Happy Sad Confused - Adam Horowitz

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

This is a special episode of "Happy Sad Confused" for many reasons. Josh returns to the podcast for the first time since his father passed away to look back at his own beginnings with his big brother, writer Adam Horowitz ("Once Upon a Time", "Lost", "Tron Legacy"). Adam and Josh talk about the comfort movies they love that were inspired by films their dad introduced them to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ontario, the wait is over. The gold standard of online casinos has arrived. Golden Nugget Online Casino is live. Bringing Vegas-style excitement and a world-class gaming experience right to your fingertips. Whether you're a seasoned player or just starting, signing up is fast and simple. And in just a few clicks, you can have access to our exclusive library of the best slots and top-tier table games. Make the most of your downtime with unbeatable promotions and jackpots that can turn any mundane moment into a golden, opportunity at Golden Nugget Online Casino. Take a spin on the slots, challenge yourself at the

tables, or join a live dealer game to feel the thrill of real-time action, all from the comfort of your own devices. Why settle for less when you can go for the gold at Golden Nugget Online Casino. Gambling problem call connects Ontario 1866531-260. 19 and over, physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See Golden Nuggett Casino.com for details. Please play responsibly. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, leased a 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 biweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall experience event.

Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now. Today on Happy, Sad, Confused, two Horowitz's for the price of one, and maybe one in spirit. Hey, guys, I'm Josh Horowitz. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Thanks, as always, for joining me on my little old podcast, a pet project that began over six years ago and one that remains a labor of love and one that I derive a lot of joy from

and hopefully you do too. If you notice, you know, there's a little extra sadness, a little more weight in my voice today. It's because it's been an especially tough time in my life recently, to be perfectly frank. If you follow me on social media, maybe you know this already. If you don't, Here's the sad news. My dad passed away very recently. It was a tough, brief illness that he confronted at the end. He's been ill to some degree for many years. I've referenced it in past conversations. He had Parkinson's for over 18 years. Really, he actually was astounding bearing the weight of that illness. over the years it really it affected him but but did not really affect his quality of life to a a a large level he was able to enjoy his life enjoy his family enjoy his work um enjoy traveling up until uh recent times um my dad was a huge part of my life and a huge part of why i do what i do he loved movies he uh loved talking about movies um in the last few months

of his life one of the one of my rituals for him was to was to go through the movie listings every day look at all like the look at all the channels and make my movie recommendations to him because that was that was really his main source of enjoyment beyond obviously hanging with his family was to watch old movies that he that he loved I of course was always trying to expose him to new movies that I thought he would enjoy he always wanted to go to the tried and true the ones that he always found comfort in, which kind of weirdly dovetails very nicely with what I've been doing on this show in recent months, talking about comfort movies. You know, we went dark for the last couple of weeks for understandable reasons while I was dealing with family stuff and dealing

with just a lot of emotion and pain. But it felt like it was important to start to get back on the horse and start to do to what I do for a living best, which is entertaining you guys with conversations for MTV and Comedy Central and here on the podcast. And I was debating on how to kind of kickstart the podcast again, what to do again. It felt weird to just come back with just another actor or filmmaker that I had some kind of relationship with. I wanted something that felt a little bit special and hopefully could honor my dad in some way. And it occurred to me, why not have my brother on? My brother, Adam Horowitz, who I talk about frequently on the podcast, he is and was and always will remain four and a half years older than me, and was a big influence

because of that growing up on my movie-going habits. We went to the movies all the time in New York City. He was the way I saw movies. He took me to movies. It was really Adam Horowitz's choices in movies that influenced my love of movies most. So it felt right to have my brother on the podcast today, not to talk about one comfort movie, but to talk about sort of how we grew up and how we came to consume and enjoy movies as much as we did. And also to talk about the movies that my dad kind of passed on to us, his comfort movies, the movies, the genres that he loved most, the kinds of filmmakers and actors he gravitated towards most. So this is a conversation with my brother Adam about growing up in New York and seeing just a ton of movies

and sneaking into movies and seeing double features and watching movies, not on VHS, but on our beloved old Selectivision player, which you'll hear about a little bit more later. It's really a conversation about how I came to love movies through family and experience growing up. By way of the introduction about my brother, in case you don't know, Adam is a hugely successful screenwriter and a television creator, his credits are long. They include co-creating once upon a time. He was a writer and executive producer of Lost. He co-wrote Tron Legacy. He's done a lot of amazing, amazing work on sort of the other side of what I do. And I've only interviewed him a couple of times over the years. I interviewed him a couple times at Comic-Con. And it was always a little bit challenging, a little bit interesting, a little bit odd. Because, you know, how do you talk to your family in different ways? Then you would talk to you would talk. to somebody in a professional clinical professional interview setting so this conversation might sound I don't know it sounds somewhere in between an

interview and a conversation between two brothers hopefully so I hope you get a sense of our passion for movies our love for movies our love for our dad this is hopefully a small way to honor Larry Horowitz and what he did for us and I hope you guys enjoy it this this felt like the right way back into happy say confused and I I also just want to say so many of you sent lovely, beautiful messages over social media. Social media gets a bad rap, Instagram, and Twitter. You know, they're the darkest portals of our minds right now. But there is some good there, and I got so many lovely messages from people I know.

