Remove the Amy romance and center Jim’s relationship with Lamar, including the ethical conflict of point shaving and the athlete’s exceptional talent. — Bill Simmons
A present-day remake is considered, but no comparably famous comic cohort is found; Tim Robinson is discussed as talented but insufficiently famous for the same premise. — Chris Ryan
Jason Segel is favored as a digital replacement for James Franco because of his ties to the group and likable quality.
It has to be Jason Segel; Kunis has a nice shot, but Segel wins because he also wrote it, which pushes him over the top, even though one host really wants to give it to Kunis, who becomes a star from this moment on and is that host's favorite part of the movie.
Her character beats the dick, which is not in the top ten or maybe top fifty; hers was a nothing part that she made really fun, whereas Kristen Bell's part was developed; asked to name five things about Kunis' character, the hosts get a bad relationship, dropping out of college and working at a hotel, and still like her.
Segel won because of the writing: everything that makes the movie unique and weird and keeps you coming back is permeated by his personality, his interests and his vulnerability, and the film changed how he is viewed, since you usually cannot be an action star after a movie like this.
Peter should have known the crime show was canceled since he wrote its music; Rachel lacked the authority to hand him the $6,000-a-night suite; Aldous Snow is far too famous to travel without an entourage yet gets a normal room; Sarah Marshall going to Hawaii so soon is a snake move; how Hader could know she was going to Hawaii; Peter fully naked in his unlocked dressing room
Wouldn't Peter have known the crime show got canceled, since he wrote music for it? The hosts wonder what year it came out and note he uses a cell phone a fair amount, though it could plausibly slip past him.
Does Rachel have the authority to give him the Kapua suite? No way; she is fired within ten minutes, there does not seem to be a lot going on at Turtle Bay, she fraternizes with guests and cuts out for a hike, and she hands over the $6,000-a-night Oprah suite on the condition that he clean up after himself.
One host wonders about trying this at hotels, asking for the suite saved for someone like Megan Allison (as transcribed) and promising to clean up, which would require being embarrassed by your ex in front of the receptionist; staging that with a fake divorce announcement earns the reply that it sounds like a sociopath, and the joke shifts the analogy onto a host considered a more realistic divorce candidate walking up to reception.
The defense is that Sarah Marshall is famous and he was dumped and humiliated in favor of Aldous Snow; the counter is that real hotels make you fill out a form to get toothpaste, and she is not the manager; the hosts concede it is a leap of faith they never questioned, since she could simply have said they had a room and he just gets a dope suite.
How famous is Russell Brand's musician supposed to be? He closes Access Hollywood and writes the anthem of his generation, a male Winehouse and an A list celebrity, yet he is the first musician ever with no entourage, which is completely unrealistic; he would have had three people and a bodyguard and is far too normal for a famous person.
He reminds one host of Richard Ashcroft of The Verve walking into a Hawaii bar grill ten years after his hit, but Access Hollywood presents him as a major star, more like Adam Levine meets Liam Gallagher; Adam Levine at Turtle Bay would not be alone and would probably rent the whole resort.
The couple has a normal room with another room on the other side of the wall while Segel gets the suite; he is about to go on an 18-month world tour, so he is obviously successful but not enough for the $6,000 suite; that may have been improvised rather than accurate tour logistics, and the hosts joke about deleting the movie from Sling.
The hosts want a consulting firm for questions like this: any basketball scene, the 100-yard football field with no end zones, the boxing ring that is too small, and the last-minute drive that somehow goes backwards from the 40 to the 30.
It feels like a real snake move by Sarah Marshall to go to Hawaii so quickly after the breakup, though she had dated the guy for a year; when Hader tells Peter to go on vacation alone but not to Hawaii, the implication is that he knows she is going there, and nobody can explain how, unless he simply thought it was weird.
At the very end the callback has him completely naked in his own unlocked dressing room when Mila Kunis walks back in; nobody likes being naked, and one host marvels at how many human-anatomy conversations they have had with Bill in two weeks; the explanation offered is that he is taking off a unitard with no underwear underneath and is comfortable in his own body, and the Stoller interview had nothing on his prep for that shot.
Earlier, before the Joey Pants Award, one host asked to pick nits because of a Turtle Bay complaint and was told to hold on.
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.
The script draws on Jason Segel's breakup with Linda Cardellini and three other breakups; one girlfriend dumped him while he was naked; Get Him to the Greek followed two years later with Jonah Hill as a different character; Inside of You was conceived as the worst song a girlfriend's new boyfriend could sing; the naked picture of Mila Kunis was computer-generated; the film is 60 to 70 percent scripted; Segel and Stoller reunited for The Muppets; the buffet waiter is surfer Kalani Robb
The film is based on screenwriter Jason Segel's breakup with Linda Cardellini and three other breakups with unspecified women; the naked breakup did not involve Cardellini, but one girlfriend did dump him while he was completely naked, and rather than being devastated he found it hilarious and could not wait for her to leave so he could write it down.
