This is it. This starts there. We did there. There's something about Mary last week.
4:30 Chris Ryan? So that's like eight years before.
4:31 Bill Simmons? We go all the way through the mid 2000s and then kinda 2008, 2009, we're near the end.
4:37 Chris Ryan? This is a movie where if it didn't work, I wonder if they would have released it. You know, it's the, that's the stakes. It's like, if this doesn't come off, if this doesn't play, can you put this in movie theaters?
4:48 Bill Simmons? Lot of big stars at the time.
4:50 Chris Ryan? Yeah, yeah.
4:51 Speaker 03 And I think that was, obviously, this is gonna sound stupid, like a lot of big stars, that's intentional, but I think part of the charm of the movie is you know all of these guys. These are not the guys. You trust these guys. Look at the familiar faces that are a part of this movie. Even just people showing up, they get the complete buy-in cuz they do some really outrageous shit that you have to have trust in the performance for them to be able to pull it off.
5:14 Speaker 02 What's the first year that you start saying, oh, I don't think they can do it? I think whenever, I'm trying to remember like when aggrieved Twitter was at its peak? Like 2013, 2014?
5:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Twitter's basically rounding in a shape right around now. 2008, 2009.
5:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, like I, I don't even think I'd been, I don't think I joined Twitter until like 2009.
5:34 Bill Simmons? That's when I was too. I was like spring of nine.
5:36 Speaker 02 So like, yeah, it's not even moving the conversation. So I think like by the time that gets a little bit of, you know, motion and more people on there, then I was like, all right, 2013 to the 14?
5:45 Bill Simmons? Here's what I got. There's something about Mary is 98. American Pie 99, fucking the pie. Forty year old virgin. The aristocrats, the whole Gilbert Gottfried, they make a documentary about it. Bored at, no question. Super bad, definitely. And then, um, and then this movie and they kind of, we're about at the end here.
6:06 Chris Ryan? What do you think ended it? Was it social media? Was it like the, the kind of, the open of the town square of, of discourse and criticism? Or was it, these guys all get too big and you can't mess with the money that much? Like what is it?
6:19 Bill Simmons? There's, it was happening everywhere, cuz I felt like it was happening with TV too, right? Cuz Eastbound and Down's pushing the envelope same time, late 2000s.
6:27 Speaker 03 I mean, you know what? Some of the stuff that we're talking about is pushing the envelope. Is pushing the envelope in terms of how zany and daring a comedy is? This is different, though.
6:38 Bill Simmons? Yes.
6:38 Speaker 03 Like, this is legitimately hitting at what some people would say are marginalized communities. Special disabilities, um, eh, special needs people, should I say? Black people, gay people.
6:50 Chris Ryan? Viet Kongs.
6:52 Speaker 03 Viet Kongs. There's not a lot of-
6:53 Chris Ryan? Viet Kong!
6:54 Speaker 03 Kong, yeah. There's no S. You wouldn't say Chinese. You wouldn't say Chinese. There's not a lot of movies in this run that you guys are talking about that go for this. Something About Mary is definitely one of them.
7:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
7:05 Speaker 03 Definitely one of them, but there are not that many movies that go directly where Tropic Thunder goes.
7:10 Bill Simmons? Do you get credibility, though, when you have this many stars and proven people in it? Do they get to push the envelope more at that point?
7:17 Speaker 02 I guess it depends on who you get credibility with, right? Cuz like, yeah, Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller, like, all these, uh, Jack Black. They have credibility with people-
7:25 Bill Simmons? Downey?
7:26 Speaker 02 Downey, yeah. They have credibility with a certain kind of comedy community, but, again, by the time we start getting to the height of Twitter, like, 2013, 2014, I don't even think they would be able to pull that off with them. Like, I don't think people would buy that shit from Robert Downey Jr.
7:40 Chris Ryan? And when you think about the fact that this is the same year Iron Man comes out, so this is the sort of completion of his renaissance, you know, his, his career revival. But he's not that far into becoming an insurable actor again when he does this. Which, on the one hand, is crazy that he did it, but on the other hand, it makes sense because you're like, he wouldn't do this today. You know, I don't think anybody in this movie would do Tropic Thunder today. Not because of, like, necessarily the content, it's too big of a gamble.
8:10 Speaker 02 You think of that as different from, cuz I, I saw an interview he did from like 2020, 21. He said, "Well, I don't regret it," something like that.
8:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, I do a little prep, man. I told you I was studying tape.
8:21 Chris Ryan? He was like, "I don't regret it, but I wouldn't do it again."
8:23 Speaker 02 Yeah. He didn't say, "I wouldn't do it again." He just said, "I, I, I don't regret it," basically.
8:27 Chris Ryan? I think that they had a pretty s- serious, like, intellectual reasoning behind Kirk's, the Kirk character, which is obviously like the one that's like the thing that you'd be like, "Could you pull that off today?"
8:39 Bill Simmons? Well, I like some of the quotes that Stiller had about it, it's just like, "Look, we're making fun of actors and how movies are made." And this is like the nth degree of all of this stuff.
8:49 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:50 Bill Simmons? We're just taking it as far as we can go, but that's the whole point of the movie. You're either with us or you're not.
8:54 Speaker 03 You know, I have this in, uh, what's the most 2008 thing about the movie? We were still in the era to where funny won.
9:04 Bill Simmons? I agree.
9:04 Speaker 03 If it was funny, then people would, there would be a certain group of people that would have an issue with it, uh, problems, and we could have conversations. But if it was funny, that was the most important thing. Everybody kind of got the joke together.
9:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
9:19 Speaker 03 And if it worked that way, then it was cool. Now, obviously, we came out of that, right? We came out of that partly because Hollywood pushed us out of it. There were several egregious things that happened in the 2010s, like, uh, you know, casting Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell, like casting movies where everyone went, no, we need to have a conversation about the racial dynamics and politics that exist in Hollywood. And that kind of overshadowed a lot of the other stuff. But at this point, it was still like, if you went to this movie and you laughed at that character, that was enough.
9:51 Bill Simmons? Craig has a theory.
9:53 Speaker 03 Oh, here we go.
9:54 Bill Simmons? Okay. What was your last, when did you think the last funny comedy was? Did we say This Is the End?
10:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, my joke was that This Is the End was the end.
10:02 Bill Simmons? Neighbors?
10:02 Speaker 04 Of that era.
10:03 Bill Simmons? Was Neighbors right after?
10:04 Speaker 04 Neighbors technically came after, but it's, it's that like 2014 range. I think it's mostly because, like, I think this movie is a great example of the Ben Stiller group. They were all in their early 40s at this point. They were at the peak of their powers. It was kind of like Apex Mountain for what can we get away with? And I think This Is the End was the same thing for the Seth Rogen crew. They were all kind of reaching 40 years old. They have kind of done everything. They're like, all right, what's one last thing we can get away with? And then there was no new group that came up below those guys, which is, which is why I think there's no Tropic Thunders or This Is the Ends now, because like, no group really like supplanted them and came after them. And then 2017, things changed, you know, culture got differently.
10:44 Speaker 03 The way you're talking, huh? I like to hear it, what's happening?
10:47 Speaker 04 At the end of the 2010s, with, culture changed for a variety of reasons.
10:52 Speaker 03 He's changed.
10:53 Chris Ryan? There's also, but you know, there is also, there's a massive, massive sea change in Hollywood, which is a lot of the people in, several people in this movie, especially Downey, start participating
11:05 Speaker 03 In Marvel.
11:05 Chris Ryan? In Marvel and in large scale superhero franchises. And you can't really fuck with the money on those, like, the next Tropic Thunder should have been about Marvel movies. Right? You would do like, I can't believe we're on movie 11 of this and you would have all the fake trailers and the documentaries and
11:23 Speaker 03 The Boys does that a little bit.
11:24 Chris Ryan? It does a little bit, but not in a, this is a movie, and there was an HBO show like a year or two ago that kind of came and went, that was a little bit about this, but it's, it's, Tropic Thunder can make fun of something and you can be conversant in Platoon and Apocalypse Now, and be like, this is so funny, the way they're making fun of this, but even if you haven't seen it, you'd still laugh at some of the things that are happening.
11:45 Speaker 02 Tropic Thunder 2 is like Scorch Your Eight then, right?
11:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
11:48 Speaker 02 Basically.
11:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
11:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:51 Bill Simmons? I have a lot of Scorch Your questions coming later.
11:55 Bill Simmons? I think I would have seen at least the first two in the theater, but I'm not sure the plot was. So this was one of the most successful Hollywood parody movies, I think, ever.
12:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
12:05 Bill Simmons? And when you talk about Big Picture, The Player, Network, what else is in there?
12:09 Speaker 02 Network, uh...
12:11 Bill Simmons? Were they really flippant?
12:13 Speaker 03 There was a recent show called, um, there's a really, there's a really bad one called, uh, Burn Hollywood Burn that had some people in it.
12:20 Chris Ryan? I think at this point now, it's like the
12:21 Bill Simmons? Well, the studios, the
12:22 Speaker 03 Studios, the one, trying to think of more, but
12:25 Bill Simmons? The studio, I think, probably was influenced by this movie to some degree.
12:28 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
12:28 Speaker 03 The Kevin Bacon one, right?
12:30 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's another good one.
12:31 Chris Ryan? That's the Big Picture, is that?
12:32 Speaker 03 That's the Big Picture, that's the Big Picture, yeah, Kevin Bacon, Terry Hatcher, all those people in it, yeah, sure.
12:36 Bill Simmons? Swimming with Sharks, was that one of them?
12:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah, that was the agent, there's been a couple of like agent, like hurly burly
12:41 Speaker 03 But then you know what you also have, like, around this same time is you have Entourage.
12:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
12:45 Speaker 03 And. Lloyd.
12:48 Speaker 03 And Entourage is legitimately another thing that pushes it so far with some of the stuff that's happening that you probably couldn't do now, which is another reason why maybe that movie was like not well received when it came out. But Entourage is kind of doing the same thing at the same time.
13:03 Chris Ryan? You know how you were, when we were doing Ghostbusters and we were kind of going through the montage that they have, the fame montage?
13:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah, the eighty-four montage.
13:09 Chris Ryan? And you were like, this is just the fucking best. Like, I love the eighties. This was so great. Eighty-four. Do you feel that way about oh eight? Like when you wa- when you're rewatching Entourage or you're watching Tropic Thunder, stuff from back then, are you ever like, oh, eight was the best, man?
13:22 Bill Simmons? It's just.
13:24 Chris Ryan? Housing prices were low.
13:26 Bill Simmons? You're talking pre-social media, though.
13:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:28 Bill Simmons? You're talking.
13:29 Speaker 03 You guys, this is hard for Bill to talk about. Cause he's, cause he's walking the line. He's gotta be sensitive to the concerns of the people now. But at the same time, that was your era.
13:38 Chris Ryan? Doc and the big three.
13:39 Speaker 03 That was your time.
13:43 Speaker 03 That was your era, yeah.
13:44 Bill Simmons? Obama.
13:45 Speaker 03 Say it again.
13:45 Bill Simmons? Sarah Palin, Tina Fey.
13:47 Speaker 03 Like, oh, Obama.
13:49 Bill Simmons? Sarah Palin and Tina Fey.
13:50 Speaker 03 You know what I loved about oh eight? Obama. Get the fuck out of here.
13:52 Bill Simmons? Loved Obama.
13:53 Speaker 02 I mean, he wasn't even president.
13:54 Bill Simmons? He inspired me.
13:55 Speaker 02 Yeah. But see, he wasn't even president. I, you, I think you're right. It was like, this wasn't the last good year. But it was like the last, it was like the last year that everything didn't seem headed for a downward trajectory.
14:06 Bill Simmons? It was also, there was enough, enough distance from nine eleven. And it just felt like, there, there was a hopefulness, I think, as we headed into late two thousands that now seems like it happened a million years ago.
14:17 Chris Ryan? This movie benefited from being in oh eight because there was no like out of context commentary on it. Like, you had to go see the movie to really know what was in the movie. And if it came out now, there would just be clips and screenshots and it would just get destroyed before people even went to go see it.
14:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Yeah, that is true.
14:31 Speaker 03 Now, I will say that throughout the mid twenties, we, I was still having a lot of fun twenty fifteen, twenty fourteen, twenty sixteen, like, I'm at TMZ going crazy, right? I'm still having a lot of fun.
14:41 Chris Ryan? What do you mean?
14:42 Bill Simmons? What kind of fun?
14:42 Speaker 03 We haven't, we, we're going nuts. We're going nuts in the city.
14:45 Bill Simmons? Going nuts in the city?
14:47 Speaker 03 We're going nuts. We're going nuts, right?
14:49 Bill Simmons? You touched it?
14:49 Speaker 03 But, but, shut up. But in this, with this movie, with these types of movies, like, a lot of stuff happened. First of all, some of these guys, not necessarily so much in this movie, but like, some of these guys started getting in trouble. Like, there's a comedy purge that happens once the Me Too movement comes out. And you start to see the way some of these guys, not necessarily in this movie, but around the way they acted in their personal lives.
15:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
15:16 Speaker 03 And really, that ripped the heart out of like, what a lot of, I'm not saying that that was a bad thing. I'm just saying, you legitimately lost some of these careers when we're talking about some of these comedy dudes. Like, they didn't even last throughout the scrutiny of the mid to late 2010s.
15:31 Bill Simmons? You know who was able to avoid this the entire time was Larry David with Curb? He was always able to push the envelope on whatever he wanted. And then even after everything else changed, he still kept cracking out seasons. And still even made seasons this decade and almost seemed like he got a hall pass for it.
15:47 Chris Ryan? Well.
15:48 Bill Simmons? Some people get hall passes. Like Barclay had one forever.
15:50 Chris Ryan? There's a hall pass element to it, but I think that the thing that's crucial is if you're gonna make fun of other groups of people or basically anybody else, and this is what this movie actually does do, you have to be the body of the joke.
16:03 Bill Simmons? Right.
16:04 Chris Ryan? And Larry is always the most awkward, difficult, funniest person on Curb. Like, no matter who he's making fun of, Larry is always the one you're like, I can't believe this guy needs a napkin that bad that he's gonna do this.
16:16 Speaker 02 And Larry always loses.
16:17 Chris Ryan? And Larry always loses.
16:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
16:18 Chris Ryan? And Stiller and Downey and Jack Black, like, yeah, they get a moment of heroism at the end. But the people who are most worthy of ridicule in this movie are the, are the stars of the movie.
16:28 Bill Simmons? Right.
16:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, man, it's just too bad, because I was thinking about the Palestinian chicken episode, right? And it was like, yo, like, I think he actually could still do that today, though. So I think, I think, I think we're, I don't know, I mean, again, I don't work in Hollywood, you know what I'm saying? This is one of my few times out here in LA. But I just kinda feel like they're still, wait, don't look like that. I just feel like I just felt a little energy.
16:48 Bill Simmons? No.
16:50 Speaker 02 Just let me finish.
16:52 Speaker 02 Just let me finish.
16:54 Chris Ryan? Should we go?
16:56 Speaker 02 But no, it's just that, I mean, I think the thing is, is that you could still do that. I mean, the thing, the same kind of comedy that prevails in Tropic Thunder is still out there. You can find it.
17:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
17:06 Speaker 02 On the internet or wherever. It's just not, you know, a big Hollywood, it might not be a big Hollywood movie or whatever, but you can still find people doing blackface and walking up on people, calling them nigger. That was, you know.
17:18 Bill Simmons? About Chuck the Builder?
17:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, Chuck the Builder.
17:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Chuck the Builder. Well, it's a different podcast. We'll talk about that.
17:23 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, that's right. Sorry, I didn't mean to make it a comedy.
17:25 Chris Ryan? That's okay.
17:25 Speaker 02 I also.
17:28 Speaker 03 Bill, like, Joel said the N-word with the R. And Bill's brain detonated.
17:36 Bill Simmons? I just find Joel to have a safe space to give his opinion.
17:38 Chris Ryan? Bill's just like, I wore a different sweatshirt.
17:43 Speaker 03 That's a line from The Departed.
17:49 Speaker 02 I should have asked if I had permission to do that.
17:50 Chris Ryan? You do.
17:51 Speaker 03 Get your shit off, bro.
17:53 Speaker 02 Alright, doc, come on. Do it up.
17:56 Bill Simmons? I forgot what I was gonna say.
17:57 Speaker 03 I know you did.
17:59 Bill Simmons? I had a good point. I'll remember it a half hour from now. So it's making fun of two different genres.
18:06 Bill Simmons? All these Vietnam movies we grew up watching. And then all these Oscar bait movies that... I just feel like pre-social media, we were all making fun of this stuff and you might see it in essays and blog posts and... Whatever, but I don't feel like we made fun of some of this stuff enough. Like, have you ever seen I Am Sam? Like, some of these ones... These are like, regarding Henry, we've always talked about for dramas that are now comedies month, but... All these actors, they couldn't resist. And then when it would hit on Forrest Gump, then the next actor would feel like they had to do some sort of, you know, Oscar bait movie. But I always loved that this movie made fun of that.
18:43 Chris Ryan? And the Vietnam stuff is like, I kind of think about the scene in True Romance when Clarence Worley is like, "Man, did you make coming home in a body bag?"
18:55 Chris Ryan? It's like, this is almost making fun more of coming home in a body bag than it is like The Deer Hunter, you know? And coming home in a body bag is a fictional movie from True Romance, but...
19:04 Bill Simmons? Well, and a lot of homage stuff that you know if you're like a diehard fan of all this stuff, like, even Stiller's character starting to lose it. At the end and thinking that half-squats his son.
19:17 Bill Simmons? And it's basically Apocalypse Now, right? But it's, they're not blatantly hitting you over the head with that. You have to kind of know.
19:23 Speaker 03 One thing that social media did was it allowed everyone to run to their corners, coalesce around each other, and then form things to get offended about, right? And I'm not saying that...
19:34 Bill Simmons? Yes.
19:34 Speaker 02 Oh, you're saying people too woke, huh?
19:35 Speaker 03 No, I'm not saying people too woke. I'm saying like, even like, right now, like, the film bro community, the subjects of King Shang fantasy, the film bro community, right? They get offended. Like, they get offended about stuff like, "This movie is legitimately making fun of the culture of the Oscars." Of the culture of serious filmmaking being an endeavor that is completely cynical. This movie is making fun of that.
20:04 Bill Simmons? I screenshotted and they have the they have the five movies nominees and Hanks is in Hanks is in a wheelchair with his arm like he won some sort of wheelchair race.
20:19 Chris Ryan? Who's in the operating
20:20 Speaker 03 That's Sean Penn as a
20:24 Speaker 03 as a blind guy.
20:24 Chris Ryan? And Jon Voight, right?
20:25 Bill Simmons? Jon Voight and then Tobey Maguire in the Satan's Alley, which I own on 4K Blu-ray. It's pretty great.
20:32 Speaker 03 So like what I'm saying is like now there is a holy grail to some of this stuff. There there will be people that would be offended by some of this that think the Oscars now and the conversation around it because of podcasts and all of that stuff. It's just more different and robust than even I remember it from before. It's like it's the biggest part of somebody's here.
20:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I think Oscarology was more of a niche pursuit and now
20:55 Bill Simmons? No question.
20:55 Chris Ryan? And now it's not uncommon. I mean, maybe we have bias because we live in Los Angeles and it comes up a lot, but like you'll hear people be like, oh, I heard that movie has a really good shot in the in the Oscars.
21:07 Bill Simmons? Right. That was the dialogue. That kind of started in the nineties and then got even better in two thousands. I, as a movie fan, especially somebody on illegal cable box for years and years, who's watching all these movies, was offended by how bad some of the movies are.
21:18 Speaker 03 You said you had a what?
21:20 Bill Simmons? An illegal cable box.
21:21 Speaker 03 Don't try to like
21:21 Bill Simmons? In Charleston for years.
21:23 Speaker 03 And try illegal cable but guy like your gym.
21:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
21:25 Speaker 03 Don't try to like
21:26 Bill Simmons? No, Big Al. We paid Big Al to come over. He souped up our box. We get all the pay per views for like
21:31 Chris Ryan? Wow.
21:32 Bill Simmons? Four years.
21:32 Speaker 03 Now, this is interesting. This is interesting.
21:34 Bill Simmons? I loved it.
21:35 Speaker 03 I've never heard you talk about your criminal exploits on any podcast.
21:38 Bill Simmons? I've talked about it before. I've talked about it. Sierra's heard about this.
21:41 Speaker 03 Yeah. Okay, I've been making sure. I thought maybe you was doing this for me and Joe.
21:44 Chris Ryan? As a younger person, I used to tell him about like you switch the channels back and forth really fast.
21:49 Speaker 03 Oh, joint, yeah.
21:50 Chris Ryan? To get Skinamax.
21:51 Speaker 03 What crimes have you committed?
21:52 Chris Ryan? I can't really talk about it.
21:53 Bill Simmons? This was my favorite crime I ever committed because it would be the pay per views and they would be just on every two hours.
21:58 Speaker 03 That's fucking amazing, man.
22:00 Bill Simmons? So these movies would come on like Patch Adams and they would just be on on channel, whatever. And you'd be like, what the fuck were they doing? Making the, how did anyone, What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams and Cuba.
22:10 Speaker 03 Oh, I love that movie.
22:11 Bill Simmons? You like that movie?
22:11 Speaker 03 Yes.
22:12 Bill Simmons? I am, Sam. Like they would just make shit movies year after year. Oh.