And people I don't know that have just listened to the podcast or watched my stuff. And each and every one of them truly, truly helped me through this time and will continue to do so. and I appreciate your support more than ever, because it ain't easy. As many of you know, it ain't easy losing a parent and a loved one. So I thank you guys for helping me through this difficult time. I'm happy to say that I am back on the horse. I am making new stuff. I just did a couple really cool conversations for the folks that run New York Comic-Con

are putting on this cool thing called Metaverse. If you want to check out some two really special conversations that I did, you should follow New York Comic Con on YouTube. That's the first step. And this weekend, between August 13th and August 16th, they're doing a slew of really cool YouTube video events. They're all free and their interviews and panel discussions. And I did two for them. And they're actually going to come back around on the podcast in future weeks. So if you just want to hold tight and listen to it on the podcast, that's fine. But if you want to watch these videos and watch the, uh, the conversations as soon as possible i highly recommend you subscribe to new york comic on youtube um this friday uh is a conversation an hour long dissection of mad max fury road with the genius that is george miller i can't tell you how amazing an opportunity this was this is something i've wanted to do it for a while george was on the podcast five years ago talking about Fury Road. He was sweet enough to come back on the podcast and come back on this kind of metaverse conversation, whatever we want to call it, for an hour-long deep dive into what

made Mad Max Fury Road. So if you're at all a fan of filmmaking and Mad Max, you're going to love this conversation. I also chatted with Joe Kiri, who is fantastic, up-and-coming actor. You know him, of course, from Stranger Things, as Steve Harrington has a new film called Spree Out at August 14th, and that's just a fun conversation about his life and career, Stranger Things, Spree, his favorite comfort movie, again, go subscribe to New York Comic-Con on YouTube, and you'll be able to check those out. And if you want to just hang tight, you can also enjoy the audio versions on Happy Sad Confused in the weeks to come.

Anyway, all right, onwards and upwards, Happy Sad Confused is back. I hope you guys enjoy this conversation. It's a personal one. Here is me and my slightly older brother, Adam Horowitz. Well, this is a very exciting first for Happy Say I Confused. It only took about six years and 300 episodes to add a second Horowitz to the mix. You know the more famous Horowitz, Adam Horowitz, from Once Upon a Time, lost, amazing stories. Tron Legacy.

he's the celebrated West Coast Horowitz. It's Adam Harrowitz. Hi, Adam. Hi, my brother. Hello, brother, Josh. I don't know. I don't know if I'm the more famous, but I'm the more West Coast.

You were definitely the more West Coast and arguably more famous. The good thing about this is this is the kind of conversation we're going to have is basically what we talk about anyway. Like literally 90% of our conversations, I feel like just evolve into talking about the same. hundred movies we watched as kids. Is that fair to say? So as I was saying in the intro to this,

it felt weird to like dive back into my podcast with just like a normal old episode. You know, since my last episode, our dad passed away. And, you know, certainly he was a big part, I think, for both of us in introducing us to a lot of films. in different ways.

And I think I just wanted to like start by talking a little bit about how we consumed movies as kids. Because I feel like I can fit them into kind of three buckets the way I saw movies. And the main one to your, you can take credit for this or I don't know if it's a thing to take credit for is I think I saw most movies in the company of you. You're my older brother. You were then. You still are.

You're catching up, but I am still older. No, I'm not catching up. That will never happen, sadly. So is that, I mean, is that fair to say? Do you remember, like, seeing most of our movies just together, like, more than our parents making us to movies? Well, there was a certain point where it felt like our parents decided that they could not keep up with our desire to see movies. That's true. And then they just gave up and let us just go about our movie going business with each other and hoped that it didn't ruin us. It seems like it didn't.

If anything, it actually, we both got careers out of it. Right. I mean, there's a possibility that our lives could have gone in much better directions without them, but we'll probably never know. there might be another timeline where we are, you know, very successful dentists or something. I don't know. What would have invented the cure for tooth decay? But I think that them, you know, letting us, I mean, they went at a young age, they did, you know, I have memories of them taking us to the movies, and they certainly like movies.