Get Him to the Greek, the spinoff follow-up, came two years later from director Nicholas Stoller with Russell Brand and Jonah Hill; the hosts have seen it only once against 10 or 15 viewings of this film, listeners have requested it as a rewatchable, and the producer says it stuck with his generation, earning the title Lord of Gen Z.
Jonah Hill plays a different character in Greek, a newly hired A&R man for Diddy's label who must get Aldous to his tour dates over 24 hours, with Elizabeth Moss a big part of it; one host thinks it would have been funnier as the same character relocated to LA, and one host's kids loved The Babysitter with Jonah Hill.
The song Inside of You was thought up by Segel as the worst song your girlfriend's new boyfriend could sing in front of you; Russell Brand's on-stage performance of it in Hawaii, bending over into yoga poses, is called incredible.
The naked bathroom picture of Mila Kunis was created on a computer and was not real, something the publicity was very deliberate about getting out there: real dick, fake breasts; according to Stoller the film is 60 to 70 percent scripted and 30 to 40 percent improvised.
Segel and Stoller were reunited as screenwriters for The Muppets in 2011, Segel's dream project, and then did The Five-Year Engagement; the buffet waiter who later punches Segel is Kalani Robb, the surfer from Romentum Generation (as transcribed), which the hosts did not catch on first viewing; he seems taller than in life, is memorable bringing the second rum bottle, and was probably just hanging out surfing in Hawaii.
Mila Kunis auditioned for Knocked Up and lost the role to Katherine Heigl, but Apatow filed her away and she got this one; whether Hathaway was also up for that part is not remembered, which raises the question of whether Knocked Up would have been better with Kunis.
One host is not a fan of Katherine Heigl on screen in movies or television, with no disrespect to the human being, while another is a big fan of her in Knocked Up; the case against her is that Heigl is not funny, Kunis is, and nobody bought that she would ever be interested in Seth Rogen.
The rebuttal is that re-engineering the casting is like saying the New Testament would be better with Bruce Willis, though it is a clear case of picking one actress over the other; Heigl works perfectly as a specific, annoying kind of person, and one host was ready for them to break up the whole time.
Aldous Snow (transcribed as Algiers Snow) was written with Charlie Hunnam in mind, who had Apatow history from Undeclared, and was entirely rewritten for Russell Brand; one host suspects it was not written at all and Brand simply did the role.
Earlier, during the intro, the note that Kunis had gone for the Katherine Heigl part in Knocked Up was explicitly parked for Casting What-Ifs.
Peter and Aldous meeting on surfboards in the ocean together with the getting back on the beach scene with the reef and the leg; Peter's first Skype call with Hader and his wife
The list opens with six nominations and probably more; the breakup scene is first, nominated as rewatchable for being so weird.
Asked what he found rewatchable about the breakup scene, the answer is that it is rewatchable on TBS, where you don't have to see Jason Segel naked, and that it's just good. — Bill Simmons
He is naked the whole time, so the hosts wonder what sound effect or blur TV would put over it; she dumps him and it is a classic breakup scene, and the club scene with Bill Hader right after is nominated too.
The club scene is amazing: the lines about not hanging out in places like this, the place smelling like stripper's perfume and getting herpes from the couch; Bill Hader is incredible, this may be a favorite of all his performances, and every moment he is on screen lands.
Further nominations: Peter Skyping Hader and his wife from Hawaii while insisting she is not there, the 'I'm on the moon' bit, and the first time he plays the Dracula musical song in Hawaii, when Mila Kunis tells him to play it without realizing what it is; that scene is called tremendous.
Also nominated are the double date that goes off the rails near the end, Jonah Hill going off on Russell Brand when he flips out, and every single thing Paul Rudd does, starting with the first Rudd scene when Russell Brand's Aldous is brought back in with the coral in his leg, losing blood and asking Kunu to call the front desk, which the hosts quote at length.
So much random material suggests Stoller, Apatow and Rudd were freelancing in real time; every Kunu line gets a huge kick, and the cutaways to Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime with Billy Baldwin are held for what's aged the best because they are so short, along with the Bateman one and the post-credits bit.
Kunu versus Brian Fontana (as transcribed) in Anchorman for best Rudd: the cologne scene is the funniest thing one host has ever seen, with Sex Panther and hosing it down like Silkwood; Anchorman is being saved for the end of the world, is called the godfather of comedies and possibly the most rewatchable movie of all time, with another movie's worth of material on YouTube.
Brian Fantana is the fifth most important character in Anchorman and Kunu the ninth most important person here, yet every appearance delights; a late addition is the short scene where Peter and Aldous meet on surfboards in the ocean.
Two different picks emerge: one host takes the surfboard meeting together with the getting back on the beach scene, with the reef and the leg, calling the whole segment really good and quoting 'How are you so cool?'; another goes with the first Skype call with Hater and the wife, the first one rather than the one where he makes her head go up and down, out of love for Hater.
Added later during what's aged the best: the hike, hilarious for anyone who has unwillingly gone on a hike with someone, and his leap off the cliff backwards.
