The Program The Rewatchables
The Program poster
The Program

What’s Aged the Best?

Steve Lattimer (Andrew Bryniarski); Darnell-Ray feud; Kane Is Able bumper sticker; 80,000-fans chemistry-experiment line; bow-tie academic; Darnell's dating theory; jock adrenaline factor; Latimer's injection scene; Chris Berman

In the discussion (15)
Approx. transcript time · 00:59:17Read transcript
  • Latimer's actor says not a day goes by without someone yelling "place at the table"; he is unrecognizable as a neo-Nazi in Higher Learning and later played Leatherface, but this was his best role.
  • Latimer belongs on a Mount Rushmore of football-movie characters and is a 1990s ogre in the Donald Gibb mold.
  • Why he never became a lead in action movies is a great question: he can act, as in the scene telling Alvin not everybody has his ability, and he has the look.
  • It is a tough lane (Jeff Speakman's The Perfect Weapon is cited); a theory holds that distractingly striking people struggle to carry vehicles, like a Peter Parker versus Spider-Man distinction.
  • He could have been Dalton's younger brother in Road House; his credits include Necessary Roughness, Street Fighter, Higher Learning, Any Given Sunday, Rollerball and the Texas Chainsaw remake.
  • The Darnell versus Ray feud is distinct, with Ray modeled on the Beverly Hills Cop banana-in-the-tailpipe type and the pair likened to Carlton versus the Fresh Prince; everyone roots for Darnell though he is kind of a dick.
  • Halle Berry is called terrible in the film for breaking up with Ray at a party and following Darnell, with a joke about her Monster's Ball Oscar speech.
  • The "Kane Is Able" bumper sticker is a great psych gag.
  • The spitting into each other's mouths was computer-generated after the fact according to both actors in the oral histories, a disappointment; don't spit in friends' mouths during COVID.
  • The line asking when 80,000 people last showed up to watch a kid do a chemistry experiment captures why football matters at colleges, and the bow-tie academic is a required stock character.
  • Darnell's theory for dating Halle Berry's character, going where white people go like skating and bowling, is called cutting edge.
  • The jock, adrenaline factor holds up: in 1993 the Pantera-loving jocks had Latimer as their guy, and rewatching felt like being back in the high school weight room.
  • Latimer injecting himself in the backside is rough on nicer TVs; the speaker says he has never used, and nobody he knows went straight to curls after injecting, especially with dated dumbbells. — Ryen Russillo
  • An unanswerable Berman question: was Tim Weyman's name written so Berman could say he could "go all the Wayman"; Berman's nickname riffs, such as Jeff Conine the Barbarian, suggest he made it up on the spot.
  • A recent Berman story: a joke nickname "Jeremy double chin" made on a podcast four days earlier was used by Berman on Monday Night Football 18 hours later; Berman has aged both the best and the worst.