I mean, our father particularly was a movie fan, but then there was a point where, you know, I think around, when I was around 10, 10 or 11, where I started taking you to movies, which, you know, as a parent now, seems crazy that they would let me take you, who was like six or seven, when I was 10 or 11, when I was 10 or 11, to the movies, to the moment. movies in New York City in New York City it's like okay yeah just go off to the movies and you know by ourselves I don't remember much resistance like from like the usher like I don't remember like encountering much resistance no I mean it's not like we were going on like R-rated movies very often if at all but but no they New York in the 80s in the mid to late 80s, which was when this was, didn't seem to care about its children in the way it does now. I mean, I'm not saying it was a cold, heartless city. It wasn't. I love New York, and I loved it then, and I missed a lot of things about the city then. But there was definitely sort of an attitude

of like, okay, there's a couple of, there's a 10-year-old with a six-year-old brother, you know, Oh, and I see, you know, Rocky 2 or whatever, and it's fine, you know. We also took advantage. Rocky 3 would have been. Right. I don't actually remember seeing Rocky 2 in the theater, but definitely Rocky 3 and 4 many times. I remember seeing Rocky 3 in the theater, which was the first Rocky I saw in a theater. Yeah, maybe not the, did you hear that Stallone is working on a director's cut of Rocky 4?

A director's cut of Rocky 4 wasn't what was. released a director's gut of Rocky Ford? He was the director, yeah. Maybe there's a holding him back at that point. Yeah, he was at the height of his powers. You would think he could do, I mean, that film was basically three musical montages, so I'm anxious to see what he was holding back. Maybe it's more of that robot.

What didn't he get to? So the other thing we took advantage of, I mean, was sneaking around into multiple movies. I mean, we did double and triple features like it was just part of the, Well, I think, yeah, it was, it felt like once we discovered that movie theaters had more than one screen in them, it was, seemed just like we were supposed to see more than a movie. No, it's like going to an amusement park. You get to go to all the rides. Why would you just go to one if you're in this theater that has four to six screens?

I mean, back then, that was a lot for six screens. Yeah. But I do remember some, actually, now that I think about it, I do feel like there was some tension sometimes. You definitely were not supposed to do that. And it felt like we had to be a little strategic. It was one, like, particularly scolding woman, an older lady, I remember at the lowest 84th Street Theater on 84th in Broadway.

That was our theater of choice. That was our local theaters of work. I remember her giving us looks from time to time. Suspicious looks about what these truants were doing. It was a Saturday. I don't like we were skipping school. But, you know, there was, you know, there was a lot of screens. What were we supposed to do?

We didn't know any better. That's true. That's true. I was saying before, I mean, in particular, when I think of seeing multiple movies in a day, I feel like we had a tradition going where we would go to summer camp and I remember a few years like day, because I would go for summer camp for two months

and I would miss all the summer movies and in order to just start catching up, we'd see like three movies in a day. Well, to a child or a, you know, a young kid like ourselves who loved movies, summer camp was cruel. It was like,

You know, going away in summer, when the movies that were meant for us were being released. Yeah, I don't need to swim. I need to see Gremlins. Right. Right. Why was I being sent to the one place where you couldn't see Ghostbusters? Yeah. Where you had to be outdoors.

Nature. Well, children around America were watching Gremlins and Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters and And, you know, all the other, the fun stuff, you know, I guess, you know, and then what would happen is, yeah, we would be a camp for whatever, seven or eight weeks, which was, you know, very nice of our parents to send us to camp, although I'm sure there's a little bit of a selfish motivation of getting the kids out of the house so they could travel and stuff themselves. right you know they were also trying to be nice and expose us to athletics fresh air but but the same respect we'd come back and we'd be like all right it doesn't matter if it's a flickering image on us over screen we will go synchronic right and because of that we did have some I feel like there was one I think I think this is all the same summer there's there's one triple feature I want to say I don't know if I have this right teen wolf facts of the future real

genius would that have been the same year that was that was right yes and now that felt particularly cruel to miss back to the future like you know to send a kid away went back to the future came out but like but it was interesting you'd come back and and there's two michael j fox movies out there's d more from back to the future now as a kid at the time they're just there's two michael j fox movies you don't know the difference they're they're just equal obviously yeah so they're they're on an even playing field when you go see them, you know, and up in a, you know, a log cabin in New Hampshire, they're not sending you daily variety with grosses. I don't know what's a box office phenomenon in sweeping America. For all I know, Teen Wolf is the one. You know, we went to see both

and I enjoying Teen Wolf just fine. Sure. I like back to the future a lot, you know, but it was, it was, you know, it's funny to see it in that context where it's all, your script of any sort of sort of cultural knowledge of what's going on. So I do remember, do you remember this? I mean, this is a whole, another longer conversation, but in brief, we, you know, we were nerds for all kinds of movies. But we, a big part of our childhoods was sci-fi and Star Trek. We would go to conventions, sci-fi conventions in New York.

