Blank Check with Griffin & David - Hercules with Larry Owens

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

BC welcomes multi-hyphenate Larry Owens (A Strange Loop) for a discussion on 1997's Hercules! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

🎵 Blank Check with Griffin and David 🎵 🎵 Blank Check with Griffin and David 🎵 🎵 Don't know what to say or to expect 🎵 🎵 All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check 🎵 Though a kid of Zeus is asking me to jump into the fray, my answer is two words. Podcast. Two words, podcast.

But the joke, David, you understand is that in the song, it feels like he is winding up to say no way. Right. He's got the arms. He's going, no way. And then Zeus hits him with the lightning. And then he says, okay. And it's a reversal. Okay is also not two words.

Podcast is not two words. Also, I just went through every other song in this movie. And they're either too hard to sing or too lyrically hard to put podcasts into or both. So I decided to do the one that Danny DeVito kind of quote unquote sings. You were drawn to DeVito. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. That's my vocal

range is devito hey kid you know well we'll talk about it but you you know that all like someone who they auditioned for that role was like you're just gonna hire devito right they at in 1993 when this was like in the in the gong show period of Disney animation where like anyone could pitch any movie, someone pitched Hercules. It like developed a little. It laid dormant. And the key part of that pitch was the sidekick is Danny DeVito. Like everyone was in such a like romancing the stone. You got to have Danny DeVito chasing the heroes, helping them out kind of mode. That was part of the pitch. Then Musker and Clements pick it up a couple years later. They redevelop pretty much the entire thing, and they're like, it should be Danny DeVito as the sidekick, right?

They go to Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito's like, hard pass. No, go fuck yourself. They audition. Everyone else in Hollywood, and everyone's like, what are you doing? You're going to cast DeVito. Why are you wasting my time?

It's Red Buttons was the one who was like, just hire DeV davido why are you wasting my time and it's red buttons right was the one who was like just hire davido what are you doing also like they they auditioned like dick letessa and ed asner like every every ornery guy every grump every grump it's borg nine right berg nine they just everybody borg nine was willing to take a break from his nonstop masturbation schedule to put down an audition for Philatides. And then apparently they ambushed DeVito while he was eating pasta on the set of Matilda. Did you see this? They ambushed him during a pasta dinner.

Which is, I mean, you know, I find that very offensive. Of course, you can't interrupt a pasta dinner. There's nothing more intimate than a pasta dinner. I also want to circle back because it got no response. Am I the only one who remembers the thing where Ernest Borgnine was on the Today Show and they asked him what his secret was to living so long? He jerks off all the time. Right, it was whoever it was on the show.

He like leans in and whispers as if he doesn't know how microphones work and then the sound team fully picks up him saying i masturbate a lot i masturbate a lot uh let me see who he's doing it to it's someone on fox news oh it's like one of the fox you know fascists it's one of those guys he said to bill o'reilly it's not even that though it's like just one of the like look introduce the show introduce our like we're we're so deep already we're deep we had to go in the deep on a borg nine jerk off tangent yeah dav. Yeah. DeVito pasta dinner, Borg-9 yank in it.

This might be our horniest episode ever. Just talking about two short, hairy guys and their sex lives. Folks, this is a podcast about here-suit, egg-shaped character actors.

It's called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. And it's not actually about that it's about filmographies it's about directors who have massive success early on in their careers

and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they go the distance baby this is a mini series on the films of Musker and Clements the Disney renaissance

through the eyes of these two guys who kind of had the exact, like, kind of the perfect arc to be able to look at this 30-year journey. This part of the studio went on. And that kind of changed American animation in general forever. Today we're talking 1997's Hercules. Arguably their first bounce, right? I suppose so. I mean, it did all right, but I suppose it underwhelmed. I think this is a soft bounce and then Treasure Planet's a huge bounce.

That's the big one. This one is the trouble in the water. This is the sort of like, oh, you know, we're having trouble with the formula. But this is also that weird point where the Disney movies have gotten so big that like this and Hunchback back to back making around 100 million dollars suddenly looks like a disaster because the movies had become humongous. And expensive. become humongous. And expensive. Yes.

And I'll say this. Our guest today, we have an incredible guest today and he is being so respectful. But what he doesn't know is that's the opposite of what we like here. We live for the drama and we love when a guest speaks

before they're introduced. That's how we like to operate. You won't do it. Are we supposed to get in You won't do it. Are you supposed to get in here? No, this is, um, been really informative because I'm just absolutely shocked.

Um, I call this a dip to me. This is, um, to me, this is like a Bible canon Pentateuch movie. And you're citing an $100 million gross. My Wikipedia is showing me $252 on an $85 million budget.

Is this over time adjusted for inflation? What is that? That's worldwide. That's worldwide. I will admit, Larry, I'm a big box office nerd. Our guest today today of course an incredible comedian incredible actor winner of a drama desk award needs needs no intro let's just dive into brass intro i'm supposed to elbow my way in yes please okay i'm in larry owens

motherfucker one of the funniest people on the planet one of those talented people i've ever seen when i first time ever saw you perform, what did I say to you? Is he supposed to remember? Something kind, I hope. Yeah, I said, you're the biggest star in the world. I truly feel that

every time I've seen you perform, Larry, I'm just like, this is, you are going to be the biggest star in the world. You're one of the most talented people I've ever witnessed in any capacity uh in addition to being incredibly funny and uh smart oh my gosh well not as smart as you guys because i don't know any of the technical stuff like i truly like my eyes are like right now being open to like oh yes animated

movies have directors like to me they are like such the property of the composer the lyricist like obviously are like stars and uh and just like to look at this trajectory that uh musk and clements yeah shocked that they didn't do beauty and the beast they didn't but not no that's the one they didn't do there's like like this alternation. They were sort of the default directors and every other movie would be directed by some other team. And the other teams never solidified themselves as much as Musker and Clements, who did a lot of films together and always together.

But like the Lion King guys don't make a movie together again after that, I think, you know? And that was sort of seen as the B-team movie in a lot of ways. Hercules was supposed to be, I mean, here's, look, Larry, we're not smart. We're just big old fucking dorks and we're connoisseurs of context

and David and I collect all this goddamn information. But the story we're kind of telling over the arc of these movies, and to some degree, usually our show is a little more auteur based, but talk about Musker and Clements, we really are talking more about the auteurism of the Disney Renaissance and of Mencken and Ashman, you know? And this is the first movie we're covering where Ashman is fully gone, where he's left no work behind. It menken uh charting new path without him uh and ashman was very much a big kind of auteur figure in uh aladdin and uh little mermaid and beauty and the

beast which we did not cover um yeah i yeah the howard ashman uh legacy a huge, it is like one of like maybe the only historical talking points which I have in regards to this movie in that like I lament the passing of Howard Ashman, I guess, marked, you know, significantly by this movie. Just in terms of like as like a musical theater like lover in the 20th like born in the late 20th century because to me that marriage of like humor reference and like pop sensibility like it's like almost all of any you know disney score in the 20th century is a pastiche it's a pastiche score of like writing songs that sound like other things and then of course there is like the disney sound of like go the distance those sort of the like sweeping i want song and i feel like howard ashman just in terms of using that device and keeping it so earnest and unironic like now everything is a comment on sort of that sensibility and i don't like it but i feel

like howard ashman had just the perfect amount of like understanding of grit and nuance and like honestly vaudevillian humor as well as like pop styling and like i don't know this is like that like sensibility modern sensibility i couldn't agree more and we've talked about in some of the other episodes but it's like little shop of horrors is my favorite musical ever uh and and that's such a good example of something which on its face seems like a totally ironic uh experiment yeah he's adapting a crappy b-movie right and something like this shouldn't be a musical no one cares about this movie and the amount of emotion and intelligence he imbues into it but i also think it was like so much of it was his um sort of you you can if you

understand the fundamental tenets of storytelling and of the power of music in storytelling you can turn anything into a functional story you know yeah literally and into like a huge hit and i feel like it is howard ashman he was the artistic director co-artist director of this like very very intentionally small theater called the wpa theater and And something about my career having worked only off Broadway, I've never been in a Broadway show, but I have been a part of a Pulitzer Prize winning musical. So the skewed impact perception of Broadway versus the work that can happen in small spaces, like the work that can happen in small spaces and then how that translates on translates to the global stage like i feel like by perfecting moments for like that few people a night it totally informs the intimacy that comes across even in these big budget movies and i just feel

like it's just such like a fascinating sensibility. And being another gay man from Baltimore, I feel like that there is like something in the water. And I'm like, I want to be heir apparent. No, but I do. I think you have that sensibility and all the work I've seen you do. I mean, for folks who don't know and should educate themselves, I mean, you have such an interesting sort of like combination of influences in background in that you have like musical theater training, but also kind of like hardcore theater Steppenwolf training, and then came to New York and sort of found yourself doing stand up, but very much stand up on your own terms. And so you approach things from like a

couple different minds equally and this movie is in a certain way at a cross-section of a lot of those things and i feel like it yeah it is i encountered this movie in latin class so i went to a nativity school which means that it was um all these like really smart little black boys and our education was paid for by like nice kind catholics in the neighborhood and but they like it was like a really great education to you know get us out the hood and you know on to podcasts and so we all were required to take Latin and to like we learned about mythology and then we watched this movie over a series of class periods and I was just like yeah I get this like i understand the mythology

it's the sound of like my black church that i like go to every sunday and then it's like this disney story which is all about like fantasy and destiny and like meeting your fate like i it's day uh musk your inclements yeah yeah yeah and it is i mean it's it's funny like we're talking about ashman so much but this is like the first post ashman menken but yet you still really feel his shadow on it they're still very much using sort of all the lessons i feel like he imbued yeah storytelling wise also in terms of like let's blend a familiar fairy tale myth whatever with like hollywood old hollywood right like because this is a little screwball and it's got like kind of like a you know uh you know well i mean he's a himbo right like a big you know sort of

fun doofus as the lead and then a bunch of wisecracking like that's all ashman energy i guess totally i mean that's the self-referential stuff you're talking about larry the sort of uh knowing sort of mashup of different pop culture elements it's like you're taking greek mythology like that's the patina that they're based in then you're like mapping sort of uh screwball comedy energy like tex avery animation energy then the score is very much feels like phil spectory you know i feel like like the are the main like touchstone for like aside from go the distance is the one that just feels there's always we're talking about this there's always the one that they just had to make as adult contemporary easy listening adjacent as possible it's like the who's going to sing it

over the credit song right so they had the michael bolton version of go the distance yeah i feel like this movie is brilliant because so there's a rule in the musical theater that you have the first 15 minutes to establish all of the rules like that are going to be at play and so like in this like in like this like opening shot you get this like charlton heston voiceover so like immediately old hollywood then we like go to mount olympus and it's you know we're storytelling of these muses it's very like contemporary like this is still happening now and then there are like so many like references that follow like that, where like the Hercules branding, it's like, they're almost like Jordan sneakers.