22:17 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
22:17 Speaker 02 But radio is based on a real person, though.
22:19 Speaker 03 Some of these movies are.
22:20 Chris Ryan? I mean, some of these movies are good, but it is.
22:22 Bill Simmons? I don't find radio.
22:23 Speaker 03 Some of these movies are.
22:25 Bill Simmons? It's okay.
22:26 Speaker 03 Some of these movies are, but also, remember, serious movies at a time were about serious topics. And sometimes, somebody's, when you, somebody's like, they don't fit into society for whatever reason. They're having trouble, like, that was a serious topic.
22:43 Bill Simmons? But this started in TV in the, really the late seventies, early eighties, with the after-school specials and Different Strokes. And these shows were.
22:52 Speaker 03 Oh, man.
22:52 Bill Simmons? Somebody just sent me one today about the time Arnold and his buddy were on the street and somebody had this.
22:58 Speaker 03 They got molested.
22:59 Bill Simmons? Not a molester one.
23:00 Speaker 03 They got kidnapped.
23:01 Bill Simmons? Somebody had a seizure in front of them. And this, this lady just has a seizure for like a very special half. And it's, it was a special episode about seizures.
23:08 Speaker 03 I know you're gonna remember this.
23:09 Bill Simmons? This is how you learned about stuff.
23:11 Speaker 03 Do you remember, uh, the Ben Affleck one where he was taking steroids?
23:14 Bill Simmons? The steroids, he punches the.
23:15 Speaker 03 Oh.
23:16 Speaker 02 You remember that one?
23:17 Speaker 03 You got a little bit of that.
23:18 Bill Simmons? What about Helen Hunt jumping up?
23:20 Speaker 03 Helen Hunt jumping up and off.
23:21 Chris Ryan? She was on acid, right?
23:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
23:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
23:23 Bill Simmons? But like, that's how we live about this stuff. And then eventually it drifted into movies and better shows, but still. Um, the actors in this, so we've been still are wrapping an incredible eleven-year run as comedy leading man, which we covered in, uh, in the, There's Something About Mary. Jack Black, at a really weird point in his career, trying to stay on top. King Kong two thousand five, Holiday two thousand six, which I think has.
23:47 Speaker 03 A big one.
23:47 Bill Simmons? Had a lot of legs. He did the Tenacious D movie. Is it Margot, The Wedding in two thousand seven?
23:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
23:53 Bill Simmons? It's kind of like, am I a comedy actor or what am I? So he's at that point. Uh, and then Downey, as C R mentioned, putting together his comeback of Zodiac, Tropic Thunder, Iron Man, where all of a sudden he's an A++ lister again.
24:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it's starting to finally.
24:05 Bill Simmons? Really happening for him.
24:06 Chris Ryan? Pick up after Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is sort of, is like, hey, I, I can be bonded, like.
24:10 Speaker 02 I had forgotten how close that was to the time that he had been in prison.
24:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
24:14 Speaker 02 You know, like, yeah.
24:14 Bill Simmons? And then couldn't get insured.
24:16 Speaker 02 Right, that was, that, cause that was the thing, to a point, I think probably when I saw this movie, I thought of Robert Downey Jr., so that was the junkie. You know what I mean? Like, that was a guy who was a problem, that was what he was known for.
24:26 Bill Simmons? What he was, that was what all the stories were. McConaughey.
24:30 Speaker 03 Oh, McConaughey.
24:31 Bill Simmons? Trying to hang on to the A-list.
24:33 Speaker 02 He was in the wilderness.
24:34 Bill Simmons? After this movie, he does Fools Gold, Surfer Dude, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Lincoln Lawyer.
24:39 Speaker 02 Like, it's not going well.
24:41 Speaker 03 Well, The Lincoln Lawyer is a good movie, but it does, it, it, it comes on the heels of that. He's in the.
24:44 Bill Simmons? Is it a good movie?
24:45 Speaker 03 All right, yeah, I think The Lincoln Lawyer is a good movie.
24:48 Bill Simmons? Is Lincoln Lawyer a good movie?
24:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's, I think it's a good movie.
24:51 Speaker 02 I don't know if I, I don't know if I remember.
24:54 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it's like actually a pretty enjoyable thriller.
24:56 Speaker 03 But it's like him kinda getting his footing back because he is flirting with obscurity during this time.
25:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
25:03 Speaker 03 Like Hollywood.
25:04 Chris Ryan? After Sahara.
25:05 Bill Simmons? Yeah, a couple, a couple rom coms that went sideways.
25:08 Speaker 03 Don't know what to do with him. And then, then in the next decade, obviously Dallas Buyers Club, Interstellar, True Detective, all of these things are gonna bring him back. But him in this movie right now is him staying on the tips of people's.
25:19 Chris Ryan? The actual start of the McConnessans. So like mostly people think it's Magic Mike, Dallas Buyers Club, Wolf of Wall Street, True Detective, Interstellar. In some order.
25:29 Bill Simmons? No, it's this.
25:30 Chris Ryan? But I actually think it's this and Eastbound are like, kind of like, they're like, oh, this guy has like a whole other gear that he can play with. And also.
25:38 Speaker 02 For us, it was two for the money.
25:39 Chris Ryan? And he also is, crucially, yes, he's like, I'll play a supporting part.
25:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
25:44 Chris Ryan? Like, I don't have to lead everything I'm in.
25:46 Speaker 02 It's probably easier to tell them on that.
25:47 Bill Simmons? Joel plays supporting part.
25:50 Speaker 02 All I gotta do is get some rebounds.
25:55 Speaker 03 That's Joel podcast.
25:56 Speaker 02 It's not.
25:57 Speaker 03 Y'all not listening to Tellgate. Joel is out there every day.
26:00 Speaker 02 I'm a role player, man.
26:01 Speaker 03 Like Jokic putting up rebounds, assists.
26:05 Chris Ryan? That's the big board I come for.
26:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly.
26:07 Speaker 02 Let me tell you, when we went to Rose Bowl, everybody's coming up the van in the motherfucker, man. I was like, oh, I just feel to be famous out here. All right, let's move on.
26:15 Bill Simmons? Tom, we, more on McCona later. Tom Cruise, he's at another crazy point.
26:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
26:21 Bill Simmons? We're three years after Oprah's sofa. We're in the middle of the Katie Holmes weirdness.
26:26 Speaker 03 Oh, man.
26:27 Bill Simmons? We're with that Weird Scientology interview he did. We have Paramount dumping him. And he's about to follow this up with Valkyrie and Night and Day with Cameron Diaz.
26:36 Chris Ryan? Can I ask a question about whether we look back at this? In 08, there was a part of me that was like, is, is Les Grossman kinda cringy? Not cuz like I didn't like the character, but it was like he's trying really, really hard in this moment. Like, no?
26:53 Speaker 03 So, when I first saw this movie, this, this is the first movie I ever went to a screening of. It's Tropic Thunder. This is my first screening ever that I ever went to.
27:02 Bill Simmons? You took shot. Sasha Grey.
27:05 Speaker 03 Boy. Don't get me started though. There's some people that like to find a special place. Um, you just, you, I almost forgot what I was about to say. Um, but I'm serious. Uh, cause there's this one.
27:18 Bill Simmons? He's at a screening.
27:19 Speaker 03 She's in like a.
27:20 Chris Ryan? No, just go back to Tom Cruise.
27:22 Speaker 03 So.
27:23 Speaker 02 Well, I actually want the Sasha Grey screening.
27:25 Speaker 03 But it's in the movies, like it's a, this is still, so like, this is the first screening ever. This is gonna sound so crazy, y'all. Not till the end, I did not know it was him.
27:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
27:34 Bill Simmons? That's a recurring theme in the research. Most people didn't know it was Cruise.
27:37 Speaker 03 I did not know it was him. And then, uh, the guy, Tim Wells, producer I was working with at the time, goes, stay, watch this. He's getting ready to leave and it's like, Tom Cruise, I'm like, what the shit? And I thought to myself that exact same thing, even back then, I'm like, why did he show up in this? But he was so universally reviled at that point.
27:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
27:59 Speaker 03 Like, it's so difficult for people, I think the two biggest comeback stories in modern Hollywood memory are Rob, are both in this movie. Robert Downey Jr. And Tom Cruise.
28:09 Bill Simmons? I think Travolta's in there too.
28:10 Speaker 03 Travolta's absolutely in there, right? That's actually, that's a great point, but like, so three, but like, he was so universally the, the weird guy. Shut up, man. He was universally the weird guy.
28:20 Bill Simmons? Did some good stuff in the 2000s. Oh, oh, oh. Did some, had some golf, had some celebrity golf.
28:25 Speaker 02 I mean, man, he was a correspondent on the camp, on Kyle's podcast.
28:28 Speaker 03 OJ Simpson, do you know who advocated for him at the Rose Bowl?
28:32 Speaker 02 Not advocate.
28:33 Speaker 03 We're going in there and Joe is making sure that OJ Simpson is in the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame.
28:38 Speaker 02 It would be absurd if you went to the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame and you didn't mention OJ. That's what I thought. And I just wanted to make sure.
28:43 Bill Simmons? I think that's fair.
28:44 Speaker 02 Okay. Yeah, this one, and he, and he was listed there among the people then.
28:47 Chris Ryan? That had been there, yeah.
28:49 Speaker 03 But I, I think that's fair, but I also think it's kind of interesting to walk into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame and the first thing you say is, where's OJ?
28:58 Speaker 03 Well, I think, I think that, I think what he's saying is true, but I think also.
29:01 Speaker 02 I think I asked about Prince Young first.
29:02 Speaker 03 No, you didn't.
29:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:03 Speaker 03 It's okay, let's, yeah.
29:05 Bill Simmons? So you saw a screening, had no idea it was Tom Cruise, which was. Most people, did you know Tom Cruise was in this when you saw it?
29:11 Speaker 04 That's hard for me to remember in 2008, but I watched it with Liz, who had never seen this movie and she did not know it was Cruise until halfway through the movie. I said, you know, that's Tom Cruise, right?
29:18 Chris Ryan? And was she like, what?
29:19 Speaker 04 Yes.
29:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah. It's really good makeup.
29:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
29:21 Bill Simmons? And it's physically, it just doesn't seem like him.
29:24 Chris Ryan? They also kept him from all promotional materials. Like they did, like they were, they, I think they sued like a tabloid for taking pictures of him going from like a, like his trailer to the set. I, but there was a moment there where like, maybe it's more like after the movie came out where I felt like he was obviously not a trained comedian because he was like overworking the joke a little bit. And it felt like for a second, you could get him to show up as Les Grossman. At like college game day. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, like Les Grossman was available. It felt like.
29:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I think he was just happy.
29:57 Speaker 03 He was one of people to clap for because he did it at MTV. He did it at the MTV Movie Awards. And it kinda didn't work that well, but he was just happy that people were like, oh, it's Tom Cruise.
30:07 Speaker 02 See, I thought instead of being reviled, I thought more than anything, people thought he was weird, you know? And that's more than, I mean, that's more, that's different than being reviled because people like, I don't even know.
30:17 Bill Simmons? The Katie Holmes thing, I think, turned people off.
30:19 Speaker 03 The Katie Holmes thing, but also the Matt, uh, the, the, the Matt Lauer thing.
30:24 Bill Simmons? When he was yelling at Matt Lauer.
30:25 Speaker 03 Yelling at Matt Lauer, the whole deal. Like people were like, this guy's an asshole. Like what is he talking about? He's too far gone.
30:31 Bill Simmons? Paramount dumping his deal was, was a pretty crazy thing to think back on.
30:35 Chris Ryan? And, and the Spielberg breakup had happened a couple of years before that too.
30:39 Bill Simmons? And then the last one in this, Nick Nolte. Former A-lister from the seventies and eighties.
30:46 Speaker 02 Most northern play Jack hates.
30:48 Bill Simmons? Ah.
30:49 Speaker 02 Are you shocked to know he's 85 years old?
30:52 Bill Simmons? Nick, how is he still alive?
30:54 Speaker 02 Eighty-five years. Yeah. I mean, he seemed like the guy that should have died at like 67.
30:57 Bill Simmons? I think he's the only one that they had to replace on SNL when he was guest. And that was when the famous Eddie Murphy episode, because Nick would just party too hard and couldn't host it.
31:06 Chris Ryan? The crazy thing is that he doesn't look that much older in Crime 101 that he did in Tropic Thunder. Like it, it's basically like he hit old age and just has been there.
31:16 Bill Simmons? An amazing run for him. It's one of those that when he dies, nobody's gonna be like, what? No.
31:22 Bill Simmons? He's worn his career.
31:24 Speaker 02 I mean, even we were talking about Downey, I mean, he had gotten arrested like a bunch of fucking times. Like going leading into this too. And I was just kinda, you just kind of expected that. Like, I felt like he and Gary Busey were kinda like the same person to me a little bit. It was just like, oh, those are the old guys from the eighties who are always like getting DUIs and shit like that.
31:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you know what, there was like a weird thing, talking about the difference between now and oh eight. There was more of a distance, I feel like, with celebrity then. So like when Downey would get arrested, you'd be like, oh, and then you'd kinda keep it moving. But now it would be like, what's the first pod Downey's gonna go on after this? And like, people writing these parasocial posts about it, but yeah.
32:03 Speaker 02 You would never be able to get away from it.
32:04 Bill Simmons? Call her daddy.
32:04 Speaker 02 They would always, yeah.
32:05 Speaker 03 Come on. I will say, I will say that there was something about Robert Downey Jr. at that time though.
32:13 Speaker 03 All of the trouble that he was having, like Hollywood was mourning it. Like Hollywood was like, Hollywood was mourning it. He had been around for so long, yes, you know, going back to like Weird Science and the Pickup Artist and all of these movies and then he peaked with Chaplin. He's in the James Toback movie. He starts to get into the weird indie thing at the end of the nineties. Then he comes out on Ally McBeal and it's like, oh my God, he might be back, but then he can't stay straight for that. People were really sad, for whatever reason, you could tell, even in the tabloids, the way they would cover it, how well liked he was. And they were happy when he got it together. Like when he got straight and came back and delivered in Iron Man, delivered in Zodiac, delivered in this. People were, they rolled out the red carpet for him to strut back into the town.
32:57 Chris Ryan? I'm just gonna see Downey in US Marshals every couple of years. And it'll be like, oh man, that guy could have been a contender.
33:03 Bill Simmons? It was almost like an athlete.
33:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
33:05 Bill Simmons? Where you think of like, oh man, Kenny Anderson, he only kept the shit together. It's like, how many of those did we have in basketball and football over the years? Dwight Gooden?
33:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
33:15 Speaker 02 Kenny Anderson was the man. He was.
33:16 Bill Simmons? We're gonna take a quick break and then more to discuss with this movie.
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34:23 Bill Simmons? Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.
34:34 Speaker 06 I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common. Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis.
35:00 Bill Simmons? Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.
35:21 Speaker 06 Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.
35:28 Bill Simmons? All right, let's go through the characters. Ben Stiller as Tug Speedman. Hit it big with the Scorcher franchise. They made sex. I was getting to this later, let's do it now.
35:39 Chris Ryan? What's Scorchur about?
35:41 Bill Simmons? What's happening in Scorchur? Is it like a global warming?
35:44 Speaker 03 They tell you in the first trailer. The earth has stopped spinning.
35:49 Speaker 03 So in Scorchur, the earth has stopped spinning. So because the earth has stopped spinning, I guess volcanoes and the atmosphere.
35:56 Chris Ryan? It's like a day after tomorrow kind of vibe.
35:57 Speaker 03 Basically, so.
35:58 Chris Ryan? But he's like, he's like commando, he's like Schwarzenegger or that.
36:01 Speaker 03 He's some sort of commando who is saving people in this post-apocalyptic deal. The earth has become a scorcher and it's destroyed.
36:08 Bill Simmons? So each sequel, it's still the same premise? The earth has still stopped moving?
36:12 Speaker 03 It's colder.
36:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
36:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think the last one was like, it was like literally like, yeah.
36:16 Bill Simmons? I honestly not against the premise. Like I would at least give one, if it was Gerard Butler in Scorchur, I'm like, not, not pay-per-viewing that.
36:23 Speaker 03 I did not know what that movie Greenland was, okay? I did not know what it was.
36:27 Bill Simmons? You think it was Scorchur?
36:28 Speaker 03 I was going to the movies. Greenland I watched for the first time Saturday. That is legitimately a fucking good movie.
36:37 Chris Ryan? Dude, Butler doesn't miss that often, man.
36:38 Speaker 03 Legitimately a good movie. I expected Greenland to be corny, I'm watching it, they're trying to get on a plane, the whole, no, it's legitimately a good movie.
36:46 Bill Simmons? So he, uh, Joel, he went serious after all the Scorchur. He was once the biggest star in the world. Ended up playing Simple Jack, a special needs farm boy who can talk to animals.
36:58 Chris Ryan? I feel like we gotta do comps, right?
36:59 Bill Simmons? You make me happy.
37:00 Chris Ryan? Who is Tug Speedman in Hollywood?
37:02 Bill Simmons? I think.
37:03 Chris Ryan? It's Cruise?
37:03 Speaker 03 I definitely think.
37:05 Chris Ryan? Cruise had all the prestige in the eighties and nineties.
37:08 Speaker 03 I think the reason why Tom Cruise is in this movie is because he thinks it's funny that Stiller is doing a riff off of him, because Stiller had been doing a Tom Cruise character for a long time.
37:19 Chris Ryan? And then they had done the like, I'm Tom Cruise's stunt double thing, right?
37:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's definitely Tom Cruise to me.
37:24 Bill Simmons? I thought it was like a cross between Cruise and the Mission Impossibles and like Stallone just trying to keep Rambo going. Crossed with not another Hollywood thing.
37:33 Chris Ryan? Those guys would often make, now, none of them I don't think did something like Simple Jack, but they would every once in a while make like a family movie where you'd be like, what the fuck are you doing, man? You're Jean-Claude Van Damme.
37:43 Bill Simmons? Is there a world where Simple Jack could have worked? Like was. Was Downey, right?
37:47 Chris Ryan? I think Kirk Lazarus lays out how.
37:49 Bill Simmons? Kirk Lazarus was like, he laid out the mistakes.
37:50 Chris Ryan? I think Simple Jack needed a special skill. Yeah, you need to be good at blackjack.
37:53 Bill Simmons? Cause if you could talk to farm animals, that's, you'd become an asset on the farm.
37:57 Speaker 02 Is Forrest, I'm just, the thing I was just trying to determine, is Forrest Gump that far off Simple Jack or not? I couldn't tell, like.
38:03 Chris Ryan? Good at ping pong.
38:04 Speaker 03 Good at ping pong, talk to the president.
38:06 Bill Simmons? Right.
38:07 Speaker 03 Forrest break down his weapon.
38:07 Bill Simmons? Charm Richard Nixon.
38:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:11 Bill Simmons? Started a running movement.
38:12 Speaker 02 Right.
38:13 Bill Simmons? Uh, so Scourge of Six: Global Meltdown was supposed to be the comeback.
38:16 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
38:17 Bill Simmons? I like that title too. Uh, all right. So that's him. Then we have Jack Black as Jeff Portnoy, a movie comic star with a stealth heroin problem. I described him as Adam Sandler crossed with later career Eddie Murphy, crossed with late seventies Belushi.
38:34 Chris Ryan? And Farley maybe?
38:35 Speaker 02 Farley.
38:35 Chris Ryan? And some Farley. Yeah.
38:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:37 Bill Simmons? Uh, recently the star of The Fatty's Fart Two. I absolutely would have seen this with both of my kids.
38:42 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
38:43 Bill Simmons? The Fatty's and The Fatty's Fart Two.
38:45 Chris Ryan? I was trying to imagine like.
38:47 Bill Simmons? It sounds great.
38:48 Chris Ryan? Like Ben.
38:48 Bill Simmons? It's a great idea.
38:49 Chris Ryan? Ben Simmons' level of interest in Fatty's over Tropic Thunder would have been like off the charts.
38:55 Bill Simmons? No question, we would have owned it on multiple platforms, streaming, DVD, great idea, still time.
39:02 Speaker 02 The white nutty professor, man.
39:03 Bill Simmons? Yep.
39:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
39:05 Bill Simmons? Robert Downey Jr. is Kirk Lazarus, Australian method actor.
39:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
39:09 Bill Simmons? Five time Oscar winner. That would be the record, by the way.
39:11 Chris Ryan? It would be, it shatters the record. That was a good pick that they made him the all time leading Oscar winner.
39:16 Bill Simmons? Star of Satan's Alley and then also played Neil Armstrong in Moonshot. Whenever they found out what the premise, what was the premise of Moonshot?
39:25 Chris Ryan? I don't know, but he had.
39:26 Bill Simmons? Is it like a thriller?
39:27 Chris Ryan? Like he had to like re- re-acclimate himself to the earth's atmosphere coming back from that movie.
39:31 Bill Simmons? Sounded great.
39:32 Chris Ryan? And he's supposed to be a combination of Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell and Daniel Lewis.
39:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:37 Bill Simmons? It felt like a lot of Russell Crowe.
39:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah, well, the Australian part, yeah.
39:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah, like the, him naked on the balcony.
39:41 Chris Ryan? But the method part is DDL.
39:43 Speaker 03 Cause he was, he was supposed to be Irish. Um, in some of the research I saw, he would, the character was supposed to be Irish.
39:48 Chris Ryan? And he's like, no, I can do Australian.
