The opening store scene does a lot, with Seth Rogen's story about a Tijuana show featuring a woman and a horse, which turned out not as cool as it sounds. — Bill Simmons
Paul Rudd accosting Jane Lynch over the Michael McDonald DVD, ending with the 'Yamo burn this place to the ground' line; the speaker's son got bored about 40 minutes in but watched that bit on YouTube over and over.
The same DVD played over and over in the store is very real to anyone who has worked retail. — Bill Simmons
The poker game feels like an SNL sketch; the line about a breast feeling like a bag of sand makes it the speaker's personal favorite scene. — Bill Simmons
The Leslie Mann scene is bonkers, the only unrealistically unhinged scene, but in a good way. — Bill Simmons
The body-waxing scene was like Caddyshack's Baby Ruth scene coming out of the theater.
The hosts say the waxing was done for real with five cameras and an actress as the waxer, so the nipple was not oiled and his right nipple was ravaged; it was really Carell's chest, and they had to keep waxing it for later shirtless scenes. — Bill Simmons
Paul Rudd bringing over a big box of porn and the Boner Jams '03 mix tape, followed by the Everybody Loves Raymond tape; Boner Jams '03 is called the favorite line in the movie.
The speed dating scene is really good, with Mo Collins's character flagged to come up later for the Dion Waiters category. — Bill Simmons
Andy's first date call to Catherine Keener while the others do 'you know how I know you're gay', which has not aged well in some ways but is Rudd and Rogen cooking. — Bill Simmons
The support group scene and Seth with his dad, who berates him about his little Jew fro. — Bill Simmons
The ending, where losing his virginity turns into a musical number with the whole cast, is called a really good choice and credited to Gary Shandling because they couldn't figure out the ending. — Bill Simmons
A special shout-out goes to the extended version of the Kevin Hart and Malco scene, compared to Clemens and Cecil Fielder going toe to toe; the lister agrees and had it in what's aged the best.
Andy following Rogen's character's tips in the bookstore: the just-ask-questions bit, the 'be David Caruso in Jade' advice, then the best line in the movie and the 90-second seduction by Elizabeth Banks. — Sean Fennessey
The David Caruso in Jade reference may have aged best or worst, since producer Craig would not know what Jade was. — Bill Simmons
Formal pick: the poker game, because it is perfectly written. — Bill Simmons
A second voice agrees the poker game is the most iconic now: the chest waxing was, but the bag-of-sand line is the one quoted back. — Sean Fennessey
It fits the movie because the other guys' sex talk makes sex seem gross and foreign, so Andy's choice to stay home with his electronic drum kit seems understandable. — Chris Ryan
Lindsay Lohan nearly cast as Jade but judged too young by Phillips; Jack Black turned down Alan; Paul Rudd turned down Phil; Jeremy Piven turned down Stu; Mike Tyson refused until he learned Phillips made Old School; Alan was written as a Jonah Hill-type younger brother and Thomas Hayden Church (as transcribed) was considered
Lindsay Lohan was almost cast as Jade; Phillips decided she was too young and is adamant about it, while Lohan's version is that she turned it down and it was the biggest regret of her career.
Lohan in the movie would have felt very 2009 and not a good version of her; Heather Graham is perfect, and being a little older makes the part work better.
One host is not as much of a believer in the theory that Lohan was a great Goldie Hawn-esque movie star whose talent was frittered away. — Sean Fennessey
The reaction is 'Oh, how dare you?' and 'This is your worst take you've ever had', with Parent Trap offered as proof: she plays two people, one with an English accent, like a 17-year-old Meryl Streep in training; Freaky Friday is weaker.
The Heather Graham conversation runs License to Drive, Twins, Drugstore Cowboy, Six Degrees of Separation and Swingers, by which point one host was in love, then Austin Powers; she may have been his number one 90s crush, Ed Burns dated her, and Boogie Nights, Even Cowgirls Got the Blues, Diggstown, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Scream 2, Two Girls and a Guy and Bowfinger show she was always in good stuff and good at sending up her persona; another gets her confused with Terry Polo.
Her ABC show Emily's Reasons Why Not never worked; Grey's Anatomy is raised as a show she might have led, but she is a comic actress who thrives in comedy; she is good here and way better than Lohan would have been, her 35 making more sense than weird 25-year-old energy.
Jack Black turned down Alan, thank God, since he would have overpowered the other three; Paul Rudd turned down Phil and would have been doing Brian Fantana and Sex Panther while making fun of it, whereas you believe Cooper as a shit bag even greeting his wife at the wedding; Rudd has not played a guy like that outside Neil LeBute (as transcribed) plays.
Jeremy Piven turned down Stu, thank God, probably because he was at the height of Ari Gold; Stu is the third lead.
