The first 32 minutes are called unassailable: everything during the day is rewatchable until they get in the car with the guy who hits Jonah Hill and the movie shifts to night. — Bill Simmons
The opening phone call is smart and well crafted; Michael finishes the call five feet away before getting in the car, classic best-friend stuff from the call-only era before texting. — Bill Simmons
The Vagtastic Voyage debuts here, with a co-host joked to be its patient-zero, platinum-club subscriber.
Planning which porn site to subscribe to once he gets to college, including the line about who directs the porn he watches, is singled out as funny. — Chris Ryan
The mom cameo and the tits/teeth exchange are called very high-schooly. — Bill Simmons
A favorite comedy mode, traced to Chevy Chase, is someone doing something inappropriate behind a person who does not know; Jonah's home ec monologue about never needing to make tiramisu is the example.
The dick-drawings confession goes all in; Evan Goldberg's brother drew hundreds of them, and the Ghostbusters lunchbox treasure chest is a classic.
The driver's license scene unleashing McLovin is so funny; it was also the screen-test scene on YouTube, and Jonah's anger ("between that and Muhammad") makes it.
A Ringer piece says Jonah was mad at Mintz-Plasse, who did not care and stepped on his lines.
Seth telling Evan he got invited to the party has the most great Jonah Hill lines in two minutes: calm down Greg it's soccer, iron chef of pounding vag, Seth's own dressing, DTF.
Worked-up Jonah is compared to Chris Farley's energy; he could have done 20 more years of it and does some in Funny People. — Bill Simmons
The whole liquor store sequence could go in; the Seth dream sequence buying vodka is proposed, and at the party Seth coins the verb "perioded." — Bill Simmons
A favorite Hader scene is his bar explanation of his marriage and group sex on the wedding night, guessed to be ad-libbed; McLovin getting cockblocked by the cops, the cops generally, and the ending are also praised. — Bill Simmons
The Coke party with Kevin Corrigan's brother-from-Scottsdale speech is called the most rewatchable scene, better than Boogie Nights, with Cera singing These Eyes compared to Damian Lillard in a fourth quarter. — Chris Ryan
After an invitation to Sean, the dream sequence is chosen for Jonah's line readings such as "That would be lovely."
The stretch of McLovin buying booze, the robbery, Michaels and Slater interviewing Mindy and McLovin, the Seth-Evan lube fight and Joe Lo Truglio hitting Seth is called a favorite 15-minute stint. — Sean Fennessey
The following party scene captures the high school feeling of being somewhere with older kids where you are not supposed to be.
Agreement on the 15-minute stretch, adding the breast-reduction and "warlocks" riff and the plan to go down on her for several hours. — Bill Simmons
S'mores monologue; Wendy Peffercorn's name; Ham Porter; James Earl Jones; Kenny's Kansas City Monarchs hat; nicknames; retro fashion; on-the-nose music
The s'mores monologue lives on: the host's son recited it by age eight, and it has a new YouTube life.
Ham's s'mores setup resembles a caterer's station at a wedding, never explained. — Mina Kimes
Things the film taught an eight-year-old viewer: s'mores, tree houses, flashlight-under-the-chin stories, the word 'bitchin', and cannonballs. — Mina Kimes
The 'biggest pickle of my life' line recurs, teaching a generation that pickles are a big part of baseball, which they are not. — Mina Kimes
S'mores quibble: the chocolate must be allowed to melt; you can't rush the s'more.
Wendy Pfeffercorn (as transcribed) is the classic one-beautiful-person legend of a movie town, and her name is a great one. — Bill Simmons
Ham Porter could have been Oscar-nominated, carries scenes like Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam, and is the best performance in the film. — Bill Simmons
Ham walked so Jonah Hill could run; in an alternate universe Ham becomes an Apatow-era star. — Bill Simmons
James Earl Jones has a very high PER; seeing him is a pleasure, as with his Field of Dreams turn.
Kenny's Kansas City Monarchs hat is a subtle nice touch, though Kenny's role on the mound is unclear. — Bill Simmons
Mr. Myrtle's Negro Leagues background is noted; the hosts cite a 1993 New York Times article in which a Negro league historian said major leaguers barnstormed with Negro leaguers and Ruth played against them. — Mallory Rubin
Ham Porter, the Great Hambino, gets better every year. — Mallory Rubin
Nicknames in general and the retro fashion of tees, jeans and Chuck Taylors or PF Flyers hold up.
