Jamie Foxx and Giancarlo Esposito together, James Toney’s acting, the Foreman heavy-bag image, sports-media cameos, “The Champ Is Here” sample, Smith’s fighting credibility, the Malcolm X structure, and the opening music staging
Gooding reportedly auditioned early and remained the benchmark despite later auditions including Jamie Foxx. His voluntary decision to undress for an audition scene is corrected after a misunderstanding that he was required to. — Bill Simmons
Gooding receiving his Oscar from Mira Sorvino is noted because she reportedly lost Dorothy when her agents requested too much money. — Bill Simmons
Crowe reportedly wrote for Hanks and Winona Ryder; Hanks passed after the long writing process to make That Thing You Do!, and Ryder with Cruise seemed too sibling-like. Woody Harrelson reportedly rejected an offer because audiences would not care about an agent; his hypothetical casting is considered inferior to Cruise. — Bill Simmons
Jennifer Lopez auditioned, but Connie Britton was reportedly the final alternative to Zellweger. Britton's height theory and reportedly disastrous screen test are discussed without settling the reason. — Bill Simmons
Jamie Foxx's Rod audition is revisited as a plausible different version of the role, with Willie Beamen later giving him a sports-film showcase. — Bill Simmons
Janet Jackson reportedly auditioned and accepted Marcee before the deal fell through; Regina King replaced her and the film helped move her toward major Hollywood roles. — Bill Simmons
Diane Lane as Avery is an uncorroborated casting rumor that excites interest; Preston's death is distinguished from Lane, who is alive.
Movie presidents are raised as something held for Apex Mountain; it is unclear whether the Mount Rushmore allows TV or only movies. — Bill Simmons
If movies only, the four most important movie presidents are Michael Douglas in The American President, Kevin Klein in Dave and Pullman in Independence Day, with the fourth spot wide open; for this participant it is Jeff Bridges in The Contender, who seemed very presidential. — Bill Simmons
Kevin Klein in Dave redid a budget and healed America; since a movie president appears only when something bad is happening, the preference is for one who can handle himself.
White House Down, seen only once, is said to be better and sillier than remembered; Olympus Has Fallen is preferred by one participant.
The new category, from a listener, is to recast one part; two would recast nothing because the movie is perfect, one would put Dave Chappelle in the Mo McCray part, with Kate McKinnon as a joke; asked which part they would play, the answers are Borracho and Murph, and Jamie Foxx is rejected as too old.
The film missed spots to stunt cast: the disgruntled wife could have been someone more famous like a 2019 Catherine Keener or Jessica Alba, and Gus could have been funnier with Chappelle, a take the other two vote down.
Gus could have been dialed up with Dave Chappelle or Jamie Foxx for three jokes, but the others say the film cannot have humor because it is built as Big Nick versus Ray Merriman, two alpha gorillas on a collision course, signaled by the on-screen names and matching back-shot introductions.
Mo McCray's best moment, pulling Big Nick away from the women at Benihana while giving them a salacious look, shows the crew is as dirty as Nick; the Chappelle wish is compared to Laker fans preferring Derek Fisher to Chris Paul.
For 50 Cent's part, Ray Lewis or Ed Reed are imagined as stunt casting, Idris Elba is too famous and old, and swapping Mo McCray and 50 would make a worse movie because the cop needs to be the slimy, skinnier one.
Everybody has taken a crack at the best sports-movie quarterback; Ronnie Bass is a two seed, with the host still iffy on his pitch, while the Rifleman in All the Right Moves is the best quarterback one host has seen in movies or real life.
Across all movies the one seed is Willie Beeman (as transcribed), built by Jamie Foxx studying Aaron Brooks highlights for two years, who foreshadowed where the position went with Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen.
Would a parody, like Hot Shots for Top Gun, be far off from the actual movie? No; just change the music, since it is already a hilarious movie and Ray the Racist is comically racist, practically wearing a hood in the locker room.
The opening diner scene is the first candidate: the Madonna 'Like a Virgin' theory leads into the tipping argument, and the clip of Mr. Pink refusing to tip because society says he has to is played.
A lot of guys came out of the movie with a new vision of the service industry; one host, who had worked as a busboy and waiter for two summers, was offended by Buscemi's character and says anyone who has worked food service knows you tip.
