Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Disaster Movies of the 1970s Encore
Episode Date: December 12, 2022GGACP celebrates the 50th anniversary of one of Gilbert and Frank's favorite movies, Irwin Allen's all-star disaster epic "The Poseidon Adventure" (released December 13, 1972) with this ENCORE of a...n "Amazing Colossal Obsessions" episode from 2017. In this episode: Leslie Nielsen plays it straight, Red Buttons feuds with Carol Lynley, Shelley Winters trains with an Olympic swimming coach and the boys discuss "Airport," "Airport '77," "When Time Ran Out" and "The Towering Inferno." PLUS: The films of Martin Landau! Remembering George Romero! The musical genius of John Williams! Charo boards the Concorde! And Gilbert warbles "The Morning After"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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One, two, three, four. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and I'm here with my co-host, Frankford.
And that engineer, Santo Padre,
does a great job. And yes, our engineer,
Frank Santo Padre.
It all runs together
after all. And yeah, and I think
it's Peanut
Butter Cove
that we're recording at.
And this
is Gilbert and Frank's amazing, colossal obsession.
It is.
What the hell is Peanut Butter Cove?
That's what Nutmeg changed their name to.
Oh, I see.
You did a bizarro version.
I think it's where the plane crashed in the airport.
Paul Rayburn is here, too.
Yes, yes.
airport.
Paul Rayburn is here too.
Yes, yes. That's why if the show starts dragging
we have
an excuse. Good research takes
time. Yes.
Now, do we have time to mention
two people we lost? Yes, please
do. In one night.
Yes. In one night.
They may have died days apart. You don't know.
Yeah, but we
never had either
one of them on our show they were on the list yeah they definitely were uh one of them i mean
i remember years ago like maybe in the early 70s uh there was word going around that the Waverly Theater in New York's Greenwich Village was having a midnight showing every night of a movie called Night of the Living Dead.
And me and my sister, Arlene, went there and it was standing room only.
And lucky enough, in the middle of the picture, two people left. And that was like, so anybody who watches the nine million TV series about undead and people who eat flesh and then they turn in, the victims turn into undead and are lumbering around.
It's big business now, zombies.
And it's like you owe a debt of thanks to
george romero yeah well you know the great thing about that movie every time i see it or think
about it is that the zombies moved way too slowly you would think to ever catch anyone it's a little
like the mummy right so like we've made about the mummy they're like it's you just walk away and
but there's something relentless about it.
And, you know, the truck blows up.
I mean, no matter what people try to do to get away,
even though it looks like it should be easy, they can't get away.
And there was something about the low-budget feel to that movie.
Yeah, they made it real.
Yeah.
Sort of Carnival of Souls is another movie that feels that way. Yeah, that made it real. It's sort of Carnival of Souls is another movie that
feels that way.
Yeah, it has that also. Black and white, low budget,
kind of eerie.
Yeah, gives you the
creeps. And it's not like cheap
jump scares and stuff. It's real
terrible. Yeah, it just keeps
you at the edge of your
seat for the whole movie.
And then he made Dawn of the Dead.
Yeah.
That had the chills of the first one, but it was also funny.
Right.
Like a sick kind of humor.
Like zombies getting their heads sliced off by helicopter rotors.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
And that it took place in a shopping mall.
Right.
And when you see the zombies on the escalators, and they look just like just regular people.
Well, that one's a satire.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, then there was filmmaker.
Sean of the Dead was the takeoff on the takeoff.
Yeah.
I think he cut his teeth.
I think he worked for Mr. Rogers in Pittsburgh.
Oh.
George Romero.
Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Pittsburgh. Yeah, I think he did. How does that he worked for Mr. Rogers in Pittsburgh. George Romero. Oh, that makes sense.
Pittsburgh. Yeah, I think he did. How does that make
sense? Mr. Rogers. Because they're Pittsburgh
and they're both Pittsburgh boys. They're both Pittsburgh guys.
They're not both zombie guys.
That's what put Pittsburgh on the map
for those living dead. Michael Keaton,
too, was another guy from Pittsburgh who
worked on Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.
Oh. Yeah, George Romero.
He was great. I tell you, these guys are irreplaceable.
Him, Martin Landau.
Yeah, Martin Landau.
