Slater is underrated on this pod: by this film he was Christian Slater in every movie, the Jack Nicholson impersonation that had been exciting in Heathers was now held against him; he is a good actor and believable in the part even though a case can be made the movie is about a schizophrenic, wish fulfillment in his head, a dream woman, a classic bag-of-money scenario, note-perfect gangsters and everyone liking a loser from a comic book store.
Tarantino wins it because it proved Reservoir Dogs was not just a weird indie fluke, established a narrative, led to Pulp Fiction and is belatedly great, the most personal of his films with Clarence as his proxy; Tony Scott was another's runner-up, since the movie needed him and the Gandolfini scene in the wrong hands would go badly, and Tarantino directing it in 1993 would have shot it closer to the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs; he was famously not on set, and started Pulp Fiction about three months after this came out.
How much a theater manager would pay for a call girl; Alabama has only been a call girl for four days; whether Clarence and Alabama could walk out of the Beverly Ambassador past a thousand cops
How much money does a movie theater manager have to spend on a call girl for an employee's birthday; the economics of call girls in 1993 are unclear; Alabama has only been a call girl for four days, the movie trope of the hooker who has only been one since last Thursday.
An LA tidbit: the movie theater is the Vista on Sunset, used for all the exteriors rather than Detroit; Tarantino tells the story of putting the Sonny Chiba triple feature on the Vista marquee so his movie nerd friends drove by and called him about it.
Would Slater and Arquette really get out of the Beverly Ambassador, both covered in blood, carrying a suitcase past a thousand cops without a sideways look; not according to Tarantino.
Obvious non-candidates like Brad Pitt are taken out; Rubinek is a slam dunk, never more of an Apex Mountain candidate, a theater actor in On Golden Pond doing his best work, also good in the cable movie And the Band Played On and an all-time Law & Order guy with some forty episodes; big winner of this podcast.
Christian Slater: a yes from one host that the others contest, going Heathers instead, then calling that too early and picking Pump Up the Volume because he invented podcasting, which is granted as a good point; nobody picked Broken Arrow or Hard Rain, and Broken Arrow was Travolta's real comeback when the wheels came off.
Patricia Arquette: Boyhood is floated because she won the Oscar for it, then withdrawn; personally and subjectively this is her film, but career-wise it has to be the Oscar; the category is defined as when they were at the peak of their powers with the most options and respect, and she was pretty unknown here with a rough seven or eight years after, so it is not this.
Tony Scott is an unequivocal yes for one host, over Man on Fire, because his commercial hits had faded, people doubted him, and this led to Crimson Tide, his career never in better shape than between the two; the others contest that yes, countering that it was a flop, that Crimson Tide is his apex, and that he made Top Gun, one of the biggest hits of all time, which launched Tom Cruise.
The counter is that in the mid-eighties Top Gun was not received as a Tony Scott movie, the narrative was Tom Cruise as the biggest star in the world, whereas with True Romance Scott was part of the narrative; the Top Gun case is acknowledged, and a favorite Tony Scott movie is conceded not to be the same as apex; the category is elusive like the MVP award; the film is also the most critically acclaimed of his, at 92 percent.
Bronson Pinchot: Beverly Hills Cop, a massive hit that made him a breakout star, with the espresso with a twist of lemon; Sizemore: Heat, since 'the action is the juice' is the definition of Apex Mountain; Chris Penn: Reservoir Dogs, Nice Guy Eddie, agreed.
Walken: hell no, he is The Deer Hunter; an early-nineties case is made, hosting SNL in fall 1992 with Trivial Psychic and Stock Talk, this film in 1993, Pulp in 1994, a Walken-sance with everyone in on him and Jay Moore (as transcribed) doing the impression, plus King of New York, Wayne's World 2 the same year and Things to Do in Denver, but the Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter has to be his apex.