39:49 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Had controversial pigmentation alteration for Tropic Thunder. I like this shot of them in the operating room. He's like, yeah.
40:01 Bill Simmons? Steve Coogan plays director Damien Cockburn.
40:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:05 Bill Simmons? The director of Tropic Thunder. I guess in the research it said this was inspired by director Richard Stanley's experience directing The Island of Doctor Moreau.
40:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:14 Bill Simmons? A movie that I've wanted to do for the rewatchable for eight years.
40:17 Chris Ryan? Did you watch Reigns of Madness, the hearts of darkness of Tropic Thunder?
40:21 Bill Simmons? The, by Thoreau?
40:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
40:22 Chris Ryan? Uh, so there's more Damien in that and he talks about how he's, was he 50% Werner Herzog? 50% Francis Coppola and 50% Peter Bogdanovich. And he's like, well.
40:36 Bill Simmons? Stupid percentages.
40:39 Bill Simmons? You guys in On Island of Doctor Moreau?
40:41 Chris Ryan? I love it.
40:41 Bill Simmons? In general as a movie?
40:42 Speaker 03 What I mean, some, oh, like Marlon Brando.
40:44 Bill Simmons? Just that movie, how fucking crazy it is?
40:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, nuts. I love late stage Brando.
40:49 Bill Simmons? See, I makes fun of me because I made it a gimmick when, at Grantland with the, the Island of Doctor Simbo.
40:56 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:56 Bill Simmons? But see, I thought it was the most, most amazing thing I ever did in the com.
41:00 Chris Ryan? Although I came around to Burmester.
41:02 Bill Simmons? It was just like a hodgepodge mailbag that I named after the Doctor Moreau movie because I was the only one that liked it. But that was another one with Big Al's cable box. We were just watching it over and over again and after like nine times, you kind of got it.
41:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
41:12 Bill Simmons? I understand what they were trying to do.
41:14 Speaker 03 Right.
41:14 Bill Simmons? Kellmer didn't want to be in the movie is the problem. I blame, I blame. That was one where Val mailed it in.
41:18 Chris Ryan? There would be at Grantland, like Bill would come up with a gimmick and then walk off and then it would be up to us to kind of see it through. But like, he would be like, 93 days until the NBA season. Let's do a post every day about counting it down. And then he'd come back like day 61. He's like, oh, you guys are still doing that? Meanwhile, we're like, what the fuck are we gonna say? It's August.
41:39 Bill Simmons? Well, we did that, remember for the, uh, we did that for NFL, right? Because we had two sports in a lockout.
41:44 Chris Ryan? Yes.
41:44 Bill Simmons? So we had to start doing a countdown to when we were going to actually get sports.
41:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
41:48 Bill Simmons? Oh, man. Sad times. Nick Nolte as. Four Leaf Tabak.
41:55 Bill Simmons? Danny McBride is Cody Underwood. Uh, big McBride run here.
41:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
41:59 Bill Simmons? Hot Rod, Pineapple, Thunder, Eastbound, all in three years. He's just in our lives for real.
42:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:05 Chris Ryan? When he's about to do the explosives run, he's like, Damian, Damian, I need to put some Tiger Ball on.
42:14 Chris Ryan? It's like, he's, he is really like, you can tell the vibrations coming off of him that he's like a significant guy.
42:20 Bill Simmons? He's one of those that, Craig, did we, we have enough all NBA teams and MVP ballots for him over the years?
42:26 Speaker 04 He's like the funniest guy of the 2000s that never became a star.
42:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, man.
42:29 Chris Ryan? Could a guy like that become a star?
42:31 Speaker 03 He became a, to me, he became like a force, like a force, not like a, not an A-plus lister. I know, 12 years of HBO shows and then also creatively because he was the creative force behind a lot of this stuff and stuff like that. To me, it got to a point to where he was the most consistently funny line reader in the town.
42:54 Chris Ryan? For sure.
42:54 Speaker 03 Like, he said a line, the line was funny.
42:58 Bill Simmons? That was, this is the end was his impact.
43:00 Speaker 03 Like, everybody else is talking, when he talks, you laugh.
43:03 Speaker 04 First season of He's Spinning Down is all time.
43:05 Speaker 03 Same thing, yeah.
43:06 Chris Ryan? You know, the problem was is that when you would see him outside of that arena and like if you, if you watch Prometheus and Danny McBride's in Prometheus. Or he's in Covenant.
43:16 Bill Simmons? You couldn't wrap your head around it.
43:17 Chris Ryan? In Covenant, you're just like, yo, man, like, when is he gonna do Kenny Powers? And it's almost like too much.
43:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I can see that.
43:24 Bill Simmons? I, I don't know where he ranks on the funniest people of the 21st century for me.
43:30 Chris Ryan? Oh, he's top five.
43:31 Bill Simmons? I don't think he's out of the top 10.
43:33 Speaker 04 His P E R is like top three. I mean, pound for pound, he's number one, maybe.
43:37 Bill Simmons? I don't think he's out of the top 10 for me.
43:38 Speaker 03 I'm gonna mention a movie that like, not a lot of people love, but is legitimately one of the funniest movies that I love. Did you guys see Your Highness?
43:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:47 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, a long time ago.
43:49 Speaker 02 I haven't seen it.
43:50 Speaker 03 Hysterical, like legitimately, like it's stupid, but like hysterical.
43:57 Chris Ryan? You know the great thing about him too is anybody who's in a scene with him, they also automatically get 10% funnier. So when he's in a scene with Will Ferrell, you're like, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. But he can make like John Hawks hilarious, you know, like the dude from Deadwood who's in Eastbound or Natalie Portman in Your Highness is like really funny. It's just, the only person I've ever seen make, not make more funny is Nick Nolte. It's just like, well, it's just, it's just Nolte.
44:22 Speaker 03 Well, that was the thing. I was just like, well, I guess we'll talk about it later, but that pairing, I had a really high expectations for them, you know?
44:30 Bill Simmons? When I showed my son Eastbound when he was finally old enough, he had the same look on his face for three episodes that Jack Black does when he sees the pile of heroin.
44:41 Bill Simmons? It was just every funny bone possible, just slamming. It was everything he would want, Kenny Powers. Jay Barishow is Kevin Sandusky.
44:49 Speaker 02 Hmm.
44:50 Bill Simmons? Not knowing that the Sandusky thing had not happened.
44:52 Speaker 02 Man, that did not happen yet. That's five years.
44:53 Bill Simmons? Unfortunate last name. I think he's really good in this movie.
44:58 Chris Ryan? Yes.
44:58 Bill Simmons? Hmm. I was thinking about casting couch later. I'm like, oh, who should, and I was like, you know what? I really liked him.
45:04 Chris Ryan? He's also the only one playing in the lane lines. He's like, I know I'm not supposed to be the funny one in this movie.
45:10 Bill Simmons? And then Brandon T. Jackson is Al Pacino.
45:13 Speaker 03 Al Pacino, yeah. It's my guy. That's my man. Brandon T. Jackson's a homie of mine. Like, he was on a run. He was on a run during this time, all big movies, Percy Jackson, Big Mama's House, like a lot of big movies was in. And this kind of was like, he was a very familiar face in Hollywood at the time.
45:32 Bill Simmons? He's excellent in this movie.
45:33 Chris Ryan? He's great.
45:33 Speaker 03 He is.
45:34 Bill Simmons? I would not, he is not on my casting couch. I would not replace him.
45:37 Speaker 03 Really?
45:38 Bill Simmons? No. Cause there was some Kevin Hart stuff that we'll talk about later, but like, you know, like we're still kind of in Chappelle range where he could have, I think, played this, but there's, I think, I think he's actually really good. I thought he goes toe to toe with.
45:51 Speaker 02 Everybody in the movie and he's good.
45:53 Bill Simmons? Um, he also was a businessman with the Bust a Nut candy bars.
45:57 Speaker 02 Booty sweat.
45:57 Bill Simmons? Booty sweat.
45:58 Speaker 02 Booty sweat.
45:59 Bill Simmons? Drinks.
46:01 Bill Simmons? We'll talk about him later. And then Cruz as Les Grossman. So the producer Stuart Corn, we did a oral history of Les Grossman for Greenland. And apparently Tom read the script. There was no Les Grossman. And he said, I think you need another villain. What about some greedy pig studio executive represents the gross part of Hollywood? And then Cruz like developed a lot of it. Um, wanted oversized synthetic cans. They put them in a fat suit. Bald cap.
46:28 Chris Ryan? Kind of Joel Silver-ish.
46:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, but they say it was Weinstein, Silver and one other.
46:33 Bill Simmons? It's weird. They, in the research, they're like, it wasn't based on anyone, but I never believed that. I always feel like somebody's based on somebody. Yeah, Joel Silver is a good one.
46:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah, but I think the screaming at people is rooting.
46:43 Bill Simmons? And then, uh, Bill Hader, early Bill Hader.
46:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:46 Speaker 02 Early, young.
46:47 Bill Simmons? As his assistant. And then McConaughey as Rick Peck. Is there a third Peck?
46:53 Chris Ryan? There was Walter.
46:54 Bill Simmons? Walter Peck, Dennis Peck from Internal Affairs and Rick Peck.
46:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:58 Speaker 02 Rick Peck.
46:59 Bill Simmons? Could have done Peck month.
47:00 Chris Ryan? We should do another category. That's like which Peck should be in this movie.
47:02 Bill Simmons? Best Peck?
47:05 Bill Simmons? Uh, and then a ton of cameos. What's your favorite cameo in this, Joel?
47:09 Speaker 02 Man, you know, Tyra Banks. That's a good one.
47:13 Speaker 04 Tyra Banks is great. I mean, cause first of all, she's playing.
47:15 Bill Simmons? Dan just, I know that look.
47:17 Speaker 02 Well, also, yeah, I mean, I have like.
47:18 Bill Simmons? That was a nostalgic.
47:19 Speaker 02 Speaking of 90's shit, like there's like, that was probably the last time I looked at Tyra Banks and I was like, that's it right there.
47:26 Speaker 03 God damn.
47:27 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, I'm not, she, nothing happened to her. I'm not meaning to be disrespectful. She's still a beautiful woman. But I mean, everything we know about her now.
47:35 Chris Ryan? She was cruising back then.
47:36 Speaker 03 I've kind of. She was cruising.
47:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:37 Chris Ryan? I avoid, uh, for his reaction and not winning the Oscar.
47:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, I got Tobey Maguire, man.
47:45 Speaker 04 Little Wonder Boys throwback.
47:47 Speaker 03 Little Wonder Boys.
47:48 Chris Ryan? Touching the prayer beads.
47:49 Speaker 03 That hilarious.
47:51 Speaker 04 Lance Bass just showing up. He's like, I'll do it.
47:53 Speaker 02 Oh, Lance Bass, that was pretty good.
47:55 Bill Simmons? They said they only had like three hours with Toby. Cause he was flying somewhere. So they had to film like all of his stuff. They had like this short window to get it done.
48:03 Chris Ryan? He had like a poker game in Macau. He had to go through.
48:07 Bill Simmons? Probably. It's a Gondola's game. Uh, the premise, which ten soldiers went, four returned, three wrote books, only one was turned into a movie about a secret assignment in 1969?
48:19 Bill Simmons? Stiller developed it because he was shooting Empire of the Sun. He had a small part and thought some of the actors were very self-important and self-absorbed and self-involved and appeared to believe they were actually part of the military.
48:33 Chris Ryan? So I'm trying to figure out who he was talking about. I mean, it's like Malkovich is the person he is in that movie with. Those are the two American soldiers who adopt Christian Bale when they're on this base in Japan. But yeah, it's hard to tell because I don't think of Malkovich as somebody who would be like, I'm a soldier now, but maybe I'm wrong.
48:53 Bill Simmons? You know what's interesting about this, though? And I like Ben Stiller. I do think he has a reputation for taking himself a little too seriously. And it's funny that he came up with this movie because he noticed people taking themselves too seriously. Isn't that part of the rap?
49:06 Chris Ryan? Well, kind of the genius part of this movie is people like, all these actors are beating people to the punch with the criticism you would level at them. You know what I mean? It's like Tom Cruise is gonna like lampoon Hollywood, so you can't really lampoon Tom Cruise. Ben Stiller is lampooning self-involved leading men. You know, that means he's kind of bulletproof about it. It's an interesting tactic.
49:28 Speaker 02 With the exception of Downey, though, don't you, I'm sure we'll talk about this later, don't you all kind of feel like they're playing basically a version of themselves?
49:34 Chris Ryan? Yes.
49:35 Speaker 02 Right.
49:36 Speaker 03 And even Downey, Downey, they make sure to put in the character that this guy has like a bad boy off-screen image and stuff like that. So Downey is playing who people thought he was, maybe like 93 or 94.
49:47 Chris Ryan? All right. Did you ever stiller on your pod?
49:50 Bill Simmons? I think I did.
49:52 Speaker 02 Who?
49:53 Bill Simmons? In the late 2010s.
49:54 Chris Ryan? After this. After Tropic Thunder.
49:58 Bill Simmons? After Tropic, yeah.
49:59 Speaker 02 Wait, what?
50:00 Chris Ryan? I was asking if he ever had stiller on his pod.
50:01 Speaker 02 Oh, really? Oh, shit. Okay.
50:04 Bill Simmons? All right, let's talk Downey and Kirk Lazarus. I'll just give you some quotes. Downey said, "At the end of the day, it's always about how well you..." You come into the character. If I didn't feel like it was morally sound. Where that would be easily misinterpreted that I'm just C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man.
50:21 Chris Ryan? It's tough.
50:21 Bill Simmons? I would have stayed home.
50:22 Chris Ryan? C T H.
50:23 Bill Simmons? C T H just like, what did I do? I'm over here. I'm just a working actor.
50:28 Speaker 02 I was thinking of because I, I think Soul Man was one of the first movies I saw on V H S tape. And we got it from Blockbuster. And at the time, I don't remember thinking it was all that offensive.
50:38 Speaker 03 My parents loved that movie.
50:41 Speaker 02 It wasn't bad.
50:42 Bill Simmons? We laughed.
50:43 Chris Ryan? I saw that there.
50:45 Speaker 03 You guys, first of all, I'm just letting you guys know, I'm forty six. I'm telling you right, my parents loved that movie. They loved it. We would watch the movie and I remember as I got older. And I was like, one day I was like.
50:59 Bill Simmons? You're like huh?
51:02 Speaker 03 Fuck, this is fucked up. Now, now here's the deal. It's interesting that he would take a shot at Soul Man. We'll talk more about Soul Man later. Because even in Soul Man. The movie is attempting in a really, really fucked up way to make a commentary and critique on race. The movie is attempting to lampoon someone that would go. Or make fun of somebody that would go that far and use something intended to help black people to help themselves. And, and the movie is an exploration about what that character kind of learns about black people. By doing this really stupid, silly thing. But you just can't get past what the movie does.
51:41 Bill Simmons? Man, I would love.
51:41 Chris Ryan? I don't think you can find it.
51:43 Bill Simmons? I don't think it's streaming.
51:44 Chris Ryan? I can't imagine that's the case with the way that four Ks and Blu-rays are now.
51:47 Bill Simmons? Well, I'm sure Sean probably.
51:49 Speaker 02 We've got to find that.
51:50 Chris Ryan? Sean's got the special.
51:52 Bill Simmons? Sean got it from New Zealand.
51:54 Speaker 03 Yeah. It's a big picture, a podcast about movies. Well, today we talk about Soul Man starring C. Thomas Howell.
51:59 Bill Simmons? I vaguely remember what happens, but wasn't. He got a scholarship at Harvard. But it turns out Ray Don Chung should have gotten the scholarship and now she's putting herself through.
52:10 Speaker 03 He couldn't pay for it.
52:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:11 Bill Simmons? He couldn't pay for it.
52:12 Chris Ryan? How about law school?
52:13 Bill Simmons? But he took it from Ray Don Chung, right?
52:15 Speaker 03 In to Har- he got into Harvard. But he couldn't pay for it. And for some reason, his dad wouldn't pay. Cause he didn't get a scholarship or something like that. So he got, he wanted to get the, the, the aid, the money. And he did blackface.
52:31 Bill Simmons? Did you know about this movie? Craig?
52:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah, but I've never seen it.
52:33 Bill Simmons? Just because we talked about it.
52:34 Speaker 02 He took tanning pills.
52:36 Speaker 03 Tanning pills.
52:36 Speaker 02 Tanning pills to get blabbered.
52:38 Bill Simmons? So Brandon T. Jackson said, when I first read the script, I was like, what, blackface? But when I saw him act, he became a black man. It was just good acting. It was weird on the set because he would keep going with the character. He's a method actor. I bet that was weird. Stiller said, he's playing a method actor who's gone to great lengths to play a black guy. The movie is skewing actors and how they take themselves so seriously. And then last thing, Downey was so committed to it that he did the DVD commentary as the character instead of Robert Downey. All right.
53:07 Chris Ryan? I would, go ahead.
53:09 Bill Simmons? No, you go.
53:10 Chris Ryan? I just think it's interesting that you could make the argument that he does not take himself seriously as an actor again until Oppenheimer. Like, he does Iron Man. I'm not saying he's not taking that seriously.
53:22 Speaker 02 You are, just go ahead and shit on it.
53:24 Chris Ryan? But he's largely like, playing. Like, there is very few roles that he does in between this and.
53:30 Bill Simmons? Like, he's playing the character of movie actor Robert Downey, just popping into movies?
53:34 Chris Ryan? And it's like, I almost wonder if he got like too close to the sun on this one.
53:38 Speaker 03 Now, I'll say this. I actually think that there are a couple of movies where he tries it. I think he tried it in The Soloist. I think he tried it in, what's the one?
53:49 Chris Ryan? The Judge?
53:50 Speaker 03 The Judge. And I just think he just got to a point to where, to fit those movies into something that audiences were loving so much.
53:58 Chris Ryan? Yes.
53:58 Speaker 03 He just went, I can't do it. Like, I'm taking some swings. I want to be, Robert Downey Jr. to me, always wanted to be taken, he's such a great fucking actor. He wanted to be taken seriously as a serious actor. Tony Stark was never going to be enough for him.
54:14 Bill Simmons? But he also made insane amounts of money.
54:16 Speaker 03 Insane amounts of money. And getting while the getting was good. And even after this, right? He did Oppenheimer, he won. And then he goes back to the MCU. Because now that he's proven that thing to everyone. Go back, get another seventy, eighty, a hundred million dollars, you know what I mean?
54:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
54:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, I just, I don't know, man. I kind of feel like. If he had just, if any, I'm trying to think if there's anybody else that would have been able to pull this off because.
54:43 Speaker 03 Really?
54:44 Chris Ryan? I know, I'm, I was like honestly thinking of the people who he's supposed to be lampooning.
54:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:50 Chris Ryan? And how bad it would have been if.
54:52 Speaker 02 Like Colin Farrell.
54:52 Chris Ryan? If Russell Crowe or Colin Farrell tried to do this, it would have just been like, we can't, we gotta burn the negative.
54:57 Speaker 02 Colin Farrell, I'm been with more black women than Robert Downey Jr.
55:00 Speaker 03 Colin Farrell, we got proof.
55:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, man, you've been into it.
55:03 Speaker 03 But like, you can watch it, but, but I'll say this.
55:09 Speaker 03 When you think about it, that's actually a good point, like a fantastic point. Downey is one of the most unique talents that has ever come out of town.
55:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:18 Speaker 03 Like, super unique, he can charisma his way through a movie, he can straight act his way through a movie. He can comedy his way through a movie. He's like, he's got a weird Hanksian thing, not quite the everyman thing that Hanks has got going on, he can't get there. But he's, he's got like a really, really deep skill set.
55:37 Speaker 02 In my life, I didn't know that he had like a comedic background, like I didn't, I had not know.
55:42 Speaker 03 It's a Saturday Night Live.
55:42 Speaker 02 He was on Saturday Night Live.
55:43 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
55:44 Speaker 02 I mean, I, I had not know that was his background.
55:46 Chris Ryan? No, I mean, I, I think it's something, if you had probably gone back to like pre Chaplin, before Chaplin, like Less Than Zero, some of the stuff that he was doing in the eighties, you would probably be like, this is gonna be Dustin Hoffman, right? Like, this is gonna be, this guy could do anything and might do a range of comedic and drama performances. So for him to take fifteen years, almost twenty, when we get to doomsday.
56:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:11 Chris Ryan? To be like, I'm gonna basically play Tony Stark, a couple of Sherlock Holmes movies, a couple of throwaway kind of Hollywood dramas.
56:20 Speaker 03 Trying to see if I can, try to see if I can bite the dramatic apple.
56:23 Chris Ryan? I always think about like, I mean, PTA has debated about how real this was, but like, he was supposed to be in Inherent Vice. He was supposed to play the detective that Joaquin Phoenix played. And I was always like, man, what would, what would it have been like if Downey had done Inherent Vice? And like a really challenging, cool movie with, with, with PTA? And we'll just never know, and I don't know when he's gonna try again.
56:45 Speaker 03 He does three Ironmans and then once he's, he's not in those.
56:49 Chris Ryan? Ten kajillion dollars.
56:50 Speaker 03 Then after he's with those, he's in Spider-Man, he's in all, he's in everything that they're doing.
56:53 Chris Ryan? And the, and the stuff he's doing other than that is basically Sherlock.
56:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:57 Bill Simmons? So, two thousand twenty, it was interesting, who was the one who pointed out that on Letterboxd? This was like three and a half stars or something like this is a movie that some people are now against.
57:08 Speaker 04 Tropic Thunder.
57:09 Bill Simmons? Tropic Thunder.
57:10 Speaker 04 I don't know.
57:11 Bill Simmons? I think it's like not, were you the one that told me that?
57:15 Chris Ryan? I did not.
57:15 Bill Simmons? I thought it was like not well liked.
57:17 Chris Ryan? Well, I said there's something about Mary has a.
57:19 Bill Simmons? Or was it there's something about Mary?
57:20 Chris Ryan? Something about Mary has like, it's either five stars or one star.
57:25 Speaker 03 Uh, well, I'm sure again, we'll probably get to this, but.
57:27 Bill Simmons? Let's get to it now.
57:28 Speaker 03 Well, I just kind of feel like it didn't age quite as well as I thought. I, I walked away feeling very underwhelmed.
57:35 Chris Ryan? But because of the movie, not because of like the missed, the jokes don't land anymore.
57:40 Speaker 03 Right. The movie itself.
57:41 Bill Simmons? You're talking about the character.
57:42 Speaker 03 The char, the, well, cause like, again, like in retrospect, I, I probably thought Danny McBride and Nick Nolte probably made me laugh my ass off in two thousand eight. But as I was watching it again, I watched it twice this weekend. I was just saying, it just felt like there was missed opportunities all over the place.
57:58 Chris Ryan? The.
57:58 Speaker 03 The, the movie depends so much on Robert Downey Jr.'s, Jr.'s performance to be a great movie.
58:03 Chris Ryan? It's heroic.
58:04 Speaker 03 It's, it's a low bearing wall.
58:06 Chris Ryan? I'll also say, I didn't remember this before, watching it this time around, the third act of this movie feels like they're making it up as they're going along. Like at, on the day of, they're kind of like.
58:16 Speaker 03 It was really bad.
58:17 Chris Ryan? Yeah, let's have a shootout over here. And it's like, oh, you guys kind of almost stopped writing the movie at a certain point.
58:24 Speaker 03 I laughed my fucking.
58:26 Chris Ryan? So fucking hard.
58:27 Speaker 03 Ass off. Like I laughed, I think when the war broke out, I was a saucier in San Antonio.
58:37 Speaker 03 I think that's the fucking scene. Back when the war broke out, ah, call up some greens. I think, I, I don't know why, like even in the theater, when that was happening, I was like, this is the funniest shit I've ever fucking seen. And then to watch Brandon, look at him like, what the fuck? This motherfucker is crazy. Like that's the funny, I laughed my ass to your point. You get to a point in the movie, almost at the point where they discover he's simple Jack, where the movie is just almost like, oh, watchable. You can't like even watch it. But all the trailers, that part, everything that led up, up to there, I thought it was hysterical. I laughed big ass titties for no reason. Like it's funny. The movie's fucking hysterical to me.
59:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I had that on what stage is the worst. The last third of the movie could probably be half as long.
59:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
59:25 Bill Simmons? And it's clearly they're just shooting from the hip in Hawaii and just filming shit, blowing stuff up and.
59:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I just, I was surprised that it wrapped up as quickly as it did. Like, all of a sudden, I see Tom Cruise, just like, you know.
59:37 Bill Simmons? He's dancing.
59:38 Speaker 03 Dancing and I'm just like, oh, wait, this is what, this is how.
59:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
59:42 Speaker 03 The last five, six minutes of this is gonna be. Okay, cool.
59:44 Bill Simmons? Stiller directed, wrote the screenplay with Justin Theroux and Eton Cohen. So Stiller directed Reality Bites, Cable Guy, Thunder, Two Zoolander's and Walter Mitty. And then a bunch of Severance, right?
59:56 Chris Ryan? Uh, he's done Severance and Escape from Dannemora, yeah.
59:59 Speaker 03 Ah, Escape from Dannemora, great, yeah. Great fucking show.
1:00:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:00:01 Chris Ryan? We fucking love that one.
1:00:03 Speaker 03 Great show.
1:00:03 Bill Simmons? That could have gone longer.
1:00:06 Chris Ryan? Let these guys stay free.
1:00:08 Bill Simmons? They just made that again?
1:00:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:00:10 Bill Simmons? So they had an extensive marketing campaign, uh, fake websites, fake, fake stuff for the characters, fictional TV special. Sold the energy drink and then they did a simple Jack website and people were like, get this fucking thing down.
1:00:26 Chris Ryan? They had multiple movie clips, even in 2008, people were like, no, no, the simple Jack website.
1:00:32 Speaker 03 And to be real, there were, like, there were protests then.
1:00:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:00:37 Speaker 03 Yeah. So I hope no one thinks that there weren't.
1:00:40 Chris Ryan? At the premiere.
1:00:40 Speaker 03 There were protests then. There were protests from the black community. There were protests from the Shriver family and the Special Olympics. There were, there were protests then. There was heavy. There was talk about the Les Grossman character and whether or not that character was directly.
1:00:53 Bill Simmons? A Semitic, right?
1:00:54 Speaker 03 Yeah. There were protests then. It's just that the funny one. And that, that, that, that is what happened with the movie. People went to the movie, they're like, it's funny and the funny one.
1:01:02 Bill Simmons? Downey, best supporting actor, nom.
1:01:06 Bill Simmons? Unfortunately, it was the Heath Ledger Dark Knight year.
1:01:08 Chris Ryan? So let's play this out. How would that have worked if, if Robert Downey Jr. Had won an Oscar for this?
1:01:14 Bill Simmons? Over dead Heath Ledger? That would have been terrible. People would have fucking gone crazy.
1:01:18 Speaker 03 Number one, the Heath Ledger performance is like.
1:01:20 Chris Ryan? He was never gonna win.
1:01:21 Speaker 03 I mean, just imagine.
1:01:22 Bill Simmons? If it was a different year, you mean?
1:01:23 Speaker 03 Every year that, or every year around the, of the Oscars, there'd be tweets about how there's more, there's more people that won Oscars for, uh, oh, yes, sorry. I'm, I'm new to the. He has a microphone, brain blind spot. We were doing it at UCLA. The mic is down here and Joel is talking. I'm like, Joel, there's people in the stands.
1:01:45 Bill Simmons? It was like, what was that SNL sketch with Bill Hader where he's the, he's the?
1:01:48 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
1:01:49 Bill Simmons? He can't.
1:01:52 Speaker 02 I was not meant to be on camera in life. I was a writer. I told him, I was like, yeah.
1:01:56 Bill Simmons? You're a late bloomer superstar.
1:02:01 Speaker 04 So you were gonna say though, the Oscar thing?
1:02:03 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
1:02:04 Speaker 02 Every year around there, they'd be like, oh, a bunch of black people saying, there's been more people that have won Oscars for blackface and have actually, you know, won, so.
1:02:12 Speaker 04 It's not the craziest fucking thing in the world that he got an Oscar nomination for this? Like, if you tell somebody now that he got an Oscar nomination for that, it would blow their minds.
1:02:20 Speaker 03 I think the Oscar nomination is the thing that people most hold on to when they're talking about the negative legacy of the portrayal.
1:02:26 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:02:26 Speaker 03 Is the fact that he got nominated.
1:02:27 Speaker 04 It hurt, it hurt the movie almost that he got an Oscar.
1:02:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah. You know what else is interesting about it? And we talked about this, but there's Something About Mary. Like comedies never get nominations.
1:02:36 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:02:36 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:02:37 Bill Simmons? And it was just weird that this one, it was like all the old, like, people in the Oscars were like, yeah.
1:02:42 Speaker 03 But this goes back to my theory that sometimes the people in the Oscars be fucking with us. It's like, sometimes they go, they wa, they sit together and they watch The Help and they go, oh, yeah, we gonna piss them off.
1:02:53 Bill Simmons? I don't, I don't even.
1:02:55 Speaker 03 Like The Blind, The Blind Side, oh, we gotta make sure they get one here.
1:02:58 Bill Simmons? I would like to think it was trolling, but I think it's actually just old guys, you know? Be like, the shit was just better back then.
1:03:05 Speaker 03 Well, Driving Miss Daisy, oh, that's when we got one. You know what I'm saying? So I just think something, they fucking with us sometimes, man.
1:03:11 Bill Simmons? This was weird that it got nominated, le, less for the Downey character, but just the comedy getting that. It's not like this was a hit, but not like a phenomenon. Yeah, it's, to me, it's like, sort of made more sense for Matt Dillon to get nominated for There's Something About Mary or something like that than this.
1:03:26 Speaker 02 And my cousin, who else?
1:03:29 Bill Simmons? It's, it's, it's not a long list.
1:03:31 Speaker 02 She's great, yeah.
1:03:33 Bill Simmons? Google, Google comedy actor, actress supporting Oscar?
1:03:36 Speaker 02 Where's the Tommy?
1:03:37 Bill Simmons? If you're talking last thirty years, it's probably five or less.
1:03:40 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:03:41 Speaker 03 Would you count Rod Tewill?
1:03:43 Bill Simmons? Oh.
1:03:44 Chris Ryan? No, that's kind of like-
1:03:45 Bill Simmons? That's a great character.
1:03:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's a great character, but he's-
1:03:48 Bill Simmons? No, but that's not like necessarily like a comedy character.
1:03:50 Chris Ryan? He has funny scenes, but I don't even think that they're being, they're very much like rooted in the story of Jerry Maguire.
1:03:56 Speaker 04 Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids nomination.
1:03:58 Speaker 03 Okay, yeah, that's one, that's one.
1:04:00 Speaker 04 Gossiping Barbie.
1:04:02 Speaker 03 Gossiping Barbie, that's one, that's one.
1:04:04 Speaker 04 Uh, Jonah Hill, Wolf of Wall Street.
1:04:06 Speaker 03 I don't know if that counts much. Get that fucking shit out of here.
1:04:08 Speaker 02 Wow.
1:04:08 Speaker 04 Alright, relax. Um.
1:04:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:04:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's it.
1:04:15 Speaker 04 You made it sad, you stopped researching.
1:04:18 Bill Simmons? Tootsie, Terry Gar?
1:04:21 Speaker 04 Well, Hoffman.
1:04:21 Bill Simmons? That was in the eighties, yeah, we had a couple in the eighties, yeah, it's pretty rare. Speaking of Craig, this movie was a hundred and seven minutes, a plus seven on the Horlback scale.
1:04:30 Chris Ryan? Feels like a plus fourteen.
1:04:32 Bill Simmons? The-
1:04:32 Speaker 04 I care you.
1:04:33 Bill Simmons? No.
1:04:33 Speaker 04 They, I mean, there's trailers at the beginning, you know, there's some bonus footage that they had to include.
1:04:38 Bill Simmons? The unrated director's cut, which for some reason I own on Vudu, was like over two hours.
1:04:44 Speaker 04 Really?
1:04:44 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:04:45 Speaker 04 What's in there?
1:04:46 Bill Simmons? Just extra stuff.
1:04:47 Speaker 02 Damn.
1:04:47 Bill Simmons? As you know, Craig, my rule is always deleted scenes were deleted for a reason. Uh, and it's a good example. Ninety million dollar budget made a hundred ninety-five point seven million. Roger Ebert. Three and a half stars. Considerably better than Stillers previous film, Zoolander.
1:05:04 Speaker 04 Huh.
1:05:04 Bill Simmons? Roger, if you didn't like Zoolander. It's the kind of summer comedy that rolls in, makes a lot of people laugh, and rolls on to video. Most rewatchable scene, let's go, categories. I fucking love the opening so much.
1:05:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:05:18 Bill Simmons? I think the first twenty-five minutes of this movie are A plus, plus, plus, plus.
1:05:22 Speaker 02 The, the Access Hollywood segment was just great. It just, I, I can, I feel like I felt like-
1:05:26 Bill Simmons? You're jumping ahead. Isn't that the first twenty-five minutes? No.
1:05:29 Speaker 04 Oh.
1:05:30 Bill Simmons? No, I, I have the opening.
1:05:32 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:05:32 Speaker 03 Oh, are you talking about just the trailers?
1:05:34 Bill Simmons? The trailers?
1:05:34 Speaker 02 Just the trailer, oh.
1:05:35 Bill Simmons? Booty sweat?
1:05:36 Speaker 02 Booty sweat.
1:05:37 Bill Simmons? Scorch your six global meltdown. Fatty's fart too and Satan Alley. We had, the movie hasn't even started yet.
1:05:42 Speaker 02 That's right, that's right.
1:05:43 Chris Ryan? And you know, it's probably a very complicated time for Kirk Lazarus because he's also on the trail for Satan's Alley, right? Right, he's gotta do promotion.
1:05:51 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:05:53 Bill Simmons? Forbidden Love in the 12th century.
1:05:55 Speaker 03 Because he, because, uh, Tobey Maguire is nominated.
1:05:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:05:58 Speaker 03 Now, does Kirk Lazarus, who is very competitive, uh, did he get nominated?
1:06:02 Chris Ryan? Well, I think after the Tropic Thunder experience, he's realized it's not about competition.
1:06:06 Speaker 03 It's not about competition.
1:06:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you know.
1:06:09 Bill Simmons? First big battle scene, Tug gets shot like 47 times. His hands are blown in the spiders. Danny McBride comes in hot.
1:06:19 Bill Simmons? Mother nature just pissed her pantsuit. There's a lot of good stuff in there. I like his hands and the Jay Barish show, the, the intestines kill me.
1:06:27 Speaker 03 Oh, man.
1:06:30 Speaker 03 What even is all this?
1:06:31 Chris Ryan? I think I can put it back.
1:06:34 Chris Ryan? I think I can put it back, kill me.
1:06:35 Bill Simmons? Uh, the E.T. segment.
1:06:37 Chris Ryan? Is this where Danny McBride goes tuck, tuck and Kim have blue balls? I wanna let him squirt it in.
1:06:43 Bill Simmons? E.T. segment with Nunez, uh, the disappointing buddy comedy, Chitlin' and the Dude.
1:06:47 Speaker 03 I was gonna ask.
1:06:48 Bill Simmons? So what was the premise of this movie?
1:06:49 Speaker 03 Who was Chitlin' and who was the dude in this?
1:06:51 Bill Simmons? I think Chitlin' was.
1:06:52 Speaker 03 Martin Lawrence?
1:06:53 Bill Simmons? No, that was Martin Lawrence, yeah.
1:06:55 Speaker 03 So Chitlin' was, oh, man.
1:06:57 Bill Simmons? And then the dude was Ben Stower and, or, uh, Tug Speedman in drag?
1:07:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:07:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, the art of parody.
1:07:02 Bill Simmons? Or was he Chitlin'?
1:07:06 Bill Simmons? I had so many questions for Chitlin' and the Dude, I wanted to know more.
1:07:09 Speaker 03 The art of parody, parody just works better than, cause the name of the movie.
1:07:15 Speaker 02 Chitlin' and the Dude, man.
1:07:18 Bill Simmons? It's a buddy cop comedy.
1:07:20 Speaker 03 It's a movie they would never make, but it's a movie that they made.
1:07:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah, they just call it something else.
1:07:24 Speaker 03 They just call it, but it's really Chitlin' and the Dude.
1:07:26 Chris Ryan? They call it like Money Talks.
1:07:28 Bill Simmons? Well, they had, what was the Ben Vereen comedy that, uh, on TV was like 10 Speed and Brown Shoe? Something like that? But that was like an actual show, you can look it up. It's on ABC for multiple years.
1:07:41 Bill Simmons? Simple Jackson this as well, and then we get to meet McConaughey, whose hair is just, I don't know what's going on.
1:07:47 Chris Ryan? Uh, it's, it's.
1:07:48 Bill Simmons? It is like a full-fledged Afro.
1:07:51 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:07:52 Speaker 02 He looks great, man.
1:07:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I don't know if it's a wig or what he's doing.
1:07:55 Chris Ryan? I think that was, um, maybe post a Turkey visit, you know?
1:07:59 Bill Simmons? Post Harasans?
1:07:59 Speaker 02 Ooh.
1:08:02 Bill Simmons? Uh, we get Les Grossman's entrance. This is your fault, you limey fuck.
1:08:07 Speaker 03 Uh, my favorite, one of my favorites, hey, where's the key grip? Punch him in the face, because the key grip's gonna look the same on every production.
1:08:14 Bill Simmons? We get Damian, the director, blowing up. I gotta say, this is a guilty pleasure favorite scene for me, because I like when he puts the head on the rifle.
1:08:21 Chris Ryan? So great.
1:08:22 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
1:08:23 Chris Ryan? Let's go and make the greatest wall movie ever.
1:08:30 Bill Simmons? It's corn syrup, guys.
1:08:32 Speaker 02 Latex and corn syrup.
1:08:34 Bill Simmons? Then, uh, the scene, the, I don't even know how to title this scene, but the Kirk talking to.
1:08:41 Chris Ryan? Tug and Kirk talk about Simple Jack.
1:08:43 Speaker 03 Now, can we talk about this scene real quick?
1:08:45 Bill Simmons? I'll just lay it out.
1:08:46 Speaker 03 Okay, talk about this scene real quick, okay? So, obviously, the scene is hugely and ridiculously problematic, obviously, right?
1:08:53 Chris Ryan? Is it?
1:08:54 Speaker 03 So, I'll tell you, it is just be, in the world that we want to live in, it is, right? However, the observation in the scene.
1:09:04 Bill Simmons? However, I laughed for three straight minutes.
1:09:05 Speaker 03 Yes, the observation in the scene was so deadly accurate. And even still, I wonder, when I watch it, how I never thought of that?
1:09:16 Bill Simmons? Sean Penn blew it.
1:09:18 Chris Ryan? He went too far.
1:09:19 Speaker 03 The observation in the scene is so deadly accurate that it is just a genius, brilliant piece of comedy writing. It is, it is. You can't take it away from people who look at that and go, you don't want that as part of a punchline and all of that stuff like that. I get it. That scene is hysterical and is just gorgeous writing.
1:09:40 Speaker 04 It's the most memorable line from the movie.
1:09:41 Chris Ryan? It's the most, this is the most rewatchable scene for me. It's also basically the sleep with me Quentin Tarantino rant about Top Gun. It's like the most dead on observation about like, it looks retarded, actually retarded, not retarded. And it like, the fact that like, that actually is the peak of Downey's performance to me is like, he's just so, he is pretending to be an Australian guy, pretending to be a black guy, who is also commenting on the like, the nature of Oscar like campaigns.
1:10:14 Bill Simmons? Well, also his, the way he plays off Stiller, Stiller's like, there were times I actually felt like I became retarded in town. He's like, what the fuck?
1:10:23 Speaker 04 To be monarchical.
1:10:24 Speaker 03 But he's also, but also in all of that, he's also fucking with him.
1:10:28 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:10:29 Speaker 03 They're in a dick measuring contest for the starring role of this movie. So he's saying, you're a moron. You're like, monarchical.
1:10:38 Speaker 04 An imbecile.
1:10:39 Speaker 03 Being, being is going, yeah.
1:10:43 Speaker 03 Like the dumbest motherfucker, dumbest motherfucker alive. He's really, and then he, he gives him a little bit. He walks, he makes him follow, and he just continues to fuck with him the entire time.
1:10:54 Speaker 04 He does the same thing when he's commenting on his physique and he's like, any tips?
1:10:59 Speaker 03 Cause I'm trying to come up too. I'm telling you, I don't give a fuck what nobody say. He is throwing 117 miles an hour for the entire movie and it's still tickled me to this day.
1:11:11 Bill Simmons? Couple more, uh, we get a couple less gross men scenes, including the ransom meeting. Take a big step back. You didn't really fuck your own face.
1:11:21 Bill Simmons? Him dancing to Flo Rida, was it, did they have Flo Rida back, guys?
1:11:23 Speaker 03 You like him?
1:11:24 Chris Ryan? It was, it was fun to revisit.
1:11:25 Bill Simmons? 2007, 8ish.
1:11:28 Speaker 02 I don't, you know, I don't know if I've ever been any place to play Flo Rida, man.
1:11:32 Speaker 03 Oh, interesting.
1:11:32 Speaker 02 Have you?
1:11:33 Speaker 03 Well, it's like LSU, like, uh, I wasn't, I would go home. I wasn't, I was in, uh, fucking, uh, LA by this time, but you go home, you go around the campus and they love low around campus.
1:11:46 Speaker 04 A lot of Flo Rida at my high school prom.
1:11:47 Bill Simmons? Really?
1:11:48 Chris Ryan? I think it was.
1:11:49 Speaker 02 I got to avoid a lot of that. I was 30 years old.
1:11:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, I was, I was close to that age too, but you're like, you go back, you go on campus and they're like, oh, apple bottom jeans.
1:11:56 Bill Simmons? Forgot to mention Tug getting recognized as Simple Jack.
1:11:59 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:12:00 Bill Simmons? And they all, they all, they forget the VHS. The, uh, I think this is a top three for me, that the troops all hanging out when Jack Black is tied up. When he calls, says your mother's a cantankerous whore.
1:12:16 Speaker 04 Oh, when Jeff's detoxing?
1:12:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and the Lance, he's talking, Brandon T. Robb, he's talking about, uh, talking about Lance.
1:12:24 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:12:25 Bill Simmons? And we get, were you thinking of dangling the dice on Lance's forehead? I texted that to Craig this weekend.
1:12:33 Speaker 02 Do you think they always knew that that was going to be Lance Bass?
