Oscar-bait disability movies; Raymond crashing the sex scene; the car-import business scenes; the card-counting stigma and casino reaction; Tom Cruise's cigarette smoking
The Oscar-bait run of movies like Regarding Henry looks bad in totality. — Sean Fennessey
Raymond crashing the sex scene also goes here: weird, though it somehow works. — Sean Fennessey
The car-import business scenes with Lenny are one and a half too many and five minutes too much, like someone gave Oliver Stone an eight ball to write two Lamborghini-importing scenes. — Bill Simmons
The economics of Charlie's business is flagged and deferred to a later spot. — Bill Simmons
The stigma of card counting starts with this movie, yet they don't seem to win enough for the casino to turn on them; up 80 grand in 1988 is guessed at about 400K now. — Bill Simmons
Crowds in Vegas do not gather behind random winners at a table unless it is someone like Tiger Woods or Charles Barkley. — Bill Simmons
Card counting is not illegal, and being called into the manager's office for that amount seems ridiculous; trouble usually starts in the millions. — Sean Fennessey
There is no law against counting cards unless using a device; casinos push out players who crush them over months, not for one night. — Bill Simmons
Tom Cruise trying to smoke cigarettes ages worst and is suggested to have cost him an Oscar nomination; fans are invited to make a montage of Cruise smoking in movies. — Bill Simmons
Cruise learned to fly a plane, flip pool cues and drive a race car, yet smokes like an idiot, holding the cigarette like a tree stump, usually at a diner. — Bill Simmons
Hoffman smoked through the Bernstein role and could have given him advice; Cruise also learned a back handspring for The Firm. — Bill Simmons
Bad smoking on screen is called a passion; Cruise clearly never had a cigarette, holds it sideways and never smokes it, because his body is a temple. — Bill Simmons
The will reading, where Charlie learns he got the rose bushes and a used car while the beneficiary got $3 million, ending with "If there is a hell, sir, my father's in it" and laughing his ass off. — Bill Simmons
A combined pick: Charlie meeting Raymond at the car, then Charlie touching Raymond's things in his room ("definitely not a weekend visit, Vern"), including the uncut sheet; called a really well-written scene. — Bill Simmons
The breakfast toothpick scene: Raymond counts 246 with four left in the box. — Bill Simmons
The doctor's explanatory scene is very 80s and they would never do it that way now, but it still earns sentiment; it leads into the phone-booth fart scene. — Bill Simmons
The bathtub scene is a little forced but really well acted; in the Premiere piece Hoffman is quoted saying the key scene where Tom finds out he is the Rain Man was the first take, which Levinson kept. — Bill Simmons
Reading the Tootsie material shows Hoffman was a big rehearsal guy, while Levinson worked on an if-we-got-it-we-got-it basis, and they somehow navigated that. — Bill Simmons
The breakfast where the card-counting scheme is hatched begins the last 45 minutes, called a favorite part of the movie, running through the Vegas blackjack section. — Bill Simmons
It is asked whether Vegas was the number one reason to do this movie; wanting to finally talk about Hoffman is given as a reason too.
Charlie letting Ray go back to Wallbrook, with the head touching and Barry Levinson being weirdly good, and the Amtrak ending with "one for bad, two for good" are also nominated. — Bill Simmons
The pick is Vegas: the seven minutes of blackjack are called unassailable, and it is affirmed as definitely Vegas. — Bill Simmons
The Vegas sequence is instantly iconic and may have sent more teens and twentysomethings to Vegas than any movie stretch; Swingers references it. It is Hollywood Vegas rather than the real chain-smoking grind. — Bill Simmons
Ebert is jokingly called "Raj" because the hosts feel closer to him after doing a Siskel and Ebert podcast; his score is three and a half stars. — Bill Simmons
The quoted review says the film refuses to supply sentimental but unrealistic answers and is not a movie with a miracle cure; he also liked what Cruise did in the film. — Bill Simmons
The first line of a second critic's review, read aloud next, calls the film Dustin Hoffman humping one note on a piano for two hours and 11 minutes. — Chris Ryan
The pick is uncertain because of vote splitting. — Chris Ryan
James Ransone is in the running for the scene where he tells Owen he got the drop on him; he brings wiry Dustin Hoffman New York energy.
Ransone is also slotted for the Recasting Couch, but the response is "I don't want to lose him out of this movie".