The music is on the nose but perfect for kids: This Magic Moment for the lifeguard scene, Green Onions against the rivals, Tequila, Wipe Out for chases; the score is by David Newman. — Mina Kimes
Is it Leo's: Django is a hell of a lot darker than being a shithead on Wall Street and arguably more impressive; The Revenant was a make-good after people were angry he had no Oscar, great for its natural-light shooting as much as for him; there is not enough separation between the roles to call this his peak, and Titanic is arguably the apex since he was the most popular person in the world, though one host has still never seen it.
The Aviator is incredible, but apex is also about what he can do in the business; the run is listed, Body of Lies, Catch Me If You Can, Gangs of New York, which one host would fight for every day while wishing for a version without Cameron Diaz, a take judged too hot, then The Departed, Blood Diamond, Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island, Inception, J. Edgar as the only true dud in an old-man suit, Django and Gatsby, with every performance preferable to The Revenant, the classic Oscar thing.
So it is not Leo's and not Scorsese's; Bernthal gets a personal yes from one host, and it only might be Jonah's, which stops short of a yes.
Would anyone be recast: Jennifer Lawrence as Naomi is suggested and rejected; Carl Weathers in the Jonah Hill part gives 'smoke crack with me' a different valence and is not considered impossible, to be reconsidered tomorrow.
McConaughey's scenes were shot in the second week and his chest-beating was his warm-up; the film was financed with money allegedly stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB fund and Red Granite paid $60 million to settle; 400 to 450 VFX shots, shot digitally; a Guinness record 506 F-words; the actors snorted crushed B vitamins; Christina McDowell's open letter about the victims; Robbie's paper cuts on the bed of cash; Spielberg spent a day on set during the Steve Madden speech; Belfort coached DiCaprio on quaaludes; 27 takes for the Joanna Lumley kiss; the drug scenes are edited oddly on purpose
McConaughey's scenes were shot in the second week of filming; the chest-beating and humming were improvised from his pre-acting warm-up; the brief shot of Leo looking uneasily away from the camera was him looking to Scorsese for approval, and DiCaprio pushed to keep it in and later said it set the tone for the film, a pretty good sliding-doors moment.
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission alleged the film was financed with money stolen from the One Malaysia Development Berhad sovereign wealth fund by producer Riza Aziz, who pled not guilty to charges in July 2019; 2016 Department of Justice civil complaints named it as having provided a trust account through which hundreds of millions were siphoned; Red Granite Pictures paid $60 million to settle with no admission of wrongdoing.
The story is part of Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope and Tom Right (as transcribed): Joe Low (as transcribed), a well-off Malaysian kid at Pen among generational wealth, became a networker who threw parties without paying, went home to start a fund with Aziz, the prime minister's stepson, pulled in Middle East money and Goldman Sachs, took Paris Hilton on ski trips, bought Lindsay Lohan 23 bottles of champagne, bought part of EMI, sent Marlon Brando's Oscar to DiCaprio, who gave it back, and made a $43 million art purchase.
DiCaprio and Scorsese saw guys offering total control and endless money after Scorsese had wasted half a year in development; in a poetic twist the financing is a testament to the reality the film depicts, money at your fingertips making you throw away principles; the money is still being chased, Low is thought to be under Chinese protection, DiCaprio and others gave back everything gifted, and whether anyone actually liked the guy is an open question; the movie is a lot different without a kid from Malaysia stealing money.
The budget was needed partly for 400 to 450 VFX shots, uncommon for Scorsese outside Hugo; the film was shot digitally after he had been one of the last bastions of film, and without it there is probably no Irishman.
The film set a Guinness World Record with 506 uses of the F word, 2.81 per minute, beating Casino at 422 and the 1997 British film Null by Mouth (as transcribed) at 428; CinemaScore audiences gave it a C, the lowest of anything in theaters that week, which is why America is not to be trusted.
The actors snorted crushed B vitamins for the cocaine scenes and Jonah Hill ended up hospitalized with bronchitis; the film also commits the consistent Scorsese error of a character throwing the head back after a line as if hooked by the neck, which nobody does in real life.