And like very 1997. It's true. Yes. It's so 1997. And, and we just like, and it's a story. And I feel like it's just like,

by it being mythology, it just so easily lends itself. Like it is the actual hero's journey. Yeah. And that earnestness is captured as well in that first moment, in that first 15 minutes of like, yeah, this is going to be this type of ride. How do you... Yeah, I don't ask the questions.

No, ask the questions. What's your question? No, I just love Howard Ashton. I keep talking about Howard Ashton. I could keep talking about Howard Ashton. I mean, we've been talking about him. A lot. We did Little Mermaid. We did Aladdin, obviously.

Yeah, Part of Your World and Somewhere That's Green. Kind of the same song. But honestly, use what you know. Also, if you write one song that good, you're allowed to use it five times. It's so good. And they both work so yes so wow like what they do for what they do in these i just love i feel like the only musicals that's like been able to bridge that gap and maybe it's because it's source material

but it's hairspray where it's like each number is pastiche like they can like sometimes go low but like mostly it is just like yeah let this little fat girl dance and so it's like yeah let this himbo like find his dad find his parents but also that weird balance of just like kitsch with with the genuine feeling you know that doesn't just feel like it's in air quotes. That's I mean, that's the other part of the soup on this is like Musker and Clements weren't really musical guys or fairy tale guys. Right. And then they make these two humongous Disney musicals. But the thing they wanted to do the entire time was Treasure Planet.

Right. Like they won post Aladdin. They're like, now can we do Treasure Planet, the movie we've always wanted to do? Because from the 80s, every time they got to make a movie, their first film is Great Mouse Detective. Every time when the studio's like, great job,

what do you want to do next? They're like, Treasure Planet. We want to do fucking Treasure Island in space with no songs. It's not a comedy. It's a straight sci-fi adventure movie. And every time they'd be like, that sounds too fucking weird. You have to do one more movie that we want you to do

and then you can do Treasure Planet. And they just kept, like, like Lucy Van Pelt lifting the football and never letting them make Treasure Planet. So, wait, do you want to know what, much like last time with Aladdin, they picked between a bunch of projects. Do you want to know what the three were this time? you know no i just know i mean it's wild because

aladdin was so fucking big the biggest animated film ever the biggest film of that year and still they were like you have to do one more commercial movie before you can make treasure planet so then right they looked in the pile of all the stuff from the 90s what what were the other two well hercules wasn't any of them first the for the three that they can mold were don quixote apparently disney had a don quixote lined up around the world in 80 days and the odyssey which was their initial like thought well we'll do like a greek mythology thing which and then they realized that there was like a hercules pitch that was simpler and that's what they finally alighted on they wanted to do a superhero movie they were like okay we can that that can be the hercules pitch i was gonna say

that's the final element in the soup of this movie which is they had been wanting to do like just a straight boys adventure movie. And so they saw this and they were like, this is an opportunity to do Superman. We could do Superman as a screwball musical comedy influenced by Phil Spector, wall of sound pop. He is, he is definitely like heroic and it follows like,

like oftentimes like the laws of that sort of genre it's definitely not the dominant sort of like energy of the movie i think um in a good way uh because the music i just i'm yeah i always come back to it but uh okay so first of all treasure island honestly sounds good i want to know have you watched it and like does it like hold up in a secret way where it's like yeah it flopped but like we're doing that i love what you that's our next episode it's one of those things that has it has its cult for sure there's a whole generation that saw that at the right age that's like no that movie's good so i'm hoping yes i'm hoping that we're gonna watch it and be like oh yeah this thing's great i'd be treasure island for these two um uh elderly even at the time men

like or like like that being just like there i i have to do this like honestly makes sense and then also like chronologically like their like space interest and then probably like a little like their peak of like this that's entertainment is probably like raiders of the lost ark or like indiana jones like that's where their heart lies and this is literally like matinee fluff to them i get it i understand their psyche i guess yes i think i i wouldn't say like i think they care about all the movies they made. But it was one of those things where it's like if we could make anything, if we had the blank check as as the premise of this podcast proposes. Right. They were like, this is the thing we'd most want to see.

You just said the title of the play inside of the play. I love that. Thank you. You know, we have a saying in our family, use sports, don't let sports use you. Hi, it's Jeff Merrick from 32 Thoughts to Podcast. Are you a sports parent, rep sports, travel sports, whatever you call it? If you're like me, you know that one of the great joys of having your kid or kids play sports is travel. You know, our families use sports to see different parts of the world, meet new people, and stay in a number of different places. Recently, we've started using Airbnb.

The kids love it because it feels like a sleepover at a new friend's house, while my wife and I enjoy more space, a proper bed, and mostly a washing machine. That really comes in handy for baseball trips. Trust me. In fact, it was on a baseball trip last summer when my wife sent me a text after the first night saying, Do you think we could do this? Look, if you've ever stayed at an Airbnb, you've probably wondered the same thing. Could our place be an Airbnb? And now that our kids have also discovered the joys of skiing in addition to travel hockey

and travel baseball we're on the move even more while our house just sits there why not make a little extra money to cover some costs right we have friends who travel south every winter and they Airbnb their place why not look if you want to make a little extra cash and who doesn't need that these days maybe your home could be the way to make it happen. Find out how at Airbnb.com. I mean, the superhero stuff comes into play, and Superman in particular, I think, if you look at the changes they make to the Hercules myth itself. Right, where he's essentially this abandoned orphan from another world rather than the product of a god uh seducing oh he's both he's a product of a god and through a series of uh um you know godlike events he

is believed to be an orphan but much like annie that's he's a bit of a little orphan annie but they drop the he's half mortal Because Zeus liked to get around When he would visit Earth They have to drop that That's too much for the first 15 minutes No we're not really going to do Nookie Zeus and Hera become the parents

Exactly Which actually it aligns with tenets of Latin class mythology In that they were husband and wife Yes right They don't want to have to show Zeus tenets of Latin class mythology in that they were husband and wife. Yes, right. I mean, they don't want to have to show Zeus using trickery to fuck a woman on Earth in the first 15 minutes. It's also like the song you have to write about that. Right, right, right.

It's just no one wants any of that. But so their workaround is they essentially give him like the Superman myth where it's like he was the golden child of the two golden people in the golden place. And then he got sent down to earth. I mean, in this case, he's stolen, you know, but it's like he's there. He doesn't know his background. He's raised by two kindly farmers and then at a certain age finds out his birthright and has to figure out how to like fill out the suit. So I feel like that's that's the superhero side of it and that that there's that 30 minute chunk of the movie that feels like it's really following that kind of superman the movie arc and then once meg comes in i feel like it fully just loses to that energy which i think is the right decision a far better energy yes meg is that because musker i think it's musker

yeah i have this interview musker is like right we wanted to do this screwball thing where hercules is jimmy stewart right he's like the the lovable doe doe-eyed idealist and meg is like barbara stanwick in the lady eve or whatever right like meg yes meg is the prickly. They feel so much. I mean, have you seen Lady Eve, Larry? No. One of the greatest comedies of all time. Put it on the playlist right after Treasure Planet. But I feel like the Henry Fonda, Barbara Sandwick dynamic is almost identical to this, where it's like incredibly powerful, privileged man who's sort of oblivious and easily duped and the very worldly wise fast talking dame yeah and honestly it was refreshing to see i loved the um subversion of trope here i think something that made me lean in powerful feminine energy uh man is done

it was all reading to me is honestly very true to life and i think one of the reasons why you know we have we have a bunch of women we uh we have curvy black women we have meg and you know very much like you will never like i like love is like the last thing and she's honestly nefarious she's she's a little she's a little twisted or i don't know she a prisoner of war or something i don't like what is that it's she her boyfriend died she made a deal with hades to bring him back to life and then the boyfriend ended up leaving her anyway it's sort of similar a little of that uh what's her name uh you're not you're rippy what's her name uh It's in Hadestown. Who does she play? Oh, yes. Eurydice. Yeah, Eurydice. I was like, Euripides, no, bitch.

Eurydice. And then his name, who does she turn in the pomegranates? Who does she turn in round four? Or Odysseus? No. Orpheus. Orpheus is the one who wants to get her back, obviously. Hadestown, incredible. I was thinking a lot about Hadestown watching this. You were? Well, just another hades

a different like because the hades in hercules he's this we'll talk about james woods but you know he's he's like a hollywood agent right he's like chatty and he's jokey and he's kind of cynical and then the haiti i was thinking about you know the hades of has thinking about patrick page oh yeah patrick page in hadestown is not... I don't know if Patrick Page is giving old Hollywood... No, Jimmy Woods is giving fast-talking, neurotic... Yes, very neurotic. Literally

cigar-smoking. Did you see Larry, the public theater production of Disney Hercules a couple years ago? No. I was very curious about that. And it seemed like that was probably, like, it felt like,

oh, this must be a prelude. They're trying it out before they try to bring it to Broadway. And then there was never any talk of that. I mean, like, that production got such good reviews. And then there never seemed to be any movement on bringing that thing to Broadway.

And the cast was so good. I know. Jelani Aladdin as Hercules. This is what we want to see. Krista Rodriguez as Meg. Fucking slam dunk textbook meg roger bart moving from singing voice of young hercules to hades that's a great easter egg that was fun that was fun but the last the last bit of chat about that was a lot this summer menken said no it'll happen it'll go to Broadway Like we have an adaptation ready Whenever

There is a Broadway again So hopefully that will happen To me that is indication of like This movie being like beloved and a hit Like Disney movies don't get Traction unless they have that Built in audience And just the generation comes of age

Like right like the kids who saw this movie are now ticket buying grown-ups i don't know i i think there's another factor here i mean i i need to do a little bit of uh uh not mea culpa but but sort of like addressing i i in a recent episode said that this movie was my favorite movie of all time when it came out and that I don't even like it anymore. That I had rewatched it some years back and was pretty nonplussed about it. Wow. And I

rewatched it today for this and I don't know what the fuck was wrong with me the last time I watched this movie. But like Toy Story was my big fucking movie for like four years. All I talked about was Toy Story. My parents take me to see Hercules. I turn to them afterwards and I go,

it's a tie. Hercules is tied. It's the only movie I've seen that's as good as Toy Story. And then like Toy Story 2 comes out a couple years later. That usurps it. Hercules sort of falls off from the brain.

