Apex Mountain is explained as whether anyone's career peaked with the movie; one host says yes for James Van Der Beek, on Dawson's Creek, leading a football movie and winning Teen Choice and MTV Movie Awards, while another asks whether his second life as a meme counts as more impactful.
Thinks Dawson goes on for many more years and becomes a sensation for tweens, which is what he is still most associated with, so his apex is the later Dawson years. — Mallory Rubin
Scott Kahn (as transcribed) is a no, with Hawaii Five-0 and the Oceans movie; Ali Larder is a no, with the Final Destinations, fighting Beyonce and Heroes; Amy Smart was already covered; John Voight (as transcribed) is a no, having won an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy in 1969 and fathered Angelina Jolie, with the joke that Anaconda, alongside Ice Cube, is his apex.
Billy Bob, sadly, is a yes: this was his apex.
Paul Walker is a no, not even close; this paved the way for one of the host's favorite apexes, and he is so beautiful and pristine here that everyone would have guessed he would be the biggest star from the movie.
Chris Tucker is named immediately, the name coming twice in quick succession with 'come on, man' agreement that it is obvious; one host says it pains them that his career is not in the shape it should be.
Next Friday and Friday After Next starred Mike Epps, and a Last Friday has been hoped for for years; original cast members say Tucker is why it has not happened, his pay scale rose, and in his defense he probably does not want to play a weed-smoking delinquent at forty, though the character could be evolved.
A gritty reboot and 'Christopher Nolan's Friday' are joked about; the hosts watched Next Friday but not Friday After Next, and barely the animated series; Tucker has cryptically suggested interest in recent interviews now that his pay scale is down.
Rush Hour 4 is also in the works with Tucker on the fence and Jackie Chan as the Ice Cube trying to get him there; the hosts would take Rush Hour 4 over Last Friday a thousand percent, since Chan and Tucker could reprise older versions, while Friday is quintessentially youthful and would be weird with 45-year-olds on the porch.
Questions a sequel would raise, kids, still smoking, or flipping Smokey straight and Craig into the pothead, are floated, but what people want from sequels is an extension of the original, which would have to change too much to work, so leave Friday be; Rush Hour 4 should just avoid the mistakes of Lethal Weapon 4.
At the top of the show, with no spoilers on who won, Tucker is said to dominate everyone's attention as soon as he appears on screen.
Chris Tucker's smoking looks fake while Craig's looks real; Cube's voiceover appears only twice; the pivot to the message and Witherspoon's speech is inelegant; the drive-by feels unnecessary to one host; Debbie's attraction to Craig is unearned; Felicia as the roving crackhead type; the credits spell the name Felisha; the $200 Big Worm plot is not urgent
Chris Tucker's smoking does not look right: he holds the smoke in his mouth, the telltale sign of a non-smoker, while Craig, the supposed non-smoker, actually inhales and exhales; it is noticeable when Craig takes the joint and leans back, but not off-putting, and a first viewing before ever smoking would not catch it.
Cube's voiceover appears at the beginning and once in the middle, when they go to rob the house next door and he says not to always get him into shit, then never returns; it feels like a detective-noir intrusion they forgot to cut.
The film flips around the hour mark into Witherspoon's speech after Chekhov's gun; F. Gary Gray is quoted wishing there were more of a transition to the message, which crashes in and is inelegantly executed, and a host agrees the film pivots into an after-school special when the gun and the drive-by arrive.
The events in the movie could stay the same; what makes it feel after-school is John Witherspoon's speech. — Justin Charity
The speech about not needing a gun and taking an ass-whipping is played; the fix proposed is an acted rather than spoken vehicle for Witherspoon, not a black-and-white flashback of a younger Witherspoon losing a fight, but a pensive beat as Cube confronts Deebo before dropping the gun and decking him, a scene instead of a speech.
One host did not mind the speech much, only because of loving Witherspoon giving it; the drive-by, with Uzis spraying and people jumping on cars, felt unnecessary to that host, while another counts it among favorites because it is so sharp and sudden in a laid-back stoner movie, even if poorly lit at night, a last-minute reminder that things are still real.
A final nitpick asks whether Debbie would be that attracted to Craig when he did little to earn it, with the joke that it was conveniently written into the script by Cube; a prior neighborhood relationship blossoming is believable.