Christina McDowell, daughter of Tom Prusalis, who worked with Belfort at Stratton Oakmont, wrote an open letter criticizing the film for not portraying the victims; the response is that Boiler Room did have the family-guy victim, that this is like replying to a tweet with the seven things it left out, and that nobody would have seen a movie about the victims, which they made as 99 Homes with Andrew Garfield; the popularity of a movie like this is itself the point, which is where the final shot out into the audience lands: you thought this was fun, think about it.
Margot Robbie reported the sex scene on a bed of fake cash was uncomfortable because the sharp paper bills gave her multiple paper cuts on her back.
Asked for takes on the sex scenes, the addressed host declines to vamp for twenty minutes about them. — Chris Ryan
The last sex scene is disturbing and awesome, such a fuck you and the ultimate turn; she deserves exactly what he has done to everyone else, and it should be an awful heartbreaking moment for him, the rock-bottom guy finally seeing the woman who had his back and not deserving to get her back; the sequence up to the freak-out and the kidnapping is the Scorsese of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, dread, fear and violence, the eggs out of her hands.
On a routine visit Steven Spielberg spent a day on set watching the Steve Madden speech and, per Scorsese, essentially co-directed it, advising actors and suggesting angles; that shows Scorsese's confidence, where anyone a tier below would say scram, like a host in the background wanting quicker questions when Simmons had Damon in studio; two cinematic geniuses might just agree there is a right way to tell a scene.
Belfort coached DiCaprio's behavior, especially how he reacted to quaaludes and the dope-induced confrontation with Danny Porish (as transcribed), the character Jonah plays; a weird conversation that nonetheless makes sense since we are out of ludes and cannot know, something like trying to stay up on Ambien but much harder.
DiCaprio was so nervous about the kissing scene with Joanna Lumley that it took a reported 27 takes; Scorsese has confirmed the editing is odd on purpose, with continuity issues after every scene where Jordan takes drugs; DiCaprio's dance was done on the spot but learned over decades, a real bar mitzvah robot he presumably did after a few sarsaparillas, in another smashed-up sequence with three songs in a minute and a half.
Possibly the hardest one ever done, ranked least to greatest: Bo Dietl as Bo Dietl, with an 'are you fucking high' impression; he was a recurring in-studio character on a New York radio show, New York's top cop turned PI turned conservative pundit praising Rudy, an object of obsession for Scorsese and Spike Lee as a New York institution, like Curtis Sola (as transcribed) commenting on crime; a New York One regular; he is good in it and has a prominent mob-boss role in The Irishman.
Kristen Milioti (as transcribed) as the first wife may be the most likable and only innocent character; Jake Hoffman as Steve Madden is a purposeful cold check, like Mikhail Bridges (as transcribed); Shea Wiggum (as transcribed) as Captain Ted Beecham making a little chop; Joanna Lumley as Aunt Emma, with nobody admitting to being an AbFab guy.
Rob Reiner as Max Belfort is amazing: the Equalizer phone tirade, the weird British accent he affects as soon as he answers, and the seemingly improvised 'sides cure cancer' exchange with Jonah while explaining marriage to his son.
Jon Bernthal as Brad, the Quaalude King of Bayside, has not been discussed enough: the diner performance, asking for the ketchup, 'tell your sister I was asking about her'; visually incongruous with these guys, he is the one animal every crew of normal guys had, the one with the Adderall; a guy still in his hometown asking younger dudes to hang out is a red flag, yet Belfort likes him most as the guy who gets it; a human wrecking ball who is a classically trained, thoughtful actor kept getting cast as violent meatheads after The Walking Dead and The Punisher, and is now a jacked Lee Ayacocca (as transcribed) in Ford versus Fari (as transcribed).
A tangent on Craig Kilbourne (as transcribed): his 'old man Ferrari' Instagram videos, made with his old writing crew, are ten times funnier than expected, awaited like Christmas morning, and he is floated as the new Robert Evans.
Spike Jonze as Dwayne the investment center leader, blotchy skin, bad shirt, uneven mustache; Spike Jonze is only ever great in movies, Three Kings, Moneyball and this; a host's wife found him cute, prompting a re-evaluation.