I'd rewatched it a lot, like 97, 98, 99. But then I don't see it for a while. And I feel like I watched it very drunk on netflix like five years ago i think it was a thing mad at hercules you weren't into it i think part of it was uh uh that i was like watching a movie i hadn't seen for almost 20 years and remembered as being my favorite movie and i burned it with unrealistic expectations, much like the phenomenon that happens when adult men see Star Wars movies and get angry that they don't make them feel like a six-year-old anymore. One of our great ills of society. I was able to

apply the perspective, this time watching Hercules, that I always try to apply when I see a new Star Wars movie, which is this movie will not make me forget that the world is bad because I know too much now. The other part of it is I think when I get drunk, I have a very hard time watching movies that are fast. I become very aware of edits and rhythms. And this movie is so frantically paced. It is just like the entire movie has genie energy.

It's quick quick quick quick quick very quick there's okay so we have uh we have our lead then we have five narrators five five narrators who sing on pitch and in harmony yeah a literal great chorus we had charlton heston never to be heard of until the end of the movie then he has a nemesis his nemesis has two henchmen then he then he gets a love interest or just a woman enters and then he gets a coach and his parents and then adopt a parent so there's four parents like there's a ton of characters and just like pain and panic right pegasus who's like his bff yeah there's the titans there's a ton of characters and just like pain and panic right pegasus who's like his bff yeah there's the titans there's a bunch of titans that show up late you know there's all

that and the fates i mean there's also just like greek mythology is so dense there's so much more world building hermes is a character yes we literally see every god, lowercase g, on Mount Olympus, like, all doing bits. Paul Schaefer as Hermes. Paul Schaefer as Hermes, iconic. And Hermes looks like him. It looks like him. They did such a good job with that animation. You're like, that's Paul Schaefer.

It's Paul Schaefer. I remember this being one of the kid movies that my dad took my brother and I to that he actually clearly liked. But when he would talk to his friends about it, like I'd hear my dad on the phone be like, I took the kids to see Hercules. You know, that movie was actually funny. And the only thing he would cite is Paul Schaeffer's in it

and he just like looks like Paul Schaeffer. My dad just couldn't get over Paul Schaeffer being in the movie. He thought it was the funniest fucking thing in the world. But he's just like, it's like Hermes, but it's Paul Schaefer and he's just agreeing with everything it's so good it's the type of like cameo that i don't think will ever have the impact again just because

of how overexposed celebrity is that like there is no like you're in my home every day but then i go to the like you're a tv star now you in a movie. But it also feels like the weird meshing of, like, all the sort of pop culture sort of reuse we're talking about, where it's just like, it's not like they're putting Kim Kardashian in a Disney movie. Like, it's a weird pick. It doesn't feel like they're putting Paul Schaefer in there because he's a big name cameo. It feels like they're putting him in there because they're like, what's a funny person to play the yes man? You know? And then they're like, oh, Paul Schaefer's a yes man. What if we just make the character Paul Schaefer? He just talks like Paul Schaefer.

It's so bizarre. But yeah, I mean, it's just like this movie is uh so much my sensibility in so many ways it got kind of mixed response from critics it got like it did okay at the box office but i see fatigue people were just getting a little tired of every year you know the big it's that's what it was i think that's a huge part of it i think the marketing for this movie was fucking relentless they also pinned a lot of like they a lot of toys yeah a lot of toys a lot of everything like the every disney store was changed into a hercules store do you remember all this new york shit that they did like they they did some fucking central park thing and they

took over all of chelsea piiers and made it a coliseum. And then they had a Hercules parade. And when the movie opened, it was only playing at the New Amsterdam Theater for the first week. They did, like, the limited run thing. That's where I saw it. It was—Disney had just bought the New Amsterdam. Lion King hadn't opened yet. So they had Hercules play there as a movie for two weeks.

And it was just, like—particularly in New York, had Hercules play there as a movie for two weeks. And it was just like, particularly in New York, the Hercules shit was relentless. And I think Katzenberg was more and more trying to push Disney away from girl princess stuff because they wanted to get the boys on board. And they sort of in the process might have alienated some of their like dyed in the wool audience. But I think the reason why its reputation is so much better now, Larry, is I feel like this is kind of the favorite Disney movie of a lot of people who work in the media from our generation now. You know, I think because of its weird sense of humor. I think so. There is this phrase, it comes from a musical. Yes, it's called, it says,

I think so there is this phrase it comes from a musical yes it's called it says I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing it's definitely bad energy right yeah and it's like unapologetically like yeah like about like a Disney movie about a male like superhero in a way that I guess Aladdin kind of was but I don't know Hercules I don't know it justcules, I don't know. It just has a different edge. It's a little bit edgier. Yeah. It's about getting famous. It's about weird things for a Disney movie.

It's specificity is what makes it charming. And I think that like, I think that if Meg were the center of the movie, she would not be allowed to be as complex. She would have to be flattened to the like disney standard and so yeah i like you know musker and clements paying their penance to okay bars muster and clements paying their penance yes bars uh um i i feel like the like confidence confidence and sort of later career nature of some of these really bold choices for Disney, for me, makes it a standout for me. It represents some sort of departure.

Maybe it's the Ashman thing, but it does feel like it feels separate than Aladdin and yes mermaid it's also like you know like Jafar and Aladdin and Jasmine are pretty straight characters you know it's like Aladdin has that division of like here are the comic relief characters here are the heroic and villainous characters you know and this is a movie in which every character is comedic. The whole thing is just top-to-bottom comedy energy. You also have a very different visual style. Like, it feels like they're really—I mean, they're obviously trying to, like, incorporate, you know, Greek art and all of that, but it just has very different sort of shapes in it and a different kind of score and like different action sequences like the hydra sequence is very different than any action sequence in like aladdin partially just because of technological advancements and budget i don't like the hydra i love it i think it rules you love it you think it rules yeah it's so it's sort of video gamey i i like that it's sort of video gamey i just think it's it's cool it's like uh it's got such a different uh vibe and it's also they just like were able to

at this point pull off like camera moves and shit which they could barely do in aladdin everything's so kind of locked down because stiffy stiffy, stiffy. This doesn't feel stiffy, stiffy. This feels new, modern. It feels closer to 2000 than it does to 1990. This is true. It just, like, all of it feels a lot closer to just, like, we're going somewhere different. Like, even the pace. Like, probably Nickelodeon is just, like, such a machine now.

And, like, Disney Channel's, like, they're starting to, which is, like, Disney Channel television is just Borscht Belt vaudeville. Like, these kids, like, they sell a punchline, a three-stack build. Like, they sell it to the balcony on television, and they, like, do a hundred scripts. Like, it is truly, like, Little Rascascals type training for an actor. And totally like if you talk to a kid like between the ages of like eight and eleven, their personality is actually wisecracking sidekick. Like they very much have like why I ought to like a kid will say that. So you're like, who taught you that?

And it's like, it's fucking Miley Cyrus. It's also like, I mean, you look at, so it's Aladdin, right? And then am I forgetting one? No. Yeah, it's the three Disney movies. The three other Disney animated films that happen between Aladdin and Hercules, between the two Musker Clements, are Lion King, not in order, are Lion King, Pocahontas, and Hunchback of Notre Dame. That's in order.

Well, so you know what? I got it right by accident. But all three of those movies are definitely trending more serious, right? There was this thread of Katzenberg. Like the two things you hear about Jeffrey Katzenberg running Disney animation at this point in time was he always said, like, I want more edge. I want more reverent. I want more pop culture references.

And he wanted to win Best Picture. Like Katzenberg got so hard when they got Beauty and the Beast nominated for Best Picture. And that was the first animated movie that he kept on going like Pocahontas hunchback lion king they're tragedies they're like big tragedies pocahontas especially i think he for whatever reason thought that was going to have the right mix of like prestige and class and star power epic romance and shit history right it's gonna like be beauty and the beast but leveled up we've got more money we've got more time to do it like and then pocahontas is i think you know it's a little snoozy i you know there's things that are fun about it i you know i kind of like how it looks i don't know how you guys feel about pocahontas i don't want to come too hard it's never been a favorite i like pocahontas a lot it's an imbalanced

imperfect movie but i like it a lot what is that a steven schwartz score on that it's a it is it's well no it's menken but wait uh it's menken and schwartz yes schwartz working together on pocahontas i well, the story is gonna be tragic because that's just what she wrote. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's just, in terms of like, I actually don't have a huge appetite for this, for, I'm like trying not to offend my future bosses.

I'm like, I don't really watch animated movies. Like, or maybe I'm just like not like a Disney gay or a princess girl. Like, I like my musicals live. I like my musical sanguine, flesh and blood. Okay. White woman out front. That's another thing for me

that I find interesting about Hercules, which rewatching it now, correcting my past greasy talk about it, I do think is my favorite of the Musker Clements and my favorite of this Disney Renaissance era. It's just so my sensibility. But I feel like, A, it's the one that has live musical theater energy.

Something about the relentlessness of it and the kinetic energy of this movie and how fast it moves really feels more like a staged musical than an animated musical film. And I also think that, like, the... Those films, right,

they picked more tragic source material, right? But they also, I think, were going for that sort of prestige. They wanted seriousness in the eyes of Hollywood at large. And this movie is, like, owning being a cartoon. Not owning being a Disney movie. It's owning being, like, a fucking Bugs Bunny cartoon to a certain degree. It has Bugs Bunny energy. movie is owning being like a fucking bugs bunny cartoon to a certain degree it has it has bugs bunny energy i don't know where this is how the related this is to uh space jam but i don't know

something about it feels hand in hand same year space you're a year apart no not same year right space jams 96 you're right you're a part i think and and and you know the whole section of him of hercules being merchandised That's obviously Michael Jordan satire Right? Like all the Big gulps and all that stuff Air Herc Exactly

But I I mean I can't agree with you Griffin But we have to talk about David Zippel Then we have to you know This is the guy coming in To replace asherman as the lyricist here uh with working with menken what do we have strong opinions on david zippel larry do you care about david zippel i have a personal connection david zippel david zippel is a friend very very sweet charming person perfect let's talk about it then because i don't know him well fantastic lyricist i uh davis credits goodbye girl on broadway

burning up peter's vehicle uh and that's with hamlish right that's marvin hamlish i think yes marvin hamlish and then city of angels i believe he's a lyricist of that. So these just like really, really like stalwart, like show business, uh, like, like shows. And so I feel like sort of like that show business edge, uh, comes into play here. And I find that like the lyrics, like they're so like, I feel like it is definitely completely hand in hand with understanding the assignment of Howard Ashman did this really well. Things are conversational. They're breezy. It's contemporary vernacular, but with always the reach to pull from anything in history and assume that our audience knows what this is.

