Blank Check with Griffin & David - Poetic Justice with Jourdain Searles

Episode Date: May 16, 2021

Jourdain Searles (Bad Romance Pod) joins The Two Friends to discuss “Poetic Justice” - a film that is NOT about Janet Jackson teaching a poetry class, contrary to Griffin’s assumption. The episode also features a delightful Billy Zane tangent and includes probably the most Maya Angelou poetry of any Blank Check installment yet. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

🎵 Blackjack with Griffin and David 🎵 🎵 Blackjack 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 Blackjack 🎵 Alone lying, thinking last night how to find my soul a home where water is not thirsty and bread loaf is not stone. I came up with one thing, and I don't believe I'm wrong. That nobody, but nobody, can podcast out here alone. Alone all alone.

Nobody, but nobody, can podcast out here alone. There are some millionaires with money they can't use. Their wives run around like banshees. Their children sing the blues. They've got expensive doctors to cure their hearts of stone. But nobody, no nobody, can podcast out here alone.

Now if you listen closely, I'll tell you what I know. Storm clouds are gathering. The wind is gonna blow. The race of man is suffering. And I can hear the moan. Because nobody, but nobody, can podcast out here alone. All alone. Nobody, but nobody, can podcast out here alone. I just feel like we're all in this kind of mellow mood now. We're just like, all right, yeah, all right. That's the effect of Maya. I posted my virtual background for today as Maya Angelou teaching the word M with Elmo. Sure.

And I just have such a Pavlovian response to her because of how much she was on Sesame Street in the early 90s, where like any celebrity who appeared on Sesame Street that much, i still find relaxing when they pop up in things i watch as an adult that makes total sense right she's a very early 90s figure obviously a you know existed for far longer than that as a major figure but yet you know i think of the inauguration of bill clinton i think this movie i think you know like yeah

sesame street sure the 90s were sort of when she got elevated to like national treasure a book of secrets you know when she was no but she was i feel like at that point it's like okay you've been you've been an important cultural figure for this long we're now treating you like uh a pillar of our very society. It is just funny that this is like her first movie appearance in 20 years. Sure. I guess I hadn't thought about that. Like move on screen appearance. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But she had done like, she does movies after this. She had done stuff in the seventies, but this is like a couple of things, a big deal. She's in roots. Yeah.

For her to be in this and also to write the poems in this it is such a flex for a a filmmaker under the age of 25 for a second movie going like oh yeah and by the way Maya Angelou wrote additional material for me I just think it speaks to just how uh unique his position was going into his second movie which is the thing I want to talk about a little bit on this episode of Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. David, I'm David. Wow. I tried to get it so quickly. I forgot to say I'm.

Uh-huh. Because people have been clowning on you. They've been clowning on you for being slow on the uptake saying, and I'm David. And so instead, this time you were so over eager that you didn't even throw in the, and I'm, you just went David. I'm really losing it. That's clearly, I'm just like, David'm David. And so instead, this time you were so overeager that you didn't even throw in the and I'm. You just went David. I'm really losing it. That's clearly I'm just like, David, David, I'm David. Well, I don't understand why. And frankly, you have no excuse. I find your behavior abhorrent.

This is a podcast about filmographies. 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 bounce baby. And this is a miniseries on the films of John Singleton. This is his second film, Poetic Justice. This miniseries is called Pods in the Cast. And joining us again for the third time from the Bad Romance podcast, film critic, comedian, Jordane Searles. Jordane, thank you so much for being back.

Happy to be back. This is what you you called that you wanted this one a while ago. I gave you like a list of a couple miniseries ahead. And the two you sparked to were A New Leaf and Poetic Justice. Yes, that's right. You were you were you were deciding between those two yes new leaf great i mean i assume you're a fan yeah i love a new leaf yeah it's interesting that i chose this movie because i i don't love it this is a more flawed movie yes right than the leaf yeah i like this movie but it's you know it is it is no unambiguous classic first of all i like this movie a lot i'm a big fan of this movie

i had never seen it before wait you had never seen it before i had never not only i never seen it before i had a completely incorrect perception of what this movie was oh why did you did you think of it like like in relation to the drake song what was going on do you think it was like more about poetry like like she was going to go to like a poetry competition or something i for some reason up until when i put this movie on yesterday thought this was a movie about a poetry teacher i thought this was a movie about a poetry class were you sort of merging this and higher learning his like the his two adjacent movies where it's like yes it said at school i guess

i must have but i but i know that like higher learning is more of like a campus violence movie well i mean i do feel like if you if you look at the poster of poetic justice, if it being it being a teacher would totally make sense. Her arms are folded. She looks like she's not going to. Yeah, exactly. And also the 90s were the peak. This is the early 90s that the teacher movie is everywhere. There's so many movies about teachers inspiring people.

But I think I knew that Maya Angelou wrote the poems. I knew that it was Tupac and Janet Jackson. And I knew the poster and I just extrapolated, I guess. Oh, I bet this is a classroom movie about her teaching poetry to people. And then I was watching it going like, man, it's taking a really long time. They're still in the mail truck. What's going on? Yeah. Well, like 30 minutes and i looked it up and i was like oh i just i am watching the wrong movie uh relative to what i thought but um i

like this movie a lot yeah uh jordaine so you're you're kind of fascinated with it more than anything what what is your sort of relationship to this movie and I guess to John Singleton overall that made this one jump out to you first? I mean, I've seen this movie a lot. You know, it's one of those movies that I don't even know if it was a it's very hard to tell what was on BET and like what I'm just imagining was on BET because, you know, everybody agrees that Baby Boy was on BET every single day for the duration of our lives. But like otherwise, it's very hard to remember like what else. Like I want to say that I watched this a lot on BET, but it also just might have been cable. I've just I've seen it a lot because, you know, whenever there are like black movies,

especially in the 90s that were about any kind of romance, I would watch all of them trying to see which ones I like and which ones I didn't like. And I don't really think I've ever liked this one, but I kept watching it. And I guess I am here to try to figure out why. It is also just such a fascinating second movie in that way. just such a fascinating second movie in that way i was sort of queuing up where it's like when you're a director who is that much of an explosive like cultural phenomenon movie right out of the gate a lot of people crumble under that pressure of like now i'm expected to make my my great follow-up right they they fall into like the magnificent Ambersons trap. And somehow their ambitions get too large

or they lose control of the movie or whatever it is. And this feels like very strategically him saying like, I'm going to choose to make a movie that is not quote unquote important. You know? Like I'm very much choosing to make a different type of movie and to try to cast off the expectations that every time I'm going to rattle society like boys in

the hood did. Also, he made a very male movie boys in the hood obviously is, and he's like, I'm going to do a movie with a female protagonist. And yeah, I guess, I guess this is not as,

I mean, boys in the hood is a very confrontational, like let's, let's talk about the issues movie and I guess this is not that but this is not like you know completely it's a contemporary movie set in contemporary times that's like you know has some issues at the forefront

but yeah it's a little different I guess this is my bigger point is that like I feel like a lot of other filmmakers in his position would have made higher learning or Rosewood second. Right. Higher learning does kind of feel like the followup movie, right? Where he's like, I'm going to, I'm going to tackle so many things at once. Right. How do you feel about higher learning, Dardane?

I do not like it. I mean, it's a, I think higher learning is a more is is a a failure is it you know like a huge huge swings that that mostly don't connect not to preview my take on higher learning yeah yeah higher learning i mean i haven't seen it in a long time but uh yeah i remember just being like this is weird i don't remember exactly why it was. It also just feels like a kind of like a, like a lesser version of school days, except, you know, in, in higher learning, it's like, you know, the racial stuff is like more expansive in terms of all of the conflicts. I don't know. It doesn't really. I don't know. Now I want to watch it again but i feel like as soon as i do i'm gonna regret it school days is funny and it's got all this sort of genre blending and obviously it's said that uh you know historically black college where it's

like higher learning is it just it's so serious it's very serious yeah and so like that's it's and it can't really swerve out of serious because it's got so much to talk about. But look, that's higher learning. I don't know why I'm bringing up so much higher learning on the top of the poetic justice episode. But I agree with you, Griffin, that that feels like movie number two. I was just looking at the reviews of this movie while I was watching it and was very surprised by how mixed they were and how like disappointed critics seem to be. And I, of course, am talking about primarily white critics who were writing for major outlets in the 90s. And all of them are like,

what is this? This is not what we expected from the Boys in the Hood guy. Like they seem disappointed that he's not making another movie that's like grabbing them by the collar you know that's so strange to me because i feel like this is a companion movie to boys in the hood in a lot of ways yes but but it's like it's an interesting it's that thing i mean you you quoted someone else saying this david recently but the like every director's movie is a response to their last movie in some way and this is him not falling into the trap of I just need to go bigger. It's like I need to make the complimentary movie, you know, I need to flip to the other side of what I was sort of doing in Boys in the Hood. But I think that's an interesting artistic choice as opposed to him making the kind of obvious career choice of,

As opposed to him making the kind of obvious career choice of, you know, like, make your epic now. I also think that was him consciously being like, I'm like 25. Everyone's eyes are on me. I need to set up a template for me to be able to experiment and make different kinds of things without people expecting every time that it's going to be like a primal scream you know look i mean it's a very following up boys in the hood is just that's like a curse thing it's a poison chalice like you know like they're you're not going to satisfy it the hype is very big you got your oscar nomination especially right the sort of critical community is just it's not even they're not going to have their knives out they're just like you said they're

just going to it's it's the classic second album thing they will have very high expectations i think going with an intimate movie that's a romance that's you know basically set in one location for about like a huge chunk of the movie like in a moving location but is a very smart zag yeah and i think this movie had a long afterlife like you're saying today this i this is definitely a cable movie maybe it was i it was all it was this movie was always it's partly also just obviously janet and tupac like you know especially tupac like the fact that he's in so few movies i feel like all his movies kind of play a lot but like this is just the whole legacy of this movie is is a few years after its release not probably like its opening weekend can i just like sort of as a as a comparison point right so i i won't read this full. I'll just sort of go from like the

modern ones, most recent. But here are other people who got a Best Director Academy Award nomination for their first movie, right? Examining what their second movies were, okay? Because it's like there's a pattern of a couple different things that people fall into. And I think what Singleton did here is strategically, in terms of the long term, the smartest thing someone in his position can do, which is just immediately shake off the expectations of needing to outdo the first movie by saying, I'm not even trying to do that. Right. Yeah. Ben Zeitlin just gets absolutely caught.

Right. Like takes eight years, makes a movie that doesn't exist. He sure does. OK. makes a movie that doesn't exist. He sure does. Okay. Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton sort of tries to do the same thing as this, where he's like, now I'm going to do like a smaller sort of romance, comedy, caper. Duplicity. Are you gaming me? Right. But I'm like strategically not trying to do the same movie again. And not going for an Oscar or whatever. Right. Which I think is what Singleton's doing here as well. Like making a movie with a lot of integrity but not trying to make a prestige play in the same kind of way bennett miller capote

like absolutely overcome with the pressure takes like seven years to make another film total oscar bait and the oscars are like okay we'll pay attention but they're also like she but takes so long it turns down so many things ends up signing to a movie that someone else got fired off of you know oh no right he made money ball before fox catchers fuck i'm sorry money ball's a great follow-up yeah good job ben and miller yes but but took a while uh uh rob marshall chicago does the obvious thing which is like do memoirs of a geisha next go huge adapt the biggest thing, get the biggest people. Bomb.

Sam Mendes' American Beauty is kind of the weird combination of all of them, where he's trying to do like an Oscar play and a summer blockbuster with the biggest movie star at the same time. And it's a genre exercise. Mm-hmm. A hit, I feel like was, critics were kind of disappointed. Yeah, critics had their knives out at the time. Right. What film is this knives out at the time.

Right. What film is this? Road to Perdition. Oh, yeah. That's a fine movie. It's OK. Yeah. I like that movie.

I'm a huge fan of that movie, but it is Griffin wild to think about that. Like Sam Mendes and he won Best Picture with this movie. So that's even more, you know uh even bigger hype to deal with but right that he's like yeah i'm working with tom hanks okay buddy i'm doing a gangster movie oh okay but it's coming out in the summer like that that's the thing that would never happen no they would never put that movie out in the summer right everything about that movie is weird but it's also just like hanks paul newman spielberg everyone was like absolutely this is the guy right uh spike jones just sort of doubles down right like from being john malkovich adaptation that actually works uh costner takes fucking seven years and then does the postman

yeah you're gonna want to deliver mail right i, those are like the examples from the 90s and on, you know? I just think it's like Singleton made this very choice, which is like, I'm going to build a movie around a movie star. Or rather, I'm going to build a movie around a superstar. Yeah, not a movie star. Where I will get the press buzz from making her a movie star. the press buzz from making her a movie star. And I saw this like MTV segment, like an MTV news segment on YouTube the other day as I've been watching stuff to prep for this,

where they went onto the set of Poetic Justice. And it was wild the way it was framed as, can you believe that Tupac and Janet Jackson are doing a John Singleton movie? Yeah, just like, why would they do that? Or is it crazy that he got them? That it was like, this is big for them as much as it was big for him. I can buy that with Tupac.