1:12:38 Speaker 04 Uh, that's a really good question.
1:12:39 Bill Simmons? That probably was a late.
1:12:41 Speaker 04 Or they shot the Oscars already and they were like, Lance, it's a funny joke, it'll pay off at the end, yeah.
1:12:46 Bill Simmons? Downey says, man, everyone's gay once in a while, it's Hollywood. And then Jack Black wants to blow him if he'll untie. I'll cradle the balls, stroke the shaft, work the pipe, swallow the gravy. Get it over here, buddy, let's do this.
1:13:01 Speaker 04 Can I, can I do my flex right now? Cause it's related to that line.
1:13:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah, let's go.
1:13:05 Speaker 04 It's the Steven Seagal shitting on himself word for the most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot. Apparently that line that Jack Black says tied to that tree is, this is from an interview with Jack Black. It was an homage to the urban legend about Sylvester Stallone going to his trailer with some lady. They were having sex in his trailer and as the legend goes, he still wore his microphone. And the sound guy turned up the volume and everybody outside could hear. And he was saying, stroke the shaft, cradle the balls, say my name, swallow the gravy.
1:13:32 Bill Simmons? Forgot about, I think that is a true story.
1:13:36 Speaker 02 That's crazy. Wow. If I had that context, it would have been that much funnier.
1:13:45 Bill Simmons? Cradle the balls. Uh, the shootout, Jack Black with the double cocaine hands kills me. I like when the hands come back. I like this, I have a sundae, half squat. As we said, the last third of this movie is not awesome, but, uh, there's a couple of fun things in there. And then the Oscars ending with Tropic Thunder. And less dancing. So what do you got, Joel? What's your most rewatchable scene?
1:14:07 Speaker 02 Well, actually, I gave it away already. I felt like the excess Hollywood scene just took me back to, I felt like I was, I am in a hotel room.
1:14:15 Bill Simmons? Right now.
1:14:15 Speaker 02 Right? You know, I'm staying in a hotel room because LA is not where I live. Uh, and it was just like sitting down, putting down your shit and being like, oh yeah, this is exactly what I would have expected to see.
1:14:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it's like sitting in an airport bar.
1:14:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. On any TV from like twen- 2003 to 2011.
1:14:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:14:32 Speaker 02 You know, and it just felt good like that to me. I don't know. And so then he said, you know, I didn't see that, somebody said they were close to me while I'm coming. I don't know. I felt like that was the best acting that Ben Stiller had done in the whole thing. Somebody said they were close to me?
1:14:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah. What do you got, Van?
1:14:46 Chris Ryan? Uh, Kirk and Tug.
1:14:48 Speaker 03 Saucy in San Antonio. I'm sorry, guys. Like, it's like-
1:14:51 Chris Ryan? Oh, and he's talking about cooking for them?
1:14:52 Speaker 03 Yeah. He's like, he's like, we're gonna sit down. And he just, and there's something that happens in that scene. First of all,
1:14:58 Bill Simmons? What'd he say? Hustle up some crawfish?
1:15:01 Speaker 03 So Brandon, like, so I actually called Brandon about this. And Brandon said that they were losing the light, and now you can actually see it when you, when you see it, they were losing the light. And Ben Stiller told them, just do whatever. Just cook. Like, it was all improv. This movie has a lot of that kind of like Ghostbusters feel when we were talking about Ghostbusters. It was all improv. They were losing the light, Ben was getting cranky, and he's like, you guys just cook. Just do some shit. And so Robert comes off the top of his head with that. He starts going in on it, and Brandon T. Jackson just plays off of him. And the authenticity of it, it plays real to me. Because when I'm listening to him be a black man and talk about crawdads and like grab some collard greens and all, it's just, it's
1:15:45 Speaker 03 it's fucking unbelievably hilarious. It's hilarious to me.
1:15:49 Chris Ryan? Did he say collared up? Collared up some greens.
1:15:53 Speaker 03 He says, y'all, y'all in for a treat. Back before the war broke, I was a saucy in San Antonio. Call up some of these greens. It's funny, bro. This shit is funny.
1:16:05 Bill Simmons? What do you have, C.R.?
1:16:06 Chris Ryan? Uh, I'm gonna go with Kirk and Tug talking about Simple Jack.
1:16:11 Bill Simmons? That's mine as well.
1:16:12 Speaker 03 That's the, that's the same.
1:16:14 Bill Simmons? What's the most 2008 thing about this movie?
1:16:16 Chris Ryan? I got a list. Rick Peck playing Wee Tennis.
1:16:19 Speaker 03 That's one.
1:16:20 Bill Simmons? Wee's on there.
1:16:21 Speaker 03 Oh, the Wee, yeah, I got the Wee.
1:16:22 Bill Simmons? Tobey Maguire being credited as an MTV Best Kiss Award winner.
1:16:26 Speaker 03 That's on there.
1:16:28 Bill Simmons? Less reading Maxim magazine?
1:16:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:16:30 Speaker 03 That's on there.
1:16:31 Bill Simmons? Marine Manuño's entire banks?
1:16:33 Speaker 03 TiVo.
1:16:33 Chris Ryan? TiVo.
1:16:34 Speaker 03 Oh, man. The entire conversation about the format wars between HD DVD and Blu-ray.
1:16:41 Chris Ryan? And Al Horan led the way.
1:16:42 Speaker 03 Al Horan led the way.
1:16:43 Bill Simmons? An important Lance Bass cameo.
1:16:46 Speaker 03 Sorry, yeah.
1:16:47 Bill Simmons? Um, Qualcomm phones?
1:16:50 Speaker 03 Yep. Mm-hmm.
1:16:52 Bill Simmons? But the winner is TiVo, and the winner really is TiVo saving everybody at the end.
1:16:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure.
1:16:57 Bill Simmons? It feels like the most dated fucking thing ever.
1:16:59 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:16:59 Bill Simmons? Were you a TiVo monthly subscriber or lifetime?
1:17:02 Chris Ryan? I never had TiVo.
1:17:03 Bill Simmons? What?
1:17:04 Chris Ryan? No, I didn't really get it until DVR on cable boxes.
1:17:07 Speaker 03 What did y'all do?
1:17:08 Bill Simmons? I had it. I mean, when I started fucking with it, your provider had the shit on it.
1:17:14 Chris Ryan? Also, sometimes we would literally go to like, I would go to a friend's house to watch 24 on TiVo. Like, I got three 24s.
1:17:22 Bill Simmons? TiVo really had a moment.
1:17:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:17:24 Speaker 03 Oh, man. It was like the most important thing in my house once upon a time.
1:17:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:17:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:17:28 Bill Simmons? Would say it's the best.
1:17:29 Speaker 03 Well, a couple of things. The Spalding official NBA ball is in there.
1:17:32 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:17:33 Speaker 03 That's 2008. The original iPod is in there. Um, and...
1:17:39 Bill Simmons? Oh, shit, you're right.
1:17:40 Speaker 03 The original iPod is in there.
1:17:41 Bill Simmons? The first one, yeah, that was the first year.
1:17:42 Speaker 03 The first iPod is in there.
1:17:44 Bill Simmons? Oh, man.
1:17:44 Chris Ryan? They were so good.
1:17:45 Speaker 04 There's also while he's, because it's, Tug is watching his iPod in the jungle, right?
1:17:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:17:49 Speaker 04 He pulls out a very specific brand of chapstick that is like only from 2008 that he's about to put on before the band attacks him.
1:17:56 Speaker 03 And one thing about this too, last thing I'll say about 2008. Everybody in this movie is in the perfect spot in their career to be in this movie.
1:18:07 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:18:07 Bill Simmons? Mm-hmm.
1:18:08 Speaker 03 For like the, for the, the space it had.
1:18:10 Chris Ryan? They're all big, but they're a little dinged up.
1:18:12 Speaker 03 Yep.
1:18:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:18:12 Speaker 03 Yep.
1:18:13 Bill Simmons? Still is the only one who's, but even he, I guess, is a tiny bit dinged up.
1:18:17 Chris Ryan? Cable guy was like, it's a $600 million movie.
1:18:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:18:20 Speaker 03 This is just his project, though. So it's not, you know, he's already kind of had his run, right?
1:18:24 Bill Simmons? Would say it's the best.
1:18:27 Chris Ryan? I have a list, but what do you got, Joel?
1:18:28 Speaker 02 I said the portrayal of Les Grossman.
1:18:31 Chris Ryan? Oh shit.
1:18:32 Speaker 02 You know what I'm saying? Like, don't you think of him like, that is our CEO class in this country.
1:18:37 Chris Ryan? Sure.
1:18:38 Speaker 02 You know what I mean? And like, he put, for what, even though people think that there was some anti-Semitic tropes with that. I didn't read that. I didn't, I didn't get that out of that. That may be my own ignorance on it or whatever, but I just thought that kind of executive has defined American culture as much as anyone over the past 20 years.
1:18:54 Chris Ryan? Go ahead, Van. Your response.
1:18:55 Speaker 02 You disagree?
1:18:55 Chris Ryan? Go ahead. Go ahead, Van.
1:18:57 Speaker 02 He doesn't give a shit if people die, he doesn't have to treat you nice, he's ridiculous, like he'll make you watch him.
1:19:01 Speaker 03 You ask, why you asking? You should be asking him.
1:19:03 Chris Ryan? What does he say? He's like, and in the appropriate amount of time, we will file an insurance claim.
1:19:09 Speaker 03 I think that's actually true. That's all I said.
1:19:11 Chris Ryan? It's a performance that like, honestly, in 08, you were probably like, huh? And then now it's like, oh, it's completely on the nose for that, that, that era of Hollywood exec.
1:19:20 Speaker 02 For sure.
1:19:20 Chris Ryan? What do you have for What's Age the Best? Uh, the, the, the whole scene with his exploded hands, um, and the two of them trying, like, crying on each other. And Ben Stiller is still trying to cut like the arrogance of those guys and, uh, just putting Danny, Danny McBride in charge of explosives.
1:19:39 Speaker 03 Uh, fantastic. Um, YouTube, they mentioned YouTube. YouTube was still kinda.
1:19:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:19:44 Speaker 03 YouTube.
1:19:45 Chris Ryan? It's like two years in.
1:19:46 Speaker 03 That's Age the Best. Also, all of these guys are kinda still on top.
1:19:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:19:52 Speaker 03 Like.
1:19:53 Chris Ryan? Jack Black's the biggest one out of all of them.
1:19:55 Speaker 03 Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey.
1:19:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:19:57 Speaker 03 Tom Cruise is back. Uh, Ben Stiller has Severance and the Knicks. Um, like, it's like, a, a lot of these guys, Robert Downey Jr., these guys are like still on top.
1:20:07 Speaker 02 Let me ask about your boy, uh, what's Brandon doing right now?
1:20:09 Speaker 03 He's doing great.
1:20:10 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:20:11 Chris Ryan? So, so all the, all the brother, you know, I mean, you should tell the truth about.
1:20:14 Speaker 03 He's doing great.
1:20:15 Chris Ryan? Your friend's experience, man. You know what I'm saying?
1:20:17 Speaker 03 Brandon's doing great. I talked to him, he's doing great.
1:20:18 Chris Ryan? I love it. I mean, it's great.
1:20:20 Speaker 03 Say, watch Deadline is, uh, he's doing great. He's had a great career and it's still going on. I don't know why you're picking on him.
1:20:24 Chris Ryan? Just glad Van was able to do a name drop.
1:20:27 Speaker 02 Been a couple of episodes.
1:20:29 Chris Ryan? I called Brandon earlier.
1:20:30 Speaker 03 I could drop more, I could.
1:20:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, go ahead, what?
1:20:32 Speaker 03 You know the people, you talked about, don't, don't get used, don't, you don't do it.
1:20:37 Chris Ryan? What?
1:20:37 Speaker 03 If somebody else could do that, you can't do that though.
1:20:40 Chris Ryan? You gotta start just name dropping, like, be like, yeah, man, I was texting with Matt Dillon the other day, just see if he calls you on it, like.
1:20:49 Speaker 02 You can't do that. A lot of people could do that, but not you.
1:20:52 Bill Simmons? Look at you doing the LeBron meme. Finger pointing. I have Vietnam movie parodies. I still enjoy even all these years later, even though they don't really make Vietnam movies anymore. But I still love that whole culture. We even did a podcast about them once. Sandusky's theory about porno movies validating video formats?
1:21:11 Bill Simmons? I thought it was, I honestly, kind of brilliant.
1:21:13 Chris Ryan? I was thinking about this the other day because we were doing a physical media pod on Big Picture and we were asked a question about whether or not there will ever be something above 4K. And the first thing that popped into my mind was from this movie. It was like, well, if porn, if porn leads the way, then yes.
1:21:27 Bill Simmons? It's gonna be 8K, right, Craig?
1:21:29 Chris Ryan? Apparently the human eye can't process more than 4K.
1:21:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I'm barely can process 4K. Uh, how about an author lying about a personal experience to sell books?
1:21:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah, that says pretty well.
1:21:41 Bill Simmons? See that?
1:21:42 Chris Ryan? Right. James Frey?
1:21:44 Bill Simmons? James Frey, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a personal one for me and it's so stealth, but it fucking kills me. Um, Rick, Rick Peck's loser son.
1:21:53 Speaker 02 Oh, man.
1:21:55 Chris Ryan? You got to choose.
1:21:59 Bill Simmons? The dude with the picture thing he has in his office and the son's not even looking at the camera, he's just...
1:22:06 Speaker 02 Oh, but when they're on the plane at the end of the movie too. I was like, oh shit.
1:22:10 Bill Simmons? This is so good.
1:22:14 Bill Simmons? I have Peck's remedy for killing a hooker. For how to clean it up. Get your hands on some bleach, hydrogen peroxide, a shitload of lime.
1:22:26 Bill Simmons? I thought it was a great little kid performance by the leader of the flaming dragons.
1:22:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:22:30 Bill Simmons? That guy's good.
1:22:30 Speaker 02 He's really good, yeah.
1:22:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he was excellent. He was like scary, he could do moves. And then I like when Nolte says, uh, let's bag and tag the bastard. You're in a world of hurt, Dumbo.
1:22:41 Speaker 03 That's funny.
1:22:43 Bill Simmons? Let's bag and tag the bastard.
1:22:45 Speaker 03 It was like, you're in a world of hurt. I don't know why.
1:22:49 Bill Simmons? That's what CR said about the self face after game seven. It's like, let's bag and tag the bastard.
1:22:53 Chris Ryan? He's talking to Tatum.
1:22:55 Bill Simmons? And then, uh.
1:22:56 Speaker 03 Oh, my God.
1:22:57 Bill Simmons? So, hmm, the five actors nominated for best actor leading role were Tug Speedman, Tom Hanks, Sean Penn, Tobey Maguire, and Jon Voight. Pretty believable.
1:23:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:23:09 Bill Simmons? Fivesome.
1:23:09 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:23:10 Bill Simmons? No.
1:23:11 Chris Ryan? And you have to presume that Sean Penn consented to be, yeah, included in that group.
1:23:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Probably Downing, because he knew Downing from early in his, okay. Uh, the Floyd Gondoli Butter on My Ass and Lollipops in My Mouth Award for Something I Just Enjoy.
1:23:25 Speaker 03 Every time somebody says booty sweat, man, it does shit work for me, bro. Like, I mean, I was saying, you remember there was a time when people would say, Rick James, bitch, or whatever, we and my boys would just talk about booty sweat, you know what I'm saying? Let me get some of that booty sweat.
1:23:37 Chris Ryan? Honestly.
1:23:37 Speaker 03 Don't, see, don't, don't.
1:23:38 Bill Simmons? I'm not doing anything.
1:23:39 Speaker 03 Don't do that. Don't do it. I saw your face.
1:23:41 Chris Ryan? Anytime sympathy for the devil is used in a movie, I'm just kind of like, my, my spidey senses go off.
1:23:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I did a, I was gonna wonder, I was gonna do the hottest take on whether that's the best movie song of all time, but it wasn't less movies than I thought.
1:23:54 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I also give you shelter is, uses it a lot, yeah.
1:23:57 Bill Simmons? But more TV shows. I have a, I really love well-done fake movie trailers in a movie.
1:24:03 Speaker 03 Hmm.
1:24:04 Bill Simmons? It's a fucking home run every time. Like, I, I honestly, I feel like we're short. Craig, we're like fifty short career.
1:24:11 Chris Ryan? Fake movie trailers?
1:24:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah, just really well-done ones, just don't, like, why not just, if you're making a comedy, why not just put a fake movie trailer for no reason before the movie starts?
1:24:19 Chris Ryan? In the second season of the studio, because the Paul Dano action movie that they did, which is really just the opening scene of that movie or the climax of that movie. And they did the one about, uh, like, the.
1:24:28 Bill Simmons? Did they ever do the Greta Gerwig, not, yeah, the Greta Gerwig movie?
1:24:31 Chris Ryan? The fartpocalypse, didn't they do that trailer in studio, in the studio with Johnny Knoxville?
1:24:36 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's right.
1:24:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:24:37 Bill Simmons? That's right. I miss those. What do you have, Van? Do you have one?
1:24:42 Speaker 03 Um, I like walking around the jungle. I, I just like movies in the jungle, uh, army action movies, just walking around in the jungle.
1:24:50 Bill Simmons? Being scared?
1:24:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:24:51 Bill Simmons? Mm-hmm.
1:24:53 Bill Simmons? All right, we'll take a break and then we'll come back with Joel's first ever flex. This episode is brought to you by Trivia. Sweeteners are like movies, the best ones don't leave an aftertaste. That's why Trivia Alolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener is a smooth, balanced tri blend that delivers sugar like sweetness with zero calories per serving and no aftertaste. If you're looking for a better way to enjoy sweetness with zero calories per serving, you really need to try Trivia Alolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. Available online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer. This episode is brought to you by Viori.
1:25:35 Bill Simmons? All right, let's talk about a category we appreciate, clothes that stay in the rotation. Viori earned that spot. Their core shorts are good for workouts, travel day, weekend, whatever. And the Strato Tech T ridiculously soft. It's the kind of gear you keep reaching for because it's comfortable while still looking put together. Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com/rewatchables and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.
1:26:07 Bill Simmons? All right, Joel, it's time. Your flex category. First, did you understand the assignment?
1:26:11 Speaker 02 I did, I did understand the assignment and actually I had something for all three and now I'm going to decide right here based on the center of the conversation.
1:26:20 Bill Simmons? Wow.
1:26:20 Speaker 02 All right. Because you know, sometimes, because either it's like I could have done something more ridiculous, but also I just don't want to seem, you know, this is a very highbrow podcast.
1:26:28 Bill Simmons? Sure.
1:26:28 Speaker 02 You know what I'm saying?
1:26:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah. There's a lot of intellectual heft here.
1:26:30 Speaker 02 Um.
1:26:31 Bill Simmons? It's not in my house, but we're still doing good.
1:26:34 Speaker 02 Not with the catering and everything.
1:26:38 Bill Simmons? Wow, Bill Sugarfish, thanks, man. Tell your chef, thanks.
1:26:42 Speaker 02 Maybe the next time.
1:26:46 Speaker 02 The, the Needle Drop, Run Through the Jungle by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
1:26:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:26:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:26:50 Speaker 02 Um, that, that shit is beautiful, like, and I expect to hear it in every Vietnam era.
1:26:56 Bill Simmons? Yes.
1:26:56 Speaker 02 Movie.
1:26:57 Bill Simmons? You're right. It's probably eighty percent of the Vietnam movies feel like they have to do it.
1:27:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:01 Bill Simmons? It makes you wonder why, why wasn't there more classic rock songs about jungles?
1:27:06 Chris Ryan? I mean, I just, in general, I think Creedence has that vibe. So like Susie Cues and Apocalypse Now and I'm sure there's one.
1:27:13 Bill Simmons? Are they the number one Vietnam movie band?
1:27:14 Chris Ryan? They have to, alright?
1:27:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:27:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, Fortunate Son.
1:27:17 Bill Simmons? Fortunate Son.
1:27:17 Chris Ryan? Fortunate Son is huge.
1:27:19 Speaker 04 Bad Moon Rising?
1:27:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:27:20 Chris Ryan? And then there's a lot of Motown, I think.
1:27:22 Speaker 03 What's the most used song in a Vietnam movie?
1:27:25 Bill Simmons? Probably anything from Creedence Clearwater Revival.
1:27:27 Speaker 04 I think it's Fortunate Son is the most stereotypical song.
1:27:30 Speaker 02 Allegedly, they say that song is about gun violence, though, like, which is crazy because this is from like nineteen sixty-nine.
1:27:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:27:36 Speaker 02 Um, I was like, this really wasn't about Vietnam, huh? Okay, sure, whatever you say. But yeah, that was my shit. And maybe I actually downloaded that so I could listen to it.
1:27:44 Speaker 04 Oh, wow.
1:27:44 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:27:45 Bill Simmons? Great Shot Gordo Award, tug running in front of the bridge as it blows up, or would you do something else?
1:27:50 Chris Ryan? I had the Great Shot Gordo slash the Sean Finacy Award for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm is the reenactment of the Willem Dafoe death in Platoon.
1:27:58 Speaker 04 Were you to do Platoon?
1:28:00 Bill Simmons? It's on the list.
1:28:01 Chris Ryan? Hmm.
1:28:03 Speaker 03 Fuck that movie.
1:28:04 Bill Simmons? Ches Rockwell, Brock Lander's Award for Best Character Name, it's gotta be Alpo Chino.
