How Did This Get Made? - The Adventures of Pinocchio LIVE! (Classic)

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Martin Landau star in the 1996 fantasy adventure film The Adventures of Pinocchio. LIVE from Chicago, Paul, June, and Jason discuss the donkey transformations, Pepe the Cricket, Geppetto and Pinocchio getting in a bathtub, and so much more. Plus, Paul drops a new childhood story involving his Grandma and an evil butcher. (Ep. #232 Originally Released 01/30/2020) • Go to hdtgm.com for tour dates, merch, FAQs, and more• Have a Last Looks correction or omission? Call 619-PAULASK to leave us a voicemail!• Submit your Last Looks theme song to us here• Join the HDTGM conversation on Discord: discord.gg/hdtgm• Buy merch at howdidthisgetmade.dashery.com/• Order Paul’s book about his childhood: Joyful Recollections of Trauma• Shop our new hat collection at podswag.com• Paul’s Discord: discord.gg/paulscheer• Paul’s YouTube page: youtube.com/paulscheer• Follow Paul on Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/paulscheer• Subscribe to Enter The Dark Web w/ Paul & Rob Huebel: youtube.com/@enterthedarkweb• Listen to Unspooled with Paul & Amy Nicholson: unspooledpodcast.com• Listen to The Deep Dive with June & Jessica St. Clair: thedeepdiveacademy.com/podcast• Instagram: @hdtgm, @paulscheer, & @junediane• Twitter: @hdtgm, @paulscheer, & msjunediane  • Jason is not on social media• Episode transcripts available at how-did-this-get-made.simplecast.com/episodesGet access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using the link: siriusxm.com/hdtgm Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's a movie where you get an accent, you get an accent, you get an accent, we all get an accent. We saw The Adventures of Pinocchio, so you know what that means. Holy shit, this is amazing Chicago home of how to just get made first. You saw Hurricane Heist. You saw Blues Brothers. We didn't torture you enough with those two films. We needed to turn it up. a notch, and we did with the Jonathan Taylor Thomas Martin Landau Fantasy Childs film?

JTT in full effect for the last 30 seconds of this movie. The Adventures of Pinocchio is everything that you love about the beloved classic Pinocchio, but really fucked up and weird. It's like they took... all the children aspects out and replaced it with like David Lynch crazy. It's going to be very hard to talk about this movie because Jiminy Cricket's not called Jiminy Cricket. Stromboli is not called Stromboli.

So we may have to get around that a little bit, but to help break it down tonight, we have two amazing people. My two co-host, please welcome first. Mr. Jason Manzuka! Jason! Have you ever seen this? movie before. This waking nightmare

of a film. This was haunting. It was like a diamond in the rough that no one even mentioned it. Like in the millions of suggestions that we get for this show, no one ever said, did you know there's a Jonathan Taylor-Thomas

Pinocchio movie? Never heard that. You would characterize this as a Jonathan Taylor-Thomas movie? This is a Martin Landau vehicle friend. This is part of the landauissance, as far as I'm concerned. We can agree to disagree. I mean, JTT is getting top billing in this.

And he's in it for barely minutes. But his voice, his voice is in it, the entire film. Oh. So good. This was straight up garbage. It was like, this was, it was, it was, it reminds. It reminded me of another terrible, all of the CG, all of the effects looked like pre-vis.

They looked like the idea of what we were gonna draw. But then they're like, fuck it, put it in, we're in. It is a disturbing movie, especially as a father going, if I was ever tricked into taking a child to this, I am creating trauma for my children. It was also like overtly sexual. in any and all ways. Every time that nose grew,

I was like, somebody in this room has turned on. There were... Way too many mouths open with water jutting into it too. That was like slowed down and they were like, getting a gulp. Pinocchio meets flash dance. Well, I know that someone here is going to have a very strong opinion about this film.

She is my other co-host. Please welcome. June, Diane, Raphael. How are you, June? I'm doing okay. How are you? I'm fine. Thank you for asking. June, we watch the Adventures of Pinocchio together today. Yeah, and let me just set the scene because we're staying in a very nice hotel.