Samantha Ivers, "the queen of Hackensack," is nominated for doing Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny times a thousand, and the award is given to her. — Sean Fennessey
The casting items come from the internet with uncertain accuracy; Schrader reportedly wrote Travis with Jeff Bridges in mind, which seems possible. — Bill Simmons
Keitel was definitely offered the campaign worker role Albert Brooks played and wanted the pimp instead; the studio had the pimp changed to a white character over riot and liability fears, and Keitel ended up in the part. — Bill Simmons
Reports conflict on whether Melanie Griffith was first offered Iris; a Linda Blair possibility and a Tatum O'Neal / Bad News Bears swap are also mentioned with doubt. — Bill Simmons
Mid-70s New York City; Joe Spinell's job interview; God's lonely man line; Harvey Keitel's pimp look; Travis and Wizard scene; De Niro's preparation; Bernard Herrmann's score; cinematography; Jodie Foster's career
The mid-70s New York setting holds up, as does the opening job interview in which Joe Spinell sizes Travis up as a lunatic. — Bill Simmons
Spinell's 1970s run, including Godfather 2, Taxi Driver, Rocky, Sorcerer and Big Wednesday, is compared to De Niro's. — Bill Simmons
The 'loneliness has followed me my whole life... God's lonely man' line is Schrader writing about loneliness after almost losing his mind. — Bill Simmons
Keitel's sleeveless-shirt, hat, hair and muscles look is floated as something that should have become a Saturday Night Live character. — Bill Hader
Keitel reportedly based the pimp on a real pimp he worked with at the Actors Studio; the pimp originally had five lines and Keitel added more, and the 'I'm hip / You don't look hip' exchange is loved. — Bill Hader
Travis telling Wizard he has bad ideas in his head is short but pivotal; Peter Boyle is great as a man who knows he doesn't know what he's saying yet is weirdly right. — Bill Hader
'You talking to me' was an omnipresent catchphrase for 15 or 20 years, though probably not as big a deal in 2021. — Bill Simmons
De Niro's preparation, including 15-hour days driving cabs, studying mental illness, recording Midwestern soldiers for the accent and losing 35 pounds, felt like the first time an actor's commitment was almost part of the marketing. — Bill Simmons
The method line runs from Brando to Dustin Hoffman in the same era, as in Marathon Man, and on to later method actors; De Niro's work is honed into behavior where others' choices show. — Bill Hader
Asked about riding with cops for eight months for a Superbad cop role, the reply says they did have to ride with a cop in South Central and calls it the dumbest thing of all time. — Bill Hader
Bernard Herman, arguably the most important film composer and known for Psycho, Vertigo and Citizen Kane, wrote his last score here; Scorsese, who mostly uses needle drops, begged him to do it, and the composer said 'all I hear is brass'. — Sean Fennessey
An editor on Barry dislikes the score and the bluesy saxophone gets a reservation, but it works and the opening music hits like a giant wave; hearing it reportedly made Scorsese feel Travis's doom and fate. — Bill Hader
The composer died right after recording the score, at 64.
The cinematography is composed, natural-light and beautiful in a style rarely seen now. — Bill Hader
The shoot came during a hot summer and the garbage strike with wet streets, and according to the cinematographer a lack of time and money forced them to let New York light itself, which turned out right. — Bill Simmons
In most versions of her life Foster might not have become one of the most celebrated actors of a generation and an accomplished filmmaker; a reply praises her acting and directing.
The pick is narrowed from the opening cocktail party to Josh Hamilton and Olivia Diaba on the balcony, where she says she is going to Prague and he claims he has been to Prague; it introduces their relationship. — Bill Simmons
Prague was a mythical post-Berlin-Wall destination heard about on campuses, requiring a Fodor's book, a visa and travelers checks, so "going to Prague" became a thing in itself. — Andy Greenwald
A college roommate came back from a Prague junior year abroad judging everyone; skipping a semester abroad is a regret; the movie was seen on Thayer Street in Providence before the first Starbucks there. — Bill Simmons
The graduation party is up there with the wedding in The Godfather for getting to know every character, Skippy, Max and Otis. — Chris Ryan
The "You never even been to Prague" exchange riffs on the stop-shaving-your-armpits, read-The-Unbearable-Lightness-of-Being version of Prague.
The book club scene, added because Eric Stoltz had to be shoehorned in with ad-libbed scenes, has about seven laugh-out-loud lines about All the Pretty Horses.
Hollywood roller coaster: Stoltz was removed from Back to the Future, and ten years later this movie could not get money without him. — Andy Greenwald
Further nominations: Grover confronting Max about sleeping with Miami, with Chet sneaking back in; Skippy confronting Max; and Grover and Chet at the bar, where Chet saw it as a postponement of his life until realizing it was his life. — Bill Simmons
The final airport scene is spectacular: Grover's roughly three-minute monologue on a whim to go to Prague, with the camera on him.