I remember seeing the teaser for Back to the Future at one of those conventions where like they where the like the window comes down don't remember that really okay but i but i believe it happened yeah thank you it happened but i don't remember it okay um but i do remember um i do remember seeing back to the future with you after somewhere now and i remember seeing it like i remember seeing it and teen wolf and and yes and real genius was the other one, which I really liked Real Genius. I still love Real Genius. I was very, very

excited to much, much later in life get to work with William Atherton. He did an episode of Lost for us when my writing, cruising partner, Eddie and I worked on Lost. We cast him in a role

during the final season. as a as an ornery school principal. That sounds about right. That's in his wheelhouse. It was his wheelhouse and he delivered and he was very nice man and he did a great job and it was one of those, you know, that has been one of the joys of working the business now is like getting to work with people.

Oh, yeah, you know, I like William Atherton a lot and he's now can write a role for him. Amazing. Okay, so the other important, before we launch into some specific comfort movies, the other important way we consume movies, which speaks a little bit to our father's frugal nature,

perhaps, or sometimes poor decision-making and buying new tech. He decided not to go with Laserdisc, which was one of the burgeoning new technologies of the time. He went with RCA's competitor, the Selectivision. Yes. The Select Division was a technology that never quite took hold.

It looked like a laser disk, but it was not a laser disk. It was, as far as I could tell, it was like a record with images. Yeah, it's more akin to that, like, it's grooves. And the dust would, like, literally ruin it. Yeah, I don't even quite understand how the technology worked. And I remember him justifying it to us. saying he didn't get the laser disc because this was just as good. The only different is something like after 10,000 plays, the disc wouldn't be any good.

But who's going to watch a movie 10,000? That was the only difference. There's no other qualitative difference. Sensible. There was a lot of qualitative difference. The image was not very good. It was, you know, maybe a step up from VHS, if that, which we didn't have. We were the last family to have a VHS because we had a Selectivision disc player, which was all you really needed,

except that you couldn't record anything with it. They just watched a very limited selection. I think we were probably one of the last 10 families to, like, stick with it. Because I looked it up. I think, like, I read the last one they produced. I'm pretty sure we owned was Jewel of the Nile. And I feel like I see that in our collection. So like from like 81 to, yeah, 81 to 86, we had like every selectivision disc.

I'm impressed that we're still hanging on to the technology in 86 and that so were we. Yeah, but because of that, there is a limited selection. and there was we had a limited library of films that our father would buy and that would sort of like that kind of curated our film knowledge a bit just by what we had yeah we watched those same 100 movies over and over again and i and i was thinking before we go into like the specific comfort movies like i was thinking i think of the ones that were like a little bit beyond especially my age like I think of, like, he had the verdict and he had MASH and, like, Cabaret even. These were, like, I wasn't ready for any of those movies, but I saw them. I'm watching Cabaret and if they'd depend or whatever and liking it, I think, but not quite understanding it. And the same, the verdict was also probably not one for 10-year-old me. but but I got there eventually

I do remember I don't know if you remember this that the only James Bond movie we had you remember this was from Russia with Love which has remained probably my favorite James Bond movie to this day maybe that's why yeah that's interesting that is my go-to too and I wonder it's probably why actually

I mean partially it is also it's a great movie but it's and maybe are really the best one in some ways. But it was also the only one we had. So I watched it 10,000 times until the disc wore out. Yeah. Okay, so we're

going to talk about comfort movies in three buckets. We're just kind of kind of free-associated on a few. I think a big one for us is the comedy bucket. And you have a comfort movie to start us off with, which wasn't necessarily one of our dad's movies, but it kind of dovetails with a lot of

the ones. I mean, it is, a holiday movie and it is Scrooged, which is not, you know, maybe the standard holiday movie for everyone, but it is one that I go back to over and over again, and a movie that I do find comforted, that will always make me laugh, and that I always, you know, flaws and all. all enjoy um like it's you know no movie is perfect i mean maybe there are a few perfect movies but but there's a difference between you know perfect movies and and movies you just like enjoy being with and scrooge it is one yeah for me that whenever i come across it i can just watch it at any point and enjoy it. And then, you know, and every holiday season, I wind up