I love a luxury hotel experience. But let's not tell anyone where it is. I'm not going to say where it is. I'm just going to say. Four points. Get used to it. If you're in Naperville, come knock on our door. I'm just going to say it's a very,

it's a luxury experience. Sure. It's between a subway and a dominoes. And it's totally cool if you send it up to the room. And I love that experience so much that I'm willing,

I'm willing and able to watch whatever comes my way. I mean, you saw, when you came back, last night what I was watching. Yes, we were watching Chicago Live, the replay. It's at night. Yes. So it's a replay of what is a live morning show? I think so. And it was terrible. And it's still called Chicago Live, even though it's taped earlier. But I can fall into whatever the TV has to offer me happily. Oh, if I'm in a hotel, Guy Fietti is odd. I mean... Apple D, baby.

But if I'm at home, if I'm at home and Guy Fieri comes across the screen, I'm like, this fucking guy, get him out of here. But in hotel, I'm like, this is the best thing I've ever seen. Absolutely. I'm just happy to be there. Happy to have been invited to the experience.

And so for me to have such a negative reaction to a movie during a luxury hotel experience means it's really quite, quite bad. Yeah. Like, what? Would you rather watch this movie again or have one hour and 45 minutes of diarrhea?

Like, that's the length of the movie. There was no way the movie was an hour and 45 minutes. This was a five-hour movie. 96 minutes that felt longer. It has to be longer. It has to be longer. 96 minutes that felt like longer than Endgame and Infinity War put together. I'd watch, I'll say this, I watch the whole.

movie. Then I clicked on it to see how far it progressed? 22 minutes. I was like, that can't be right. I've watched all of Jepetto's nightmares now. It was a tricky 96 minutes.

Now, I don't remember I guess the story of Pinocchio. Was Pedro the cricket part of it? Jiminy the Cricket was. That's what Paul and I thought. We turned to each other and said wasn't a Jiminy. Jiminy Cricket, though.

My belief is the Pinocchio story must be public domain. Anybody can tell it? But my guess is Jiminy Cricket was a Disney creation? Well, I think the idea of a cricket that has the moral compass for Pinocchio is true. And I think then Disney may have labeled him as Jiminy, and that was it. Because also all the characters in the classic Pinocchio tale, I mean, there's a lot of differences. I think this is more based on the book. Okay.

The book, Pinocchio? Yes, the book Pinocchio. I mean, I remember reading Pinocchio. And I don't think that's what I saw. I mean, this is not the story that I remember. And seeing the title now, it did make a little more sense that this is just one of the many adventures of Pinocchio. No, this is...

June, this is all the adventures. This is a movie movie. Because he's talking to be in this movie. He is made a child's... turned into a donkey. He is part of the show. He is the lead of the musical performance. He is swallowed by a sea monster.

Well, who was a man? Who was a man? I think these are, in fact, all of the adventures of Pinocchio. There isn't another Pinocchio story, or is there, because there was a sequel to this film. The sequel was released three years later. It was called The New Adventures of Pinocchio. What?

Just Mar ahead. Who is telling me he comes? to contemporary's earth. Martin Landau did reprise his role. Wow. And Udo Kerr came back not as Lorenzini, but as Lorenzini's wife, Madame Flambeau. So he went a different

direction. What? And then Gabriel Thompson played the title role replacing JTT. By the way, June, this is 96. Were you a JTT head? Let's see. I was 16. I was a little too old to be a full JTT head. Got it. I mean, I remember knowing of him and seeing him in the, you know, on the rags, but I didn't. Was he getting a lot of gossip rag? On the rags?

Yeah, he was. When you were having your period, you would see. You were going to say that. You were going to say that. You were going to say that. Like, oh, no, my odd floe's visiting. Guess I'm going to see JTT's face everywhere. I only seem to see it when I'm going to see it. on the racks.

Yeah, I was like a few years too old for him, but... Not me. I loved him. My problem with the puppet, though, of JTT, Pinocchio was he looked nothing like Jonathan Taylor Thomas at the end. He looked much younger than Jonathan Taylor Thomas. When Pinocchio, the Marionette... By about ten years. He looks like a, I don't know, six-year-old boy, something in there.

And Jonathan Taylor Thomas appears to be 12 when he transforms into a human boy. Well, I mean, at the end of the movie, you think he's going to be asking for, like, a sister. But he's like, get me a girlfriend, dad. I want to fuck some wood dolls now. Get some dick splinters. So here's my question.

