Paul Meskell, Adam Scott and Josh O Connor illustrate modern possibilities; Mike Feist is floated while Tom Holland lacks the required physicality.
Chalamet is considered unlikely to fit though likely to be approached; muscular Sasha Baron Cohen is a joke, Jesse Plemons may be too old, and Will Poulter is floated.
Sabrina Carpenter as Alma is tentatively entertained; Gosling ten years earlier could have worked. — Wesley Morris
Danny McBride as Ennis and Shane Gillis as Jack start as jokes but draw serious interest. — Wesley Morris
Script origins; table reads for buyers; music budget; real party scene; Vegas casinos; original ending; Sundance rejection and Miramax sale; Jaws theme and Spielberg; bear speech origin
The hosts say that after the script they held full-cast readings for potential buyers for a year, compared with Jason Reitman's readings. — Bill Simmons
Vaughn is quoted that buyers missed the universality: a breakup, coming of age, a journey with friends, wanting to meet someone. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say they paid most for Dean Martin, with half a million dollars in music licensing against a quarter-million production cost. — Bill Simmons
The party scene is said to have been a real party they threw for friends without explaining; Adam Scott and Mike White of Chuck and Buck were there. — Bill Simmons
The Vegas exterior is said to be the Stardust and the interior the Glitter Gulch; gulch never works. — Bill Simmons
Favreau is quoted that the script ended on the Lorraine phone call and an unaffordable helicopter shot; Liman added the new ending, seeing a platonic love story between Mikey and Trent, and they scrambled to find a baby for it. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say Sundance rejected it; a screening at the Fairfax $2 theater for about 500 people, 490 friends and 10 possible buyers, crushed, and it sold to Miramax for $5 million, premiering at the Vista. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say they got the Jaws theme by sending scenes to Spielberg for approval, who asked about Vaughn and cast him in The Lost World. — Bill Simmons
Vaughn apparently really gave Favreau a version of the bear speech, and the story of leaving a girl behind is autobiographical for Favreau. — Bill Simmons
The first picks split between Farrell (as transcribed) and Riley (as transcribed), the latter because Reilly got Walk Hard out of this movie; the case for Ferrell is that his influence on everybody in the movie is palpable, inviting them along on the journey.
A request to name Han and Scott together is refused as a procedural move; the counter is that Ferrell was going to be funny no matter what, so winning would require an extraordinary Ferrell performance, while Reilly matched him coming in from drama in a way Ferrell could not reverse opposite Daniel Day Lewis, so the degree of difficulty favors Reilly.
Since the two performances are dead even, McKay is raised and the oral history would argue it is him; the hosts settle on McKay as the non-controversial consensus pick, with a shout-out to John C. Reilly for stepping into comedies when he is not a comedian, or perhaps a comedian miscast his whole career, and a joke that he should not have been the catcher in For Love of the Game.
Trejo could have been in this movie, sure, why not; the audience, via a couple of emails, is ready to retire the Danny Trejo category and the hosts kill it on the spot, since the lesson is always that Trejo should be in every movie, with Call Me by Your Name imagined as the exception, and even there it would be hilarious if he rented the bikes or cut the riders off in a pickup truck.
Listeners are invited to email themailbag at the ringer to decide the next, more polarizing figure for the 'would this movie be better off with blank' category; Adam Scott and Catherine Han are floated, though she would make any movie better, and an on-air invitation is extended to her to come do podcasts.
Catherine Han is a yes, a hundred percent: this put her on the map in the greatest way possible in a movie people rewatch all the time.
Will Ferrell is a no: after a clarification that Apex Mountain means the greatest moment of a career rather than just comedic performances, a host still thinks Anchorman is it, he was in the middle of a great run, and he was still at the tail end of SNL, having played Bush for a couple of years.
Adam McKay gets a yes at first, the peak of his powers, making an iconic comedy out of nothing, with no plot, that let him do whatever he wants; then The Big Short, $140 million and a Best Director nomination, is raised and the same host changes his mind and goes Big Short, while another thinks McKay has not hit his apex yet and it is in front of him, citing the jittery Big Short camera work in Succession even though the show is mostly creator Jesse Armstrong's handiwork.
Adam Scott gets a hundred percent from one host; another would instead name Eastbound and Down, where his agent Pat Anderson is mind-blowing in two and a half scenes, with the black-credit-card exchange with John Hawkes recited up to its crude punchline; Will Ferrell's Ashley Schaefer BMW plums speech from the same show gets a shout-out, and without Step BrothersScott would not have been unleashed as a comedy dick in that role.
For Reilly, Boogie Nights and Magnolia are offered, with Days of Thunder and Talladega Nights in the conversation; one host calls him his least favorite part of Magnolia and would cut the whole character, Walk Hard is mentioned, and Boogie Nights is given as the answer for his exercise dance behind the glass during the Mark Wahlberg song before Feel the Heat.
