The only casting what-if found: Lee campaigned for Robert De Niro to play the pizzeria owner, but De Niro declined due to prior commitments. — Wesley Morris
With De Niro it becomes a different movie about De Niro; it might make more money or get closer to Best Picture, though Aiello's nomination suggests not. — Wesley Morris
De Niro would tip the ensemble's equal balance and bring baggage, so his smashing Radio Raheem's radio might be cheered; it is a morally different movie. — Wesley Morris
Danny Aiello was a 'that guy' at the time, known from Moonstruck with a very small Godfather role and other small parts. — Sean Fennessey
Bruce Willis was chosen after an extraordinary list of stars; Sam Neill was considered for Hans Gruber, while Tom Berenger and Don Johnson are the panel’s plausible McClane alternatives.
Because the source novel followed an earlier Roderick Thorp book adapted with Frank Sinatra, Sinatra reportedly held a contractual right of refusal.
Tom Berenger and Don Johnson are proposed as alternatives who could have worked, though the released film would have been less iconic.
Nick Nolte is rejected as physically and tonally wrong for the required action.
Sam Neill is reported as considered for Hans Gruber, but Alan Rickman is treated as impossible to replace after seeing the performance. — Chris Ryan
The panel wonders whether Chris Rock or a Wayans brother was considered for Argyle and asks what the final Argyle shortlist looked like; the transcript does not resolve it. — Bill Simmons
De Niro is the pick, as a favorite De Niro performance ever; his performances are ranked with Midnight Run as 1A and Jimmy Conway 1B, Godfather 2 third for building a character on what young Brando's interpretation would have been, Heat fourth and Raging Bull fifth; a recent Deer Hunter rewatch is called a tough hang but incredible, and John Kazal (as transcribed) only made the four best movies of all time.
De Niro wins, with honorable mention for Grodin (transcribed 'Gerdin'), all the that-guy performers, a case for Danny Elfman, and Martin Brest; the result is affirmed twice.
De Niro is complicated and this is not his apex but a high step toward it; candidates for his real apex are Taxi Driver, Raging Bull coming off Godfather 2, and Goodfellas, with a Marvin's Room joke; one host personally calls Midnight Run his favorite De Niro peak but then argues Goodfellas, where the anticipation of De Niro in a Scorsese mob movie as Jimmy Conway made the credibility the hook, as the arguable apex, so the lean does not stand as a pick.
Joey Pants is a yes: he is great in Memento and The Matrix, but this is the favorite and his apex because this is where he becomes Joey Pants, running to the restaurant or reporting that Marvin has the Duke.
Grodin has permanent scars from the real handcuffs he wore; the boxcar scene was entirely improvised on set; De Niro actually punched John Ashton during the train fight; the script originally had Marvin die when Serrano's thugs knocked him out, and he was shoehorned into the McCarran Airport climax
Grodin has permanent scars from the real handcuffs he wore for much of the film across all those takes, which a hypothetical Grodin podcast would ask to see; the boxcar scene was entirely improvised; according to John Ashton, De Niro got so into the train fight that he actually punched him; the script had Marvin die when Serrano's thugs knocked him out, but the climax would have been less dramatic without him, so he was shoehorned into the McCarran Airport scene.
John Ashton, Marvin here and Rosewood's partner in Beverly Hills Cop, with Cop 2 one of the great heat checks, would win going away in any other movie; it is a mystery why he never had a bigger career or a Fox cop drama, since he could easily have been the Dennis Franz character in NYPD Blue.
Yafet Kodo (as transcribed), the FBI agent whose identity De Niro steals, is in maybe fifteen minutes yet hits seven threes on presence alone, and carried it over to network TV.
Joe Pantoliano, who has his own award on the show, was in the stretch where he stopped being that guy, after Risky Business, Running Scared and Eddie and the Cruisers, and became Joe Pantoliano here, dyed hair and all; by the strict letter of the Dion Waiters law one host gives it to Pantoliano for making the most of his opportunity.
The other host goes Farina, who is in about five scenes, all filmed in Vegas because he was doing Crime Story, and is completely over the top in a baggy gray-and-black sweater; they agree to disagree, and his threats about the pencil, the cream soda and burying the telephone in his lawyer Sydney's head are recited.
Farina's best work is argued over: his mob boss Lombard in the first Miami Vice season, which led to Crime Story and typecasting as cop or mob boss after eighteen real years as a Chicago cop; Manhunter as Will Petersen's boss (preferred over the Bronx Tale performance of the actor transcribed as 'Chaz Pimentary'); and Out of Sight as Jennifer Lopez's father.
Called a pantheon casting what-if: Paramount obtained the script and lined up Harrison Ford as Jack Walsh and Chevy Chase as the Duke around 1986-87, post-Fletch, which would have been a pretty good backup movie, although Ford, basically in his Blade Runner outfit, might be too handsome and has rarely been heard cursing that much; Chase had a conflict with Funny Farm and another film, and Ford dropped out.
De Niro opted in only after being turned down for Big; Albert Brooks was then offered the Duke and turned it down, which would also have been incredible, since Brooks and Grodin could have swapped parts for fifteen years and Brooks probably wins head to head.
Paramount then decided Cher should play the Duke, which is unimaginable, during a brief three-year peak of Cher as a top-tier actress; the research came from a piece written five years earlier, with a shout-out to Alan Seppinwall (as transcribed) as one of the few listeners.