1:28:09 Speaker 02 Alpo Chino.
1:28:10 Speaker 03 Kirk Lazarus is good, too.
1:28:12 Chris Ryan? My silver medal is actually Hater's character is named Rob Slalom.
1:28:18 Chris Ryan? I don't know if they ever actually say it out loud.
1:28:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:28:22 Chris Ryan? But it's so weird to watch Hater because you keep waiting for him to completely break out in this movie and he's just like, kind of keeping it.
1:28:29 Speaker 02 Now, if you count Lincoln Osiris is the name.
1:28:32 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:28:32 Speaker 02 The name's good, too. That's a good one.
1:28:33 Bill Simmons? Link.
1:28:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:35 Bill Simmons? The Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness, Joel talked about the Needle Drop. There's a couple of really good ones in there, but it's, it's gotta go to Creedence.
1:28:43 Chris Ryan? Is also another big Vietnam movie, one, yeah.
1:28:45 Bill Simmons? What do you got for your flex here?
1:28:46 Chris Ryan? I have Billy Bat's Jack Wolts Award for the most biting and scalable insult for first, first of all, take a big step back and literally fuck your own face.
1:28:57 Bill Simmons? It's a great one. Butch's girlfriend word, weak link of the film?
1:29:01 Chris Ryan? This is a really, this is a good one here. I think this is interesting.
1:29:05 Bill Simmons? Mine is, we already discussed it. I thought the last third could have been seven, eight minutes tighter and we just could have gotten out of there.
1:29:12 Speaker 02 Even halfway through, I was like, man, this is kinda going on.
1:29:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:29:15 Speaker 02 You know?
1:29:16 Bill Simmons? I wanted more, like, there's a deleted scene before they send the five into the jungle again. Where they're at some party at the set and they're talking to Al Pacino. Baruchel meets him and they're, I just wanted like two more scenes with that. Like the guys hanging out before it got weird, and less at the back end would be my note.
1:29:40 Speaker 03 I have Jack Black.
1:29:41 Chris Ryan? Wow. You thought he just showed up and collected a check, huh?
1:29:45 Speaker 03 No, I think that the Jack Black stuff is funny at times. But I do think that beyond the scene of, there are two scenes that really work. Other than that, he's kinda just whacked out in the movie and pulling it away from the funniest parts, which is like Kirk and Tug and Al Pacino and some of the other stuff. I had Jack Black, and it's rare. Jack Black is normally a plus player in every movie he's in, but in this one, I had him as the weak link.
1:30:16 Chris Ryan? I have, Steve Coogan is much funnier in Reigns of Madness than he is in Tropic Thunder.
1:30:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:30:22 Chris Ryan? And I feel like they kinda hemmed him in a little bit.
1:30:26 Speaker 02 I have Ben Stiller, man. I was just, yeah.
1:30:29 Bill Simmons? Ben Stiller?
1:30:30 Chris Ryan? Wow!
1:30:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, man. I'm sorry, I just, again, I felt like, I was like, oh, I've seen this Ben Stiller before, over and over again. I didn't think he had that much work to do. I felt like he was, he got to be himself. And, you know, I mean, I didn't mean that he was bad, and I didn't think, I didn't think the acting performances were probably the, some of the best parts of the movie to me. And of that bunch, I thought, I would have said Jack Black, but I couldn't say Jack Black because you already said Jack Black. So I had Ben Stiller, like, right above that.
1:30:57 Speaker 04 I get what you're saying. I think, we were talking about this a little bit earlier. Like, Ben Stiller has really good taste, and usually the movies he's involved in are really good and funny. But he's not always, like, the single best part of the movie as just particularly an actor.
1:31:11 Speaker 03 But there's something that he can do that is very useful in a movie like this. Is he can be a funny straight man.
1:31:18 Chris Ryan? Yes, and he's making fun of himself.
1:31:19 Speaker 03 He's making fun of himself and his performances are nuanced enough to where he can be the straight man to a lot of other stuff that is crazy and happening at the same time in a movie.
1:31:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:31:32 Speaker 03 But he can also actually have you laugh at him.
1:31:35 Chris Ryan? I enjoy him more as a character actor. Like, I think him and Happy Gilmore or even Zoolander is funnier than when he's just doing like the meet the parents thing.
1:31:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:31:43 Bill Simmons? The Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot, which Craig already did. I have another one. This is Bill Hader. This is a story he had. Tom Cruise didn't know who I was and was trying to figure it out. I said Seth Rogen's a friend of mine. He said he went to your house. I did a Seth Rogen impersonation for two seconds, like, Tom Cruise is amazing. We rode motorcycles in his backyard. And it was like I did a magic trick. Tom Cruise started clapping and going crazy and he went, you do impressions and you're on Saturday Night Live. Meaning I was briefed that I know now who you are. I just would have loved to have been in the room for this.
1:32:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:32:21 Bill Simmons? But can you imagine Cruise doing the over exaggerated, you're so funny, you're the SNL guy. Oh, I get it.
1:32:27 Chris Ryan? Kind of like the politician who's just like, this is the Treasury Secretary and that's his daughter, not his wife.
1:32:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he's been on SNL for two years. What's age the worst? Well, we covered a lot of the what's age the worst already.
1:32:40 Bill Simmons? Including the the website for Simple Jack. All the other things that happened. Any other what's age the worst that we have?
1:32:47 Chris Ryan? Uh, I would probably say it's just a, I would say the action in this movie is each the worst.
1:32:53 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:32:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:32:54 Speaker 03 I would say that comedy is not the only thing that matters now anymore. Your movie is not just about whether or not it's funny. This is like really one of the last movies that was like, okay, it's gonna take all of these chances, these gigantic swings. And if it's funny, it's gonna work. Your shit can't just be funny now. It has to, there has to be more than that. You have to consider a lot of things before you put script to screen and then put it out. Or else people gonna not fuck with it, they're gonna summarize it before it even gets to the.
1:33:23 Speaker 04 Unless you're a stand-up.
1:33:25 Speaker 03 If you're a stand-up, it can still work, but even as a stand-up though, you have this almost sectioned off group of people who just came to see you. The movies, I think people react differently to them because they, I don't know why people still feel like that every movie is supposed to be for everyone. Uh, they don't feel like that way about stand-ups. It's almost like if you go to see Louis C.K. at this point, you know what you signed up for. But when a movie comes out, a lot of times people are offended because they feel like if it's in the theater, I'm supposed to be able to watch it.
1:33:54 Chris Ryan? Yeah, and I think also it's just like, I've, uh, you've been selling me this movie for such a long time and it either is or isn't what I expected it to be.
1:34:01 Speaker 04 For a movie to get made, like a hundred people have to sign off on it, Louis, it's kinda just him.
1:34:08 Speaker 02 Anywood stage the worst show? Yeah, but he would stage the worst for us, or did we cover?
1:34:13 Speaker 03 Oh, no, I was gonna say, I thought the comedy just fell flat, just totally. Like, again, I, it wasn't as funny as I remembered. I just, I thought, see, I.
1:34:20 Chris Ryan? A rare case of Joel Trumpathunder.
1:34:23 Speaker 04 I don't like this movie.
1:34:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:34:26 Chris Ryan? No, he did the work, though.
1:34:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, I did, I just, you know, again, I watched it, again, I think, I, I definitely remember thinking it was funnier in 2008.
1:34:34 Chris Ryan? Can we actually, cause this is Joel's first time on the podcast, can we get a, a barometer of what would be a funny movie to you?
1:34:39 Speaker 03 Exactly.
1:34:40 Chris Ryan? Oh.
1:34:41 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, my favorite movie is Coming to America Friday.
1:34:45 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:34:45 Speaker 02 Funny, you know, so.
1:34:46 Speaker 03 Oh, you know what else I love?
1:34:47 Speaker 02 I always talk about Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, cause nobody fucks, you know, I don't have any fuck with it, but.
1:34:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:34:52 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:34:53 Speaker 03 You ever see that one?
1:34:53 Speaker 02 You ever seen Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins?
1:34:56 Chris Ryan? Two thousands?
1:34:57 Speaker 03 Something like that, yeah, I think it's the early two thousands, he goes back to his family reunion.
1:35:01 Speaker 02 Um, and, yeah, it was in Shreveport, they filmed in Shreveport.
1:35:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, 2008?
1:35:05 Speaker 03 2008, see 2008?
1:35:08 Speaker 02 I like stuff.
1:35:09 Chris Ryan? I believe you do.
1:35:09 Speaker 02 I believe the laugh. I like the laugh.
1:35:11 Chris Ryan? But I didn't know if you were gonna be like, to me Rushmore is funny, you know?
1:35:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:15 Speaker 02 I mean, I like a lot of the, um, what's it called? Like the Best in Show.
1:35:18 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:35:19 Speaker 02 Like that kind of stuff.
1:35:19 Chris Ryan? Christopher Guest stuff, yeah.
1:35:20 Speaker 02 Christopher Guest movies. Y'all love that stuff, you know? That, this one just, and look, I like Anchorman, like Anchorman's funny. Step Brothers, I could, if you put Step Brothers on right now, I will not get it.
1:35:29 Bill Simmons? We got the idea.
1:35:31 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:35:31 Chris Ryan? You know, we.
1:35:32 Bill Simmons? I'm just fast forwarding, all the people are like, why'd you have the guy that was like Tropic Thunder on the rerun?
1:35:37 Chris Ryan? But you know, we had this conversation with, about, with something about Mary, about its legacy.
1:35:42 Bill Simmons? This is a complicated movie.
1:35:43 Chris Ryan? Beyond, it's legacy beyond just like whether it was funny or not, right? And you just mentioned two movies that I feel like have a way bigger, like sort of mind share of like the current movie going public. With Anchorman and Step Brothers are way bigger than Tropic Thunder. I also think they're better movies.
1:35:59 Bill Simmons? I think that, I think they have a much longer tail.
1:36:01 Chris Ryan? Okay. Don't you think so?
1:36:03 Speaker 03 But I'll also say there's one, there's a reason why, because those movies edit for television better.
1:36:09 Bill Simmons? There's another reason, like my kids didn't like Tropic Thunder, Travis Shockley.
1:36:12 Speaker 03 I get it, it's, it's an edgier, it's an edgier movie.
1:36:14 Chris Ryan? It's a satire of like nineteen.
1:36:16 Bill Simmons? They were just out, but they fucking love Anchorman and Step Brothers.
1:36:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, tho- those movies are more, I mean, there's some, you know, but those movies edit for television better, they're, those are more accessible films.
1:36:25 Speaker 02 Outside of Downey, did you think, I mean, I'm not, I don't, you know, people are gonna get mad at me, but that's fine. Did you think it, outside of Downey, did it seem like smart funny to you though? Like, did you like, you were just like, oh wow, that was some really complicated, you really thought?
1:36:37 Chris Ryan? I thought that the conceit of the first like hour of the movie and especially like the trailers, the, the Maria Menino section, Peck and Grossman. Like all that first bit run through the Hollywood stuff is pretty.
1:36:49 Speaker 03 She's funny. She, at the end, at the end of it, she goes, lo, lo, lo, something like that. She's funny, like, all of that stuff leading up to it, to me, is really, really high level satire going on.
1:37:03 Bill Simmons? Orchard over acting word.
1:37:04 Chris Ryan? Jack Black.
1:37:05 Bill Simmons? I had Jack Black.
1:37:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:37:05 Speaker 02 Jack Black, yeah.
1:37:06 Bill Simmons? Uh, Van's Choice for a flex.
1:37:08 Speaker 03 Okay, a list, five movies not getting greenlit in 2026.
1:37:13 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
1:37:13 Speaker 03 Uh, number five, our namesake movie, The Ringer. Have you ever seen this?
1:37:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that was problematic when it happened.
1:37:19 Chris Ryan? That's Johnny Knoxville, right?
1:37:20 Speaker 03 That's Johnny Knoxville.
1:37:21 Bill Simmons? We had a big debate about whether we named The Ringer The Ringer, wondering if The Ringer, the movie, would overshadow us with Google, and guess what, it didn't.
1:37:29 Speaker 03 It did not.
1:37:29 Chris Ryan? I almost cost you so much money by calling the website Chase the Night.
1:37:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:37:35 Chris Ryan? But it was like, we tried for two years, Chris, I gotta pull the plug.
1:37:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah, seriously.
1:37:39 Speaker 03 These are four, five movies we're not making. Number four, Tropic Thunder. I don't know if with all the stuff like that, the movie intact, the way it is, gets greenlit today. I don't know if they make it. Number three, Jawana Man.
1:37:49 Speaker 02 We, oh man.
1:37:51 Speaker 03 Not gonna happen. You're not in this day and age gonna have a movie where a guy goes and dominates the W I B A cuz he's a guy. We're having too many conversations, the W is coming too far. It's not gonna happen.
1:38:05 Speaker 02 That's right, yeah.
1:38:06 Speaker 03 Number two, I think is, could easily be number one, it's an easy one, The Birth of a Nation.
1:38:11 Chris Ryan? Like the, the new Birth of a Nation?
1:38:13 Speaker 03 Bro, I know.
1:38:14 Chris Ryan? The second one.
1:38:14 Speaker 03 The old.
1:38:15 Chris Ryan? The 1915 Birth of a Nation?
1:38:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, we're not doing that right now.
1:38:18 Chris Ryan? I think that would have been the case.
1:38:20 Speaker 03 Hey, you know what? They played it in the White House then. Alright, people were happy to go see it. Alright, so I would gotta say right now.
1:38:26 Chris Ryan? That's because they were like, I can't believe a train is moving, right?
1:38:29 Speaker 03 That is partly true, it's also cuz they was fucking with that shit.
1:38:32 Bill Simmons? Well, you're right.
1:38:33 Speaker 02 No, they kinda, I mean, they might, I mean, they might have that shit in the ball right now. I mean, that would, that would go over well.
1:38:38 Chris Ryan? There might be a four K or two sitting around in the White House now.
1:38:40 Speaker 03 Might. Number one, despite the fact that we have tried on this podcast to change the legacy of this movie, there's no way Soul Man happens in 2026. Soul Man is an impossible movie to make.
1:38:54 Chris Ryan? Lack of availability is probably a testament to that, yeah.
1:38:56 Speaker 03 So Soul Man is number one.
1:38:58 Bill Simmons? I think Soul Man would.
1:38:59 Speaker 03 As a riot.
1:39:02 Speaker 03 Who's gonna be writing?
1:39:03 Bill Simmons? Not just everybody.
1:39:03 Speaker 03 Do you think?
1:39:04 Bill Simmons? I think all people riot.
1:39:05 Speaker 02 Do you think it would? Do you? Cause actually, I mean, ultimately, the guy finds out that like racism is a real thing. Do you think that because of that, the people are like, what?
1:39:12 Speaker 03 We can't get to that point. I'm trying to say that we can't get to that point. At the end of Soul Man, Soul Man rounds out with him discovering just how terrible it is. But see Thomas, how the entire movie has, it's just not gonna happen.
1:39:29 Bill Simmons? I would like to throw in The Crying Game into this talk.
1:39:31 Speaker 03 Interesting.
1:39:33 Bill Simmons? Fucking lose their minds now. They would have intentionally spoiled the secret. I think that movie gets submarine in an island.
1:39:38 Speaker 03 It's actually a good one.
1:39:39 Speaker 02 That's a good one, yeah.
1:39:40 Bill Simmons? People have been really mad at that movie.
1:39:41 Chris Ryan? I'm trying to make like, just on twists alone. I mean, I know why you're saying crying game, but I wonder whether or not, if you tried to pitch Fight Club now, would they just be like, yeah, but we're not gonna be able to keep it a secret? Like, there's just too many people writing about movies. There's too many people who see movies too early. And they'll be like, make sure you stick around for the last 20 minutes of this, you know, like.
1:40:00 Speaker 03 Yo.
1:40:01 Bill Simmons? Really tough.
1:40:01 Speaker 03 What a pro fun. Have we lost? Would Fight Club not work today?
1:40:07 Bill Simmons? The ability to keep a secret, we've lost. Blair Witch is dead. No way. Doesn't work.
1:40:11 Speaker 03 Like Fight Club completely does not work in any way as a movie or as an experience. I remember when my homies was first putting me on Fight Club, cause I hadn't seen it in theaters. They were happy to like not spoil it.
1:40:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:40:24 Speaker 03 They would tell you everybody. I can't tell you what's going on and they just made you. I don't know if that would exist now. It would be all over. Kind of like what they did with the drama almost.
1:40:30 Bill Simmons? I love Fight Club.
1:40:31 Speaker 02 American History X?
1:40:32 Speaker 03 Ah, they could still make that one.
1:40:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:40:34 Speaker 03 I think that one could still get made.
1:40:36 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:40:37 Bill Simmons? The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. How to take a word? What do you have, CR?
1:40:41 Chris Ryan? This movie did to Platoon what Walk Hard did to music biographies.
1:40:45 Bill Simmons? Ooh.
1:40:45 Speaker 02 Ooh.
1:40:46 Chris Ryan? I tried watching Platoon this weekend and I need a little bit more distance from Tropic Thunder to like watch Keith David. Yeah, like, uh, you know, like we're going home, brother. You know, like it's just too close. And, uh, all the shots that they had, like, there's so many one for one shots from like Platoon in Tropic Thunder. So I think it kind of deflated the ball a little bit.
1:41:10 Speaker 03 My hottest take is this is legitimately the only time I have purely and sincerely, not even a half of percent at all been offended by black people.
1:41:25 Speaker 03 This looks bad. I'm like, I'm just like, I know that this looks bad. I just, I want to, I want to have been offended by that in this movie more. I want to be, I like, I'm, I, I interrogate myself. But as many times as I've watched it, as many times as I've seen it, I just have never even a little bit been offended by the usage of it in this. There's no blackface. If you do it, I'm gonna get on your motherfucking ass. Stop with the goddamn Halloween costumes. It's not a tribute to Beyonce. I'm, I can't, like, all of that stuff. But in this movie, for whatever reason, it's just never offended me.
1:42:03 Speaker 02 Oh, that's some real shit. I actually agree with him. That, it does not, he, it had to be as good as it was.
1:42:10 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:42:10 Speaker 02 For it to meet that bar. And I'm just going to say like, alright, I have to, I'm gonna give Lincoln Osiris a chance.
1:42:15 Chris Ryan? It's also like, if he had been doing, like, if he had been doing anything that was like contemporary, like if he tried to kick hip hop language in it or anything like that, it would have just blown up in his face.
1:42:27 Speaker 02 So when he did the saucy and set in tone thing, that's why they had Brandon's character go right back. Cause like, okay, you're leaning into the shit. You're doing a little too much right now.
1:42:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah, this is too, too many times in between takes.
1:42:39 Speaker 03 But that, but that was the joke, all the time, the joke was, what do you mean you people? Like, they continuously remind you over and over and over again that the absurdity of this is that people take roles like this. The absurdity is that this is not so far out of the realm of what has happened or what did happen. So, I don't know, I just got it.
1:43:00 Chris Ryan? What do you have?
1:43:01 Speaker 02 That was it. I mean, I actually, I'm not offended by the blackface at all. And again, I, again, I.
1:43:06 Chris Ryan? You don't have a hottest take?
1:43:07 Speaker 02 That performance.
1:43:09 Chris Ryan? That's not your hottest take?
1:43:10 Speaker 02 What's that?
1:43:11 Chris Ryan? Do you have a hottest take?
1:43:12 Speaker 02 That's the hottest take, yes.
1:43:12 Chris Ryan? Oh, you both had the, you separately came to the same hottest take.
1:43:15 Speaker 02 I was not offended by the blackface at all. Because I get, I, I think, and like, this is my first time in front of a watchable's audience, right? And I know there's a lot of people on Reddit or whatever, that's like, oh, that guy's jokes, dude, let's go. But anyway, but I can laugh at shit like that. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's funny. Oh, they're gonna love you. If you're gonna be racist, like, at least be funny with your shit. Dog and like I felt like like become correct. I mean, I'm not even gonna talk about some of the shit I like on Twitter sometimes. I'm just like, oh, man, you know, sometimes Nick Fuentes. Oh, no.
1:43:48 Speaker 02 Said some shit, I'm like, I don't, I don't fuck with you. I don't like you. We would never be cool. But I was like, that's kind of funny though, dog.
1:43:57 Speaker 04 Do you want me to try and get out of this?
1:44:01 Speaker 04 Let's do, let's do how would Van get out of this one right now? Do it like a top ten blackface?
1:44:06 Speaker 02 You don't think Nick Fuentes is funny? Get the fuck out of my face with that. You said it before. Shut up, dog.
1:44:13 Speaker 04 I never wished we were live on Netflix.
1:44:18 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna try to follow that one. My hottest take. I think you could switch four actors, the parts of this, and it's a better movie.
1:44:26 Speaker 04 Oh.
1:44:28 Bill Simmons? I think you could switch McConaughey and Stiller. And I think you could switch Jack Black and Bill Hader. And I think the movie's better.
1:44:34 Speaker 04 So Stiller, in that Tom Cruise.
1:44:36 Bill Simmons? So Stiller's the agent.
1:44:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, and the Tom Cruise oral history.
1:44:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he's still gonna play the agent. And I think McConaughey as the lead, I think would have been really fun. Cause I, my issue with this is it feels very Zoolander-y, the character. It feels like a Stiller character I've seen before, he's just like more jacked. Whereas McConaughey, I would have been interested. But I think Hader and the Jack Black part. When it was like, we hadn't really had Hader yet, we'd had Jack Black around for like 12 years at that point. I think Hader just would have added some improv stuff. I just think it would have been better.