watching it or now making my kids watch it. And, you know, I think part of it is, it speaks to my sense of humor. I do, you know, I do distinctly remember seeing it with you, which I don't know if you remember. I do remember, because I remember, I'll never forget, like, the end when he speaks, he speaks of the audience and that feeling unique and odd. I want to say it was an Upper West Side Theater. What the other was? Oh, really? It was not. Okay, what was it? It was, um, for anyone from New York of a certain age of a remember, the Lowe's Orphium on the east side, on the East 86th Street, which used to be, before our time even, used to be a giant single screen theater

when those things used to exist. And then sometime I'm going to guess in the early 80s was split up into two screens where there was one giant, like, thousand-seat theater or bigger that was like the main screen. And then they turned the balcony into a second screen. It was like four or five hundred seats. but the main screen was this like kind of cavernous theater

and that's that was the one that we saw a scrooge den and I do remember it was a fairly crowded opening weekend audience and they had that whole gag at the end where he's speaking to the audience and telling people to like sing or stand up or class outside of the theater and like it was one of those instances where it actually like worked audience, which was crazy.

But yeah, it was, we saw it Thanksgiving night. I remember that. 1988. 1988. And you and I, it was after our Thanksgiving dinner with the family and after Turkey and all the other stuff and visiting with relatives and everybody kind of drifting off and going home and probably around nine or. 10 o'clock for whatever reason our parents let um probably it was i was probably 15 or 16 and you were

probably 12 well usually you were 12 yeah right and um right yes i was probably 16 and you were 12 and then let me take you uh to the theater and we went across town and saw probably like a 10 o'clock show with that richard donner was a big part of our childhood or i mean but the run he was you know i didn't realize this he made this in between lethal weapon one and two oh i'm a big picture donner fan i have been for a very long time and um um i i briefly got to work for him one of my first jobs which i don't know i ever told you i think i remember that well one of my first jobs in hollywood was as a post-production pa which just meant um a production assistant for the editorial team on a show called Tales from the Crypt

from HBO for a number of years and Richard Donner was one of the producers and in the pre-internet days of 1995 or whatever it was was like probably late 94

you know there was back then there was no like you know dailies on the internet and all that stuff what would happen is I would wake up at 5 a.m. and drive over to a place and physically pick up the dailies and then Hollywood and then drive them from Hollywood to Chatsworth where the production post-production offices and production offices were

and then we would like the editorial team would make jobs of them on VHS and then I'd have to drive them to all the producers and were a lot of producers all over town at Paramount and there's a million producers on the show and Richard Conner was one of them and and I remember you know having to go to his office like you know every day and briefly getting to meet him and um and uh on the Warner Brothers lot which uh was you know I just got it out of college and um but you know the thing with Dailies then was they were on VHS tape so like you know when you'd have Dailies I'd be literally carrying like a cardboard box that might have 30 or 40 VHS tapes stacked in them

and they had these little narrow pathways on the one or a lot between the little bungalows and I remember just like be very nervous and just wanted to get into the right place and I remember and this was like very early in my time in Hollywood just a few weeks in bringing this very nervous when I do it right and I like tripped I fell and all the tapes

splattered out of my cardboard box and blocked this like you know, two-foot path. And I got on my hands and knees and I'm picking out, trying to get a box, and I feel this little entourage, stop waiting for me to get, so you pick them up and get out of the way. And I look up and staring down at me is Clint Eastwood. And that was the scariest Hollywood moment I probably ever had. Just Clint Eastwood just wait for the tips out this way. Oh, my God. Anyway. You had a, yeah, you had a lot of, you had a, you had a of interesting early Hollywood stories.

I mean, I still remember just visiting you out there and, like, getting to read scripts that you were getting and reading. That was like my first time I've ever reading scripts. But anyway, okay, let's talk with some more comedies because I feel like beyond Scrooge, which I don't even know if our dad ever watched, but I'm with you 100% on that one.

But his comedies, I think of, I think of Mel Brooks, I think of Adam McAstello, I think of Mark's brothers, really silly big pink panther yes um keep i think he exposed the i would i would credit him with exposing us to all of those pretty much yeah i mean i think pink panther and i think you know also i mean i mean i think he liked blake edwards because i also remember him taking us see victor victoria we had that on selectivision too yeah which was not a pink panther movie was blake edwards movie that was like what 1982 something like that yeah and yeah we were pretty young to be seeing

a Victor Victoria, but I still got something out of it, and that was a funny movie. I remember he loved Victor Victoria. That's a funny movie. It's a big movie. Pink Panther really registered for me. Pink Panther was just all of them. That was a big thing in our household. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we would often quote lines back and forth, Cato and him, and it was, yeah. Yeah, no, there was a lot of imitating Inspector Cluzo in the house. And he got a kick out of Inspector Cluzo and Peter Sellers. He loved Peter Sellers. And he also, I mean, different than digressing from Panther.