Paramount pushed for Robin Williams, who wanted to audition, the same year as Good Morning Vietnam; Brest refused and wanted Charles Grodin, so Paramount sold the rights to Universal with Grodin and De Niro attached, and Universal had a major success.
Better or worse with 1988 Robin Williams: a sliding-doors note that doing it before or after Good Morning Vietnam might have affected Dead Poets Society; one view is that Williams would have done bits throughout and turned it into a comedy, while Grodin's measured, deadpan complaining plays perfectly off De Niro; the counter is a mellow Garp or Dead Poets Williams could have done it, and the endless takes might have driven him to become Robin Williams anyway.
Williams is judged the better actor but Grodin played it better; Williams only grew into his body by Good Will Hunting and was still slight in the eighties, so nobody but Grodin can be pictured in the part, with Grodin the safer pick though Williams playing it correctly would have been great; a crude aside recalls an anatomical revelation from the HBO Williams documentary.
Earlier aside: De Niro wanted the lead in Big to show a lighter side, the studio said no and went to Tom Hanks, who was nominated, while De Niro settled for Midnight Run and was not; which was the better career choice is left open, but De Niro as Josh Baskin, a thirteen-year-old at the piano with Robert Loggia, would have been creepy, so the studio made the right move.
De Niro bringing a gun onto an airplane is jarring; the movie could be released now except for that, the payphones, the lack of cell phones and no internet.
The constant smoking: Jack smokes everywhere, Grodin gets pissy about it on the bus and you side with the smoker; Jack puts a cigarette out on the hallway carpet before picking a lock in a beaten-down downtown LA apartment building; even in the nineties you could be stuck next to a smoker on a plane, and now everyone would be vaping; chain-smoking Marlboro Reds through Brest's endless takes must have meant five packs a day, and De Niro, a method actor, was surely not smoking fakes.
Cable airings with bleeps have aged worst of all for one host; the movie is not meant to be watched bleeped, since the art of the f-bomb is on full display.
The number one pick: eight guys get knocked out with no concussion awareness and nobody ever bleeds; Marvin, the rival bounty hunter played by John Ashton, goes down four times in a 100-minute movie, the Duke twice, and Moron Number One and Two once each, often by pistol-whip or shotgun butt; a 2013 joke that the movie was directed by Roger Goodell is recalled, no alternative is offered, and Marvin is imagined in a dark room on an E60 piece with Jeremy Schaap (transcribed 'Schapp'), unable to remember his wife's name.
The chemistry between De Niro and Grodin has aged best, even though De Niro reportedly did not like Grodin much, stayed in character through take after take, and Grodin, probably playing close to himself, kept trying to annoy him; that kind of two-guy chemistry is rarer than you would think.
There are 119 f-bombs in the movie though it feels like 280, especially in the last call to Eddie; the phone call where Farina has Moron Number One put Moron Number Two on while the other guy shadow-boxes the one on the phone is too short to be a rewatchable scene but slays.
McCarran Airport, the saddest place on earth when everyone is leaving Vegas, has not changed since 1988 and makes you want to shout that Serrano has the discs; Grand Central Market in downtown LA still looks much the same, though you could not take a payphone call from a restaurant there now.
Danny Elfman's score (transcribed once as 'Danny Offen's') is like the Bus Boys from 48 Hours doing a soundtrack, one of the best ever despite some people disliking it: it slows down and kicks back in at the right places and sounds like Steely Dan's backing band vamping before Becker and Fagan (as transcribed) walk on; anyone anti-soundtrack is called a moron.
'Looks like I'm walking' is one of the better last lines of any movie covered, especially since walking out of LAX is no fun; the visit to the daughter is one of the favorite De Niro scenes: awkward, he has nothing to ask her beyond what grade she is in, she offers him money as he leaves and he cannot take it, and then he holds the door of his wife's station wagon so Grodin's coat does not get caught, every beat graded A plus.
The weird sentimental moments may be what has aged best, with several unexpectedly poignant beats including the ending; a tangent on the greatest De Niro scenes names the Godfather 2 killing, moments in Cape Fear, the Goodfellas slow-motion smoking shot at the bar, nearly every scene in Heat including the diner, and many in Deer Hunter and Taxi Driver, while Raging Bull is now a tough, one-and-out watch.
Asked at the end what was said for what aged best, the recap is the poignant moments and Danny Elfman's music; the chemistry, the last line, the unchanged settings and the profanity were raised along the way.
Every scene is called rewatchable, so a few are thrown out: the counterfeit-twenties con in the bar (the 'litmus configuration' test), Jack visiting his daughter, the coffee-shop scene with the chorizo and the 53-cent coffee where the Duke needles Jack about Serrano, the boxcar scene, and the late chase where Jack loses the Duke, stops the car under the helicopters and says he has come too far.
The boxcar is the pick for both: it is where the two finally break down and become real friends, a cathartic release after the car chase through the desert, apparently mostly improvised, and a lived-in, funny, genuine scene between two great actors; any scene with Farina or Pantoliano is a rewind, but the boxcar is the rewatchable one.
The setup as recounted: the Duke slips into a boxcar thinking he has escaped, Jack comes around the other side and, furious, announces he is not talking for the rest of the trip; the director then told Grodin to loosen De Niro up, De Niro was too wound up to crack, and Grodin finally landed it with a crude teasing question about the farm animals on the reservation, which leads to the exchange about the watch; the clip is played and it is called the best scene in the movie.