Here's my question. Just because you brought it up. This is my genuine question. He's now a real boy. He's been transformed into a living boy, played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas, why not try and get a girlfriend amongst the living?

Why have Geppetto carve a wooden girlfriend, you then will have to find a magical way to bring that Marionette. Do you know the odds of twice transforming, or he's just going to fuck

fuck that wooden pussy? But this is what is so weird about the movie. I mean, I asked the very same question when Pinocchio is trying to save other puppets in the theater scene because it's as though he's saving his friends and actual people. And I did not know if, I mean,

is the premise of this movie that every puppet has the potential to- I don't think so. I was doing some thinking about this too, June, because you said- You were? Yes. Because when June said we were watching it

And Peppy, Jiminy Cricket, says, go save your brothers and sisters. They never come to life, but they're treated like when two of them are left on the ground for dead, like, oh, he left them for dead. But then I remember in the beginning of the movie, Martin Landau in his great Italian accent says, meet your brothers and sisters.

And so I think it was sort of like a little bit of like a flower sack baby scenario for Pepe. It was sort of like, hey, if you want to be a risk, responsible, real boy, you gotta care about people, and that was his first challenge. Huh. Yeah, maybe. I don't, here's what I thought.

I mean, I get it. What I thought was, I think all the other marionettes are just that, marionettes. Because the Pinocchio marionette was carved from the tree that had the heart carved into it, that was the magic that allowed for him to have infuse. used in him the love of Geppetto and Leona? Yes.

That their love is the bit of magic that allowed him to come to life. But no, no, no. I just want to pull this back because I want to get to what you're saying, but that's a problematic thing. Hashtag problematic? Because Geppetto was in love with the woman who married his brother didn't seem like she was in love with him or knew about it until he was rowing off the scene.

It's like, by the way, I fucking love you. Also. And you're like, I don't have time for this. Also, this is, do you have access to the movie right there? Yes. Can you, while I set this up, go to the very last beat of Geppetto? After Pinocchio runs away, we have a shot of just Geppetto and Leona, and it's now they are in love for the, for, they live happily ever after, and she looks miserable.

And there you have it. Geppetto and Leona lived happily ever after. They lived happily ever after. He touches her shoulder. She recoils. Yes. She looks like she is not there at her own will. She does,

she literally looks like she's being held prisoner by the puppet maker. She expected him, and rightly so, to die at sea. And she didn't want to be like, I never loved you in that moment because she thought that would be too harsh. And now she's, what a, you know. What a wicked web we weave when we try to deceive, am I right?

What if we reversed around this right now? What if in this shot, we reversed all the way around and saw what they were looking at, and it was just the Pinocchio Marionette lying on the ground? And the whole thing was Martin Landau's crazy. He was insane, and everyone is humoring him? Did anyone else think that the magic, that Penknit, that Panukes, Anokio might be the spirit of Geppetto's brother. Oh.

Hold on. What now? How so? I think there's a world in which, because the magic of the movie is so strange. I don't know if he's their child. Did Leona and Geppetto's brother have any children? Doesn't seem like it. No, it doesn't seem like the brother was a really interesting add-on

because it felt like it was always an unrequited love. and then at a certain point's revealed, oh, that was a Leone and he was married, she was married to my brother. Well, what was interesting is when we, in the beginning scene, is when they're carving the tree. He's carving the initials in the tree,

and they're young. And then it cuts to, like they say, a few years later, but it's, Martin Lando's an old man. Yeah. Yes. By the way. He missed his shot, like, by a lot.

I mean, by the way, I love the opening Vio in this movie because you're introduced to Geppetto through his voiceover, which just sounds like an old man like ordering a bagel. Give me, and the poppy seeds and tomatoes, not too much.

