The setup for the sequels; Kevin Bacon; Crazy Ralph as the town crazy; strip Monopoly; Jack's weather knowledge; how horny men are; Harry Manfredini's score
A truly tremendous setup for the sequels, laying the groundwork with the question of where the boy is.
Kevin Bacon is named, then the town crazy, Crazy Ralph: the gimmick has never gone wrong because the town crazy is the only person who gives a real warning, and the hosts doubt Ralph knew it was Pamela.
Asked for the most underrated town crazy, a participant names Sam Jackson in Above the Rim before correcting it to Bernie Mac as Flip.
Strip Monopoly is picked, with jokes that nobody knows its rules, that Monopoly is a three or four hour game, and that the guy had threesome ideas.
Jack announcing that the wind shifted 180 degrees and the storm will tear down the valley shows what dudes were like before ESPN, when they knew about weather and how to fix stuff.
Another pick is how horny men are: Marcy recounts her dream of rain turning into blood, and Jack responds only by asking if she wants to go inside.
Nobody mentions the cemetery or the Camp Blood nickname of Camp Crystal Lake, and the cemetery would be as scary.
The last pick is the score by Harry Manfredini: a participant heard it as choo choo ha ha for 46 years before learning it is Kiki Mama (as transcribed); Halloween's piano theme takes the gold and this the silver.
Tha Dogg Pound receives an initial yes but New York, New York and its video are a competing peak. — Wosny Lambre
Leon receives a yes from one participant; The Five Heartbeats and especially The Temptations performance as David Ruffin are competing choices. — Wosny Lambre
Clooney, Pitt and Damon are set aside as the stars; the nominees are Elliot Gould (as transcribed), the preseason number one pick, Cheadle, Scott Kahn, Casey Affleck, Julia and Topher Grace.
Gould, no question: a beautiful, perfect, smart casting choice to evoke cool, funny, slick, jazzy 70s heist thrillers, really funny, and the character who says what a normal human would say about robbing a casino being blatantly absurd; Arkin would have been great too.
Another pick is Julia: she is this close to hating everyone on any set, and under the America's sweetheart smile there is an undercurrent of disdain and impatience that Soderbergh understands and that animates the whole performance; on screen about eight minutes, electric, and parceled out well.
One host wanted more Tess and how she and Danny came together; the counter is the rule of Jay Z and Beyonce that less is more, and that teasing out why Tess is with either man makes it fall apart; Julia Roberts is never outside in sunlight, probably shot over three nights, raising the question whether a curator of her taste would consent to a sunless, air-conditioned Vegas life, though she was married to a thief and precious art cannot see the light either.
Another vote goes to Bernie Mac, for the table scene, though he was not nominated, which draws a Jill Stein write-in joke.
Gould is interesting because people the hosts' age know him as Monica's father, so the godfather role here throws him back toward what he was truly famous for; a second vote for Gould as connective tissue to the 70s films Soderbergh references and as what the Rat Pack guys would be if they got old and stinking rich, living off the strip in a house they cannot afford, selling remaindered furniture with a butler; Gould is the pick.
Soderbergh considered shooting in black and white; the code names (Boski, Jim Brown, Miss Daisy, two Jethros, Leon Spinks, Ella Fitzgerald) all appear in the movie; Clooney sent Julia Roberts the script with a $20 bill; Don Cheadle is unbilled after a billing dispute, resolved in 12 and 13
Soderbergh considered shooting the film in black and white; one host would have liked that, but it would lose pops of color like her jacket at the boxing match, would not have been as mainstream successful since it is a popcorn flick, and would change the commentary on celebrity and make it more moody.
The code names in the we're-going-to-need speech are all represented in the movie: a Boski (as transcribed), after the Wall Street fraudster, is Reiner's con man Saul; the Jim Brown is the Bernie Mac bit; Miss Daisy is the getaway vehicle; the two Jethro's are the Molloy's (as transcribed); Leon Spinks refers to doing something during a boxing match; the Ella Fitzgerald is the videotaped robbery, after her 1970s Memorex commercial with the tagline is it live or is it Memorex; credit to Ted Griffin.
Roberts, coming off Aaron Brogovich (as transcribed), was probably the biggest movie star in the world making $20 million a movie; when Clooney sent her the script he attached a note reading I hear you're getting 20 a picture now, with a $20 bill inside, and of course he called it a picture.
Not much drama surrounds the movie, but Don Cheadle was not psyched about his placement and billing; he has said he would have done it for free but is glad he did not; he is famously unbilled, his name absent from the credits, which was resolved in 12 and 13 by placing him alongside Damon, Clooney and Pitt; as one of two black actors in the film, his fight for recognizability is interesting.
The category is hard for this film because it is defined by flow rather than individual scenes, and the heist itself goes on without distinguished scenes, so the nominees are top-heavy: the poker scene including Danny Ocean's entrance and banter, Ruben's introduction with the three Vegas robbery attempts scored to Take My Breath Away, Clooney's this-is-how-we're-gonna-do-it monologue, and the Claire de Lune montage of the guys looking at the fountain.
Claire de Lune has been one host's alarm sound for ten years, a beautiful way to wake up thinking about the eleven career criminals staring at a fountain; it is called the most iconic scene, very still with few faces, the band breaking up, a beautiful end note on a well-executed heist; a running bit insists the show will not be celebrating a movie about bad people.