Hamilton's airport performance echoes Dustin Hoffman banging on the church at the end of The Graduate. — Andy Greenwald
If asked at the end of 1995 which five young actors to bet on, Chris O'Donnell, Damon and Omar Epps would have been on the list along with Hamilton; the part could easily have been a Matt Damon part, but Hamilton is perfect in it. — Bill Simmons
Hamilton suffers on Google from the Texas Rangers ballplayer of the same name and is part of the 90s New York theater crew with Billy Crudeup, Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard. — Andy Greenwald
Jessica Hacked, who was on Friends as the lesbian lover of Ross's ex-wife, is great as the stewardess in the airport scene. — Bill Simmons
The flashbacks work, perhaps as the story Grover is writing, and the ending goes straight into the Fridi Johnson song Bad Reputation, a needle drop that hits like a bomb.
The last line, "let's pretend we're an old couple," happens before everything chronologically, and they do not actually kiss. — Andy Greenwald
The airport scene is one pick, with a special shout-out to the entire graduation party as a meet-everyone-at-a-gathering opening.
Every scene is equally rewatchable because the tone is so consistent, but the shout-out goes to the scene where he would rather be bow hunting.
Before the category begins, the McConaughey sequence meeting Mark Hanna is flagged as the thesis statement of the movie: you are here to rob people and do cocaine while you do it; the body is a vessel for making money, jerking off and coke, and a wide-eyed 22-year-old from Queens with two accountant parents watching Hanna hoover martinis on a Monday morning could decide that is the lifestyle he wants.
The purpose of the Hanna sequence is pinned to the moment Leo's character offers that everybody wins if the clients make money and Hanna's answer is simply no: every warrior for himself, the thesis in the second paragraph.
The opening, the life of Jordan Belfort with the unreliable narrator, the $49 million a year line and the car flipping from red to white in real time, shows a character at the prime of his life right as the fall is about to come, with Scorsese breaking his own rules; the fourth-wall breaks are never used in a moral way and the film never slows down to judge the characters or let the audience feel better than them.
The Mark Hanna lunch clip is played; McConaughey's four minutes are called the reconnaissance for his comeback between Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective, with the Hanna character and the hair having as much to do with it as the dialogue, which is so eighties and unbelievably bad; an ESPN-era interview anecdote recalls him answering a question about Interstellar by saying he needs a little freedom to do what needs to be done; the chest-beating was his warm-up that Scorsese and DiCaprio told him to keep, and it is good that the character never returns because it is unsustainable.
McConaughey is an amazing physical actor here, throwing his arms down in a thrust before lunch and peering in like a college football coach racing down the sideline; you can imagine him giving the masturbation speech at a bar in real life, and the 'all mustard up here' line gets quoted.
Donnie Azoff in the diner, 'show me a pay stub for $72,000' and quitting his job on the phone, reads as very Long Island, a wealthy guy weirdly having breakfast at a diner; the early run of back-to-back scenes, Donnie, Hanna, Spike Jonze, is remarkable in itself.
Jonah introduces the grotesque with the capped teeth and the shirt patterns, trading his life for a pay stub; the character should not work, marrying his cousin, selling children's furniture, smoking crack days after meeting someone, yet the bond between two weird animals is bought; the objection that DiCaprio would never hang out with him is answered with the cousin Greg Succession theory, that he should not be in the room but every Greg scene is funny, and these are guys who make bad decisions, like Charles Schwab needing a guy for the garage.
Meeting the Duchess of Bay Ridge: Margot Robbie was a lightning bolt, an Australian reportedly 23 at the time with some dispute about her real age, introduced as Jordan's dream girl coming out of the beach-house party with the douchebag boyfriend Blair and the jet-ski comeback.
The smokestack lightning bacchanalia, the office party with the marching band, throwing the little people, the head shaving and the strippers, is one of the most ecstatic pieces of filmmaking ever; then an old blues song with echo comes in, the lighting goes dark and strobe, and you realize they have created hell on earth and are demons who love it; the camera moves in on a despairing DiCaprio walking off the stage, a subtle moment beside the later aside about the man who married the woman they double-teamed and killed himself; the first impression was that it was too much, Braveheart lines of strippers advancing.