Mike Tyson refused to appear and changed his mind on learning Phillips directed Old School; the Galifianakis character was written as a younger brother-in-law of the Jonah Hill type until Phillips realized an older brother was funnier, and Thomas Hayden Church (as transcribed) was the other option, a different movie.
The soundtrack: generic, predictable songs that are perfectly executed and make sense with the plot, not a Dazed and Confused soundtrack but what guys going to Vegas then would be listening to; the music under the blackjack scene with the numbers is smart, and the T.I. song Live Your Life was huge and still is.
A tangent on which songs from this century have joined the wedding mix: Heya (as transcribed) by Outkast, probably the T.I. song, Bruno Mars, Adele, and 1901 by Phoenix heard at 18 weddings, pitched as a Ringer piece.
Todd Phillips' taste for hard rock, the Danzig song at the start and the Metallica in Old School; the Dan Band has also aged well, with future generations asking why they never played the Super Bowl halftime show, and the 'just the tip' setup turning inappropriate fast.
Rachel Harris as the girlfriend from hell is an incredible character, every stereotype put on steroids to make her the worst character of all time; the 'you fucked a waiter on a cruise' bit and Galifianakis's 'what did she say' after Helms walks away are singled out.
The elevator scene with Todd Phillips' cameo; his habit of going down on a woman in his own movies is his version of Hitchcock walking across the frame.
Alan reading the letter on the roof with 'that's why they call it Sin City'; the subtle cut where he is finishing a description of the Ted Danson and Magnum PI movie as they head to Heather Graham's hotel; and the 'it's not illegal, it's frowned upon, like masturbating on an airplane' exchange ending in 'thanks a lot, Bin Laden', the hardest one host laughed.
'Alan, you're the man' answered with 'you are too, Phil' shows he has no idea how to be one of the guys; his aping of Phil throughout is well done; the two made-up songs are enjoyed, and Ed Helms' piano song while they wait for the tiger to fall asleep was apparently ad-libbed.
Old-school, last-decade Vegas; every Alan line, especially 'this isn't the real Caesar's Palace, is it? Did Caesar live here?', and the pitch-perfect reaction of the woman at the desk.
How high Alan ranks in the pantheon of comedy characters: the criterion is someone who was not the star but stole the movie, so Frank the Tank, John Candy in Stripes, Bill Murray and Ted Knight in Caddyshack, Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters, Matt Dillon and Chris Elliott in There's Something About Mary, Michael Keaton in Night Shift, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd in Anchorman, McLovin, the Wedding Crashers character as the backfire case and Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids as the perfect example.
Galifianakis belongs in that conversation as the breakout; John Candy in Stripes was like that for a host who knew him only as Ox and never watched SCTV; Galifianakis is named the big winner.
The movie stood up in total for a host without as much of a rewatchable relationship to it; the actual plot of what happened to them is well done, with Jade, Mr. Chow and the roof payoff; the brevity, about an hour thirty-five with no wasted section, makes it the last comedy before the two-hour-ten Apatow era.
The DVD's deleted scenes were anticipated; the end credit sequence has held up as a convention, 'they pretty much invented Marvel right there', though another host had it for what aged worst.
Eligibility is the problem: Hader is in it too much, Russell Brand is in it too much, and Jonah Hill getting his own movie afterwards either breaks the rules or proves he should win; Jack McBrayer and William Baldwin are the other names, and neither of the big guys qualifies.
One host's pick is Jonah: not in it too much and throwing heat every time, with the English accent, the getting mad, and taking Jason Segel's plate right after he started eating and then saying he will just go fuck himself.
Asked whether it should be Rudd instead, the hosts agree Rudd is in about two scenes and bats a thousand, while Jonah may be one scene too much to be eligible; the 'the weather outside is weather' line settles it and the award is given to Rudd (transcribed as Red).
Earlier, before the break, a joke asked whether Jason Segel's dick was up for the Dion Waiters Award, with the answer that we would find out.
Peter and Aldous meeting on surfboards in the ocean together with the getting back on the beach scene with the reef and the leg; Peter's first Skype call with Hader and his wife
The list opens with six nominations and probably more; the breakup scene is first, nominated as rewatchable for being so weird.
Asked what he found rewatchable about the breakup scene, the answer is that it is rewatchable on TBS, where you don't have to see Jason Segel naked, and that it's just good. — Bill Simmons
He is naked the whole time, so the hosts wonder what sound effect or blur TV would put over it; she dumps him and it is a classic breakup scene, and the club scene with Bill Hader right after is nominated too.
The club scene is amazing: the lines about not hanging out in places like this, the place smelling like stripper's perfume and getting herpes from the couch; Bill Hader is incredible, this may be a favorite of all his performances, and every moment he is on screen lands.
