Pod Insights The Rewatchables ‘Working Girl’ With Bill Simmons, Amanda Dobbins, and Joanna Robinson About this episode The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Amanda Dobbins, and Joanna Robinson hop on the Staten Island Ferry and pop on their tennis shoes to revisit Mike Nichols’s 1988 classic, ‘Working Girl,’ starring Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver.
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Transcript 27,569 words · 9 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:00 Bill Simmons? The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. You can find Amanda Dobbins on The Big Picture. Dramatic return to you for the Rewatchables.
1:08 Speaker 02 I'm incredibly excited.
1:10 Bill Simmons? I was, you know, you have two kids now and you're busy and I was trying to ease you back, but now we get you back for stuff.
1:17 Speaker 02 You've been very respectful.
1:17 Bill Simmons? You've been on in like a year and a half.
1:19 Speaker 02 I know, but I'm back and I have to tell you in terms of returning to the real world.
1:23 Bill Simmons? This is like a real I'm back.
1:24 Speaker 02 World of adults, thank you so much for this opportunity.
1:27 Bill Simmons? Joanna Robinson is here as well.
1:28 Speaker 03 Hello.
1:29 Bill Simmons? You don't live here, but every time you're here, I try to grab you for Rewatchables now.
1:32 Speaker 03 And it's like a great track record of movies that you've had me cover.
1:36 Bill Simmons? So, Working Girl.
1:39 Speaker 02 I can't believe it.
1:41 Bill Simmons? Mentioned it a couple of weeks ago to you and Mallory.
1:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:44 Bill Simmons? When we were doing a Rewatchables and I was like, we should do Working Girl. And Mallory, who you've known now for how long?
1:50 Speaker 02 10 years.
1:51 Bill Simmons? Said, I cannot do that. I cannot take that from Amanda. Give my spot to Amanda. And I was like, you're right. Amanda has always said Working Girl is the number one movie I would ever want to do in the Rewatchables.
2:04 Speaker 02 I've been waiting.
2:04 Bill Simmons? It's my bad for forgetting that. And now we're gonna do Working Girl. Let's run the trailer and then we'll go.
2:11 Speaker 04 Do me a favor, be my... Tess, be my secretary.
2:14 Speaker 05 He wants to give her a chance.
2:16 Speaker 04 Hold all calls, Ms. McGill. Maybe I just don't like you.
2:20 Speaker 05 You're a double-crossing boss.
2:22 Speaker 00 I consider us a team, Tess.
2:24 Speaker 05 Doesn't.
2:24 Speaker 00 This woman is my secretary.
2:26 Speaker 05 But this working girl is gonna make it on her own. You are amazing. Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, and Melanie Griffith.
2:33 Speaker 06 What's going on in there? She's dusting?
2:35 Speaker 05 Working Girl: Rated R. Starts Wednesday, December 21st, at a theater near you.
2:41 Bill Simmons? This episode of The Rewatchables is presented to you by Amazon Prime. Prime is more than just fast delivery. It's also where you can dive deep into your favorite movie genres with Prime Video and get what you need, fast, to fuel your obsession. You also, if you watch a movie in Amazon Prime, you can click down and see the actors in each scene for a lot of the movies, which is great. Snacks for movie night, a new book on film theory. It's all there, too, on Amazon Prime. Whatever it is, Prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into. Head to amazon.com/prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes.
3:31 Bill Simmons? All right, your favorite movie ever, Amanda, why?
3:33 Speaker 02 Perfect romantic comedy, but more than a romantic comedy. It is a cultural artifact as well as a, you know, Cinderella story. Great cast. Got a Harrison Ford take for later that I don't want to spoil, but very important. One of the great movie songs, if not the great movie song of... Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself. Listen, it's in the trailer, right? We've already heard it, but incredible stuff.
4:05 Bill Simmons? The first time I, when I watched it twice in four days and the first time and I was like, do I like this song? And then when, and then it just.
4:12 Speaker 03 And it plays nine times in the movies.
4:13 Bill Simmons? And then keep doing, you do the little where she's just kinda humming it a couple times. You're like, alright.
4:17 Speaker 03 They do it on the organ, the symphony. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:20 Speaker 02 The score is great. The score is wonderful.
4:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:22 Speaker 02 Um, and also, you know, I was born a few years before this movie came out. So in some ways, this is how I understand the eighties, you know? Uh, and it, and how I understand my parents, for better and for worse. So just landmark, in my opinion.
4:39 Bill Simmons? Joanna?
4:40 Speaker 03 I love this film so much. I, I feel like this is a top five eighties movie.
4:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:44 Speaker 03 Like, if you're like, what was the eighties? Let's put it in a time capsule for the aliens. Working Girl is in there. It has to be. Um, the very.
4:53 Bill Simmons? That would be an interesting.
4:53 Speaker 03 Right?
4:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Conversation, what those five movies would be. I kinda feel like The Breakfast Club should be one of the five.
4:59 Speaker 03 Absolutely. Sure.
5:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:02 Speaker 03 Die Hard?
5:03 Bill Simmons? Die Hard, the first Die Hard.
5:05 Speaker 03 The first Die Hard.
5:07 Speaker 02 Over like Ghostbusters?
5:09 Bill Simmons? Would you put Fatal Attraction in there? I'm trying to think of movies that just seem distinctly eighties.
5:14 Speaker 02 Let's see.
5:15 Bill Simmons? Top Gun, I think, would have to be in the running. I mean, there's a lot.
5:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, but if it can only be five, this should be a podcast. This should be an entire podcast. What's these?
5:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:23 Speaker 03 What's the five movie time capsule for each decade?
5:26 Bill Simmons? But it, but it would have to be, these movies represent the eighties in the most eighties ways possible.
5:31 Speaker 03 And so the way that The Working Girl represents, uh, well, you know, I'm, I'm just like, only a few years older than you. And growing up rewatching all of these eighties movies on TNT or TBS or whatever it was, I was like, oh, every movie is set at Wall Street. Like, that was, that was the impression we got, that every single movie was about Wall Street. That was the goal. That was the aim. Um.
5:50 Speaker 02 Everyone was in New York trying to.
5:52 Speaker 03 Trading.
5:53 Speaker 02 And, and, and trading and arbitrage, which I still don't know what it is. Forgot to Google that before this podcast.
5:58 Bill Simmons? Five from arbitrage.
5:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, sure.
6:00 Bill Simmons? I don't know what arbitrage is either.
6:01 Speaker 03 I have it under questions that can never not be answered. Okay, well, that's good, yeah. What is arbitrage? No idea. I'll never know.
6:07 Bill Simmons? Well, there's also, uh, this is kind of the tail end of the, I mean, there's so many things going on with this movie, but this kind of greed is good era.
6:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
6:15 Bill Simmons? Where it's like, you just gotta work your ass off. And if you get, then you'll have money and maybe you'll be able to ride in a limo. And it's just the eighties were very innocent about all that stuff. That, that was one of the things that jumped out to me is like, oh, this premise probably isn't the same kind of premise in 2025 necessarily.
6:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, I don't know that like the, the highest achievement is your office and in a warrant of all these other offices. If that's like the, the gold ring, the brass ring that you want right now, but in, in the late eighties, it was.
6:43 Bill Simmons? And it was a zero sum game. You were getting it at the expense of somebody else. All right, so I have, well, first of all, Rolling Stone wrote this in 1989, which I thought was perfect when they did a very bizarre Melanie Griffith feature.
6:54 Speaker 03 Well, sure.
6:55 Bill Simmons? And I cannot.
6:56 Speaker 03 I, yeah, I listened.
6:58 Bill Simmons? To talk about her.
6:58 Speaker 03 Has there ever been like an unbizarre Melanie Griffith feature is my question?
7:03 Bill Simmons? Wow, um, Rolling Stone writes, Working Star is, Working Girl is the story of a secretary fighting an egomaniac, egomaniacal boss for credit on an idea. Griffith stars as the secretary and she too is fighting for credit, though the character she plays in almost every scene, Griffith's billing is third behind Sigourney Weaver, the boss, and then Harrison Ford. It's so interesting that she's not the star of the movie.
7:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:27 Bill Simmons? Because she seems like a massive star now, but at the time it seemed risky to even build a movie around her.
7:34 Speaker 03 She had just done Something Wild, right? Yeah.
7:36 Bill Simmons? And Body Double, but they weren't, those weren't big movies.
7:39 Speaker 03 Well, this is what makes her forever a star.
7:41 Bill Simmons? Totally.
7:42 Speaker 03 Right, yeah.
7:43 Bill Simmons? But I can't remember other movies where somebody's clearly the star and they're like, no, we gotta put you third because we need these other two for the poster, which kind of weirdly mirrors the movie.
7:53 Speaker 03 That's so interesting. I think it's definitely happened before, usually maybe second builds.
7:57 Speaker 02 Right.
7:57 Speaker 03 Over a star that has an ego or something like that. But third build is under Sigourney Weaver. Cause Harrison Ford's her co-lead, but Sigourney Weaver is definitely in supporting.
8:06 Bill Simmons? But she was a massive star from Aliens at that point.
8:08 Speaker 02 It's not even the and, you know, and she doesn't even like get the and like the bummer or introducing. She's not being introduced. She's been working for a while. Yeah, just absolutely third.
8:18 Bill Simmons? Well, I can't wait to talk about her. All right. Here's what I wrote down. There's four movies going on at the same time. We mentioned The Greed is the New York aspirational money, all that stuff that's in there.
8:31 Bill Simmons? There's this seventies, eighties thing that they don't really do anymore in movies where the trying not to get caught in an elaborate lie.
8:39 Speaker 03 Right.
8:39 Bill Simmons? Was basically half of the TV shows in the seventies and then a lot of movies where it's like Joanna's pretending to be the head of Spotify.
8:49 Speaker 03 Oh, well, it's like the TV show Younger, essentially.
8:51 Speaker 02 Oh, yes, exactly. All of which is just
8:53 Bill Simmons? Craig thinks Joanna is running Spotify. She's actually not.
8:56 Speaker 02 Right.
8:56 Bill Simmons? But they're, and now they're in the same room and the actual head of Spotify's there and she's gotta duck out before he sees her.
9:01 Speaker 03 Get away with it, honestly.
9:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, but there's no Google. So, yeah, there's
9:05 Bill Simmons? You can kind of make up whatever you want.
9:07 Speaker 02 Exactly.
9:07 Speaker 03 Right.
9:08 Bill Simmons? So you have that. You have the Pretty Woman Cinderella. It's the Pretty Woman parallels with this movie. It kind of makes me look down on Pretty Woman a little bit. They openly steal shit from this movie.
9:20 Speaker 03 Absolutely. Yeah.
9:21 Bill Simmons? And then the last piece is the female empowerment workplace comedy stuff that is like for the eighties, cause you have baby boom here too. This is
9:29 Speaker 03 Broadcast news in a like a slightly different way.
9:31 Bill Simmons? This is becoming an era of like professional women. Huh. What an interesting
9:35 Speaker 03 Right.
9:36 Bill Simmons? time for something.
9:37 Speaker 02 Fatal Attraction is also like the reverse of it, right? You know, like a prof, she's professional at the expense of a beautiful home in the countryside.
9:44 Speaker 03 You're missing the rom in the con though.
9:45 Bill Simmons? Well, and obviously the rom com.
9:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:48 Bill Simmons? But which one of the, out of all of those, what's your favorite?
9:50 Speaker 02 I really, the yuppie cinema of the late eighties, and particularly the women, is fascinating to me. I love all of those movies. It is really fascinating to watch them now and be like, oh, so this is how I learned how I was like supposed to go to work and supposed to dress. Because for our age, it was, you know, handed down to you like, okay, this is what a working woman looks like.
10:10 Speaker 03 Right.
10:10 Speaker 02 This is what it is to be a professional.
10:12 Bill Simmons? Right.
10:12 Speaker 02 You're supposed to, like, can you have it all? Should you balance your career? Should you accept the random child that you inherited from an unknown location?
10:21 Bill Simmons? Right.
10:21 Speaker 03 Have you done a baby boom rewatch of those? Or is that what we're pitching right now?
10:25 Speaker 02 I mean, it's, it is really fascinating.
10:28 Bill Simmons? Bright Lights, Big City was another one.
10:29 Speaker 02 Sure.
10:29 Bill Simmons? There's a bunch of these.
10:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
10:33 Bill Simmons? My mom talks about, my mom's old, so she talks about this all the time, when she gets mad at younger generations. And she's just like, we just knew how to navigate stuff in my day.
10:42 Speaker 03 Oh, true.
10:43 Bill Simmons? If we had people who were just jerks or they were hitting on, you just, you just learned how to deal with them.
10:48 Speaker 03 You just write that they're a sleazoid on the ticker.
10:51 Bill Simmons? You just kind of had your, your ways, almost like your nuclear defense system.
10:55 Speaker 03 Of dealing with it, yeah.
10:56 Bill Simmons? And it's, one of the interesting things about rewatching this movie is the first 20 minutes is basically all about, like, she's just in this world. Weird shit's going on. They're trying to set her up with Kevin Spacey. And she's like, is he gonna just try to get me to date? And the irony of it being Kevin Spacey was pretty great. Um, but he's like, yeah, I got my hotel room. And she's just like, oh, man. She ends up getting out of the car and it's just like, ah, that was a Tuesday.
11:19 Speaker 03 Right.
11:20 Bill Simmons? Now that would be like the most traumatic thing that happened to somebody. But back then, that was just kind of what the eighties were like.
11:26 Speaker 02 Right.
11:26 Bill Simmons? Pretty crazy.
11:27 Speaker 02 She has that scene with Alec Baldwin of when she's talking about like how great it is to be working for a woman. And there's none of that like chasing around the desk crap. And it's just matter of fact.
11:37 Bill Simmons? Exactly.
11:38 Speaker 03 Right, right. And she's like, I know you hate when I say stuff like this, but it's kind of nice to not have my ass slapped.
11:43 Bill Simmons? But I can't think of that many movies in the eighties that even, I don't know, casually.
11:48 Speaker 02 Nine to Five is another one?
11:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:49 Bill Simmons? Nine to Five, that was the whole theme of it.
11:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:52 Bill Simmons? I mean, that movie's insane.
11:54 Speaker 02 It actually, it is true.
11:55 Bill Simmons? I think I was 10 or 11 when that came out.
11:57 Speaker 03 Were you?
11:57 Bill Simmons? The whole point of that movie is like.
11:58 Speaker 03 Do you think, did you see it when you were 10 or 11?
12:00 Bill Simmons? I saw it in the theater.
12:01 Speaker 03 That's amazing.
12:02 Speaker 02 Did you see this in the theater?
12:04 Bill Simmons? I did.
12:04 Speaker 03 Oh, God, I'm jealous.
12:06 Bill Simmons? I mean, 87 was an all time movie.
12:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:08 Bill Simmons? Or 87, 88, those, that, those two years of just big stars, cool movies. Um, I'm trying to remember.
12:19 Bill Simmons? If it was preceded as a Harrison Ford movie or a Sigourney Weaver, because they were both really big stars.
12:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:27 Bill Simmons? I think it was probably a bigger deal that Sigourney Weaver was in it because she was, The Aliens was such like a massive movie.
12:32 Speaker 03 I wonder if it was a big deal that Indiana Jones was doing sort of like a romantic comedy.
12:37 Bill Simmons? His first rom com.
12:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know, so an Indiana Jones movie or a Harrison Ford movie until you see it and then it's a Melanie Griffith movie.
12:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, he doesn't show up for at least 30 minutes.
12:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:49 Bill Simmons? We'll talk about it in a second. We gotta talk about, we gotta talk about Melanie.
12:52 Speaker 03 Okay, yeah.
12:54 Bill Simmons? Holy mackerel. What a performance.
12:57 Speaker 03 This is it.
12:57 Bill Simmons? I still think Body Double is my number one Melanie Griffith.
13:00 Speaker 03 Really?
13:00 Bill Simmons? Oh, she's so good in that movie and she just comes in 120 miles an hour.
13:05 Speaker 03 Even though she is Hollywood royalty and she wasn't, you know, born a working girl from Staten Island.
13:10 Speaker 02 Right.
13:11 Speaker 03 This is just is, seems like her. This just seems like who Melanie Griffith is. And I, I can't separate her from Tess, having seen her in like any number of other things.
13:22 Speaker 02 She's also, it's a, it's an amazing performance because it's not over the top. It's not, she's like, she's not gonna win the overacting award. Like, she is soft spoken.
13:32 Bill Simmons? She does very like.
13:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But she's still, you know, she's gonna, she's determined. She's gonna get what she wants. But I always think it's really interesting when people take these really big roles. The movie hangs around her and they're, and they recede a little and they don't always raise their voice. Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada being the other one. It's, it's not an obvious choice and she's great in it.
13:54 Bill Simmons? That's another movie.
13:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:56 Bill Simmons? There's a lot of DNA.
13:58 Speaker 03 There's a lot of Devil Wears Prada from this.
13:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's a, there's a reason all my favorite, you know.
14:03 Bill Simmons? Well, that's, so this movie is 38 years old now and it's just sprinkling DNA over all these beloved movies over the next 40 years. But those were, Pretty Woman and Devil Wears Prada were the two that I was like, oh, yeah.
14:14 Speaker 03 Uh huh.
14:15 Bill Simmons? You guys just watched this one over and over again and tried to pull stuff. Melanie Griffith.
14:20 Speaker 02 We gonna talk about it now?
14:21 Bill Simmons? Let's talk about Tess first.
14:22 Speaker 02 Okay.
14:25 Bill Simmons? Perfect character.
14:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
14:27 Bill Simmons? Like, just like little details that are great. Like when she shows up in the office and she takes her shoes off and replaces them. It's like, okay, I get the, the hair is like a disaster. The outfit's not great. You know, the makeover, some sort of thing is happening at some point. She's like.
14:47 Bill Simmons? Slightly trashy, but not. You know what I mean? Like, you could see her at a bar at two in the morning, probably.
14:54 Speaker 03 She fits in both wor- she figures a way to fit in both worlds.
14:57 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, but they're doing like the class version of she takes off the glasses and like OMG, she's beautiful.
15:02 Bill Simmons? Right.
15:03 Speaker 03 She was obviously always beautiful, but I liked that the mon- the makeover montage is just like a haircut. It's not like every, you know, it's like she takes off her bangles in one scene and like she cuts her hair in another scene and that's.
15:12 Speaker 02 Also that Joan Cusack is capable of that kind of layering on such short notice.
15:17 Speaker 03 Like flowby level.
15:18 Speaker 02 Sure, yeah, it's really impressive.
15:19 Speaker 03 Really good.
15:20 Speaker 02 Career there.
15:21 Bill Simmons? So she snaps, well, all of a sudden when she's gonna pretend to be the boss.
15:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:24 Bill Simmons? Fixes her hair.
15:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:26 Bill Simmons? Different, slightly different outfit, changes the makeup and all of a sudden looks like a absolute assassin.
15:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:31 Bill Simmons? Um, but it's just, I, I thought it's a totally authentic, I completely believe the character.
15:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:38 Bill Simmons? I'm in on all her decisions. Um, I actually believe she can navigate this world.
15:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:43 Bill Simmons? And she's using like her.
15:45 Speaker 03 Her street smarts.
15:46 Bill Simmons? Sex appeal and street smarts the right way.
15:48 Speaker 03 Yes.
15:48 Bill Simmons? And the guys are kind of, that one scene when she walks in and it's just a whole room of guys. And she does, like everything about it is just really good. I, I'm actually surprised she didn't win the best actress. I understand why because the Jodie Foster and the accused, that was such like.
16:02 Speaker 03 Right.
16:03 Bill Simmons? A big part. It was like a big thing for her. People had all history with her, but. I don't know, if you watch those two performances side by side, I actually think this one might be harder in some ways.
16:12 Speaker 03 Since Jodie's about to win again. I always like, when you sort of re-litigate the Oscars, I'm just like, well.
16:16 Bill Simmons? Would you rather give her the Silence of the Lambs?
16:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought, I think this is a harder part because I don't know who else could have played the part.
16:25 Speaker 03 There's a whole roster, which we'll talk about later, uh, you know, but, but something that they talked about inside of the casting is they didn't want anyone who was like too obviously the most beautiful woman in the world.
16:35 Speaker 02 See, your beloved, sorry to step on.
16:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:38 Speaker 02 You know, casting what ifs, but Michelle Pfeiffer.
16:40 Speaker 03 Pfeiffer.
16:41 Bill Simmons? Can't work.
16:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, right. They were like, she's too beautiful.
16:45 Speaker 02 You just don't buy it when she's sitting there.
16:46 Speaker 03 You couldn't like, watch her bloom into something because she's pre-bloomed. So, you know, Melanie Griffith is like the perfect, she's so beautiful, but with the hair and the bangles and all this sort of stuff like that, you can see how people would overlook her or use her or whatever it is that they're doing at the beginning.
17:01 Bill Simmons? There's some baggage that she brings in real life.
17:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
17:05 Bill Simmons? In the movie?
17:06 Speaker 02 Yes.
17:06 Bill Simmons? That is perfect. It's like, she just turned 30. She's slightly older than Sigourney Weaver. And she just looks like there's probably been a couple of mistakes in the past. And now she's trying to get her shit together. That I don't know if Michelle Pfeiffer would bring.
17:18 Speaker 02 No, Michelle Pfeiffer has it like is pitch perfect, most beautiful person. And there's no vulnerability to her.
17:26 Bill Simmons? No.
17:27 Speaker 02 If there is, it's like a different.
17:28 Bill Simmons? Things have worked out for her since she was four years old.
17:31 Speaker 03 I can almost see it with Michelle Pfeiffer with like Married to the Mob or Fabulous Baker Boys. Like there's something in those characters that is almost.
17:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, but she's having fun doing that.
17:41 Speaker 03 I guess, but there is.
17:42 Bill Simmons? You mean Fabulous Baker Boys, the most important performance by an actress in the history of movies?
17:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly.
17:47 Bill Simmons? That movie?
17:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
17:48 Bill Simmons? Haven't done that one.
17:49 Speaker 02 Do we get to talk about Melanie Griffith's personal baggage right now? Or should we do it later?
17:56 Bill Simmons? Well.
17:57 Speaker 02 It's pretty well documented.
17:58 Bill Simmons? There's a lot of stuff going on here. In her Wikipedia.
18:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:02 Bill Simmons? There's a section for spouses.
18:04 Speaker 02 Oh, sure.
18:05 Bill Simmons? Don Johnson, married 1976, divorced 1976. By the way, she was like 15.
18:11 Speaker 02 Right.
18:12 Bill Simmons? Don Johnson, again, married 1989, divorced 1996. Huh, that's interesting. The double marriage to the same person is a classic Hollywood thing that I don't think happens in real life. Stephen Bower, married 1981, divorced 1989. I have a feeling that they probably had some fun. Uh, and then Antonio Banderas from 96 to 2015. She was married to Don Johnson, Stephen Bower and Antonio Banderas.
18:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, an assassin.
18:39 Bill Simmons? What a trifecta.
18:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
18:41 Bill Simmons? Three of the greats. Um, she had coke and alcohol stuff for.
18:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:47 Bill Simmons? Really since she was like a teenager.
18:49 Speaker 03 While she was making this movie.
18:50 Speaker 02 And you can see it in the movie. Yeah. And they, they have all talked about this, but at some point they even had to shut down production because she was, um, under substance abuse and she.
19:00 Bill Simmons? So I didn't, I didn't know some of this.
19:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:02 Bill Simmons? I didn't know that they made her pay. Mike Nichols was so mad, he made her pay for the whole day shoot.
19:07 Speaker 02 Right, yeah.
19:08 Bill Simmons? Stuff like that.
19:09 Speaker 02 But you can, part of the reason that she works is there, her face is sometimes like a little puffy and a little something, especially in some of the early test scenes. And you're like, oh.
19:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's not like she, it's not, she looks like she had had like a really rough night the night before, kind of bloated.
19:27 Speaker 03 She was carousing with Alec Baldwin.
19:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:29 Speaker 03 You know, living her life.
19:31 Bill Simmons? So.
19:33 Bill Simmons? She ends up getting, they say, clean after the movie. But some of the stuff was, Griffith said, it was the late eighties. There was a lot going on party wise in New York. There's a lot of cocaine. There was a lot of temptation. One of the reasons this movie is rewatchable is because it's fascinating to see her scene by scene. And be like, ooh.
19:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:53 Bill Simmons? I think that was a rough night because the TVs are better. The HD is better and you can really, there's a couple of scenes where she's just got like completely red eyes for no reason.
20:02 Speaker 03 But it just like works.
20:04 Speaker 02 I dunked my face in a bowl of ice water this morning, inspired by Melanie Griffith. I was like, I was just like, I just can't, you know?
20:11 Speaker 03 I need to deep up myself. Yeah, come correct.
20:14 Bill Simmons? They said she would, she'd be out till four thirty in the morning and they would have like a six o'clock call time.
20:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:19 Bill Simmons? And she would just be flying. So they finally had to shut down one of them, but it really sounded like.
20:24 Speaker 03 It was tough.
20:25 Bill Simmons? Not great.
20:25 Speaker 03 Yeah. I was watching a Harrison Ford interview that he did in promotion of this and they were asking if she was easy to work with or hard. And she was like, he was like, well, I just let everyone do what they do. She's very sensitive, easy to access. And I was like, there you go. He talked right around it.
20:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:41 Bill Simmons? The eighties were amazing is always the lesson in the rewatchables. It was just, there's no decade like it.
20:46 Speaker 02 There's a lot of that in the movie also. There is cocaine, there are muscle relaxers. There's Valium.
20:51 Speaker 03 Dim sum.
20:52 Speaker 02 Lot of, yeah, dim sum. A lot of booze, like.
20:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:55 Speaker 02 It's full eighties in the text of the movie.
20:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:59 Speaker 02 Seems fun.
21:00 Bill Simmons? I like the era where it's like six thirty and people just on the set and people are like, where's Melanie?
21:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:06 Bill Simmons? There's no cell phones. You have no idea like where is she? I don't know. We're filming, we're getting this, the sun's coming up soon. And then she like comes in, probably from some whatever, but that's how they did it. Uh, it turns out to be the greatest thing that ever happened in her career. Although if you look at her IMDB, this is probably the peak and Pacific Heights and.
21:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:25 Speaker 02 This is it.
21:26 Speaker 03 This is it.
21:27 Bill Simmons? I do love Pacific Heights.
21:29 Speaker 03 Me too.
21:29 Bill Simmons? But this is the peak. So she went into rehab three weeks after filming and then got back together with Don Johnson, my guy.
21:38 Speaker 03 And was pregnant with Dakota for the Oscars that year.
21:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:41 Bill Simmons? Ends up having Dakota Fanning.
21:43 Speaker 03 Johnson.
21:44 Bill Simmons? Dakota Johnson.
21:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:45 Bill Simmons? Why did I say Dakota Fanning? Because I'm old? It's only nine thirty in the morning. Ends up having Dakota Johnson.
21:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:52 Bill Simmons? But Don Johnson is on Miami Vice. This is the ponytail year.
21:56 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
21:57 Bill Simmons? When he gets amnesia as Sonny Crocker.
21:58 Speaker 03 Sure.
21:59 Bill Simmons? And thinks he's a hitman.
22:00 Speaker 03 I was looking at it.
22:01 Bill Simmons? Three-episode arc where he's just a hitman.
22:04 Speaker 02 All culture starts here.
22:04 Bill Simmons? He shoots tubs.
22:06 Speaker 03 I was, I was looking at the Oscar photos from that year and his hair is just like down past his shoulders, like waving sun.
22:12 Bill Simmons? Amazing. It was an amazing reconciliation.
22:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:14 Bill Simmons? And then the other piece of it is, well, they were once married before when he was twenty-two and she was fourteen. It's like, what?
22:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:22 Bill Simmons? Fourteen?
22:23 Speaker 03 It's not good.
22:23 Speaker 02 It's great.
22:24 Bill Simmons? So you think the eighties were like, the seventies were like a whole other level. But yeah, she's pretty legendary.
22:32 Bill Simmons? She was in Night Moves with Gene Hackman. I think that was nineteen seventy-five.
22:37 Bill Simmons? The Tubi classics.
22:38 Speaker 03 Sure.
22:38 Bill Simmons? You'll see it on Tubi all the time. And she has nude scenes in that and she's like thirteen or fourteen in that.
22:44 Speaker 03 Right, yeah.
22:45 Bill Simmons? It's just a different era.
22:46 Speaker 03 She's talked about her childhood.
22:48 Speaker 02 Right, yeah.
22:49 Bill Simmons? I would say exploited is probably a decent word to use, I would say.
22:52 Speaker 02 I saw Drowning Pool recently for the first time with Paul Newman, where she's like a fifteen-year-old seductress. Really, she's really, really good in it and also like has chemistry with Paul Newman, who's definitely in his fifties at that point.
23:06 Bill Simmons? Jesus.
23:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, it works out.
23:08 Bill Simmons? She's also, she plays a hitchhiker in the Robbie Benson basketball classic, One on One. A movie I've seen over a hundred times. And he picks her up and then she steals money from him. But she's, she's basically just for five straight years, either a hooker.
23:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:22 Bill Simmons? Or some sort of trying to steal from somebody. Or she's like a street person or she's a drug addict.
23:28 Speaker 02 Right, yeah.
23:29 Bill Simmons? And that's just kind of who she became. And that's, so when she does Body Double. That's the first time like a real director is like, no, no, there's something more here.
23:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, though in Body Double, it's not like she's wearing all of her clothes.
23:40 Bill Simmons? No, she is plays a porn star.
23:42 Speaker 02 Exactly.
23:42 Bill Simmons? She plays Holly Body.
23:43 Speaker 03 And what I think is wild about this movie is like, yeah, this is the least sort of like lowly to seductress she is, and she still is more than your stereotypical rom com lead like Meg Ryan couldn't do this.
23:56 Speaker 02 No.
23:57 Speaker 03 You know?
23:57 Bill Simmons? Well, you know, one of the reasons, I was thinking about this because it's a great point. She's very comfortable, like she's in a bra and panties like three, four different times in this movie where she's just like getting dressed.
24:08 Speaker 02 She's vacuuming topless, yeah.
24:09 Bill Simmons? And it's not like, sometimes it's not great camera angles of her and she just doesn't care. Like she's very kind of, and I don't know if a lot of, like Julia Roberts, I don't think would have been, oh, I'm just gonna get dressed in three different scenes. Meg Ryan wouldn't have done it.
24:22 Speaker 03 I really love that scene where she's just sort of like kind of awkwardly bending over, fastening the garters. And Alec Baldwin, who's reading like Motor Trend magazine is like, you look amazing. And I'm like, yeah.
24:33 Bill Simmons? And it says the same thing with Joan Cusack when they're trying the different outfits.
24:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:37 Bill Simmons? I don't know. She's very comfortable on screen, which she, there's something about her in everything she's in where you're like, I'm kind of rooting for her. I don't know why.
24:44 Speaker 02 Yes.
24:45 Bill Simmons? Pacificaite's being the key.
24:47 Speaker 02 Well, sure.
24:48 Bill Simmons? Evil tenant. She's gotta like get rid of that guy.
24:50 Speaker 02 I, I had a lot of questions about Pacificaite. You haven't done that yet on Rewatchables, right?
24:54 Bill Simmons? We're gonna have, it might not even be from hell month. It might be from hell, from hell summer.
25:00 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, sounds right. Some of the legal landlord arrangements there.
25:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah, you're just not allowed to.
25:05 Speaker 02 I'd like to go into the paperwork on that.
25:07 Bill Simmons? Pile drive into your thing.
25:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:09 Bill Simmons? So we have her, we have Sigourney Weaver, who her mid eighties looks like this Ghostbusters, Aliens, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl, Ghostbusters 2, basically on a row. And each part's different. This is a really weird Sigourney Weaver in a good way performance where she's just.
25:27 Bill Simmons? I don't.
25:27 Speaker 02 Nancy Kerrigan.
25:28 Bill Simmons? This is like a character that would not exist in a movie anymore.
25:31 Speaker 02 True.
25:31 Speaker 03 How do you mean?
25:32 Bill Simmons? Just like, super kinda heat checky, pompous. I use my sex appeal. I'm just lying in bed in lingerie with 10 people in a hospital bed around me and
25:42 Speaker 02 In, in general, the lingerie in this movie is, is of a time, you know?
25:48 Bill Simmons? No question.
25:49 Speaker 02 They're, they're all really, really invested in it. Like thigh highs, I just don't think are a part of the, the wardrobe in that way anymore. She's, she's really good at it. And another performance where she is like obnoxious and unlikable, but like, all under a chill, there's like a iciness and it's nev- it's not big.
26:10 Speaker 03 It's hu- it's human.
26:11 Speaker 02 Until she comes in like with the crutches and is like making a whole scene and you know, faints.
26:16 Bill Simmons? Well, that's what's interesting.
26:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:18 Bill Simmons? She ramps it up in the second half of the movie and it doesn't feel like it's somebody trying to overreact.
26:23 Speaker 03 I feel like this character still exists and this character will always exist, which is just sort of like, the woman who was born pretty and extremely rich and knows how to work every room.
26:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
26:33 Speaker 03 And, and you're sort, and, and will
26:37 Speaker 03 pretend to give you a hand up, uh, and then stab you in the back. Right.
26:41 Bill Simmons? And it's kind of annoying. Like if you put Kathleen Turner in this role in the mid eighties,
26:47 Bill Simmons? I'm not convinced Harrison Ford's gonna walk away from it.
26:50 Speaker 02 Oh, I thought you were gonna, but it's also like a little too big.
26:54 Bill Simmons? She's, she's a little annoying and I can see why he's like, God, I gotta get.
26:58 Speaker 03 Well, I'm almost like, why was Jack with her for long enough that she thought they were gonna get married?
27:03 Speaker 02 Well, timelines here, you know, are a little confusing.
27:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:07 Bill Simmons? What's your Sigourney Weaver relationship? She checks a lot of your boxes.
27:11 Speaker 03 How so?
27:12 Bill Simmons? Lot of, lot of different things, the movies that you're into. Yeah, a lot of genres.
27:16 Speaker 03 My main association is Ghostbusters. That's my Sigourney Weaver association.
27:21 Bill Simmons? What's interesting about her, she doesn't. Like, I don't know who the 2025 Sigourney Weaver is. She was kind of a one on one, but nobody realized it at the time. The different types of movies she was in.
27:31 Speaker 03 I think, like, your Elizabeth Debicki. What's so interesting about this is that the, the screenwriter said that her role was originally written as a man, which is true for her role in Alien as well. And so the fact that they're like, let's get Sigourney to play the role that we thought we were writing for a man, but let's put a woman in it. So that was sort of like a niche for Sigourney Weaver for a little while.
27:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
27:51 Speaker 03 Which is so bizarre because she's so, like, beautiful and sexual and all this sort of stuff like that. But they were just sort of like, there's something about her energy that feels like it could just slide. We didn't change how we wrote the role. We just-
28:02 Speaker 02 I mean, they had to change some plot points.
28:03 Speaker 03 Yeah. The Jack stuff, yeah.
28:05 Speaker 02 And the, and the, and it does become more, the fact that it's two women against each other.
28:09 Speaker 03 Definitely matters.
28:10 Bill Simmons? You rattled Amanda, just suggesting they would have changed anything about working girl. She was like, what's going on?
28:15 Speaker 02 Sigourney, working girl into Dave. Very formidable.
28:19 Bill Simmons? So I want to talk about that because you have her in Alien and Aliens.
28:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:23 Bill Simmons? Which is like this distinct crazy action hero role, right? That's like, only a couple of people could have done that. Then you have this working girl character, and then she's also the first lady.
28:35 Speaker 02 And mean.
28:36 Bill Simmons? She's like three completely different. And I actually like her the most in Dave. I think that's my favorite Sigourney Weaver, other than, uh, Alien and Aliens.
28:43 Speaker 02 The Dave and the working girl, it's someone who is, is very, very standoffish. And, you know, I guess they track opposite where in Dave, you got to wear down. And so she'll be doing Harmony, you know, for the, the cop when they get pulled over. And in, and in working girl, yeah, which is just, it's really funny. She's really good.
29:02 Speaker 03 She is.
29:03 Speaker 02 And in working girl, she's like, sort of charming and, and weird about the bunny. But then her true layers are revealed, but both times.
29:11 Bill Simmons? So do you like villain Sigourney? Are you like Ice Queen Sigourney? Or are you like action hero?
29:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, Ice Queen Sigourney is really-
29:16 Bill Simmons? So Ice Storm Sigourney is another one.
29:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:19 Speaker 03 But like, yeah, she's so like patrician in this versus an alien. She's a space trucker. Like, I think that's-
29:25 Speaker 02 But there's a steeliness to all of them.
29:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:27 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I like Sigourney Weaver.
29:32 Bill Simmons? Not, not a hot take. She's one of the most successful actresses of the eighties.
29:35 Speaker 03 You got all screaming for her, Craig, for your bravery.
29:39 Bill Simmons? There's a reason she was in a lot of big movies.
29:42 Speaker 02 I'm still a fan.
29:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
29:43 Speaker 02 She's still great. I mean, you know, she's blue in Avatar or whatever. I don't remember what's going on there.
29:47 Speaker 03 She's playing like a teenager in Avatar.
29:49 Speaker 02 Oh, and like also a whale or something?
29:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, a lot happening.
29:52 Speaker 02 I don't remember.
29:53 Speaker 06 Also, for people in my generation, uh, holes. That's how we were introduced to Sigourney.
29:58 Speaker 02 You know what? I just learned about holes last week.
30:00 Speaker 06 Oh, my God.
30:00 Speaker 02 I mean, it's formative for you guys.
30:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:03 Speaker 06 Maybe one of the most formative movies for my generation.
30:05 Bill Simmons? One thing with her, she's tall.
30:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:08 Bill Simmons? And it's like, she's, I think she's like five eleven, maybe even six feet.
30:12 Speaker 02 But this is the tall woman, like consortium over here. So I'm taller. Listen, you just made a face like I don't compete and I don't compete with you.
30:20 Speaker 03 No, you, I welcome you.
30:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, thank you. But we like tall women.
30:23 Bill Simmons? We have Joanna, the sneaky tall.
30:25 Speaker 06 Yeah, six feet. Sigourney.
30:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:27 Bill Simmons? Yeah. The Chuck Klosterman All Stars of sneaky tall.
30:30 Speaker 03 And this is why it's believable when she lands that basket in Alien Resurrection.
30:35 Bill Simmons? Right.
30:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:36 Bill Simmons? Well, it's believable, action hero, probably hard to cast in certain movies because like you can't put her with Tom Cruise.
30:44 Speaker 02 Right.
30:45 Bill Simmons? The guy's gotta be like five, 10 and up.
30:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:48 Bill Simmons? Uh, speaking of guys, our guy Harrison Ford.
30:52 Speaker 02 It's, it's really.
30:53 Speaker 03 As we know, our really good friend Mallory Rubin.
30:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:56 Speaker 03 Loves Harrison Ford more than, I'm gonna give that to her. Anyone else on this planet, her, she thinks the, the most attractive Harrison Ford has ever been is in Witness canonically. This is peak Harrison Ford.
31:09 Speaker 02 This is my hottest take in honor of Mallory Rubin.
31:12 Bill Simmons? Bang it out now.
31:13 Speaker 02 My, and, and also in honor of Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. No, he could not. This is the hottest he's ever, he's ever been.
31:20 Speaker 03 This is the hottest he's ever been.
31:21 Speaker 02 Like, keep your Han Solo, keep your Indy. I really, I mean, the Witness, it's tough and Mallory did give me her spot and so I feel bad and the Sam Cooke is powerful.
31:32 Bill Simmons? No, she don't feel bad.
31:33 Speaker 03 She loves working girl.
31:34 Speaker 02 She does. She does love working girl.
31:36 Speaker 03 What is, what is he like?
31:38 Bill Simmons? And we're doing Witness for her and she can do Harrison Ford for an hour. Joanna and I are horrified.
31:43 Speaker 03 Inside of the hottest he's ever been inside of a movie.
31:47 Speaker 02 Right.
31:48 Speaker 03 What's the hottest moment for Harrison Ford inside of this movie?
31:51 Speaker 02 Well, it's a, it's a little obvious, but when he's
31:54 Speaker 03 The shirt changing?
31:55 Speaker 02 And then kinda, you know, the audience is cheering and he's also, I like, I like that he takes this role. It's a, it's a nothing role. He's just there to like be handsome and support her and he does it with such charm. And is like, sure, I'll just do whatever you need. And that scene where he's just like, okay, I guess I'll get shirtless and, you know, make fun of myself and let a, a office of women clap for me. I find that appealing.
32:19 Speaker 03 The shirtless scene is very good. I would, I, I see that and I will, I will raise you
32:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:24 Speaker 03 A bit of Suzuki on the corner of his mouth, being emotionally vulnerable about how he needs this trade.
32:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:29 Speaker 03 He needs this.
32:30 Speaker 02 No, that's true. He is a little more open. He's a little goofy in this. There's like almost a little Jimmy Stewart in him.
32:36 Speaker 03 Exactly.
32:36 Speaker 02 Which I wouldn't say typically is my type. So I guess I gravitate towards the slightly more, you know, macho asshole version of him. Like, you know, I told, I promised myself when we met, we'd drink tequila. Is a line that would work on me 10 out of 10 times.
32:52 Speaker 03 Such a good line.
32:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:53 Speaker 03 Um, I have a question.
32:55 Bill Simmons? He's 45 when they filmed this.
32:56 Speaker 02 Looks incredible.
32:57 Speaker 03 I have heard conflicting reports. So a couple of years ago, I read a Harrison Ford biography where he talked about, they talked about this movie and his initial response to being offered this role was, I don't want to take this role. It's her picture. Why would I take this role? It's her movie. It wouldn't be my movie. And that the, the way it was depicted in that book, they then give the role to Alec Baldwin.
33:18 Speaker 02 Right.
33:18 Speaker 03 And then he goes, actually, I want the movie. Then they bump Alec Baldwin down.
33:22 Bill Simmons? That is true.
33:23 Speaker 03 The, well, the other story I've heard is that it was a budgetary thing.
33:27 Bill Simmons? But it's fine.
33:27 Speaker 02 Well, yeah. Well, and also all the Mike Nichols stuff. We have, this is directed.
33:31 Bill Simmons? Mike Nichols is doing that next.
33:33 Speaker 02 Yeah. But that Nichols did want Baldwin and then the studio was like, Melanie Griffith and Alec Baldwin aren't enough of names. So.
33:42 Bill Simmons? You guys are stomping over cast ones.
33:44 Speaker 02 I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
33:46 Speaker 03 The casting.
33:46 Speaker 02 I know. And I did my hottest thing already.
33:49 Bill Simmons? Baldwin had it.
33:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
33:51 Bill Simmons? And then they called him and they said.
33:52 Speaker 03 To Nick.
33:53 Bill Simmons? Hey, bad news.
33:54 Speaker 03 But guess what? He's great as Nick.
33:56 Bill Simmons? He's, he's fine.
33:56 Speaker 03 He's a really, really great ball.
33:58 Bill Simmons? His career was fine, at least until Rust.
34:01 Speaker 03 This and Beetlejuice.
34:02 Bill Simmons? Too soon? Sorry.
34:03 Speaker 03 This and Beetlejuice together? Come on. It's great.
34:07 Bill Simmons? To back up your Harrison Ford point. I present to you this Nora Dunn story.
34:12 Speaker 02 Okay.
34:12 Bill Simmons? That I'm gonna read. We all had such a crush on him. One time Harrison walked up to me and said, I hear that you're working on a different project and that's why you're working today. What are you working on? I could barely speak. I said, I'm working on Saturday Night Live. He said, oh yeah, sorry, I haven't seen it. What an amazing, anyway.
34:30 Speaker 02 Is it good?
34:31 Bill Simmons? It's been out for 13 years at that point.
34:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:33 Bill Simmons? And I go, oh, it's not that good, laughs. I disowned everything about myself. I even had my hand in my pocket wrenching off my wedding ring. I turned into a complete ignoramus. I came on very late that night, 5:00 in the morning. My husband was in his bed. He said, I'm glad you're home. I have a better half, blah, blah, blah. And she goes, I was such a traitor because I was blown away by Harrison Ford. He was in such great shape and such an absolutely perfect movie star. The whole package.
34:57 Speaker 02 Mm hmm. Agreed.
34:58 Bill Simmons? Nora Dunn.
34:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:59 Bill Simmons? By all accounts, one of the most unfriendly actions of the 80s and 90s. Just completely all in on Harrison Ford. His 80s, just wanted to mention this.
35:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:10 Bill Simmons? Not that people who listen to this podcast wouldn't know this, but two Raiders of the Lost Ark movies. Actually a third, because he made the third.
35:18 Speaker 02 Last Christmas it came out right after this.
35:20 Bill Simmons? So three.
35:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:21 Bill Simmons? Two Star Wars, Blade Runner, Witness, Mosquito Coast, Frantic, and then this movie. That's all in the 80s, just from 80 to 89, just banging them out.
35:33 Speaker 02 This man does not have an Oscar.
35:35 Bill Simmons? Banging it out.
35:36 Speaker 02 It is a crime.
35:36 Bill Simmons? They're gonna give him the.
35:38 Speaker 02 No, I want a.
35:39 Bill Simmons? Irving G. Thalberg.
35:41 Speaker 02 I want it on stage.
35:42 Speaker 03 What?
35:43 Bill Simmons? What would his Oscar have been?
35:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, what would you give it for?
35:46 Bill Simmons? Regarding Henry?
35:47 Speaker 02 Fugitive.
35:48 Speaker 03 By the way, I love Regarding Henry, Mosquito Coast.
35:50 Speaker 02 I liked, I saw it. I like your joke. It's a recurring bit regarding Henry. He's, you know what?
35:56 Speaker 03 I like Regarding Henry.
35:57 Speaker 02 I don't like it, but he's good in it.
35:58 Bill Simmons? Is this your audition for the Regarding Henry?
36:00 Speaker 03 I'm just saying, I love.
36:01 Bill Simmons? It's on the list.
36:02 Speaker 03 I love Regarding Henry.
36:03 Speaker 02 Flawed, but lovable. He is, like, he goes some new places, you know? And you never really see him be that sweet.
36:10 Bill Simmons? The cast in this movie, I love Harrison Ford.
36:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:13 Speaker 03 Can brain damage make you a better person? That's the question Regarding Henry dares to ask.
36:18 Bill Simmons? The answer is yes.
36:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:19 Bill Simmons? Harrison Ford, I think, might have the highest approval rating of any actor of all time. Craig, what's your relationship with Harrison Ford? He's my number one favorite actor ever. Yeah.
36:27 Speaker 02 Okay, good.
36:27 Bill Simmons? Every generation loves Harrison Ford.
36:29 Speaker 02 It's nice that it's been handed down.
36:30 Bill Simmons? The rule with this stuff is if you're at a party and somebody said, you know, I fucking hate Harrison Ford. People would be like. Why? What did, like, you just wouldn't believe it. Everybody loves Harrison Ford. Not even the airplane antics could bring him down, you know? Not even, he's had a lot of weird moments the last 20 years.
36:48 Speaker 03 I think he actually has a higher Q rating than even like a Tom Hanks, genuinely.
36:51 Bill Simmons? Oh, 100%.
36:52 Speaker 03 Yeah. He's Indiana Jones and Han Solo, among all the other things that he wanted to do.
36:57 Bill Simmons? He's the most popular actor of my lifetime.
36:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:59 Bill Simmons? Now, some of that helps because he was been in some of the most popular movies of all time. He's also just so cool.
37:06 Speaker 03 And like, is still cool.
37:07 Bill Simmons? Chris Ryan thinks Luke Wilson could have had his career. Other people in this cast, Alec Baldwin, you mentioned him. Yeah. Young Alec Baldwin.
37:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:15 Bill Simmons? We'll cover him later.
37:15 Speaker 03 Not landing Alec Baldwin.
37:17 Bill Simmons? Joan Cusack, nominated for an Oscar, which I found strange, but very good. It's, it's grown up, you know?
37:22 Speaker 03 I would give it to her.
37:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
37:25 Bill Simmons? Nora Dunne mentioned Oliver Platt.
37:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:28 Bill Simmons? Starting his role of like, this guy's in an office or in a business. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Is he gonna be the villain in this movie or like the sidekick? Who knows? Spacey, Olympia Dukakis is in this.
37:41 Speaker 03 One scene. The year after winning the Oscar, she's wonderful.
37:46 Bill Simmons? We gotta take a break and then we'll talk about Mike Nichols. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever finish a movie and the next thing you know, you're totally obsessed? That's happened to me. Like, I'm talking about ordering a book about 70s film lighting. You done that, Sierra? I have, yeah. Or buying the soundtrack on vinyl? Kind of obsessed, whatever it is. Prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into, or getting into. Head to amazon.com/prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes. All right, this movie's directed by Mike Nichols, who
38:19 Bill Simmons? had such a fascinating career that Mark Harris wrote, I think, one of the best Hollywood biographies I ever read. It's so good. Four years ago about him. And it was one of those careers where it's like,
38:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:29 Bill Simmons? It was like, I always thought this guy was interesting. And then it's like 500 pages of how interesting and bizarre his life was. And this, so his run in the 80s, just from 83 to 89, was Silkwood, Harpburn, Biloxi Blues, Working Girl, Postcards from the Edge, and then Regarding Henry, 91. But movies that Just intersect with you, your brain.
38:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:51 Bill Simmons? Your life. This is like, is he like your favorite director?
38:54 Speaker 02 One of them. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that of all those movies that you mentioned, all starring or centered on women, which in the eighties, you know, you didn't always get that. He was famously a comedian, part of Nichols and May.
39:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
39:10 Speaker 02 And then, you know, moved into a theater legend, moved into directing films, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and then The Graduate. And because he has so much theater work, he's just, he's like really good at people talking and characters and people being believable and in real life situations and like the world around them is always very well observed. And, you know, we say all the time, they don't do it like they used to. But Mike Nichols types of movies where people are just trying to get something in life and being people, and they are people that you recognize. He is fantastic at it.
39:48 Speaker 03 There's this personal piece that didn't click for me until I reread the section of the Harris biography is that this is when he gets together with Diane Sawyer, who, you know, he considers the love of his life.
39:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:59 Speaker 03 They describe them as like giddy teenagers. They're so in love in this section in the book. And so the fact that he's like, found the great love of his life, right as he's making this like beautiful love story inside of Working Girl is really sweet.
40:10 Speaker 02 And there is also like, so I think that Mike Nichols biography, which is wonderful, so much of it is like, his life seems so great. I mean, he was like the creme, la creme in New York, friends with Nora Ephron, married Diane Sawyer, like has a house in Connecticut and like raises horses for some reason. I don't even really know what that is all about. Like a very like educated, fancy, like wealthy, you know, New York society guy. But he is in fact, like a German immigrant, like worked through all of that. And for me, the biography pointed out like, the test character.
40:46 Speaker 02 Is relates to him. Yeah.
40:47 Speaker 03 An immigrant story.
40:48 Bill Simmons? It's a good point.
40:49 Speaker 02 A lot of shots of her going past and forth the Statue of Liberty. Like, it's not subtle, once you see that. And this person, an outsider, who like, wants to be in the finer things, like, wants to be a part of this, like, great quote unquote, American, whatever, um, definitely comes from him as well.
41:04 Speaker 03 It's interesting, I was watching a Candace Bergen interview where she was talking about his horses.
41:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:09 Speaker 03 And she was like, I think he's surrounded himself with wealth to sort of inoculate him, like, because he was so afraid of going back to
41:15 Speaker 02 Right.
41:15 Speaker 03 that sort of humble immigrant roots. And so he's just sort of like, I've got horses.
41:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:20 Speaker 03 I eat caviar, I'm BFF with Carly Simon, like, all this sort of stuff like that. It's just sort of like, I'm never going back.
41:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he was big on chartered planes and just
41:29 Speaker 03 Airman.
41:29 Bill Simmons? Kind of obscene wealth.
41:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:31 Speaker 02 It seems like he lived well. How about that?
41:34 Bill Simmons? The book made a big, that was a big piece of the second half of the book, is he's so kind of obsessed with just garnering wealth. Because he wants to fly private everywhere he goes. He wants to stay in like the bay. So he ends up taking some, some projects that basically just for the paycheck. And his nineties get pretty strange.
41:54 Speaker 02 Yes.
41:54 Bill Simmons? Um, he makes some, some bad ones and basically does some money grab stuff, but
41:58 Speaker 03 But also the masterpieces regarding Henry, so, you know.
42:01 Bill Simmons? But he, he belongs to this different era, though, of when like these, these like very powerful creative guys felt like they ran New York. And now it's kind of over, like, Graydon Carter retired and Lorne Michaels is eighty, but you had this run in the eighties, nineties, where it was like Mike Nichols, Graydon Carter.
42:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:21 Bill Simmons? Mike Nichols, there was like these six, seven of them, and it felt like all of New York culture just kind of ran through all of them.
42:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, Harrison Ford talks about
42:29 Bill Simmons? They're all friends with each other.
42:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, Harrison Ford talks about how like every day they shot, they also went out to these like really long lunches at the best restaurants and had the wittiest conversation. And that was what it was like to work with Mike Nichols.
42:40 Bill Simmons? And Spy Magazine was starting to even parody some of his stuff at this point, but, uh, Nichols, fascinating guy. I think When I think about his movies, especially when you look at all these in a row, just really good with lead female characters.
42:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:52 Bill Simmons? Just wanna, like, he just, for some reason, and they all loved him.
42:57 Speaker 02 Works with Meryl Streep three times.
42:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
42:59 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, in that, in that decade, yeah. And then, you know, she comes back for, yeah, Angelina.
43:04 Bill Simmons? And a real ladies man, too, which, you know, I wouldn't call him, like, breathtakingly handsome, but it seemed like the, uh,
43:09 Speaker 03 I think he and Melanie have the same number of marriages.
43:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he has, he had a lot going on in, uh, really his whole life until he found out.
43:18 Speaker 03 But yeah, so like, to that point, when they gave, when they gave him the sort of like AFI award, every single tribute speech was given by a woman.
43:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:26 Speaker 03 Yeah. It was like Nora Ephron, Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Cher, Candace Bergen, like, yeah.
43:33 Bill Simmons? There was an oral history, I didn't read it, it came out last year, except I felt like the biography was good with Mike Nichols, I didn't really need to double down. But there was an oral history, and it's called something like Mike Nichols as told by 150 of his closest friends.
43:45 Speaker 02 Right, right, right, right.
43:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:46 Bill Simmons? July was a really good title.
43:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:48 Bill Simmons? Uh, screenplay was written by Kevin Wade, who went to New York City in 84 and saw all these queer women walking through the streets in tennis shoes, carrying his high heels, and it's like, that feels like a movie.
44:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:02 Bill Simmons? Then we go, ends up getting nominated for six Academy Awards. Best Picture, Best Director, doesn't win. Best Actress, Griffith loses. Best Supporting Actress, Weaver and Cusack.
44:12 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
44:13 Bill Simmons? And only wins for Carly Simon's, "Let the river run."
44:21 Bill Simmons? One of only, I think this is right.
44:24 Speaker 03 Guys, how are the levels on that?
44:27 Bill Simmons? Only this and Bruce Springsteen's Philadelphia.
44:32 Bill Simmons? I think, at least in my research, maybe there's been one in the last couple of years, they didn't update, but won Best Original Song, Oscars, Grammy, Golden Globe, all three.
44:39 Speaker 03 Oh, okay. Wow.
44:42 Bill Simmons? Not like you wouldn't know it's a Carly Simon song?
44:45 Speaker 03 I think so.
44:46 Bill Simmons? Right? You would think it's, it could be like.
44:49 Speaker 03 No.
44:49 Bill Simmons? It's just a popular, would you, does it sound like Carly Simon to you though?
44:53 Speaker 03 I don't know. I don't remember a time where I didn't know this was a Carly Simon song. So this just is the Carly, but like, the way that she hums throughout the movie is very Gilmore Girls to me. You know what I mean? So like, all of that is connected in its own special way.
45:08 Bill Simmons? More DNA for this movie, Gilmore Girls.
45:10 Speaker 03 But I think that like, um, that's Carole King, but it's like, it's, it's a very similar like vibe. And I think what's interesting, according to my research is that originally she wrote a bunch of songs to this movie. And they were all very explicitly telling you what was happening in the plot.
45:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
45:25 Speaker 03 And so they just cut.
45:26 Bill Simmons? She's just trying to get a hair.
45:29 Speaker 03 Time to cut your hair, you know, whatever. So.
45:34 Bill Simmons? Best picture, Rain Man beats it.
45:36 Speaker 03 Okay.
45:38 Bill Simmons? Good category that year. Rain Man, Axon Alturas, Dangerous Liaisons, Mississippi Burning, Working Girl.
45:44 Speaker 03 I'd probably give it to Dangerous Liaisons, but I would give it to Working Girl over Rain Man.
45:47 Speaker 02 I would as well.
45:48 Bill Simmons? Dangerous Liaisons person?
45:48 Speaker 03 Oh, I love Dangerous Liaisons. Yeah.
45:50 Bill Simmons? You, is that you throwing your hat in the rain?
45:52 Speaker 03 No, I'm not audition, just every time I say like a movie doesn't mean.
45:55 Bill Simmons? No, cause I love that movie.
45:56 Speaker 03 Yeah. It's a great movie.
45:57 Bill Simmons? I don't think CR, it's too, you know.
45:59 Speaker 02 It's too risque. Yeah, he doesn't work blue.
46:01 Bill Simmons? CR turns into like that timid Irish Catholic guy.
46:04 Speaker 03 Glenn Close, Malkovich, come on.
46:06 Speaker 02 It's good. I still go for Working Man. I mean, Working Girl over Rain Man.
46:10 Speaker 03 Oh yeah, Working Girl over Rain Man.
46:11 Speaker 02 Rain Man was like a real thing.
46:13 Bill Simmons? Rain Man was a phenomenon.
46:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:14 Bill Simmons? This was too, but Rain Man was like a phenomenon.
46:17 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
46:18 Bill Simmons? I think.
46:18 Speaker 03 We were constantly quoting Rain Man. We weren't quoting Working Girl necessarily.
46:22 Bill Simmons? Well, Barry Levinson wins for best directing.
46:25 Speaker 02 My dad's favorite director.
46:27 Bill Simmons? And Hoppen wins for best actor.
46:29 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
46:30 Bill Simmons? Best actress.
46:34 Bill Simmons? Melanie Griffith loses to Jodie Foster. Glenn Close is in there for Dangerous Liaisons, which is a fucking incredible performance.
46:41 Speaker 03 That's the winner, honestly.
46:42 Bill Simmons? I think that's the winner.
46:43 Speaker 02 But is that where her, like, trajectory of always being the loser starts? Is that's the one?
46:50 Bill Simmons? Her taking off the makeup at the end?
46:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, she's very good.
46:54 Speaker 03 I think it it took like a couple more nominations before everyone she became the Susan Lucci of Oscars.
46:59 Speaker 02 That's where we could have turned it around, right?
47:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, before it started, honestly.
47:03 Bill Simmons? Meryl Streep in A Cry in the Dark. I don't remember that movie.
47:07 Speaker 02 That's not, is that Dingo Ate My Baby?
47:08 Speaker 03 The Dingo Ate My Baby.
47:09 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's it.
47:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and then Sigourney got nominated for Girls in the Mist. All right. No Best Actor Supporting, but Best Actress, Cusack and Sigourney. So Sigourney with the double nomination. Always loving that happen. Strong here.
47:24 Speaker 02 This is also one of the rare three women nominated from one movie.
47:28 Bill Simmons? Right.
47:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, I don't think that there, it's like maybe All About Eve is.
47:31 Speaker 03 Chicago?
47:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's, it's only happened a couple times.
47:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Catherine Zeta-Jones in Perdida.
47:37 Bill Simmons? Frances McDormand, you might have heard of her.
47:38 Speaker 03 I have.
47:38 Bill Simmons? Mississippi Burning.
47:41 Bill Simmons? Pfeiffer. Dangerous Liaisons. And then Gina Davis wins for The Accidental Tourist. Well, don't, don't, no, don't save it.
47:56 Bill Simmons? Some really good ones didn't get nominated that year. I just want to point out, I don't, I think Joan Cusack's really good in this movie. I also don't think it's that important of a part. And I can't believe she got nominated because Elizabeth Perkins in Big?
48:09 Speaker 02 Hmm, she's pretty good.
48:11 Speaker 03 Wouldn't that be lead?
48:13 Bill Simmons? I think you could throw in that Supporting. Susan Sarandon, Bull Durham, not nominated?
48:18 Speaker 03 Once again, that's lead.
48:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:19 Speaker 03 But she should have been nominated.
48:21 Speaker 02 Is it lead?
48:21 Bill Simmons? I think you could have shoehorned it into Supporting to try to get.
48:25 Speaker 02 Are you a category purist?
48:26 Speaker 03 Not necessarily, but I don't think they played such fast and loose games with category fraud back in the eighties.
48:34 Bill Simmons? Here's where it goes, this is.
48:35 Speaker 03 I don't mind it at the end of the day, especially if someone, like, hasn't gotten an award and can get an easy one in Supporting where they can't compete in Lead.
48:43 Bill Simmons? What about Hopkins, 16 Minutes for Hannibal Lecter, Best Actor? 16 Minutes of the movie?
48:48 Speaker 03 That's fine with me.
48:49 Bill Simmons? Okay.
48:50 Speaker 03 I support it.
48:50 Bill Simmons? Three, three men who didn't get nominated? Charles Grodin in Midnight Run.
48:55 Speaker 02 That's tough.
48:55 Bill Simmons? Alan Rickman in Die Hard.
48:57 Speaker 02 Also tough.
48:59 Bill Simmons? Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons. What the fuck are we doing?
49:03 Speaker 03 They nominated Dangerous Liaison for Best Picture and did not nominate Malkovich is wild. Truly wild. But what's funny is like you mentioned Die Hard. And you say Die Hard to me now. I was like, well, Die Hard is not getting a nominee for something. But Working Girl is such an improbable. Doesn't it seem like now? Working Girl feels like, I mean, not an Enora year necessarily, but like. You're like, oh, this is just an 80s rom com. And I think growing up, it wouldn't have occurred to me that this was a six.
49:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I was surprised by six, but it was a massive movie.
49:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:35 Bill Simmons? Malkovich really hurts.
49:37 Speaker 03 It does.
49:37 Bill Simmons? I don't understand that one. We saw this movie when I was in college. It was right when I was really getting into movies from like a bigger picture way. And we just, we all left the theater and we're like, holy fucking that movie.
49:50 Speaker 03 Dangerous Liaisons.
49:51 Bill Simmons? And we were like.
49:51 Speaker 03 Uma.
49:52 Bill Simmons? That Malkovich. Yeah. I mean, just everything. But we were like. That was like, is that like the greatest acting performance of all? Like, we didn't know any better.
49:59 Speaker 03 Who was nominated?
50:02 Bill Simmons? So Best Supporting, Kevin Kline won for Fish That Saved Wanda, Al Guinness, Little Dorrit, Martin Landau, Tucker, The Man in His Dream. River Phoenix running an empty. I don't mind that. And then Dean Stockwell Married to the Mob.
50:14 Speaker 03 Okay. So there's just some old timers.
50:16 Bill Simmons? They just, they.
50:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, and Kevin Kline.
50:19 Bill Simmons? And Kevin Kline wins.
50:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:21 Bill Simmons? Groden, I think bothers me the most other than Malkovich, but regardless. $28 million budget for Working Girl made $103 million. And then lived on for the next 38 years and counting and then son.
50:32 Speaker 03 Guys, we used to live in a better world. Where Working Girl could make over a hundred million dollars and get nominated for six Oscars. Yeah.
50:41 Bill Simmons? Well, Roger Ebert, four stars.
50:44 Speaker 03 Raj.
50:46 Bill Simmons? The plot of Working Girl is put together like clockwork. Carries you along while you're watching it, but reconstruct it later and you'll see the craftsmanship.
50:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's called Cinderella, but that's fine.
51:00 Bill Simmons? Working Girl is Nichols returning to the top of his form and Griffith finding hers.
51:05 Speaker 03 Agreed. Yeah.
51:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah, solid.
51:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, because they didn't like Biloxi Blues very much. Yeah. I defend Heartburn. Big time, even though it was not well received. I like to think about Heartburn more than I like watching Heartburn.
51:18 Bill Simmons? Craig, who's Melanie Griffith for your generation? I mean, Dakota Johnson? I don't know.
51:23 Speaker 03 Yeah. I think that's fair.
51:27 Speaker 02 I mean, she kind of, you know.
51:28 Bill Simmons? She's single.
51:28 Speaker 02 Similar-ish beginnings.
51:31 Bill Simmons? Let's do the categories.
51:32 Speaker 02 Okay.
51:33 Speaker 03 We just saw a Dakota Johnson movie earlier this week together.
51:35 Speaker 02 She has really shiny hair.
51:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
51:37 Bill Simmons? Okay.
51:39 Speaker 03 But a similar smile.
51:40 Speaker 02 She does, but I, when we were talking about Don Johnson's hair, I was like, oh, maybe the hair is from Don Johnson.
51:45 Speaker 03 Yeah. And the smile is from Melanie.
51:46 Speaker 02 It's really, really shiny.
51:47 Bill Simmons? What a legend. Most rewatchable scene. Opening credits, I'm just throwing it out.
51:52 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
51:52 Bill Simmons? Just really good.
51:53 Speaker 02 100%.
51:54 Bill Simmons? With the Carly Simon sign and the Statue of Liberty and you get to see all of New York and then it's like, ah, there are the Twin Towers and then they're standing on the ferry.
52:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then it goes right into them on the ferry and the shoes and the, you know, they get that in in the first few minutes.
52:07 Bill Simmons? It feels like it's cheesy.
52:09 Speaker 02 Well, it's on my list.
52:10 Bill Simmons? No, we have, we have a bunch.
52:11 Speaker 03 I don't know.
52:12 Bill Simmons? It feels like it's gonna be cheesy and then it's not cheesy. It's like, I'm actually enjoying this little.
52:17 Speaker 03 And you liked it both times because you said you liked watching this movie the second time more than the first time.
52:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
52:21 Speaker 03 Did you, what did you bump on the first time?
52:24 Bill Simmons? Because I was just, every time it's like the hair and the clothes.
52:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:28 Bill Simmons? And you're just like, oh, my God, this movie feels.
52:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:30 Bill Simmons? My son walked by the TV at one point and he's like, what the fuck is this movie? Like, he was just completely confused by it.
52:36 Speaker 03 He's like, is this a Mad Max movie?
52:38 Bill Simmons? He was like, what is this?
52:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:42 Bill Simmons? All right, next one I have is Bob from Arbitrage in the limo with Tess. Because it's so fascinating to see Spacey. We're gonna party. I'm starting a new category.
52:55 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
52:57 Bill Simmons? The Kevin Spacey doing cocaine, showing porn and inappropriately sexually harassing Tess in a limo award for craziest foreshadowing of a real life event.
53:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yes.
53:06 Bill Simmons? I don't know if whoever had that category out again.
53:08 Speaker 02 I had this in what aged the best.
53:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's like, wow.
53:11 Speaker 02 They knew.
53:12 Bill Simmons? Wow.
53:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, Mike Nichols, perceptive.
53:14 Bill Simmons? I really liked that when she types in David Lutz is a sleazoid pimp with a tiny little deck.
53:19 Speaker 03 Sleazoid pimp is incredible. It's one of my most 1987 things. The word sleazoid, which we don't use anymore, and that's sad.
53:27 Bill Simmons? Tess in Sigourney's office, I'm just gonna call her Sigourney throughout the movie.
53:30 Speaker 03 Okay.
53:30 Bill Simmons? I know she's Catherine. She's talking German?
53:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:33 Speaker 02 Oh, sure, when she calls to make the, uh.
53:35 Speaker 03 She's like, huh.
53:37 Bill Simmons? She's just really turning it on, but then gives the Tess. You don't get anywhere in this world by waiting for what you want to come to you. Make it happen.
53:47 Speaker 03 While wearing her ski boots over her nylons. Yeah. Before she gets on the phone and starts speaking in German, she says, well, did you tell them it was me?
53:57 Bill Simmons? Right.
53:57 Speaker 03 Which is just like, that's some, that's some special energy to bring to the world.
54:00 Bill Simmons? I also like how Melanie Griffith is reacting off of what a pompous, like, piece of shit boss she is, but she's just kind of.
54:07 Speaker 03 She's absorbing.
54:08 Bill Simmons? She's trying to absorb and she's actually like genuinely interested in her answers.
54:12 Speaker 02 I really like when she asks Sigourney, like, well, what happens if he doesn't propose? And Sigourney goes, I really don't think that's a variable.
54:19 Bill Simmons? Right.
54:20 Speaker 03 And I'm me, so.
54:22 Bill Simmons? Also, Good Office, get a nice little shot.
54:24 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
54:25 Bill Simmons? Can hear the ferry in the background.
54:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
54:26 Bill Simmons? All right, so you got that, uh, Tess goes to the bar and meets Harrison Ford.
54:30 Speaker 03 That's mine.
54:31 Speaker 02 Obviously.
54:32 Speaker 03 That's my number one.
54:32 Speaker 02 100%.
54:33 Speaker 03 I have a head for business and a bod for sin.
54:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:36 Speaker 03 All-timer.
54:38 Speaker 07 I've been looking for you.
54:41 Speaker 04 Why, do you know me?
54:43 Speaker 07 No, no. I promised myself that when I saw you, I would get to know you. You're the first woman I've seen at one of these damn things that dresses like a woman, not like a woman thinks a man would dress if he was a woman.
54:55 Speaker 04 Thank you, I guess.
54:57 Speaker 07 What are you doing here?
54:59 Speaker 04 Actually, I'm looking for someone myself. His name is Jack Traynor. He works at Dewey Stone. Do you know if he's here?
55:06 Speaker 07 Why are you looking for him?
55:10 Bill Simmons? You're the first woman I've seen at one of these things that dresses like a woman, not like a woman thinks a man would dress if.
55:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:17 Bill Simmons? I thought that's a good line.
55:18 Speaker 02 The costuming throughout is great, but you see all the other women in their suits. And they clock her and look at her, like, what's wrong with her?
55:25 Speaker 03 She shows up and thinking that she completely misdressed for this occasion, which she kind of did, but.
55:29 Bill Simmons? She looks, she looks great.
55:31 Speaker 03 Oh, this is the best.
55:31 Speaker 02 She looks incredible.
55:33 Speaker 03 So good.
55:34 Bill Simmons? Really good Harrison Ford double take shot.
55:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:39 Bill Simmons? This seems really good. I, this has one of my favorite moves that you can do in a rom-com. The guy. Not saying who he is.
55:46 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
55:47 Bill Simmons? When he meets our lead character is just like, that works 98% of the time.
55:52 Speaker 03 Uh, the costume designer, Anne Roth, one of the things that she said was like, I cheated with that dress. She was like, because no way could Sigourney Weaver wear that dress because it's way too short on her. Sigourney Weaver is so tall that it would just look silly on her, but she was like, who cares?
56:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:05 Speaker 03 It's fine.
56:06 Bill Simmons? Craig, when you write your AI rom com. Okay. Put in something about the guy who meets the lead character.
56:12 Speaker 03 And lies to her.
56:13 Bill Simmons? Doesn't admit that he's the character. Yeah, I didn't tell Liz who I was when I met her. She's like, don't you work the ringers? I say, no.
56:23 Bill Simmons? The, uh, I don't, maybe I, I might be alone on this for a rewatchable scene, but I like the party when, when Nick and Tess get in the fight after. And he goes, who the fuck died and made you Grace Kelly?
56:37 Speaker 03 That's a good line.
56:37 Bill Simmons? And then she comes back with, I am that steak. You can't just order me.
56:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:41 Bill Simmons? It's just fucking great screenwriting, but I like that scene. I like when they fight.
56:45 Speaker 02 It's good. She looks good in that one, too. The, I, because the incident where they had to shut down production happened on Staten Island. I, the whole time I was just watching, I was like, is this the one? Is this one? I don't think that that's the one.
56:57 Speaker 03 I think it's when she's, they're walking with a pizza box.
56:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:59 Speaker 03 Oh, you think it's the wedding?
57:00 Bill Simmons? No, I think it was the wedding because they had, that was the one they had to delay by a day.
57:04 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
57:05 Bill Simmons? But I think it was the wedding where she's dressed in the bridesmaid's outfit.
57:08 Speaker 03 Oh.
57:09 Speaker 02 Do you think she was so tanked because she couldn't stand being in that bright turquoise bridesmaid dress?
57:14 Bill Simmons? Might have been that.
57:14 Speaker 03 That was tough. Yeah.
57:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Uh, I really loved every single moment of the luau wedding party.
57:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course.
57:22 Bill Simmons? The drinks are great.
57:23 Speaker 02 Dun, dun, dun.
57:25 Bill Simmons? The bar vendors and the waiters.
57:26 Speaker 02 I went to a wedding over Memorial Day and they played that song and I was like, this is a working girl wedding song. Where am I?
57:32 Bill Simmons? Why didn't you have a luau wedding?
57:34 Speaker 02 Uh, because we didn't drink big enough, you know?
57:36 Bill Simmons? Any regrets? Would you do it over again?
57:38 Speaker 02 Because Zach planned it. So I, you know, I wanted to do City Hall and he planned the wedding. But maybe we should do a renewal of vows luau.
57:45 Bill Simmons? A renewal vows luau wedding?
57:47 Speaker 02 That would be great.
57:48 Bill Simmons? Can Joanna be invited?
57:49 Speaker 02 Please. I also, I never, I didn't have a 40th birthday party. So maybe it can be 40th birthday vow renewal luau situation.
57:57 Speaker 03 Working girl homage.
57:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, let's go.
57:59 Speaker 03 We need a tall, like, just red 40 drinks, whatever it is that Harrison was drinking.
58:04 Speaker 02 With the straws from Dunkin' Donuts.
58:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
58:07 Bill Simmons? Craig, have you ever been to a themed wedding? Hmm, no. See, I think this was a 70s, 80s thing that went away. Cause we took weddings less seriously when I was a kid.
58:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:17 Bill Simmons? And then they eventually had to become these big, serious, major events.
58:20 Speaker 03 I love that when the bride enters the bathroom in tears and she's like, my husband says it looks like Nicaragua.
58:27 Speaker 03 To be go too big.
58:29 Bill Simmons? We get a Ricky Lake cameo out of nowhere.
58:31 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
58:32 Speaker 03 Duchovny's in this, too.
58:34 Bill Simmons? Duchovny's in the scene when they fight.
58:36 Speaker 03 He's, he's also in the like surprise.
58:38 Bill Simmons? Oh, he's in the wedding, too? Yeah.
58:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
58:40 Bill Simmons? Duchovny's got this slicked back hair thing going on.
58:43 Speaker 03 It's his, uh, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead hair.
58:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Um, I like when she dances with Trask, too. I like Trask, I think he's good.
58:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Couple more, Jack telling her where he got a scar. You guys talked about that scene earlier.
58:56 Speaker 02 No, no, that's a different shirtless scene.
58:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:59 Speaker 02 When after he's come back from Memphis and he's at the office.
59:02 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah, yeah.
59:03 Speaker 02 And he's on the phone.
59:04 Bill Simmons? Gotcha.
59:04 Speaker 02 And so he's doing like the, like gym class, change the shirt while the phone thing, you know? It's great.
59:09 Speaker 03 And all the ladies in the office beyond, outside of his window, start cheering for him. And he's like, yeah, um, that was, you know, you like, uh, you imagine what offices are like, uh, growing up watching these things. So growing up watching like the Mary Tyler Moore show is like, okay, you always have a bottle of booze in the bottom drawer of your desk. And then watching this, I was like, and you have fresh shirts.
59:30 Speaker 02 Of course.
59:31 Speaker 03 In case you just flew back from Memphis.
59:32 Bill Simmons? And shoes and sneakers.
59:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
59:34 Bill Simmons? All kinds of things. Nobody would steal anything. I thought it was believable post-coitus bed talk with them. They usually ruin those scenes in rom-coms.
59:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was charming. I mean, well, oh my God.
59:48 Bill Simmons? Just laughing hysterically, my favorite. Craig, we might have to break that scene down on Ringer Movies.
59:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:53 Bill Simmons? I just, I have so many thoughts. It's one of the funniest two-minute scenes of this century. It's really, really good. Um, couple more. Jack visits Catherine with Tess hiding in the apartment. Yeah. I always like that when we have to do the Three's Company. Can Big Jack come out to play? Makes me laugh. The boardroom showdown, got that. The elevator showdown. Yeah. And then, uh, I really like when she meets the new assistant at the end. Oh, yeah. And that whole interaction is so good. Amy Aquino, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:00:23 Speaker 04 I, uh, I expect you to call me Tess. I don't expect you to fetch me coffee unless you're getting some for yourself. And, um,
1:00:34 Speaker 04 the rest will just make up as we go along. Okay?
1:00:41 Bill Simmons? Does the thing about only get me coffee if you're also getting whatever she says? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just like, oh, this is good. She's learned lessons. And the rest will make it up as we go along.
1:00:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:52 Bill Simmons? And then Mike Nichols is like, but don't get too excited and just hand back. You're just a rat in the middle. Yeah, you're just a mouse in the, in the trap. All right. So what's your most rewatchable?
1:01:01 Speaker 02 Can I add one?
1:01:02 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:01:03 Speaker 02 So after they meet, Harrison Ford and Tess meet, and then she passes out from the valium and he takes her home and props her up in the chair and then is doing like a whole solo date with her.
1:01:16 Speaker 07 Would you like a blanket?
1:01:21 Speaker 07 I guess not.
1:01:24 Speaker 07 Uh, it's too late for coffee.
1:01:30 Speaker 07 Herb tea.
1:01:33 Speaker 07 Herb tea?
1:01:36 Speaker 07 I don't have any.
1:01:38 Speaker 07 It always sounds good when people offer it to me when I'm in your shape.
1:01:44 Speaker 02 He's like, would you like some nightcap? Would you like some tea? And she's flapping over. He is so funny. And he is just, I mean, he is acting against, you know, Melanie Griffith as a red doll.
1:01:54 Speaker 03 He's very funny. I do have it under What Age the Worst.
1:01:58 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:01:58 Speaker 03 But.
1:01:59 Speaker 02 But he didn't. And in the end, he did the right thing.
1:02:02 Speaker 03 Mostly. He took off her dress, which he didn't need to do. Got in the bed with her while he is also naked. I'm saying, put her on your bed, sleep on the couch.
1:02:09 Speaker 02 We don't know if he's naked. I'm with you on the couch.
1:02:12 Speaker 03 Bare leg, bare shirt. No shirt.
1:02:13 Bill Simmons? So I had, I had for What Age the Worst for this whole thing? That they just wouldn't have this scene in the movie now?
1:02:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's true.
1:02:19 Speaker 03 But.
1:02:20 Bill Simmons? But it was kind, there's kind of an innocence to it, but I appreciate it.
1:02:23 Speaker 03 When he says, would you like a nightcap? No. And he's like, would you like? He's like, this always makes me feel better when I'm in your position. Like, it is funny.
1:02:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:29 Speaker 03 It's really funny. That part is really funny.
1:02:31 Speaker 02 The whole thing about like the, the apartment may be not clean and like, I don't mind, but people who come like.
1:02:37 Speaker 03 It's very funny.
1:02:38 Speaker 02 It's really, really good Harrison Ford.
1:02:40 Speaker 03 It's very good.
1:02:40 Speaker 02 And, and good physical comedy.
1:02:42 Speaker 03 I would like to add the farce of Melanie Griffith pretending to be the boss. Joan Cusack pretending to be her secretary.
1:02:51 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:02:51 Speaker 03 While Morgan is trying to get in and Harrison Ford's in the office.
1:02:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:55 Bill Simmons? So what do you have for most of the watchable?
1:02:57 Speaker 02 I mean, I'm, the opening, I think it's, I think the opening. That's hard, though. With the wedding and then also the elevators. Do I have to pick the whole movie?
1:03:08 Bill Simmons? You have to pick. It's all part of the category.
1:03:09 Speaker 02 The elevators. The elevators is so good.
1:03:11 Bill Simmons? And nobody's ever asked that on a rewatchables.
1:03:14 Speaker 02 I know, but I'm so excited. It took me like my second watch to find any like What Age the Worst. I was too happy.
1:03:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:03:21 Speaker 02 Um, I, I picked the wedding. I'm not the, uh, no, I picked the elevator. No, I picked the elevator at the end.
1:03:26 Bill Simmons? Okay. What do you have, Joanna?
1:03:28 Speaker 03 Uh, the meet cute at the bar.
1:03:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:30 Speaker 03 Over.
1:03:31 Speaker 02 It's really good.
1:03:32 Speaker 03 I, I don't think he'd be ordering gold tequila, but other than that, ten, ten, no notes.
1:03:35 Bill Simmons? I have the bar.
1:03:36 Speaker 03 Okay. Yeah.
1:03:37 Bill Simmons? What's the most 1988 thing about this movie? I have seven candidates, but give me your best one.
1:03:43 Speaker 02 Um, the eyeshadow.
1:03:45 Speaker 03 The hair.
1:03:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:47 Bill Simmons? So I had, I had all the haircuts.
1:03:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:51 Bill Simmons? The makeup and the eye shadow.
1:03:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:53 Speaker 03 The shoulder, when she's, when they have sex and they're undressing each other in his apartment and she's got like a translucent blouse on, but you can see the shoulder pads.
1:04:01 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:04:02 Speaker 03 Through the translucent, yeah, that's shoulder pads.
1:04:04 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:04:04 Bill Simmons? I have a couple more runners up because the hair is the answer.
1:04:08 Speaker 03 They feel great.
1:04:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:09 Speaker 03 What about the powder blue ruffled tux look at the wedding?
1:04:13 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:04:15 Bill Simmons? The twin towers sadly.
1:04:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, sure.
1:04:19 Bill Simmons? Uh, multiple women calling themselves secretary?
1:04:22 Speaker 02 Yes, that's true.
1:04:23 Bill Simmons? I don't think that word's been said in 15 years.
1:04:26 Speaker 02 Well, Amy quite correctly said, yeah, if it's okay, I prefer assistant.
1:04:29 Speaker 03 Assistant, yeah.
1:04:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:30 Bill Simmons? Lark cigarettes?
1:04:32 Speaker 03 Oh.
1:04:33 Speaker 02 Oh, good one.
1:04:33 Bill Simmons? I don't even know what they.
1:04:34 Speaker 02 I don't know what those are either.
1:04:35 Bill Simmons? Remember those.
1:04:35 Speaker 03 Me neither.
1:04:37 Bill Simmons? A lead movie character regularly reading newspapers and magazines?
1:04:41 Speaker 03 What about radio being?
1:04:43 Bill Simmons? Radio being a thing?
1:04:45 Speaker 03 A thing.
1:04:45 Bill Simmons? But my number one other than the hair is Catherine's exercise bike.
1:04:49 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:04:50 Bill Simmons? That, that she gets on it. That thing looks like it's out of like 1884.
1:04:56 Speaker 03 That's very good.
1:04:56 Bill Simmons? Like, I think Taylor Sheridan used it for one of his go back shows. I think, I, I can't even, it looked like it weighed 140 pounds. It's like made of wood.
1:05:05 Speaker 02 I mean, it's clever though, because you're also like, you're sort of doing a crunch. You're using the core as you're, as you're pedaling. It looks hard.
1:05:12 Bill Simmons? And they have like the old mid eighties TV with like the VCR on it. It was like, it's just the most eighties scene in all the movies somehow.
1:05:20 Speaker 03 The, uh, all the, all the computer monitors.
1:05:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:23 Speaker 03 All the printouts.
1:05:23 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
1:05:24 Speaker 02 The computers.
1:05:25 Bill Simmons? The email, yeah, all that stuff. Okay. Let's take one more break and we'll do what's age the best.
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1:05:59 Bill Simmons? All right, what's age the best? What do you got?
1:06:01 Speaker 02 Let the river run. The, the song and, and the score.
1:06:06 Speaker 02 And the way they use it, you know, when the chandelier is coming, when they're
1:06:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:06:10 Speaker 02 Coming down and it's just like the organ, like you're in a church, but it's let the river run and like, and then what's it for?
1:06:15 Bill Simmons? It's like rom com gospel music.
1:06:17 Speaker 02 It's really, yeah, but it's really, really well done. And I do also think like that, like the bigness of it, that first shot of the Statue of Liberty and you got all the drums going. And it's like, oh, okay, we're.
1:06:29 Bill Simmons? I'll go further. It shouldn't work.
1:06:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:06:31 Bill Simmons? It should have, it should have failed.
1:06:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, but.
1:06:33 Bill Simmons? Like, we're gonna make rom com gospel music and that should just like, that shouldn't work.
1:06:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:06:38 Bill Simmons? And it works.
1:06:38 Speaker 03 It works.
1:06:39 Bill Simmons? Gets me. I'm singing it, walking into the pod.
1:06:42 Speaker 03 I love it. That gets stuck in my head all the time. That song gets stuck in my head all the time.
1:06:46 Speaker 02 It's anthemic. It's.
1:06:47 Bill Simmons? What do you have?
1:06:48 Speaker 03 Supportive work husband, Jack Traynor.
1:06:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's great.
1:06:52 Bill Simmons? Oh.
1:06:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:06:52 Bill Simmons? You liked when they were making toast together and buttering it?
1:06:55 Speaker 03 It was so cute in the kitchen seat at the end. And he packs her a lunchbox?
1:06:58 Speaker 02 Which he got monogrammed very quickly because.
1:07:00 Bill Simmons? I'm still waiting for my first fun morning experience like that.
1:07:03 Speaker 03 Say a report to my office?
1:07:04 Speaker 02 Tomorrow morning. Right? And they do have to go back and like finish their contracts. Yeah.
1:07:08 Speaker 03 It seems like they've been living together for a little while when she goes. Yeah.
1:07:12 Speaker 02 Like, how did you get, you know, like the Lunchables and everything?
1:07:15 Speaker 03 Or something like that. Yeah.
1:07:17 Bill Simmons? Do you and Zach like share a toast and it pops out of the toaster and you butter it and then he puts jam on it?
1:07:23 Speaker 02 He does bring me coffee though. So, yeah.
1:07:25 Bill Simmons? Really?
1:07:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, he does. Every morning. Yeah, it is very nice. And he's the barista.
1:07:30 Bill Simmons? Zach plans weddings and brings you coffee?
1:07:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:07:33 Bill Simmons? It's really Renaissance, man.
1:07:34 Speaker 03 The full package, the full package.
1:07:37 Bill Simmons? I have for what's aged the best other than David Duchovny's cameo. And I really love the round table that they have near the end of the movie. It's just, I was almost thinking about it for The Ringer, could we do like a 12 person podcast with this giant round table? What's aged the best? Jack's tequila gold order, which seemed really rambunctious in the late eighties. Like you order tequila, it was basically like doing cocaine.
1:08:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:01 Bill Simmons? It's like the most dangerous order.
1:08:02 Speaker 02 That's how she reacts.
1:08:03 Bill Simmons? But just that he was a tequila guy. Now it's like tequila's, you know, one of the go to.
1:08:08 Speaker 03 That's my drink, tequila. But just neat. Yeah.
1:08:12 Bill Simmons? I'm telling you, in the eighties, people were afraid of tequila.
1:08:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:16 Bill Simmons? It was like, you drink tequila, you'll blackout.
1:08:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:08:19 Bill Simmons? I don't even know what tequila gold is.
1:08:20 Speaker 03 It's cheaper than it, you know, what I think a jack trainer would order.
1:08:24 Bill Simmons? Jack being on tequila early, though?
1:08:26 Speaker 06 It was also a double and he got two of them. So they really had four shots in like 10 seconds.
1:08:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:08:30 Bill Simmons? And she had taken four valence.
1:08:33 Speaker 03 Should check the milligrams.
1:08:35 Speaker 02 Live and learn.
1:08:35 Speaker 03 Live and learn.
1:08:36 Bill Simmons? What's age the best? This will be my Harrison Ford contribution to whatever.
1:08:40 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:08:41 Bill Simmons? Great clothes in this movie by him. I was admiring all of the outfits and the tie choices. It wasn't 1988 at all. It actually felt like you could wear a lot of those suits. I was impressed.
1:08:52 Speaker 02 I mean, Joanna mentioned Anne Roth did the costumes, who is like a legend and like across the board.
1:08:58 Bill Simmons? All solid colors for the most part.
1:08:59 Speaker 02 But I mean, because once Tess has her makeover, it's like really communicating something both like very eighties, but very different about who that character is or who that character is trying to be like the Sigourney Weaver's entire closet is so.
1:09:12 Speaker 03 All of her skirt suits.
1:09:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, the details are spot on and they really do make the characters. But he, I agree that he looks great. His overcoat, he's got a scarf, you know?
1:09:22 Bill Simmons? Great, great, great clothes. Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, also great clothes.
1:09:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:09:27 Bill Simmons? So it's like a sneaky thing when you have like the rom com guy who's got to be a wealthy guy. The clothes have to work.
1:09:33 Speaker 02 And the clothes fit, which I would just give a note to all men now.
1:09:37 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
1:09:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:37 Speaker 03 You can find a tailor.
1:09:38 Speaker 02 Clothes don't fit anymore.
1:09:40 Bill Simmons? I have for what's age the best, the Melanie Griffith, hot mess, stealth smart, baby voice archetype.
1:09:46 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:09:47 Bill Simmons? As a movie character, I'm always in.
1:09:49 Speaker 02 Who else you got?
1:09:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:09:50 Bill Simmons? I don't know. It's just, I'm in when it's like, oh, I'm gonna underestimate her. And there's way more going on here, but nobody sees it. But we, the audience, see it, but nobody else does yet. It just works.
1:10:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:03 Bill Simmons? So Craig, add that to the rom com.
1:10:05 Speaker 03 The, I mean, I guess.
1:10:06 Speaker 02 The Duty Holiday. Princess Diaries.
1:10:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:10:08 Speaker 02 It's another one.
1:10:09 Speaker 03 Sure.
1:10:10 Speaker 02 Well, I guess she's not really baby voice.
1:10:11 Speaker 03 She's just a teenager.
1:10:13 Speaker 02 Well, but she doesn't believe in herself.
1:10:15 Bill Simmons? And double was proud of the first half hour when Meryl Streep's just ripping her a new one.
1:10:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:20 Bill Simmons? Um.
1:10:21 Speaker 02 Before the makeover. Yeah.
1:10:23 Bill Simmons? What's age the best trying to guess which scenes Melanie Griffith filmed right after she was out 4:30. It's weirdly like a great part of rewatching this movie.
1:10:31 Speaker 03 And you can win that game, actually. You can.
1:10:35 Bill Simmons? How about this tidbit? I don't know where, what category to put this, but I'll put it in what's age the best. Working Girl became an NBC series in 1990. Because this is what we did in the 80s and early 90s. We, a movie was successful and they had no idea.
1:10:50 Speaker 03 This is before they turned them into Broadway musicals?
1:10:53 Bill Simmons? Right. Do you know who starred as Tess?
1:10:55 Speaker 02 I do not.
1:10:56 Speaker 03 I don't. Will you give us a hint?
1:10:59 Bill Simmons? Want to play 20 questions?
1:11:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, okay.
1:11:02 Bill Simmons? Go ahead.
1:11:03 Speaker 03 Burnett or blonde?
1:11:04 Speaker 02 Well, you have to say, I was gonna say, is she blonde?
1:11:07 Speaker 03 Is she blonde?
1:11:08 Bill Simmons? No.
1:11:08 Speaker 02 No, okay.
1:11:09 Speaker 03 Is she Burnett?
1:11:10 Bill Simmons? Yes.
1:11:11 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:11:14 Speaker 02 Is she still working today?
1:11:15 Bill Simmons? Yes.
1:11:17 Speaker 03 Is she more of a TV, is she a TV actress?
1:11:20 Bill Simmons? No.
1:11:22 Speaker 02 Has she been in a rewatchables movie?
1:11:24 Bill Simmons? Yes.
1:11:27 Speaker 02 Okay. Has she won an Oscar?
1:11:30 Bill Simmons? This is really fun.
1:11:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:31 Bill Simmons? She won an Oscar. Yes.
1:11:34 Speaker 02 Okay. Dark hair, has won an Oscar, has been a rewatchables movie. Still working. I'm like, my hands, I'm like controlling them under the table. I'm like, I can't, I want to reach for my computer. So I'm like, okay. It's not Sandra Bullock because she's not really still working. It is Sandra Bullock?
1:11:53 Speaker 03 Sandra Bullock?
1:11:54 Speaker 02 She's not working.
1:11:55 Speaker 06 I mean.
1:11:56 Speaker 02 Well, she hasn't been working, she hasn't made a movies in a long time. She has her own life. Listen, people make choices, but it's Sandra Bullock?
1:12:01 Speaker 03 Take the win.
1:12:02 Bill Simmons? It's Sandra Bullock.
1:12:02 Speaker 02 Oh, okay, wow, okay.
1:12:04 Bill Simmons? Sandra Bullock, 12 episodes of Working Girl.
1:12:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:12:07 Bill Simmons? Somewhere on YouTube.
1:12:08 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:12:08 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:12:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah. There you go.
1:12:10 Speaker 03 Does she have the hair, Craig, does she have the hair and the makeup and everything?
1:12:13 Speaker 06 That I don't know. I'll look that up though.
1:12:14 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:12:15 Bill Simmons? What was her Oscar? I forget.
1:12:17 Speaker 03 Blind Side.
1:12:18 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
1:12:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:12:21 Speaker 03 You ready for that rewatchable?
1:12:22 Bill Simmons? That's, Van, Van's already, Van didn't just request to be on it. He's just like, I have to be on it. Yeah.
1:12:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:12:31 Bill Simmons? What's aged the best this quote? Never burn bridges. Today's junior prick, tomorrow's senior partner.
1:12:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:12:36 Bill Simmons? Good lesson in life.
1:12:37 Speaker 03 Yep.
1:12:37 Bill Simmons? And then I have the officer and a gentleman homage when they're kissing and one of the secretaries says, way to go. Way to go. Which is like, I, that could either age the worst or the best.
1:12:49 Speaker 03 No, no, I love it.
1:12:49 Speaker 02 It's really good.
1:12:50 Speaker 03 That's great.
1:12:52 Bill Simmons? Big tuna burger award for best use of food or drink. I'll give you champagne on Spacey or the dim sum dumplings.
1:12:57 Speaker 03 Dim sum dumpling, uh, the souvlaki.