1:45:09 Speaker 04 If you switch McConaughey out of Peck, though, you don't get Rum Tum Tug or Nuts.
1:45:15 Speaker 04 It's Pecker.
1:45:17 Bill Simmons? What do you think? Did I break your brain with that, Craig?
1:45:19 Speaker 04 McConaughey as Tug, I think, really works. Hater, the physicality that Jack Black brings, I do think, like, add some sparkle to the movie when it's, it's just them walking through the jungle for like an hour. Jack Black does kind of bring that Farley energy that I do think kind of you need.
1:45:37 Bill Simmons? Casting what ifs. Stiller wanted Keanu as Tug.
1:45:42 Bill Simmons? Didn't happen.
1:45:43 Speaker 02 Really?
1:45:43 Bill Simmons? He was gonna play Rick Peck and Keanu was gonna be Tug. Tug, Keanu's tug is, I don't know, I don't know if that one would have worked.
1:45:50 Chris Ryan? It's really, Keanu might be one of the hardest actors to like, assign roles to like this.
1:45:56 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:45:56 Chris Ryan? It's, it's like, it's, you talk about like, Robert Downey Jr. Spending fifteen years playing Iron Man, like, I feel like Keanu's been John Wick for like fifteen years.
1:46:06 Speaker 03 I think it was like twenty fourteen or thirteen or something, it's getting close.
1:46:09 Bill Simmons? He's in that Aziz movie, As an Angel or whatever, and I was.
1:46:12 Chris Ryan? And he's in the John Wick movie, yeah.
1:46:14 Speaker 03 Is he one of those guys that when casted perfectly, is perfect, Utah, Speed, John Wick.
1:46:20 Bill Simmons? Shane Falco.
1:46:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:46:22 Speaker 03 Shane Falco, Shane Falco works, and even in Parenthood, perfectly casted.
1:46:26 Bill Simmons? Hardball guy, smoking, gambling, Little League coach.
1:46:32 Bill Simmons? Kevin Hart turned down Al Pacino, did he want to play a gay character?
1:46:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right.
1:46:38 Bill Simmons? Some tough research on this one.
1:46:39 Speaker 02 He, he admitted though, I mean, he said, it's like my own insecurity along those lines, but still, it's just kinda, well.
1:46:44 Bill Simmons? And then, Mo Stef turned it down because he wanted, he wanted to change a character to an R and B musician, he didn't want to make fun of rap.
1:46:52 Speaker 02 Really?
1:46:54 Bill Simmons? So ended up, I mean, did you get the sense, Van talked to today?
1:46:57 Speaker 02 Well, did you get the sense that he was a rap star? Like, I don't know, I felt like that was the one thing that was kinda missing, like, I didn't get.
1:47:02 Chris Ryan? I felt like he was like more like Nick Cannon or something.
1:47:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, like.
1:47:05 Bill Simmons? It almost felt like he was a rap star five years ago, who had now become.
1:47:09 Speaker 03 Nick Cannon is a rap star.
1:47:11 Bill Simmons? This was sad, the, so Cruz vacated Rick Peck, Owen Wilson gets cast, and then Owen Wilson had,
1:47:18 Speaker 02 Oh, remember that?
1:47:19 Bill Simmons? Had that meltdown in oh seven, suicide attempt sadly, dropped out, Matthew McConaughey comes in, so McConaughey was the third choice. Which is kind of where he was in his career.
1:47:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:47:30 Bill Simmons? Best That Guy Award? I don't know.
1:47:33 Chris Ryan? I have, uh, Yvette Nicole Brown as Peck's assistant, goes on to become.
1:47:38 Speaker 03 I think Yvette Nicole, Yvette Nicole Brown is, Yvette Nicole Brown, no?
1:47:42 Chris Ryan? Now she is, I, it's like, I'm using a more of a like, oh, like the background player, and then it's like, she's like got one shot, where she's like, it's like hang up the phone.
1:47:51 Speaker 03 At that time, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, cuz like, she's, she's like a cultural mainstay.
1:47:55 Bill Simmons? You know what's funny is Danny McBride, when they made this movie, wasn't that guy.
1:47:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:47:58 Speaker 03 Kinda, yeah.
1:47:59 Bill Simmons? And then Eastbound made of Danny McBride.
1:48:01 Speaker 02 Saint Christopher Walken was kinda like, I was like, oh yeah, just love seeing him.
1:48:04 Speaker 03 Christopher Walken isn't that guy, interesting.
1:48:08 Bill Simmons? I did mine in my hottest take. Did you have any?
1:48:11 Chris Ryan? Not really.
1:48:12 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:48:14 Bill Simmons? Craig did his flex. We're moving to Half-Assed Internet Research.
1:48:17 Speaker 04 You do Dion?
1:48:18 Speaker 03 Dion, why you do Dion?
1:48:19 Bill Simmons? I didn't do Dion, Jesus. Well, it's Cruise.
1:48:21 Speaker 03 It's kind of Tom Cruise.
1:48:22 Bill Simmons? Tom Cruise, right?
1:48:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:48:24 Speaker 04 Are you? You test drive the bride?
1:48:26 Chris Ryan? No, I had something for possibly answerable questions, but I'll bring it up for Dion. Now, it's not necessarily that less is in this movie too much for Dion, which is like a sliding kind of barometer sometimes. What would happen if there was just one less Grossman scene? Is it? Does it become like one of the great one-scene cameos of all time?
1:48:44 Speaker 04 You don't love Grossman. There's a little bit of you.
1:48:45 Chris Ryan? No, I think Grossman is incredible on the fuck your own face one, and I'm like, you have to get a binding resolution. I think it's the mission returns, and it almost feels like midway through, they're like, man, this is incredible. We gotta do another Grossman scene.
1:49:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:49:02 Speaker 03 I think that it was probably Cruise's commitment to it. Like, oh, Tom's having a lot of fun. How much juice can we get out of him?
1:49:08 Chris Ryan? It should have been Alec Baldwin and Clint Gary. It should have just been like, I'm speechless after that one scene.
1:49:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:49:15 Chris Ryan? Maybe that should have been my hottest take.
1:49:16 Speaker 03 Fuck you.
1:49:17 Bill Simmons? That would have been a good one. I mean, you could say he just could have been the one scene and then the end, but then we don't get him negotiating with the...
1:49:23 Speaker 04 That scene's great. When he goes, lots of money.
1:49:26 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:49:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, see, I thought the third scene was like really good.
1:49:29 Speaker 03 The scene at the very end, like, that was probably a little bit too much, and then he's dancing through the credits, but how do you guys feel about the dance through the credits? It was kind of...
1:49:36 Speaker 04 See, like, as a 14-year-old, I love that shit.
1:49:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I like shit like that for end credits.
1:49:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:49:42 Bill Simmons? Half-Assed, they filmed in Hawaii and Kauai. It's the first movie in Kauai in five years.
1:49:48 Chris Ryan? This is the beginning of people being like, you know, it's cool living in Hawaii for a long time.
1:49:53 Bill Simmons? This is when Adam Sandler really figured it out. It's like, family friend vacation, Hawaii, tropical location, let's make a movie.
1:49:59 Speaker 02 He got married down there, too, still, so I bet that was just like...
1:50:02 Bill Simmons? Yep.
1:50:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:50:04 Speaker 03 Don Glover, big Kauai guy. Yeah.
1:50:07 Bill Simmons? We mentioned most of this stuff, except Stiller, Downey and Black appeared on the seventh season finale of American Idol. Uh, as the Pips performing with Gladys Knight.
1:50:16 Chris Ryan? And.
1:50:17 Bill Simmons? They just, before the movie came out, they promoted the shit out of this movie. They went everywhere. They popped on every show. They did American Idol shit. Vans got Rick Baker designed and created the Downey makeup.
1:50:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, Rick Baker. I wonder.
1:50:31 Bill Simmons? Further guy.
1:50:32 Speaker 03 Did he do the fatties as well?
1:50:33 Bill Simmons? He probably did everything, right?
1:50:35 Chris Ryan? I wonder if he did the hands.
1:50:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, probably did the hands, yeah.
1:50:37 Bill Simmons? Who is like the second best Rick Baker?
1:50:40 Speaker 03 Yeah. If it's not him, who is the, who, if you can't get Rick Baker, then you go with.
1:50:44 Bill Simmons? But then, who is the other guy who was almost as good as John Williams?
1:50:47 Speaker 03 Somebody, Hans Zimmer?
1:50:48 Bill Simmons? No.
1:50:48 Chris Ryan? No. Jerry Goldsmith.
1:50:50 Bill Simmons? Jerry Goldsmith.
1:50:51 Speaker 03 I mean, there's a couple guys in that, like, if you depended on, like, if, but if you can't get Rick Baker, who's the, who's the second Rick Baker?
1:50:56 Bill Simmons? I don't know. It feels like Rick Baker just annihilated everybody.
1:50:59 Chris Ryan? I think it's Stan Winston.
1:51:00 Speaker 03 Oh, Stan Winston?
1:51:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:51:01 Speaker 03 Damn. Stan Winston, yeah. Stan Winston's way up there.
1:51:05 Speaker 02 Um. That's way right there.
1:51:07 Bill Simmons? CR mentioned the, the mockumentary Reign of Madness.
1:51:12 Bill Simmons? Downey at one and a half to two hours of makeup. And then, uh, they wanted, did you see the thing about how they wanted Nolte's character to be revealed like Quentin Jaws and they decided it was
1:51:24 Chris Ryan? Really?
1:51:24 Bill Simmons? Too many homages. And then, um, Hater said he went in to audition for Tropic Thunder.
1:51:32 Speaker 03 Is Stan Winston black?
1:51:33 Speaker 02 He, he kinda got a Shel Silverstein going on.
1:51:36 Speaker 03 Situation happening. No, are we tripping about this?
1:51:39 Bill Simmons? Stan Winston?
1:51:40 Speaker 03 No, I don't think, it's like a.
1:51:41 Speaker 02 He kinda like, I don't, maybe he's just a little red here.
1:51:44 Speaker 03 No, but go back, go back to the last one. Like, are we missing out on Grady? Or we not, look at that.
1:51:48 Speaker 02 Kinda, yeah.
1:51:50 Speaker 03 I don't know.
1:51:51 Chris Ryan? I don't think so, because I think I would've known.
1:51:53 Speaker 02 It's funny because when you said Stan Winston, I was like, Stan Winston's a black ass name.
1:51:57 Speaker 03 He's a black name. Like, if you look at him right there, click, go some, go to like some more, eh, like.
1:52:01 Speaker 02 You want to get some more images?
1:52:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:52:03 Speaker 02 Okay, hold on, Doug.
1:52:04 Speaker 03 Oh, shit. I don't know, J, I don't know, bro.
1:52:07 Speaker 02 Look at that.
1:52:07 Speaker 03 I don't, I don't know, bro. I don't think he is.
1:52:10 Speaker 02 That's a black man, bro.
1:52:10 Speaker 03 I don't, I'ma claim him though.
1:52:12 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:52:13 Speaker 03 All right, cool. Stan Winston.
1:52:14 Speaker 02 Shel Silverstein, man.
1:52:15 Chris Ryan? I shouldn't have said anything.
1:52:16 Speaker 03 I'm looking at him. He's, I, I don't think that he is, but I don't know, dog.
1:52:19 Speaker 02 Look at, uh.
1:52:20 Speaker 03 It's, uh, nah, not in that picture. Okay, boy, yeah, nah, he's, nah, we, we lost him. We lost him. We had him, we lost him.
1:52:26 Bill Simmons? You had him for.
1:52:29 Speaker 02 Somebody who has the sun, maybe it depends on that. Some people with light skin, they shows up a little bit more.
1:52:34 Bill Simmons? Hater, the last one is Hater went to. Audition for Tropic Thunder and saw a possible cruise playing Wes Grossman. And then all of a sudden was like, this is the most important addition of my life. I've gotten nailed this and was really nervous. Apex Mountain.
1:52:53 Bill Simmons? Ben Stiller, no. Downey were in the ballpark.
1:52:58 Chris Ryan? Oh, Apex.
1:52:58 Bill Simmons? Because this is Iron Man same year. I think this is it, right?
1:53:01 Speaker 03 Unless you were to say it was the in-game time because he's the biggest star.
1:53:04 Speaker 02 I think so.
1:53:05 Speaker 03 This is.
1:53:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:06 Bill Simmons? Vietnam War parodies, would you go, what was the Charlie Sheen one?
1:53:10 Speaker 03 Hotshots.
1:53:11 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Hotshots.
1:53:12 Chris Ryan? No, I would say this.
1:53:13 Speaker 03 It's this, yeah.
1:53:14 Speaker 02 We're done with Vietnam now, right?
1:53:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:53:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, culturally.
1:53:16 Chris Ryan? I wonder if he'll ever come back like World War II. Like, World War II is such an unambiguous, like, it's us versus evil, but.
1:53:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:23 Speaker 03 That's the thing.
1:53:24 Chris Ryan? But people crave, like, war stories.
1:53:26 Speaker 02 They do.
1:53:27 Chris Ryan? They crave the Band of Brothers experience.
1:53:30 Bill Simmons? Cruise, no. Jack Black, no. Brandon T?
1:53:38 Speaker 02 Well, now you're.
1:53:39 Bill Simmons? How do you want to call him?
1:53:42 Bill Simmons? Should have asked him when you were on the phone with him earlier.
1:53:43 Speaker 03 I'll call him right now.
1:53:44 Speaker 02 Do it.
1:53:45 Speaker 03 I'll call him right now.
1:53:47 Bill Simmons? Blind call to Brandon? It's kind of an awkward call.
1:53:49 Speaker 02 If you're gonna call anybody, call Sasha Grey.
1:53:50 Bill Simmons? Was Tropic Thunder your apex?
1:53:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, it kind of is, but he's in a lot of big movies.
1:53:54 Chris Ryan? Blind call, Sasha Grey.
1:53:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, if you're gonna call anybody, like.
1:53:58 Bill Simmons? Tropic Thunder premiere together?
1:53:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:54:01 Bill Simmons? Jay Barishow?
1:54:04 Speaker 03 What was his big breakout joint?
1:54:08 Speaker 03 Was it, what was, what was the name of the movie?
1:54:10 Chris Ryan? He's the lead of Undeclared, right?
1:54:13 Bill Simmons? I think this was the biggest thing he's been in. I mean, he's good in This Is The End, too.
1:54:17 Speaker 03 He's good in This Is The End. I'm trying to look, Million Dollar Baby, him as Danger, I remember.
1:54:22 Chris Ryan? Oh, no, his fucking shit is How To Train Your Dragon.
1:54:25 Speaker 03 How To Train Your Dragon.
1:54:26 Chris Ryan? That dude's caking.
1:54:27 Speaker 03 He's the man, so he's, he's the lead in How To Train Your Dragon, is he not?
1:54:30 Chris Ryan? I mean, yeah.
1:54:31 Bill Simmons? He's solid decade. I was surprised he wanted to move back to Canada and This Is The End.
1:54:36 Chris Ryan? Apparently, that was based on real life, right? That whole relationship between all of them?
1:54:41 Bill Simmons? McConaughey, no. Hater, no. Politically incorrect, but got away with it somehow comedies, probably still blazing south. Yeah, that was like the biggest comedy.
1:54:53 Speaker 03 But yeah.
1:54:54 Chris Ryan? I mean forty eight hours.
1:54:57 Speaker 03 But so but you know, like, think about it. All of these movies in every single one, like, Ranger Nerds, Animal House, all of them, they're all insanely politically incorrect. Yeah, I didn't have them on the list because the premises aren't, you know, but like, I don't know, I guess so.
1:55:15 Bill Simmons? Cruise or Hanks? A rare Cruise, by the way, is eighteen three watchable, just extending his lead. He's four above the next guy.
1:55:22 Chris Ryan? How many Cruise movies have we not done?
1:55:25 Bill Simmons? There's a few.
1:55:25 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:55:26 Bill Simmons? We might be able to get to twenty five.
1:55:27 Speaker 03 What are the ones?
1:55:28 Bill Simmons? The last, we never did all the right moves.
1:55:31 Chris Ryan? I'm actually a big Valkyrie guy.
1:55:33 Speaker 03 I love it. I don't understand. I never understood the hate. Maybe I I think people would just, there are a couple of movies in there that people just didn't like him anymore.
1:55:40 Bill Simmons? Like.
1:55:40 Speaker 03 Yeah. Valkyrie is one of them. Obviously, Edge of Tomorrow is one of them. I think there are some movies that would have flown when he was on top. Like, I think Oblivion would have flown. I think there's a couple of movies in there that people were just like.
1:55:52 Bill Simmons? Vanilla Sky, what did you think of Vanilla Sky?
1:55:54 Speaker 03 I mean, it's a good movie.
1:55:55 Bill Simmons? But I think Reacher is the number one for me with this.
1:55:57 Speaker 03 The people were just like, we're just done with them. If the movie was cool.
1:56:00 Bill Simmons? That movie's good.
1:56:01 Speaker 03 We're just not fucking with Tom Cruise. Yeah.
1:56:03 Chris Ryan? It was also like.
1:56:04 Bill Simmons? And they didn't like that he was playing.
1:56:05 Chris Ryan? The whole idea was he was supposed to be six foot five.
1:56:06 Bill Simmons? They didn't like that either. Scorsese or Spielberg?
1:56:09 Chris Ryan? Spielberg.
1:56:11 Bill Simmons? Spielberg?
1:56:11 Chris Ryan? I think so.
1:56:13 Bill Simmons? I would say Scorsese.
1:56:14 Speaker 03 I want to hear what you guys said. I really could not think of.
1:56:17 Chris Ryan? I I just, I guess there's.
1:56:19 Bill Simmons? Heroin in the last thirty minutes?
1:56:21 Chris Ryan? I think it would be a darker movie.
1:56:22 Speaker 03 What's the funniest Scorsese's ever been?
1:56:25 Bill Simmons? Oh, and Wolf of Wall Street.
1:56:26 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Wolf.
1:56:27 Speaker 03 Okay, that's good.
1:56:27 Chris Ryan? Wolf, yeah.
1:56:28 Speaker 03 That's very funny.
1:56:28 Bill Simmons? Goodfellas.
1:56:30 Speaker 03 Hey, look, I found a wing. You want the, you want the breast of the wing?
1:56:36 Chris Ryan? It's his hoof.
1:56:37 Bill Simmons? Pick a Net. So Steve Coogan, the director, his plan was to, he filmed. The whole bunch of stuff and then got rid of everything he filmed.
1:56:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah, this is the biggest nitpick is that he's.
1:56:49 Bill Simmons? He's gonna put cameras in the jungle.
1:56:50 Chris Ryan? But he's got, those are like high eight, like camcorders.
1:56:54 Bill Simmons? And he's, and we're just, this is what we're gonna do with five time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus.
1:56:58 Chris Ryan? Days later.
1:56:58 Bill Simmons? What was this? What was his plan?
1:57:00 Speaker 02 Well, also, can I just, I'm confused because for Leaf at the beginning, I say, so there were 10 people in this unit. Four people wrote books, three get them published, two get, and two get movies out of that, right?
1:57:11 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:57:11 Speaker 02 Didn't nobody know he was a fraud before then?
1:57:14 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:57:14 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, it didn't say there's people that died. So nobody was like, hey, man, you weren't there. What the fuck you talking about?
1:57:21 Bill Simmons? Figured that would happen.
1:57:22 Chris Ryan? It probably would have happened, but there was a little bit of a, it's like, I think people got away with a lot back then.
1:57:28 Bill Simmons? I had, I don't know why Tug kills a panda. I don't understand that scene at all.
1:57:33 Speaker 02 That was weird.
1:57:34 Chris Ryan? Oh, cause I think he's just scared that he's getting attacked by like a wild.
1:57:36 Bill Simmons? Why is there a panda in Vietnam?
1:57:37 Speaker 02 Pandas, right? And that's like the thing he loved, you know, he took the.
1:57:40 Chris Ryan? A panda? That's probably not even a real name.
1:57:44 Speaker 02 Well, I know the pandas aren't in Vietnam, but also like, are they violent?
1:57:48 Chris Ryan? I don't know.
1:57:49 Bill Simmons? I don't know. I didn't understand anything about that. Why didn't the first gorillas just kill Tug? Why'd they capture him? Wouldn't you just shoot him?
1:57:57 Chris Ryan? To ransom him.
1:57:59 Bill Simmons? They didn't know that he, that he was ransomable.
1:58:01 Speaker 02 They, they assumed he was DEA, right?
1:58:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:58:04 Chris Ryan? Probably wants to see what he knew.
1:58:06 Bill Simmons? And then nobody, none of these guys die. They get shot at for two hours.
1:58:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, nobody died.
1:58:11 Chris Ryan? They're all shooting blanks.
1:58:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:58:12 Speaker 02 The only people that died were Bat, that panda, and, uh, you know.
1:58:17 Chris Ryan? That hat.
1:58:18 Speaker 02 This entire movie is a nit, like the plot is just like, the whole movie is a nit. By the time they're walking through the jungle, like they're fake shooting a movie, it doesn't make any fucking sense.
1:58:28 Bill Simmons? Downey, Downey's keeping that makeup on just for five straight weeks in the jungle, nothing's melting.
1:58:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, surgery.
