The hosts say the character was originally named Danny Weber and renamed LaRusso once Macchio was cast; Macchio auditioned for Johnny because he did not want to play another good guy. — Bill Simmons
Zabka is cited saying Robert Downey Jr. and Charlie Sheen were considered for Daniel; Downey might have made a better movie, but the counterpoint is that Macchio's odd combination is what makes it stand out, and a likable Downey would have muddied whether Johnny was the villain. — Bill Simmons
Sheen is not seen as Daniel and would have fit Johnny better. — Bill Simmons
The studio originally wanted a famous Japanese actor from Seven Samurai for Miyagi (name garbled in the transcript), but he did not speak English; Bill Cosby is also said to have been mentioned, which would have aged worst. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say Crispin Glover was considered for Johnny before Zabka, and Helen Hunt and Demi Moore for Ali before Shue, who reportedly got it partly from a Burger King commercial and took leave from Harvard. — Bill Simmons
1980s soundtrack; the 'Mommy not here to dress you' insult; Johnny's semifinal rout of Vidal; Bill Conti's music; dropping the original ending; the golf-and-stuff date spot and montage; Mrs. LaRusso; 'Get him a body bag'; the restaurant scene with Daniel's mom
The 80s soundtrack leads: Cruel Summer, 'Danger', 'Young Hearts Beat Fast' in the date montage, and 'You're the Best'; 80s love songs are mocked as caveman-simple. — Bill Simmons
'What's the matter? Mommy not here to dress you?' is called the greatest movie insult ever, a triple crown of disdain, mom and wardrobe. — Bill Simmons
Daniel's wardrobe draws mockery: high-waisted mom jeans and camo pants that would have labeled him in the 80s. — Ryen Russillo
In the final, a crowd member yells 'you're a cupcake, Johnny'; 'put him in a body bag' became a reliable college lacrosse heckle. — Ryen Russillo
The writer is named as Robert Mark Kamen; Cobra Kai's snake and strike-first, no-mercy mentality are praised, and throwing the first punch is described as how fights are actually won. — Bill Simmons
Johnny's semifinal against Vidal, the best technician in the tournament, is a 3-0 demolition and is called Johnny's apex; it is said the fight could have been closer, but that would upstage the final. Johnny is lip-read saying Vidal is not that good. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say Vidal was one of the real black belts, doubled for Miyagi in long shots, and still instructs in Murrieta. — Ryen Russillo
Bill Conti's music is listed; the hosts say the discarded original ending, in which Kreese breaks Johnny's trophy and fights Miyagi, became the opening of Karate Kid II, and ending on the celebration was a great decision. — Bill Simmons
Freddie and friends rejoining the celebration are mocked as front-runners, compared with fans after the Lakers signed LeBron. — Bill Simmons
The golf-and-arcade spot in Norwalk used for the date montage was the dream 80s date location; a parody date montage with happy music over a disastrous date is pitched. — Bill Simmons
Mrs. LaRusso makes a Mount Rushmore of 80s pop culture moms with the Family Ties mom, Mrs. Bueller and the Cosby Show mom; the Growing Pains mom gets an honorable mention. — Bill Simmons
'Get him a body bag': the hosts cite the oral history in which Rob Garrison, said to have died last year, recalls looping the line months later on the first take and being told by Avildsen it would be a classic. — Bill Simmons
Tommy's whole performance is praised, while 'take a worm for a walk' did not catch on; Tommy's death in Cobra Kai is called emotional. — Ryen Russillo
The restaurant scene where Daniel's mom, now a hostess, asks whether he likes anyone ('she buries Judy') is praised as a sincere mother-son moment. — Ryen Russillo
The decision not to use the original ending is restated as a what's-aged-best pick, since what gets cut can make something great. — Ryen Russillo
The hosts say Keanu Reeves was originally set to play Chris and lost the part when Kilmer fit it around Batman Forever; one host would totally go for Keanu. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say Ted Levine was offered Waingro and turned it down to avoid typecasting after Buffalo Bill; one host can't fathom it, the other thinks he would like that movie more. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say Voight initially turned down Nate, saying others could do it better, until Mann insisted. — Bill Simmons
An internet claim that the actress later in Mann's Miami Vice refused Justine unless the script was translated into Mandarin is called half-fast and fishy. — Bill Simmons
The Thief star lamented on a 1998 Thief DVD commentary with Mann that he had no role in Heat; the hosts say he should have played Nate. — Bill Simmons
Offered the Thief star as Nate plus Keanu as Chris, one host would rather keep Kilmer, whose unpredictable performance he loves. — Bill Simmons
Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, praised Pacino's performance and said Coppola was a master of mood, atmosphere and period. — Bill Simmons
The three-star grade is joked to be a little better than Poseidon, like a Simmons review of The Irishman.