It's like he's yelling at you, Mia. It might as well be Richard kind narrating this movie. I don't know. What is going on? All right, so I'm a baker. I'm carving my initials in a tree. I always thought the story of Pinocchio

is that Chippetto wanted a child. I don't believe that, I don't think the legend of Pinocchio has as its root, like an enchanted log. No, I mean, the whole idea, well, this is the issue they have. He's in love with the yona, so the log becomes enchanted,

so his love... A lightning strikes it too, I think. Right, so his love then gets him a boy? It's like, oh, I would love to be in love. You got a son. Huh. Okay, I get... I mean, yeah, it's sort of like

I'm in kind of the right place. I got, like, the lift left me in the general area. I got to walk a little bit further to get to where I want to go. But, like, it's a weird, it's a weird thing that he gets a boy because he's in love. I wonder, though, in making this movie, they were, you know, because it was live action,

they felt it was too creepy to have a man of Landau's age, just want a little boy. I haven't... You think that this is going to be avoided creepy stuff? I have an update. They did not succeed. This was straight up erotic.

The first moments that Pinocchio comes to life when, and I'll say it the Italian one, when Pinocchio comes to life, he immediately gets into a bathtub with Martin Landau. Martin Landau is wearing clothes in the bath. Fucking Italians.

I literally thought that Martin Lando is like, I can't be naked and a little boy gets in the bathroom. I can't. Because the little boy puppet is also naked. He's not wearing anything at that point, right? Yes, but I don't think... And I'm assuming Jonathan Taylor Thomas is doing that on set.

No, and I don't think that the little boy... I don't think Pinocchio was carved genitalia. No. We don't know. And that's kind of what the sequel gets into. Now listen, did I cry during the courtroom scene when they ripped Pinocchio away? I did. June?

Sobbed. Saubed. Not cried. Yes. Sobbed. Whoa. Whoa. Yeah.

You sobbed that the evil puppet owner. The court decides, evil puppet owner, you get this kid. And then the evil puppet guy is like, come with me, son. now he's his son And then later Pinocchio's like Well Lorenzini's my papa now I was like oh this poor kid Is literally being human trafficked

Yes Between people in the same town His father is like five blocks Away and he's in the theater Like guess I live here now I'm the star of the show But what about my papa? He's literally over there I will say I was impressed

with how off book he was at that show It seemed like he was given away in court in the afternoon, and by nighttime, he was ready to go. By the way, not a bad gig. He's the star of the show. Everybody, he's improvising, everybody thinks he's hilarious. He's getting paid in gold coins, like, not too bad. For a kid who was born, like, a month ago. Speaking fluent English.

It's so crazy, though, that this evil guy is involved in children's theater. His greatest scheme is... When they cut to that audience at night, it's all kids. It's children. And what is he doing with these children? Because he's entertaining them there. But then he also has a side gig where he's turning kids into donkeys. Yeah.

Like, when you just kind of merge the two? Like, why don't you put the theater and the donkey thing together? You got to run two separate businesses. But why does he... Why does he want to turn little boys into... donkeys. Why? We don't know. I think he's trying to get that ass.

Sorry, it's not, it's not very good wordplay. Not very good word play. Oh, booze. Booze from Chicago. Fair enough. I couldn't figure out, I couldn't figure out if that's because he was like selling them as like work animals or I don't, I literally was like, I don't know what this is. Like he, I mean, if you just look at them as his customers, like what, just, from a business

perspective didn't make sense. I thought they were being sent to like work in the minds or something and then they were all turned into donkeys and I was like, oh, or then, no, no, what it is, I'm sorry, is anybody gets turned into whatever they're acting like. So they happen to be acting like jackasses

so they got turned into jackasses. I mean, that is in the Disney cartoon. They all turned into jackasses in the Disney cartoon too. But they go to punch. Snyder and that woman got turned into a fox and a cat. Oh. Wait, right? And yet, he got turned into like a human whale.

So they get turned into what they are, a monster. But so, I couldn't figure out here. Let's listen to what... Why does this happen? Let's listen to what Vanzini says here.

Act like a jackass if you have to love. Drink up the water. Get what you deserve. Be wicked. Be naughty. Come drink from my fountain. Then I will be rich. Oh, yeah.

He just happens to have a magic fountain that turns people into animals, but we don't know why. Is that in the book? I know that Pleasure Island, they go there and they turn into jackasses, but... Do you want to tell us very quickly what the deal is? What are we missing? Hold on, let me get close to you. Is there a librarian in the house? How many librarians, Chicago? Wait a second.