So it's an intelligent but innocent listener. And so I feel like that carries through in terms of like the voice of the show and he has a lot of fun with like and this perfect package packed a pair of pretty pecs like he's having fun he's showing his pen it feels like cabaret-y right like it's it's it's clever it's it's like yeah it's like meant to be listened to and understood in a way that like a musical theater lyric is distinct in that way like a pop pop lyric, the chorus has to be pronounced. But like you really don't know what Ariana Grande is singing. And like you prefer it because she's literally like, oh, no, that's Selena Gomez.

You got me walking side to side. To me, one of the like a more lewd song than WAP because she's literally like I got rocked and now I can't walk correctly this is Selena Gomez Disney star you got me walking side to side and so you don't know that that's what the song's about because you can't hear the lyrics but David Zippel's lyrics are

now I have to shout out my beltresses the vocalists the ladies multiple Tony Award winners in this group of singers playing the muses. We have as Calliope, Lilius White. We have as Terpiscite. I don't even know.

I can't really do it. It's Lilius White, Roz Ryan, Cheryl Freeman, LaShonze. And I think there's one other female vocalist. Vanessa Thomas. Vanessa Thomas, who I don't know where her stage career is, but the, the four women that I mentioned, just like,

like so indelible to the like growth and life of Broadway, the roles that they played between them. And just, just as a group, like as like a girl group, the energy that they infuse into this score and the like amount of storytelling that they truly cover as these direct-to-camera narrators and also just like the style that they bring like they dance like they're gorgeous like they represent this

like very very fierce modern sensibility of the show and this tearing down of like the literal fourth wall and also the literal fourth wall and also the energetic fourth wall of like we're having fun like like this isn't this isn't beauty and the beast we actually like actually one of the easter eggs visual easter eggs uh i think like a scar or mufasa's in the clouds yes it's scar no no scar is when Hercules is posing for his painting, he's wearing Scar as a pelt. As a pelt. A skinned Scar. Yeah.

No, it's, I mean, you can hear the pen is a great phrase, Larry, which I'm going to use all the time. Oh, in a good way. I mean, sometimes it's a bad thing. But here in a really positive way. Yeah. What were you going to say, David? Sorry.

A bunch of things. One, I agree with you, Larry, that yes, the muses, they're setting the temperature of the movie, which is what you need. Like, right? Like, here we're having,

this is going to be silly. It's going to be referential. It's not going to be disposable. Like, this is fun. But like, you know, and I love the look of them. But I wanted to ask you if you knew who the first choice

to play the muses was. It's a very 1997 choice tlc the spice girls they wanted the spice girls oh my gosh why there are five muses why they are five a five person act um and i i have no idea they declined whatever they you know it's the it's the height of the spice girl yeah they're it's a busy i mean honestly it's a lot of development like to like they like the involvement um there's like some really great like making of and you just i just love to listen to lilias white who sings like the lead muse i just love to listen to her stories of making it and how they like you know consulted them about their design and like lilias is uh she's like zoftig and curvy but she you know requested to be a slender muse like her muse does not resemble her

roz ryan who is like the shorter more curvaceous muse like that is ross ryan energy uh and and just yeah i love it when they dance like they like the movement for the muses if recreated on the human body would be impossible and it's just so fun it's the same with how meg is animated i was gonna say meg's silhouette yeah it makes zero sense i mean it's just like i i love the weird angularness of the designs for these characters because I feel like... They look like they're on a vase. That's what I love about it. Right. Yeah. Vase. Vase, yes, yes. It's a Hercules joke.

But that's like, that's the thing. Like, Zero to Hero has so many fucking funny jokes within the lyrics. Jokes, jokes, jokes, jokes. Jokes, jokes. Right. I mean, he could tell you what's a Grecian earn is like wait okay so i think jury's out on this lyric so you believe it to be what he could tell you what's a grecian and then sometimes i hear he could tell you what the

grecians earned so i think the joke is that it sounds like both that it sounds like he's telling you what a grecian earns and what is a greek yes a brilliant lyric what what's a grecian earn right yes he could tell you what's the grecian earn which is hilarious right because you're like one grecian like even just like a passing like music man uh high school you know you've been in a production of music man you're like one grecian earn and then so it's like you're already pricking the musical lover's ear. And then it's funny. And then it's a double entendre. He could tell you when the Greesh's earned.

Which is hilarious. And the literal pitches that she's singing on. It's just like so perfectly placed in the power part of her voice. Wait, now I'm David Zippel. Hey, hey. placed in the power part of her voice wait now i'm david zippel hey hey uh zero to hero is what is one of the songs i like sing while puttering around my apartment the most and has always been and i think it's just because the the the lyrics are so jokey that they're wedged in my brain for it's a top to bottom showstopper like the first time you hear it you're just hit with like the

velocity of like seeing an amazing musical theater number which like there is no other feeling like that like when you see for the first time you're just like i want to hear that again immediately and you can't because there's two more hours of show there's no cd whatever and you just have to live with the song until you hear it again and then for people who love this movie to officially learn the lyrics to like break it down like for a kid or like a young person discovering what these lyrics mean like oftentimes you have to ask your parents like what is you know like like what is all about eve because it's like a reference in like a movie and they're like well it's this this this and so you really learn about life through these lyrics that and these references that happen in passing.

Aladdin has that too, right? Yeah, which Ashman, right? All that little referential stuff where you're like, as a kid, you're like, well, I get it's something. I get that this is something I want to know about. Yeah, and how comedy, how you just hear the inflection of comedy, even if the joke's not for you. You just still know that something's funny. comedy even if the joke's not for you like you just still know that something's funny and then the like and then truly learning about things that you wouldn't learn about in school but just like popular culture real things from these movies that like pass on this sensibility like something i

think about a lot tangent as a creator you know who's very intimidated by like tiktok burns through material intentionally like am i a font of creativity or do i have like a fix you know, who's very intimidated by like, TikTok burns through material intentionally. Like, am I a font of creativity or do I have like a fix? You know, and it's like, no, people, like kids will always respond to live comedy because they're being taught it in these little moments. Yeah. Like there's like a jazz cue in a Disney movie makes someone like hear La Vie en Rosa in real life and have an attachment to that?

Like, La Vie en Rosa, the song, is never going to die because it's used in these properties. Like, it's still being passed on. Yeah. And, like, Bugs Bunny teaches you vaudeville and shit. I mean, it's, like, all this stuff. There's, like, comedy weirdly—I mean, the weird self-referential element of comedy ends up functioning as like a history of itself, you know, like all comedy is influenced by. I should say all the influences that go into any work of comedy end up becoming weird sort of indoctrination tools into those different voices and sensibilities i mean it's just our shared history of like what we acknowledge to be either true in life so it's funny or to be

presented in a way that's like not quite like life which is like fun to watch and it's just like how we cope like it is it's i don't think it's ever going to go away because humor is one of the most universal things. Not everyone has been in love, but everyone has laughed, period. Not everyone has parents, but everyone has laughed, period. And so, yeah, I just love, I don't know, I feel like the comedy in the lyric writing, Zero to Hero is just such an amazing song. Those references and the alliteration and how specific they are to the singers as Black women, like using their natural vernacular

and patterns of speech and then to thinking of them as truly muses who hold the history and also the future, truly, of Hercules. And their genuine excitement for the character and sort of the double entendre of like, by telling a story of gods, they use godly music,

AKA gospel. Normally I hate when, when white composers lean on black musical idioms. Megan's idea, apparently. Yes. Yeah. Like I, cause like. Because normally it's a

very canned and artificial version of the spirit, but because I think it's so dramaturgically important as a way in of telling an epic story. It's storytelling music,

right? Telling a community story, telling a good news a gospel a literal gospel uh in terms of that framework it allows the music to blossom and then to keep like subverting that and and playing with like the contract of five female singers or like i won't say i'm in love just becomes you know like probably the most ron netzville specter of the references for me i think that's that i think that's the that's my favorite i mean that's just a a banana's good song i love that song i love how it's uh portrayed as well but it's just that's just a that's why i want to see this on broadway someday like i i want to see that i mean i would

like to see all of it obviously but like i would love to see that done to a crowd yeah just like an honest moment like when you when you're excited for an adaptation so you can like so that you can see someone just like deliver a killer song in front of an audience which is all the theater is versus like i want to see how they do the um what do they call the hydra hydra it's like the titans yeah it's gonna be um some some fabric and some lights honey like yeah who gives a shit you want to you want to see fucking krista rodriguez sing that shit with emotion yes with the girlies with the girlies singing and you want to hear her check the green you're in love it's like not clean see they're gonna be clean vocals at the same time and i also wanted to say before I forget

My wife uses the muses in this To teach her kids She's a teacher About the chorus Really? Yes That's cool And the muses, right?

