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The Rewatchables ·

Varsity Blues

year 1999decade 90sdirector Brian Robbinsgenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Shea Serranohost Jason Concepcionhost Mallory Rubin
All 13 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 13:09

The team turning on Coach Kilmer in the locker room (2 of 3 spoken picks)

Nominees: Mox coming off the bench to save the game after reading Vonnegut and watching his buddy blow out his knee; the whipped cream sundae; the 'I don't want your life' speech; the team turning on Coach Kilmer; Dawson's big halftime speech; the punt block; and the hook and ladder play, with the joke that Billy Bob is not on the punt block team because he is constantly concussed.

One pick is the whipped cream bikini, which the host will stop for every time as basic human instinct, even though it lasts two seconds.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 41:19

"I don't want your life"

Setting 'I don't want your life' aside as the given, nominees include 'I'm back' and 'Puke and rally', one of which is called a good high school senior yearbook quote, and Kilmer's crude insult of Mox's father, admired as the perfect insult.

The film

Varsity Blues (1999)

Directed by Brian Robbins · Drama

106 minutes

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Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Cast credits have not been imported yet.

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

30:33

Half-Assed Internet Research

40% on Rotten Tomatoes; Ebert called it a predictable football movie that lacks intensity; Van Der Beek won Teen Choi...

40% on Rotten Tomatoes; Ebert called it a predictable football movie that lacks intensity; Van Der Beek won Teen Choice and MTV Movie Awards breakout honors; shaving cream stood in for the whipped cream; Wendell's actor played at Stanford and briefly for the Kansas City Chiefs; Billy Bob's actor tore his patella tendon during the shoot; Mox wears number 4 for Brett Favre; Van Der Beek stopped playing football after an eighth-grade concussion

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:30:33Read transcript
  • The film has a 40% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so 60% of people are idiots; Roger Ebert is quoted calling it a predictable football movie that lacks intensity, which the hosts reject, since the coach does a Hitler salute.
  • True or false: Van Der Beek won breakout movie star at the Teen Choice Awards and breakout male performance at the MTV Movie Awards; true, and since it was an MTV production the hosts suspect it was semi-rigged.
  • Shaving cream was used in the whipped cream sundae scene because whipped cream would not stick to Allie Larder; whether it sticks to anyone else is unknown.
  • The actor who played Wendell played at Stanford and had a cup of coffee with the Kansas City Chiefs as a strong safety; the Billy Bob actor tore his patella tendon during the shoot, which is why he is shot from odd angles and the hook and ladder looks weird, and they still ran it with three guys on his back.
  • Mox wore number 4 because Van Der Beek's favorite player was Brett Favre, read on IMDb that day; the claim that Billy Bob was 38 when filmed is false, with the actor recalled as 47 when he died about a year ago and 28 at the time; Van Der Beek had to stop playing football in eighth grade after a concussion, so they knew.
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36:00

Picking Nits

No coaches once Kilmer walks out; the kids call plays for the division title; Billy Bob has no last name; Mox says he...

No coaches once Kilmer walks out; the kids call plays for the division title; Billy Bob has no last name; Mox says he never played football again although the team made the playoffs; the field goal not kicked on the final drive; Billy Bob plays right guard instead of left tackle yet ends up on the left sideline for the hook and ladder; Brown admits Mox in the fall; Lance's unsubtle 'Hook?' call; the shotgun that hits only Kilmer's face on the sign; students at a strip club till dawn with their teacher; two state titles in thirty years

In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 00:36:00Read transcript
  • No coaches: two other coaches are in the trainer's room helping give the shot, then nobody coaches the second half; why only two assistants when Texas has twelve; the joke is Nazi ideology, where subordinates step aside when the leader does, but since the film gives Kilmer a long dramatic shot walking the hallway and packing his office, showing the assistants leaving with him would have been an easy fix.
  • Letting children call plays with a division title on the line is ludicrous, and the announcers are not rattled at all; one announcer's first line is a threat to burn down grandmothers' houses in Bainesville.
  • Billy Bob has no last name, or it is Bob; are we to believe Mox could not play at Brown after a Texas state title, or did he not want to; he says he never played again, yet the team went to the playoffs, so perhaps they forfeited for having no coaches, which would be ludicrous; the field goal they did not kick is noted again.
  • Asked for nits, names the team not going to the playoffs as a big one and is obsessed that Billy Bob plays right guard instead of left tackle, since an offensive lineman that large should protect a right-handed quarterback's blind side, and even so he somehow ends up on the left sideline for the hook and ladder, so the geometry does not track. — Mallory Rubin
  • How does Mox hear from Brown in the fall, which is not how admissions works, unless it was early decision; the hook and ladder is called by Lance with a bare 'Hook?', so what is the other team doing not to pick it up.
  • Asked for nitpicks, picks the coaches and the fact that Mox claims he never played football again. — Jason Concepcion
  • The others note the team made the playoffs, so maybe Mox forgot because of a concussion.
  • Offers a small one: when Billy Bob has his breakdown shooting his trophies on the back of the truck he pulls up at about the 30-yard line, and after their talk he hands the gun to Vanderbeek, who turns and shoots the Bud Kilmer sign from thirty yards away with a shotgun and hits only the face. — Shea Serrano
  • That is not how a shotgun works, and it holds a hundred bullets; you can see the E60 piece on Billy Bob in two years, concussions, shooting trophies, chugging syrup, introduced by Tom Rinaldi; the fact that high school students drank shots at a strip club until dawn with their teacher is raised again.
  • Earlier, during the scene discussion, Kilmer's two state titles in thirty years are flagged as a nit for later: he would be fired in Texas, where Coach Eric Taylor won two in four years, and nobody cares about division titles.
  • Earlier, during what aged best, the absence of a single assistant coach to run the game is raised and saved for nitpicks.
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43:48

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Did the Coyotes cover the spread in the final game? Did Coach Kilmer really never coach again? Has any movie used Van...

Did the Coyotes cover the spread in the final game? Did Coach Kilmer really never coach again? Has any movie used Van Halen's Hot for Teacher better? Did Friday Night Lights rip off Varsity Blues or vice versa? Why isn't Varsity Blues 2 in the works?

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:43:48Read transcript
  • Did the Coyotes cover the spread in the final game: they won 20 to 17 as roughly three-point underdogs with Mox, so they covered, with one host calling it 'a Nicole situation' (as transcribed); they were at home and had put up 66 the game before.
  • The closing credits have Mox stating that Coach Kilmer never coached again; one host does not believe a player mutiny would stop him getting another job, though being outed as a white supremacist or winning only two titles in thirty years might, and in 1999 without the internet he could go two towns over with no assistants to spread the tale.
  • Asked, as the panelist who wrote a book about music, whether any movie has used Van Halen's Hot for Teacher better, answers that the book was about music, not stripper teachers, that this might have been the only Hot for Teacher, and guesses no. — Shea Serrano
  • Did Friday Night Lights rip off Varsity Blues or vice versa: vice versa, since the makers wanted to film the Friday Night Lights book, could apparently not get the rights, stole the good parts and made up weird ones; one host would pay to see that movie every year.
  • Why isn't Varsity Blues 2 in the works: several people have died, which becomes the pitch, with Lance Harbor having coached for twenty years and dying, Mox returning from Brown, where he is a professor, for the funeral as West Cannon is about to abolish football, a football Footloose, or alternatively Mox as a software salesman in Denver; the hosts are in on Netflix.
  • Nobody has further unanswerable questions.
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