1:13:01 Speaker 02 Sure. I mean, I was gonna say tequila.
1:13:03 Speaker 03 Tequila shots, wedding drinks.
1:13:06 Speaker 02 And then, and then the wedding drink is the other one.
1:13:08 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's the wedding.
1:13:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:13:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:13:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:13:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Okay, fair. What do you have for great shot, Gordon? Uh, it's the opening credits, right?
1:13:15 Speaker 02 I was gonna say the last shot. That, that last shot when she is like, because it is like a whole idea about the movie. And it is otherwise like, not a saccharine movie, but I think that last shot adds like a lot of ideas to what you're supposed to take away from it. And you also like, think about it, you know, it's famous, right? It's the finest, it's just her and, and then it's everyone.
1:13:37 Speaker 03 That is the most famous shot in the movie, I think, or her on the ferry at some point. I would say there's a, after Baldwin cheats on her, and I think basically she spends a night on the ferry. There's a shot of her on the ferry with just like a fog machine behind her. And then you get this crazy, uh, it's a helicopter shot over the water into the night skyline, but it's sped up, so it looks like a drone did it.
1:13:58 Bill Simmons? It almost looks fake.
1:13:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's cool. Yeah.
1:14:01 Bill Simmons? Keep Cuddy Pursuit of Happiness Award, best needle drop. I'll give you Lady in Red by Krista Bird or the Pointer Sisters with I'm So Excited.
1:14:08 Speaker 02 So Let the River Run is not eligible.
1:14:10 Bill Simmons? Not eligible.
1:14:10 Speaker 02 Okay, it's obviously Lady in Red.
1:14:12 Speaker 03 It's definitely Lady in Red.
1:14:13 Speaker 02 They milk it too, you know, they give you like a long, long intro and you're just like, oh my God, is this really, they're doing Lady in Red?
1:14:20 Speaker 03 The whole time and then they dance.
1:14:22 Bill Simmons? That's one of those karaoke songs that it's almost weird if somebody picks it where they're just like.
1:14:27 Speaker 02 It's not almost.
1:14:27 Bill Simmons? I've never seen you lose. You're like, what's this guy doing?
1:14:30 Speaker 02 So slow.
1:14:30 Speaker 03 You have to really commit to it.
1:14:33 Speaker 02 It's also like, everyone has to have had tequila at that point.
1:14:37 Speaker 03 Half ass Lady in Red. Um, did, fun fact, did you know that, I'm sure you did, um, that they first cut the opening to The Eagles' Witchy Woman?
1:14:48 Speaker 03 And everyone liked it and Mike Nichols told Carly Simon that and she's like, how dare you?
1:14:53 Bill Simmons? And upped their game.
1:14:54 Speaker 02 That absolutely ruins the movie.
1:14:57 Speaker 03 I agree.
1:14:57 Speaker 02 Witchy woman.
1:14:58 Speaker 03 Witchy woman.
1:14:59 Speaker 02 So bad.
1:15:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, then Mike Nichols called her, he's like, we're gonna use, we're gonna use it at the end, but we're gonna.
1:15:03 Bill Simmons? It really fucks the movie up.
1:15:05 Speaker 03 Yeah. The Eagles, witchy, ooh, witchy woman.
1:15:07 Bill Simmons? Good song, but not, not, not for that. Uh, chess rock, bro, Brock Laner's award for best character name, can I submit Doreen Demucci?
1:15:14 Speaker 03 It wasn't me popping Doreen Demucci in on a bed.
1:15:17 Bill Simmons? Doreen Demucci.
1:15:18 Speaker 02 Or a cast is a good runner up.
1:15:20 Speaker 03 Doreen Demucci.
1:15:21 Bill Simmons? I'm so happy to give this out with Amanda Dobbins here. The Amanda Dobbins Award for best piece of real estate.
1:15:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:15:26 Bill Simmons? One of the great categories.
1:15:27 Speaker 02 This is like one of my great, um, career achievements that this career exists. So you would think that I would go for the townhouse and it is a beautiful townhouse. However, when you see the exterior shots, it appears to be like on an avenue. I don't know whether that's Madison or Lex, but it looks a little busy.
1:15:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:15:46 Speaker 02 The office.
1:15:47 Speaker 03 That's what I was gonna say.
1:15:48 Speaker 02 Catherine Parker's office with that, with the view. I mean, the full harbor, like she has a corner, so she gets both Governor's Island and the Statue of Liberty. I don't know how a 30 year old transferring down from Boston is getting that office, but.
1:16:02 Speaker 03 Family money.
1:16:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, still, it's really.
1:16:05 Bill Simmons? I knew that was gonna be the answer.
1:16:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course.
1:16:07 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:16:07 Speaker 02 It's incredible.
1:16:08 Bill Simmons? Amanda's still up because you have a flex category.
1:16:10 Speaker 02 Okay, alright, so I know what I'm gonna do. It is, I just have to read the full thing. It is the Vincent Chase Award for are we sure this character was actually good at his job? Which goes to literally every single person in this movie besides Tess. What are we doing here? Okay, Jack Trainer, like, has had, not had an idea in 10 years. He desperately needs it, but he's also not gonna take the meeting at the work thing. He just wants to go drink with someone else instead. Then all he has to do is call someone in Memphis and be like, hey, come to.
1:16:45 Speaker 03 He takes a flight. He goes down, he glances.
1:16:47 Speaker 02 Sure, that's true, but here's what I'm saying, that's like half a day's work. Meanwhile, Catherine gets promoted or transferred down from Boston, immediately goes on a ski vacation? You know? Also is not bringing any ideas to the table as far as I can tell. Everyone else, all of the Trask
1:17:07 Bill Simmons? Not sold on any of the Trask people.
1:17:09 Speaker 02 They're just like, uh, he's not gonna do that. And then they get a phone call.
1:17:12 Speaker 03 That's such a good scene.
1:17:14 Speaker 02 Like, no one has ideas. No one's doing anything.
1:17:18 Speaker 03 Besides like checking their schedule. Trying to do things, but her printer's not working.
1:17:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, and also her party ideas are bad.
1:17:25 Speaker 03 They are bad.
1:17:25 Speaker 02 So I just, I, I mean, I guess mergers and acquisitions, I'm not sure if they're good at their jobs.
1:17:31 Bill Simmons? Arbitrage isn't doing well either.
1:17:32 Speaker 03 No, certainly not.
1:17:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's a good point on Jack.
1:17:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:37 Bill Simmons? I expected more from Harvard class of 1970. I don't know.
1:17:40 Speaker 03 Jack should have asked one question.
1:17:43 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:17:43 Speaker 03 I mean, that words are premise the movie, but like, one person was like, hey, has anyone heard of Tess?
1:17:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:48 Speaker 03 McGill, have you worked with her before? Should I work with her?
1:17:51 Speaker 02 I'd like, should the fact that I'm sort of in a relationship with her colleague have, you know, any impact on what's going on here? Maybe I should mention it.
1:17:59 Bill Simmons? Wouldn't Jack be like, Tess, where'd you go to college? Where'd you go to business school? Where are you from?
1:18:03 Speaker 03 School of hard knocks, school of life.
1:18:06 Bill Simmons? And that's a good one, Amanda.
1:18:07 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:18:08 Bill Simmons? I have the, uh, I don't know if I put this in the rundown for you all, but the Tom Cruise, which end do I light award for terrible on-screen smoking?
1:18:15 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:18:16 Bill Simmons? Goes to Sigourney in the office. Doesn't actually put the cigarette in her mouth. Does the classic, the character's supposed to be smoking.
1:18:24 Speaker 02 Right.
1:18:25 Bill Simmons? Does one of these, but when you see like, there's no, doesn't touch her lips.
1:18:29 Speaker 02 It's almost like she was so bad at it that they tried to cut it out, that they didn't have anything else for that one thing. Cause she only is smoking in that one scene and they barely show it.
1:18:38 Bill Simmons? And that's it.
1:18:38 Speaker 02 It might also be a character decision where they're like, she
1:18:42 Bill Simmons? No.
1:18:43 Speaker 02 She would not be a smoker, but it seems like she's just not good at it.
1:18:45 Bill Simmons? It's not, not what they did.
1:18:46 Speaker 02 That's okay. She's good at other things.
1:18:49 Bill Simmons? The butcher's girlfriend award for weak link of the film. What do you have?
1:18:53 Speaker 03 I don't think there is one.
1:18:55 Bill Simmons? What do you have?
1:18:56 Speaker 02 I mean, Doreen.
1:18:58 Bill Simmons? Doreen Demucci just having sex with Alec Baldwin and then showing up at the party?
1:19:02 Speaker 02 The reaction, I don't know if like, you're supposed to be looking at her face and emotional, uh, reaction in that moment. No, no, no, no, no. Once they catch her in the bedroom, but like her fake crying.
1:19:15 Speaker 03 Oh.
1:19:15 Speaker 02 As she is a stride Alec Baldwin.
1:19:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:19:19 Speaker 02 It's not believable.
1:19:21 Speaker 03 Okay. Shots fired at Doreen Demucci.
1:19:23 Bill Simmons? Candidate. I, um, don't get mad until I finish what I say here.
1:19:28 Speaker 02 Okay. Uh-oh.
1:19:30 Speaker 02 You, it's not too late, it's not too late to not do it.
1:19:33 Bill Simmons? No, don't get mad. Cause.
1:19:35 Speaker 03 Is this the one where you were gleefully saying earlier, you are excited to piss us off about?
1:19:39 Bill Simmons? No. This is an absolutely absurd premise for a movie. It's absurd.
1:19:46 Speaker 03 So is Die Hard.
1:19:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:19:49 Bill Simmons? I said, I, you gotta let me finish.
1:19:51 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:19:51 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
1:19:53 Bill Simmons? And they pulled it off and it works.
1:19:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:19:56 Bill Simmons? It is a nine, I have it as a nine point six out of 10 on the no fucking way scale. That Tess is able, her boss goes away and she's just able to pull off like basically a merger with Trask. And she doesn't have an office and she's just in her office and nobody else in the, I mean, if you actually like really look at this. It's absurd.
1:20:19 Bill Simmons? Wow.
1:20:20 Speaker 03 Oh.
1:20:20 Bill Simmons? It's a set move.
1:20:21 Speaker 03 Swayze disagrees.
1:20:24 Speaker 06 Do we want to get that?
1:20:25 Bill Simmons? Well, we'll fix it later.
1:20:28 Bill Simmons? I'm on a, I'm on a heater.
1:20:29 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:20:30 Bill Simmons? Look, most movies are absurd. Pretty Woman's absurd. Most movies that we live are absurd. I just want to point out that this movie fundamentally is absolutely absurd that she pulls this off and then they're like.
1:20:49 Bill Simmons? Swayze's furious.
1:20:51 Speaker 06 This is what your, your take did to the studio.
1:20:53 Bill Simmons? My take, Swayze.
1:20:57 Bill Simmons? I think we leave that.
1:20:57 Speaker 06 I think we leave it too.
1:21:00 Speaker 02 I agree with you.
1:21:01 Bill Simmons? It's absurd.
1:21:03 Speaker 03 Of course it is.
1:21:04 Speaker 02 It aligns with my point that were anyone good at their job, then maybe they would notice what's going on here, you know?
1:21:11 Bill Simmons? First of all, she's fired, she's fired immediately. They're like, wait, you, you're, you're a secretary and you just arranged this merger? And then we caught you? Like pack your bags.
1:21:22 Speaker 06 How does nobody in the office leak it? Like everybody is seeing her pretend for two weeks. No one's telling anybody?
1:21:28 Bill Simmons? So good, you actually just buy into it. It's like, but Pretty Woman's the same way where you're like, yeah, I think, I think this would happen. He would follow along with this hooker on Hollywood Boulevard.
1:21:37 Speaker 03 Percent matters if the premise for a movie is absurd, if the human emotion is, works. Right.
1:21:43 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:21:45 Bill Simmons? What's aged the worst?
1:21:48 Bill Simmons? I have a lot.
1:21:49 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:21:52 Bill Simmons? This is a good one. You'd still be able to do your job in 2025 with a broken leg.
1:21:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:21:58 Speaker 03 Oh, remote work.
1:21:59 Speaker 02 Right.
1:22:00 Bill Simmons? Remote work is like, she's fine.
1:22:02 Speaker 03 Remote work ruins this movie. LinkedIn and remote work ruins this movie.
1:22:07 Speaker 02 I think she could be making phone calls and having ideas.
1:22:10 Speaker 03 But she's.
1:22:11 Speaker 02 If she's like a hard-earned MMA.
1:22:13 Speaker 06 Also, why can't you fly home with a broken leg?
1:22:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's.
1:22:16 Speaker 03 Cause she's boning her doctor.
1:22:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:22:19 Speaker 02 You gotta be thankful for our medical innovations, Craig.
1:22:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:22:23 Speaker 06 Sure.
1:22:24 Bill Simmons? I have a.
1:22:26 Speaker 06 1988, you couldn't fly home with a broken leg.
1:22:29 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:22:29 Bill Simmons? I have just about everyone's hair except Harrison Ford.
1:22:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely.
1:22:33 Bill Simmons? Probably nine out of 10 hairdos and even Duchovny. How women were treated in the workplace has not aged well. Uh, someone reading Motor Trend Magazine in bed?
1:22:42 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
1:22:43 Bill Simmons? I'm positive that doesn't happen anymore.
1:22:45 Speaker 03 It was the Lamborghini edition of Motor Trend Magazine. Yeah.
1:22:50 Bill Simmons? Sad shots of the Staten Island Ferry?
1:22:53 Speaker 03 Hasn't aged well?
1:22:56 Bill Simmons? No, just. I don't know, ferries, like, just.
1:23:00 Speaker 03 I had a, I had a colleague who, like, an editor at Vanity Fair, and he used to say that he took the Staten Island Ferry in, and he would talk about how he could, like, hear Carly Simon.
1:23:09 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:23:09 Speaker 03 Like, playing in his head.
1:23:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:23:11 Speaker 03 When the ferry would come in.
1:23:15 Bill Simmons? Alec Baldwin, whatever look he has at this point in his career. So, is he handsome in 1988? What's your relationship with him? Cause to me, he looks like he'd be playing on the Pittsburgh Penguins.
1:23:26 Speaker 02 He does, but it's like a styling.
1:23:28 Bill Simmons? He looks like a hockey player.
1:23:29 Speaker 02 Well, it's like, it's a styling issue, the hair and the way that, the amount of chest hair that is being, like, shown to us.
1:23:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:23:36 Speaker 02 But in that, the, the wedding scene, like, where he's in the tux.
1:23:40 Bill Simmons? You're going handsome.
1:23:42 Speaker 02 I mean, you see his face when he's clean shaven, I'm like, this is a very handsome man.
1:23:46 Bill Simmons? Cause he looks like all three of his brothers at the same time. And then he grew out of it and started to look like Alec Baldwin.
1:23:52 Speaker 03 I think he's greaseball handsome in this.
1:23:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:23:56 Bill Simmons? Um, where do you stand on Tess not wiping the hot dog crumb off of Jack's mouth? Cause it drives me crazy when I watch this movie.
1:24:03 Speaker 03 I think it's Suzuki.
1:24:04 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:24:04 Bill Simmons? Whatever it is, like whatever the way.
1:24:06 Speaker 03 I like it, but it's there.
1:24:07 Speaker 02 It's a nice touch.
1:24:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, I really like that it's there.
1:24:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:24:09 Bill Simmons? But that she doesn't fix it.
1:24:11 Speaker 02 They're not ready for that yet. They're not there, you know? She can't let her guard down yet.
1:24:16 Speaker 03 What do you make of Jack not washing his hands after he uses the restroom? And then he does like one of these with his finger in his mouth at the wedding?
1:24:22 Bill Simmons? Didn't like that at all. Didn't like that at all. Would he, Annie would say the worst, other than everything we covered?
1:24:27 Speaker 02 You know, Joe alluded to some of this, but sleeping together before you close the deal. I don't, it's like, uh, just, you know, girl boss wise, that's not what we would be doing anymore. You gotta wait.
1:24:37 Speaker 03 But a kiss so good, you drop your briefcase?
1:24:39 Speaker 02 That's fine. I, is it fine? I don't, I don't know.
1:24:43 Speaker 03 I don't hate, they're consenting adults. I don't hate that. I just like.
1:24:46 Speaker 02 It's also a little bit like, I always feel this way when like Travis Kelsey is reported to have like, stayed at Taylor Swift's house the night before, like a game. I'm like, you guys have a big meeting the next day, like eyes on the ball. You know what I'm saying?
1:25:00 Bill Simmons? She's, she's just has high standards.
1:25:02 Speaker 03 I, I, I see it.
1:25:03 Speaker 02 The other, the other thing I have is just like the concept of like, of, of hard copies, of, of making records of things, like whether it's the dictaphone or the day planner.
1:25:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:25:13 Speaker 02 Like great movie, you know, plot devices, but just really comes down to bite everyone in the ass. And if you're just doing this all on your phone where no one else has access.
1:25:23 Speaker 03 Catherine never knows.
1:25:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, you don't do the cloud, none of this happens.
1:25:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's true.
1:25:27 Speaker 02 Never do the cloud.
1:25:28 Speaker 03 Yeah. I really think he could have just left her dress on. That's all I'm saying. He was, he carried her up the stairs and that's great. But he had no need to take her dress off.
1:25:36 Speaker 02 You're right.
1:25:37 Bill Simmons? I think it's fair.
1:25:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:25:39 Bill Simmons? I think we've solved it.
1:25:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:25:41 Bill Simmons? The rough low Hannah Rubenek, perchance over acting word, clearly Kevin Spacey.
1:25:44 Speaker 03 Kevin Spacey?
1:25:44 Bill Simmons? I mean, he just.
1:25:45 Speaker 03 It's of an arbitrage.
1:25:46 Bill Simmons? All time dilemma. Uh, what do you have for a flex, Joanna?
1:25:49 Speaker 02 Okay. I contemplated.
1:25:52 Speaker 03 The Jamie Lee Curtis Unnecessary Nudity Award for the topless vacuuming. That was mine. Yeah, it's, okay. I mean, it's, and apparently it was Melanie Griffith's idea. Oh, I was gonna ask about that. Yeah, apparently she was like, this is what I would do. And Mike Nichols was like, okay. Just right out of the bender.
1:26:09 Bill Simmons? See, Melanie Griffith was lit.
1:26:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, she's just like, I wouldn't put a shirt on. He's like, sounds great.
1:26:15 Speaker 02 I mean, you do get overheated, you know?
1:26:18 Speaker 03 She's in heels.
1:26:19 Speaker 02 If you're really going for the vacuuming.
1:26:20 Speaker 03 Why is she in heels? No reason.
1:26:22 Speaker 02 Well, that's just to feel glamorous, you know? Sometimes you need it.
1:26:25 Speaker 03 But I am gonna get, actually, my actual award is the, uh, okay, motherfucker, exact moment when the movie goes up a notch. And it's at 36 minutes and 4 seconds when Harrison Ford aims his lopsided smile at Melanie Griffith's legs and enters the story. That's it. 36 minutes, 4 seconds in.
1:26:42 Speaker 02 Nice, tight close up.
1:26:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:26:43 Speaker 02 He looks great.
1:26:44 Speaker 03 And he just gives the little lopsided Harrison Ford's, and we're off to the races.
1:26:47 Bill Simmons? I like it. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest take award. Amanda gave hers. What do you have?
1:26:53 Speaker 03 I had this should have won Best Picture of a Rain Man.
1:26:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, agree.
1:26:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:26:57 Bill Simmons? Not even sure that's a hot take.
1:26:58 Speaker 03 Great. That's my tepid take.
1:27:00 Bill Simmons? No, I think you're right.
1:27:02 Bill Simmons? I, uh, I really worked on this one. I think I've done this before.
1:27:06 Speaker 02 I'm just getting my posture ready.
1:27:10 Bill Simmons? The Pointer Sisters, I'm so excited.
1:27:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:12 Bill Simmons? Is secretly the most important pop culture song of all time.
1:27:15 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm, okay.
1:27:17 Bill Simmons? It's in National Lampoon's Vacation in a pivotal Christie Brinkley scene.
1:27:21 Speaker 02 Right.
1:27:21 Bill Simmons? It's in Beverly Hills Cop.
1:27:23 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:27:24 Bill Simmons? It's in, we covered this in the Miami Vice Calderon's Revenge episode. The only TV show we've ever done the rewatchable is me and CR. It is in an absolutely crucial point in this Miami Vice episode. That's one of the most important episodes of the 80s.
1:27:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:39 Bill Simmons? It's in the second best, the NBA had these, it's fantastic commercials that they ran that really made the league more likeable. And the best one ever was One on One with Hall & Oates, where they would just show all these slow motion. The second best one ever was, I'm so excited with Pointer Sisters.
1:27:53 Speaker 03 Was it also the 80s?
1:27:54 Bill Simmons? 80s.
1:27:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, so my question is, is it the most-
1:27:56 Bill Simmons? Working Girl, 80s.
1:27:57 Speaker 02 Are you gonna build a bridge to our generation?
1:27:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, most important song of all time or of that decade?
1:28:01 Bill Simmons? I said pop culture.
1:28:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:28:03 Bill Simmons? For the tw- for the 20th century.
1:28:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:28:06 Bill Simmons? I'll go there, because it's hottest take.
1:28:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:28:08 Bill Simmons? Because you have Working Girl, important.
1:28:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:28:10 Bill Simmons? And everything culminates in the Saved by the Bell caffeine pills episode.
1:28:13 Speaker 02 Yes, of course.
1:28:14 Bill Simmons? This is, this is a 10-year run.
1:28:16 Speaker 03 She's so scared.
1:28:18 Bill Simmons? It's 10 years of this goes into major movies, major TV shows and the NBA.
1:28:25 Speaker 03 And then Anne Elizabeth Berkeley.
1:28:26 Bill Simmons? Six times.
1:28:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:28:27 Speaker 02 It's a great take.
1:28:28 Bill Simmons? Thank you.
1:28:29 Speaker 03 Yeah. I love it.
1:28:29 Speaker 02 Really good.
1:28:31 Bill Simmons? Casting What-ifs.
1:28:32 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:28:33 Bill Simmons? At one point, this movie was supposed to be directed by Jim Bridges, starring Demi Moore.
1:28:37 Speaker 02 Absolutely not.
1:28:38 Bill Simmons? Demi Moore, if she's jewels in St. Elmo's Fire, like, I'm not saying better than Melanie Griffith. I'm just saying, I'm not not giving it a chance. Raspy, kind of looks like she's been out the night before.
1:28:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:28:52 Bill Simmons? Little puffy face from.
1:28:53 Speaker 03 I can see it.
1:28:54 Bill Simmons? I could see it.
1:28:55 Speaker 03 But that version was.
1:28:56 Bill Simmons? The man is horrified.
1:28:57 Speaker 03 No, a very different movie, I think.
1:28:59 Speaker 02 It's hard for me to imagine anyone but Melanie Griffith, but also, Demi Moore, I've realized, is sort of like the generational divide for me. Like, I've, I've seen all the movies, they were handed down to me, but I was not conscious.
1:29:12 Bill Simmons? You never buy it.
1:29:13 Speaker 02 Demi Moore, like, the big star.
1:29:15 Bill Simmons? It would be jewels from St. Elmo's Fire, Demi Moore.
1:29:18 Speaker 02 And so I was learning about it all after the fact, and I would say, like, her biggest celebrity moment to me is still the Vanity Fair cover.
1:29:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, Vanity Fair cover.
1:29:24 Speaker 02 Where she's very pregnant.
1:29:25 Bill Simmons? So you're later and.
1:29:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I just, I don't always, like, get it, you know?
1:29:29 Bill Simmons? So the thing, the reason I think it would have worked is because 80s Demi Moore, who was battling a lot of the same stuff Melanie Griffith was, I think brings some baggage into it.