I don't know if I buy that with Janet, though. Like, she was so huge, right? By 93, like, she's been around forever. But that there was an air of legitimacy to it let's yeah sure sure right because she had turned down so many movies at this point in time jan jackson of course had been in a lot of sitcoms and tv shows growing up hadn't done a movie period was constantly being wooed to try to do like musical films didn't do them and the idea of just like it was more that the mtv news segment was just like holy shit this feels like a cultural

moment you have these three people on the same set this is going to be major there just i think was an unreasonable amount of expectation put on this movie for a movie that is designed to be a pretty intimate small character study and maya angelou too yeah maya angelou tupac, Janet Jackson, you know, John Singleton, like, you know, I can imagine the expectations for it would be pretty high. I mean, not necessarily in the same way like it's going to culturally rock the world, but in the sense that this this has got to be something really special. Totally. Yeah. totally yeah i also think it is having only seen this movie one time 24 hours ago very much the kind of movie that feels like it would only gain power from watching it on cable over and over again because there's its best qualities are just it's sort of like lived in observational intimacy it has acts so you can kind of it like a classic cable movie you can be like oh like what part of

it oh this is like the beauty shop or this is the they're getting in the mail truck like i don't know i think that's crucial to a rewatchable movie yeah there's i mean there's like the barbecue scene and you know i i when i was watching it again on yesterday i was like oh i know that the barbecue scene is coming and i know that maya going to be in this scene. And the only scene actually in this movie that I always forget is the opening scene. I, I remember everything else, but every single time I turn it on, I'm just like, well, what is Billy Zane doing there? Every single fucking time.

I do love opening on Billy Zane and, and wait, who is Lori Petty, right? The opening is so fascinating because this feels like him directly addressing the expectations that everyone right right right it's like to start with the columbia pictures logo logo and rhapsody and blue playing right and then you have his like once upon a time in south central la again but this time with that music and then you cut indoors to billy zane and laurie petty in this overwrought modern noir film yeah it's it's very funny billy's where's billy zane why is he the guy to be your joke movie star at this point i want to look this up it's also odd that's laurie petty because laurie petty was such a weird movie star it's not like she was like conventional miss

hollywood i god i love i I love Lori Petty so much. But then, you know, I'm a tank girl defender. I love tank girl. I think that it's incredible. OK, Ben's getting happy again. I mean, Tank Girl is actually kind of another cable movie. I feel like there was maybe just a spell there. I kept catching it on cable.

Yeah. But yeah, that movie that like I mean, I had such a crush on Tank Girl I was like I want to date a Tank Girl Tank Girl is amazing like what is better than a girl on a tank like it's very hard to think of something better than that and Tom Waits is in the desert with you too

in that moment come on yeah no it's yeah it's so good yeah but with Billy Zane is so interesting because i've been re-watching well i'm not re-watching i've been watching a lot of his movies because like people are just like oh he's only been in like five movies that's actually not true he just did a lot of indie movies and did not do a lot of hollywood movies and he's actually really great and at the same time i was watching a bunch of alec baldwin movies

and i decided to make the very explosive take that billy zane should have alec baldwin's career and i'd be i'd be interested to see it i mean billy zane is so beautiful especially back then alec baldwin and i look i know he's retired from public life so i don't want to mock someone who's trying to be private yeah of course he's retired he doesn't want to he's trying to stay out of the spotlight so hard i mean like and alec baldwin was very was we've talked about it you know in the 80s he was very handsome but i don't think of him as as pretty as billy zane billy zane he was a little more sure virile yes billy zane is like yeah beautiful around here this is when he's in orlando it's when he's in tombstone as the like dandy actor like he would he would swoop into a movie as like kind of

like this sort of flashy kind of uh exciting uh handsome guy and i guess the phantom is it's it's all supposed to be building to the phantom which i enjoy i i think the phantom is fun uh i haven't seen it since i was like 12 years old but and then you know titanic i mean the man's in titanic i assume you could just sort of dine out on that forever he's so good in titanic but there is something there that dooms his like a-list possibilities i don't know why yeah well right i mean dead calm is the movie where everyone i guess said like oh this guy's supposed to be a movie star right that's the one yes that's amazing in that like yeah he's incredible in that yeah i feel like that was the movie where everyone went like oh this is inevitable it's a matter of time.

Then he does like the smaller films like Orlando. And then you're right. It was like by the time you get to Poetic Justice, it's been four years since Dead Calm. And it almost feels like he's been avoiding putting on a superhero costume. You know, he's been avoiding making the Phantom. He is good in the Phantom. Slam evil. Slam evil. You know the story about Phantom, right? Have I said this before on the podcast? I think you have. Is it that the writer wrote it as a sort of satirical movie?

Joe Dante was supposed to make it and he wrote it as a satire and they fired him. And he still retained a producer credit, but he wasn't involved day to day. And he wrote it as a satire and they fired him and he still retained a producer credit but he wasn't involved day to day and he went to the premiere and was like oh no they didn't rewrite the script but they didn't get that it was a comedy they just shot it all straight yeah right but he was just sitting there going like that was a joke that that line is structured like a joke what are you doing Billy Zane should have Alec Baldwin's career so I'm just trying to think of like I I you know what I I had a full argument for this at the time and I feel like in the middle of the night I'm gonna wake up and I'm

gonna remember what the exact argument was I'm not I like I like Alec Baldwin's early career but I still am just intrigued by like Billy Zane. Like we're making him Jack Ryan. Like obviously he'd be good in like Miami blues. He'd probably be fun in Glen, Gary, Glen Ross. Yeah.

Yes. Like I'm trying to think of those like early. And then of course, like it's funny. Cause like Alec Baldwin does the shadow, which is his, the phantom. They both did briefly go like oh okay

30s newsreel energy that's what we should do right i will i think it's just because they both have this like classic energy but it's not like george clooney kind of eight list thing it's kind of this other it kind of this other kind of weirder territory and somehow alec baldwin was able to parlay that into a career with uh an appeal that i personally don't understand but well i mean once again he's retired from public life we shouldn't talk about too much but david what are you gonna say well when zane is in titanic you're like oh my god like this guy is the most dialed in to the you know old-fashioned like you know vaudevillian thing you know everyone in that movie is on a different energy which is one reason that movie i think works but it is crazy like some people like he's doing like he's so fucking funny

but people clowned on him at the time i just remember people clowning on that performance because but but they're not recognizing how canny it is that he gets what movie he's in more than anyone else everything in titanic was clowned upon worshipped you know took taken apart put back together i mean that movie was but yes you're right i mean he if you think that movie is silly and over the top you're going to point to the embodiment yes right yeah but i mean i think that all rules i put the coat on her when he says that that's my favorite part yeah uh looking at things he did right after titanic it feels like another moment where he like deliberately avoided becoming like the hollywood

villain du jour you know where he he probably turned down a lot of easy pathways and then zoolander which for me is a feather in his cap that he's like billy zane right that he's not precious enough about his image maybe kind of fucked him in a way well because it makes it seem like he's retired right it's like he's what is he just chilling now doing cameos i don't know it makes him seem like richard grieco and night at the roxbury that's the problem what he should have done probably at that point and i forgot of course he's on twin peaks as well shout out to john justin's wheeler but um i always forget that yeah yeah right i do too and he's in the first two back to the future movies of course well as match he's one of the one of the right one of the bullies but he probably should have done a tv show and he didn't um because tv i guess in their late 90s is still you know

it's not as easy to sort of hop over and maybe that he did a lot of tv movies but like why didn't he have some show where he's like a hot lawyer that just kind of feels easy i want to say two things before we move out of our 10 minute billy zane corner segment on our poetic justice episode yeah let's get out of zane who's in this movie for one minute four shots yeah maybe two right uh just two quick things about zane uh david i know both you and i re-watched all of community recently he's got that one episode appearance on community where he's unbelievable in the last season where he is so fucking funny that makes you wonder why he hasn't had a alec baldwin style comedic resurgence because it feels like that guy is ready to just show up with a big bushy beard and be a bizarre comedic figure he's the honda guy if people don't remember he is so fucking good in that episode

secondly uh if anyone did not listen to our episode, of course, on Don John, which was a couple episodes before this, Sean Clements shares an amazing story about Billy Zane, which also is why I think we're taking to him so strongly now because we're like in that sphere of is Billy Zane a genius? Did we do wrong by him culturally? Jordaine, I will repeat the story for you off mic. Yeah, it's a good story. But anyway. Billy Zane comes off great in this story. Yes, it's a story that co-signs your argument that perhaps

Billy Zane should not only have been Alec Baldwin, but should have been anointed the president of Hollywood. You have this fake out movie, and then you go to the drive in theater. Yeah, this date with Janet Jackson and Q-Tip. Yes.

Which, I mean, once again, I'm watching this and I think this movie is about a teacher, right? I think this is the tragic back. I know. I just it was sometime after, I guess, like like maybe 25 minutes and I realized I was wrong. But at this point, I assume this is the tragic backstory and it's going to cut ahead 10 years to her in a classroom on the first day of school or something. Right. overly dramatic opening to a movie that isn't really trafficking in the same level of drama, even compared to like when Tupac finds out that his cousin is dead, is handled very differently than this sequence, which is so operatic, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, that's very quiet. The later scene, right? This is the close up on the gun and her screaming and the glass breaking. And yes, it feels it's sort of out of break it's not it's not like anything else in the movie in a way yeah but it's also like here's like everyone is still reeling from the death of ricky right and he's sort of like i'm gonna give you the ricky death right up at the top so the entire movie isn't the audience going when is someone gonna get shot it's in some way it feels like maybe that was his thought process yeah that's that's perhaps i don't know the the q-tip thing is so interesting because like later when you learn about the rest of her backstory

that her grandma died recently and that her mom and that her mom also died her mom committed suicide right yeah yeah committed suicide it's like she already has so much tragedy so to also have the q-tip thing is like okay so this woman is surrounded by death like right also the q-tip thing doesn't really come up again in the same way that the stuff you're talking about i mean i guess it comes up but like it's casting this paul over the movie i it's funny also just because like q-tip's kind of a dick in this scene and then he gets shot which is weird and like i don't think the movie needs it in terms of like the stuff it explores later with her character like you said she's got plenty worth exploring that she lays out there but

maybe you're right griff that it's sort of like him challenging the audience of like is this what you expect from me i don't know and especially starting with this fake bullshit hollywood movie you know i mean i just feel like he's at the very beginning trying to address the baggage that everyone's going to come into his second movie with to some degree. And you also have just like the way the sequence is set up with him going to get the food from the concession stand. And then you have that very weird like split diopter shot that isn't even trying to look like it's the same image. It's sort of like a split screen in terms of composition, but with the split diopter effect between it and the way that's just sort of like just building and building intention, them talking about the guy.

It just feels like he's, you know, coming to the table saying, I know all eyes are on me right now and this is what you expect. And I'm all eyes are on me right now. And this is what you expect. And I'm going to knock this movie right out at the beginning, right? First, I'm going to show you the parody of the type of movie I'm not going to make, which I also think is sort of a statement of, I was reading, I know I'm going on like tangents off of tangents off of tangents here, but Cam Collins' piece when Singleton died was really good.

I've been reading a lot of his – in memoriam, the pieces written about Singleton after he died, especially because that death was so surprising to people that I feel like it got these really great tributes because people had to suddenly do real digging as opposed to it being someone who they were like, oh, I've already come to terms with the fact that this guy might never make a movie again. He's 86, right? It felt like he was sort of pulled so arbitrarily and early. And Kim Con said this thing about how so much of John Singleton's identity as a filmmaker is tied to just his very first moment ever, which is the Columbia logo at the beginning of Boys in the Hood with the screaming over it, right? And that John Singleton was very aware of the fact that he was not an independent filmmaker, that he was making big Hollywood studio movies, and that he was not trying to be esoteric. He was trying to wield the responsibility of being at the sort of center of the culture in a lot of ways. And this whole opening feels to me like him just kind of wrestling with all of that. Yeah. Right. Yeah, definitely.