They don't make him like this anymore.
I was so looking.
He's the other one.
We were so looking forward to talking to him.
We were trying hard, and we thought we were getting closer.
He had just done Marin's podcast.
I think he'd done another one.
I'm trying to remember whose it was. Robert Wills. Robert Wills, his friend from Mistress. He did Robert's podcast. He had, I think he'd done, he'd done another one. I'm trying to remember who's,
who's it was. Robert Wills, Robert Wills, his friend from Mistress. He did Robert's podcast
and we were, Dick Gutman was helping us and it was a timing thing. And then he passed. We just
weren't able to, to, to close the deal, which was a heartbreaker. And I think he wanted a wait till
he was promoting something or one else thing. I't know what it was but he i would have
loved to have told we were trying so hard and uh so you know those those ah it's a kick in the
teeth when you lose somebody like that that you think you're getting on the show and uh i forget
the guy's name but one guy tweeted me and said rest in peace, Oscar-winning Jew, Martin Landau.
Martin Landau, with one of those careers where, you know, he was a showbiz survivor.
I mean, because he went from the bottom, the part of his career where things were real dark,
when he was playing the mad scientist on the Harlem Globetrotters Visit Gilligan's Island.
And within a couple of years, he's in a Coppola picture.
He's in Tucker, the Man and His Dream, and then he Crimes and Misdemeanors.
And he worked his way back up.
Yes.
That's the nature of the vicissitudes of the business.
But he worked his way back up to, and then he wins an Oscar.
Yeah.
For Lugosi.
But he was a guy that was on hard times for a good while.
Yeah.
For Lugosi.
But he was a guy that was on hard times for a good while.
You know, winning an Oscar and having you take Bela Lugosi seriously is a tough thing.
Yeah.
Because you don't want to come across as a nightclub comic doing Lugosi.
And for him to make that believable.
And credit to Scott and Larry who wrote him the part of a lifetime there in Ed Wood.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. He was great. Yeah, yeah.
He was great.
And, you know, another Brooklyn guy, another Brooklyn boy.
Oh, that's right. Yeah.
And I heard, you know, well, he once worked with Alfred Hitchcock.
Sure, sure.
And he said Hitchcock had seen him in something else that was like a musical
or something or a comedy comedy and he says he asked
hitchcock he goes well what made you think of casting me as the villain and hitchcock said
something like you look like you have a circus going on in your head interesting he was a
commercial artist he had a great He had a great face.
Yes. He did a great face.
Yeah, and great range.
Here's what we're going to do.
We have this thing called Producer of the Month on Patreon where basically fans and listeners can suggest a show.
And if we pick the idea, we just name that person Producer of the Month and we do the show.
Yeah.
So we're going to try this.
We haven't done it.
It's actually something new on Patreon.
This is one of the great honors in show business.
One of the great honors in show business?
Oh, the people are talking.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
Where did you read this?
Oh, where didn't I read?
In the street news?
Where didn't I see it?
The paper the homeless people used to sell on the C train?
Yikes.
The paper that homeless people used to sell on the C train?
Yes.
A gentleman named Eric Rhein, who is a big fan of this show, R-H-E-I-N, suggested he's the producer of the month for June.
We're a month late because this is running in July, but then we didn't put it up until recently.
He's suggesting that we do a show about 70s disaster movies, and I thought that's right up Gilbert's alley.
Oh, yeah.
And we had talked about Irwin Allen on a previous show, but some of these are not Irwin Allen movies. He was the
master of disaster. Yeah. And we did a, we did a mini episode about Irwin Allen, but I thought,
well, that's a kind of a fun idea that we could play with. And, uh, I thought I'd throw some of
these out at you and Paul, feel free to listen in. I'll do some research when I consider it appropriate.
Yes, yes.
And you'll come back to us in a year when you have the answer.
The producer of the month a year from now will find out.
Get started on the 80s disaster movies.
So here we go, Gil.
I think this kind of this genre, if you will, started or subgenre, started with Airport in 1970.
Oh, that's right.
Now, was that Dean Martin?
Dean Martin and Burt Lancaster and Van Heflin in his last part.
Oh, and was Jacqueline Bissett the stewardess?
She sure as hell is, and she comes back because she's in horror movies later.