Tony Scott changed the ending so Clarence lives; Elvis's estate refused any Elvis music; Drexel's eye came from the Dracula prop box; Rubinek did not know his audition was Joel Silver; the hotel deal was shot at the abandoned Ambassador Hotel; Sizemore lay with feathers in his mouth for days; Walken asked to shoot Hopper's half first; Warner Brothers wanted the title Reckless Hearts; the money exchange moved from a zoo to Six Flags; Gandolfini stayed in a dingy hotel; Slater and Arquette had an off-screen romance
Tony Scott changed the ending because he loved the characters; originally Clarence died and Alabama got away with the money, and apparently both versions were shot; one host dislikes Clarence being shot in the eye and maimed, wanting a shoulder wound if he lives; another loves that Scott liked him too much to let him go, classic sentimental Tony.
A joke about a Ringer montage of characters ending up on the same perfect Mexican beach with their kids and 300,000 dollars in a suitcase: Red talking to Alabama, Shawshank, Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster from Fast 7, about two miles from Zawantaneo (as transcribed).
Elvis's estate would not allow any Elvis music, so Charlie Sexton's Graceland, basically Sexton doing Elvis, opens the film; the music is a 1993 mishmash, a late-period Aerosmith song feels out of sync for a Tarantino film, and one host calls the music a missed opportunity that belonged in aged worst when Pixies-type bands were available, though Soundgarden's Outshined is what Floyd would listen to; the fifties stuff, the Big Bopper on the phone with Dick Ritchie and the Burl Ives song feel Tarantino; Drexel listening to techno is odd, Wu Tang would fit, but the techno gives the scene its unsettling vibe.
Drexel's weird eye came from the Dracula prop box; Oldman's account is that over tea at the Four Seasons Scott could not explain the plot but described a pimp who is white but thinks he is black, and that was all he needed to hear; Rubinek's account is that at his audition Scott told him he had Joel exactly right, and he had no idea who Joel Silver was.
The hotel drug deal was filmed at the abandoned Ambassador Hotel where Robert Kennedy was shot, near the end of Beverly by the 101, now a dog and cat hospital with the neighborhood schools renamed RFK; a host's daughter practiced at Virgil High School next to it for half a year without his knowing; in the Maxim oral history Sizemore recounted that his death was got in one take at the start of the shootout, so he lay on the ground with feathers in his mouth for days.
Scott intended to shoot Walken's part first; Walken begged him to shoot Hopper first and found his character watching Hopper's half play out; Warner Brothers was going to change the title to Reckless Hearts until Arquette, Slater, Scott and Tarantino threw their bodies in front of it; the money exchange was meant for a zoo and ended at Six Flags when the location fell through; Gandolfini got into character as Virgil by staying in a dingy hotel and not showering or changing his underwear.
Slater and Arquette seem to have had sparks on and off the set, evident in how they connect: Scott's account that Christian was instantly attracted and Patricia fell in love with him, a true romance; Arquette on a romantic, magnetized sexual attraction; Slater on love at first sight made tricky by being in a relationship; the phone booth scene is called one of the more believable sex scenes in movie history, with Slater really going for it.
Earlier, during aged best, the Pineapple Express origin story is flagged as stepping on the internet research.
Young Gandolfini: he is basically auditioning for Tony Soprano, and this and his Get Shorty role (transcribed 'bare') are the two poles of that character, sweet, charming, evil, menacing and violent; the film was one of the first DVDs a host bought, so he was always the guy from this movie.
Floyd, who gives the directions down Beachwood to the Beverly Ambassador, was an A++ in the nineties and the DVD era, a spirit animal for anyone getting baked at two in the morning; the whole idea of Pineapple Express came from Judd Apatow and company loving Floyd and asking what would have happened if he chased the Italians.
Unlike Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder working to go viral, Pitt just lies on the couch with a couple of improv lines; the Floyd stuff is largely improvised, as are Hopper's eggplant and Walken's cantaloupe lines; Floyd is the most important character because he gets everyone together for the shootout, and 'don't condescend me' is a favorite line.
Brad Pitt has an alternate path as one of the great character actors, fifteen non-essential but memorable parts up through Burn After Reading, but he was so handsome he had to be a leading man; Seven is a character he put thought into before material started being created for him; the Tarantino relationship continues through Inglourious Bastards and the coming Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Dennis Hopper is so likable that even the Speed villain was hard to root against; the Clarence-Clifford scene is economical writing, 'you're just like your mother', three years apart, a recovering alcoholic who only has a Seven Up, telling you why Clarence would throw it all away; two lines are lifted, 'you're just like your mother' from Hopper's own line in Rumblefish and the beer line from The Last Picture Show.