Asked for a most rewatchable scene, she has a list of about twelve that includes everything already mentioned; the one actual standalone scene is Danny and Tess at dinner the first time, which is Julia Roberts on eleven. — Amanda Dobbins
The dinner scene shows the level of the writing and their chemistry; the House Always Wins speech is loved because every Clooney-and-Pitt aside is a delight, it is the one with actual proper nouns, and the 'been practicing that' deflation sums up the charm of the movie: something cool that gets punctured by a sarcastic joke; the clip is played.
Linus doing recon and presenting Terry Benedict's whole day, ending with Julia Roberts' entrance, is almost as good as Clooney coming up the escalator as she walks down, with Brad Pitt eating his shrimp cocktail, a favorite of his foods.
Rewatching the night before, Bernie Mac is very funny: every line, the encounter with the van dealership guy that feels like a different movie, and the stage showdown with Linus in front of Terry Benedict.
The poker scene gives a contact high: being in on a joke the others are not, the patter, the Incan matrimonial head mask market and fencing, a peek at their career criminal nature; it is visually distinct, dark with lighting that breaks the screen around the round table against the sun-drenched Vegas, and shows why Brad Pitt, bored and staring at mermaids in LA bars, wants this; the car shot on the way to Musso and Franks is loved, and the poker scene is picked out of affection.
Rather than read fifteen minutes of quotes, each host gives a favorite; the first is 'you ain't got to lie, Craig', said by Joy when she accuses Craig of infidelity, funnier on an adult rewatch because she has a man in bed with her while saying it, making her a hypocrite.
Smokey's last line, when he is supposedly going to rehab for weed, is to face the audience and say he was just bullshitting, which bursts the after-school-special feel and brings everything together.
Another favorite bit is Smokey, after Deebo has punched Red and Red has sulked off, telling Craig he has mind control over Deebo: when Deebo talks he goes quiet, and when Deebo leaves he talks again; Smokey has so many that one host goes with 'and you know this, man', and lines like 'you ain't gotta lie, Craig' and 'Bye Felicia' live on in memes, with Tucker carrying bits into the Rush Hour movies.
Bernie Mac's pastor scene and the 20, 20, 20 call and response are flagged as amazing; with all of them best quotes, the award goes to all of them.
The field is wide: Tiny Lister as Deebo, John Witherspoon, Bernie Mac, Faison Love (as transcribed), Paula J. Park (as transcribed) as Joy, Regina King, Stanley, little Chris and Smokey's mom, who is only in a couple of scenes asking Smokey to buy cigarettes and talking on the phone; Craig and Smokey are excluded as principals.
One host would have said Joy for her iconic scene but after rewatching lands on John Witherspoon for the gun speech, that a gun does not make you a man and you fist fight, win or lose, and stay alive, which plays a little after-school but he goes for it; a John Witherspoon impression by Charity is teased.
Red is argued for as the most thankless role, getting beaten up and clowned the whole movie, played well, with the touching scene of him sobbing at his car and pulling off.
Witherspoon and DJ Pooh's Red are called great, but Deebo gets it: he has his own music, his name persists as a word for a bully, and he is so iconic that Tiny Lister throwing the detonator off the ship in The Dark Knight reads as Deebo moved to Gotham, arrested and folded into the Joker's plot.
Picking one scene is called difficult because the first hour is basically a rewatchable hour; Craig getting high is nominated first, since you wait the whole movie for him to finally take a puff, and Smokey's angel dust flashback is noted as funny but a little problematic.
Red getting his chain snatched by Deebo is nominated as the classic bully scene: when Deebo approaches, Smokey rips his own chain off and puts it in his back pocket, while Red only tucks his in and says so, which is not thorough at all; the Bernie Mac pastor scene and Bye Felicia are also nominated.
The first hour is a procession of immaculate character bits that happen on the stoop over one day rather than discrete scenes, so a line like 'you ain't got to lie, Craig' is a memorable quote, a fifteen-second bit, not a rewatchable scene.
Craig getting high works because Cube underplays it: body language shifts, chuckling, offering to make Kool-Aid, weird non sequiturs rather than Smokey-style running in front of a car; it is a progression over fifteen minutes rather than a scene, and a vulnerable, goofy Cube is striking after years of scowling, with the Cypress Hill cue a little on the nose.
One vote goes to Red getting his chain snatched by Deebo because it has a lot of moving parts: Deebo, Red's cameo, and Cube and Smokey reacting to Deebo; another vote goes to the Craig scene, not for Craig but for Smokey's Michael Jackson-style dancing, possibly the start of Chris Tucker moonwalking in every appearance, which got him into a Michael Jackson video.
A second vote joins the Red pick in a garbled exchange that addresses Charity and pairs the name with 'Craig getting that', so which pick Charity proposed is unclear; the Craig-scene voter stands alone; the Red scene's moving parts are the core of the movie and set up its end game, and Deebo is loved.
Tiny Lister was known as a wrestler in the WWE and appeared in the Hulk Hogan movie No Holds Barred, so he was one of the more famous people in the film after Ice Cube; Deebo is indelible, Lister in interviews is just Deebo, though behind the scenes he is reportedly gentle and sweet and gets joked on, a huge man blind in one eye who lumbers through the movie creating havoc.