Yeah, and she's in The Day the World Ended.
That's right, when time ran out. Yeah, time ran out. The Day the World Ended. That's right, when time ran out.
Yeah, time ran out.
The Day the World Ended
was the name of the script.
It was the name of the movie
in development
before they changed it.
And yes,
and Helen Hayes won an Oscar
for Airport in 1970.
Did you know that?
No.
The Airport was nominated.
So we think about this now
as kind of like pop junk
that's kind of fun.
Yeah, sure.
Airport was nominated for 10 Academy Awards.
So the Towering Inferno was nominated for Best Picture.
It's incredible.
Can you imagine that today?
Yeah.
Like a cheeseball disaster movie being nominated for Best Picture.
It's so ridiculous.
Yeah.
And there's still this building in L.A. that's not that big a building, but I think it was used as the Towering Inferno.
Yes, we'll get to that.
But this I found out in doing my research, that the writer of Airport, the original Airport in 70,
was a gentleman named George Seaton, S-E-A-T-O-N, who made one of my favorite movies, Miracle on 34th Street.
So how do you get from Miracle on 34th Street to Airport?
Again, the strange twists and turns of a career.
to airport. Again, the strange twists and turns of a career.
We will return
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colossal podcast
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And now back to the show.
It is somebody described it as Grand Hotel on a plane, and that's pretty much what it is.
Those were the formulas for these things.
Put a bunch of stars in them and put them in peril. And that's where, oh, was she the one that gets smacked a bunch of times on the plane?
Who, Helen Hayes?
You mean what they spoofed in airplanes?
Helen Hayes.
She's a stowaway.
Yeah.
Helen Hayes, I think in airplane, gets smacked a couple of times in the original one.
And the Zuckers parodied that in Airplane?
Because I think they smack her as a diversion
because some guy's trying to hijack the plane or blow it up,
and she starts yelling,
and it's so much fun to watch Helen Hayes get smacked.
You know, it's funny because people think the Zuckers were parodying the airport movies,
but it's really a parody of a movie called Zero Hour.
Yeah, with what's his name?
Dana Andrews.
Dana Andrews.
Right.
And then that spawned Airport 75, which was confusingly released in 1974.
Yeah.
Which is odd.
Yeah, because Zero Hour had everything in it.
Like, I picked the wrong time to give up smoking.
Oh, yeah.
It's fun to watch it now.
And George Zip and all those.
That's right.
It's fun to watch.
But Airport 75 was Charlton Heston, Karen Black.
One of the things these disaster movies have always done is getting old stars, faded stars to fill out the—
It was kind of like Fantasy Island and Love Boat.
Well, Gloria Swanson's in this one.
Helen Hayes was in the first one.
I mean, Fred Astaire turns up in The Towering Inferno.
That was a bit of a part of the formula.
Now, in Towering Inferno, there's a famous football player. O.J.'s in The Towering Inferno, that was a bit of a part of the formula. Now, in Towering Inferno, there's a famous football player.
OJ's in the Towering Inferno.
Yeah, but there's another guy.
He's a big, big guy, like wide.
If we had a researcher here, we could look that up.
Yeah, yes.
I'll put out a call.
Put out a call.
And in Towering Inferno, the elevator snaps and it's not working.
So this football player, you know, grabs the cable of the elevator.
It's not Bernie Casey or was it a guy with an acting career?
Not a big acting career.
I think he was white.
I think so. So he was a football player, and he grabs the cable of the elevator, and he tugs up an entire elevator of people.
I love it.
Well, your man Don Gordon is in The Towering Inferno.
Oh, my God, Don Gordon.
But going back to Airport 75, Helen Reddy is a guitar-strumming nun, which was parodied in Airport 75.
Oh, yes.
Helen Reddy as a guitar-strumming nun, which was parodied in airplane. Oh, yes.
And that one is really George Kennedy also, who became a veteran of these pictures.
He would pop up in all those.
Yeah.
In fact, he's in the first one, too.
He's in Airport 70.
But these were hits, and they kept spawning sequels. And the next one co-starred a former podcast guest, Airport 77,
which is the one where the jet liner ends up on the bottom of the ocean.
Oh, that's right.
With?
Not with.
Christopher Lee was in that.
You're right, but who played Christopher Lee's wife?