Because if you're getting a bunch of You know, 13 year olds to read The Odyssey or whatever I feel like the chorus is something That is hard to summarize Or whatever Anyway I just wanna say Because you guys are talking so lovingly about this or whatever like i feel like the chorus is something that is hard to summarize or whatever anyway i just want to because you guys are talking so lovingly about this griff you're saying you're singing zero to hero and i feel like you like this movie less no i don't know i like the movie a lot

every time i watch i've spent the things i've seen this movie like three times in my life and i don't know why it was never in my rotation except maybe i was just like a year or two too old for it you know like i was 11 when it came out you're kind of starting to you know right like not just watch disney movies anymore right you know what i mean and like maybe that's the difference like i feel like hunchback was the last disney movie that i remember being like pumped to see in the theater and i remember seeing hercules and like being like oh that was remember being like pumped to see in the theater and i remember seeing hercules and like being like oh that was fun and like never thinking about it again and because it was light it wasn't trauma you were like hold on i'm not attached like literally to the trauma it

was too light for you you're like i see i want to also i just want to say i was like someone who was a 12 so i think I aged out but I also was just like this is like homework yeah you saw the ancient setting and you were like no nah that's the stuff I try to not do at like

at school I've heard of Hercules he's some old guy yeah it's like it's a book or something is this the exact is this the exact same year that hercules the legendary journeys the kevin sorbo show yes my background right now you have a background your background i believe is just of kevin sorbo the man it's just sorbo being intense serving looks that that show began in 1995 so it's already been running for a couple years

yeah so i feel like that stole some of their thunder i do think there was a little bit of disney fatigue as you said i think it's weird because it's like this movie in a way feels like such a, um, uh, an attempt to, uh, make a hairpin turn away from the increasing sort of self-serious stodginess that the, the increasingly dramatic Oscar thirsty films had had. But I think so many people were just off the train at this point that you couldn't get him back on. And then it's like, I feel like there's this movie and then Emperor's New Groove is three years later and Emperor's New Groove is like this, but without songs and just fucking comedy. And similarly, kind of underperformed in theaters, kind of got a shrug from critics and now has like a really positive reputation obviously right but

but i think people were like this isn't a disney movie like this isn't what a disney movie's supposed to feel like emperor's new groove tonally to me i don't know to be totally very i don't know it's giving me lauren vibes lauren michaels vibes it's got lauren vibes i mean david spade is involved it's got some lauren vibes is that is is that why i was like hmm this is going in a like a it's going in a straight direction it's got it's got david spade uh okay babe energy why am i saying okay babe that's dennis miller the other thing about emperors in a group griff is that it was going to be a self-serious epic and disney yes it into a comedy, which is a weird microcosm of that. Them being like, oh God, should we have to stop being prestige? Do we have to do something different?

That was also a Hail Mary pass to escape the film being canceled entirely. canceled entirely. Like, the self-serious version of the movie was such a disaster that they were like, give us a weekend to rewrite it and just turned it

into a parody of itself and, like, cut down the budget and then the film got made. Cut down. That film was, like, 75 minutes long. It's so short.

It's so short, right. Yeah, and it was made in, like, a year. I mean, everything about it is just, like, trying to... I think it's... You have Hercules, then you have, like...

I know it's not straight away, but you have Mulan and Tarzan, which zag back in the other direction and are bigger hits. Tarzan is like Hercules, but not funny. It's also a superhero story about a himbo, but I don't remember it being funny. It just forgot to be funny. I think it kind of sucks. And the Phil Collins music blows uh but it was a huge hit and then after that it's like emperor's new groove they're just doing fucking comedy it's not even a musical and then they do the back-to-back atlantis treasure planet and i was wondering when

atlantis came into all of this because totally you gotta go to atl. You gotta go. They do two back-to-back sci-fi boy adventure films with no songs, and both of them bomb so hard. And Treasure Planet is the one where they're like, we're canceling all future plans. No more hand-drawn movies. But also worth noting, of course, that Katzenberg is over DreamWorks at this point spooling up Prince of Egypt egypt like he's like

well i'm still gonna make you know these like big self-serious musical epics yeah uh over here he does uh road to el dorado right like he's trying to sort of keep the disney thing alive and failing i guess bad sin bad and then it's like shrek is like sort of the like accident off to the side that ends up fucking everything up. But this movie, I mean, Katzenberg must've started on this and then gone over to dream works during the development of this.

Right. I believe. Yeah. Cause you know, this thing they started, whatever, working on it in 93. Yeah.

Um, it, and that Musker and Clements come in and they're like, it should be a screwball comedy. Like, uh, bring that energy into the screenwriting that's uh they wanted they want to do a bunch of michael jordan style right like they want to parody like celebrity culture in the 90s uh and as we mentioned they read every ornery old guy in the world for phil and eventually hire danny over pasta susan egan uh who plays meg had to basically beg for this role because they were like no you're bell you can't

be meg you're you're you know sweet innocent bell you can't be flinty clever meg you know and so she had read for every single female lead in the Disney Renaissance and wouldn't get it. Would come close and wouldn't get it. And was begging them. Was playing Belle on Broadway at the time. Exactly. And was like, let me come in. You all close your eyes.

Let me record the dialogue. I'll sound like Barbara Stanwyck. Animate it. And then get back to me and tell me if it works. And they did that. And then like six months later, they were like, we looked at the animation test. It's good. You got the job.

She's great. She's so good. Tate Donovan falls into this weird category of, I feel like. Tate Donovan. But like Tony Goldwyn playing Tarzan. Like there's this era where it's just like Tom Hulse playing a hunchback of Notre Dame. Like you get someone who's like a known actor but isn't really a movie star is kind of a leading man who never became a leading man right not really like a himbo and he

is a real life him but remember when he was on friends he had like curly hair and he was dating jennifer anderson in real life and it was like oh is this like a guy we're gonna have to i love tate donovan i enjoy i deserve like i, I enjoy dad Tate Donovan, right? Like, I enjoy the OC. OC Tate Donovan is where we get peak Tate. Yeah. Tate really grows into it. He's a little lost in the 90s.

I like Kenny Lonergan, Tate Donovan on stage. Mm-hmm. But as a kid who was so movie obsessed, when I would see a movie I loved as much as Hercules and then ask my parents 5,000 questions because I wanted to know everything about it, I'd be like, who is Tate Donovan? And they'd be like, he's the star of Love Potion number nine. He sure is.

Like so often with these movies, if I liked a film and then I'd be like, Danny DeVito's funny. I got to watch Danny DeVito movies. You know, I'd be like, this is my new favorite actor, this voice. You really do? You find some people you like this way you do but tate donovan they were like there's no real path for you to go down as a tate donovan fan as an eight-year-old tate donovan fan there's not really a syllabus we can hand you stick around you know in 15 years this guy's gonna be given great you know supporting role like he's gonna

play managers and club owners it's gonna be a lot of fun he'll be on damages for a long time he'll be like the other guy on damages remember when he just kind of clung on for dear life on damages does no one want to talk to me about damages yeah that's that's you that's some you territory damages glenn close is my new best friend. I was in Montana. Sheila famously lives there. And yes, we did hang out. Oh, did you really? Absolutely.

Larry! There are 12 people in Montana. Like, yeah, we like truly ran into her in the corner. Wow. David is holding a, is this a cardboard sandie or is it a screener? It's a screener. I mean, if I had a cardboard standee of Hillbilly Elegy this fast, that would be impressive. I just want to make this very clear. David has his Zoom background on with the photo of like

the Titans on the vase. The Titans. I love how they're animated. They're fun. But because of the way that Zoom virtual backgrounds work, where they're trying to identify what the background is and what your face is, the DVD screener of Hillbilly Elegy David is holding up. It's cutting out the back. It looks like it's just Glenn. You're right. You're right.

Right. So it just looked like David was holding up a cardboard standee of Glenn Close and Amy Adams and Hillbilly Elegy, which he had on his desk. Mama, did you talk about hillbilly elegy when you when you hung with no we were castmates in a virtual benefit of angels in america love it uh this summer yes uh she played roy cone i played bullies um and so we we we chuckled about being castmates virtually. And yeah, we helped to move a chair.

Larry, side tangent here. You're an excellent on-camera actor as well, but you are such a live performer. You're one of those people who it is so infectious to watch your energy on stage and how much you clearly feed off the energy of an audience and work with it and everything. And you've done like a bunch of these fundraiser things recently. I mean, you had like a small part in the Ratatouille TikTok musical. Yes.

And you did the Angels in America thing. You've been doing a lot of these like live streamed, you know, web piecemeal kind of let's try to do the equivalent of a show sort of thing. Like, how are you dealing with the absence of live performance right now? Like the absence of that energy? I mean, it's like, I'm just really biding my time. And there's nothing to replace it. There's like nothing to do. It really is like, I have to submit to, it's the most vulnerable I've ever been in my life

because I don't get to air out my dirty laundry. Either as subtext or literal text. Right. That's why I asked. Cause it's just like, if you've had the honor of seeing you perform, your thought is like, oh, this guy lives on the stage like this is just i i rarely have seen someone this at home getting this much power from this and and giving this much power uh it would just be a lot it would be a lot of moments together

with people like together with the audience together with like fellow artists like and that is like it's just a true true true lack and uh i always say that like one of the deadliest things you can do in corona is sing in a group because of the droplets yes uh like you can't gather an audience like and so like it just has made me really like a true um movie reference avenger in terms of just like really wanting to have like a very, very like pro quarantine lifestyle, like trying to do as much as I can to encourage everyone to look out for the collective good so we can get back to that sooner.

And then when we go back, I am so excited. There's a vaccine now and I'm just gonna absolutely just like pump it it's gonna be so fantastic to like have a room full of people clapping again and laughing and it's gonna be so phenomenal

but right now I'm my own grip, I'm my own sound person and it fucking sucks it sucks, it sucks A, it's like I'm i no part of me ever wanted to be my own tech and b all the sort of half measure like uh uh sort of uh facsimile sort of of live performance shit ends up just making me miss live performance more than if i wasn't doing anything the amount of work that I've done with my skills

so that I strategically do not have to do tech. But again, it's a very, very humbling time. And fortunately, I feel like I'm getting better at the thing that we have to do now. I have a ring light, the most important element of all time i have this microphone like it's i i and honestly like for the tiktok ratatouille like tiktok acting is different babe like oh yeah don't even don't look at the camera and don't pick an eyeline you look at yourself that is weird i didn't think about that but that is

crucial to tiktok so they're looking like over there. Did you watch the TikTok Ratatouille, David? I did. Absolutely. So I'm not going to drag anyone or praise anyone. I'll be as vague about this as possible. But it is very interesting watching that thing, Larry, and seeing the different choices people make with regards to Eyeline. And some of them work much better than others. There's just like, if you use the platform, like to a certain degree, like you just understand like that certain,

and it could even be generational. I think, I think it is to a degree, but it was very interesting to watch like performances, super imposed next to each other side by side. And like one person is looking at cue cards one person is looking at themselves on camera one person is looking to the side pretending that they're looking at their co-star as someone who had to submit a sum total

of three lines to that operation like what they did like like, was like, like unbelievable, like truly like it. Like I like the organization. I mean, just some behind some BTS. Like I worked so hard on my three lights. If I had anything else, I would have been, you know, showing some. It's like on chopped. Like, don't make too many dishes. Okay.