The research indicates the party combines things that did not all happen at once, and the absurdity is the point; a nitpick is raised that the film is over-scored, with too much music and a blues-to-eighties-to-Foo-Fighters run whose years do not add up; the defense is that the soundtrack runs the whole arc of pop music out of chronological order, with Robbie Robertson in Scorsese's ear, so that the music is about overconsumption like the movie, and its radio-dial flipping feels true to a coked-out perception, as opposed to the perfectly aligned Talking Heads cue in Wall Street.
The Steve Madden IPO speech, 'my killers, my warriors, my telephone terrorists', with Madden bombing and being thrown out; Madden is played by Jake Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman's son; the bachelor party and wedding dance is now a famous GIF and Leo is a genuinely impressive dancer, which drifts into public Leo with the dad bod, super soakers, the Vans and calf socks and the choice of college hat.
'Daddy doesn't get to touch mommy' is a good scene nobody puts on YouTube, and it apparently really happened, including Rocco watching; after the movie came out every NBA player followed Robbie on Instagram, the entire Central Division, with Hibbert still in the game, a pivot from the Christina Hendricks era.
Jordan invites the FBI onto his yacht, then 'I'm not leaving' is the clubhouse favorite, one of the more rewatchable scenes in any movie of the last decade, simultaneously disgusting and beautiful; the mid-speech realization that he cannot leave is the most honest part of the movie; it is the Field of Dreams heartstring moment that is also the most self-aggrandizing garbage of all time, since he forces Kimmy Belzer to tell a room of screaming dudes how much money he gave her; Aya Cash's snapping character is not meant to be liked, like nobody in the film.
The Lemon Quaaludes are still aging and have lost their potency; the hosts wonder whether a thriving lude community exists on the dark web, compare the finite supply to Honus Wagner cards and ask whether Gretzky has one.
The Naomi yacht capsizing is arguably the best scene, really fun and also true, as is the plane crash; 'I will not die sober' and getting the ludes while the boat goes down; the ultimate wake-up call compared to a country-club DUI; then the sober-at-the-pool scene with Donnie and the ankle bracelet and the O'Doul's exchange, some of the funniest writing in the movie, with 'it sucks, man' played as a clip.
Spike Jonze at the investor center selling AeroTine (as transcribed), two brothers making radar detectors or maybe microwaves out of a garage in Dubuque with their mom Dorothy answering the main line, six cents a share, and the cutaway to the shed.
The Stratton Oakmont cold-call script with Moby Dick and the harpoon, and everyone yelling about who Captain Ahab is, played as a clip; right before the boat leaves, finding out Aunt Emma is dead while freaking out about his money is loved too.
The Spike Jonze scene is perfectly executed: he gets the company name wrong, does not know whether it is microwaves or radar, knows what a clown he is, and the 'if you sell ten thousand dollars of stock I'll blow you' line; DiCaprio's reaction shows the difference between a good and a great actor; dudes eat pizza, a guy screams in a sweatsuit and the bathroom opens straight into the office; the cross-cutting between brokers delivering Jordan's script, his gestures on the answering machine, the 'vice president of Stratton Oakmont' walk-throughs and the later SEC interrogation montage are also singled out.
A correction for the sticklers: the plane that came to pick him up exploded a couple of days later, not in the same moment, and the real sinking is even crazier than the movie; listeners should tweet thanks to Russillo for getting it right.
The final pick: one host argues McConaughey should be ineligible like Shack (as transcribed) in early fantasy basketball because the Hanna lunch is the clear runaway; another narrows it to the lunch, the Lemon Ludes and 'I'm not leaving' and goes with 'I'm not leaving'; a third goes with McConaughey after watching the scene fifteen times that week, so the Hanna lunch takes it two to one.
Dustin Hoffman wandered onto the Blockbuster shoot as a friend of Nancy Meyers; the chateau lunch interior is the Greystone Mansion; Iris's cottage was built in a field in Surrey with the interiors on soundstages; it snowed during the shoot; Amanda's house exterior is near the Huntington Gardens in San Marino; Iris is also the name of one of Jude Law's daughters
Dustin Hoffman was walking down the street, saw a movie shoot at a Blockbuster, and because Nancy Meyers is his friend they put him in the scene; it may have been in Larchmont, since there was a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf next door back then.
The beautiful chateau lunch scene was filmed inside the Greystone Mansion with a different home as exterior; Kate Winslet's England house was completely built in a field in Surrey, with soundstages for the interiors, which is where much of the $85 million went, and it snowed during the shoot, which is rare.
The exterior of Cameron Diaz's house is near the Huntington Gardens in San Marino by Pasadena; Iris, Kate Winslet's character, is also the name of one of Jude Law's daughters, which one website suggested was deliberate but could not be confirmed; Iris and Graham sound like siblings.