Former podcast guest.
Lee Grant.
Nice work.
Lee Grant.
And wasn't Jack Lemmon the pilot?
Jack Lemmon was the star, and Jimmy Stewart's in it.
And keeping with the formula of old-time stars, old Hollywood stars from the Golden Age,
Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotton.
Oh, wow.
So, you know, you got Olivia de Havilland in one.
You got Helen Hayes in another.
You got Gloria Swanson.
They were probably on the phone with their agent saying,
get me one of these airport movies.
Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure
all of those old
dying actors were going,
hey, you got to get me in it. So-and-so
was in it. I actually remember
liking this movie, but
purely as a guilty pleasure. Yes.
Airport 77. I remember liking Jack Lemmon
and it was kind of a different part for him.
Yeah, it was kind of fun to see those guys in those different roles.
Yeah, and cash and a check.
Yeah, that's right.
But the franchise, the nail in the franchise's coffin was Airport 79, The Concord.
Oh, that's right!
Not only did the movie—
Who was in The Concord again?
Robert Wagner.
Okay.
Charo.
You think that would have sold it right there?
A French actor named Alain Delon.
Who I believe was in that movie, Mr. Klein, that you liked.
Yes, yes.
Wow.
He was the pilot.
And with Charo there, the pilot should have been Murph Griffin.
Paul, what do you got on Airport 79?
The Concorde.
Not much, but I do know that you may have noticed that the actual airplane, the Concorde, no longer flies.
I believe because of the reception to the movie.
They finally actually shut down the aircraft altogether.
That's why the SST program went away.
David Warner's in it.
I'm pretty sure.
Oh!
And George Kennedy.
Of course.
Yep.
I think George Kennedy's in all of them.
I think George Kennedy is the recurring motif.
Okay, now we've got to get to the big guns.
In 1972, The Poseidon Adventure.
Now, here's a movie that we have talked about at length on this show.
With Mario Cantone, with our friend Ira Glass.
And Red Buttons, Ernest Pognine.
Yeah, and your friend Stella Stevens, who you wanted.
Stella Stevens is spending
the entire movie in
white underwear and she's
climbing up ladders.
People are following her up.
The camera is following her up the ladder.
Boy oh boy.
Stella Stevens won't do our show
will she? We tried her.
We can go back to the well and see what happens.
So I have a question for Gilbert.
Go ahead.
What was the
Academy Award winning song
from the Poseidon?
Morning After.
Oh,
he's good.
Yeah.
Why do we even bother?
Why do we try?
Sung by,
who sang it?
Oh,
that was,
was that Helen Ruddy?
No.
No,
no,
that was,
that was,
oh God.
You can do it.
You can get this.
She has an alliterative name.
Oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Both letters, same letter, same letter. Oh, no. That was, oh, God. You can do it. You can get this. She has an alliterative name. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Both letters, same letter. Oh, all right.
Give me the letter then.
M.
Two M's.
Maureen McCormick?
No, Maureen McGovern.
Maureen McCormick is Marcia from the Brady Bunch.
Oh, that's right.
She would have sung a bitchin' version of The Morning After.
Can you do a verse?
She would have sung a bitchin' version of The Morning After.
Can you do a verse?
There's got to be a morning after if we can hold on through the storm.
This is beautiful.
And who scored that picture?
Somebody who comes up a lot on this show. Uh-oh.
Mr. John Williams.
Oh, wow.
Are you kidding?
Did he write that song?
I don't know that he wrote the song.
You can check that.
But John Williams
had history with Irwin Allen
from Lost in Space.
That's right.
And Land of the Giants
and those other great
theme songs that he wrote.
This is the first
Irwin Allen movie
that we'll talk about, too.
Gilbert's got the cast right.
Stella Stevens,
Red Buttons.
I believe,
if this isn't bullshit,
and I found this in my research, that Gene Wilder was going to play the Red Buttons. I believe, if this isn't bullshit, and I found this in my research,
that Gene Wilder was going to play the Red Buttons part.
Oh, that would make sense.
James Martin was the character's name.
And because Carol Lindley reportedly did not get along with Red Buttons.
That was bad blood.
So maybe she'd have done better with Gene Wilder.
I don't know.
So Carol Lindley didn't get along with Red Buttons?
