Madsen is the first name; the heat is pretty equally distributed, but Tim Roth's shirtless boss in the vest does a lot with a little, chewing up 'that invisible bitch'; Madsen in the ear-cutting scene is compared to Vinnie Johnson in game five of the 1990 Finals, going for it in a career-altering way, except his career was not altered.
Barely worth mentioning is the extra Buscemi bangs into while fleeing the robbery, who yells 'fuck you, asshole' like an acting buddy making the most of one opportunity.
One more Dion Waiters: the earnest, mustached cop telling his story during the commode monologue, repeatedly ordering the motorist to put his hands on the dash; he looks like he is from Wisconsin rather than California and is handed the best that-guy award instead.
Tarantino wanted James Woods and made five cash offers, which Woods' agent refused without telling him because they were below his salary; Woods fired the agent after learning the story, and Tarantino never told him which role; online speculation says Mr. Orange, which the hosts doubt given Woods' age, preferring him as Mr. White.
Tarantino wrote Mr. Pink for himself; Madsen auditioned for Pink, Vincent Gallo turned it down, which is doubted as half-assed research, Tim Roth almost played it, and Tom Sizemore was a finalist, which could have broken brains.
Sizemore's Natural Born Killers character is the brother of Seymour Scagnetti, one of the most messed-up characters in movie history; asked which part he wanted and why, Sizemore told Tarantino 'the action is the juice'; Buscemi originally auditioned for Mr. White.
George Clooney read for Mr. Blonde, which the hosts can see, and later did From Dusk Till Dawn; Christopher Walken refused Mr. Blonde, almost too obvious a choice, perhaps never even replying to the script.
Robert Forster auditioned for Joe Cabot; one host never thought Forster was that great, including in Jackie Brown, and never bought the attraction with Pam Gray (as transcribed), which the others call a crazy, bad take given his Oscar nomination; he would still have been better than Lawrence Tierney.
Tony Scott read both scripts, wanted Reservoir Dogs and was told he could have True Romance; his version would have shown the heist with more cop stuff, a Hans Zimmer score instead of seventies songs, and Gary Oldman as Mr. Blonde with dreadlocks and gold teeth.
Cross-echoes with True Romance: 'a diddle-at-joe' to Drexel's 'damned if I know', and Mr. White saying he used to work with Alabama; the theatrical release has no female speaking parts beyond the woman who shoots Mr. Orange, nor does this podcast.
Four nominees: Tarantino's theory that Like a Virgin is about a John Holmes type, Madsen's line that Ladera Heights is the Black Palos Verde (as transcribed), an inside L.A. joke that slayed one host, Keitel's torture theory of pinky first then threaten the thumb, with the 'let's get a taco' clip, and Buscemi's theory on not tipping.
One pick is not tipping, because Madonna herself negated the Like a Virgin theory; she liked the film, refuted the interpretation and gave Quentin a signed copy of her erotic album (as transcribed) saying it is about love, not dick.
Another's favorite is the Madonna theory regardless, since artist intent is not interpretation and nobody cares what Tony Scott believes Top Gun is about; the finger theory is also loved, with a joke about a jewelry store manager living his hand life with three fingers.
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.
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.
Madsen is one host's first instinct: over the top, with no clear character, and kind of a dumbass.
A case can be made for literally everyone in the movie, but especially Kim Basinger as Memo, deliberately over the top since the character went to Hollywood to be a starlet and performs for whoever she is with, raising whether Gus, Roy or anyone sees her true self; Prosky as the judge, with the lamp going on, is also loved.
Basinger is agreed as a good one, with bad acting in the scene where she tries to shoot Roy, and both hosts land on her.
Madsen is wanted but not getting it; Bobby the Batboy is the first pick.
Gus, played by the uncredited Darren McGavin, is going for it every time, and both hosts agree Gus is the better choice, partly because it leads into internet research; he was also a candidate for the Saul Rubinick overacting award (as transcribed).
Basinger is in the final eight of a most-beautiful-woman-in-a-movie bracket, and her constant lip licking raises whether it is deliberate or just her essence; Diane Lane in Unfaithful is a similar case.
Brimley and Farnsworth as Pop and Red are perfect and some of the best stuff in the movie; it is sobering that Brimley was the same age as one host is now yet seems 78, and only about two years older than Redford in real life.
Hobbs played semi-pro ball for the Hebrew Oilers, prompting a hunt for t-shirts on Cafe Press or Redbubble; the Randy Newman score was Oscar-nominated, is instantly associated with the film, and gets yanked for NBA and World Series montages.
Basinger is named again, with a nod to Alec Baldwin and their handsome couple; Max Mercy, who never played sports but makes it more fun to watch, is a model for sports media, and the hosts imagine him resisting digital media at the New York Daily News, still drawing cartoons, before being wooed by Sirius for Mad Dog Radio or a podcast.
John Rhodes, the Pittsburgh lefty who is a Roy Hobbs spitting image with a good throwing motion, is great casting, and the slow-motion shot of the guys flying out of the dugout after the homer is an all-time favorite.
Roy Hobbs is a three-true-outcomes player for the modern era, homering, striking out or walking, like 2003 Bonds or a nine-WAR player with a 184 wRC+, though his defensive value would be poor since he is slow and unwieldy and his side hurts every time he reaches for a ball.
The old-school baseball fashion and aesthetics, especially the Cubs uniforms, have aged wonderfully, even though the heavy fire-retardant uniforms look as warm as wildling furs.
Iris as an independent spirit and trailblazing feminist: Roy gets her pregnant in the barn, proposes romantic bullshit and never returns, and she raises the boy alone in Chicago with a nice apartment, a job and a drugstore where they know her name, can get an usher to deliver a note, and still gets the guy at the end.
The final pick is Red and Pop, with a wish for 30 minutes of deleted dugout ad-libs or a mic'd-up game, or else the iconic score.