1:29:38 Speaker 03 Would you also have a scene where she's alone in a room with just a fan on her, as she is in St. Elmo's Fire?
1:29:42 Bill Simmons? With all the windows open?
1:29:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:29:44 Bill Simmons? I would.
1:29:44 Speaker 03 Yeah. Okay.
1:29:46 Bill Simmons? Molly Ringwald, apparently audition was deemed too young. I mean, they auditioned everybody, including, uh, they thought about Michelle Pfeiffer and Madonna. Scott Rudin was running Fox, which I don't think I knew, and was really pushing for Shelley Long, who was red hot on Cheers. They squashed that. Lorraine Barco wrote in her memoir that she thought she nailed the audition and didn't get it. That was mildly interesting.
1:30:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:30:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:30:09 Speaker 03 I would love Lorraine Barco in this movie.
1:30:11 Bill Simmons? She does, um, Someone to Watch Over Me, right around the same time. Nichols finally said, fuck it, I'm dropping out if we don't hire Melanie Griffith. So they do the casting credits thing. Then there's this whole weird.
1:30:25 Bill Simmons? Lawrence Kasdan wanted to, he was testing that accidental tourist part.
1:30:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:30:30 Bill Simmons? Gina Davis and Melanie Griffith are both for the part. And Scott Rudin says, if she tests for another movie, she's out for Working Girl. And this executive producer, Carlisle, tells Melanie Griffith, whoever plays Muriel in Accidental Tourist could win the Academy Award, and whoever does Working Girl will be a star. This is in the oral history from 30 years later. And then she says, I want to be a star, goes for Working Girl. And then at the Academy Awards, for whatever reason, Melanie Griffith hands the Oscar to Gina Davis. She's the one presenting it.
1:31:05 Speaker 03 For the accidental tourist.
1:31:06 Bill Simmons? For the other part she didn't go for.
1:31:07 Speaker 03 And I would just say that Gina Davis was both an Oscar winner and a star. So that wasn't the top tier advice.
1:31:13 Bill Simmons? You're talking to somebody who bought Gina Davis stock as early as it could go. When she was just buried in Fletch. We argued about this on Fletch, it was the maddest CRs ever been on a movie watchable, that Gina Davis should have been the lead in Fletch, not Dana Will or Nicholson. And CR got really mad.
1:31:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:31:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, anyway.
1:31:32 Speaker 03 Um, can we, can I just add a few more casting what ifs?
1:31:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah, because I couldn't tell how much was 100% true, but go.
1:31:40 Speaker 03 I sort of cross checked that THR thing we pulled from, and also the Nichols biography. Uh, Whoopi Goldberg was someone they were considering because Nichols did her like,
1:31:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:31:51 Speaker 03 stand up show, Goldie Hawn.
1:31:55 Bill Simmons? Too old.
1:31:56 Speaker 03 Was she too old at that point?
1:31:58 Bill Simmons? She's too old, maybe eight. Yeah, she's too old at that point.
1:32:00 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:32:00 Bill Simmons? Because she did Private Benjamin in 1980.
1:32:03 Speaker 03 No, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:32:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah, she's like in her 40s at that point.
1:32:06 Speaker 03 Um, Meg Ryan.
1:32:09 Bill Simmons? Meg Ryan, maybe. I don't know if she could have pulled off the accent and the baggage part.
1:32:13 Speaker 03 And not the, the sex appeal in the same way. This movie has a lot of sex in it for romantic comedy. Share.
1:32:21 Bill Simmons? No.
1:32:23 Speaker 03 Thanks for coming.
1:32:25 Speaker 02 Are you not, you're not a Moonstruck person?
1:32:26 Speaker 03 You don't like Moonstruck?
1:32:27 Bill Simmons? Just Cher.
1:32:28 Speaker 02 Oh, okay. All right. Okay.
1:32:29 Bill Simmons? Not for this. Not for this.
1:32:31 Speaker 03 Not, you don't like?
1:32:31 Speaker 02 No, I, I agree with you.
1:32:32 Bill Simmons? She brings too much Cher.
1:32:34 Speaker 02 I, it's also like-
1:32:35 Bill Simmons? She's still Cher. She was like one of the most famous people of the 70s.
1:32:38 Speaker 02 I don't think-
1:32:39 Speaker 03 I love Moonstruck.
1:32:40 Speaker 02 I love Moonstruck as well.
1:32:41 Speaker 03 Mermaids.
1:32:41 Speaker 02 Incredibly important. Yeah. Why did I see Mermaids in a theater? When I was like five.
1:32:47 Bill Simmons? Cher was like incredibly famous in the 80s.
1:32:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with you.
1:32:51 Bill Simmons? I think she's too famous.
1:32:51 Speaker 02 I, I completely agree with you for this role. I just-
1:32:54 Bill Simmons? I was a big Sonny and Cher guy. I was a-
1:32:55 Speaker 02 I thought that that was a reaction to Moonstruck and I was a little concerned.
1:32:58 Bill Simmons? No, Moonstruck's good.
1:32:59 Speaker 02 Wonderful. Yeah. Okay.
1:33:00 Bill Simmons? I just wouldn't buy her as a test.
1:33:02 Speaker 02 Agree.
1:33:02 Bill Simmons? Best that guy. Oliver Platt counts, according to Craigslist, that just because we call him Oliver Platt, that doesn't mean anyone under 35 knows who Oliver Platt is.
1:33:10 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:33:11 Bill Simmons? But that's not the winner of this. It's either the bad guy from Beverly Hills Cop 3, who's one of the two people trash-
1:33:19 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah. Right, right.
1:33:20 Bill Simmons? I don't even know what that guy's name is, but I'm like, hey, it's the bad guy from Beverly Hills Cop 3. Or that guy who worked for the evil law firm in Philadelphia and had second thoughts about maybe ratting out Jason Robards. And then on the stand, it kind of, kind of, uh, kind of is on the Tom Hanks side.
1:33:37 Speaker 03 What role is he in this?
1:33:38 Bill Simmons? He's just in the movie. And I was like, that guy.
1:33:40 Speaker 02 That guy?
1:33:41 Bill Simmons? So I almost feel like that makes him the winner because I don't even remember what part he played in this movie. Yeah.
1:33:46 Speaker 03 Um, what about Caroline Aaron, who plays Dr. Marcia Fieldstone in Sleepless in Seattle? And is also the mom on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?
1:33:55 Speaker 02 Oh, that's a really, really good one. Yeah.
1:33:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:33:59 Bill Simmons? Dionne Waiters a word? Joan Cusack eligible?
1:34:03 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:34:03 Bill Simmons? I don't think she's in it that much. She's, she's in it for 12 minutes?
1:34:08 Speaker 02 She, I mean, Joan Cusack would be a classic Dionne Waiters. May I ask if Carly Simon is eligible?
1:34:14 Bill Simmons? Not eligible.
1:34:15 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:34:15 Speaker 03 What about Olympia Dukakis?
1:34:16 Speaker 02 I thought I was doing something. She's great.
1:34:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:34:18 Bill Simmons? Nora Dunn.
1:34:19 Speaker 03 Olympia Dukakis is one scene-
1:34:20 Bill Simmons? Oliver Platt, Spacey.
1:34:22 Speaker 03 Robert Easton, who plays Armistice, who is the like, who is the guy in the deal with the like Colonel Sanders beard and accent? Has like one scene and he's just like-
1:34:31 Speaker 02 Metro's owner.
1:34:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, Metro's owner. Yeah.
1:34:35 Speaker 03 The Memphis.
1:34:35 Bill Simmons? I think the answer is probably Nora Dunn.
1:34:37 Speaker 02 She's very good. She's very threatening. Yeah.
1:34:39 Bill Simmons? She was also really good at that specific kind of part. Recasting couch director city. What's her name? Danucci? What's her? What's that?
1:34:50 Speaker 03 Doreen.
1:34:50 Bill Simmons? Doreen.
1:34:50 Speaker 03 Doreen Demucci? Demucci, yeah.
1:34:52 Bill Simmons? Could we have gotten, could we have snuck like a young Marisa Tomei in that part? Or could we have like an actual famous actress?
1:35:00 Speaker 03 Mira Sorvino?
1:35:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:01 Speaker 03 I love it.
1:35:01 Bill Simmons? Mira Sorvino, somebody with a little like, wow, that she played.
1:35:05 Speaker 03 Doreen Demucci?
1:35:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:35:08 Bill Simmons? Half ass in her research. We did a lot of these, but um, my favorites. Melanie Griffith revealed in a 2017 interview that she um, repeatedly made passes at Alec Baldwin and he said, no, thanks. And it hurt her feelings, but I think he thought she was a little hot mess express.
1:35:25 Speaker 03 And he was also like, I know Dawn's just waiting in the wings to remarry you.
1:35:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah, no question. Uh, there's a Bob's Burgers episode about this in Die Hard. That's apparently a famous Bob Burgers episode. My kids used to love that.
1:35:36 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:35:37 Bill Simmons? You mentioned the Mike Nichols thing and then um, the lobby of seven World Trade Centers in this town. So it's been this multiple times.
1:35:43 Speaker 03 Can I read you an excerpt from the New York Times, 1989, written by Maureen Dowd?
1:35:48 Speaker 02 Oh, boy.
1:35:49 Speaker 03 George Bush ended his first week as president by having some friends over to the family quarters of the White House on Friday night for beef pie, whatever that is, and a screening of the movie Working Girl. He warned his guests, a mix of prominent Democrats and Republicans, that he had heard that the film Without a Wall Street Cinderella had some, quote, dirty parts, so they had better watch out.
1:36:09 Speaker 02 Ooh.
1:36:10 Bill Simmons? Meat pie.
1:36:11 Speaker 03 Beef pie with George H W Bush. His first week as president, he said, let's watch Working Girl.
1:36:19 Speaker 02 I like hearing.
1:36:20 Bill Simmons? Some beef pie and Working Girl.
1:36:21 Speaker 02 Hearing George H W Bush say the words dirty parts out loud is not.
1:36:26 Speaker 03 Also beef pie.
1:36:27 Speaker 02 Like makes me really, really unhappy.
1:36:29 Speaker 03 To have it either.
1:36:31 Bill Simmons? Wow. Uh, Apex Mountain, I'm gonna say yes for Melanie Griffith.
1:36:35 Speaker 03 I agree.
1:36:36 Speaker 02 It really goes.
1:36:37 Speaker 03 Carly Simon.
1:36:38 Speaker 02 It goes down, very downhill, very quickly from here. And like, I didn't really remember.
1:36:43 Speaker 03 So you don't love Milk Money?
1:36:46 Bill Simmons? The 90s were.
1:36:47 Speaker 02 She's really good in Nobody's School.
1:36:49 Bill Simmons? 90s are bad for her.
1:36:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:36:51 Bill Simmons? I really like Pacificites.
1:36:53 Speaker 02 I mean, me too, but, you know.
1:36:54 Bill Simmons? Harrison Ford, no.
1:36:55 Speaker 03 No.
1:36:55 Bill Simmons? I think there's a Sigourney Weaver case. She's nominated in two categories at the same time. It's two years after Aliens. It just feels like she never had more juice than she did in 1988. It's a big, she's about to make Ghostbusters 2. She's probably the most bankable actress in Hollywood at that point.
1:37:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, I would say.
1:37:16 Bill Simmons? That's right.
1:37:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, right before.
1:37:18 Speaker 03 It has to be like.
1:37:19 Bill Simmons? It's somewhere in there, somewhere from Aliens to here.
1:37:21 Speaker 03 It's near, it's near. It's in the range.
1:37:24 Bill Simmons? Female struggling in the workplace movies?
1:37:28 Speaker 03 No, those are evergreen.
1:37:29 Speaker 02 Yeah. We're all just all doing our best every day, Bill.
1:37:32 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
1:37:33 Bill Simmons? This isn't the best one?
1:37:35 Speaker 02 It's one, it's one of my favorites. I mean, like, it, Broadcast News. Devil's Prada.
1:37:42 Bill Simmons? Broadcast News is a good one.
1:37:43 Speaker 02 Yeah. And they're all in the same.
1:37:45 Bill Simmons? You know what? The answer is Devil's Prada, because that's the best movie of all time.
1:37:49 Speaker 02 Can you believe they're making a sequel? I, I'm, I'm beside myself with joy.
1:37:54 Bill Simmons? Oh, I thought you were gonna say beside myself with anger.
1:37:55 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no, no, I don't care. It's like, fine. All the nerds have gotten us, no offense, have gotten all of their movies forever. Like, give me all of it.
1:38:02 Speaker 03 Do you want like nine Devil's Prada?
1:38:04 Speaker 02 I would watch a TV show. I would watch a novel. I would read the novels. I've read the original, but.
1:38:10 Speaker 03 Are they getting Tucci?
1:38:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:38:11 Speaker 03 Are they getting Blunt?
1:38:12 Speaker 02 Yeah. Uh, I don't know about Blunt, but I think so.
1:38:15 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:38:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:38:16 Bill Simmons? Nina Hathaway looks incredible these days.
1:38:18 Speaker 02 She does.
1:38:18 Bill Simmons? She's a great, great job by her.
1:38:20 Speaker 03 Looks great.
1:38:21 Bill Simmons? Great job by her. My daughter.
1:38:22 Speaker 02 I think they're just new eyebrows.
1:38:24 Speaker 03 It's the whole, well, yeah.
1:38:26 Bill Simmons? My kids who don't consume my content at all.
1:38:29 Speaker 03 Um, yeah.
1:38:29 Bill Simmons? And actively disparage me at all times.
1:38:31 Speaker 03 Sure, okay.
1:38:32 Bill Simmons? Um, my daughter does like the rewatchables and listens to it. And she thinks the Devil Wears Prada one is one of the best podcasts ever recorded.
1:38:39 Speaker 02 Zoe, thank you so much. I, I do think that-
1:38:41 Bill Simmons? Amanda was on that podcast.
1:38:42 Speaker 02 That was my, it was me, Juliette and Bill. I, I-
1:38:45 Bill Simmons? It was one of the first rewatchables where we were like, this is probably where the show is going.
1:38:50 Speaker 02 I was freaking out a little. I do think it was my professional peak, but like, and this is pretty close. You know, in terms of things I've worked hard for my whole life.
1:38:58 Bill Simmons? We did that, it was in the first year. I'm looking up-
1:39:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was in your, it was in the office on the couches.
1:39:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah, we did that for, I'm gonna say, within the first-
1:39:08 Speaker 03 Uh, I hope it's okay for me to say that Amanda said that-
1:39:11 Bill Simmons? Oh no, we did that later.
1:39:12 Speaker 03 This is more important than, this is more important than giving birth to your children, this podcast episode?
1:39:17 Speaker 02 Well, it's more fun, more fun.
1:39:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah, more enjoyable.
1:39:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, just, just as an experience, you know?
1:39:22 Bill Simmons? Uh, Mike Nichols, Apex Mountain, no.
1:39:24 Speaker 03 No.
1:39:25 Bill Simmons? Graduate?
1:39:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think so. He wins the Oscar.
1:39:27 Bill Simmons? I mean, he made the graduate.
1:39:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's pretty good.
1:39:30 Bill Simmons? When finding movies of the sixties. Carly Simon, I'm gonna say no.
1:39:35 Speaker 02 You don't think so?
1:39:37 Bill Simmons? I don't know. She was-
1:39:38 Speaker 02 You're So Vain is the whole thing.
1:39:39 Bill Simmons? She was killing it in the seventies. You're So Vain was like, probably one of the biggest single songs of the seventies from a female artist, right? And also like, led to fifty years of, who was she talking about in the same dialogue?
1:39:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:54 Bill Simmons? The Staten Island Ferry?
1:39:55 Speaker 02 I had that. That was mine. It is, it is totally the Apex Mountain for Staten Island Ferry.
1:39:59 Bill Simmons? It never got better for the ferry.
1:40:01 Speaker 03 All right.
1:40:02 Speaker 02 My son is really into transportation, so I was like, how will I show him Staten Island Ferry? Just pulled up Let the River Run, watched it, rapped.
1:40:10 Bill Simmons? Colin Jost and Pete Davidson bought it, apparently.
1:40:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, but they don't know what to do with it, so.
1:40:14 Bill Simmons? That's not Apex, man.
1:40:15 Speaker 03 Devastating.
1:40:16 Bill Simmons? Uh, bony asses?
1:40:18 Speaker 02 Um, yeah.
1:40:19 Bill Simmons? Just being, being used repeatedly as a disparaging term?
1:40:22 Speaker 03 Sure.
1:40:22 Speaker 02 Memorable.
1:40:22 Speaker 03 Um, and sleazoid, yeah.
1:40:25 Bill Simmons? All right, that's probably good.
1:40:26 Speaker 06 What about 80s hair?
1:40:28 Bill Simmons? 80s hair in a movie? It's probably.
1:40:30 Speaker 03 And like a non, because I do think some of the like.
1:40:33 Bill Simmons? I think they do it better.
1:40:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, like Whitesnake music videos and like Mad Max, stuff like that. But in terms of like a, a less extreme version, I think you might have something there. You know, like this is just supposed to look normal. In a music video, you're going for something extreme.
1:40:46 Bill Simmons? I need to think about it more. I feel like there's some 80, 85 range, high school movies that are probably 86 range.
1:40:52 Speaker 02 But it kind of has become the shorthand for it. Like maybe Apex Mountain for shoulder pads.
1:40:58 Speaker 03 Also Q-Sax eye makeup.
1:40:59 Speaker 06 Yeah, you can't overstate how much these people look like aliens. Like every, every 15 minutes, Liz and I were like, man, the hair.
1:41:08 Speaker 02 But like, but the clothes are back.
1:41:10 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:41:10 Speaker 02 And, and like Working Girl is the reference and all the copy of like, you know, get your inner, you know, whatever on with this, this suit.
1:41:17 Speaker 03 Unleash your inner.
1:41:18 Bill Simmons? Craig, give a flex category.
1:41:20 Speaker 06 Um, I was gonna, I was gonna do the vacuuming naked. I kind of, I'll, I'll do it like a pseudo hot take. I think Jack, is it Jack Trainer?
1:41:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:41:28 Speaker 06 I think he's a little creepy in, in the beginning of this film. And I know that everyone's in on it and I like Harrison Ford. I like the character eventually. I feel like they were still figuring it out. The first scene, it's like cheating on his girlfriend. I guess he wanted to get out, but like the, the back to back double shot of tequila.
1:41:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:41:45 Bill Simmons? Doesn't say his name.
1:41:46 Speaker 06 Doesn't say his name, takes her home, takes the dress off. And then the next day is like dinner and a movie. I'm like, this guy's coming on a little hot.
1:41:54 Speaker 03 You forgot about, he did buy her a briefcase though.
1:41:56 Speaker 06 Also weird.
1:41:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:41:58 Speaker 06 Super weird. A gift the next morning is like huge red flag.
1:42:01 Speaker 02 As always, the timelines are an issue here because they say, I love you within four days.
1:42:07 Speaker 03 The I love you is.
1:42:07 Speaker 02 This entire movie takes the span of like five days.
1:42:10 Bill Simmons? I had that in picket nets. That bell bomb is coming out so fast.
1:42:14 Speaker 03 Out of.
1:42:14 Speaker 02 For sure. I, but like, I.
1:42:16 Bill Simmons? Sometimes you know.
1:42:17 Speaker 02 He is.
1:42:18 Bill Simmons? It's like Amanda and Zack knew right away.
1:42:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's true. He is a pretty sleazy, he's supposed to be a sleazy Wall Street guy.
1:42:23 Speaker 06 But he starts as sleazy and then by halfway into the movie, he's like dopey.
1:42:26 Speaker 03 I think that like, I think.
1:42:28 Speaker 02 It's called, it's called character shaving, you know?
1:42:30 Speaker 03 I really think that if he had kept her dress on, I can defend almost all of it.
1:42:36 Speaker 02 I'm, I'm with Bill's mom on this.
1:42:38 Bill Simmons? Not saying your name is weird. Are you Jack? No, I don't know who Jack is.
1:42:42 Speaker 06 He like whispers the, the double shot to the bartender.
1:42:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, that part is a little weird.
1:42:45 Speaker 03 Oh, not great.
1:42:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:42:48 Speaker 03 Then again, he didn't know about the milligrams.
1:42:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:42:52 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that is, he did whisper, double shut.
1:42:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:42:54 Bill Simmons? This man was a menace.
1:42:57 Speaker 02 Sex pest, Jack Trainor.
1:43:01 Bill Simmons? Cruise or Hanks?
1:43:03 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:43:04 Speaker 03 It's Hanks.
1:43:05 Speaker 02 It is Hanks.
1:43:06 Bill Simmons? It has to be Hanks.
1:43:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, the height thing that you mentioned earlier, but Cruise is just too powerful.
1:43:13 Bill Simmons? Cruise ahead at this point, Craig. Hanks. Hanks is at a cut. By like three or four.
1:43:17 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:43:18 Bill Simmons? Scorsese or Spielberg?
1:43:20 Speaker 02 Marty. Marty.
1:43:21 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
1:43:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:43:22 Bill Simmons? Really? I had Spielberg.
1:43:23 Speaker 03 It comes from Wall Street?
1:43:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, he did it with Wolf of Wall Street.
1:43:26 Bill Simmons? It's a different movie.
1:43:27 Speaker 03 It's a very different movie.
1:43:28 Speaker 02 It's way more of the last shot of the film.
1:43:30 Speaker 03 Yeah. I would watch Marty's.
1:43:33 Speaker 02 It would be great.
1:43:34 Speaker 03 It would be wonderful.
1:43:35 Bill Simmons? What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? Probably Spacey.
1:43:38 Speaker 02 Oh, I was gonna say Oliver Platt.
1:43:39 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah, yeah, good call.
1:43:41 Speaker 03 This is his scent of a woman.
1:43:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:43:43 Speaker 03 Vibe.
1:43:44 Bill Simmons? Picking nits that we haven't done yet.
1:43:45 Speaker 02 Okay. Um, Tess wears all white to the wedding. That's just rude.
1:43:51 Speaker 02 You know, come on, even I know that. I just tried to blend in, man.
1:43:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:43:55 Speaker 02 You know?
1:43:55 Speaker 03 I mean, how does she know what the dress code is also? Because she's wearing like sort of a business suit.
1:44:00 Speaker 02 Well, it's more like a.
1:44:02 Speaker 03 Daytime tiki wedding.
1:44:04 Speaker 02 A mother of the bride type.
1:44:06 Speaker 03 She's wearing something that Jack conceivably thinks they could just be going to a lunch for and they're going to.
1:44:11 Speaker 02 Though I did notice, I think he's, he's wearing black tie. It's, he's not wearing a tuxedo, but I like, the tie is a very dark color, which would suggest that even though he thought he was going to a three o'clock lunch, he was also wearing black tie, which is confusing.
1:44:29 Bill Simmons? I have, why didn't anyone wonder why Tess was in her boss's office so much?
1:44:32 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:44:33 Bill Simmons? As number one.
1:44:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:44:34 Speaker 03 I can buy, I can buy.
1:44:36 Bill Simmons? Two days in, it's like, what's going on with Tess?
1:44:37 Speaker 03 Here's what I can buy. I can buy the boss is not like paying enough attention to notice and I can buy the secretary is covering for her.
1:44:44 Bill Simmons? But why is the door always closed?
1:44:46 Speaker 02 Right.
1:44:47 Speaker 03 She's watering the plants.
1:44:48 Bill Simmons? No, it's, it's.
1:44:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:44:50 Bill Simmons? People are talking by Wednesday. What kind of broken leg did Sigourney have where she's good in three weeks?
1:44:57 Speaker 02 I don't.
1:44:58 Bill Simmons? Bed, goes from bedridden to just like.
1:45:00 Speaker 03 She just has a cane.
1:45:01 Bill Simmons? Hobbing around.
1:45:02 Speaker 02 I don't know, you're the, you're the sports expert.