Further nominations: Peter Skyping Hader and his wife from Hawaii while insisting she is not there, the 'I'm on the moon' bit, and the first time he plays the Dracula musical song in Hawaii, when Mila Kunis tells him to play it without realizing what it is; that scene is called tremendous.
Also nominated are the double date that goes off the rails near the end, Jonah Hill going off on Russell Brand when he flips out, and every single thing Paul Rudd does, starting with the first Rudd scene when Russell Brand's Aldous is brought back in with the coral in his leg, losing blood and asking Kunu to call the front desk, which the hosts quote at length.
So much random material suggests Stoller, Apatow and Rudd were freelancing in real time; every Kunu line gets a huge kick, and the cutaways to Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime with Billy Baldwin are held for what's aged the best because they are so short, along with the Bateman one and the post-credits bit.
Kunu versus Brian Fontana (as transcribed) in Anchorman for best Rudd: the cologne scene is the funniest thing one host has ever seen, with Sex Panther and hosing it down like Silkwood; Anchorman is being saved for the end of the world, is called the godfather of comedies and possibly the most rewatchable movie of all time, with another movie's worth of material on YouTube.
Brian Fantana is the fifth most important character in Anchorman and Kunu the ninth most important person here, yet every appearance delights; a late addition is the short scene where Peter and Aldous meet on surfboards in the ocean.
Two different picks emerge: one host takes the surfboard meeting together with the getting back on the beach scene, with the reef and the leg, calling the whole segment really good and quoting 'How are you so cool?'; another goes with the first Skype call with Hater and the wife, the first one rather than the one where he makes her head go up and down, out of love for Hater.
Added later during what's aged the best: the hike, hilarious for anyone who has unwillingly gone on a hike with someone, and his leap off the cliff backwards.
Asked who won the movie, with a joke about Paul Rudd's eyes, the host says it is obviously Alicia Silverstone and wonders why they even asked; she is perfect, the ideal avatar for everything Amy Heckerling wanted to get across, and someone wound her up and she nailed it.
Much of what is memorable about the movie, even saying 'as if', would not be as memorable without the way she delivers it; the realization that 'as if' was left off the quote list is called almost criminal, 'whatever' with the W hands is added, and the hosts highly recommend rewatching the film.
The question is posed as who is at their best other than Alicia Silverstone and Amy Heckerling ('Hackerling' as transcribed); one host repeats that Paul Rudd is at his best here, and another jokes that his eyes are at their best in the film.
On a seventy-first viewing in HD one host finally noticed how much eyeliner Paul Rudd wears throughout, wondering if it is an emo move or part of his green-party, standing-in-front-of-the-fridge flannel persona; another doubts you are meant to see it and says this was the first film watched on a fancy TV, which revealed things about the aesthetic better left unseen.
The pick refers back to an earlier aside during the casting discussion: Clueless together with Paris in Romeo and Juliet is still the peak Paul Rudd run for one host, who says he will never be more important than he was then in that host's universe.
A tangent on the Arclight theater chain in Los Angeles, whose lobby displays film costumes that look like sewn-together tablecloths; cameras and lights do a lot of work, HD has ruined many illusions and is good only for reality TV, Game of Thrones production value and sports.
The Christian storyline, though the hosts move it toward aged pretty well; Christian's over-stylized retro persona; how the teenagers interact, such as Elton keeping Cher's photo in his locker; Murray and Elton sharing a popular crew; Cher and Ty doing a home workout video; the fashion computer's monitor
Cher's date with Christian is called the most problematic part of a problematic fave; asked whether falling for a gay man is a rom-com trope, the hosts can only think of the Rupert Everett and Madonna film and agree it is not really a rom-com thing, while finding it funny that the straight guys, Paul Rudd seeing Christian dance with a man and Murray, pick up on it before the ostensibly perceptive Cher and Dion.
Murray's reveal, played as a clip, uses 'friend of Dorothy', an old-school gay self-identifying marker from The Wizard of Oz, plus 'cake boy' and the Oscar Wilde, disco-dancing, Streisand-ticket-holding string; the hosts find it hilarious in a good way that Amy Heckerling put those words in Murray's mouth, call the Streisand line remarkable and Pulitzer-worthy, and the 'cake boy' line unfortunate.
Christian's analog in Emma, read from Wikipedia in a way Cher would endorse since she loves Cliff's Notes, is Frank Churchill, who courts Emma while secretly engaged to someone else and waiting on an aunt's inheritance, so the storylines are not really the same; the host prefers him being gay to that.
GLAAD ('Glad' as transcribed) gave Amy Heckerling an award for the storyline, which was very progressive at the time; Murray pointing out that Christian is gay is not malicious, the joke is that Cher is totally clueless, which one host says has happened to teenage girls and, going by the friends that host still counsels through it, women of all ages, so the item is moved to somewhere between aged best and aged pretty well.