I remember he liked being there. Yes, that was another one I was going to mention in kind of the adult movies that were on Selected Mission that I was too young for at the time. Right, which was, I remember, I distinctly remember watching being there on one of those discs after watching Panther movies. and waiting for the Prap Falls. Yes. That the Prat Falls did not come.

No. That was like it was, that was a hard transition into Ashby. Yes. But, but it was, I got there eventually. But, but yeah, no. So his taste spanned all sorts of things, but he really did like Peter Sellers. Yeah, I mean, I remember we had Strange Glove on, on disc as well. after the Fox

was a That was a big one which was I don't know people are familiar with that one that's a slightly lesser known one

about that's great though yeah he plays a guy pretends to be an Italian film director to do a heist

it's a fun movie I feel like we should mention Mel Brooks too because I think Young Frankenstein in particular

stands up as one of my top comfort movies and I think it was one of his favorites too it is I just watched that recently with my children.

And it was actually a bit of an ordeal to find. It's like it was hard to actually find it. I did track it down like you had to like subscribe to stars or something. Did you not look up Selectivision discs on eBay? Because it was definitely on Selectivision. I haven't. But it's still funny. Yeah.

And it didn't play well with two out of three of my children. One of them, the youngest, found it a little scary. Because it's like, it's so close to what it is that it did play a little scary for him. Well, it's shot beautifully. It's in black and white. And like if you weren't listening to the dialogue, you would think you're just watching like a beautiful, classic horror movie. Yeah. And for my seven-year-old son, it played a little like that.

So, yeah, he was a little frightened. Next category, let's talk about are kind of suspense films. And tell me your comfort movie, which has some comedic event to it, too, but it's a good entry point. Foul play, that was a big one for me as a kid. And I remember that was one that was on, like, on HBO a lot. like he sees a Saturday night movie or whatever and he liked that one yep I remember watching it with him and kick out of that so for context just a little bit it's a 1978 movie this is chubby chase Goldie hon Dudley more um and it's actually one of i think one of the first like

big leading roles for Chevy chase after SNL yeah it is one of the first one of his first big And there's actually a funny moment early in the movie, which is a slightly strange scene where we meet Goldie Hawn in a party at the very beginning of the movie and Chevy Chases there and hits on her, which is like just a way to introduce his character early in the movie because his character doesn't come into the movie to like 45 minutes since in the movie. Because he's like the police detective that gets assigned to the case that she's like gets embroiled in this whole mystery thing. But they clearly wanted him in the movie early, so they put him in this opening scene.

And it's just this big coincidence movie that there's really no reason for him to be in that scene. But he, like, he, like, kind of hits on her at this party. And then at the end of the scene, when she kind of rejects him, he just kind of stands there, and the camera holds him. He just kind of looks at the camera, and it's like this, like, SNL-like moment almost. And you feel like the SNL actor in him there very strongly. But there's a little bit of a test. run for it for Fletch a little bit more there's a little Fletch in there too yeah it's

I haven't seen it in a while have you seen it recently does it hold up it it does it does it is it is a classic example of how a PG movie in 1978 is very different from a PG movie in present day right and and also like I was watching it with the family, and then it became clear after about half hour, it's probably not appropriate for my children yet. So, you know, it's funny, and it's a PG film, and there's some adult themes, and it's not, you know, super, you know, out there, but, you know, these days it would certainly be a PG-13, not R-rated movie. And, you know, there's a whole extended sequence with Dudley Moore

in the old movie. That's a funny sequence where she's being chased by the bad guys and she goes into a singles bar and she asked Dudley Moore to help her out and he takes her to his apartment and he thinks picking him up and he's the whole misunderstanding and it's really it's a little bit of a dated

and like you know there it's I don't know if it's offensive so much because Dudley Moore is really portrayed in a negative light for what he's going, but it's not really a scene for kids. Right. It's funny.

It's also like a, oh, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was going to say it belongs to kind of like a weird subgenre that I really, really, really love, which is kind of inspired a little bit by Hitchcock and like these kind of ordinary people caught in these like dream circumstances. You think like North by Northwest is the Hitchcock example that comes to. mind most. But then, like, I think of something like, we, and we've talked about this a lot, Silver Streak actually has a really a lot of DNA with this one. Well, I mean, and they're both

Colin Higgins, right? Colin Higgins wrote Silver Streak. Oh, maybe he wrote, I don't know if he wrote it. Maybe he wrote it. I know he only directed three films. He directed nine and five. And he directed, well, foul play was the first one. He directed, did he, I'm pretty sure. We're looking it up as we speak. Yeah. He died very young, and he has only three directing credits, nine to five, foul play and the best little hoard house in Texas. I don't know if he wrote Silver Streak, of course.