But then Q-tip gets shot, Jant Jackson screams, and we go to a notebook. Her name's Justice, and she writes poetry. She is a poetic justice, one could argue. And he's already mentioned that that's what he loves most about her is her poetry. Oh, high school poetry, man. Were you a high school poet, Ben? I mean, I was mad as hell. And I wrote it down.

What was your tolerance level in terms of like, what kind of schedule were you on? Were you thinking you were going to continue to take it or were you planning to not take it anymore? Wait, what? That's a mad as hell joke. That was a crazy joke, Griffin. It was. I mean, talk about a sophomore slump. It might be better that I didn't know what you meant.

Yeah, it's fine yeah um i guess i guess the idea with justice is that she's just got this kind of arrested life right like she's like post this she's just kind of like sort of trying to figure herself out that's this is a romance but that's kind of the major plot of the movie right like she's just kind of still in a bit of a daze she's got her friends but she's kind of just kind of guarded now right yeah put the put the shutters up right right she lives in her grandmother's house with her cat and she sort of just is like you know her, her life is just her job. I was feeling so it's interesting because she's supposed to be, you know, like a loner and sad and everything. But I was honestly watching the movie just like, man, I wish I was living in this house.

And then she opened the and I love the cat and then she opens the closet. It's just all these black clothes. And I was just like, yes, girl, same. I was just like this. clothes and i was just like yes girl same i was just like this this whole thing where she's just like supposed to be like bitter and it's just like go out there and like meet a man i was just like no like this is fine like i i wish that's what i was doing her job is fun i just like that the first 20 20 30 minutes of this movie are mostly set in the the hair salon it's mostly people hanging out and chatting it's just got a good energy it's funny uh and it's the that it's that's not related to the rest of the movie we're

gonna we're then we're gonna go on a trip but like this is all good this is all something i just could watch on cable 10 times which is i do feel like poetic justice's ultimate legacy it's it's fun slice of life stuff and it's i'm paraphrasing cam collins again here but it's sort of like the argument that singleton was trying to make so badly at this point in his career which is like the culture i'm representing is the mainstream you know it is just a mainstream America that Hollywood does not represent. I think so much of the design of this movie is making something that is just about a couple of characters and a couple of days, you know, and saying, like, there's sort of no bigger point behind this. There are individual points and scenes. The statement is the intimacy, if that makes sense. Yeah, I would say so. Yeah. I mean,

the only overarching theme that I got, and I think I'm getting it more as I'm older, is this idea that, you know, in this time, you know, the late 80s and early 90s and, you know, everything after that, there's this thing with like the older generation watching the younger generation uh of black um men and women and everyone else just being like they don't know what they're doing and they don't know how to be together anymore and like that I mean I feel like that's very much in the Maya Angelou part where it's just like there's there's this thing where it's just like everybody's having sex and like nobody's committing and like I feel like that's that's an an old kind of idea that you could put with like you know any group of people white people whatever but I feel like this movie is kind of like dealing with the kind of like gulf between the kind of lives that the aunties lived

and the kind of lives that the kids are living right now and so much of it is about like um like dealing with emotions and uh like kind of like learning how to commit to each other you know and it's like I don't know it's kind of reminds me of like uh that in the terms of themes it you ever watch that Boondocks episode where Martin Luther King comes back and he's like watching BET. And he's just like he's just like so upset and like like that is that is kind of like the perspective that I see of this movie. Just like Maya Angelou, just like looking at these kids and it's like, what are you doing? What is this? But then it's also so funny because he is so young it's not like he's commenting on a generation from a distance he's not at a remove you know the right the fact that there were so few black

filmmakers in Hollywood period but right now you also have this guy he's 25 years old he's making a movie about people who are practically his age like there's just a lot of filmmakers doing that it's fucking hard to make a goddamn studio movie like yeah is he's i don't think of him like you know you think of the sort of so many hollywood movies of the past that mostly are not directed by black people are so moralistic and so you know in search of a fix or in search of a like here's what needs to happen and that like poetic justice is not like that but which is great like and john singleton in general is not like boys in the hood things happen that are bad and it's you know trying to talk about stuff but it also just kind of ends with like this is fucked up like yeah we're sad like you know this it's and and we know nothing's

gonna change we assume that nothing is gonna change yeah yeah it's not trying to really teach you a lesson which i which i i like about boys in the hood and i that is a thing that i like about this movie is that it's not trying to teach you a lesson but it's kind of like a young man trying to be like man like i don't because I feel like so much of it is like Tupac not being in touch with his emotions and not being able to you know just be real with Janet and it's also but there's also the um Regina King and and Joe Torre which that that's a whole thing where it's like they can't they also can't be real with each other either and there's this thing where it's like man why can't we talk to each other it just seems like to be the through line why can't we

just say what we're feeling and be honest with each other and yeah he doesn't really come up with an explanation for that he just kind of explores it which i like like yeah and like right joe tory and regina um regina king are like performing you know very their relationship very loudly and like you know they're they're bigger than life and it's whereas right like tupac and janet jackson are very afraid to admit anything sort of you know sensitive or vulnerable to each other and like they they have a lot of their their guard is up and that put them in a fucking mail truck drive them across california like let's see what happens let's rattle it around well i was seeing this thing do you know what his original pitch was for this movie

no was it like she's like a teacher maybe who like teaches kids valuable lesson about poetry no that was my pitch for this movie before seeing it um this is so this is like talking about what second movie he didn't make okay i'm just gonna read this verbatim john singleton's original idea for poetic justice was to do an army film because he was upset that a friend of his was sent to fight in the Persian Gulf. It was going to be about a young GI's wife named Justice who would marry a guy who was recruited from South Central Los Angeles and then would go off to live on an army base in Japan or the Philippines or Northwest. The man would spend all his money on his truck and not in supporting his family. He would eventually get mad at one of the CEOs and

end up punching him out, which then gets him sent to jail justice would send him home as well he's locked up she'd have babies but with no money the idea of justice working at a hair salon came from her originally doing the hair of other army wise for extra money singleton ended up giving up the army idea since he'd have to do extensive research living on an army base well he also he like he came up with a movie he cut 90 of the movie away and was like but what about this person who works at a hair salon and is kind of bummed out right which speaks to just like why don't i just simplify this and just make a movie about a person which i also think was him saying like you know boys in the hood did not have a ton of substantive screen time for women

there are not many women uh movies being made about african-american women period let me correct that i have the power to do that and also knowing that if he cast a megastar they would probably be pretty hands-off with whatever he wanted to do in the film yeah it's i i do appreciate i mean i have a very contingent relationship and i write about it a lot in my reviews and things about like what happens when a black male director is like, well, I'm going to try to understand women. Going to turn the camera over here. Yeah. And it's like I've always just like I respect it. I respect that they care. You know, I love my brothers but then I'm always just like a lot of the uh the conclusions that they come to

for why black women are the way that they are are really fucking weird and I think that that's my issue with this movie that's my underlining issue with this movie but I do appreciate that he tries and there are some things like the thing about justice like as a character is that she has she totally has reasons like totally valid reasons for being the way that she is and then everybody around her is just like you know like why don't you like smile more and why don't you wear nicer clothes and like why don't you like why don't you like date a boy and she's just like i just i just want to be left alone man and the and the movie just won't leave her alone well she's unfortunately the star of it so the movie keeps being like hey what's up man your movie's called poetic justice your justice did you know that like how are you doing

yeah i mean you you said it jordaine like the movie, it does ultimately end up being about Tupac coming to terms with his own emotions, right? And learning how to be like a more emotionally intimate person. He is ostensibly the character who has the arc in this movie. Like she is the protagonist. But as much as the movie keeps on saying, like, come on, shake it up. She doesn't really have to change. I mean, she is fundamentally right. You know, she's pretty much the correct person in every single scene, you know, whereas he is the guy who really has to change.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's something we've talked about. I mean, it's like he doesn't want to. Maybe that's why you have this overly dramatic opening. Like he doesn't want to load her character up with flaws and issues. So it's like, well, things there are terrible things have with flaws and issues so it's like well things there are terrible things have happened to her and that's why she's in a funk whereas right like tupac is also just kind of a pretty electrifying performer i'm a fairly yeah big fan of his screen

presence in general like so i guess he's also you're also just kind of like i want to know what's up with this guy but i do think the movie especially in the latter half is kind of just like more into more interested by him and especially the ending like you know like i always sign up with the idea that the the the ending is the conceit of the movie right whatever a filmmaker chooses to end on is pretty much the ultimate statement of what the movie was about up until that point if the ending doesn't feel like it fits with the rest of the movie it's probably a failing of how the movie was set up until that point. If the ending doesn't feel like it fits with the rest of the movie, it's probably a failing of how the movie was set up. But the ending of this movie is the accomplishment of him coming into the salon to apologize to her, to introduce her to his daughter. Like, he's the one who's making the move, you know?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's the Jerry Maguire. Like, he's the one who's like, I'm here, I'm ready. I guess this is Singleton's only movie with a female lead. I mean, Higher Learning is just like a big ensemble. That would be the closest. Sort of Jennifer Connelly, Christy Swanson. But, like, that's it. Like, yeah, it's true that he never really does this again.

He didn't make enough movies. Like, you know, maybe. Sure. But, yes, it's a mostly male driven uber and and jordaine to like your point this is the exact point in time where hollywood should have been letting julie dash make this movie i'm not saying this movie in particular but her version of this right like boys in the hood and uh dars of the dust are both 91 yeah they are yeah and she famously struggles to get anything made she does i mean daughters of the dust is a more obviously

boys in the hood is a freaking hollywood movie it's part of the reason it just like smashed things and daughters of dust is incredible but obviously it's a you know he's innately a more commercial mainstream filmmaker than her yes yes but i mean julie dash has certainly said like it's a you know he's innately a more commercial mainstream filmmaker than her yes yes but i mean julie dash has certainly said like it's been fucking impossible to make to get any funding for anything like she's well the kind of like the black women directors of the 90s you know you uh there's cheryl denier uh julie dash uh cassie lemons and leslie harris yeah leslie harris and you know the well it's weird the weird thing about leslie harris is that she made the exact kind of movie that should have gotten her a career similar to john singleton's and it just didn't she's the wildest one she

like that movie just another girl on the irt is not a perfect movie, but it is very much like a bombastic, fun, interesting movie that like should have broken through. And like, you know, I guess, I mean, obviously it was discussed. It's a big debut. Like if it had come out now, it would be a huge deal. But for some reason at the time, it really wasn't. But in terms of like the other three, you know, they were doing more kind of like art housey work. And so I think that that's part of it because, you know, like, you know, I mean, I've talked, I've talked in on other places and other videos

and things about like how hard it was for me to find a copy of the Watermelon Woman and how I was like chasing down a VHS of it for years that I never got. I only watched it for the first time, I think like four years ago. So that was a thing, like a lot of those movies weren't really easy to find. But Cheryl Dunn's another perfect example of that, where it's like, you know, she feels like she should have been able to transition more easily. You know, like it's usually easier for people to move up in terms of comedy directors. And it takes her years to get to make another movie. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yeah. Cyril Dunier, her thing is like, yeah, but that's the thing. Like the 90s in terms of like how we think about Black women it's almost totally shaped by you know like john singleton spike lee and all of these things and also the players club which is ice cubes magnum opus like uh i'm so glad that he didn't if he i kind of wish ice cube had made a bunch of other movies just so that i could come on blank check to specifically talk about how insane the players club is like it does not that is one of the wildest movies that i've ever seen just nothing nothing about it makes sense but yeah it's like it's interesting unambiguous hit too i mean yeah he could have made more movies he he he he sure could martin lawrence could have made more movies too yeah

and cube kept like writing and producing movies it feels like he just chose to never direct again yeah i mean which i am you know i'm okay i'm i'm fine like i'll be i'll be okay okay um but yeah so I don't know like I don't want to like go do like a whole treatise on it but like it when you watch poetic justice you know especially the the parts with the the women in the hair salon like it's very clear that John Singleton is like he's taking stuff that he's heard women say and putting them in their mouths and like that's interesting but there's also like for me a sense that a sense of like there's something missing in the way that they talk to each other like I like I wish it was better but it's it's something that like really can't be registered I can't explain what it is, but that makes the beauty shop not pop as much as

I want it to. Can I throw out a micro theory? The other thing here is I feel like with movies like this, right? It's like if the filmmaker is going outside of the immediate purview of their understanding of the world, right? You know, a very male director trying to make a movie with a female lead. You have to sort of really be able to trust your collaborators to give you the insight that you do not organically have. And the actor that he is putting at the center of the film and kind of trusting as a key creative collaborator has also been so disproportionately famous since she was a child, you know? And he said, like, that one of the things that made Janet Jackson want to do this movie was she has always longed to have a normal life.