Pre-internet, movie quotes and pulling from the past mattered more; a host's column threw in movie lines because that is how he and his friends connected, and Twitter gifs have given it a renaissance.
Sizemore and Penn together are the twelve-episode Fox cop show we never got; the hosts saw a Reitman live read at the Ace Hotel with Slater and Arquette, the Duplass brothers as the cops, J.K. Simmons as the estranged father, Kevin Pollack as Walken's part, Jon Favreau as Gandolfini's, Keegan-Michael Key and Paul Scheer as Drexel and Elliot Blitzer, May Whitman in several parts and Jason Segel as Floyd.
Coming Home in a Body Bag is funny right on the heels of forty Vietnam movies; Saul Rubinek's Lee Donowitz as Joel Silver, Bronson Pinchot as his assistant, Boris the bodyguard who hates cops, and Dick Ritchie constantly asking whether the producer knows he is an actor; Donowitz is one of a host's favorite movie characters, saved for the Dion Waiters argument.
The Hans Zimmer score is distinct and gives the movie levity; according to a host it is based on a composition from the 1500s by Carl Orff that Terrence Malick used in Badlands, which Zimmer redoes as an homage, and Arquette's opening voiceover mimics the Badlands voiceover; the film pulls the best parts of other things.
Asked for a single best out of all of it, one goes with the way it looks, the peak of Tony Scott's neon vision of urban America; another is still responding to the dialogue, over the top and offensive on purpose because it is pulp; a third says Gandolfini, like watching Michael Jordan at North Carolina.
Five candidate scenes are set out: Clarence going back to Drexel, Hopper versus Walken, which might be the most famous scene of both careers, Gandolfini versus Alabama, the coke sale at the Beverly Ambassador when Slater shows up wired and talks Vietnam movies and Coming Home in a Body Bag, and the big three-way shootout, Tarantino's second three-way shootout in two movies.
A recap for anyone who has not seen the film in a while: Clarence falls in love with the woman his boss hires for him and they get married. — Bill Simmons
The recap is corrected: she is a call girl, not a hooker, there's a difference, she says; Clarence decides he has to emancipate her from the pimp, Drexel Spivey, played by Gary Oldman, which leads to a shootout, and he takes the wrong suitcase, full of cocaine, so they end up on the run.
One pick is Clarence versus Drexel as one of the great five minutes of the nineties; another insists it has to be the Sicilian story, Tarantino's favorite scene he has ever written, three-dimensional chess; a clip plays and a third goes with it 100 percent.
Christopher Walken playing a Sicilian is a ludicrous choice, the least Italian person imaginable, and he pulls it off; Hopper is at a fascinating career moment, having survived the nine stages of fame, a trailblazing filmmaker, an Academy Award nominated actor, villains and heroes, Shooter and Frank in Blue Velvet; a text the night before called him warm and powerful here.
Hopper's relationship with Clarence is set up in about three minutes; in the scene the gangsters surround the two men in a circle, it is the middle of the day but lit like three in the morning with a spotlight on them, and the dialogue is two guys telling crazy Tarantino stories, the antichrist and vendetta lines; the Drexel proposer is talked into it.
Drexel is one of a host's favorite characters: Gary Oldman was already famous from Dracula and talked about as a next great actor, yet audiences 25 years ago could not tell it was him under the hat and the affected Black vernacular; a clip of the negotiation speech plays.
Tony Scott and Oldman disagreed about where Drexel came from: Scott's version is that Oldman called in the middle of the night to say Drexel was his drug dealer; Oldman's version is that he had no drug dealer and was emulating kids he heard outside his trailer; Scott later had a big heat check of crazy interviews, clearly disliked Christian Slater and took credit for a lot.
Drexel is a complete Tarantino original, every word entertaining; shot flat the way Reservoir Dogs was shot in a warehouse, without the music, the swinging light and the Chinese food, the scene might not work at all, which is where Tony Scott makes this something different in the Tarantino canon and why it is called the best Tony Scott scene; the techno track is by an artist named Nymphomaniac, and Slater seems intimidated before answering all of Drexel's questions.