Yeah, no, he wrote Silver Streak. Okay, so that makes sense. And Silver Streak, those who don't know, it is, of course, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jill Kleiberg. It takes place a good portion of it takes place on the Silver Streak on a train. Gene Wilder witnesses what he thinks is a murder. and yeah, it gets kind of caught up in circumstances beyond his purview, beyond what he can handle.

And what I found interesting recently, I think I mentioned this to you, is despite it being kind of a Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder movie, Richard Pryor doesn't come in to like an hour into the movie. No, very late in the movie. And there's elements of that movie that probably don't hold up in a modern context. Yes, the scene in the bathroom that will probably not work to that. Yeah, but, but it's, it is a, it's a well-written and well-made and well-constructed movie like Palpley is as well, in that they are sort of, spoof isn't the right word so much as they're like kind of, they take the Hitchcock genre and kind of add another genre to it. And Colin Williams was a really, really talented writer.

He also wrote Harold and Maud. Oh wow, I didn't realize that. Yeah, which was, I think, the first thing he wrote, or at least the first thing that was produced at Pace. He must have been very young when he wrote that. He was very young when he died. Yeah. But he wrote Harold and Maud, which is another Greek.

And which is not a Hitchcock-inspired thing. It's a other thing. But Silver Street has a lot of Hitchcock in it, too, married with sort of a romantic comedy element in it as well. Plus also a buddy film element. It's got a whole bunch of stuff. And then Foul Play also is this like takes the Hitchcock, like, wrong person in the wrong place. I can see it as something like North by Northwest and then marries it with, you know, a buddy cock. thing and

a romantic comedy thing and and turns it into something else. Now I've always thought and you know that you could look at foul play actually is like in some ways a

oddly like a dry run for something like lethal weapon two like if you look at Okay. No, not lethal weapon one, but two. Because if you think about the movie, the Brian Dennyhee character, do you remember? And you probably don't because it's a pretty small part in the movie, but Brian Dennyhy plays Chevy Chase's partner. And Chevy Chase is the crazy cop.

Brian Dennyhee is the sort of buttoned down cop. They're essentially Mill Gibson Danny Glover. and they're assigned to deal with this crazy woman. She is essentially the Joe Pesci character. And it's like lethal weapon too told from Joe Pesci's point of view. What foul play is. This is why people come to my podcast for the hot takes on foul play. That's perfect.

I mean, we mentioned Hitchcock. Hitchcock, like probably most dads love Hitchcock. I mean, it's just like it's a, you know, his body work is amazing. But, yeah, we were exposed to a lot of Hitchcock. North by Northwest remains one of my favorite films. Oh, yeah. But I think of, I feel like he liked Spellbound. I don't think of like the later ones.

I don't think of, like, vertigo. Spellbound, I remember, that freaked me out, that one. You liked that one. You did, right? Yeah. Spellbound's along with where, where it ends with a kid going down. Yes. Spoiler. Cover your ears.

The end of the movie. the kid slides down the thing and the the spike is there that that freaks me out yeah yeah that's a shrew look but that's another one that I probably saw too young um but but as stuckly and the other one he loved was um what's i don't know murder oh shadow of a doubt yes yes yes um uncle charlie that's that's again remains one of my favorites and then Oh, and then Strangers on a train. Yes. Yes.

I think I remember him liking, I think he liked her own mama from the train, which is obviously a huge descendant of. Yeah, that's right. He did. Yeah. Okay, the third category, the final category we want to bring up, and this is a big one. He loved war movies.

In particular, World War II films. I would, I guess I would take Casablanca, which is sort of, I guess it is a World War II movie, but it's also a lot of other stuff. stuff. But it's, that was one of that we had on disc, which I watched endlessly, which is, you know, I do think, you know, going back to something I said earlier, actually is pretty close to a perfect movie. Yeah, I thought I would agree. There's, there's not much to quibble with in that movie. It's interesting now, like showing it to my kids now, you know, having to give the context of World War II and what was going on. I had to pause it a lot to explain what was, what was. was happening and why you would need letters of transit. Like what the whole situation was. And when we saw that movie and when our father showed it to us in, you know, early 80s, late

70s, whenever it was, you're talking about 35, 40 years after World War II. Right. It was much oddly closer and fresher. Now you're talking about, you know, 75 years later. Truly a different world. yeah yeah it's such a different world so far um that it's it's like it is uh it's it's kind of crazy like kind of trying to contextualize something like that and like so revisiting some of these war movies now is is interesting in that way but it's it's a it's a great movie and um that's one

i remember you can love it and and still holds up one one i remember that um It's an important one, but maybe it's not certainly not, the Casablanca level, was Mr. Roberts, which I watched over and over and over again, and is a war movie. It also has a lot of comedy to it. Henry Fonda, William Powell, James Cagney, Jack Lemon, basically about like an officer on a cargo ship who feels like he's missing the war based on a play. Yeah, just like, I don't know, a super watchable movie, not as grim. maybe, as a lot of these other films we're talking about, though I remember the ending is pretty tragic.