That, like, part of the appeal for this movie for her was her getting to play act, not being a megastar by the time she was 13, you know? not being a megastar by the time she was 13, you know? But it does mean that perhaps as she's giving insight into the movie, you know, it's like he's throwing out things that he's heard people say, and she's throwing out things that she's heard people say, because her perspective is also so different from the everyday life of these characters. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's like a sense, there's like a sense of they're going for,

they're going for authenticity. And it doesn't, it doesn't exactly work. Although like, I will say one of my favorite exchanges in the salon is at the end where there are those two women and they're staring at each other and then they start getting into conflict

they're gonna fight and then one was just like just remember every single time you kiss your man you're also like tasting my pussy I believe that that shit is incredible like that's a great scene the second major pussy breath joke in the movie right yeah it's sort of

bookended yeah that's I wish that so much like I would love just like a beauty salon movie where it's just that where it's just like people just like kind of what beauty shop should have been to barbershop of beauty shop was too like cartoony that is my exact problem with you because i love the barbershop movies and i think barbershop 3 in which it is a combo barbershop beauty shop does a better job of it than beauty shop does oh yeah totally when they when they brought nikki minaj in there yeah and regina hall and everything that's much better me. I just like the idea of a beauty shop, a beauty shop movie. And once it gets into the mail truck, it is what a journey. What a journey we go on.

It's odd. Yeah, because it's like, I mean, that seems to be to some degree his big conceit is like, I want to make two for the road, right? Like, I want to make this road romance picture. I want to make this ups and downs of a relationship kind of movie confined to a vehicle with two couples. You know, one real couple, one potential couple. It's also just wild to consider.

I know that Ice Cube is in Boys in the Hood and Lawrence Fishburne is in it, but like, Boys in the Hood has these actors who he's like plucking out of nowhere. They're making screen debuts. He's making this movie about, like, hey, this is, you know, this is the life you don't know about. Like, this is real life. And here he is going for, again, like, you know, these are real people.

They got real problems. And he's casting these two huge, huge stars, like, beyond acting. Like, they're just, I mean, Janet especially is justet especially is just like a globe dominating force at this point like she's someone who like sells out you know a worldwide tour she's one of the most famous people on the planet and to a certain degree there's a target on her back by casting her in this movie because there's that thing that often happens especially with female superstars where it's like oh you want to do this too now right sure sure sure all right janna yeah well you can't you want yeah tupac i guess is about to be a mega star like he's a star he's a big name but like i i feel like his peak is more than in the next couple years right like

that's when he whatever crosses over i mean like when you know he does the sort of his cornier albums which i i still enjoy uh me too because i'm a big sap i was always more of a tupac kid because he's emotional he's corny um but he's he's so good uh as an act i just i always like tupac like in in any movie in the whatever the eight movies he made tupac is great in this movie he's so great he's so good he's only been in juice before this which he's also great in juice is like a big energy performance like that's just like but like that he's he's so yeah he's just magnetic in this movie. He wrote this for Ice Cube explicitly. He wrote it for Ice Cube and Janet Jackson.

There are all these stories of the other actresses like Jada Pinkett who were like vying for this role so hard. And Singleton said, we never did casting. I wrote it for Janet Jackson. It was my explicit intent. I think he knew her a little bit because, I mean, he had done the Remember the Time video already at this point. So he he was in with Michael and everything. um he said like we never had auditions and those other actresses who like have been reported were up for the role literally just showed up at the studio when the movie was announced because there were so few roles for black actresses

that the announcement of a movie was like Jada Pinkett just showing up on the lot and being like, can I get an audition? But Jan Jackson was the only person. He writes it for Ice Cube. Ice Cube turns it down, A, because he, I think, has already signed on to do Trespass at that point. And B, he said, I don't think I can pull off being a romantic lead. I don't think I can do it. I think he was totally right. Yeah, I don't know. Cause there's like a, because you know, all of like Tupac's angry scenes, you know, he's got this like intense vulnerability.

Whereas like, I feel like ice cube would just be intense. Yeah. Right. That's what he's really good at. Right. At this point in time, like,

and probably that's, that's usually what he can give you intensity presence but i don't yeah i don't i don't know what he would look like in this movie i i'd be interested to see you know him going in a more vulnerable direction i guess i feel like he would be terrifying in this movie i just think he would suck i mean i i think he turned it down he turned down the john singleton follow- up movie like he probably knew like, I don't think this is going to work for me. I know. But he was just like it was, you know, just like that. I'm not going to be able to pull that off. People won't see me that way.

I don't think I can do it. You know, and it's like we were talking so much about Ice Cube in the last episode. But like, you know, he's become a very effective movie star. But part of his effectiveness is I think he's very aware of what his range is. And he's been able to translate that over to different genres and different types of characters. But he's very smart about not overreaching. And Tupac, like you watch Ice Cube when he comes on screen, Boys in the Hood, and you go, wow, this guy is a movie star. Like immediately, you know, this guy might not be a finely polished actor, but he's just engaging to watch. Whereas Tupac comes on screen in this movie and you're like, he's an actor.

You know, he just immediately has that presence on screen. His interaction, his chemistry with everyone. He's so good at listening to people. And he's also just got those incredible eyes you know he was he was so hot so fucking hot he's like one of the top five hottest people of the 90s or whatever right like just i'm inclined to agree like i'm just like i don't know if many people had a better face than him he like at the, at the end, when God, who, who is the actress? I feel that because there are so many like, you know,

black woman character actresses in this movie. And I want to know, I think it's, I think it's Tyra Farrell. Who's the one who talks about how he has a, how he has a cute nose. And it is, she does. Yeah. It's also like, he's got a cute everything the guy just looks good like that that scene him entering in and and flirting you're just like yup absolutely you're the star of this movie of course you are oh my god and his name being lucky like come on like just he's he has such romantic lead energy i just remember do, do you guys remember, you know,

do you remember the movie Notorious, the Notorious B.I.G. biopic? Anthony Mackie plays Tupac in that movie. And Anthony Mackie is a very handsome man. You know, like, no offense to his looks, but like, it's just like everyone else in that movie, like, you know, Jamal willard the guy playing you know biggie like obviously he like he looks like him he's imitating him he's going for a whole thing but like when anthony mackie shows up as tupac you're like now get the fuck out of here

this is not even close and when they make the tupac biopic they cast a guy who had never been in a movie before who just looked so much like him because they were like people aren't going to be able to get over it his bone structure was so much a part of his like iconography you just need to get that face man remember when that movie came out they didn't even screen it for critics yeah and it made a bunch of money and people were like is this good and everyone was like no no it's not. No, I didn't see it. But I do remember like poor, poor, poor, poor Cat Graham. Poor Cat Graham. Just having to like deal with Jada Pinkett being so upset about not being consulted about the movie. It's like Cat Graham is just a nice actress who is on Vampire Diaries.

She took a job she didn't know. Yeah, right. Just not not fair. Not fair. Not her fault. Yeah, right. Just not fair. Not fair. Not her fault. It was just such a weird phenomenon. It was like that movie came out and it was like, wait, did anyone announce this? It's like, no, it came out of nowhere.

It was very unceremonious because I remember when the lead up to Notorious, I knew that Notorious was coming. It was huge. Notorious was like a big deal coming out. Yeah. It was like came out Martin Luther King Day weekend. notorious was like a big deal coming out yeah it was like came out martin luther king day weekend it was like months of hype we got this guy you won't believe he sounds like biggie like all that shit and then like straight out of compton it's like

oh my god like ice cube son is playing ice cube and he you're gonna you know that's gonna blow your mind like there was that was one of the most watched trailers on youtube like everyone knew that thing was gonna be a fucking hit i remember i guess we had maybe done like a saturday record or something but i remember being in a bagel shop with you when one of us got like saw on our phone the opening day numbers for all eyes on me and we're just like flummoxed but it was like it made sense that people wanted to see the movie it just came out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly and no one ever talks about it it's just funny to think about i think it was like made by some white i feel like it was made by some white guy like it was made by

benny boone was it yeah it was directed by benny boone that's like the weirdest thing about it are you fucking kidding really i am not kidding you. Yeah. But it definitely, it had that kind of energy. It feels like I directed that movie. Like, that's the problem. I feel like that's why no one was excited for it. Because it looked like.

I just assumed it was some white guy. Like, I don't know why I thought that. Yes. It has ginormous Griffin Newman tries to make a hip hop biopic energy. Oh, man. But yeah. Wow. Yeah. Tupac, you know, I, I love that he, he comes in and he flirts with Janet. And I love how mean she is to him. Although like, it's very hard. She is mean.

Janet being mean is something that like, it's a little hard. It's been, it's a hard sell for me because I can always feel like, I don't believe that Janet Jackson is a mean person, but she tries. And I appreciate that. Well, I think that was like another thing I was reading, you know, what led her to want to do this was she wanted to seem more personable. And part of being more personable, I think, is also being a little more rough around the edges because she had spent her entire life with a very sort of like carefully crafted public persona, you know? And everything was designed

towards being as kind of like likable and aspirational and electric and uncontroversial as possible to a certain degree. And, you know, things like the Rolling Stone cover like happen after this, you know? I think she was trying to like, to some degree, demolish this idea of just being some kind of like ivory tower pop princess. But I think she's really good in this movie yeah she's good i like janet jackson as an actor basically always i think i think i always find her to be very locked in and charming no i was looking this up after this obviously she had done a lot of tv up until this point right she's on good times a bunch like that's different strokes she did a season of fame right that's what she had done this is her first movie david can you name what her second movie is i'm gonna guess that it's clumps from the way that

you're setting it up yes nine years later to eight years later look i haven't seen clumps yeah i haven't seen clumps in 20 years but i remember her being very cute and fun and agreed agreed but everyone was sort of like oh nice of her to do this it's weird that this is her second movie that she could have done so much after poetic justice then do you know what her next movie is after that for colored girls why did i get married oh right she's in that And she's in the sequel. Remember the sequel where the men, the poster, the men are all wrapped up with one ring and the women are wrapped up with the other ring. Oh, why did I get married?

Right. Then she does. Why did I get married to? And then she does for colored girls. Those are her only five films. She's made five movies. It feels like she's been in more. Yeah.

She had three Tyler Perry movies, a clumps movie and a singleton movie there you go that's janet jackson's film career her and uh and the why did i get married movies are it's some of the wildest performances that i have ever seen like her energy in those movies are, it's so chaotic, especially the second one. And I did not expect that from her. The second one becomes like a murder mystery, right? The second one is so intense. They're on vacation, right? Because the first one is like,

these guys are like, why did I get married? But like the second one is like, all right, well, we already dealt with that. So they go on vacation and there's something something crazy happens there's a murder right isn't there a murder in that movie they go to like a tropical couples retreat and someone dies i don't know i just i just remember this scene

this this wild scene with jana jackson and her husband and like something having to do with like a giant cake at the office and this whole thing about her, like calling him a bitch. And like, just like a lot of her just calling him a bitch and there's making a big show of it and like embarrassing him. And I was just like, is this, is this really necessary? I just remember seeing the trailer for the first movie and going like, okay, I get it. So it's like the big chill, but with some like men are from Mars, women are from Venus energy. And then seeing the trailer for the first movie and going like okay i get it so it's like the big chill but with some like men

are from mars women are from venus energy and then seeing the trailer for the second movie and i'm like is this an almo devar film like why is it like shots of her holding a knife and screaming she really she really goes in for that movie and it's such a weird movie to go in for yeah well i do feel like tyler perry he usually is like telling his actors, like, you know, get really theatrical. Like you can, you know, you can really have fun here or whatever. Maybe that's part of it. But why did I get married to strikes me as like where he's in Sandler mode, where he's

like the movie set in the Bahamas. Like, let me call Lionsgate and tell them to book a plane because we're going to the Bahamas. My character has a medical condition where he needs to be massaged at all times on screen. I mean, if you have to do like one to two movies a year, like you might as well, like, have fun. Make them into trips. But then I read, so those three Tyler Perry movies are Lionsgate, right? And the two Why Did I Get Married movies are in the upper half of his highest grossing films, especially for the early part of his career.