What still annoys is Christian's style: the over-stylized guy obsessed with the twenties and thirties, who deserves Cher not knowing who Billie Holiday is, though Billie Holiday deserves better.
Discussing a possible remake, the hosts find the way these kids interact foreign to teenagers now; Elton keeping a photo Cher took in his locker is quaint, silly and confusing, which is part of why Elton gets kicked out of the picture because he sucks, and the 'social director of the crew' line is loved.
Murray and Elton being in the same crew of popular guys confuses one host, whose high school popular set was uniform in style rather than race; another went to a weird school with a wide range, and a third had a clearly defined cool tier with pressure to look the same, so the kids with sagging jeans and the Eltons would have mutually rejected each other.
Cher and Ty doing a home workout video instead of a class has aged badly, though it is set in the nineties when everyone had workout videos; the hosts recall sneaking a mother's 'Tybo' tape (as transcribed), a Paula Abdul video with a routine still remembered, and the Barbie workout video starring Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Earlier, during the opening-minutes discussion, the fashion computer's actual monitor is said to look like trash now and not to have aged well, even though the idea was forward thinking.
Cher's plaid outfit and most of her wardrobe; the craft and Amy Heckerling's direction; the affectionate satire; the jokes; Cher's kitchen; the upper-crust design aesthetics; the short skirts
The plaid outfit still rocks and most of Cher's outfits are good, with her style coming back; one host wants to say the script but concedes certain aspects of it have not aged well, and lands on craft: the film was impeccably made, still really funny, with most jokes holding up despite being a specific nineties movie.
The film does not seem dated, has no fat and no scene to cut, so Amy Heckerling is what has held up best; she was ahead of her time because few satires manage to be so affectionate toward what they satirize, enjoying the silly characters even while mocking them, as with Ty's line that they speak like adults.
Cher's kitchen still reads as high-end: a Viking range and oven, the granite countertops seen on every HGTV show, great light, a good double-door refrigerator-freezer, and a startling quantity of cold cuts; only the cabinet handles would need updating.
A hand is raised to ask whether anyone noticed how the sandwich is made in the kitchen scene. — Amanda Dobbins
The sandwich scene is walked through: just after the makeover, Josh and Cher argue in the kitchen over whether her project has the right intentions while Paul Rudd gets out cold cuts, bread and mayonnaise, puts cold cuts on one slice, dips the knife for a paltry amount of mayo and spreads it directly on the turkey; the hosts are disgusted and wonder whether he was too busy acting to make a sandwich.
The sandwich has not enough mayo to moisten anything, no other condiments, no cheese and about one piece of turkey, a gross dry sandwich that horrified the hosts; even so Paul Rudd is a revelation and very funny in the film.
The design aesthetics hold up because the world is so upper crust that it is classic rather than trendy, unlike 90210 where the couches and styles look ridiculous; the real-life Los Angeles counterparts might lack taste, but Amy Heckerling's set and costume designers had it, and it clearly mattered that the film be nice to look at.
The skirts are really short without being slutty or trashy, which is hard to do, though perhaps the hosts are simply used to the look; the tiny white Calvin Klein dress is recalled with the clip of Cher's dad telling her it looks like underwear, and the hosts note she is only going on a date with the gay guy anyway.
The casting names are called almost more fun than Titanic's, which the same three hosts covered two weeks earlier, because people did not want to own up to passing on Titanic; Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Michelle Gellar were both up for Cher, the Gellar name recalled through Cruel Intentions.
A tangent: Cruel Intentions came a couple of years later, Clueless is a G rated movie by comparison, and one host cannot believe their parents let them watch Cruel Intentions all the time.
Paul Rudd, who played Josh, apparently wanted to be Christian or Murray; the hosts could see him as Christian but are glad he did not do it, and one was deep in Paul Rudd fandom in the nineties through the show Sisters, where he was Swoozie Kurtz's son-in-law married to Ashley Judd's character (names as transcribed).
Clueless and Paris in Romeo and Juliet are called the peak Paul Rudd run for one host, who says he never gets enough credit for sustained relevance but will never matter more than he did then.
The best what-if is Jeremy Renner being up for Christian, which the host thinks he turned down; the hosts can see it and wonder whether his career would have looked different, joking about his status in the Marvel movies.
More names in the mix: Terrence Howard for Murray, Lauryn Hill for Dion (she was acting then, as in Sister Act), Owen Wilson trying out for Travis, Leah Remini auditioning for Ty, and Zooey Deschanel up for both Amber and Cher; a Deschanel Cher is agreed to be a very different and worse movie.