Jean Dujardin as Jean-Jacques Sorrel is doing a lot; for anyone not alive in 2013, he starred in The Artist, which won best picture and won him best actor during the Benigni run of handing Europeans best actor, compared to the late-nineties NBA draft and Jan Vesely; a host has still not watched or returned the DVD; he is in a different movie and takes one host's overacting award.
Number one is McConaughey with one scene; the only other name to throw in is PJ Byrne as Rugrat, who is in much of the movie but whom one host did not like, preferring Cuthbert and Sea Otter, who sold meat and weed; those guys go in the That Guy award.
In 2007 Leonardo DiCaprio and Warner Brothers won a bidding war against Brad Pitt and Paramount for the rights to Belfort's memoir, and Belfort made a million dollars on the rights.
Does it work with Pitt: absolutely for some, since Pitt is better at the darker thing and a less attractive, rougher guy might let you hate Jordan more, there being moments when DiCaprio looks too great on screen; the counter is that DiCaprio uses his handsomeness as a tool to push further, as in Django, while Damon plays relatable, and Jordan's looks explain why anyone would let him sell them anything; the telephone-terrorists speech, banging the microphone on his head, is a place Pitt may not be able to go.
Many Pitt and DiCaprio roles would be interchangeable, though The Aviator is hard to see with Pitt for one host while another could see Pitt there more than in this; both were circling The Departed at the same time; Pitt in California, twenty years earlier, and Fight Club show a weird dark gear.
Chris Evans and Joseph Gordon-Levitt auditioned for an unspecified role, presumably Donnie, which does not seem right for Evans; Jonah took about sixty grand per his Howard Stern interview, while Leo had box-office points; he was already Moneyball-nominated and in Superbad, flew to see DiCaprio, joked that Leo should kill anyone else cast, and practiced with the capped teeth and phone calls.
Moneyball was essentially playing Paul De Podesta (as transcribed), so it is hard to believe he was nominated for that and did not win for this, strong, unique and weird even if some scenes are too much; the cousin exchange, she grew up hot and if anyone is going to fuck my cousin it's going to be me out of respect, and the 'you're free' scene are things only Jonah could have done.
Asked for his Blake Lively thoughts, the addressed host would have been fine with her as Naomi. — Ryen Russillo
Blake Lively and Rosie Huntington-Whitley were considered and Teresa Palmer and Amber Heard auditioned for Naomi before Robbie; her being unknown helped, and Lively at the height of her post-Town moment could have nailed it but could not have reached the Robbie phenomenon; Robbie is doing Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, the voice and Buick Skylock (as transcribed), and the daughter is even named Skylar.
Olivia Wilde auditioned for Naomi but was deemed too old to play DiCaprio's wife even though he is ten years older, a tough beat; Julie Andrews was considered for Aunt Emma before Joanna Lumley but was convalescing from a titanium ankle implant, probably for the best given the Mary Poppins crowd; the Emma scene is sneaky extra evidence that Belfort is a bad guy.
People wanted Ridley Scott to direct for a time: his version is forty minutes shorter with a four-and-a-half-hour director's cut and less chaotic; Scorsese related to the addiction and throwing-your-life-away-for-cocaine material, which he discussed on the promo circuit, whereas Scott would bring less dialogue, longer driving scenes and a lude scene more like Kingdom of Heaven.
The takes that this was a celebration of wealth were bad takes; the take economy around it was a precursor to now, with a limited idea that art is either a moral judgment on bad people or a celebration of good ones; let someone tell a story that does not end in the usual formula; there is nothing normal about a film that starts in the third act of Goodfellas and stays there, where time and reality are hard to discern; Richard Corliss in Time asked why you would spend three hours with these people, which is called hiding your head in the sand about the parts of you that respond to them; liking to read about terrible people does not mean wanting to hang out with them.
The 2013 context: the start of the second Obama term, Breaking Bad culture, out of the financial crisis, a safer time to put a character like this on screen; some will always say fuck these guys; the Joker worry is that in ten years guys quote it as a way to live; if you don't like it fine, but saying such movies should not be made is pointless.
The runtime is proposed as having aged worst and disputed: the excess of the soundtrack, writing and camera demands a maximalist length; Thelma Schoonmaker reportedly could have gotten it shorter but did not want to cut the performances; the scene where Jonah and Bernthal get arrested is one a host has never liked, since it could be an aside, though it is how one of the real guys got arrested because Jonah's character combines several people, and another keeps it for the Nassau County police car he grew up seeing in a cop's household.