Lionsgate signs a big deal with Janet Jackson to develop movies to be in more movies. None of them ever happen. In, like, 2011, 2012, they were like, we're in business with Janet Jackson. Here's the deal. She's got her own label and she's like i'm gonna make sci-fi movies i'm gonna make comedies i'm gonna do everything nothing happens i would love a janet jackson sci-fi movie now i'm just yeah it's when i was younger i feel like i was very hard on her performance and i don't know why i think i was i

was a meaner critic when i was younger i like i used to write reviews like in high performance and i don't know what i think i was i was a meaner critic when i was younger i like i used to write reviews like in high school and i read them as just like this is this is really harsh what was going on with me it's me no i i think everyone is more like that in high school i feel like i have just become such a softy as i age i'm like i don't know they made an effort everyone showed up like whereas like when high school you're like well no this did not clear the bar that i know one has to right especially if you're a film dork it's like that's the age where you're starting to develop like critical thought and you're like okay now i know what bad things are like yeah like i was way meaner about tyler perry movies when i was young and like now i watch them but i'm just like i'm having a great time man like it's that's sort of the idea of them right i mean it's just like look i know i didn't see the one

on netflix where people were like did he like did he even like give people their lines before they like turned on the cameras what's that one called the wig it's a fall from grace but but i call it the wig because there's just absolutely no there was i saw the wig and i was like no we are absolutely 100 not doing it with this fucking wig um like it's it's like not it's still not as bad as that lace front that he gave shamar moore and diary of a mad black woman where it's like a lace lace front cornrows a cornrow wig I have never I had never seen anything like it I'm never gonna see anything like it since it's fucking it's because he's always wearing the headband and the headband is to hide the fact

that it's a lace front and I just couldn't yeah I'm looking at it here it's it's a nightmare it's terrifying at least then it was like he was making those movies for not a lot of money but for a fall from grace it's like he has netflix money he's a mogul and like whenever he's interviewed it's like clint eastwood like shooting the fake you know the baby doll in american sniper he's just like i gotta go man yeah we got a day to shoot this like i don't have to fuck around put a wig on her like i don't care yeah his his schedule is is wild yeah it's yeah i would say though like top tier tyler perry the family that prays and medea goes to jail even though medea goes to jail is a movie where you have to deal with the actress who played Rudy Huxtable being like an adult.

Right. Like, and that's very jarring. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But yeah, she's, she's good in this movie. I think a lot of her Janet's like facial acting is really great in this movie.

I don't think I really appreciated it when I was younger, but like, she, she does a lot of work with her face. I think my, I think that my issue was when I was younger is that I didn a lot of work with her face. I think that my issue was when I was younger is that I didn't like the way that she recited the poems, but the poems are a very interesting part of it. Yeah, look,

I mean, Jordaine, not everyone can recite these poems with the beauty and grace that I gave at the beginning of this episode. It's a tall order, right? But no, it is. It is, jokes aside, an incredibly big ask of anyone to be like, cool, so Maya Angelou has written original poems for this film,

and you have to be the one to recite them in voiceover, let alone someone who is already that well-known and whose voice is that famous, but is trying to step away from the public perception and create a new character. It's interesting. You keep thinking like, when are the poems going to play a plot role?

And that's not the vibe that Singleton's going for. And no, nor does it need to be. I don't like that. Like I do not need this to be about someone who, whose poetry unlocks something in the plot, but like it may be how it maybe throws viewers where they're like, what's with the interstitials where it's voiceover poetry? Like, what did that have to do with them in the mail truck fighting?

Yeah, I really don't know. They don't really connect. They take up, like, space in the movie and they're nice they chill me out i mean i guess i guess when like she's alone or like when she's thinking like it's in lieu of like voice over or silence but yeah it's weird the way that it's set up but i guess we should talk more about the mail truck in this journey because they're going to they're doing um Tupac and Joe of Joe Torre are like doing a run and um Regina King and Janet Jackson are trying to go to a hair show and it's like in the same place so they're just like all riding's just Regina King and Joe Tori

in this movie are so stressful just such a stressful couple very much so Joe Tori I only really know him as he has a big arc in ER I have no idea

if any of you are aware of this I know I know he's sort of like was on deaf comedy jam he's hosting deaf comedy jam at this point he's the guy who replaces martin lawrence when martin lawrence blows up so singleton's very much casting him off of that right he's he's on er as this guy who gets in this big sort of protracted fight with dr green for many episodes i don't know him that well like what happened to joe tory where did he go he i mean i think he's just still doing comedy i i but i i had seen joe tory in some movies before that he's in tales from the hood and i remember that yes he's

in house party three he's in um strictly business which is this Halle Berry movie that nobody talks about ever, which is it's really interesting. I don't know this movie. Yeah, it's like a it's like a Halle Berry romantic comedy. And no, this looks fun. Yeah, it's a fun movie. I don't know why people don't talk about it. He's also in the Joe Torre movie that I have seen the most is Sprung. I have seen Sprung a lot, which is also like a two couples kind of thing, kind of structured for a movie.

It does feel like that's the zone in which he's perfect, you know, is being like the guy in the second couple. Yeah. But I think, yeah, I think you're right that he just kept doing stand-up i mean i bet he's a guy who by all accounts is still headlining across the country well yeah i mean i assume that's what happened to bill bellamy too and like i associate them with the same kind of era right uh you know it feels like where did that guy go and the answer is he's probably making three million dollars a year right he's just right he just works yeah but yeah i just i think of him i associate him so strongly with er but right and he is they're very stressful

regina king's in all of john singleton's early movies and he's usually playing a very big character i feel like that was her early obviously 227 but like you know like that's her early screen where she gets slotted in like you're gonna play someone who's loud someone who's opinionated someone who's just kind of like you know boosting up the energy anytime she's in the movie i love her she's great i yes i just i'm i am always thrilled to watch uh regina king i'm never not enjoying myself watching her do anything i just think she's such a fucking pro uh and she's fun in this it's also like we've just watched boys in the hood where she's electric but she's got so little screen time it just feels nice to see her

being given this much even though we now live in a reality where regina hill actually regina king finally gets to do a lot well yeah it yeah, it's so interesting because like Regina King is like was one of my favorite actresses growing up. Like she was one of the first actresses where it's like I know who she is. I like her whenever she's in something. I'm into it. And it's been so interesting, like watching people like figure out who she is, like very late in the game, in my opinion, like in the last five years basically right yeah it's so strange because like she has been doing television since the 80s her first movie was in 91 like she's yeah and she i mean i think part of it is that she's worked mostly you know she does like a lot of mostly black movies what's up for jerry Jerry Maguire, which it's so weird.

The thing is she, she's so dominant and incredible in Jerry Maguire. Now, obviously lots of people hop out of that movie. So it's not like, but post that you would think like, oh, give her her own TV show or give her movies. And yet still, she's kind of just like a very reliable supporting player obviously there's also the stuff where it's like yeah did you know she's the voice of riley and huey and the boondocks like you know like there's all that stuff but like i remember when she was in ray in 2004 and she got oscar buzz for that role she's incredible in ray yeah even then it felt like people were just sort of discovering regina king again and then like it just happened again five years ago where it's like you know who's the best regina king and i'm like yeah she's the best she's

been doing this shit for 30 years she's been doing comedy forever but then suddenly she started doing like serious stuff like the leftovers and seven seconds in american crime and then everybody's just like oh she's incredible it's like i'm so sorry that you guys don't respect comedy yes like i think that that's exactly what it is that's definitely part of it and and you forget southland the transitional thing she's so good on southland the forgotten prestige cop show of the uh whatever early uh teens what are we calling that? The 20 teens? Sure. Whatever that is. Oh yeah. Southland. The thing that she did with Mr.

OC, the OC boy. Ben McKenzie. Ben McKenzie never doesn't work. Ben McKenzie just works. OC, I'm done. Going to Southland.

I'm done with Southland. I'm going to Gotham. You guys, you guys know that Gotham ran for a hundred episodes. I directed three of them. You did. Me, Mr. OC. You showed up to theam. You guys know that Gotham ran for 100 episodes? I directed three of them. You did. Me, Mr. Rossi. You showed up to the task.

Did you know I'm married to Marina Baccarin, that lady from Firefly and shit? Yeah, we met on the set of Gotham. It's just one of those things where you're like, what's that actor doing? Oh, I see. They constantly work. That's what they're doing. Okay, right. I forgot.

Regina King kind of has that. What's Regina King doing lately? they've constantly worked that's what they're doing okay right i forgot uh regina king kind of has that like what's regina king doing lately turning in good performances right always always always good always good literally has never missed i mean i'm just looking here so it's like you're right okay so you go like it's the early singletons right doing friday and then jerry mcguire which was supposed to be Janet Jackson. Janet was cast and dropped out because it conflicted with her touring schedule. I wonder if even she had maybe recommended Regina King for the role, but it was absolutely supposed to be Janet Jackson playing Marcy Tidwell. Then her run after Jerry Maguire, where it feels like she really should level up,

is like how Stella got her groove back. Enemy of the state mighty joe young right it's like kind of whatever supporting roles in like supporting roles that's what it is she's the friend 2001 down to earth ah yes down to earth another cable staple that movie she rules in that movie i re-watched that recently she's so fucking good in that but that's someone finally letting her be the female lead of a movie and then she ends up like you look at the 2000s you talk about jordaine like people not recognizing her just as a collection of things for her to be in that should have helped her like cross over in terms of just name you know recognition daddy daycare legally blonde to cinderella story ray miss congeniality too yeah she's in she's in the sequels to the uh both miss congeniality and legally blonde the the less liked sequels but that's like a three

a three-year run where she's just in big movies with big stars playing big parts usually i mean she's like the second lead of miss congeniality too she's incredible in ray yeah i do not remember her role in um a cinderella story i must say but i'm sure she's i'm sure she's good also i think it's interesting that uh well i mean this isn't a big movie in general but a thin line between love and hate is such a weird movie for her to be in because she's playing like the nice girl but meanwhile like Lynn Whitfield is of course like the main woman in that and I don't I wish more people watched it because that's a fucking weird movie have y'all seen it I know I mean I know Martin Lawrence here's what I know

about a thin line between love and hate I know Martin Lawrence directed it and I know that the poster has the papyrus faun which always blows my mind every time i see it i'm not trying to do an snl avatar bit you should please look up the poster it's the only comedy brave enough to use papyrus papyrus is not usually the domain of comedies it's so bizarre that people think that this is a comedy because if you watch it it's an erotic thriller it's so weird that it's yes i believe my reading of a thin line between love and hate is that it is an erotic thriller i don't get what's supposed to be funny about it at all it's not funny the tagline is while some women are waiting to exhale this one is ready to get even so it's coming for waiting to exhale it's like

get out of the way we're gonna eat your lunch waiting to exhale. It's like, get out of the way. We're going to eat your lunch waiting to exhale. And I know that Lynn Whitfield has a gun on the poster. He's going like, what's going on. And he's doing full comedy face on the poster. His head's tilted. Right.

Yeah. So it's so weird. Like it's, it makes me think like it wasn't sold as a comedy because he thinks it's a comedy because at the end, like Lynn Whitfield is having this like full breakdown. She's like attacking him. You think she's going to kill him. She's like,

she's like attacking Regina. She's like angry at Regina King. Like it's like a full, like single white female freak out at the end. It's not funny at all. All right. I'll check it out. Yes.

Let's see. Please. Please check back with me. How do I watch it in live between 11 and 8? Just to circle back to the Regina King talk, you talk about it feeling like people are

discovering her quote-unquote now, you know, for the first time. I even feel like there was that sense when she won the Emmy for Watchmen of like oh, finally Regina King's getting her due. And it's like, motherfucker, she already had three Emmys before this. She just quietly won three Emmys in the 2010s.

I was she's she had won an Oscar before she won the Emmy for Watchmen. Correct. Yeah. But even then, it felt like on Watchmen, people were like, finally. And it's like she won an Oscar. Yeah, but Watchmen is her getting a lead role. it felt like on watchman people were like finally and it's like she won an oscar yeah but watchman is her getting a lead role all her other stuff was supporting stuff and watchman was her having a big lead role winning i guess i guess that was the difference now she's making movies i you know i i support regina king i thought her movie was uh good i was not i was not the biggest fan of it no i thought it was humongous review from david that pause like you know you could put an entire lifespan between that pause i like which i i liked

a lot of it's a play i don't know like it felt it felt you know it had a lot of the sort of like uh play to screen david i i don't think i've heard you pause that long since the last time i said i'm griffin thank you thank you for rushing to that joke please i had to i had to you had to you had to i had to um it was a telling like that i don't know have you guys seen one night in miami that movie has like a lot of like like whenever she can she's doing something and i'm like you know whenever she can sort of fit in, like flourish, I like the flourish.

It is just a lot of that movie is people sitting in a room and talking to each other, which is, you know, is what it is. Yeah. I've seen the, I reviewed it.