Did not get along with Red Buttons.
Oh, I want to see a whole TV movie about this.
Behind the Poseidon Adventure.
Yeah, just like how they did Joan and Betty.
Right.
I'd like to see Carol and Red.
A miniseries.
The next episode of Feud will be Red Buttons and Caroliseries. The next episode of Feud will be Red Barton's and Carol and Lee.
That's too good.
That's what I found.
Oh, that's too good.
Okay, another quiz for you.
Oh, I was on a plane once.
Yeah.
Years ago, I was sitting in between, and I thought I was on a disaster movie waiting to happen.
I was sitting in between Carol Lindley and Sylvia Sidney.
Oh, my God.
Did you talk to them?
No.
Why not?
No, I don't know.
But, boy, if that plane blew up, I wouldn't be the least – I wouldn't have been the least surprised.
You might have been top-billed in the blurb, in the news day.
Or I could have been in brackets, and Gilbert Gottfried as Dr. Johnson.
You didn't talk to Sylvia Sidney?
No.
She's in Dead End with Bogart, for Christ's sakes.
That's right.
You could have learned about Boggey, about your hero.
Okay, here's some more Poseidon Adventure trivia before Paul finds it.
What was the tagline on the movie poster?
What?
What was the tagline on the movie poster?
We've talked about those old posters with the stars, all the faces.
Oh, that's the tagline.
Oh, oh.
No, that was the Joey Ross story.
Oh, for the Poseidon Adventure?
Our listeners are screaming it into their devices oh i know they're getting pissed off it was hell upside down oh that's very good yeah the i got the
composers for the morning after but i don't know these guys l kasha and joel hershorn joel hershorn
joel hershorn i know he's a famous. And while we're talking about taglines,
getting back to George Romero,
the tagline for Dawn of the Dead was,
when there's no more room in hell,
the dead will walk the earth.
Correct.
Brilliantly spoofed by Drew Friedman
and his brother Josh in their first book.
Let's see.
What else do we want to say about the Poseidon Adventure?
You forgot to mention Roddy McDowell.
Oh, that's right.
Leslie Nielsen in a dramatic role.
Oh, yeah.
As the captain who looks through the binoculars, sees the tidal wave, and says, oh, my God.
Which scared the shit out of me when I was a kid.
And Gene Hackman.
Gene Hackman doing good work in cheese.
Yes.
You know, as always, and the fetching Pamela Sue Martin.
Ooh.
We could talk about the Poseidon.
We could just, like, do whole shows about the Poseidon Adventure.
It's so funny that with Airplane that they used Leslie Nielsen.
Yes.
And it was like in those beginning satires where they used him,
he was still the old Leslie Nielsen playing it straight.
Absolutely.
And that's what made it so funny.
Absolutely.
Also, speaking of Oscars, Shelley Winters nominated for her role.
Oh, and she's so famous for jumping into the water and swimming.
She gained 35 pounds for the part, and she trained with a swimming coach.
She trained, I believe, an Olympic swimming coach.
And I would direct our listeners to Mario Cantone's impression of Shelley Winters in the Poseidon Adventure,
which you can find online in clips from Mario's show Laugh Whore.
It must be seen to be believed.
He's done it here.
So there's an interesting bit on Vulture.
They asked for the origin of
Don't Call Me Shirley
and where the joke came from.
And so what they did was went back
to a lot of classic movies of an earlier era
and looked for some of this dialogue and then tweaked it.
So they had found, I think, a line like – the line was – and I'm not sure – he doesn't remember which movie.
Surely You Can't Be Serious was a line from one of the movies they screened and they added and Don't Call Me Surely.
Oh, they must have felt like they'd hit a jackpot.
Yeah, exactly.
and don't call me surely. Oh, they must have felt like they'd hit a jackpot.
Yeah, exactly.
So, I mean, there's a lot of, like in Zero Hour,
there's a line that says,
stewardess, can you face some unpleasant facts?
And she says, yes, but this is hard to imagine out of context.
They change it to no and apparently got a laugh out of that in the movie.
And then the other one was, remember the line from Airplane?
It says, we need somebody who can not only fly this plane,
but who didn't have fish for dinner.
That was an actual line from a movie.
That was the exact line.
Hilarious.