It's also I mean, I want to make it clear. I'm not throwing shade at anybody. It was impressive what they put together what's interesting about it is watching the learning curve of these things in real time you know where it's just like people having to figure out what the language is of how do you do

a filmed musical where no one is in the same room and it's just trial and error David I think all your reasons why you didn't connect with Hercules make sense. I think I was just too old for it. I had seen Independence Day. You know what I mean?

I was just like, oh, I've only been seeing kids' movies. And when you're like 11 or whatever, suddenly you're like, whoa, there's a whole other world of movies. And I didn't own it on VHS. And I, whatever. It just was never.

But anytime I watch it, I've always had a fondness for it. I think it's very clever. I really like the animation style. I love James Woods, unfortunately. I've talked about this many times. We unfortunately have to talk about this. How he's one of my favorite actors. And he's like the worst person in the world.

And I don't want to say much more because i don't want him to sue me no but uh he's very funny in this and it's similar to like a robin williams thing where it's clearly a very ad-lib performance the animation feels like it's trying to keep up with him and there's like just a dynamism to that that's really cool and it's also trafficking so much in his persona as a movie star. That's the other thing with Robin Williams. The analogy is that it's like it's not just, oh, James Woods happens to be the voice of Hades. It's that this movie's characterization of Hades is he's a James Woods character. Yeah.

Yes. Weird to think that that was once a thing though that was like yeah yeah james wood he'll he'll give you a great character you know what i mean like sure he could be a star for you but also he could be a great sixth lead like that was his whole 90s vibe like he did a lot of six to play kind of a comic role yeah yeah it's weird. I keep talking about it. He's like, of course, like how incredible is he in The Virgin Suicides? Like a movie you forget he's in. Like, yeah, just a devastating performance.

Like, what the fuck happened to this guy? Yeah, he was an incredibly good actor and is an incredibly bad person. Yeah. It's just fascinating. But it's like, I don't know if I mean, he's been shitty for so long that whenever I last rewatched this movie, I'm sure my opinion of James Woods had already been totally tainted. But now it's so beyond the pale. And watching it, I was like, this character is so good. This performance is so good.

Just the animation acting on Hades is so impressive. Like his weird fingers. The design is cute. Theades is so impressive. Like his weird fingers. The design is cute. The design is so fun. It's so like magical, but he looks menacing. He looks terribly evil, but also slick.

Yeah. I mean, there's just the, the, the character animation in this movie is so fluid while the designs are so detailed and complex. Uh, I really think this film is,

is kind of maybe the most impressive of this era, just as a technical achievement. Um, but like I was telling you, we were talking off Mike David about how I had rewatched a bug's life recently, a movie I had not seen in a couple years. Another movie with a canceled villain. Yes. Right. And I was a little bit worried about watching a movie I had not seen in a couple years. Yes, another movie

with a canceled villain, yes. Right, and I was a little bit worried about watching a Bugs Life again because of the Kevin Spacey thing, and I was like, am I just not going to be able to get over it?

And the thing is, he's very good in that movie, playing a fucking horrific, monstrous creature who is very similar to Kevin Spacey in real life, and the character is not a Kevin Spacey archetype in the same way. It's just Kevin Spacey in real life. And the character is not a Kevin Spacey archetype

in the same way. It's just Kevin Spacey providing the voice of someone who's awful. So you're able to sort of transfer your contempt of the guy over to your contempt of this villain. But then Hercules gets into this zone of like, he almost looks like James Woods, you know? Yeah, no, it's true.

He does. I mean, sort of. He also has blue flame hair, no it's true he does i mean sort of i he also has blue flame hair but it's true he does and but it's like the animation is so like the way he lights up when he's angry yeah he's so clever as well and i don't know do you know the story about the casting on this um i think that i knew that it was Lithgow, right? Like that was the initial. Oh, no. Okay.

No, no. That's the one in between. Right. So DeVito was first priority. We got to get DeVito, right? And we talked about that whole rigmarole. And we enjoy Phil and he makes sense. Riptorn feels like that had to just be a very short walk

to get to that casting. At this point, he's in the pocket. He's on Larry Sanders. That's good. Hercules Tate Donovan feels like it was their lowest priority. Just get someone to do that at the end of the day. And then we already talked about all the hoops that

Meg had to jump through. Susan Egan. But also, you know, some of the little like, love Bobcat Goldthwait, obviously. Yeah, yeah. Matt Frewer. Right. Bobcat. Ohwait, obviously. Yeah, yeah, Matt Frewer, right. Bobcat. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

This is almost like an early Bobcat reclamation project, because he's kind of, like, a little bit washed up at this point. He's a little wilderness-y. You're right, you're right. Bobcat, this is good for me to isolate. I watched, it is a whoopi goldberg movie uh a burglar burglar and bobcat goldwade is in that movie and wow behavior that's that's the thing though but he had one of those arcs where in the 80s everyone's like can't get enough of this fucking guy this bobcat energy's out of control and then around 93 everyone, everyone's like, fuck Bobcat.

Throw him in a furnace. We never want to hear that guy again. So this movie is coming like four or five years after Bobcat sort of become Pauly Shore in people's eyes. Yeah, Bobcat grateful for this. Yeah, grateful for this role as you sing, Larry. Grateful for this role, as you sing, Larry. But as you are trying to set up Griffin, DeVito is the one who suggests the casting of Hades that I believe you're about to talk about.

Yes, because they couldn't solve what's the energy for Hades. Hades should be the dynamic, genie-style character. What's the energy? And DeVito said, you should get Nicholson. What would be funny is if the Lord of the Underworld is Nicholson and you have it be the Nicholson persona, whatever. So he is such good friends with Nicholson, he throws it over to Nicholson. What would be funny is if the Lord of the Underworld is Nicholson and you have it be the Nicholson persona and whatever. So he is such good friends with Nicholson. He throws it over to Nicholson and Nicholson's like, I'd love to do that. Sounds great. Nicholson comes to the table and he goes, here's the deal. I want $15 million. I respect it. I respect it. And 50% of all Hades

merchandise sold because that was his Joker deal. Sounds like a good start to bargaining to me if I'm Nicholson. They wanted him so badly for Batman that he negotiated that deal where it was like 5 million, but he got 50% of any merchandise that had the Joker's face on it. And he made the most money that any actor made for a movie. And that record stood for like 20 years. So he just saw dollar signs here and was like okay that's the deal it's you're giving me 10 to 15 million dollars 50 of all hades dolls and they were like cool cool cool here's our counter 500 000 which which

you know jesus i mean like they're like look just here's 500 grand i mean disney or cheapskates okay i'm not saying that that's a good offer but But they're like, it's a week of work. What the fuck? Just come do it. And also Robin Williams had gotten $75,000 for playing the genie. Rude. Rude, but it's like 15 is so outside of the range of what they even consider doing at this point. Then you get like, I mean, you know, fucking four years later, five years later, whatever, Mike Myers gets $20 million for Shrek 2.

Like then it starts to become the era of if it's a sequel to an animated movie and you cast a big famous person for the first one, they get fucking $20 million the second time. But at this point in time, no one's going to get $15 million for doing the villain role in an animated film. Right. But so then they hire Lithgow. They spend nine months trying to get him to work for the role i don't really know what that means exactly but they finally fire him and they bring in ron silver they bring in spacey they bring in phil hartman you know a lot of the the era's wise asses like scary wise asses rod steiger i can't imagine that james coburn and a bunch of others you know million people james woods is had this is his it's his whole character like he comes

up with the interpretation like he it's it's his whole idea i mean when you say you don't understand what they meant by lithgow not working i think it's just they didn't fucking know what the character was right i mean and it had a take. He didn't have a take. Right. And Woods came in and just came up with this whole thing and gifted this movie with his toxic energy and for once found a positive receptacle for it rather than Twitter. Yeah. I mean, I feel like we've talked about everything. What are we missing here? I mean, we should go through the basic plot of it, I feel like.

I mean, we've talked about the broad strokes, but you have, as Larry said, this sort of like, I mean, this is another reason why this movie is in my wheelhouse. And it's just a thing I've liked ever since I was a kid. But just fucking bathhouse humor always gets to me. Anything where you inflate shit with pomp and circumstance and then deflate it immediately and cut it down and like slap it down with some silly shit. I also just like that this movie has like full-on Looney Tunes. Like if Hercules shakes someone's hand, then their fingers are crushed and red and pulsating.

It has so many like boing, like weird sound effects and shit. But this movie has so much world building to do at the beginning because like Greek mythology is so much more convoluted than most of the worlds that they've set these films in. You have to set up like the rule of the gods, Hercules coming down, Hades ruling the underworld, half of his immortality getting drained. You know like there there's a lot of sort of larger shit to set up which the film does very quickly and does mostly through the the greek chorus the goddesses which is uh yeah so smart it's the use of them is brilliant the right the plotting whatever like yeah they have to sort of get around so he's just the son of gods and he

he almost drinks the mortality juice but not all of it that that's that's all fine i i this is not a movie where the plot matters to me as much like that the final you know showdown with hades is not maybe as operatic you know as so that's still pretty good when he dies yeah thank you but you know yeah it's good but like i I'm more like this movie for the characterization of Meg, the weird humor, the cleverness of the lyrics, all that stuff. But I also think, you know, Hercules as a character. I mean, there were, like, two fucking recent Hercules movies that no one even remembers existing. True. Even though one of them started the

biggest movie star, The Rock. But I think the character Hercules, despite a lot of himbo's wanting to play the role because of how it looks, I think it often gets foiled by how kind of inherently boring the character is because he's just too perfect. Like he's just too kind of strong in every single sense. And I do, I do genuinely like, I'm just a sucker for this shit, but I just, it works for me to make Hercules this like, oh, awkward gangly tripping over himself, knocking over a fucking Coliseum. Like I like that. It doesn't know how to handle his power shit and

it means that once phil does train him he does become a fucking hero he still got that insecure dude energy which i like you know it's like he still carries with him yeah he's hot he's like hot and sweet because he's kind but his body's good and uh yeah feel like T.D.'s like not wanting to train him we love that just like no good opening act arc good tension to lead off with no I don't want to do this also just a little shout out to the

fates when she holds the eyeball like those three crones we just love crone work the fates rule great crone work in this movie. I don't know who the crone wrangler was, but it must have been one of the best. Amazing.