Ebert wrote that the flashbacks gave Coppola the greatest difficulty in maintaining pace and narrative force, a structural weakness from which the film never recovers. — Bill Simmons
Ebert later amended the review in a re-review as a four-star movie; he did hundreds of re-reviews, and in his Great Movies book rarely notes that he originally disliked a film.
The shock value of the big twist, which cannot be recaptured on rewatch; the internet outrage reaction to the movie; the brutality of the Desi murder; Neil Patrick Harris's performance; Wesley Morris's negative review; Bill Simmons saying Neil Patrick Harris was bad
The big twist has aged worst in one sense: in the theater, where a guy audibly went 'oh, shit', it was the best part if you had not read the book, and that shock cannot be recaptured on a tenth viewing, though you appreciate the details in a new way, like rereading Goblet of Fire knowing Voldemort rises from the cauldron, which is the whole point of the podcast; it belongs in both categories.
The internet reacting to the movie has aged badly: one of the first cases of people pulling other things into a piece of art and arguing outrage over it, as now with the new Tarantino movie, when to one host it is a movie about a crazy lady who framed her husband and came back; another counters that using criticism to understand society through art is reasonable and happens on this podcast, and it was the 'how dare you, this is irresponsible' tone that grated.
Gillian Flynn has engaged the criticism of the story's sexual politics and of Amy, as she did when the book came out; her boiled-down response is that women can be murderous and violent too, anyone can be a psycho, an inversion the hosts find compelling; neither Nick nor Amy is a good person, and Nick's cheating does not entitle her to frame him, kill Desi and frame him for rape, or bring a child into that household, the baby being perhaps the most fucked-up thing she does.
The Desi murder is brutal and has aged worst for one host from a rewatchability standpoint; in the book she drugs him with sleeping pills and kills him off the page with a knife grabbed in the kitchen rather than a box cutter, less premeditated and violent, and Patrick Fugit's line asking how she got her hands on a box cutter is relished.
Neil Patrick Harris sucks, capital S, for one host: a sitcom actor with no chemistry, out-acted in his scenes and not a Fincher actor, with the other How I Met Your Mother guy Josh Radner (as transcribed), Zach Braff or Tobey Maguire suggested instead; others argue the lack of chemistry is the point, that he evinces weak, privileged, waspy cornball well, and that Amy is supposed to outclass him.
Wesley Morris's Grantland review is nominated, with one host eager to make fun of him: brilliant, sophisticated criticism nominated for a National Magazine Award, with a bad opinion inside it, that the movie is not good; another plans to argue with him for an hour at Rembrandt's wedding after three drinks.
The opening credits sequence; young Madsen; the ironic juxtaposition of music and violence; the who's-the-mole device; Steven Wright as the radio host; the L.A. setting
The opening credit sequence is fun to watch after Swingers blatantly ripped it off four years later with the slow-motion strut out of a diner, while joking that everyone was ripping off Tarantino; the Swingers characters are exactly the guys whose lives were never the same after Reservoir Dogs.
The shot remains influential: The Farewell, an immigrant story out this year, has a slow-motion group walk that reads as meaningful; the hosts joke about filming themselves walking the Sunset Gower lot, which one once did with Jalen, walking away from an exploding car.