Debbie falling for Craig over one day is not believable, so the ending feels unearned and abrupt even though it is only her saying she will call tomorrow, a reminder that a man, specifically Ice Cube, a first-time screenwriter, wrote it.
Felicia, and the Bye Felicia meme, prompt the observation that many nineties movies have a roving crackhead character, often a light-skinned woman, used for comic relief and pathos, begging for money with an uncomfortable sexualized undertone.
The real nit is the spelling: the credits spell the name Felisha, so everyone writing 'Bye Felicia' is spelling it wrong, and they should check IMDb, or do half-assed internet research.
Early on, before nits were officially open, the $200 owed to Big Worm was called neither urgent nor necessary as a plot device, answered that it brings amazing lines and confrontations and Faison Love (as transcribed) in hair curlers.
Cube: no, but close; the film is a memento of the best of Cube, who went on to Three Kings, Barbershop and several Kevin Hart movies yet has made no better movie than Friday, so it might be his apex as an actor, though Three Kings has him in a supporting role and this is Cube's movie only in a constitutional sense since it plays as a Chris Tucker vehicle.
Barbershop is defended as low-key really good; Friday is not Cube's commercial or stardom peak but the peak of him balancing the realistic gangster figure and the softer comedy type, the crux and pivot point of every angle of his career, the one movie that holds all his multitudes.
Chris Tucker: the question is whether he is better here than in Rush Hour or The Fifth Element, with the caveat that calling anyone's apex their early twenties is cruel; Rush Hour 2 Tucker is judged better, leading the movie and hamming it up ten degrees higher, with the outtakes credits and the gefilte fish rant as peak, which is allowed.
John Witherspoon is proposed since the others stalled; he has been in a ton of movies, was the dad on The Wayans Brothers and granddad on The Boondocks, but this is still called peak Witherspoon (transcribed 'Pete Witherspoon'), with the bathroom scene, the food scene and the gun speech cited; one voice says it feels comfortable with that while reserving the right to reset later, and nobody objects.
Shot on F. Gary Gray's old block at 126 and Normandy (as transcribed), with the Red knockout in front of his childhood house; Gray directed Cube's It Was a Good Day video; a Crip neighborhood, so nothing red appears; clothes from the Slauson swap meet; cast paid about $5,000 each on a $3.5 million budget that grossed $27 million; Kathleen Bradley was the first Black Barker Beauty; Smokey's 1976 Ford Pinto was spotted on Western Avenue with the lockup sound added in post; Chris Tucker ran uninvited into the knockout shot; Anthony Johnson drew on relatives for Ezal; Craig's firing was based on Cube's UPS cousin
The movie was shot on director F. Gary Gray's old block, where he lived in junior high, 126 in Normandy (as transcribed), and the scene where Deebo knocks out Red is in front of the house Gray grew up in; asked whether Gray ever owed someone $200 or knew a Deebo, the answer is that he directed but did not write it, and it is mostly Cube.
Gray directed Cube's It Was a Good Day video and other Cube videos, which is how they connected; the neighborhood is a Crip neighborhood, so nothing red appears to avoid the ire of local gangs; nearly all the clothes were bought at the Slauson swap meet, where a host used to go.
According to John Witherspoon the cast all got paid around $5,000 each, some of it reportedly out of Cube's pocket; the budget is put at $3.5 million against $27 million grossed, with mostly unknown actors; the hosts wonder about residuals and feel Witherspoon should eat out on the film forever, which he pretty much does.
Kathleen Bradley, Miss Parker from across the street, was the first Black Barker Beauty on The Price Is Right and was spotted there by a casting director; Smokey drives a 1976 Ford Pinto, called the best character and the ugliest car ever in a movie; Gray saw it on Western Avenue and knew it was Smokey's car, and the lockup sound was added in post.
The best shot of the Pinto is the slow shot of Smokey parking in front of Craig's house after the store where the crackhead gets him to buy a 40, the one long look that shows how broken the car is and makes the broke character feel real; a host relates, having grown up driving a 1989 Nissan Pathfinder despite being born in 1987.
Chris Tucker was not originally in the 'you got knocked the fuck out' scene and just ran into the shot, all the more reason nobody else could have played the role; Anthony Johnson, who played Ezal, drew on a brother and sister who were on crack, which is dark but may have fed a more compelling performance.
From Wikipedia: Craig being fired on his day off was based on Cube's cousin, who worked for UPS; a host believes it, calling UPS and USPS evil organizations, which draws the joke about beef with the mail and a Stamps.com ad.