Yeah. It's, it's interesting. I mean, I mostly talked about the conversations that are had in it because that's most of what the movie is. But I, but I do think that like,

for what it is, like for i do think that like for what it is like for the format of just like uh kind of a one room kind of story i i think that she does a really really good job i actually think that she does a better job at it than like how ma rainey's black bottom functions i think she's interesting i think she figures out how to do the whole theater thing better than that movie but i'm you know in a minority interesting i think she figures out how to do the whole theater thing better than that movie but i'm you know in a minority what i think about ma rainey she's also regina king's been like an incredible stalwart uh tv director like she's directed 15 tv episodes in the last eight years i mean i think that you can i think interviews with her sort of bear this out she has some

point where she's like i'm sick of making movies and playing the third lead or the best friend or whatever and i went to tv and there were much better roles for me there and it seems like because the first thing she directed was a southland episode that it's just that classic thing of like you know hey do you want to give a you know an episode a shot and then that's that's like the sort of the film school that you can do and as you can see like yeah but she did six but being mary jane scandal the catch animal kingdom green leaf pitch this is a shameless good doctor insecure before she does one night miami yeah and that's all in like seven or eight years look regina king rules this is what

we're trying to say i like her a lot in this movie. Joe Torrey kind of stresses me out. I think he's good, but the characters, he's stressful. I think that, I think that Chicago is in a very weird position in the movie because he, I don't know. I forgot like how quiet he is.

Like for some reason I remembered the movie being, yeah, it's interesting because, like, Tupac is very quiet, but Joe Torre is also very quiet. And you kind of expect the other friend to be loud. But really, the only loud character is Regina King. Regina King's, like, kind of loud for everyone, which makes their fight scenes really weird because, like, of course, like like he ends up hitting her and that's like the huge thing where he get where he gets left and you know he's not in the rest of the movie but before he hits her he's like very chill like he hits her like hitting her was just like terrible but like he hits her like the because because his feelings are hurt. And you feel like his feelings had been hurt throughout the entire movie. And he just didn't, he didn't know how to talk about his feelings, which I mean, this movie is so much about men, not knowing how to talk about his feelings, but he just sits there.

He just, he just stands there and his feelings are so hurt. And then there's this long pause and then he hits her. And that's like, it's, it's interesting that he's just out of the movie after this i understand why but i kind of wish that he his character was a better friend with tupac so that they could like talk about this because like tupac gets a lot of points for being like no no we don't hit women i'm just gonna leave you on the side of the road um but i i wish they had doesn't intervene at first though like which is interesting like they do they let that moment happen where he does the kind of like look it's between them i don't know like he you know he sort of does that like oh i just want to stay out of

this and then when janet jackson you know when justice gets involved then then he's like okay you know and then he right steps up but i do like that you give him that weird unsympathetic moment there yeah and i mean it feels like a very you know realistic response to like especially from a man like that it's just like well you know like this isn't my business. They're fighting. Yeah, the problem with Chicago. Joe Tulli and Regina King is that like, she's just really mean to him

and he just really does nothing until that hit. Like he's just. Well, even that earlier moment at the, when they go to the family reunion and she's flirting with the other guy and Janet Jackson with justice goes up to her and is like, he's going to go ballistic, like he's going to beat you. You feel like that's not my read on this guy.

No. And even when he charges towards her, it doesn't feel like he's about to really get violent, you know? Yeah, no, he doesn't't he does not read like a violent person and i don't know if that's like a performance issue or what it is it might be a writing issue or maybe not like maybe the idea is this should come out of nowhere but it does i'm not sure if that's true like it might more just be like this hasn't been layered in quite well enough for it to you know to me i don't know i don't i don't know i would love yeah yeah because i mean well chicago is a very hard character to like get a read on because the movie

isn't about him and usually when you have a best friend character he kind of like comes out at the gate being like this is who i am this is what like he has to basically declare himself because he doesn't get to have these like specific character moments. And Jotori never really does. Like, I mean, his clothes are loud and he has the thing with the brush. Right. It's just it's just his style. Like, that's all the real characterization there is this guy cares a lot about how he looks. Like that's all the real characterization there is this guy cares a lot about how he looks. And like even the hair brushing and just like it almost feels like a nervous tick because he he takes out the brush during the fight and you just feel like he just needs to put his hands on something.

And they already do the joke about him stuttering, you know, and then he's got that big scene, not that big scene, but there scene where he he rips into uh lucky for not dressing well like it all feels a little bit cartoonish you know in terms of just like this guy's just about grooming and nothing else whereas regina king uh is as you're saying like she comes in it's like this is my deal as a character here's what i'm about and you're like okay i get it right you know like she succeeds in that. Oh my God. Just like her going and drinking that 40. Just like, she's just like dedicated to that 40 and anybody who has an issue with it. It's just like, I'm going to do what I want. I'm going to drink. And you know what? It's, it's very funny until it's not, but yeah, it's funny at first. It's very funny until it's not.

But yeah, it's funny at first. I do just also like movies that are designed this way, where it's like, OK, you have a mail truck, right? It's this unusual layout with the two seats in front and then all this room in the back. The dramatic shifts of the movie are pretty much going to be decided by the four square of who's where in the vehicle. Yeah. Ben, did you ever work in a mail truck? Am I making this up?

Ben, is the mail truck something to you? I worked for FedEx and I packed those trucks. Right. But you never drove one around. It does feel like very freeing that they can just take the mail truck on the road. Oh man. I would love to be the ones in the back yeah you never went when you were a fedex driver you never went on a road trip where you took uh your friend who you seem to not even like that much his

girlfriend and his girlfriend's friend no never never worked out cool man yeah it's it's so interesting that they're just like fighting in the back because like i just keep on thinking like i would just be having sex back there and just like having i'd be like smoking some weed and like you know like and it would be just a thing where like my version of this movie would just be like them coming out and just being them just kind of like peeking out just being like oh it looks like they're falling in love in there anyway um back to what we were doing there's a sweet romance happening on the other side of the cab okay great like we're back to yeah yeah yeah but they're so but tupac and janet are so guarded they're so i mean they really don't like emotionally connect for the first two thirds of this movie, basically. Right.

No. And there's that huge fight early where she gets out of the truck and wants to leave her behind. I mean, it's. Oh, yeah. Well, because she's like, she's just like, you know what? I'm a black woman and you shouldn't call me a bitch and you have to respect me. And he's just like, I don't care about you, bitches. Like so much of this movie is just like bitches, man. It's like,'s like right if i'm a bitch then your mom is a bitch or whatever like which

is a great line because that's exactly true like it's i mean it is this i feel like especially with these early films singleton really trying to make movies about like emotional intelligence right i mean i think like about this dividing line between like you know how someone becomes an adult especially since so much of these movies are kind of these like nature versus nurture debates and there's so much about the role of like families and these people's development and everything and then you have the maya angelou speech later where she says like but at a certain point like a person takes responsibility for who they are themselves. You know, it's on you.

I feel like all of that is, you know, and so much of just the arc of this character is him learning how to actually engage with other people in a meaningful way. uh actually engage with other people in a meaningful way yeah oh we we haven't talked at all about um his baby mama and and and tone loke man i i love tone loke does anyone have a better voice than tone you know oh my god what what a great and he's like really blowing i mean the early 90s i always just forget how robust his movie career was for a time there just for a little chunk just for like the first five years of the 90s he is everywhere and and he is always killing it he's always great posse surf ninjas poetic justice car 54 where are you ace ventura pet detective blank check and heat and then he is he's like the the crown on top he is that one hilarious scene in the heat oh my god he was also in a cartoon that i see baron jamal wow i totally See Baron Jamal? Wow, I totally forgot about that.

What I was thinking about was actually Ferngully and Bebe's kids. Oh, well, yeah, he's the baby in Bebe's Kids, right? Who pulls the plug on Las Vegas, is that right? Yeah, he's Pee-wee. And in Ferngully, I feel like he's just like a giant lizard and he gets a song. And I remember that song. See, I was really, really into Seabair and Jamal, which was an animated series, a Saturday morning cartoon in which Tone Look played a hip hop teddy bear. He was an anthropomorphic teddy bear with a bad attitude i need to watch this immediately because i because i had heard of it but i've never seen it his song in fern gully just fy is called if i'm gonna eat somebody it might as well be you yes yeah he's about to eat one of the hot fairies or whatever and you know i can remember fern gully it's it's a bunch

of hot wood elves right yeah um yeah anyway tone look he's great but yes the early part of this movie i'm sorry we got we got caught up in tone look but uh that we we didn't even really talk about uh lucky's home life like his whole his whole situation that is the reason he's so emo and distant and, you know, tough to connect to. He and Tone Loke both have children with the same woman who has a history of drug addiction. Tone Loke is dealing and Lucky is incredibly concerned about his daughter growing up in that environment despite the fact that he and tone look appear to be kind of closer friends than him in chicago yeah he seems to get along better with tone look they are pals in this movie and i i wish that there was more of tone look because they're just like friends. It's because Tone Loke's good.

Yeah, he's good. He's just like an earthy actor with just a lot of charisma. And you're just like, yeah, you just buy that people get along with him. And the best voice of all time. Yeah, he's just like the kind of guy who's just like sitting on the porch. And it's like, I'm just going to spend a couple hours with this guy. Like we're going to share blood and we're going to have a conversation. And it's going to be great. great man i miss sharing blood so much i miss tone lobe he's around i believe

i think tone looks still still with us yeah yeah he is yeah i mean we talked about almost every other actor in the movie blank check has died so it's there's a there seems to be a blank check curse that does not extend to our podcast but does extend to that cast the cast of blank check yes tone look has to be on guard i'll say also i'm on tone looks imdb page right now his uh his photo his main photo on imdb is him on the red carpet for titan ae with his arm in a sling pointing at the camera, looking surprised. It's, it's a really good photo. Oh yeah. Damn. Wow.

Like it's got sort of like, what are you doing here? Energy. And it's like, Tom, what are you, why is your arm a sling? What are you doing at the Titan AE premiere?

Oh man, Titan AE. That's a movie that I've never finished. That's a movie that I start never finish ever. Um, yeah, don't, the Titan AE is a movie. i start never finish ever um yeah don't the tiny is a movie anytime you throw it on you're like this has to be good and then like five minutes in you're like oh right this is just boring yeah it's at some point i'm gonna like this like come on it's a don bluth sci-fi apocos movie and then you're just like why is this so dull

yeah i i truly don't know but yeah um love love this tone look scene and then you're just like, why is this so dull? Yeah, I truly don't know. But yeah, love this tone look scene. And then you get into it and then it's the whole thing. This scene is kind of like emblematic of my issues with John Singleton in Women, where it's just like, this woman is not only like on drugs, but she's also like having sex with a guy in the house and doing drugs while her daughter is watching cartoons while tone loc is is on like um on the porch while tupac is there like there's just like so many so many things happening it's it's the most like let's talk about the issues seen in the movie where you're like all right we get it jesus like yeah it's way too on the nose it reminds me of like

all of the drug stuff in jungle fever which but at least the drug stuff in jungle fever which i know you like it's presented like operatically like that's the one like spike lee just at least knows to like dial everything up like crazy whereas this is like more just being like oh well this is like a hard-hitting thing that's happening and it but it feels you know soapy well that's the thing is like you know spike lee was always i'm not gonna put this in the past that spike lee's entire career is so much about genre and tonal experimentation, right? And mashing those things up in a way that to a certain degree has always prevented him from being able to like cross over into blockbuster territory. Because so many people are just always turned off by like, I don't get it.

Why is this scene so goofy? Why is this scene so operatic? Why is this scene so goofy? Why is this scene so operatic? Why is this scene so dramatic? And John Singleton was always trying to be a little more like focused, you know, in his tone in any given film. The one movie of his that weirdly feels that playful is Too Fast, Too Furious, which is the one movie where John Singleton's like, I'm trying fucking everything, every scene. But I it it bites him in the ass in a scene like this in the movie where he doesn't have the latitude to be able to really like play with tone enough to pull that scene off in any way yeah no the the scene doesn't work and it's also just like when you think about it in the wider context of this movie it's just kind of like why is it here like i you know we need to meet the daughter

i understand that but it's like why if we're not coming back here why does the scene have to be like this similar to her to q-tip getting shot right it's like well this is what's up with them and i'm like you didn't need to yell i you know i can i can be into these characters without this being screamed at me i i also think like singleton one of his main you know sort of like concerns is the importance of the father right in In the raising of a child. And what bums me out a little bit is that like in this movie, it's set up where it's like, well, the father has to step up

because the mother is such a catastrophe as opposed to it feeling like this character's arc works just as well, if not better, if it is he is just not putting in the time as a father. And by the end of the trip, he realizes I need to show up. I need to be there more for my daughter, rather than it being like

I need to save her from this, you know? And Boys in the Hood has, you know, obviously like the Angela Bassett character is like hyper competent in that movie, but it still becomes about like, no,

you need to just be with your father. You know, both of these movies have this thing of just like, it has to just be the father and the child in very different forms. Yeah. Yeah. The whole, I love the,

I love kind of like the joke about that. And don't be a menace. This is like, like, I just need to drop you off in the hood. Like you just need to spend some time there specifically. I do think the Jennifer Lewis scenes very good. Yeah.