They were legitimately scary. The fucking world building this movie has to do, it has to set up that shit with the fates and the future, the omen, the strings of life, the well of souls, all that shit before Hercules even is born. It's all true. I just think the movie does a pretty good job of getting through a lot of shit

and setting up both the world of Greek mythology, I mean, the Disney-fied version of Greek mythology. That's the thing. Yeah, it's simple. Yeah, no, it's good. But more importantly, setting up its own internal story stakes, which I think it does well. Like, everyone has very clear

wants and drives phil wanting to have his kid you know i feel like it is buoyant energy throughout which i love as a viewer and i feel like as a departure from the gloom and doom prestige i i don't know i just it just feels like such a i don't know it feels like it feels like a well-balanced movie it feels like actually just like enough like humor and heart like the balance it feels it feels like they it feels like they knew that they had to work to get that uh ashman quota and i feel like they they like it was was good. That's good. I struggle with heart until Meg shows up, and then I'm all in on that front. And then you get that little jolt just when you need to,

and so I feel like that is, like, a compliment for the pacing, because, like, these movies, like, they're just long. That's honestly, like, my qualm, is that an animated Disney movie is just as long as, like, a real person movie. And I personally can't. I can't. I was like, no, I've already seen it.

I've seen the animation. It's cute. And then like the boss, it's always when like the boss, I think that every Disney movie should end right before the boss. Before they get to the boss level, you're saying? Yeah, we've seen them do enough. Now we just have to bring in, like, a Gorgon. Right.

Aladdin's 90 minutes. This movie is 90 minutes, right? Little Mermaid is less than 90 minutes. Aladdin gets turned into a live-action movie. Somehow it's two hours, 15 minutes long. Like, they did that to Beauty and the Beast. I don't know what... They'll do this, Griff, I assume, one day.

Isn't the threat... Wasn't the thing announced that it was going to be the russo brothers doing it with alexander sarsgaard which sounds like the exact wrong combination yes it did i mean it was very vague uh and they were the russo brothers were very much like it'll be really different it won't be a literal but that's my thing i'm just like are they just gonna make some new live action i'm like right oh so you're just doing another hercules movie like who cares who fucking gives a shit but that having been said i don't know how you translate this film to a live action movie the energy is so specific to animation and could only parallel to the stage

it need whimsy it needs whimsy yeah the movie would have to live action movie would have to suck out the whimsy to be uh literal because these disney remakes are like they literally are coming out so hyper literal like yes when the anime like with like how they looked at beauty the beast i was like ew and then aladdin i was like, ew. And then Aladdin. I was like, what? It was like, so you did a live action just so you could do CGI people

and CGI green screen sets? Like, you're animating the humans and you're animating the set. And such a big part of this movie is just their faces and their bodies moving at a speed and in shapes that human bodies cannot.

Truly. Right. And they instead, right, as you're saying, with the live action, they just go grounded. They go... The Lion King?

Not me paying $15, $30 to watch a National Geographic, okay? No, who gives a shit? I was like, what? This is National Geographic without the verisimilitude stop another one that is somehow like 45 minutes longer yes like even though it adds nothing right you're like this this is somehow word for word remake with 40 minutes added on there's no clear it was the

word for word remake for me it was okay it was where word for word remake with the exception of one scene. And sometimes it was in my stand up act where I went to go see Lion King alone in IMAX. I was the only person in the theater, live action. And there's a scene where a piece of dung rolls across the savannah for five minutes. Rafiki of true to life Mandrill picks a feather out of the doo-doo and says, it is time. Like, it is so unbelievable.

I forgot that scene existed. The dung beetle scene? Yes, it is truly a bug shit scene. It is in IMAX. Yes. Demented. Can I say,

I think I like a lot about this movie and why I prefer it to Aladdin. It is just my taste. It is just my preference. It is my tempo. I'm not saying it's better. I know people will be angry. But a thing I like about this

is I kind of agree with Larry on the perfunctory of the final boss battle in these movies where usually the villain takes some new form and the stakes are just like fucking whatever the guy's gonna win how do they throw him off a cliff or down a pit or whatever like how's the guy gonna get foiled i like that this one the stakes are less about him defeating hades and more about the knot of him needing to prove himself and Meg needing to get the curse lifted. Like, I'm more invested in the final test of this movie being Hercules sacrificing himself, jumping into the well of souls, being ready to die, having that prove his heroism, turning the string gold. Like, that stuff I like.

I think that's good plotting. That stuff is all great. I just don't like you bringing Aladdin in because Aladdin's ending is the best because Jafar turns the palace into a horny capital mayhem and then Aladdin slides on a jewel and tricks him into becoming a genie.

It rules. There's no one to be thrown into a pit. It's the best. The genie's thick, yeah. And the genie is thick yeah and the genie is so thick aladdin's is pretty good actually you get that visual that like gold visual so good and just just how horny everything is like that's what i love it's like jafar isn't like i'm evil now he's like what what's happening now is this is a horny space that's what's happened to agrabah that's

what i am bringing in as as sultan i'm just saying i prefer this this is just myny space. That's what's happened to Agrabah. That's what I am bringing in as Sultan. I'm just saying I prefer this. This is just my taste. That's fine. It's fine. It's all good. Just don't cast aspersions on Aladdin's ending. I'm sticking up for it.

I like that their kneecaps look like triangles. Yeah, it's great. We love that. It's fun. Yes, absolutely. Great kneecaps. Best kneecap. It won the academy award for kneecaps best supporting kneecaps yeah i'm trying to think if there are other things we should talk about in this film we hit all the songs that i like i i don't i don't like and this movie lacks a a sort of boring ballad like i like uh everything here like you know i there's there's not like a sort of plotting number the boring

song is i can go the distance which is the i want song and that's a better place to put the boring song early yeah exactly right you know it's moving it's moving the plot so that's okay it's actually a good song it's just i argue a key or two too low i believe because in the movie i will find my way i can go the distance and then michael bolton is actually i will find my way it's so good because in the movie ends, right where I belong. That's not rousing. Not after you've just heard Lilius White and LaChanze in three-part harmony. Find where I belong.

You want that. You know what I mean? And you just put the orchestra behind that. Did you know that Ricky Martin did a Spanish language version of Go the Distance? I did not.

But also, can fucking Larry play Hercules in the Disney remake? That was just... Jelani's gonna be amazing. Tag him in. That was the fucking audition. I like, like, obviously, like, growing up overweight, I was like, I am the hunchback, like, actually horrified to internalize. But then, of course, they cast the hunchback as, like, you know, he's all about being, being like conventionally unattractive and then they have uh muscle twinks play him on stage and it's like okay so uh you like make it like like it's like so really you gotta just have a like you

know a little bit of curvature and hit the b-flat and y'all choose him larry uh you and i were tweeting about this some months back but our our shared frustration at the uh casting too many hunks as seymour krelborn see it just is it so it's because they keep moving the line so first they say you can't play the romantic leads because you don't look like them and then when the structurally and texturally they're not supposed to have those attributes yeah then they still cast him so what can i play okay because it's a curveball it's like oh they're doing something different you don't want to see something no like literally the industry just cannot go on without seeing like the most chiseled

like like outside of jonathan groff jonathan groff is perfection and then they were just starting to bring hooten and haller anybody up in there, to that. And I was like, oh. I was like, okay. Oh, okay. All right. Wow. Wow.

Like, not that I was, like, gunning to be Seymour. But you should be Seymour. I want to see you fucking play Seymour. It's Taron Egerton. Like, this is a Seymour. I know. That's what I'm saying. But when fucking theaters reopen, I want you playing Seymour off Broadway.

You should have a fucking run. Oh, my gosh. Honestly, I do love Seymour so much. Little Shop was my senior year show in high school. And my vindictive director, he cast me in the ensemble because I did not want to play the plant. I was like, I'm not going to just be backstage hooting and hollering the soul and that's my senior year i want to play the lead i like i like in my soul i feel much more close to someone who's like being overlooked and pining

for love than i do for being a man eating like like bloodthirsty like monster like they literally he was like literally a monster or your skip snip which is like which is if you know the musical it's one third it's one fifth of a role that like an actor normally plays yes so that's my like little shop trauma i will be good to see more i i admit i would be good you'd be great to see more you'd be great to see more i want to see it. It's also just frustrating to me. That's my favorite musical. And now it's just, it feels like every time they're like, can you believe the transformation?

This guy somehow hid his pecs long enough to play Seymour. Jake Gyllenhaal. He somehow fit these glasses on his face. I don't know how he did it. Gyllenhaal remained with bangs. What it says about like inner beauty is like so weird yeah like it's like it's like i don't know honestly it feels toxic like it makes it like weird like she should be with someone who was like energetically like matching her where like he has this like really inner like big inner thing but then like the world sees him with less value and

like she like is very coveted for how she looks but no one is looking at her inside if Seymour looks like Taron Edgerton then Audrey has already fucked Seymour right like that's the thing like it like it ruins the poetry of the connection and yeah I just feel like it's dramaturgically

unsound and honestly it's like it's it's vile. I agree. Hashtag Larry for Seymour. I love it. But yeah, the music. So there are some really amazing vocal moments.

And like, I can't, my voice is bad right now. It's truly tired. I can't do it. But like, it's when Roz Ryan in the second Muse breakdown, he had a plan to shake things up and that's the gospel. The way she opens the trap. Like these are, the vocals are insane. And that's the gospel.

You get like four big, like jump rope sign waves of shake. Truth. It's so good. Larry, how dare you share that bad voice on this podcast? We're going to have to cut that out. Everyone is turning it down. They're like, how?

Ouch. It's just so good. And A Star is Born is actually like one of the best songs. You just have to wait till the end. It's so good. And A Star is Born is actually one of the best songs. You just have to wait till the end. It's so good. I like the whole thing. I just think this movie is a whole lot of fun. And a lot of it is probably my contrarian nature that I like that it's the movie that's kind of thumbing its nose at everything that Disney had only had success doing up until this point.

But I just think it's a movie where, like, I don't know. It is free of self-seriousness in a way that gives it some more emotional potency in other areas because it is not treating itself as epic. I think it's the only Disney movie where a black woman stays in her human form for the entire time. Very true. Or maybe even black persons, like, say, like, there's, like, not even, I guess they turn

into stone for, like, they're in, like, a part of the vase, but they're always in human silhouette form. I was gonna say, that's more like they're depicted in different art forms, but they are always retaining their own body. Definitely human. That was huge for me. I think it's why it absolutely stands out to me. And I like,

I like, I just feel like, oh, and this is for another tangent for Susan Egan fans. There's a show on Disney plus it's called encore and it's hosted by Kristen Bell, but don't worry, she's not in it a lot.