Young Madsen is another: a top-five lottery pick who became a whatever-happened-to like Tom Gugliotta, with a bit of Newman and Dean Martin, tall, black-haired and calm; he has had a complicated life, and a college friend loved even bad Michael Madsen movies.
Madsen is likened to Kenny Anderson and may have market-corrected himself; it is telling he is not in Pulp Fiction, though the long-term plan was a Vega Brothers movie with Travolta, and he returned in Kill Bill and The Hateful Eight.
Species is one of the great cable movies with no Oscars; Madsen then went down the road of Man with a Gun and Donnie Brasco and became the Skinamax lord, and his once olive-oil voice now sounds like gargled concrete, hard to understand in The Hateful Eight.
The juxtaposition of music against what it scores, easy-listening soft rock during the ear cutting, was mind-blowing and has been copied so often it is now undetectable; who's-the-mole plots remain a favorite device, as in The Loudest Voice.
Steven Wright as the radio host sets the scene; it is a good L.A. movie, with the warehouse in Eagle Rock, Tarantino living in Glendale, and his first three films being L.A. movies set in different parts of the city, like the True Romance hotel on Sunset.
The closing personal pick is the opening credits sequence.
Annie is impossibly understanding; the movie needs a sex scene; Ray Liotta bats righty as the lefty Shoeless Joe; the Fenway scoreboard reads 10:30 in the third inning; no black players before 1947; the two-acre field at $2,200 an acre; professional lights beside splintery bleachers; Mark vanishes for a glass of water; Mark isn't thrown off the property; Ray doesn't recognize his father in the scrimmage; Dwyer Brown's catching; Annie wouldn't wait when Karen falls; Karen could be carried onto the field; Archie already existed off the field; the cornfield's ground rules; only one book-burner is opposed; Shoeless Joe's no-errors defense
Notes on Amy Madigan are held for nitpicks; the first written down is whether anyone's wife has ever been this understanding in the history of mankind: she objects to Boston but not to mowing the cornfield; only the people who marry serial killers in prison compare; it's the 60s.
The movie needs a sex scene to understand what fuels Annie's blind devotion; Terrence Mann's response to Ray is you're seeing a whole team of psychiatrists, while Annie's is follow your bliss, moving and aspirational but also ridiculous, probably an extension of the hippie ethos.
Annie's Fenway big green wall vision is when she really buys in, versus her initial don't go, we're underwater doubt; by the Christmas montage of Ray staring at the field in a snowstorm every relative would want him in a mental hospital; and once Joe Jackson shows up, why not replant the corn instead of hosting a 162-game season.
Ray Liotta batted righty while Shoeless Joe was a lefty, everybody's biggest nitpick for thirty years and indefensible since they could have flipped the shot and cheated the background; come on, Phil Alden-Robertson (as transcribed), bad job.
The Fenway scoreboard reads 10:30 p.m. in the third inning with no rain delay, obviously shot after a game; it has bothered one host for thirty years.
The movie gives second chances to Ray and his dad, Moonlight Graham (joked as Grom, the gelato), Terrence Mann, Shoeless Joe and the Black Sox, yet ignores every black player before 1947; instead of the cheating White Sox, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell or Josh Gibson, and Terrence Mann would surely have raised it in the van; Robinson called it his greatest regret; it is the biggest flaw in the movie.
Mark's do you know how much this land is worth is undercut by Ray's $2,200 an acre: a baseball field is about two acres, so he isn't losing much on a farm of hundreds of acres; the counter is that he built and maintains a triple-A field with expensive electricity.
Why have the lights at all, where does a regular person get professional lighting, and why is the construction so perfect and precise while the bleachers are splintery unvarnished planks with smashed-in nails that aren't safe for a child; the lights do give an ethereal vibe and the film addresses how lights changed the game.
Busfield's Mark finally sees the ghosts after Karen is saved, Annie sends him inside for water, and he is never seen again; the counter is that interrupting the reunion with we can charge $20 a car would be in character; the opposite nitpick is that he should be kicked off the premises for nearly killing the child.