Before the category begins, the McConaughey sequence meeting Mark Hanna is flagged as the thesis statement of the movie: you are here to rob people and do cocaine while you do it; the body is a vessel for making money, jerking off and coke, and a wide-eyed 22-year-old from Queens with two accountant parents watching Hanna hoover martinis on a Monday morning could decide that is the lifestyle he wants.
The purpose of the Hanna sequence is pinned to the moment Leo's character offers that everybody wins if the clients make money and Hanna's answer is simply no: every warrior for himself, the thesis in the second paragraph.
The opening, the life of Jordan Belfort with the unreliable narrator, the $49 million a year line and the car flipping from red to white in real time, shows a character at the prime of his life right as the fall is about to come, with Scorsese breaking his own rules; the fourth-wall breaks are never used in a moral way and the film never slows down to judge the characters or let the audience feel better than them.
The Mark Hanna lunch clip is played; McConaughey's four minutes are called the reconnaissance for his comeback between Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective, with the Hanna character and the hair having as much to do with it as the dialogue, which is so eighties and unbelievably bad; an ESPN-era interview anecdote recalls him answering a question about Interstellar by saying he needs a little freedom to do what needs to be done; the chest-beating was his warm-up that Scorsese and DiCaprio told him to keep, and it is good that the character never returns because it is unsustainable.
McConaughey is an amazing physical actor here, throwing his arms down in a thrust before lunch and peering in like a college football coach racing down the sideline; you can imagine him giving the masturbation speech at a bar in real life, and the 'all mustard up here' line gets quoted.
Donnie Azoff in the diner, 'show me a pay stub for $72,000' and quitting his job on the phone, reads as very Long Island, a wealthy guy weirdly having breakfast at a diner; the early run of back-to-back scenes, Donnie, Hanna, Spike Jonze, is remarkable in itself.
Jonah introduces the grotesque with the capped teeth and the shirt patterns, trading his life for a pay stub; the character should not work, marrying his cousin, selling children's furniture, smoking crack days after meeting someone, yet the bond between two weird animals is bought; the objection that DiCaprio would never hang out with him is answered with the cousin Greg Succession theory, that he should not be in the room but every Greg scene is funny, and these are guys who make bad decisions, like Charles Schwab needing a guy for the garage.
Meeting the Duchess of Bay Ridge: Margot Robbie was a lightning bolt, an Australian reportedly 23 at the time with some dispute about her real age, introduced as Jordan's dream girl coming out of the beach-house party with the douchebag boyfriend Blair and the jet-ski comeback.
The smokestack lightning bacchanalia, the office party with the marching band, throwing the little people, the head shaving and the strippers, is one of the most ecstatic pieces of filmmaking ever; then an old blues song with echo comes in, the lighting goes dark and strobe, and you realize they have created hell on earth and are demons who love it; the camera moves in on a despairing DiCaprio walking off the stage, a subtle moment beside the later aside about the man who married the woman they double-teamed and killed himself; the first impression was that it was too much, Braveheart lines of strippers advancing.
The research indicates the party combines things that did not all happen at once, and the absurdity is the point; a nitpick is raised that the film is over-scored, with too much music and a blues-to-eighties-to-Foo-Fighters run whose years do not add up; the defense is that the soundtrack runs the whole arc of pop music out of chronological order, with Robbie Robertson in Scorsese's ear, so that the music is about overconsumption like the movie, and its radio-dial flipping feels true to a coked-out perception, as opposed to the perfectly aligned Talking Heads cue in Wall Street.
The Steve Madden IPO speech, 'my killers, my warriors, my telephone terrorists', with Madden bombing and being thrown out; Madden is played by Jake Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman's son; the bachelor party and wedding dance is now a famous GIF and Leo is a genuinely impressive dancer, which drifts into public Leo with the dad bod, super soakers, the Vans and calf socks and the choice of college hat.
'Daddy doesn't get to touch mommy' is a good scene nobody puts on YouTube, and it apparently really happened, including Rocco watching; after the movie came out every NBA player followed Robbie on Instagram, the entire Central Division, with Hibbert still in the game, a pivot from the Christina Hendricks era.