Picking one scene is called difficult because the first hour is basically a rewatchable hour; Craig getting high is nominated first, since you wait the whole movie for him to finally take a puff, and Smokey's angel dust flashback is noted as funny but a little problematic.
Red getting his chain snatched by Deebo is nominated as the classic bully scene: when Deebo approaches, Smokey rips his own chain off and puts it in his back pocket, while Red only tucks his in and says so, which is not thorough at all; the Bernie Mac pastor scene and Bye Felicia are also nominated.
The first hour is a procession of immaculate character bits that happen on the stoop over one day rather than discrete scenes, so a line like 'you ain't got to lie, Craig' is a memorable quote, a fifteen-second bit, not a rewatchable scene.
Craig getting high works because Cube underplays it: body language shifts, chuckling, offering to make Kool-Aid, weird non sequiturs rather than Smokey-style running in front of a car; it is a progression over fifteen minutes rather than a scene, and a vulnerable, goofy Cube is striking after years of scowling, with the Cypress Hill cue a little on the nose.
One vote goes to Red getting his chain snatched by Deebo because it has a lot of moving parts: Deebo, Red's cameo, and Cube and Smokey reacting to Deebo; another vote goes to the Craig scene, not for Craig but for Smokey's Michael Jackson-style dancing, possibly the start of Chris Tucker moonwalking in every appearance, which got him into a Michael Jackson video.
A second vote joins the Red pick in a garbled exchange that addresses Charity and pairs the name with 'Craig getting that', so which pick Charity proposed is unclear; the Craig-scene voter stands alone; the Red scene's moving parts are the core of the movie and set up its end game, and Deebo is loved.
Tiny Lister was known as a wrestler in the WWE and appeared in the Hulk Hogan movie No Holds Barred, so he was one of the more famous people in the film after Ice Cube; Deebo is indelible, Lister in interviews is just Deebo, though behind the scenes he is reportedly gentle and sweet and gets joked on, a huge man blind in one eye who lumbers through the movie creating havoc.
F. Gary Gray mopping in the deli scene; Megan Good (as transcribed) in the opening and the ice cream truck scene with Big Worm; Michael Clark Duncan (as transcribed) shooting dice in the Red knockout scene; Dub C as the drive-by shooter
A host coins a non-canonical category, Cameo Corner, for blink-and-miss appearances: director F. Gary Gray, who one host thinks bears an uncanny resemblance to Chance the Rapper and another does not, is mopping up in the deli scene.
Cube, Tucker and F. Gary Gray were all in their early-to-mid twenties, Tucker about 23 and Cube and Gray 24 or 25, so the film is the output of young creative people.
Megan Good (as transcribed) appears in two scenes, the opening and the ice cream truck scene with Big Worm; Michael Clark Duncan (as transcribed) is shooting dice on the sidewalk in the scene where Red gets knocked out, on screen for about a second, and reportedly wanted a speaking role; the others had never noticed him.
The drive-by shooter is identified as Dub C even though the scene is dark, on the strength of a host knowing rappers and later verifying it, teased as the Donnie flexing section; the music cue there, Pay Your Dues by Low Profile, is praised.
The script was written with DJ Poo (as transcribed) as Smokey, but New Line would not sign off because he was not a big enough star, which one host calls a smart move; Chris Tucker, not yet established but on the rise, auditioned for Cube and the rest is history.
Pooh as Smokey would not have worked, but he killed it as Red, a lovely part, especially the way he jangles back to the car after asking about his beach cruiser.
Tommy Davidson and Chris Rock were also considered for Smokey; Rock is rejected as too New York, more famous than Tucker in 1995 but not computing in the role, and his doing Tucker's physical comedy would look like overacting, Tucker reading as a younger, more exuberant spirit where Rock can be hardened.
Tommy Davidson was also supposed to play the crackhead Ezal; Angela Means, who plays Felicia, has said her agents wanted her to pass because she was so pretty and should have played the pretty girl, which one host finds fair.
A hypothetical recast: Viola Davis as Mrs. Jones, the comedic but strict mother Anna Maria Horsford plays; Davis rarely gets comedic, motherly roles and is pushed into intense crying parts, so the hosts wonder what the role would have looked like with her in 1995 or in a reboot, though whether she was old enough twenty years ago is questioned.