Didn't you want to cruise with David Zucker?
Yes.
A while back.
We've got to get him to do the show.
I, of course, didn't ask him to do it.
Nice work.
Darren didn't ask him either.
Not like he's had any connection with movies over the years.
Don't ask him. And, you know, had any connection with movies over the years. Don't ask him.
And, you know, it was funny with, like, Airplane.
You know, it was based on Zero Hour.
Yeah.
But, you know, most people had never heard of Zero Hour.
It's an obscure film.
And you didn't have to see Zero Hour to laugh.
That's right.
Whereas these other parodies they make, it's the whole thing is like, oh, dress someone
up from that movie.
And the fact that we both recognize that it's from that movie, that's good enough.
Well, they're too self-conscious.
They're imitations of a parody.
Yes.
So, and they don't, and, you know, the filmmakers don't really have the talent that the Zuckers and Jim Abrams.
Yeah, well, they they you know, at this point, there's also some interesting stuff online that this this was early in their careers.
And Paramount was so nervous about the movie.
They negotiate a contract which said they could fire them after one week.
And it turned out the first day of shooting was the day they filmed the and don't call me Shirley line.
And they showed it to the Proud Monarchs X and they said, okay, we get it.
Oh, it's great.
Now we get it.
Yeah, it's great.
We got to have one of those actors in here.
And in the beginning, they wanted to load it with comedians.
I remember.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
They had a fight against that.
It would have ruined the entire.
Yeah, that's right.
Now, was that the first movie where Leslie Nielsen did comedy?
Yes.
That was the one.
I mean, he may have been in other comedies, but he wasn't known, certainly not known for it.
But back then, he didn't realize he was getting laughs.
Once he realized he was getting laughs in those later movies he did he was getting a little too goofy yeah but when
you watch the Poseidon Adventure now and he walks in you start laughing oh of course let's talk
quickly about the Poseidon about the Towering Inferno and Mr. Zucker I know I didn't ask you
on the boat but if you're listening well wait a minute which Zucker was on the boat was it Jerry
or David uh David I think okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
We'll take either one.
And he was talking to me, and then like about a month later, I thought,
oh, he would have been a good person. Nice work.
You are on it.
That's about how long it takes me to find answers to the questions.
It would have been like Charlie Chaplin could come up to me, and I'd go,
oh, he did a couple of them. Yeah, you had a 20-minute conversation with David Allen Greer in the street and never thought to mention that you had a podcast.
Let's squeeze in and then we'll save the rest for another episode.
flush from the success of the Poseidon Adventure,
decides he has to make another big budget,
throw every kind of star,
everything but the kitchen sink into another disaster movie.
So he went to option a book called The Tower,
but it was already optioned.
So he optioned another book called The Glass Inferno.
And then Fox and Warner Brothers decided to team up.
So this was a big deal at the time because it was two studios actually joining forces.
And that led to the Towering Inferno.
You were talking about the building that's still there. This was about a fire breaking out on the 81st floor of the 138-story world's tallest building.
That was the plot.
And that was how many stars can we throw in there and put into peril and set fire to?
And Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.
And I remember a Steve McQueen and a fireman's cap always struck me as funny.
Well, according to what I found, and you know, sometimes you can't believe what you find
on Wikipedia or IMDb,
but Steve McQueen was supposedly self-conscious about the way he looked in the fireman's helmet.
Yeah.
So it's funny that you would pull that out.
Oh, he looked ridiculous.
William Holden.
Oh, that's right.
Did you mention Faye Dunaway?
Fred Astaire, Faye Dunaway.
Faye Dunaway, that's what, back when she was really hot looking.
Yeah, but how they think about it.
I mean, we're talking about how movies have changed and how you couldn't get these films nominated for an Oscar today.
Oh, my God.
It's, yeah.
Today, if you made a disaster movie, it would be automatically, it would be relegated to be movie status.
You wouldn't get people that were the level of Faye Dunaway and Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.
This would be if, like, they took one of the really low budget slasher films
and it was up for five Academy
Awards. And it lured George Clooney
and
Jennifer Lawrence.
Paul Newman was the architect.
Oh, that's right.
And Richard
Chamberlain turns out to be the bad guy
in that movie. And in every one of those
movies, the bad guy is the one, well, much like the mayor in Jaws.