The editing is shady when Mark grabs and shakes Karen, and a parent would fight anyone who touched their six-year-old; Ray never recognizes his dad during the scrimmage despite catcher's gear and three hours in the stands.
Dwyer Brown's childlike catching has an explanation from research: the catch had to be shot in a ten-minute magic hour with an 85-year-old rock-hard catcher's mitt he feared dropping, so apologies to him, though his throwing wasn't loved; it wasn't as bad as the kid at the end of The Natural.
Karen falling off the bleachers eating the hot dog has holes: Annie would run to call the paramedics and no mom on the planet stops because her husband has an idea, since a mother whose child is hurt becomes superhuman.
Why not carry Karen five feet onto the field so Moonlight needn't cross; the counter is that young Moonlight hasn't been through medical school, answered that he is a timeless ghost who has lived his life and knows the grand design; Ray doesn't yet know Graham can't cross back.
Archie already existed outside the field as a hitchhiker, and the implication that Terrence Mann will come back with a long-form piece on heaven raises why Moonlight can't return; none of them can come off the field; Archie is on a different timeline and had to be brought there; he left the field and became a drummer for the Doors.
One host is devastated the other doesn't like a scene seen 700 times; the fair questions raise whether you need to understand the rules of the magic to like the movie; it's magic and faith, believing what you can't see, so you opt in, which is why Mark seeing the ghosts at the end is disliked, since he never opened himself up.
Smaller nits: the park's ground rules, what a ground-rule double in the cornfield is, an outfielder vanishing into heaven shagging a fly, where all the baseballs go, Janet's void; if Terrence Mann could walk into the corn, why wouldn't Ray try; maybe the spirits have to bring you, and it's about what you are pursuing.
The town hall over salacious literature is moral panic, but only the one woman is actually opposed and nobody in the room supports her; the counter is that it's about how hysterical people get together; that scene could be aged-best because it's what the internet is like now.
A sequel vision: Mark comes back out after his cold drink and lectures the ghosts about walks, shifts and swing planes, disparages Shoeless Joe for not getting on base, and brings his friend Bill James with notes.
Shoeless Joe's no-errors stat is cited as proof he didn't throw the series, but outfielders rarely commit errors in one series and it would have to be an obvious overthrow; the Rothstein gambling contingent, Boardwalk Empire; the segment ends with Mark asked how his glass of water is.
James Horner's score; Shoeless Joe's 'I would have played for nothing'; late-80s Fenway Park; the Kinsella house; Ray's chemistry with the White Sox ghosts; Gabby Hoffman as Karen; the Terrence Mann character; the Annie and Ray relationship; the van scenes; Busfield walking across the field; Costner's hair and jeans; the disgruntled writer as plot point; the themes of hope and purpose
James Horner's score, unequivocally, arguably who won the movie: stolen over and over by sporting events, documentaries and trailers across thirty years, it plays five seconds and you need to excuse yourself; heard in surround sound for the first time it feels like a stadium; it has to double and triple the emotional climax in the last twenty minutes, like Shawshank's iconic score.
Shoeless Joe's I would have played for nothing, against today's spoiled players like Bryce Harper getting cash and checks.
Late-80s Fenway Park, a personal thing: the caterer, two dogs and two beers for seven bucks, few movies filmed there, the Morgan Magic 88 team with Ellis Burks and Mike Greenwell before the A's kicked their ass.
The Kinsella house is a top seven or eight movie house, still standing as it was, worth a fortune if moved to LA; the White Sox ghosts busting Ray's balls during the call to dinner show his chemistry with them, and it would be amazing if he plowed the field and told the cheaters to go back to hell.
Gabby Hoffman as the daughter is all-time adorable, in a cutest-daughters final with the Remember the Titans girl, with Macaulay Culkin's bee movie ruled out as a non-sports film; a host's own daughter at six was their favorite human ever and their own field of dreams would be going back to that age; Karen's precociousness is winning.