Jordan invites the FBI onto his yacht, then 'I'm not leaving' is the clubhouse favorite, one of the more rewatchable scenes in any movie of the last decade, simultaneously disgusting and beautiful; the mid-speech realization that he cannot leave is the most honest part of the movie; it is the Field of Dreams heartstring moment that is also the most self-aggrandizing garbage of all time, since he forces Kimmy Belzer to tell a room of screaming dudes how much money he gave her; Aya Cash's snapping character is not meant to be liked, like nobody in the film.
The Lemon Quaaludes are still aging and have lost their potency; the hosts wonder whether a thriving lude community exists on the dark web, compare the finite supply to Honus Wagner cards and ask whether Gretzky has one.
The Naomi yacht capsizing is arguably the best scene, really fun and also true, as is the plane crash; 'I will not die sober' and getting the ludes while the boat goes down; the ultimate wake-up call compared to a country-club DUI; then the sober-at-the-pool scene with Donnie and the ankle bracelet and the O'Doul's exchange, some of the funniest writing in the movie, with 'it sucks, man' played as a clip.
Spike Jonze at the investor center selling AeroTine (as transcribed), two brothers making radar detectors or maybe microwaves out of a garage in Dubuque with their mom Dorothy answering the main line, six cents a share, and the cutaway to the shed.
The Stratton Oakmont cold-call script with Moby Dick and the harpoon, and everyone yelling about who Captain Ahab is, played as a clip; right before the boat leaves, finding out Aunt Emma is dead while freaking out about his money is loved too.
The Spike Jonze scene is perfectly executed: he gets the company name wrong, does not know whether it is microwaves or radar, knows what a clown he is, and the 'if you sell ten thousand dollars of stock I'll blow you' line; DiCaprio's reaction shows the difference between a good and a great actor; dudes eat pizza, a guy screams in a sweatsuit and the bathroom opens straight into the office; the cross-cutting between brokers delivering Jordan's script, his gestures on the answering machine, the 'vice president of Stratton Oakmont' walk-throughs and the later SEC interrogation montage are also singled out.
A correction for the sticklers: the plane that came to pick him up exploded a couple of days later, not in the same moment, and the real sinking is even crazier than the movie; listeners should tweet thanks to Russillo for getting it right.
The final pick: one host argues McConaughey should be ineligible like Shack (as transcribed) in early fantasy basketball because the Hanna lunch is the clear runaway; another narrows it to the lunch, the Lemon Ludes and 'I'm not leaving' and goes with 'I'm not leaving'; a third goes with McConaughey after watching the scene fifteen times that week, so the Hanna lunch takes it two to one.
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 opening joke is Jason Segel's dick as Apex Mountain, met with doubt that it is the apex and the suggestion it has more to grow since it was cold in the studio; the hosts suspect the 'six to midnight' line from Jonah Hill's character, possibly only in the unrated version, is Segel's own note to anyone asking about his dick.
Segel himself is Apex Mountain, no question: he is on How I Met Your Mother and is the writer and star of a movie, and it is not getting any better for him than right here.
His career did not go where one host expected: he seemed headed for an Albert Brooks type lane, and the film recalls Modern Romance, Brooks' second movie, a persona loosely based on himself about the relationship between men and women, goofy yet sincere; Segel never kept making those crypto-autobiographical broad comedies.
After The Muppets he co-wrote The Five-Year Engagement and Sex Tape with Cameron Diaz, played David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour in 2015, and appeared in This Is 40, This Is the End and Bad Teacher; one host thinks he had some issues, and ten years on a CBS show for seven months a year will slow a film career.
It is strange when somebody writes a really good movie and does not keep doing it, as with Affleck and Damon never writing another film together after Good Wanting (as transcribed); maybe you make too much money, and in interviews Segel comes across as thoughtful and reflective about his place in Hollywood.
Segel was a successful high school basketball player at Harvard Westlake and a teammate of Jason Collins; his How I Met Your Mother character's nickname White Chocolate comes from that, his real nickname was Dr. Dunk, and the hosts hope he writes something and gets a second act.
Nobody else qualifies: Mila Kunis did even bigger and better things after this, Kristen Bell obviously did, and so did all the bit players; Billy Baldwin's peak was Sliver, not this.