They care about money and not safety.
It's a formula.
So they have to die a miserable death in the movie.
And he does.
Yes.
Not to give anything away.
Yeah.
And they were both written by the same writer, Sterling Siliphant, who was an Oscar winner, who wrote what?
Ooh.
What did he win an Oscar for writing?
Also Lee Grant movie.
Well, she's in it.
Ooh.
It starred your, one of your favorite actors, Rod Steiger.
Oh, shit.
Uh, uh, uh, uh, Heat of the Night?
Correct.
Yes.
So here you go.
So you're winning an Oscar for writing in the Heat of the Night, and. Yes. So here you go.
So you're winning an Oscar for writing in the Heat of the Night,
and then you're writing The Towering Inferno.
That was a big payday.
Well, that was a hot night, too, in the Inferno.
If you were on the 83rd floor.
OJ is in it.
We have to find out the other football player. Robert, yeah, so there's a guy that looks like a football player.
His name is Felton Perry. Hey, do you think OJ will looks like a football player. Is it named Felton Perry?
Hey, do you think OJ
will get out?
Felton Perry, maybe.
Felton Perry.
Do you think OJ will get...
No?
No, I don't think Felton Perry
was a football player.
What about OJ?
I don't know about OJ.
See, when this show airs,
we'll already know.
That's right.
That's right.
Whether he's walking
the street.
That's right.
Tomorrow morning.
And we should look behind us.
Did you ever work with OJ?
I met him once. Uh-huh uh did you lose a part to him well he was originally gonna be a yago i didn't know that
oj simpson i met at a party and he recognized me and did an imitation of me wow and at now that would be like charles
manson yeah that is yeah that is where john williams did the music also for the towering
inferno um and uh yes this is interesting you brought up newman and mcqueen according to then
again i hope it isn't bullshit according to uh to I found, McQueen insisted that they have the exact same number of lines.
Oh, yes.
And they were paid the same amount of money.
They were both paid a million bucks and 7% of the gross for the box office.
And it was very, very tricky trying to figure out which name would go where on the well they did what they called
staggering the credits yes like one was first but it was lower correct and the second one was higher
that's correct that was and that was in their contracts um now here's my last question for you
and then we'll we'll do the rest of these movies that I wrote down on another show
because we're going to run out of time.
But what was the name of the Mad Magazine parody of the Poseidon Adventure?
Oh, I forget.
Anybody?
No can do.
The Poop-Sigh-Down Adventure.
Oh, God.
Once as witty as ever.
As witty as ever. Yes. And you know what's sad is a lot of our listeners knew the answer to that question. Yes, God. Once as witty as ever. As witty as ever.
Yes.
And you know what's sad is a lot of our listeners knew the answer to that question.
Yes, yes.
And were yelling it at their devices.
I would say of these movies, The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure are actually not bad for what they are.
And the actors are good.
And then they did Beyond the Poseidon.
They did Beyond the Poseidon Adventure They did Beyond the Poseidon.
Was Sally Field in that?
She sure is.
We'll save that for a future show.
Paul, what do you got?
That's it.
Okay.
Did I cover this?
I covered everything.
Yeah.
That's it.
We're up to 74.
We'll do the rest of them.
And you guys know the titles.
You probably know where I'm going with the rest of them,
but I'm going to sneak in some weird ones, and we'll do it on a future episode.
This show actually has often been described as a disaster.
Yes, and I would say that's fair.
Especially when we're looking for information.
I don't know who you're referring to.
It's a disaster and a tragedy at the same time.
So thank you to Eric Ryan, our producer of the month for June.
Sorry we're doing this in July, but we're behind,
and we had a lot of mini episodes to do,
and we had to do tribute episodes, bonus episodes we're calling them now.
So thank you, Eric.
And if you guys go to Patreon, you can suggest an episode premise and we'll do it if we pick it.
And David Zucker, if you're listening, I just realized you're in the movie business.
Nice work.
Would you like to take us out with some Maureen McGovern? Oh, there's got to be a morning after if we can hold on through the storm.
Something like that.
You can see why that won an Academy Award.
You can see.
And this has been Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions.
I'm sweating.
See you next time.
Thank you, Frankie. Colossal Obsessions