1:45:05 Bill Simmons? I, it's one or the other. It's like, if you're bedridden for three weeks, you're coming out of there and you have like one of those like huge brace.
1:45:12 Speaker 03 Like a walking thing, yeah.
1:45:14 Speaker 02 Did they have those brace things yet? In the eighties? Again, our medical, our scientific achievements.
1:45:19 Bill Simmons? Was it?
1:45:20 Speaker 03 Were we just killing people when they broke their legs at that point?
1:45:22 Speaker 02 She had like really giant plaster, but I like, I don't remember. You know, when like kids breaking their arms or legs, I don't remember like the flexi casts.
1:45:31 Speaker 03 No.
1:45:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:45:34 Bill Simmons? It went from a broken leg to a torn MCL.
1:45:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. She just had the cane at the end, which was like, when Jack shows up to her apartment, when, when Melanie Griffith is hiding in the closet. And he's like trying not to get like drawn into her and he's just like, oh, your cast and like knocks on it. He's like, whoa.
1:45:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:45:51 Speaker 03 Look at that.
1:45:51 Speaker 02 He's so good.
1:45:52 Speaker 03 Sure is broken.
1:45:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:45:54 Bill Simmons? I think Catherine would just be suing everybody right away. The end of this movie.
1:45:58 Speaker 03 Um.
1:45:59 Speaker 02 I don't, I mean, I.
1:46:00 Speaker 03 We don't know if she gets fired even.
1:46:02 Speaker 02 Well, Orin Truss says that he's gonna make sure she gets fired, which once again.
1:46:06 Bill Simmons? It's like, why am I getting fired? My secretary pretended to be me for four months. What did I do wrong?
1:46:11 Speaker 03 Maybe in the eighties he could get her fired, but I do think she was a legal case.
1:46:14 Bill Simmons? My big mistake was taking credit for my assistant's idea.
1:46:16 Speaker 03 Her bony ass out of his sight, but I don't think, know that he can get her fired.
1:46:19 Speaker 02 My impression of mergers and acquisitions in the eighties.
1:46:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:46:23 Speaker 02 Is not that you could just transfer down from Boston and immediately go on vacation.
1:46:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:46:29 Speaker 02 So, and listen, I believe in vacation and work-life balance and all that, but like, she's just very absent. So I don't, do they.
1:46:35 Speaker 03 How long was Tess working for her before she went on vacation?
1:46:39 Speaker 02 Like.
1:46:40 Bill Simmons? Like two days?
1:46:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:46:42 Speaker 03 Is that true?
1:46:42 Speaker 02 Enough, enough to get the dim sum party.
1:46:44 Speaker 03 Yeah. I feel like it might have been a couple of weeks.
1:46:47 Speaker 02 But, yeah. Oh, okay. So.
1:46:50 Bill Simmons? Maybe 10 days.
1:46:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, she might've been like a couple of weeks on the job and she's like, I already had this ski vacation planned.
1:46:55 Speaker 02 I, I guess, but.
1:46:57 Speaker 06 Do you not think it's weird that she was expecting, Ca- Catherine was expecting to be proposed to on this trip?
1:47:02 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:47:02 Speaker 06 Her boyfriend bails.
1:47:04 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:47:04 Speaker 06 And she just still goes. It is skiing alone.
1:47:09 Speaker 03 No, that's, that's, that's a, that's a
1:47:10 Bill Simmons? It feels like it's gonna be the first of three or four marriages for her.
1:47:14 Speaker 03 I also feel like she had sex with her doctor.
1:47:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely.
1:47:17 Speaker 06 But like, why wouldn't you reschedule the trip with your fiance to Germany? You wouldn't, you go on it?
1:47:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:47:23 Speaker 02 I guess, it makes, he makes it seem like
1:47:26 Bill Simmons? Now Amanda's on defense.
1:47:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, it's true. Listen.
1:47:29 Bill Simmons? Amanda's currently now, she's like, wait guys.
1:47:31 Speaker 03 But like, she knew so many people there. Like, it's not like she was gonna go and be alone. She knew like, the guy who ran the hotel, and then her hotel room was just like, the biggest party room you've ever seen.
1:47:43 Speaker 06 It just feels like if Amanda was like, I think Zach and I are gonna get engaged in Germany. And then Zach's like, I can't go, I have work. I don't think she's getting on the plane and spending the money for that vacation.
1:47:51 Speaker 02 If I had the money, maybe.
1:47:52 Speaker 03 I think Katherine Hartner has so much money.
1:47:55 Bill Simmons? I have my biggest nitpick we mentioned earlier. And I, I don't think we hit it hard enough.
1:48:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:48:01 Bill Simmons? I don't understand the Alec Baldwin having sex with Dominic Donucci, whatever her name was.
1:48:07 Speaker 02 Doreen.
1:48:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, Doreen.
1:48:08 Speaker 02 Put some respect on Doreen's name.
1:48:10 Bill Simmons? I just don't understand the scene.
1:48:14 Speaker 03 You don't think he would cheat on Tess?
1:48:15 Speaker 02 No class?
1:48:16 Bill Simmons? Life was, life was different in the eighties. I'm not here to judge. Things happen. Maybe, maybe adultery was a little more common. I don't understand.
1:48:23 Speaker 03 You don't think a guy reading Motor Trend who gets his girlfriend's trashy lingerie on her birthday?
1:48:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:48:30 Speaker 03 Is, is fucking around on her?
1:48:32 Bill Simmons? It's like, he doesn't think she's coming home, and he's doing it in his bed.
1:48:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, she has class.
1:48:36 Speaker 03 She has class.
1:48:37 Bill Simmons? She walks in, it's just, and then he thinks it's gonna be fine, three days later, and he's still like, let's get married.
1:48:44 Speaker 03 Zach thinks it's gonna be fine.
1:48:46 Bill Simmons? I just have some issues. I just tell, like, if that was my wife walking in, in ten years later,
1:48:53 Bill Simmons? that's it. Like, she's moving out. It's not even a question of
1:48:56 Speaker 02 The issue is at the party, when he is, you know,
1:49:01 Bill Simmons? It's like, are we still, is there still something here? Yeah.
1:49:03 Speaker 02 And then he proposes in front of everyone, which like, just, you know, don't take the bait.
1:49:07 Bill Simmons? But it's four days after the adultery.
1:49:09 Speaker 02 That's insane. And then she doesn't just lie. Just lie, you know, I mean, that doesn't make for a good movie.
1:49:15 Speaker 03 I liked maybe. I think maybe is fair enough.
1:49:17 Speaker 02 It's a good movie scene.
1:49:18 Bill Simmons? And then he's mad. He's like, you embarrassed me back there. It's like, you motherfucker, you were just getting rid in our bed by the time we did the change.
1:49:26 Speaker 03 I genuinely believe that those are the gender politics of that, like, culture at that time.
1:49:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're right.
1:49:30 Speaker 06 Wouldn't the whole friend group know that he cheated on her? And they're all like, say yes.
1:49:34 Bill Simmons? This would be a way bigger deal.
1:49:36 Speaker 03 But they're like, no, I don't, I disagree.
1:49:38 Speaker 02 I mean, even when Joan Cusack-
1:49:39 Bill Simmons? And Denise is there?
1:49:40 Speaker 02 Joan Cusack brings her stuff to the office and is like defending him. Yeah, this isn't like you.
1:49:45 Speaker 03 I feel like this-
1:49:45 Bill Simmons? So this is just the eighties.
1:49:46 Speaker 03 I think it's a cultural thing. It's just sort of like-
1:49:48 Bill Simmons? It's like, ah, he couldn't keep it in his pants at night.
1:49:50 Speaker 03 Guys will be guys. Boys being boys.
1:49:52 Speaker 06 The best scene-
1:49:52 Speaker 02 Baldwins will be baldwins.
1:49:53 Speaker 06 The sneaky best scene in the movie is in that moment in the bar when they meet, when Melanie Griffith and Baldwin kind of meet for the first time and they're just sitting at the corner of the bar. He's slamming scotch and he's like, I got the boat loan. And she's like, oh my god, congrats.
1:50:08 Speaker 03 And then he brings up the boat again at the wedding.
1:50:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, Dory is working the phone.
1:50:11 Speaker 06 Yeah, the boat loan. Oh, it's good.
1:50:14 Speaker 02 What is he doing? Like, so is it like boat tours? It's like, what is, he's booked for three weeks.
1:50:20 Speaker 03 It's like the arbitrage of boats.
1:50:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:50:21 Speaker 03 I'll never understand it.
1:50:22 Bill Simmons? Honestly, they should have made him like high school hockey coach or something. He should have been a high school coach.
1:50:27 Speaker 02 Is hockey big on Staten Island?
1:50:28 Speaker 03 I don't think he should be anywhere near high school kids, Nick.
1:50:32 Bill Simmons? Baseball, whatever.
1:50:33 Speaker 03 I think he should be like a used car salesman. That's Nick's energy.
1:50:36 Bill Simmons? Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast or untouchable? This is untouchable to me.
1:50:41 Speaker 03 Untouchable.
1:50:41 Bill Simmons? I don't know how you'd read this.
1:50:42 Speaker 03 Even though I guess they made a TV show.
1:50:44 Bill Simmons? Yeah, they did a TV show. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harling Mays, Chris Collins, or Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm? I was thinking, I'm not gonna do Chris as Wilford Brimley, but-
1:50:58 Speaker 02 A heartbreak.
1:50:59 Bill Simmons? It would be funny if like, bringing the photos of, to Catherine, say Catherine, here's your fiance, oral and whatnot, and he's just doing the whole, showing the photos.
1:51:12 Speaker 02 I would love it. Yeah, I accept.
1:51:15 Bill Simmons? Just wanna ask her who gets it?
1:51:18 Speaker 02 Well, Carly Simon did get one, so.
1:51:21 Speaker 03 I really don't think you're
1:51:22 Bill Simmons? Was it the right one?
1:51:22 Speaker 03 Putting enough respect on Joan Cusack in supporting.
1:51:28 Speaker 03 $6,000 and it's not even leather?
1:51:31 Bill Simmons? I do like the Madonna thing where she's like, I
1:51:34 Speaker 02 That's really good.
1:51:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, doesn't make me Madonna. Like, I think this is what a supporting actress Oscar should be.
1:51:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:51:41 Speaker 03 Is just like a really fun.
1:51:43 Bill Simmons? Part that normally wins nomination, you know what I mean?
1:51:45 Speaker 03 Not necessarily true. I just think that like, you know, your Mira Sorvino's and your Marisa Tomei's, you know, like.
1:51:52 Bill Simmons? Fair.
1:51:52 Speaker 02 It's true.
1:51:53 Bill Simmons? I can see that in the movie enough, though. I don't know. I thought if you're gonna take some of the spots that got taken, like Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham, like, like.
1:52:03 Speaker 02 That is true. That she's, she's very good in that.
1:52:07 Speaker 03 What do you say for this?
1:52:09 Bill Simmons? Melanie Griffith.
1:52:10 Speaker 02 Okay, I'm open to it.
1:52:12 Bill Simmons? But I still think Glenn Close should have won that year.
1:52:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:52:14 Bill Simmons? Carly Simon's fine.
1:52:16 Speaker 02 I, it's a good one.
1:52:17 Bill Simmons? Rom com gospel I'm here for.
1:52:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:52:19 Bill Simmons? Probably an answerable questions.
1:52:22 Bill Simmons? I have three. Do you guys have any?
1:52:23 Speaker 02 I have one, yeah.
1:52:24 Bill Simmons? Go ahead.
1:52:25 Speaker 02 What do the lyrics of Let the River Run mean?
1:52:29 Speaker 03 The New Jerusalem?
1:52:30 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, I understand what that means, but let me read it.
1:52:33 Bill Simmons? Which river are we talking?
1:52:34 Speaker 02 Trembling, shaking. It's there for the taking. Let the river run.
1:52:38 Speaker 03 We're coming to the edge, running out of water.
1:52:40 Speaker 02 Right. Um, your eyes are the color of blue that you've only never seen in the eyes of your lover or whatever. Okay, the sky is the color of blue. Okay, so they're like, they're going somewhere. They're building a city.
1:52:53 Speaker 03 I think it ties back into your whole, like, immigrant.
1:52:56 Speaker 02 I mean, I think that's right, but I'm just saying it's not like the most evocative poetry that I have ever read.
1:53:01 Bill Simmons? Is it a New York river or just a, of, just a river of life?
1:53:06 Speaker 02 Symbolic river. And energy. It's, yeah, it's an energetic river.
1:53:09 Speaker 03 It's the Hudson River.
1:53:10 Bill Simmons? So the answer.
1:53:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:12 Bill Simmons? I have an answer.
1:53:12 Speaker 03 Let the Hudson River run.
1:53:13 Bill Simmons? There's just an incredible amount of cocaine going on in the areas. And at some point, at five in the morning, these lyrics made a ton of sense.
1:53:20 Speaker 02 Right.
1:53:20 Bill Simmons? And they just kind of ran with it.
1:53:21 Speaker 02 Trembling, shaking, oh, my heart is aching is an accurate representation of what's happening.
1:53:25 Bill Simmons? Five thirty in the morning.
1:53:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:28 Bill Simmons? What do you have, Joanna?
1:53:30 Speaker 03 Okay, it's not what did Jack ever see in Catherine Parker because it's a Gorney Weaver. But how did that ever progress beyond just like, we have sex a couple of times?
1:53:39 Bill Simmons? It's just corporate, corporate arrangement.
1:53:41 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, I think it's sort of like social business climate. It just reflects poorly on him. And it underlines Craig's point that maybe Jack Trainor is not the best guy we've ever met.
1:53:50 Speaker 02 He's a sleazoid too, until he's not, you know?
1:53:54 Bill Simmons? It's like if Sean was single and he just started dating like the CEO's daughter of Letterboxd. And it's like, I don't trust Sean's intentions. What's he up to?
1:54:04 Speaker 03 Marriage, marriage is, yeah, it's a business contract.
1:54:06 Bill Simmons? By the way, I was gonna make a big deal about starting a Letterboxd account, like the, cause I refused to do it.
1:54:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:54:12 Bill Simmons? And start it, and then all the movies would be completely fucking weird.
1:54:15 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah, yeah.
1:54:16 Bill Simmons? Like Cinemax movies from the 90s and just every choice would be weird and people would be like, what's going on with that guy? No movie would be good. That's, I've been thinking about it.
1:54:26 Speaker 03 Why is this a what if? Why aren't you doing this already?
1:54:29 Speaker 02 I did start a Letterboxd profile, and then I don't use it because it's just like way too much homework. But my, it's not a picture of me, obviously, because like, what are we doing? It is a picture of-
1:54:38 Bill Simmons? Is that getting you coffee?
1:54:39 Speaker 02 No, it's Melanie Griffith in the red glasses from Okay Girl is my icon. Yeah, thank you, yeah.
1:54:44 Bill Simmons? All right, here are my three unanswered questions.
1:54:46 Speaker 03 I also have a Letterboxd I don't use.
1:54:47 Speaker 02 It's just like, I don't know, log? Listen, you know, I got a life.
1:54:52 Bill Simmons? One of these is gonna make you both mad.
1:54:54 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:54:56 Bill Simmons? Dim some dumplings at an office party?
1:54:59 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:55:00 Bill Simmons? No.
1:55:02 Speaker 02 I mean, it's, the steam, I think, does not work with her hair, yeah.
1:55:06 Speaker 03 You just can't, they're not passed. You need like a table.
1:55:09 Bill Simmons? You need to dip them. Now I have sauce. I'm dripping sauce on my shirt. I have bad breath. I'm getting stuff stuck in my teeth.
1:55:17 Speaker 02 You know, the spoon and the dumplings with the sauce and then you do the-
1:55:20 Bill Simmons? No, and not a lot of people like dumplings. It's a bad choice.
1:55:24 Speaker 03 What's your number one top tier party food?
1:55:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:55:27 Bill Simmons? Look, there's a lot. I'm just saying, dim some dumpling. You want past hors d'oeuvres to be, hit, check the most boxes for people.
1:55:34 Speaker 03 Salmon and crème fraiche on some puff pastry? Is that what you're looking for?
1:55:37 Speaker 02 Best one I ever had was coconut shrimp, shrimp, at my friend Tim and Jen's wedding.
1:55:41 Bill Simmons? Coconut shrimp's good. Not everyone eats shrimp. I mean, it's hard. You're never gonna land the, pigs in the blanket is always good if it's the right one and they're smaller.
1:55:47 Speaker 02 That was my one request of the wedding.
1:55:49 Speaker 03 In-N-Out Burger out of any fair Oscar party.
1:55:53 Bill Simmons? You have to hold the burger.
1:55:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:55:54 Speaker 02 It's also so big. A slider is better.
1:55:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:55:56 Speaker 02 Went to a wedding recently with little mini lobster rolls, like an inch big on, on pretzel rolls.
1:56:02 Speaker 03 I think you can do dumplings, just not hot piping freshly steamed ones.
1:56:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:56:08 Bill Simmons? That are dripping. Craig, what are your thoughts?
1:56:10 Speaker 06 That's fair. I think you could do a pot sticker.
1:56:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:56:12 Bill Simmons? Pot sticker.
1:56:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:56:14 Bill Simmons? Pot sticker way more sense.
1:56:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:56:15 Bill Simmons? What's your favorite, uh, party order?
1:56:17 Speaker 06 Pigs in a blanket. I'm defeated.
1:56:19 Bill Simmons? Pigs in a blanket.
1:56:19 Speaker 03 It's true. It's true.
1:56:20 Bill Simmons? All guys, you're, you're getting 50% of the room immediately.
1:56:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:56:24 Bill Simmons? Plus maybe 25% of
1:56:26 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
1:56:27 Bill Simmons? the rest of the room.
1:56:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:56:28 Bill Simmons? So you're batting 75%.
1:56:29 Speaker 03 Pigs in a blanket are good for people who like are, are never gonna eat a hot dog, but they kind of miss eating a hot dog. And they're like, oh, I can have a pig in a blanket. Yeah.
1:56:36 Bill Simmons? There's some, some split up buffalo chicken finger stuff you could do.
1:56:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:56:41 Bill Simmons? With like the toothpicks.
1:56:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:56:42 Bill Simmons? Where it's like, you could dip it, not dip it. Maybe there's some blue cheese.
1:56:45 Speaker 02 The, you know, the Chick-fil-A party platter is the Amanda Dobbins signature. Yeah. You are, you are there. You can come next year.
1:56:51 Speaker 03 All right.
1:56:52 Speaker 02 Everyone's invited. Holiday party.
1:56:53 Bill Simmons? Honestly, I was in awe.
1:56:56 Speaker 02 Thank you. Yeah.
1:56:57 Bill Simmons? I was in awe. It was one of the smartest party things I've ever seen.
1:57:00 Speaker 02 Listen, and it's because when, growing up in Atlanta, you go to a boring holiday party, Chick-fil-A platter.
1:57:05 Bill Simmons? Super easy to eat. They kept coming out.
1:57:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:57:08 Bill Simmons? People are getting a little drunker, a little drunker. And then all of a sudden you just see like four guys like
1:57:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:57:13 Bill Simmons? It, it checked all the boxes.
1:57:15 Speaker 02 It's, it's, it's undefeated.
1:57:17 Bill Simmons? There's probably none left at the end of the night.
1:57:18 Speaker 02 No.
1:57:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:57:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:57:20 Bill Simmons? All right. My second unanswerable question. Does Harrison Ford ever actually have sex in movies? Just presumed innocent. I couldn't think of
1:57:29 Speaker 03 Uh, what about, what about what lies in his?
1:57:31 Bill Simmons? Sex. Doesn't though. It's like a lot of like kissing, but not.
1:57:35 Speaker 03 No, doesn't he have sex with Amanda Dobbins?
1:57:37 Speaker 02 Like, what are we defining as, does he actually have sex in a movie? You know, we're sort of getting sidetracked here. Not to Mallory this out.
1:57:43 Bill Simmons? Witness, it's a lot of like longing and lusting, but.
1:57:47 Speaker 02 So are you talking about like, is he disrobed in the bed?
1:57:50 Bill Simmons? I think it was a very intentional choice from the moment he was Han Solo on.
1:57:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:57:55 Bill Simmons? To be like, I'm not, there's a line, like, I'm not gonna be in Fatal Attraction fucking Glenn Close against Kitchen Sake.
1:58:01 Speaker 02 So basically like a bare butt situation.
1:58:03 Speaker 03 Presumed innocent.
1:58:04 Bill Simmons? That's it. That was the only thing he said. Yeah. That's the only time where he really gets it on with somebody. Other than that, not really.
1:58:10 Speaker 02 Shirtless. He like, so you're just talking about like sex scenes?
1:58:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Like Michael Douglas.
1:58:15 Speaker 02 Well, sure.
1:58:16 Bill Simmons? Not only have sex scenes, but he'll like his balls will be flapping around.
1:58:19 Speaker 02 Made his career on it, you know?
1:58:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:58:21 Speaker 02 Can you, the first Michael Douglas movie I ever saw was American President, and then I went backwards. Can you imagine?
1:58:27 Bill Simmons? Oh, my lord.
1:58:27 Speaker 02 I like, I still.
1:58:29 Bill Simmons? Like, character support is never gonna be the cop in Basic Instinct, I guess is my point. All right.
1:58:35 Bill Simmons? I think it was an intentional choice. All right, this is probably the one that makes you mad.
1:58:38 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:58:40 Bill Simmons? Probably an answerable question is the category.
1:58:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:58:43 Bill Simmons? Are we, are we sure Tess isn't the villain of this movie?
1:58:47 Speaker 02 You could play it that way.
1:58:49 Bill Simmons? Her boss's boyfriend and job.
1:58:52 Speaker 03 Okay. Rebuttal.
1:58:54 Bill Simmons? And, and steal it just because her feelings are hurt.
1:58:57 Speaker 03 The boyfriend's gonna, just because they're feeling for her? No, she was stealing her idea and passing it off as her own.
1:59:03 Bill Simmons? She worked for her.
1:59:05 Speaker 03 But she was lying to her about it. She was like, nice idea.
1:59:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:59:08 Bill Simmons? Just talking it out.
1:59:09 Speaker 03 Okay, Bill, this is good information.
1:59:11 Bill Simmons? No, just, I'm talking it out. I'm talking it out. I'm trying to defend the Courtney Weaver.
1:59:15 Speaker 03 Keep your good ideas close to your head.
1:59:16 Bill Simmons? The assistant works for her. The assistant is assisting her.
1:59:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:59:20 Bill Simmons? Has an idea, and she says, you know what, I'm gonna tuck that one away and not tell anyone. Goes skiing, breaks her leg, and then this person takes her entire life.
1:59:28 Speaker 03 Right. Hard disagree. I understand that like, if you're the boss.
1:59:33 Bill Simmons? That's why it's unanswerable.
1:59:33 Speaker 03 If you're the boss, and you're like, I like your idea, I will be leading this deal. That's fine, because you're the boss. You're not gonna say, hey Tess, you lead this deal, it's your idea. She's the boss, she can lead it. But she doesn't, you don't lie to her and say, you know?
1:59:48 Speaker 02 The dictaphone where she's like, hard copy from the home computer, do not go through Tess.
1:59:53 Speaker 03 Let Tess know.
1:59:54 Speaker 02 Suggest.
1:59:55 Speaker 03 And then like.
1:59:55 Bill Simmons? Fair counter.
1:59:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:59:56 Speaker 03 And it's so patronizing to her, and she's like, I really tried.
1:59:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a two-way street, and if you had seen this, you simply would have asked me about it.
2:00:04 Bill Simmons? Obviously, I've been in charge of some stuff. One of the best things you can do is if somebody works for you and they have a good idea, you then give them credit after the fact that they had the idea.
2:00:12 Speaker 02 Yes.
2:00:13 Bill Simmons? With that said, she did steal her job and her man in this movie.
