The late Harry Anderson as Forrest Gump is dumbfounding; it might have been good but a different, smaller movie, and Anderson was not that famous even then.
Bill Murray, John Travolta and Chevy Chase turned down Forrest; Travolta has called it one of the biggest regrets of his career. The hosts think Travolta would have been terrible, that he kind of played Forrest Gump in Phenomenon, which one still rides for, and that Michael was him trying to get back to that moment.
David Alan Greer (as transcribed), Dave Chappelle and Ice Cube turned down Bubba. Ice Cube refused to play an idiot and is literally too smart for the part; Chappelle thought the movie would bomb, regretted it and worked with Hanks four years later on You Got Mail (as transcribed); Tupac auditioned for Bubba, which would not have worked. Bubba's name is Buford Blue.
Jodie Foster and Nicole Kidman turned down Jenny and both could have been good; Demi Moore also turned it down and would have been too old to pull off the high school and college stretch that Robin Wright managed, with a tangent on when Striptease came out.
Terry Gilliam and Barry Sonnenfield (as transcribed) turned down directing; Gilliam's version would have been amazing and a lot different. Hanks was probably not the first choice because he was unavailable. Bill Murray would not work: he only played dumb as Carl in Caddyshack, for comedy, and What About Bob is the craziest he has gone.
Wes Craven could be argued but Elm Street is still his Apex Mountain; his amazing career spans the three stages of late-century horror, from Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left to creating Freddy and reinventing the genre in the nineties, and he is underrated, on a Mount Rushmore with Tobey Hooper (as transcribed), George Romero and John Carpenter; the movie still moves today.
The coming Halloween remake with Jamie Lee Curtis is asking audiences to forget some sequels, like Rocky Balboa waving off Rocky V, which is what 48 Hours should have done.
A confession that Nightmare on Elm Street was a shitty movie meets a fan of the first two and Dream Warriors; Heather Langenkamp is dismissed, and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, the meta Freddy movie, failed just before this, leaving Scream as a bit of a last gasp for his career.
Neve Campbell's nominees are this or the intervention scene with Bailey in Party of Five.
Another feels the same way about the intervention, called the saddest hour in television history with Bailey as the rock of the family, and it stands even against Scream's $290 million.
Skeet Ulrich is clearly at his Apex, with nothing else competing; he was in As Good as It Gets, went a couple of rounds with Jericho, and is now known to kids as Riverdale's Skeet Ulrich.
A tangent on Skeet Ulrich's first name becoming slang, popularized by Dave Chappelle, and whether his stage name was a bad choice slides into a crude callback to the Silence of the Lambs episode's Migs discussion.
Reader Howard from Calgary writes that Stuart Rudin, who played Migs, was in Sticky Fingers and has an IMDb of homeless men, winos and patients; Migs was his Apex Mountain, and listeners are invited to the mailbag.
Matthew Lillard: it has got to be, with SLC Punk raised; considering how good he is in Scream, this is his Apex.
Jamie Kennedy was forced on the culture with an MTV show after this and never took; his Apex Mountain is definitively dating Jennifer Love Hewitt, an achievement rather than a performance, which leads to a tangent on why women disliked her.
For David Arquette the reminder is that he held the WCW heavyweight title, a movie tie-in, the belt once held by Ric Flair.
Eight Legged Freaks is also raised for Arquette; Rose McGowan is a no, her later weirdness and dating Marilyn Manson jokingly called her apex, though she had a cool indie career, the Rodriguez Grindhouse movie with the gun leg, and is now a filmmaker and activist.
Courtney Cox is first a no, since it has got to be Friends and you cannot get higher; one voice later counters, unresolved, that the combination is her apex, since this came out during Friends season three when Monica was dismissed as having no personality and showed she could be the bitch too; her later characters are more Gail Weathers than Monica.
She reportedly pursued the role to play someone not traditionally nice and to get punched in the face; her later sitcoms were Dirt and the Bill Lawrence show about people in LA drinking wine, whose title nobody can remember.
Henry Winkler is joked to have been the mountain itself.
Earlier, while praising the cast, Drew Barrymore is followed by the garbled phrase 'I'd heard, like, Mad Love Apex' (as transcribed).
The economics of the Shop Around the Corner are questioned, then partly defended by the existence of independent bookstores and the real storefront's earlier life as a cheese shop. — Juliet Litman
Dave Chappelle's presence in this supporting role is called hard to explain despite his growing 1990s film career. — Juliet Litman
The panel asks whether the Fox family remains rich after online retail pressure and imagines they would have sold their boats. — Amanda Dobbins
Parker Posey receives one final pick for making a large impact in limited time and embodying the glamorous 1990s book-editor fantasy. — Juliet Litman
Posey's sleeping-pill advice at the publishing party is singled out as a perfectly timed supporting moment. — Amanda Dobbins
Steve Zon receives the other final pick for his sad, unlucky-in-love bookstore employee and the contrast with his role in That Thing You Do. — Amanda Dobbins
The panel speculates that Hanks and Ephron's working relationship may have helped connect Steve Zon to the earlier Hanks-directed film, but does not establish the casting chain as fact. — Juliet Litman