Yeah, it is pretty, no, that ending. But it's also the end, I also remember the ending being, if my memory is, because the ending is, can I spoil it for you? Yeah, spoiler alert for Mr. Roberts, 60 years later. All right. So it's like, Henry Fonda dies.

Yes. And then, but then it's like Jack Lemon is like, he's like suddenly, reformed and like and like he comes and takes over and it's like this very upbeat moment where he's like kind of picks up a man exactly so it is

tragic but also kind of upbeat too yeah and that other quintessential ones I think of these are all classics but longest day great escape bridge on the river quai of course

well longest day was one I always I remember him liking I remember also liking watching a lot and it's it's that's one of those movies it just has every actor in it and you know it's um you know it's about d day and and all that and it's he liked those movies that really i think also kind of like recreated things from history like like like and try to like you know sort of be accurate retelling so though you know now when you get to things like saving Private Ryan and stuff where the accuracy gets to another level. There's a sort of quaintness to something like the longest day now.

Yeah. You know what's interesting? You know, we were talking about like how he obviously enjoyed Peter Sellers. And then it occurred to me. I was thinking about some of these films in the war film genre. And I was thinking about Bridget on the River Quay. And it occurs to me, I think another one he really liked was Alec Guinness. and he actually shares a bit in common, weirdly, with Peter Sellers.

He loved Ale Guinness and Bridges on the River Kwai, but he also loved him in the Ealing comedies. He would always talk about. Oh, that's right, yeah. The Lady Killers, Kind Hearts and Coronets, the Lavender Hill Mob, and some of these movies where he was playing multiple characters. So, yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, that's a bit of a common theme between Peter Sellers and Alleghenus. He must have liked these virtual-a-sic, you know, performances. Yeah, and, no, he did. That's interesting. Well, if nothing else, we've given people a good historical lesson on archaic forms of media that you can no longer purchase. Maybe you can probably purchase a selectivision on eBay. We were talking before about like the last film or film going experiences with him, and they probably were like the event films when he would visit you in L.A., like the Star Wars films.

He got to see your, he was at the world premiere of Tron Legacy, which was a huge moment for you. and the whole family, and that must have been. I don't know what he made of John Legacy, maybe not like what was built for Warren Horowitz, but I know he was proud and excited. No, I mean, he said nice things about it. I mean, you know, I mean, it's funny. It's, I don't know how conscious or not it is,

but that movie is all about fathers and sons. Yes, absolutely. That's what I mean, you know, had a great influence, you know, on me, on my writing and stuff and you know and then the films he showed me and exposed me and even like you know

I mean I've told you like foul play for example like you know Goldie Hawn's car in that you know for any of you watch once upon a time that she drives a yellow bug and that's the car that you know Eddie and I gave Emma to drive because we're both big fans of that movie

you know I mean this stuff that he exposed to me has been huge influential and shaking my life and career. Well, same here in different unique respects. And yes, certainly, like I said, up until the end, we were talking about movies with him and joking about movies, and I was always telling him,

like, what's on TCM, he became a devoted TCM watcher. So we have a lot to be thankful for, and I think he would appreciate that this gave us a nice excuse to talk, to talk movies and talk about his influence for an hour and sorry it took this to get you on the podcast next time we won't we won't wait for a death you can come back any time let's not let's not do that stay tuned for more foul play hot takes with adam harrowitz on the next episode of happy a lot of thoughts on foul play and richard honor and so ends another edition of confused. Remember to review, rate and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your

podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley and I definitely wasn't pressured to do this by Josh. and Sundance, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo, Wyatt Earp, Batmasterson, and Bass Reeves, Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, the Texas Rangers, and many more. Hear all their stories on the Legends of the Old West podcast. We'll take you to Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City, to the plains, mountains, and deserts for battles between the U.S. Army and Native American warriors, to dark corners for the disaster of the Donner Party, and shining summits for achievements like the Transcontinental Railroad. We'll go back to the earliest days of explorers and mountain men and head up through notorious Pinkerton agents and gunmen like Tom Horn.

Every episode features narrative writing and cinematic music, and there are hundreds of episodes available to binge. I'm Chris Wimmer. Find Legends of the Old West, wherever you're listening now.