John C. Reilly cried real tears in the divorce scene; Boats and Hoes was written by Dr. Luke, who had been the SNL guitarist; Ferrell did his own singing and Reilly his own drumming at the Catalina Wine Mixer; Adam Scott lip-synced Sweet Child O' Mine in the van; the dinosaur monologue was ad-libbed by Jenkins and McKay in two takes; the prosthetic testicles reportedly cost up to $20,000
John C. Reilly really cried during the divorce scene, real tears in a real acting performance; asked as a child of divorce whether the scene landed, a host answers a hundred percent; Han starts crying too and calls him honey, prompting Adam Scott (as transcribed, 'Dan Scott') to ask why she is calling him honey.
Boats and Hoes was made by the controversial Dr. Luke, which the hosts suspect traces to his years as the Saturday Night Live guitarist when McKay and Ferrell were on the show; Ferrell did his own singing and Reilly all the drumming at the Catalina Wine Mixer, and Ferrell's operatic performance (transcribed as 'Porti Volare') is weirdly good, opera rather than a pop song, from a crazy talented man.
Adam Scott lip-synced Sweet Child O' Mine, the one guy in the van doing so, which a host never noticed until armed with the tidbit; the a cappella Guns N' Roses rendition is also called one of the most rewatchable scenes.
The dinosaur monologue was ad-libbed by Jenkins and McKay during a throw-anything session and shot in only two takes; McKay promised Jenkins he would not use it, and before the screening Jenkins asked whether he had used it and learned it was in. It is called an awesome scene that arguably belonged among the most rewatchable, a favorite three-character exchange in which Jenkins's character planned to be a doctor for a while and then go back to being a dinosaur, Brennan asking how that is even a skill, and Dale telling him a human could never be a dinosaur.
Stepped on early during the scene discussion: the half-assed internet research found claims that the prosthetic testicles cost $20,000, against the few thousand dollars in the oral history.
The award is explained as the person you like from a movie without knowing their name; Andrea Savage is the one who ends up with Will Ferrell here, and she is really good in The House, an underrated film that prompted a host to look her up and learn she had kids and checked out for years; she now has the TruTV show I'm Sorry, is a friend of The Watch and came on the Thrones show.
Per the oral history she was originally in Party Down with Adam Scott but got pregnant and had to leave the show, which went to Lizzie Kaplan (as transcribed); she is really funny in this movie and a good Joey Pants.
The movie started with John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell and then went and found actors, so the only real what-if is Derek, for which Jon Hamm and Thomas Lennon auditioned during Mad Men (as transcribed, 'Badman'); something in Adam Scott's audition won them over.
Hamm as Derek is called one of the better what-ifs the show has had, more intimidating and still funny, but Adam Scott has something evil and punchable about him, and it would be scary to punch Hamm.
Scott told the oral history he modeled Derek on moneyed, douchey people he found online and in the Rob Report (as transcribed), a guy who reads a magazine with a speedboat on the cover; the name-drops at the first dinner are all people who seem douchey, Mark Cuban as 'the cubes', Chad Michael Murray, Bobby Flay and Seal, plus the Dane Cook pay-per-view, and being name-dropped by Derek is a tough beat.
Four nominees are thrown out first: the first dinner scene with the whole family together, start to finish great, where John C. Reilly makes Will Ferrell cry and which ends with Ferrell going to shake Richard Jenkins's hand (as transcribed, 'Richard Jacobs') and slowly pulling it away; the drum scene, a masterpiece that keeps going until the fight in the yard and Mary Steenberg's (as transcribed) profane line; the bunk beds breaking, still funny the hundredth time; and the boat video.
Also floated: the Catalina mixer song and that whole moment; the grounding after the drum set, where the couch exchange between Jenkins and Steenburgen and Reilly and Ferrell is mind-blowing because the two are visibly throwing lines out; Adam Scott's Derek popping his head up into the treehouse, with 'I haven't had a carb since 2004' called one of the best lines in the movie and an obvious body double for the abs; and the porno-magazine time-machine bit leading up to it.
The film is thought of as micro moments rather than scenes, a movie of lines and dialogue; the job interview is added, and a 2 Chainz song called Trap Back stops in the middle to play the audio of the pan scene for a minute and a half, ending on 'get out of my office', taken as proof that movie dialogue can be dropped into a song and loved.
Will Ferrell is called weirdly influential on that period of rap, basically inventing Watch the Throne; Kanye loves him and famously quoted 'don't lose your dinosaur' in an interview with Zach Barron (as transcribed).
One pick is the drum scene, played as a clip from the accusation about the touched drum set through the threat to put his testicles on it, and taken as the winner all the way through the fight.
The fake testicles got significant space in Alan Siegel's oral history: they cost a few thousand dollars by one account and twenty thousand by the half-assed internet research, the designer warned McKay a really nice set would be expensive and McKay told him to do what he needed, and Ferrell asked to keep them and brings them out for dinner parties.
A second pick is the treehouse, with Derek's 'I don't have a problem, Dale. Actually, I have the opposite of a problem. I made over 550K last year' read out as proof that Adam Scott is an amazing dickhead; a third pick is the scene when they get grounded.
