What’s Aged the Worst?
The first 19 minutes; obvious stunt doubles; Victor Maitland's reaction to Mikey's death; the homophobia (nominated, then partly defended); Taggart punching Axel; Maitland's useless bodyguards; the Rolling Stone and Michael Jackson name-drop
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:51:21Read transcript
- The first 19 minutes could zip by faster; 1984 was not the peak of masking stunt work, so a guy gets punched and a different man flies through the window, Magnum PI level stunts: the man thrown through the buffet table is not Jonathan Banks, the truck driver has a mullet while the man who climbs out has a bald spot, Victor's tumble down the steps and Eddie through the plate glass are doubles; tumbling action has gone out of style and now reads as farce.
- Victor Maitland's reaction to Mikey's death is so bad that Stephen Burkoff (as transcribed) should have spent weeks in character; he has been in a Bond movie and is a good 80s guy; 80s villains were almost always played by sexy men, even Jonathan Banks, the future Mike Ermantrout (as transcribed), has an attractive energy.
- The whole movie is pairs of men, five different pairs with no female interruption, like Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas driving and looking at each other; it only jokes about that once at the club, is not homophobic, and is not afraid of what it means to have two men in close proximity.
- Homophobia is proposed for what aged worst, but one host finds it less homophobic than memory suggested: you simply see gay people be gay, Damon Wayans plays an effeminate man, and the one not-great moment is Eddie using a made-up disease, Herbie simplex 10 (as transcribed), as a weapon on the maitre d'; the defense is that the characters he invents are bits to get him into the next room, like the loudmouth journalist at the Beverly Palms; Eddie's early-80s homophobia is remembered from the stand-up specials and a little of 48 Hours, not this.
- Taggart punching Axel is pretty bad given what has been seen of the LA police, though Taggart then comes out, apologizes and offers to let charges be pressed; Maitland's bodyguards aged badly because all of them were terrible, and the strategy is dissected: five guys come in, four huge ones carry Axel through the building and the fifth just walks in front, so they can throw him through the window as evidence of a public disturbance.
- No white person thrown through that window ends up charged with public disturbance and in a police department; Axel never resists arrest because he is a cop from Detroit and a black man who knows what cops do, and he knows Todd will eventually vouch for him; the movie star's entitlement that the plot will give him something to do sits beside the reality of a black person in police presence, and there is a character logic in revealing less to learn how these officers act.
- When 48 Hours was a rewatchable the fight between Eddie and Nick Nolte looked like Nolte would kill him, so two years later the formula seems tweaked so Axel is never roughed up beyond a punch in the stomach, the window and being knocked out in the opening.
- Getting into the Beverly Palm by name-dropping Rolling Stone and a Michael Jackson profile is offered for aged worst; a follow-up, explicitly not offered as aged worst, is how magazines substitute for mobile phones: Rosewood reading Time about red meat, Victor Maitland flipping through a magazine in Jenny's office, and Jonathan Banks reading National Geographic, which is just how people passed time in 1984.