And I kind of wish that it was just kind of like that. Like if she was just like, you know, you need to go see your daughter. Like you could just throw that in instead of, yeah. Right. And like him showing up at the salon with the daughter at the end of the movie does feel like huge emotional growth.

But that doesn't have to, you don't have to sacrifice the female character in order to make that happen, you know? Right, exactly. Like the mom doesn't need to be this whole, the whole stuff with the mom just like leads to a bunch of other questions. Like what were they doing together like he seems like justice is like a relatively quiet person but his reaction to her is like so like oh this bitch and it's it's weird like when this is who your baby mama is like wouldn't justice seem like like very very chill in comparison already like wouldn't you be nicer to her yeah I kind of just can't even imagine them having a prior conversation let alone having a child

together you know no yeah it's just one like I feel like it'd be one of those things where it was just like it happened at a party he immediately regretted it and then he was just like I'm but I still don't even know how that would happen at a party he immediately regretted it and then he was just like i'm but i still don't even know how that would happen at a party because i just i i only just imagine tupac brooding like i can only see him brooding and that's his energy the whole movie like it's so consistent yeah i do think the ending scene is very sweet though the ending scene is great i i always love a scene about like dad's not being able to do their daughter's hair it's just nice i like them yeah i like them this movie takes these like wild swings

sometimes really oh you know i don't know if i if i saw that coming but right i do like them pretty much throughout let's also just say tupac is so much fun during the family reunion. Oh my God. Yeah. I love that. They just like show up at this reunion and like, and they're just like, well,

this is a big extended family. We can just say that they're related. Right. Like they're trying to find the angle for how could we con our way into pretending that we're relatives. And then the drunk uncle comes up and just serves it to them on a plate. It's just like, Hey cousin.

Yeah. And they're like, well, great. Thank you for doing all of our work for us. Yeah. I just love, and this is also totally something that I would do just be like,

Oh, there's a family reunion. I see food. Like this is, it's just such a classic hygiene. Like who's gonna, who's gonna care really? Yeah.

Who's gonna care? Once there's like more than 50 people or whatever, it's like, ah, sure. Yeah. Like this is, this is outside. This isn't, this is a public event at this point. Like give me a burger. That's sort of the crux scene in the movie, I guess. That's kind of halfway in.

That's sort of when she warms up to him. Right. I mean, cause they're still fighting up until that point. Sort of but then there's so much drama with regina king and she throws up and all like that then we sort of get sidetracked to that but yes yes that is that's when they start to to talk to each other and that's when maya angelou shows up and becomes the moral center of the movie. She does have crazy screen presence, Maya Angelou. Yes, it's unbelievable. I do kind of just want to listen to her talk. Yeah, she's great in this movie.

And I just want to, she's just, I wish that she was like the Greek chorus of this movie. Cause she's just sitting there just like, look at the kids. The kids these days, like she says that she's married, but she's not wearing her wedding ring it's just like i just love this i feel like a comedy that would be like they're they're on the mail truck and then she's just like off to the side just like oh look right look the journey

they just keep running into her she plays like someone at the gas station like it's just maya angela is just always there but but but I do think like you're right Jordaine the moment she shows up in this movie I want her to just be doing pretend it's a city for this entire film like I want them to cut back to her at a table with John Singleton riffing on shit yeah and I did I don't know if you read I don't I haven't like read a full article on this, but apparently Maya Angelou mentored Tupac a little bit on set. And I'd love to know more about that. And Tupac, he leaves the set to go take part in the LA protests. Yeah, that's all happening.

It does feel... I mean, to think that Tupac know, Tupac dies, what, 95, 96. Like it's, it's his whole thing. His whole like sort of fame is compacted into like five, six years. And there's so much shit in it. That's complicated. And it does feel like Maya Angelou is probably one of the people who's like,

Hey, Hey, like zoom out, like think about that, you know, like, and yeah, obviously.

Yeah, no, they were very, I mean, she's like, I've heard her talk about him a lot in interviews and stuff. I think they were fairly close and she felt like this guy is in the eye of a hurricane. He needs people to be able to guide him in some sort of way. It was just so fast for him. It's also, I mean, you're leaving out the other part of it which is that like he left behind so much fucking work that he was able to still feel present as an artist for a decade after he passed he is one of the first celebrities i was aware of dying i don't remember kirk cabane

dying but i do remember tupac dying i was like maybe a little too young for when kirk cabane died but tupac i was like 10 years old and it was like a big deal at school. And like I had like a friend who was really upset. Like I'm that he is one of the earliest celebrities where I was like, yeah. See, that's like the age difference between you and I, because I remember Biggie dying vividly. But my my memory of Tupac is being like, oh, that new Tupac song is good. And people being like, you know, he died two years ago.

And yeah, and y'all are both old y'all are both older than me because like my first one was Aaliyah because that was 2001 I mean I remember that too that was crazy yeah that was humongous yeah that was like a big like I could not stop crying during that it was so bizarre because she was i mean also she was like 22 years old like yeah i know she was she was so young she was so big it felt so clear that she was on the precipice of becoming even bigger and then it was just like she died in a plane crash what yeah and it was for the like it was from the rock the boat video which like after that like i could not watch that video for like a year i still don't like watching it right right and then you're like she already has a vampire movie in the can

i remember trying to explain this to my mom because my mom was like i don't get it she's in like two movies she has like two albums like what wait wait i don't get and i was just like you don't understand like like you're saying she was about to kind of take over the world like it was so clear she was supposed to do the matrix sequels like that was the other thing everyone was just like we we all agree that Aaliyah is about to dominate both mediums and also just

like just because she didn't have like a lot of out she was also like everywhere she was friends with everyone so you'd be watching a Missy video and she'd be there you'd be like Ludacris she'd be there DMX she'd be there like she knew everyone she was friends with everyone so you'd be watching a missy video and she'd be there you'd be like ludicrous she'd be there dmx she'd be there like she knew everyone she was friends with everyone and she was very present even when she wasn't like and she had like married r kelly when she was a teenager like there was just so much shit there in such a short life you know she was and she was engaged to like

uh damon dash i believe when she died yeah that was the whole thing also like they had a whole rivalry like jay-z wanted to be with her and all and like it was like jay-z and damon dash like fell out because it was like who who gets to be with her that was like a whole fucking that whole thing was all those fucking things are so weird we're doing this with britney too and it's not like britney was not like people were absolutely aware of how horrifying the but let's let's say at the time we're recording this episode the britney documentary has just come out but like it is like what you just said drudain i remember that like where it's like all these guys were

fighting over and it's like man this shit is so it's so weird i know at the time people said it was weird but still no it's it's fucking weird and she was just like so young and i was just like i like i was like a kid but i was just like can we just like leave her alone like right like when when two famous people i like are dating and i hear that i go oh that's nice and when someone i like is dating someone i don't like i go oh, oh, that's kind of a bummer. I don't understand the impulse to chart every single step of it. And even just like in this last week, I've seen all all the fucking like inches devoted to the Aaron Rodgers, Shailene Woodley thing. And are they engaged or not? Because he said this offhand. I'm like, who gives a shit? Like, I don't know who he is and i like her okay as an actor and i don't care whether they get married or not if they do i hope they're happy

whatever the only thing i'll say about that is it's one of those things like you never know when shailene woodley's gonna pop up she'll just kind of pop up that's what it's like you'll never guess who aaron rogers's guest is married engaged sure i'm like oh who and shailene woodley and i'm like i wouldn't have guessed that she's back she's always here i still refer to her as divergent i'm so she's so divergent it's no that's a good it's a good nickname i mean i will i will cop to the fact that i am very into the celebrity dating thing but i'm also like i prefer like established relationships i don't want to know who's fighting over who this shit is weird that's a great distinction

Jordaine that's the thing like when you have the fucking like oh they're mad because he was seen flirting with her but he had dibs on her for like who gives a shit but if I hear like oh Tessa Thompson and Janelle Monet are still together I'm like great I, Tessa Thompson, Janelle Monáe are still together. I'm like, great.

I hope they're happy. Yeah, that's nice. That makes me feel good. I don't need to know about what's going on on a day to day basis. I hope they are relaxed and watch TV together

on the couch. She was wearing her ring and oh no, the ring was off. And what? What does that mean? Who cares? Oh my God.

And the Brad Pitt, Aaliyahawkat stuff was so fucking weird yeah we let them be friends like that like it also just like this shouldn't we all be celebrating the fact i can't get worked up about any of it i can't it's because i just then i'm gonna get worked up i can't i can't get worked up well i'm worked up because i watched the britney thing literally last night so now I've spent the last 24 hours on this. Like, tear down the whole system. I keep I do keep on wondering what this movie would be like if Jada Pinkett was in it, because Tupac and Jada Pinkett were very famously like really, really close.

And I also remember because my mom was talking about when Jada Pinkett ended up with Will Smith. when Jada Pinkett ended up with Will Smith and my mom thought that was really funny because like in the nineties, like with her and like Tupac, she, my mom vividly remembered Jada Pinkett and Tupac making fun of Will Smith together. Yeah. It's corny. Cause he was corny. And then for her to end up with him was just really weird.

Jada would probably, Jada Pinkett Smith probably would have been amazing in this movie because she rules and she just has that. Like she, she, you know, she could play that sort of early iciness of the character so well. And then on,

you know, unlock, I mean, especially in the, you know, and then, I mean, I always loved it.

I mean, she's in the matrix or I'm just so pumped about that. It's, it's one of the few things I think about every day that she's in the matrix or that now be as bad. David, I'm not going to say anything more, but just because of conversations that you and I have off microphone,

a daily basis, I just think it's incredibly funny that you're saying that Jada Pinker being in the matrix for is one of the things I think about. I know, I know you didn't say it was the one, but now I'm just compiling the list in my head. in the Matrix 4 is one of the only things you think about on a day-to-day basis. I know you didn't say it was the one, but now I'm just compiling the list in my head. And that getting top five ranking is very funny. No, Jada Pinkett would have been great in this,

but I also think, obviously, as I just said, the Britney stuff's fresh in my mind. I'm sure there's 18 new developments every week to the Britney saga since the time we've recorded this. Yeah. Hashtag Free Britney. I mean, hashtag Free Britney. This is very much a Free Britney podcast. But as I was digging into this movie, Jenna Jackson got two fucking Razzie nominations for this movie, which the Razzies suck.

We talk about how they suck and they're stupid. The Razzies hate women so much like I remember I remember the first time I realized that the Razzies hate women very vividly it was Paris Hilton getting a Razzie nomination for Repo the Genetic Opera a movie that she is amazing yeah she's so good in that and I was just like okay they didn't watch this movie they just don't like Paris Hilton. Cause like out of all the performances, hers is the most interesting. They just pick the like tabloid targets du jour.

There's such hacks. It's so bad. This must've just been a, like, don't, you know, it's that thing like, Oh,

you think you can sing an act while we're here to like, you know, poke your balloon. Yeah. But that's why I was thinking about this. I mean, obviously she's had a very different arc from britney spears but you have like the you know deep into her career the super bowl moment which just kind of like demolishes her and somehow makes justin timber like more famous right justin timber like a literal demon like i do not believe that that is a human man.

Absolutely not. I mean, the amount of women, the amount of high profile women that he has essentially like destroyed the careers of passively. We look, listen to our Justin Timberlake and the Tennessee kids episode for this. I'm surprised that it's actually taken this long to get to Justin Timberlake because like I am number one Justin Timberlake hater that ramen noodle head ass. I hate it. I fucking hate it. I mean, this was our fucking Justin Timberlake episode.

The Tennessee kids was mostly me talking about just like I just cannot get over how much I fundamentally dislike this guy. Right. It's us being like this is a very accomplished film and obviously a lot of efforts we put on but there's just something about justin timber like that we can't handle and like then we go through i mean yes yes all the stuff griffin he is just the most insincere actor and i like and at the time that this will come out it'll be after this but at this time right now as we're, he's got like a new movie by Apple. And I haven't seen Palmer. I absolutely I'm just I'm so mad.