Terrence Mann is James Baldwin meets J.D. Salinger; the book used Salinger and the film changed it for fear of a lawsuit; the recited bio, voice of the 60s, marched with MLK, cover of Newsweek, coined make love not war; asked whether we ever had a writer like this, the answer is no, though Baldwin and Norman Mailer were around back then doing that kind of writing; the whole movie could have been Costner and James Earl Jones in the van.
The Annie and Ray relationship: a great, supportive, believable marriage with real history, down to her sleeping in one of his old t-shirts.
The son of a bitch died before I could take it back scene is gut-wrenching, Joe Jackson's a criminal being the meanest thing you could say to your dad; the van exchange about the falling out and it's not my fault you wouldn't play catch with your father; all their scenes are high level, high PER.
Busfield walking across the field and interrupting without knowing the ghosts are there, the pitch just missing him and the batter swinging through, timed with no visible special effects.
Costner's hair and everything about him, worth bottling; the tightness of the jeans, which they don't make like that anymore.
Disgruntled writer as plot point has aged well: the recluse found at a pivot point between influencing everyone and being influenced, the aura pulsating over every conversation about him, a stand-in for baseball and tradition in American life; more broadly the themes of the movie.
The retort that the themes could equally have aged the worst is greeted as a holy shit take and parked for the next category, with a promise to explain why fathers and sons aren't as interesting as you think.
Asked for a pick, the answer is Annie and Ray, first misspoken as Amy and Ray. — Chris Ryan
Another pick is the blend of magic realism with hope and purpose as a driving force in a life, which Bill is expected to try to dissuade.
Late 80s Fenway Park, a selfish pick for just one person. — Bill Simmons
The show missed its chance to get a Ray Liotta walking off the field yelling Karen.
The invited top-five flex ranks Joe Clark confronting Sams on the Lean on Me roof fifth, with the dangerous method questioned.
Fourth is Rocky beating Tommy Gunn, whose provocation is said to justify the confrontation. — Van Lathan
Third is Shep beating Kyle Watson one-on-one in Above the Rim; the deceased-friend subplot prompts a tangent. — Van Lathan
Second is a tie between Yoda teaching Luke at Dagobah and Obi-Wan defeating Anakin in Revenge of the Sith. — Van Lathan
After the rank is clarified as second rather than first, the top slot goes to the park-bench speech in Good Will Hunting, contrasting experience with intelligence. — Van Lathan
An invited flex asks for the best Philip K. Dick adaptations: Minority Report, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Blade Runner and The Adjustment Bureau are nominated. One ordering begins Blade Runner and Total Recall; another specifies Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall, while Scanner is especially faithful in spirit. — Bill Simmons
The Adjustment Bureau is defended by its proposer but rejected by two responses. Blade Runner is agreed to be best, whereas Total Recall is preferred for desert-island entertainment and rewatchability.
Craig’s flex compares Pete berating the team at halftime to San Diego State’s coach against UNC; the ensuing discussion says SDSU lost by 27 after trailing by about 38. — Bill Simmons
The flex asks for the best starting five from the actual basketball players appearing in the film, clarifying that the players rather than their fictional characters are eligible. — Bill Simmons
An initial lineup includes Shaq, Penny, Bobby Hurley and Calbert Cheaney; Allan Houston joins the core. Pre-accident Hurley is praised, but wanting Penny to handle the ball pushes Hurley out.
The final proposed five is George Lynch, Allan Houston, Penny, Shaq and Calbert Cheaney, with Hurley as sixth man. The lack of a conventional power forward is defended because Shaq anchors the team. — Van Lathan
Ricky is suggested as a floor-spacing reserve; the lineup is criticized for insufficient shooting without Hurley, and Ricky is jokingly called a locker-room liability.
Steven Seagal Hard to Kill Award for needing better intimacy coordinator: first kiss feels mauling, Adrian trapped, phone request refused; saying going to kiss not sufficient freedom to decline.
Zane’s World is reported as an existing parody, featuring Biff Malibu, Tom Byron, Madison and Trixie Tyler. — Bill Simmons
A fourteen-minute plot-only edit with the sex removed is described as unexpectedly entertaining; the Peter North casting question is a joke rather than a reported credit. — Bill Simmons