And so basically she introduces a group of high, of like high school alums who go back to their literal high school to do their high school play. And there's an episode where they do Beauty and the Beast and Susan Egan who play Bell on Broadway. And also Meg in Hercules voiceover. She does like a side coaching of an actress as Bell singing the song Home. And it's amazing. It's like you will cry. So Susan Egan fans, Disney Encore and Disney Plus Encore. I will watch that.

I just think like a personal preference thing. But like Phil getting the that's Phil's boy moment at the end of the movie really kind of gets to me. I just think that's such a nice, little, quiet, understated little arc they give him. Without drawing it out too much.

I want to share, because I found a larger sort of explanation of the marketing blitz I was remembering. They did a thing for five months when this movie was coming out, starting in February before it came out in the summer, called Disney's Hercules Mega Mall Tour. They went to 20 malls and essentially built a theme park inside each mall. They had 11 attractions, a multimedia stage show, a carousel themed to Baby Pegasus, a carnival with Hercules booths, and an animation workshop where they sent animators mall to mall

to instruct kids how to draw. Then they did a Hercules parade in Times Square and aired it live on the Disney Channel in the middle of the summer like it was the Macy's parade with Lauren Hutton, Harvey Keitel, Andy Garcia, Barbara Walters, Michael Bolton, Mary Lou Henner, and Olympic athletes, which is a real potpourri of people who exist. Ed Koch, who was, I guess, no longer president, publicly criticized the fact that I'm sorry. Sorry. Was no longer mayor publicly criticized the fact that Giuliani had handed over the city to Disney to that degree. It became like a huge thing.

Yeah. A hundred members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians used the occasion to strike for a new contract from Disney ABC complained. I think the mayor gave away the city to Disneyland. It was that moment. And 5,000 businesses and residents who felt unusually eerie upon being asked to dim their lights as the parade passed.

At the end of the parade, there was a private party where they rented out all of Chelsea Piers and had Susan Egan singing songs live on the Hudson River with fireworks. This is the moment where everyone's like, fuck Disney.

Fuck them. Too much. And Giuliani handing the city over to Disney was seen as this sort of like, oh my God, New York is dead. It was one of those many moments that people pronounce New York dead. I just think all of that

factored into this film's slightly more muted response, which is it made like 99 million dollars as larry said it made like 230 something worldwide 250 worldwide it did fine but the the it was it was a downward slope it was the first one not to crack 100 in a while lion king was like the third highest grossing film of all time at this point. It was a drop-off. It was, and I think it just didn't have as big a tale that they did. They did a

direct-to-video prequel, of course. They did an animated series, I believe. They cancelled the straight-to-video Hercules 2 because there's a story, Sylvain Chaumet, director of Triplets of belleville talks about that he was one of the main people on hercules too and they canceled it because hercules wasn't

popular enough and he that was sort of his what am i doing with my life moment i should make a movie about french triplets about old french ladies one of them has a club foot and a vacuum cleaner and the dog on a bicycle or whatever great movie but um the the prequel movie is this thing that disney would do if the film wasn't successful enough to actually make a direct-to-video sequel they would take the first three episodes of the tv show they already planned and release those right right so that's there's a hercules prequel movie that is just three episodes of a tv show and then there was a tv show that aired for a couple years we should do the box office game

though as we're now talking about the box office game and once again griffin i'm just checking with you but i'm sure you agree we should do the the wide yes right not the new amsterdam theater giuliani blesses hercules gives him the key to the city weekend uh this is it's so it's opening number two essentially it's june 27th 1997 okay it opens at number two uh-huh 21 million dollars what's your question no i was trying to think like big summer movies of 1997 but men in black is obviously july 4th it's big willie weekend correct not yet men in black has not yet come out uh the lost world jurassic park has just fallen out of the right because that was like memorial day that's what i'm trying to think i'm like those those are the

two big movies of the summer in my memory 97 is lost world and men in black so what is running the table in between those two? So number one, it's new this week. It's a movie for grownups. It's an action movie. It's a great movie. It's a lot of fun. It's got the kind of irreverent energy

of a Hercules, but much, much more grown up. Is it Con Air? It's not Con Air, but that is number five. And you are in the right ballpark. It's Face Off. It's Face Off. I knew it was one or the other. Both in the top five, and you are in the right ballpark. It's Face Off. It's Face Off.

I knew it was one or the other. Both in the top five, though. Those Cage movies came out within like fucking two weeks of each other. It's crazy, really. Yeah. It is. It's very silly.

But yes, they're both in the top five. But I think Con Air is the Hercules of Bruckheimer movies. I... Yeah, sure. I mean, I vastly prefer Face Off as a Cage experience, con airs you know it's got there's a lot to love there I I prefer con air but I would argue that uh face off is kind of the Aladdin so that tracks you prefer con well we'll talk about that one

day that's that's very interesting okay number three Griffin though we have to talk about it is is the the one you're forgetting the flop big movie of 1997. And, you know, flop is, you know, it's made $75 million in two weeks. It's doing okay. Batman and Robin, right? Yes, exactly. Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin. So, I mean, you talk about having seen Independence Day the year before this kind of putting you on the other side of Disney movies.

Penance Day the year before this kind of putting you on the other side of Disney movies. My parents were so overprotective that like Lost World and Batman and Robin, those two movies this summer were like the first times I felt like I got to see a quote unquote adult blockbuster. And both of those movies are notorious for being kiddie down. So I was still like I I was, everyone was fucking playing to me. I was so ready for Hercules because I was like,

oh, grown up movies are exactly the same as kids movies. Little girls do gymnastics and punch raptors. Batman has ice skates. I never have to grow up. Number four,

a great movie. Romantic comedy. One of my favorites. A summer romantic comedy romantic comedy one of my favorites a summer romantic comedy that's one of your favorites it's not my best friend's wedding right it is it is my best friend's wedding you got it right in one i always thought that was a fall release for some reason but something was telling me like a fall movie but no it came out in june wow uh Yeah, yeah. It came out June 20th. It came out a week before. This is a good top five. You got Lost World.

You got, all right, Speed 2, another bomb sequel, number seven. You got Liar Liar, Austin Powers, and then, of course, the biggest movie of them all, Gone Fishing. Of course. Pesci and Glover. J.J. Abrams. That's right. Wait, so when does Austin Powers come out? Does it come out in April or May?

Austin Powers comes out May 2nd, right at the top of May. So it really is hanging in there. It's hanging in there. I think that was part of why it got a sequel, right? Yeah. It had a good VHS run or whatever. But the VHS, yeah, it broke like every VHS record. But it's also impressive that

it's still in the top 10 almost two months later awesome powers uh those were the days griffin uh yeah watch tv you'd see commercials for movies you'd be excited to see the movie i yeah i mean i miss i miss that i also miss the thing that awesome powers is so emblematic of which is something accidentally becoming a franchise. Like something that had no designs. It was not planned on a spreadsheet to have different revenue streams and to be able to be a four quadrant thing. It was some bizarre passion project from a guy who had kind of had a flop that then became a major franchise. Mike Myers, baby. Just like with Shrek. Yeah. See? When you make

it from the heart, it can blow up. You make it from the heart. Just like Love Guru. It never fails. As long as it comes from the heart, like the Love Guru, it never fails. And you know the most famous movie to come from two people's hearts. Which one?

Treasure. Oh, Treasure Planet. Which one? Treasure. Oh, Treasure Planet. That's what's next on Blank Check. Thank you for setting us up. What a perfect setup. Larry, thank you so much for being on the show. That was a perfect setup. You're a prince and a king. A prince and a king!

And a lord. I don't know. How many different titles can I bestow upon you? The Duke of Hastings. I look forward to your Bridgerton series. Is there anything you want to plug? I know you always tell people to listen to Strange Loop on Spotify. Yes, you can listen to me sing that score on Spotify. And you can follow me at Larry Owens Live, wherever my platforms are not deactivated. I understand if it is a thing you can not talk about, but is there any possibility of

Strange Loop coming back on stage in some capacity on the other side of this? Absolutely. Everyone take your vaccines and social distance. Great. Because that's what I want to see. Larry was fucking unbelievable in that show, he won the Drama Desk Award The show won the Pulitzer, it's an incredible performance And I hope people get to see it at large

This podcast has only won Obies, we don't have any drama desks We have zero drama desks Also people should watch Larry's Drama Desk acceptance speech No, don't watch that It's really good No, it's so bad, I honestly think I've archived it Larry, I think it's really good no it's so bad I honestly think I've archived

it Larry I think it's so good you can watch me on high maintenance on HBO great on high maintenance let's see man episode 5 of Dash and Lily Christmas is over I got cut from search party so you can't watch me on that and

yeah I won the drama desk the Lucille Lortel, and the Obie. And you, the Triple Crown! Yes, hat trick, baby. Incredible performance, incredible show. Thank you so much for being here. Larry, I look forward to seeing you live on stage again. It is truly one of the things I keep in my mind as like, that's a thing to look forward to in the world.

Oh my gosh. Being able to go to a bar, being able to see Larry Owens live, all these things I miss. Staples of New York culture. Oh my gosh. Folks, thank you so much for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thanks to Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our artwork and the great American novel, Lee Montgomery, for our theme song.

Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. Go to our Shopify page for some real nerdy merch. Tune in next week, as David said, and as Larry so perfectly set up, Treasure Planet. We're going treasure hunting. We're going to space. A first time watch for you and I have not seen it

since it was in theaters. Bingo. Very excited to revisit it. I mean, I got the same attitude as Larry of, I just, I want that movie

to be an unsung masterpiece. I want to watch it and go, no one gives this movie credit. They were right. Time will catch up. I'm hoping to. Looking for a gem here. Diamond in the rough,

if you will. A diamond in the rough. And you can go to our Patreon, of course, Blank Check Special Features to hear us do commentaries on the Star Trek movies, which are my cold watches.

Oh, hell yeah. Oh, God. I'm so excited to do that. David, I'll show you off screen, but I've been buying a lot of Star Trek action figures off of eBay. And I also got a box

set of everything. I'm fully in the tank now for Trek. Hell yeah. I'm all in. Folks, thanks again. And as always, Larry, can you please sing any line you choose from Hercules?

Oh yeah. Bless my soul. Hercules on a roll. Her's another week at every Greek and Venian bull. Bless my soul. Herc was on a roll. Herc's another week at every Greek and Viennese. What up, bro? Herc, you stop the show. Point them at a monster and you're talking SRO.