Mr. White is teased as woke for dropping knowledge that waitressing is the number one job for non-college-educated women; the scene is said to foreshadow the rat, since Mr. Orange snitches on Mr. Pink when Joe demands to know who did not tip.
A low-key favorite detail is the Budweiser bottles at breakfast; Tarantino scenes often happen in the morning with people behaving as if it were night, like the wolf arriving at six in the morning.
It occurs to one host that the crew, dressed in uniform right before the heist, should not be seen together in public; it is called ludicrous and parked for nitpicks, defended as pre-surveillance state, and the waitress they stiffed would remember five guys in black suits smoking like chimneys and drinking Budweisers at nine in the morning; Joe should never be seen with them.
A nerd question asks whether the roving camera around the table, shooting backs and sides of heads, was stolen from someone; Terry Gilliam loved it at Sundance, it is Scorsese-ish, and the handheld over-the-shoulder following of Madsen going for the gas can feels like a flex.
The Copacabana tracking shot in Goodfellas is the comparison, called the greatest tracking shot in movie history; a Goodfellas episode could run four hours and needs a live audience.
The shooting style is read as naturalism, putting the viewer inside the conversation, and the scene characterizes everyone at once: a beef between Blonde and White, jumpy Pink, Orange lying in the cut watching, Nice Guy Eddie showing who runs what, and Eddie Bunker as pop critic preferring the early stuff.
It is one of the hosts' favorite opening scenes; an opening-scene week bracket is floated, half of Tarantino's openings would qualify including Inglourious Bastards (as transcribed), and openings and kickers are what matter most.
Keitel versus Buscemi over the bleeding Tim Roth is the second candidate: a long, escalating, well-acted scene; it is argued as the best Buscemi performance, intense, neurotic and imposing, and the two guns pointed at each other was the first John Woo reference one host caught.
Buscemi rankings: this first, The Sopranos second, Domestic Disturbance third ahead of Fargo and Miller's Crossing; Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, remembered for 'boat drinks', Amongst Friends and Very Bad Things are recalled as the Tarantino rip-off era.
The ear-cutting scene followed by the unexpected Tim Roth murder is the third candidate; Madsen gets the gleam in his eye once White and Eddie leave, talks to the severed ear, and the cutaway to the graffiti above the door at the perfect moment is why the scene does not gross one host out.
Tarantino, for someone so violent, often does not show things: Marvin's head in Pulp Fiction is quick and the trunk dummy is obvious, though Hitler's body and Jamie Foxx's forty kills in Django are counterexamples; he also had no money and never shows the suitcase, and Mr. Blonde's speech before the torture is recited.
The movie does not get many Fraternal Order of Police screenings; Mr. Orange's unexpected murder of Mr. Blonde is a great twist nobody saw coming the first time.
Tim Roth performing the commode story, from meeting his boss at the diner through the different settings, is a candidate, with the 'panic hits me like a bucket of water' passage recited.
He had never seen anything like it at the time: the color palette shifts to the graffiti background and the movie comes alive, Roth's energy changes completely as he learns to be the character, and it layers Tarantino's recurring themes of story within a story, seeing Freddy instead of Mr. Orange, and the former actor's process of memorizing lines in the apartment with the Silver Surfer poster; the jumps between settings were unlike anything he had seen. — Chris Ryan
Roth gets to flex his chops with some of the most anguished yelling in a movie, but his accent is called very bad even though a dialect coach was on set the whole shoot; is he supposed to be Dutch? A rare bad accent inside a great performance.
Roth delivering the monologue in the bathroom to cops who stand still while the German shepherd watches showed one host that writing could do that.
Buscemi arguing about the name selections is a shorter but iconic scene, with the trade request and Joe's 'city council meeting' refusal recited; the Joe Cabot bit is saved for later.
Chris Penn doubting Mr. Orange's story, and Vic Vega's return from prison with the Scagnetti talk and the wrestling with Chris Penn and Tierney, are thrown in as further candidates.
The final choices split three ways: the commode story; the ear-cutting scene, taken as the whole twenty-five-minute stretch from the Mr. Blonde and Mr. White showdown to learning what a psychopath he is, since the shootings are never shown; and the ending with Chris Penn figuring it out in seven minutes, which displaced the opening diner for one host after twenty years. Three-way shootouts in general are loved and are said to have influenced one host's later work.