Like he's one of the least convincing actors of all time. He's least he's also one of the least convincing people of all time. Like if he turned out to be an alien, I would 100% be like, this makes total sense. I saw a headline today. I did not click the link, but said Justin Timberlake thinks Palmer might be his best performance yet. Okay, cool. He's never had a good performance. Yeah. Also good for you, Justin. Am I supposed to be astonished by your opinion that your most recent work is the one you think is the best it's it's such a weird thing because like out of all of the the the soulful white guys like him being the white guy

to go the distance when he's like not even like anyway i mean the real answer to white guy with soul is always john b john b sure i i i do i mean a watching the britney documentary last night it is just kind of astonishing how fucking corny justin timberlake was like more so than almost any other boy band member you're just like this guy well because like his career would not have like been a thing if it wasn't for timbaland timbaland made him cool. And also all the Britney shit. Like he just weaponized that so much, being able to brag about it and also being able to like play the victim and all of that.

I bring this all up just because I do think there was a similar kind of like knives out thing for Janet Jackson, where it was just like, do not ask us to respect you. You know, like to have her playing like an emotionally grounded human being in this movie.

It just felt like certain people were like, fuck you. Absolutely not. You're a superstar. You're a tabloid fixture. You know, you're a pinup model. You know, you could be many things, but we're not going to intellectually engage with you. And the shittiest here are people like the Razzies were just like fuck you absolutely not you're not only worst actress you're also worst new star um uh rude i will say and you know post this is when she she does scream uh with michael jackson

which is the most expensive music video of all time right but it's also their sort of fuck the media song and then she does the velvet rope which like is kind of her best album like in 97 i don't know if i can say it's her best album just because that's like a whole debate but it's a great album it's an incredible album the velvet rope is really yeah and q-tip is on that album by the way he is and it feels like her being like look oh that's the joni mitchell yes the joni mitchell yeah and like it feels like her being like look oh that's the Joni Mitchell yes the Joni Mitchell yeah and like it feels like she's been like I've been you know

I've been kind of out of this body for a couple years I'm back with like this very artistically whole thing that is different and is you know it's so fucking good this is just the I think this is just her best run like this like early 90s all the way up to the velvet rope like it's just it's just everything she's doing is cool I think Janet is just her best run like this like early 90s all the way up to the velvet rope like

it's just it's just everything she's doing is cool I think Janet Jackson is great that's my opinion on Janet Jackson yeah no she's she's great um yeah we you know I will finally people are starting to be like wow um Justin Timberlake really like leveraged that moment to be like wow jen um justin timberlake really like leveraged that moment to like like prolong his career and it's just yeah it's it's it's fucked up she just like she for one she's been dealing with this bullshit since she was a child and she i feel like just was like i i don't want to talk to anyone i'm getting you know i'm going in to so you know don't talk to me whereas justin just rolled out this whole like slick sort of evil yeah pr campaign he's like reading these scripted and you know it sucks watch that movie that movie's interesting but it's also

just yeah it's just insane that with her it was all these people up in arms yelling, like, think of the children. And with him, it was like, well, look, he's making good jokes about it. Yeah, it's like she can't make a joke about it because it's her boot. Like, I don't know, man. It was like, it was, it was, it's, America is so weird.

Like, it was a good boob. It was a nice boob. Like, if anything, you know, I was just like, well, thank you. Like, that was nice. Thank you for that gift. Thank you for the gift of that boob like if anything you know i was just like well thank you like that was nice thank you for that gift thank you for the gift of that boob i'm never gonna say no to boobs i don't understand what everybody's problem it's a whole we really america it was the lowest point for america saying yes to boobs and it's a problem it's it just reflects how bad america really was at that moment. I think a lot about the SNL sketch the week after that was

Daryl Hammond doing Ted Koppel, and he pronounced it bube. And I think that is truly the only funny thing that came out of that entire scandal. Can I just run through quickly? I know we talked about most of the movie, and we did some Janet talk here. I just want to very quickly run down some of the things that Janet did not do as an actor after this. Okay. They wanted her, they wanted to build a Star is Born remake around her. Didn't happen. She really wanted to play Dorothy Dandridge in a biopic. Didn't happen. Eventually that the hbo hally berry movie that really elevates hally berry uh she accepts the role of marcy tidwell and jay maguire drops out regina king gets it she was offered trinity in the matrix turns it down for touring uh she was officially cast to play storm in x-men dropped out because of touring i mean a lot of these we're seeing like the tale of the the roles that made the careers of other actresses yeah where she just kept on saying like no i kind of am more interested in in the music uh scream three

head of states this is an insane stat She was originally requested to provide the singing vocals for Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago. They wanted to dub Catherine Zeta-Jones with Janet Jackson. This is weird. Just cast Janet Jackson. Catherine Zeta-Jones won an Oscar for doing her own singing in that movie. Clearly, it was good enough. Announced in 2004 that Betty Thomas was going to remake valley of the dolls starring janet jackson betty thomas yeah all people absolutely not yep uh eddie murphy wanted to do a romeo and juliet adaptation where she played juliet and he played romeo's father don't really understand the timeline on that one she She was originally supposed to play the White Witch

and the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She'd be good. Oh my god. That would have been good. That would have been good. I would have been into that. And then Tyler Perry tried to get her from a day's family reunion before I think Why Did I Get Married was really built around winning her over.

Yeah. And then, you know, at that point she signs this deal with Lionsgate and never makes a single movie uh i wish shanjax had more of a movie career it just seems like she's someone who does what she wants to do and often that's gonna more point to music right like you know like she's got a lot of plates spinning her music career is kind of always there and often she just goes back to it and this was yeah 2011 it was j day j excuse me j d j entertainment i want to say j day j it's j d j entertainment and her quote was i want to make movies with a lot of energy i love action films i love sci-fi and no movies come out of that deal give her action sci-fi which that just come out of that deal. Give her action sci-fi, which that just reminds me of Halle Berry

really, really campaigning to be in the third John Wick movie, and then me just being like, oh my god, she could have been doing shit like this the whole time. She is so good in John Wick 3. So crazy good in that movie. Yeah, and especially

Lionsgate, home of john wick is the exact place i want to see janet jackson making sci-fi action movies that's the exact kind of unpretentious fun genre stuff i want her to be doing i would love to watch janet jackson just like play a spy like that would be so good box office game this movie was a big hit, right? It was a medium hit. It opens number one. It's July 23rd, 1993. It makes like $30 million. I wouldn't, probably for the size of movie that it is, no one's taken aback. But it does open number one.

So it definitely, you know, makes a splash. It's got its big star. Big soundtrack. She gets the Oscar nomination for the song. And also it also just being positioned in the summer like there's a lot of confidence from columbia uh number two is a great movie uh an action movie with a great star one of the one of the this this star usually directs himself but one of the he's not directing himself in the line of fire yes yeah i can love in the line of fire

i know a movie you love that was the giveaway for me there is how passionately you were talking about it yeah just a lot of fun just a great hokey old guy it's just the setup he's haunted by like jfk getting shot he's still a secret service agent well that setup is even simpler than that that movie is money in the bank the second you say clint eastwood plays a secret service agent you're like yeah absolutely take me there um number three is another movie i love this is just a great time what a great time for schlocky thrillers this is um you could just go see poetic justice or maybe go see a thriller first and then see poetic justice second to kind of like you know unwind a little bit but this is major star uh best-selling novel um yeah i just thriller yeah i so badly want to say what if there was a but you know it you

know what it is it's kind of a hint it's kind of a there's something up with title with the it's is it the good son no it's not the good son it like major star major major a huge huge star huge the biggest author of the 90s it's the firm well done griffin thank you and it's fourth week it's made 112 million dollars something's up with that firm griffin yeah what if there's like two and a half hours long and when it's over you're like that's it there's not more what's up with the firm the firm is so long it's so long it has a scene where a kid backflips down on memphis street and everyone acts like it's normal and then like tom cruise is like it's like oh i could backflip too it's the

it's the most bananas movie it's the most stack cast but i just love where it's like what's the pitch what's up with it so this this lawyer joins a law firm oh okay well what happens well there's something up with the firm firm this is not a good firm they're they're up to no good it's a radical sci-fi premise what if these weird ivory tower financial institutions are actually completely morally fucked gene hackman is in a role written for meryl streep come on it's the best all right number four number four also uncredited because he was angry that he wasn't above the title something like that he's maybe only credited in the end or whatever but yes something like that uh number four is a film I saw in theaters children's film um big hit you

probably saw this in theaters you might have been too young a Disney movie I almost definitely saw it's not a Disney movie it is a live action movie it's live action um with an animal which was just a cornerstone of children's entertainment at the time it's not beethoven right no bigger uh big bigger this animal is a free willy it's free willy i mean how many animals are bigger than beethoven absolutely saw in theaters uh so you kind of you have michael and janet at the box office that's true of course will you be there do you remember when the whale jumps he sure does in free willie no i don't remember that happening it happens at the end of the movie it's the last thing no no no i would remember that i would remember it's this big moment

that comes right at the end okay okay but what you're talking about like a little jump certainly he didn't clear like the entire height of a kid or something he can't clear like a jason james richter type right no i'm talking two three feet no way he cleared like five foot two he's like a stunt man in this yeah he is he sure is keiko of course they made like four of those and an animated series and everything i think there's three theatricals and direct-to-video i'm you're probably right we could probably do that on the cartoon there yeah the fourth one is called uh free free willy escape from pirates cove just fyi that's what the fourth one's called i think the cartoon was like captain planet where there were like robot pirates who were trying to pour

toxic waste into the ocean free willie has like lasers on his back and shit yep there's a cyborg i also want to point out that the straight to video sequel free willie escaped from pirates cove stars uh bindi erwin the daughter right of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. Number five of the box office, Griffin, is the most successful film of 1993. The most successful film of 1993. Well, 92 is Aladdin. 91 is Terminator 2. Going the wrong direction. I know, but i'm just trying to familiarize myself with the other the other films of the time of course 94 is gump 95 is toy story why is 93 the one that i can't remember i don't know this movie's big bigger than any of those movies it's bigger than any of those movies so it's it was one of the 10 highest grossing films of all time when it came

out i think it was number one practically it was practically oh of course i am a dumb dumb the movie is called jurassic park jurassic park it's a big hit but number six and ben i want to know if you like this movie opening at number six coneheads benheads. Ben, were you a Conehead fan? Why waste air time asking this question? I just want to hear him say it. Yeah, just let him say it. He's not saying anything. Is Ben frozen?

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Is Ben frozen? This is terrible. For the first time in the history of this podcast, Coneheads up organically and ben is frozen this is tragic i thought he was just doing a david-esque pause i thought he was it is crazy how satisfied he looks on the zoom he looked so satisfied oh my god please no one tell ben that it says David Sims is the host now. David has gone full barcode Abdi.

He is the host now. Please, I beg our listeners, do not tell Ben that Coneheads came up without him. It will break his little heart. This has to be our secret. Jordaine, thank you so much for being on the show. You're one of our favorite people to have on as a guest. Thank you so much for having me. show. You're one of our favorite people to have on as a guest. Thank you so much for having me. People should listen to Bad Romance.

Yeah. Yes, please listen to Bad Romance and give us good reviews. We just recently had Griffin on to talk about The Breakup. The Breakup, one of my favorite guilty, I hesitate to even call it guilty pleasure, but a movie I've spent a lot of my life defending and we're somewhat unlikely to ever do Peyton Reed on this show, so I was very, very grateful

to have an opportunity. I'd like to do Peyton Reed one day. Maybe someday. But yes, I did a very impassioned defense of The Breakup, a movie that few people have ever thought about more than once and that I've probably seen eight times. Folks, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thanks to Joe Bone and Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Thank you to

Elaine Montgomery and The Great American Novel for our theme song. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Thank you to our editing team, Alex Barron and AJ McKeon. Go to blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit. And go to our Shopify page for some real nerdy shirts and other types of merchandise that don't fit into that paradigm of speech that easily. Yes. You can go to patreon.com slash blank check where we're talking about whatever franchise one march madness or maybe if that one was short we're talking about some other thing maybe we're talking about free willy i don't know hey ben uh welcome back how are you doing fine i wanted to

hear what this movie was so annoyed oh don't worry i don't think it's a movie you cared about that much we won't even talk about it wait i can't tell him i don't think it's a movie you cared about that much we won't even talk about it wait i can't tell him i don't think it was like a pivotal totemic movie for you i see for and after we'll see yes good call good call tune in next week for higher learning and as always coneheads fuck you what of course man it's a goddamn fucking masterpiece masterpiece oh that was worth it that was great