1:58:34 Bill Simmons? But he has, he has the. The other stuff that he pulls off.
1:58:36 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
1:58:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, all that stuff.
1:58:38 Speaker 02 Can you explain like, cause I, are his eyes blue like that naturally?
1:58:43 Chris Ryan? No, his Australian, when he's in Satan's Alley, those eyes are fake. Those are contacts and then his eyes are dark usually. Yeah.
1:58:52 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:58:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah. I had, the only nitpick I have is like, just Kirk Wazir is having more Oscars than Hepburn and Daniel Day-Lewis.
1:58:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I would have, three would have probably done the job. Maybe that was the joke. You have any nitpicks?
1:59:02 Chris Ryan? Nah.
1:59:03 Bill Simmons? Craig, you have any nitpicks?
1:59:05 Speaker 04 Don't you think, uh, Four Leaf should have died? I thought they were leading up to him sacrificing himself to be like, I'll, I'll, I'll die on, on the battlefield now. And they just keep him alive, which kind of just made no sense.
1:59:14 Chris Ryan? Which is probably why like the third act feels a little bit like.
1:59:18 Speaker 04 Like, I just do not understand why he is.
1:59:19 Chris Ryan? Cause there's just no, yeah, there's no consequences to it.
1:59:23 Bill Simmons? I think, I think they're probably rushing through the last half hour of this. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast or untouchable?
1:59:33 Bill Simmons? Prestige TV's, prestige TV's mildly interesting to me. But it's probably untouchable because I don't know if we can touch it. It's untouchable the same way plutonium is untouchable.
1:59:47 Bill Simmons? I don't know.
1:59:48 Speaker 02 I mean, I guess that's why, that's where Scorch Your Seven comes in for me. It's just like, he's moving on.
1:59:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:59:53 Speaker 02 You know, this is the next project. He's won his Oscar.
1:59:57 Bill Simmons? So what do we do with Scorch Your Seven after global meltdown? Maybe it's like, uh, like a.
2:00:04 Speaker 03 I would do Scorch Your Seven, they go to another planet.
2:00:07 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah. Scorch Your Seven, like interstellar.
2:00:09 Bill Simmons? I think that was Scorch Your Three, though.
2:00:11 Speaker 03 Is that, okay. They go to another planet.
2:00:17 Bill Simmons? Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist, Zane Lowe, Robert Evans, Dr. Charles Nichols, or someone else?
2:00:23 Chris Ryan? Uh, I like the ideas if, uh, Passa Wait played, uh, Grossman. You're gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I'm talking scorched earth, motherfucker. I will massacre you. I will fuck you up.
2:00:43 Chris Ryan? The chemical way.
2:00:45 Speaker 04 And then he hangs up and goes, find out who that was.
2:00:49 Bill Simmons? I had, um, I think Nell should have been in this. There was some simple Jack for a round.
2:00:54 Chris Ryan? Nell and.
2:00:55 Bill Simmons? Where it could have been like Nell two. When they're talking about possible Academy Awards and we could have got.
2:01:02 Chris Ryan? Maybe it could have been a rom-com like they're.
2:01:05 Bill Simmons? You got a movie, Joe?
2:01:07 Chris Ryan? Now?
2:01:08 Bill Simmons? Just Jodie Foster.
2:01:08 Speaker 03 With Jodie Foster going nuts?
2:01:09 Bill Simmons? Jodie Foster in the, in the woods?
2:01:11 Chris Ryan? Jodie Foster plays a woman who was like raised in the wild.
2:01:14 Speaker 03 Bruh. Nell made, Nell made a hundred and six million dollars?
2:01:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah, we used to really cook.
2:01:20 Chris Ryan? We're gonna have to do it on the, on the pod.
2:01:22 Speaker 03 What the fu- are you fucking kidding me?
2:01:24 Chris Ryan? That and regarding Henry, the drama is a now or comedy.
2:01:27 Speaker 03 That can't be right.
2:01:27 Bill Simmons? Nell is another one that paved the way for Simple Jack, by the way.
2:01:30 Speaker 03 Damn.
2:01:31 Bill Simmons? That was just be in the forest and be crazy.
2:01:33 Speaker 03 Hold on, Nell made thirty to six, thirty-three million domestic. For some reason, the world was fucking with Nell like crazy.
2:01:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah, people, and it's huge in far east Asia.
2:01:42 Chris Ryan? And France loves Jodie Foster.
2:01:44 Speaker 02 So, when I was in the newspaper, the, the person did a, a story on this woman who was raised by wolves. Like, she was like, and it became a big story. Did they do a movie on that? They never, did they ever do a mov- that sounds like something that should have been on a movie.
2:01:57 Chris Ryan? I mean, Nell is just like, they find her in like the caves, yeah, right?
2:02:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah, she was raised by somebody.
2:02:02 Chris Ryan? I haven't, I haven't fired Nell up in a while.
2:02:05 Bill Simmons? Probably an answerable questions.
2:02:09 Bill Simmons? Why do you think Cruise didn't do more Dionne Waiters type three-day roles? I always wonder about this with some of the most famous, like, would it have killed Leo to have done this like twice? You know, like Denzel? All the biggest stars we have, it's just a huge win if they pick the right movie and they just fly into it.
2:02:25 Chris Ryan? But if they pick the wrong movie.
2:02:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, but isn't it just-
2:02:27 Bill Simmons? Is that what it is? It's just a fear of-
2:02:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:02:29 Speaker 02 But I mean, also, I mean, these are people that really do take their craft very seriously, too. Like, it's just not fucking around, so. Maybe that, it could, it could, I wonder if it's just a simple as that.
2:02:37 Chris Ryan? They were asking DiCaprio to be in Cliff Booth and he was like, no. Not, not for like a day.
2:02:42 Speaker 02 You think Michael Jordan's just playing in a pro-am?
2:02:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, so he, he, he sued, yeah. But I, I just think you have to be at the right point in your career and like, these guys are chasing each other in terms of prestige and a miscalculation kinda looks bad. I, I always like to see it.
2:02:59 Bill Simmons? So like, Chalamet right now? Just popping in a movie for two days that ends up being hit.
2:03:05 Speaker 03 Like Brad Pitt will do it.
2:03:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:03:07 Speaker 03 Matt Damon will do it.
2:03:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:03:08 Bill Simmons? Matt Damon loved.
2:03:09 Speaker 03 Matt Damon loves to do it.
2:03:12 Bill Simmons? He's in Euro Trip for reasons that remain unclear with a shaved head.
2:03:15 Speaker 03 But here's the deal though, like, and he shows up in some of the Marvel stuff is funny, but when you're in, when you're watching Euro Trip and he's up there, to me, he looks so cool.
2:03:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:03:25 Speaker 03 Just like popping into that movie.
2:03:27 Chris Ryan? But there's a difference between like what he does in that and what he does in Interstellar. You know what I mean? Like there's like a supporting role and then there's like a 10 minute like cameo.
2:03:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, the Interstellar thing is actually like a really super important part of a very serious movie, so.
2:03:40 Bill Simmons? What do you got for an answer, Bo?
2:03:42 Speaker 02 Oh, for me? Oh, uh, I would just like to know why Brandon Jackson was the guy. I'm sorry, no offense to your guy.
2:03:50 Chris Ryan? Like what happened, what happened to his career after this?
2:03:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm just like, what, I mean, why didn't, I mean, we were just talking about all these guys have gone on, they had like another thing and like, what? Again, I think that is, that is the problem of the black actor in Hollywood, not your boy. That's what I'm saying. It's like, you know, you, because oftentimes these roles, even if you get nominated for something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna go on, you know? So like Lupita, you know what I'm saying? Like what it didn't, it does not make her a huge star.
2:04:15 Speaker 03 Lupita is having a fucking fantastic career. Are you nuts?
2:04:19 Speaker 02 Do you think, do you think of her as like a, a top bill star?
2:04:23 Speaker 03 Lupita is having a great career.
2:04:26 Speaker 02 Okay, no, I'm not saying she's not having a great career. You can have a great career and not be like a top billing top actress, right?
2:04:32 Speaker 03 Right, yeah.
2:04:33 Speaker 02 That's what I'm saying.
2:04:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:04:34 Speaker 02 It's gonna be like the roles are just not gonna come to her like they do some other people and I'm sure she would say that if you asked her.
2:04:39 Speaker 03 Okay, I mean, look, I don't know. I'm like, like, all I'm saying is.
2:04:41 Speaker 02 Well, you probably do know her, Carla. That's your homegirl, Carla.
2:04:45 Chris Ryan? My unanswerable would be, what, if you were making Tropic Thunder today, what would you be lampooning? Like, and I guess it would be comic book movies.
2:04:52 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
2:04:53 Chris Ryan? It's not really an answerable.
2:04:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah, like MCU type of.
2:04:56 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:04:57 Bill Simmons? Something.
2:04:58 Speaker 03 If I was doing it, I would lampoon the high auteur movie. The MCU is gonna go further, but I think now the film that's directly, that's like.
2:05:10 Chris Ryan? Like an 824 movie?
2:05:11 Speaker 03 Like, yeah, kind of the 824 film bro type of movie that like everybody has to love.
2:05:18 Bill Simmons? I mean, I'd say the funniest thing would be to do with like a, the Smartless Guys. Like a movie about, like, yeah, some sort of big gigantic podcast.
2:05:29 Chris Ryan? I don't know, that would be cinematic, yeah.
2:05:31 Bill Simmons? Where you just dive into that whole world with the celebrities that come in, but you're really making fun of a couple of different things of that world. People trying, the people trying to make the guests cry and the dates, all that stuff.
2:05:43 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:05:44 Bill Simmons? Although Charlize talking about how she didn't want to be married and just had sex with the 26 year old and it was great. I thought that was some of the best podcast content of the year.
2:05:52 Chris Ryan? Didn't you, didn't you have Charlize on your show?
2:05:55 Bill Simmons? I sure did. We never talked about her having sex with the younger man. That never came up.
2:05:59 Chris Ryan? It was in a different phase of her life.
2:06:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:06:01 Chris Ryan? A different.
2:06:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah, she came in the office, it was, it, it, most flustered I've ever been.
2:06:06 Chris Ryan? You batted baby wings at her?
2:06:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah. She's just, nah, she just sat down, put her arm in, she was just ready to roll. She was so cool.
2:06:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:06:13 Bill Simmons? She plays big backgammon person. That's a good thing.
2:06:15 Speaker 03 I don't know how to play backgammon. I saw that about her.
2:06:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah, you would learn for Charlize, I bet.
2:06:19 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, probably. Two Days in the Valley?
2:06:21 Bill Simmons? Uh, piece of memorabilia you'd want from this movie?
2:06:26 Bill Simmons? The giant Simple Jack cardboard thing that McConaughey had?
2:06:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:06:30 Bill Simmons? You know what I'm talking about?
2:06:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:06:32 Bill Simmons? Was in the back and it had, it had like, it seemed like Simple Jack was moving back and forth on it.
2:06:37 Chris Ryan? It was like a picture book.
2:06:39 Bill Simmons? It was amazing.
2:06:40 Chris Ryan? If you replaced Farrah Fawcett in your house with Simple Jack.
2:06:43 Bill Simmons? I was thinking about that. Then I was like, oh, yeah, I can have that. But I thought it was hilarious.
2:06:47 Chris Ryan? I think any number of the Bluetooth headsets or Blackberries or like old 2008 phones.
2:06:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah, the answer is the Qualcomm phone or, or the TiVo that McConaughey has, the box.
2:06:59 Speaker 03 I would love to have a can of booty sweat on my office desk.
2:07:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's a great one. Yeah, the original movie worn booty.
2:07:04 Speaker 03 Busting up bar.
2:07:08 Bill Simmons? Uh, Coach Finstock, Mr. Biagie wear for best worst life lesson? Porn sets the, sets the tone for everybody else.
2:07:15 Chris Ryan? Porn leads the way.
2:07:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, for sure.
2:07:18 Bill Simmons? Best double feature choice, CR?
2:07:19 Chris Ryan? I had Zoolander just as like a, a, another satire by Ben Stiller. I had Hot Shots.
2:07:25 Bill Simmons? Really?
2:07:26 Speaker 02 Dead Presidents.
2:07:28 Chris Ryan? Oh, good one.
2:07:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:07:29 Chris Ryan? That's a good one.
2:07:30 Bill Simmons? I had The Player. What do you have, Craig?
2:07:33 Chris Ryan? Double feature?
2:07:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:07:34 Chris Ryan? Hmm, I, I'd probably stick right in 08. Go Step Brothers right after.
2:07:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's good.
2:07:38 Speaker 02 Okay.
2:07:39 Bill Simmons? Who won the movie?
2:07:40 Chris Ryan? Downey.
2:07:41 Speaker 03 Downey, man.
2:07:41 Chris Ryan? Downey to me.
2:07:42 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:07:42 Chris Ryan? Downey.
2:07:43 Bill Simmons? Craig?
2:07:44 Chris Ryan? Go.
2:07:46 Speaker 04 I was fourteen when this came out, two thousand eight, just like, I can't, I, the summer of two thousand and eight. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Smart, Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, and Role Models.
2:07:57 Speaker 03 Crazy.
2:07:58 Bill Simmons? Wow.
2:07:59 Speaker 04 Like, in the year before that had five other hits, and the year after that had five more hits.
2:08:03 Chris Ryan? You're fourteen, you're rolling right now.
2:08:05 Speaker 03 You're going nuts, yeah, yeah.
2:08:06 Speaker 04 This was like, everything in the world, like, this was just like the funniest shit ever, I mean, all of these movies, but, I, I couldn't believe how many quotes from this movie I remembered. I haven't seen it probably ten years, and I could probably have done the whole movie from memory. Um, I don't know, it, it's just fantastic across the board.
2:08:23 Speaker 03 What's the comedy summer of, of you guys' youth?
2:08:26 Chris Ryan? It's probably like closer to like eighty-four or eighty-six or something like that.
2:08:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, mine's the eighty to eighty-two with like, you know, Caddyshack, Blues Brothers, Airplane.
2:08:37 Chris Ryan? Cause sadly, when I'm Craig's age, it's just when like comedy is having like a little bit of like a drunken hangover, like, I'm more, like, my, my fourteen-year-old summer is probably more like another forty-eight hours, and that's like, that's not as good, it's Beverly Hills Cop sequels, you know?
2:08:51 Bill Simmons? Uh huh.
2:08:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:08:52 Speaker 02 I'm probably like, two, two thousand, so like, I was a big Feral fan, so like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers. Like, that was, that was my shit, you know, I'll sit down and watch Talladega Nights.
2:09:04 Speaker 04 It, it really is just so different, like, what, what I expected at that age in a comedy, I mean, it was just the biggest stars in the world all together on a big set just fucking around.
2:09:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:09:13 Speaker 04 I mean, that is so foreign to what you see today.
2:09:15 Speaker 02 I mean, they, I mean, they were very much fucking around, like I said, at the end of the movie, I mean, it was just like, man, it's got tired.
2:09:19 Chris Ryan? Like, yeah, just the idea of giving these guys ninety million dollars to do this is nuts.
2:09:23 Speaker 04 Also, you kind of got to give it to Tom Cruise a little bit, like, the performance itself is very funny, but the fact that he came up with the character, wanted the, like, came up with the look of the character, apparently it was his idea to play Flo Rida, it's kind of like. Tom Cruise?
2:09:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:09:37 Speaker 04 Okay.
2:09:38 Bill Simmons? Plus having problems with Katie Holmes at that point?
2:09:40 Speaker 02 Well, I'm gonna say, he also hung out with Jamie Foxx around that time, too. You know what I'm saying?
2:09:43 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's right.
2:09:44 Speaker 02 They were all like part of, you know? Then Jamie moved in there.
2:09:48 Bill Simmons? Dan's like, I have no comment at this time.
2:09:51 Speaker 03 I'm fucking with it.
2:09:52 Speaker 04 So what's the play now? Can I say I love Tropic Thunder or no?
2:09:55 Chris Ryan? Of course you can.
2:09:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:09:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, like if I'm like, man, Downey Jr. and Tropic Thunder, hilarious, is that fine?
2:10:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I can't give permission. You on your own.
2:10:03 Speaker 02 You might have to ask a few more follow-ups. You know what I'm saying?
2:10:07 Speaker 04 You think so?
2:10:07 Speaker 02 People are probably like, well, you could get away from it the good way with it.
2:10:10 Speaker 03 The question is, could Bill? If Bill is somewhere in Southie, in Charleston, and he's talking to people and they ask Bill what's his favorite movie? He's like, I love Downey and Tropic Thunder. I think probably at that point.
2:10:23 Chris Ryan? You gotta be able to name a wonderful movie featuring a great performance by a black person. You can't just be like, my favorite performance by a black guy is Robert Downey Jr.
2:10:32 Bill Simmons? When Van does Boston, he becomes Australian. He becomes Kirk Blazer.
2:10:36 Speaker 03 You know, my favorite performance by a black guy is, my favorite performance by a black guy is Jay McDaniels in the first round against.
2:10:44 Bill Simmons? Oh, ended the Joker?
2:10:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's my favorite performance.
2:10:47 Speaker 02 That was bad, so bad, motherfucker, man.
2:10:48 Bill Simmons? Van loves it.
2:10:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:10:50 Bill Simmons? Van loves when the Joker goes down.
2:10:52 Speaker 02 Oh, wait, is this a race thing? Are you, are you anti Joker?
2:10:55 Bill Simmons? Do you realize what happened last weekend? Van Joker got eliminated, the Celtics got eliminated, and Great White freaked out at the Kentucky Derby. It was like a huge Van weekend.
2:11:03 Chris Ryan? Van sees Joker as an extension of the one battle after another argument.
2:11:08 Speaker 03 That's not true. See, see, this is, see, this is how, you guys are turning into people, that's not true. All I'm saying is I understand he's a badass motherfucker. And by the way, the success just beat me down. I'm, I just heard that he was the greatest of all time, and I was like, can't we pump the brakes on that? That's all I said.
2:11:26 Speaker 02 So do you think, do you think like he got punked, by the way, too? Like when he ran up on Jaden and Jaden was like.
2:11:31 Chris Ryan? He got punked.
2:11:32 Bill Simmons? That situation.
2:11:33 Speaker 02 He didn't want to get thrown out of the game.
2:11:34 Chris Ryan? He needed a.
2:11:35 Speaker 02 Nah, they don't want to, they don't want to run over there like he gonna do something.
2:11:38 Speaker 03 Don't want to run over there.
2:11:38 Bill Simmons? Because as he was running over there intending to kill Jay McDaniels, he realized, I can't get thrown out for the series.
2:11:44 Chris Ryan? And he was probably also like, oh, I just realized my brothers aren't at this game.
2:11:50 Speaker 03 He ran too far.
2:11:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:11:52 Speaker 03 And while you running, you thinking if it would've been shorter. And then when he got there, Jaden did not.
2:11:57 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:11:57 Speaker 03 Jaden was like, oh, dog, we about to fight. Yeah. Like, if you come over and Yoko's just like, nah.
2:12:04 Bill Simmons? If it beat it run over, he just would've run into him and then fallen down. The fur call. Still bitter.
2:12:10 Speaker 03 You letting him get that off?
2:12:11 Chris Ryan? Get your shot, get your shot.
2:12:12 Speaker 03 Like, you letting him get that off, you beat him. You beat him.
2:12:15 Chris Ryan? I'll do a Twitch stream later where I address it.
2:12:20 Speaker 03 Play by play. Look at this, they let everybody else push off, what about me? I can't push off? It's my favorite year ever where I played by myself and Jason Tatum wasn't there.
2:12:28 Speaker 02 I hate my Rockets so much that I don't even care that your Lakers won.
2:12:33 Bill Simmons? That's it for the rewatchables.
2:12:35 Chris Ryan? Thank you for doing this.
2:12:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, thanks for having me on.
2:12:37 Bill Simmons? Thanks to Gahan Eduardo in the back as well. Thanks to Joel, great to see you, buddy. That was awesome.
2:12:42 Speaker 02 I'm glad, thanks for having me on, man.
2:12:44 Bill Simmons? You can hear Joel on the press box and watch him and on a Ringer tailgate. The best Ringer podcast that we have.
2:12:50 Speaker 03 Wow.
2:12:51 Bill Simmons? At least in the top forty.
2:12:53 Speaker 02 It's probably, yeah, we're in the bottom quarter, I think, at least.
2:12:56 Bill Simmons? Good college football season ahead. Lot of good arguments coming. UCLA football's return, Arch Manning.
2:13:02 Speaker 02 Is it important for me to, is it, should I, I shouldn't bring up UCLA right now, should I?
2:13:07 Bill Simmons? We'll do it later.
2:13:08 Speaker 02 All right.
2:13:09 Bill Simmons? Good to see you, Sierra.
2:13:09 Chris Ryan? Good to see you too, bud.
2:13:10 Bill Simmons? Uh, next week, by the way, not sure what we're doing yet, but it will be a comedy. So there you go, see you next week.
2:13:27 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Fall is here and Whole Foods Market has everything you need for cozy meals, seasonal treats, and easy entertaining. Elevate your hearty dishes with tasty bone-in beef short ribs or New York strip steaks with no added growth hormones or antibiotics. And as the fall evenings draw in, why not get ahead of cold season with immunity shots, herbal teas, lozenges, and supplements? Make sure you look for sales throughout the month. Shop fall flavors with higher standards at Whole Foods Market.
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