Cage and Travolta spent two weeks together learning each other's mannerisms; the film was originally set in the future, in space; the studio wanted the slash out of the title; the boat chase took four weeks to film; the special edition DVD has an alternate mirror ending; Castor Troy kills 20 people; a Metacritic score of 82
The corner is called half-assed because you cannot believe pretty much anything on the internet; according to it Cage and Travolta spent two weeks together picking up each other's mannerisms and learning to play one another, which the hosts buy, and then played really crazy dialed-up versions of themselves.
Buys the two weeks: that is the kind of thing you do when you are an actor to pretend it is a job. — Jason Concepcion
Whose idea was it, Cage's or Travolta's? 100 percent Cage, imagined inviting him to Bangkok or Thailand to hang out.
Originally the film was set in the future, in space, where face technology is better; Woo would not do it and said it needed to be more realistic, which amuses the hosts since space travel has actually been done while face switching and magnetic boots have not.
The studio wanted to take the slash out of the title and John Woo resisted, thinking people would think it was a hockey movie, Johnny Depp being the great example; the boat chase took four weeks to film, which makes sense because it feels like it lasts four weeks in San Diego.
This was a cool era of movies where desert, marina and big city sit within three blocks, like Seven with its constant rain and then desert; the 90s did not care about meteorology, and it lasted through Collateral with Jamie Foxx getting from the airport to downtown in seven minutes.
The special edition DVD has deleted scenes and an alternate ending in which Travolta looks in the mirror and Joan Allen gasps as she and the audience see Castor's face as his reflection; the studio nixed it, an atrocious idea now on the disc.
Guesses that Castor Troy killed around 20 people. — Jason Concepcion
The body-count quiz draws guesses of at least 24 and 20, with three kills in the first 45 seconds before he slows down; the answer is 20, close enough that the accuracy is called disturbing, Concepcion credited with nailing it after two hosts watched the film four times in a row.
A favorite moment: after they get Castor, Sean walks into the office, is told the CIA sent champagne, says he did not know they did catering, then bummed out suggests a drink and names anonymous extras shot in the first shootout, Winters and Finesco, whom nobody cares about; Winters had been on screen for 27 seconds.
The favorite killing: Castor holds an undercover woman out of the plane, shoots her, throws her off, she gets run over by the plane and he does the Jordan shrug; before that he makes a crude come-on about sending her flowers and rephrases it into something lewder.
They had been working to catch an international, apolitical, stateless terrorist operating in Los Angeles who had already assassinated a federal agent's child, yet all it took was the brother buying a plane ticket and an agent already in place; he was wearing a fake mustache.
Metacritic gave it 82 out of 100, which astonished one host; another calls that a low score for acting that has Nicolas Cage pretending to be Castor Troy pretending to be John Travolta pretending to be Sean Archer pretending to be Castor Troy, five levels Inception deep.
The reboot is proposed as a streaming series that could recruit current young basketball players, including an observed Emmanuel Moodye example, for roles.
One participant volunteers to play a token white player imagined as Ricky Roe's son.
Rick Fox's ability to combine basketball, acting, and later television work is treated as a model for current players seeking a second public career.
A younger coach and an AAU subplot are proposed, with Jamie Foxx as a Shaka Smart-type lead. The scenario is compared to Andy Enfield at U.S.C. and to Shaka Smart moving from VCU to Texas and confronting booster pressure as results worsen.
A Duke and Olympic-team coaching model is outlined, and Jack Nicholson is separately joked about as Jerry Colangelo.
A successful Olympic coach who uses those connections in recruiting, hires a previously sanctioned assistant, and has a persistent retirement drama is outlined as another model.
An uncertain observed Koster or Costa candidate is rejected as insufficiently morally compromised. Alec Baldwin and Michael Douglas follow, but Baldwin is rejected because anything he appears in is said to turn into a sketch rather than a credible performance.
Paul Giamatti receives a positive response followed by a joking demand to stop selling him. Tom Hanks is proposed as Pete Bell and judged capable of making it a different movie, with A League of Their Own identified as the comparable prior role.