2:00:18 Speaker 02 She didn't steal her job.
2:00:19 Speaker 03 No, she got a different job.
2:00:20 Speaker 02 Tess doesn't get the corner office.
2:00:22 Bill Simmons? She stole the merger. She, she led that to get an extra level job.
2:00:26 Speaker 02 Catherine has no mergers, no acquisitions, no ideas.
2:00:30 Speaker 03 She has dim sum parties. She has dim sum parties and weird perverts hitting on her.
2:00:35 Speaker 06 In Bill's defense.
2:00:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:00:37 Speaker 06 I agree with.
2:00:38 Bill Simmons? See, Craig sees it.
2:00:38 Speaker 06 I agree with Joanna and Amanda, however, in Bill's defense.
2:00:43 Speaker 06 Tess has been working for Catherine for like 48 hours. And like, sure, maybe Catherine wasn't the nicest. To just kind of immediately risk your entire career by kind of like taking her job is pretty bold as an assistant.
2:00:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:00:56 Speaker 03 And that's the point of the movie. So Gwyneth Weaver tells her, don't wait for your opportunities to come to you. You have to go after and get them.
2:01:03 Speaker 02 And she says to Joan Cusack, like, I'm supposed to follow these rules that I didn't make up. So that I can't like, don't ever get what I want.
2:01:10 Bill Simmons? You rationalize it to yourself however you want.
2:01:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:01:12 Bill Simmons? Karate Kid, when they made the Cobra Kai and they were like, we're flipping this. Johnny Lawrence, maybe he was the victim and maybe Daniel-san was the bad guy.
2:01:21 Speaker 03 For the Catherine Parker show.
2:01:22 Bill Simmons? I think you flip it around. It's like Catherine's life is that ruin from this assistant she had for 48 hours.
2:01:27 Speaker 02 It is.
2:01:28 Bill Simmons? She's got a limp.
2:01:28 Speaker 03 YouTube, if you're still making original TV content, call Gwyneth Weaver.
2:01:33 Speaker 02 The thing about Devil Wears Prada is that it does sort of understand your point and that like the Anne Hathaway character.
2:01:42 Speaker 06 Being down over time.
2:01:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, but like, and she has that moment in the car of like, you already did, you did it to Emily. I was doing.
2:01:49 Bill Simmons? We talked about this on the pod. Anne Hathaway ultimately bad person in the movie.
2:01:53 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly. That's true. But I, but the movie knows that and is written that way. The working girl is not written.
2:01:59 Speaker 03 If, I think if Tess treated her new assistant at all remotely shabbily.
2:02:06 Speaker 02 Right.
2:02:07 Speaker 03 Then it's the Devil Wears Prada thing where she's just like.
2:02:10 Bill Simmons? Cool, so.
2:02:11 Speaker 02 Right, and also we have that last, the last shot, which is still, it's, she doesn't get Catherine's office.
2:02:16 Bill Simmons? You're on the record, you support identity theft and man stealing. That's what we learned.
2:02:20 Speaker 02 It's not, it's not identity theft. She uses her own name, which is another thing that you could not do now.
2:02:25 Speaker 03 You can't steal a man that isn't hers. No.
2:02:28 Bill Simmons? They were dating.
2:02:28 Speaker 06 That's, she didn't know that though.
2:02:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, he was over it.
2:02:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:02:32 Bill Simmons? Devor is Prada. She's a much worse person.
2:02:35 Speaker 02 Way worse. So annoying. So entitled.
2:02:37 Bill Simmons? And poor Vince from Autobots. No, I made you a grilled cheese.
2:02:41 Speaker 03 That guy sucks.
2:02:46 Speaker 03 Just because she sucks doesn't mean he doesn't suck because he does.
2:02:49 Speaker 02 He does, yeah.
2:02:49 Bill Simmons? I put some extra Yarlsberg in it. You like in a little mustard. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie?
2:02:57 Speaker 03 The Sigourney Warrhals.
2:02:59 Speaker 02 Oh, that's a good one. I want the dress. Like the dress that she wears. Yeah.
2:03:04 Speaker 03 It's not even leather.
2:03:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, I don't want to think it would suit me. I Googled inflation. I think it would be $16,000 now. Because it's 6,000 in the movie.
2:03:14 Bill Simmons? The bunny?
2:03:15 Speaker 02 The bunny?
2:03:16 Speaker 03 What about the gorilla?
2:03:17 Bill Simmons? The bunny she brings to the office.
2:03:18 Speaker 02 For a minute, I thought we were talking about Fatal Attraction again. I was like, no.
2:03:22 Speaker 03 The gorilla?
2:03:24 Speaker 02 Oh, that's a good one.
2:03:24 Speaker 03 Catherine's gorilla?
2:03:25 Bill Simmons? I think the answer.
2:03:26 Speaker 02 Right there in the corner where she used to be.
2:03:33 Bill Simmons? He hated this movie.
2:03:35 Speaker 03 No, Sweets just hated your hot take.
2:03:36 Bill Simmons? What about the two tall Harrison Ford Llewellyn wedding glasses with the straws? Movie, movie used glasses.
2:03:44 Speaker 02 Those are good.
2:03:45 Bill Simmons? Props.
2:03:45 Speaker 02 Harrison Ford put his lips here.
2:03:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson. You don't get anywhere in this world by waiting for what you want to come to you. You make it happen.
2:03:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:03:56 Bill Simmons? Even if you have to steal identity and somebody's man.
2:03:59 Speaker 03 Yeah. Check the milligrams.
2:04:02 Bill Simmons? Check the milligrams for Valium.
2:04:07 Bill Simmons? Double feature choice.
2:04:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:04:09 Bill Simmons? What do you have for working girl?
2:04:11 Speaker 02 I have a triple feature. I think this baby boom and broadcast news are like a very fun, you know.
2:04:17 Speaker 03 I had baby boom and broadcast news, but also morning glory.
2:04:21 Speaker 02 Love morning glory. Oh, my gosh.
2:04:23 Speaker 03 Rachel McAdams, working girl.
2:04:25 Bill Simmons? Karen, Karen's favorite.
2:04:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, I know. It's incredible. And Harrison Ford.
2:04:28 Speaker 03 Harrison Ford, yeah. In the sort of, yeah.
2:04:31 Bill Simmons? You could talk me into Working Girl with Pretty Woman, back to back.
2:04:34 Speaker 02 Good.
2:04:35 Bill Simmons? 1988, 1990.
2:04:36 Speaker 02 Just so you can get mad at Gary Marshall for what he stole.
2:04:39 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Double Cinderella, and then you're watching Pretty Woman, seeing all the things they took.
2:04:43 Speaker 02 There's also Witness, it's just double hot Harrison Ford.
2:04:46 Bill Simmons? Well, I think that there's a Devil Wears Prada case, is the story.
2:04:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:04:50 Bill Simmons? Because that steals, but way, way more subtly, from some stuff, but just, it's 88, not 2006, two different eras.
2:04:58 Speaker 03 If I were to pick from any of these great options, I think my number one would be Baby Boom, because it's not as seen. And if you could get people in the door for Working Girl and say, stay tuned to watch Diane Keaton start a baby food empire, then, um...
2:05:12 Speaker 02 And Sam Shepard.
2:05:13 Speaker 03 You're doing good work.
2:05:13 Speaker 02 Sam Shepard in Baby Boom does not meet Harrison Ford in Working Girl, but like, it's getting up there. He's just like in Vermont.
2:05:21 Speaker 03 Country veterinarian, right?
2:05:23 Speaker 02 Let me help you.
2:05:23 Bill Simmons? Is he the all-time number one, every woman loves somebody guy?
2:05:28 Speaker 02 Besides Harrison Ford, yes, and they are like of a type.
2:05:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:05:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's powerful.
2:05:34 Speaker 03 Sam, if Sam Shepard was still with us, he would be in a Taylor Sheridan show.
2:05:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he's, he's an all-timer.
2:05:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:05:40 Bill Simmons? Who won the movie?
2:05:42 Speaker 03 Melanie Griffith.
2:05:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:05:43 Bill Simmons? I think it's Melanie Griffith. Roger Ebert, our guy, wrote, "This is Melanie Griffith's movie in the same way The Graduate belonged to Dustin Hoffman. She was not an obvious casting choice, but she's the right one." I agree with that.
2:05:54 Speaker 02 I agree.
2:05:56 Bill Simmons? All right, producer Craig.
2:05:57 Speaker 02 This is a delight.
2:05:58 Bill Simmons? No, we gotta get Craig's say.
2:05:59 Speaker 03 Craig, yeah.
2:06:00 Bill Simmons? Thirty-eight years ago, this movie came out, which means Craig was minus seven, minus six?
2:06:07 Speaker 06 Thirty-eight, it's minus eight.
2:06:08 Bill Simmons? Minus eight? What do you got, Craig?
2:06:10 Speaker 06 This movie, single-handedly, saved Liz's relationship with the Rewatchables.
2:06:14 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah, we were in a rough room. Death Wish did not go well.
2:06:18 Speaker 06 We were, it was a dark, it was a dark time after Death Wish. This really pulled her out of the mud. Uh, when this movie ended, she was like, best movie ever made. I believe was her exact quote.
2:06:26 Bill Simmons? Wow.
2:06:27 Speaker 03 Great.
2:06:27 Bill Simmons? Better than Country Struck?
2:06:28 Speaker 06 I think a little better, a little better, although she loves Gwyneth. But, um, this is a wonderful rom com. I like, I like it because I feel like the rom coms from back in the day are a little bit edgier.
2:06:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:06:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:06:38 Speaker 06 There's just a little bit of unpredictability in these, a little bit of edge in these. And even the rom coms that have succeeded in the last like 10 or so years are like, you know, like Anyone But You. Those just have a safeness to them, like a glossiness to them. And these have, uh, no one's really bland. The characters are a little bit deeper, you know, like Harrison Ford's character being like a little bit questionable at times. I just like that the eighties and nineties kind of provide that in these rom coms.
2:07:03 Speaker 03 Agree.
2:07:03 Bill Simmons? You know, I have a theory on this. Not to get all philosophical. Um, there wasn't a lot going on in the eighties. You just kind of worked and then you went out and you watched television and listened to music and went to sporting events and.
2:07:16 Speaker 03 What do you mean?
2:07:17 Bill Simmons? We didn't have, we had nothing.
2:07:18 Speaker 06 What do we do now?
2:07:19 Bill Simmons? We had no.
2:07:20 Speaker 03 You had MTV.
2:07:21 Bill Simmons? We had no internet, anything.
2:07:23 Speaker 03 Right.
2:07:23 Bill Simmons? People were around each other all the time.
2:07:25 Speaker 03 You didn't have devices.
2:07:26 Bill Simmons? Being people.
2:07:27 Speaker 03 You didn't have the internet.
2:07:28 Speaker 02 Okay.
2:07:28 Speaker 03 As, as, uh, intensely.
2:07:30 Bill Simmons? Interacting with other people was basically everything you had to do.
2:07:33 Speaker 03 You couldn't go down your phone.
2:07:34 Bill Simmons? Sit at home and just read a book, or you could just actually go out where their people were.
2:07:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:07:38 Bill Simmons? So, well, we, we all loved reading books. Um, but you know what I mean?
2:07:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, I do.
2:07:44 Bill Simmons? Like, so movies were able to tap into that in a way that I think the last 10 years of movies with social media. I think people have really.
2:07:53 Speaker 02 It all happens on your phone.
2:07:54 Bill Simmons? I think they found out, even you see it in a lot, especially the later movies. They're really good now at showing people texting on phones. And like somebody to the phone and you'll see the text and, or they'll put the text on the screen and the texting. And I just don't think it's as good as just people being together.
2:08:09 Speaker 03 Oh, I agree.
2:08:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:08:10 Bill Simmons? And so Anyone But You is a good example of that because that movie was, was really successful. And it was terrible.
2:08:16 Speaker 03 It was really bad.
2:08:17 Bill Simmons? It's really bad. And guess what? My daughter watched it like seven times and loved it. And I'm like, I just, if that movie's winning over a movie like Working Girl, then that kind of tells us where we are.
2:08:27 Speaker 03 When do you think the last great rom com was?
2:08:30 Speaker 02 So I am not really even on board as late as 2005, six.
2:08:36 Speaker 03 I agree.
2:08:37 Speaker 02 So.
2:08:37 Speaker 06 Crazy Stupid Love doesn't do it?
2:08:39 Speaker 02 No.
2:08:39 Speaker 03 No.
2:08:40 Speaker 02 I'm sorry. And I, I have to tell you, I like, I think forgetting Sarah Marshall is really important and I appreciate.
2:08:46 Bill Simmons? It's a comedy.
2:08:47 Speaker 06 A rom com.
2:08:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:08:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, but it's about, and it's about men. Um.
2:08:52 Speaker 02 So Notting Hill is 99.
2:08:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:08:54 Speaker 02 Bridget Jones' Diary is 2001.
2:08:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, you've got mail is.
2:08:58 Speaker 02 98.
2:08:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:08:59 Speaker 02 I want to say.
2:08:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:09:00 Speaker 02 So.
2:09:00 Bill Simmons? If my wife was here, she would throw out a lot like Love in 2004.
2:09:04 Speaker 02 Okay.
2:09:04 Bill Simmons? One of her favorite movies ever.
2:09:07 Speaker 03 I would say.
2:09:08 Speaker 02 Is that the one where they sing Chicago to each other on the, in the car ride like, ooh.
2:09:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:09:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's powerful.
2:09:14 Bill Simmons? That movie's elite.
2:09:15 Speaker 03 I think it's pre 2005, pre 2005.
2:09:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, because I, like, I, I have rewatched, um, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days recently. You know, and sorry to the Knicks or whatever, but, um, it has not aged as well.
2:09:30 Speaker 03 No.
2:09:31 Speaker 02 As, as you would like.
2:09:32 Bill Simmons? Oh.
2:09:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:09:33 Bill Simmons? Not for my daughter. She loves that movie.
2:09:35 Speaker 02 I know, and that one, so that one and 27 Dresses are, I think, that like.
2:09:39 Bill Simmons? 27 Dresses is a good one.
2:09:40 Speaker 02 A slightly later generation.
2:09:42 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
2:09:42 Speaker 03 I just think they're not, they're not.
2:09:44 Speaker 02 I agree. I agree with you.
2:09:45 Speaker 03 Delivering the way that like the 90s and the 80s.
2:09:48 Bill Simmons? I think, yeah, I think we kind of, the genre, I don't want to say it died, it just shifted into this 2010s, this.
2:09:56 Speaker 03 It's not being as smart.
2:09:57 Bill Simmons? Movie Drinking Buddies.
2:09:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:09:59 Bill Simmons? It was on.
2:09:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:10:00 Bill Simmons? On cable, but it was like those type of movies where.
2:10:02 Speaker 03 That's a mumble core, yeah.
2:10:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah, like that mumble core era combined with like the brain dead, anyone but you type movies.
2:10:08 Speaker 03 Right.
2:10:08 Bill Simmons? And we never.
2:10:09 Speaker 03 We don't get the like Mike Nichols, Nora Ephron, like this is smart.
2:10:13 Speaker 02 Right.
2:10:14 Speaker 03 And a rom com at the same time, you know what I mean?
2:10:16 Speaker 02 Also, it is a romantic comedy, but there is also the professional plotline as well. And it's as much about like, is Tess gonna get.
2:10:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, getting the man is not the point. Yeah, yeah.
2:10:26 Speaker 02 Shot, and the last scene is not about Harrison Ford, it's about her and her dream.
2:10:31 Speaker 03 And she calls Joan Cusack, she doesn't call Harrison Ford.
2:10:33 Bill Simmons? Well, yeah, so you have, this is a rom com that has three, two of the best actors of the 80s.
2:10:38 Speaker 02 Right.
2:10:39 Bill Simmons? With Melanie Griffith, the breakout star. And then one of the most famous directors of.
2:10:42 Speaker 03 Right.
2:10:43 Bill Simmons? This whole generation.
2:10:44 Speaker 03 Right.
2:10:44 Bill Simmons? And now we do not have things like that.
2:10:46 Speaker 02 Romantic comedies now.
2:10:48 Bill Simmons? I, I don't know, I, I just feel like we've done so many versions of the same idea that might be part of it too. Where you would still feel like people falling in love would be timeless, but every time you watch them, they're so self-aware to the movies that have already happened before them, they almost are afraid to be original.
2:11:07 Speaker 03 But you can do iterations, like I, I'm a big defender of You've Got Mail, I love that movie, and that's, that's a remake, that had, that's a story that had already been made like three other times before it was made for the A.L. era, you know what I mean?
2:11:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but that movie has two massive stars in it.
2:11:21 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, but you can remake story premises again and again and again, as long as you do it intelligently and have a good cast.
2:11:30 Bill Simmons? The movie with Sudeikis and Alison Brie is good. When they're friends for a long time and then, I forget that one, yeah, that, that one is, that was early 2010s, I thought that was good. But I feel like by the time Amy and Paul Rudd made their rom-com, making fun of all the rom-coms, that was when we were kind of like all good with the genre.
2:11:49 Speaker 02 Well, the other thing is that there aren't, it's the movie star thing, right? Because you just identified that it's, whether it's Julia Roberts, or Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, like, those are people who are already movie stars in, and they're like, early 30s, they're or the late 20s. And we don't have movie stars like that anymore, in the same way, because of superheroes or whatever.
2:12:11 Speaker 03 I just feel like I keep hearing like, oh, the rom-coms back when Set It Up, uh, pop.
2:12:16 Speaker 02 Which I like that movie.
2:12:17 Speaker 03 It's good, um, Nobody Wants This, which was a TV show, but a lot of people are like,
2:12:22 Bill Simmons? you know. Set It Up is a good example, that hit and was successful.
2:12:24 Speaker 03 But it was like a Netflix, it was a Netflix movie, and a Netflix movie doesn't feel as big as, do you know what I mean? And Glenn Powell was not a star in the way that, that was like early 2018, right?
2:12:34 Speaker 06 That's the thing, is they become like lovable streaming hits.
2:12:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. Right. They're not like. Or TV shows. We're talking about Working Girl and Die Hard in the same conversation, and wouldn't put a rom-com in the same conversation as a big epic event movie anymore.
2:12:48 Speaker 06 The last duo we had was Gosling and Emma Stone.
2:12:51 Speaker 03 I will say. Crazy stupid. With the part of Crazy Stupid Love that is just them, that's a good rom com. Then there's a lot of other movies.
2:12:59 Bill Simmons? You know, it's it's so different than sports because in sports, sports is constantly new and the athletes can change.
2:13:04 Speaker 03 Right.
2:13:05 Bill Simmons? And rom coms are competing. It's the ghosts of the iconic rom coms that are just better.
2:13:09 Speaker 03 Yes. Yeah.
2:13:11 Bill Simmons? And I don't know, you go back to.
2:13:13 Speaker 03 I just think that like in the 90s, where there's a ton of great rom coms, you could argue, oh, well, they're competing with a screwball comedies in the 1940s, which were, you know, you can't beat Katherine Hepburn, you can't beat it, but they are. They they are equally great. So I feel like you can keep doing it. We just don't value it anymore. We just consider that small ball sort of.
2:13:32 Bill Simmons? I think Craig's point about that they used to be edgier is an important point.
2:13:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:13:35 Bill Simmons? Because even like About Last Night, which I don't think gets enough credit for 80s, kind of paving the way for When Harry Met Sally and some of these other ones. That's a pretty like.
2:13:46 Speaker 03 There's a lot of sex.
2:13:46 Bill Simmons? R rated movie, there's sex.
2:13:48 Speaker 03 Right, yeah.
2:13:48 Bill Simmons? Rob Lowe kind of goes nuts at one point.
2:13:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:13:51 Bill Simmons? I just think that movie would be completely different. They remade it with Kevin Hart and Michael Ealy. It's just like, all right.
2:13:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, right.
2:13:58 Bill Simmons? But I do think it's a star power thing.
2:14:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's definitely part of it.
2:14:02 Bill Simmons? We never really replenished. We had this, you know, the every time like Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan, and then it was like Next Generation, here's Reese Witherspoon, and then Kate Hudson's gonna make a bunch. We always had people to put in those and it was always a Matthew McConaughey. And now it's basically like Glenn Powell.
2:14:18 Speaker 06 Well, I think it felt like a necessary piece of the star playbook because you had to do your rom com and I don't think that's.
2:14:23 Speaker 03 Like Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone would be wonderful in them if they could write, if, you know, if someone committed like the script, the money and the the release.
2:14:34 Speaker 06 Nobody wants to pay those.
2:14:35 Speaker 03 But they don't want to do it. That's not their strategy. Emma Stone is instead like winning multiple Oscars for for art house movies.
2:14:40 Speaker 06 But people used to do both, which is cool.
2:14:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:14:43 Bill Simmons? I would rather she did that than that Nathan Fielder show. I would rather she made, she remade Picture Perfect.
2:14:50 Bill Simmons? We're sitting in a picture perfect. That's another one where somebody's pretending.
2:14:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:14:55 Bill Simmons? Oh, I need a date for a wedding, so here's my fiance. This guy I just hired. That's such a great era.
2:15:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:15:01 Bill Simmons? I think part of it is. The rom com premises were so crazy that I almost, they're too self aware now.
2:15:08 Speaker 02 They don't stand up to like any like ethics treatment.
2:15:11 Speaker 03 Right, so maybe, yeah, maybe we're too scared to be problematic.
2:15:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
2:15:15 Speaker 03 Okay.
2:15:16 Speaker 06 We should say that in a week, there is a rom com coming out starring Dakota Johnson with Celine Song is directing it.
2:15:21 Speaker 03 We saw it this week.
2:15:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, we saw it.
2:15:23 Speaker 03 And I would not call it a rom com.
2:15:24 Speaker 02 No, it's a romantic comedy. They're trying to market it.
2:15:26 Speaker 03 They're mismarketing it.
2:15:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:15:28 Speaker 06 Oh, never mind.
2:15:29 Speaker 02 It's in conversation.
2:15:31 Speaker 03 Yes.
2:15:31 Speaker 02 Like, that's the part of it that I really liked.
2:15:34 Speaker 03 Yes.
2:15:34 Speaker 02 But, yeah.
2:15:35 Bill Simmons? Well, one of the most fun things about having a daughter was watching her hit all the rom com tiers with my wife, or sometimes by herself, but I just think there's a timelessness to them and it doesn't matter. Like, I'm positive my daughter would like working girl.
2:15:50 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
2:15:50 Bill Simmons? Once she got past the hair, she would definitely like it.
2:15:53 Speaker 02 And it's also the way for her to learn about the 80s and the hair.
2:15:57 Bill Simmons? True.
2:15:58 Speaker 02 You know, it is because the format is recognizable, so then it's just kind of like, yeah.
2:16:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:16:03 Speaker 02 It's like, that's, that's how I first learned about Wimbledon, was the 2004 film Wimbledon starring Kirsten Dunst and.
2:16:09 Speaker 03 Paul Bettany.
2:16:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:16:10 Speaker 03 And James McAvoy.
2:16:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, and now here we are.
2:16:13 Bill Simmons? Amanda, a true pleasure. Joanna, a true pleasure.
2:16:16 Speaker 03 An honor.
2:16:17 Speaker 02 Thank you so much.
2:16:17 Speaker 03 Thanks for letting me witness this incredible moment of your career.
2:16:20 Speaker 02 It feels so great to be back.
2:16:21 Bill Simmons? Producer Craig, always a pleasure. Who else do we have to thank?
2:16:25 Speaker 06 Marcelino.
2:16:27 Bill Simmons? Thank you to him.
2:16:30 Bill Simmons? I guess it's New York month, because we've done two New York movies in a row. Might have to do two more. Only need two more for New York month.
2:16:35 Speaker 03 Sounds great.
2:16:36 Bill Simmons? These were two good ones, though. Thank you both.
2:16:38 Speaker 03 Thank you.
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