All right, you can come here. Can I get minor house lights up for a second? I do want to hear this. Okay, that's great. I'm going to ask you in a second. Yes, hi. How are you? The original Pinocchio, it's real fucked up. So this is accurate. Yeah. They turned them into donkeys to kill them and sell them for skin. And the cat and the fox show up a lot to fuck with Pinocchio.

I know one time they take him to like a tavern and they have him like spend all this money for food. And then they like rob him and string him up. like hang him and then they encounter him again and they like convince him to bury a bunch of money in a field and I think then they rum up again Well that happened in this movie yeah

Yeah and throughout them They keep popping up and like Throughout the book And then I know they turned into For the skins For the skins then they would be skin Oh so they're turned into anything that can turn into skin

No no no They were turning to donkeys for the donkey's skin to be made into like drums or something. Okay, so they were, they would turn the voice in the big drum market. Very quickly, if you're a librarian, will you please stand up? Okay. It's a decent number. All right. Okay.

Wow. Look it up there. Nice. This is, these are heroes. We love our librarians. All right, so if donkeys are being turned to the skins. Now, who wants to fight a lot? librarian. This tour is just subtly so we can go to cities and wipe out of the librarians.

We find them and we take them out. Oh, they'll be it out of this get made. They'll be easy picking. All right, so that description is disturbing. They are to be skinned for their skinned. For their skin, they're turned into like drums. That's bizarre, but it does answer a big question for me, because when I saw Rob Schneider, I said, is he supposed to be playing a lion? He looks to me like a performer in the Broadway version of cats. Yes. B.B. Newworth doesn't look like a cat, but he looks like an animal. Like, he does look bizarre in this movie. He is, I was shocked when Rob Schneider came on screen. I was like, oh, oh, what's

up? What are we doing here? I mean, this is, it was, it was, their whole subplot was fascinating, because he appears to be, like, not in control of any, he is like a straight up moron throughout. Yeah. In a fascinating way. The fact that he got turned

into a fox, I was like, okay, but like he should be turned into a jackass, I think. Well, he's a foxy guy, he's not a jackass, Jason. I guess so. I guess so. I mean, let's listen to you a little bit of Bebe Newhurth, who I thought was Kate Hudson for a majority of the film. Oh, really?

She looks like Kate up. Excuse me, but haven't you two got to push God to Rob? We've already done that. No, here. Oh, but Chapo, darling, we were just playing with him. He'll play with his own sword, thank you. Can you plus for a second?

Now, these three people are supposed to all be Italian. Correct? All three of these people are doing their Italian accents? These accents are going to come and they're going to go. This can't hang on to them. Yeah, the context clues is that this is Italy. But, I mean, John and Taylor Thomas just speaks straight up like he's on home improvement. And all the kids, all like the kind of street urchin kids, talk like they are like newsies from the 20s.

Yes, or they're British. Yeah. And I'm just like, Rob Schneider's eyebrows are on like another level. A lot of eyebrows, a lot of... A lot of, like, that reddish brick color. Yeah, I don't like that. I'll tell you what was weird about this movie. In a children's film to watch your main character get shot,

that was bizarre, a bizarre moment to watch him get shot and then play himself as a recorder or some sort of musical instrument. I also thought, my whole thing was, okay, I get it. Jepetto made him a mouth. That's cool. He's gonna eat. Okay, great. He likes sweets and stuff.

Did Jepetto make him an asshole? Like, is he just filling up with stuff? How's he getting rid of it? Is he like a giant pinata? Are you like, at one point, should they break open his belly and everyone run? Like when he gets shot, cream and sweets should come pouring out of him. It's gone nowhere else. I mean, when he sneezes, sawdust.

covers that teacher's face. Yeah. That teacher is standing there, by the way, waiting for it. The most straight face shot of sawdust. Just like the porns I watch on Porn Hub, Sawdust Porn. I mean, we're getting into the school part and the kids,

and there is something very bizarre about this movie, besides everything that we've just mentioned for the last 40 minutes, it's the fact that no one has any real reaction to there's a wooden boy walking and living amongst them. Yes. Jepetto never once tries to hide it. Like when Pinocchio gets out of the house, Jepetto just picks him up, is like, oh my God, picks him up, and walks hand in hand with him rather than carrying him so that nobody will see. Like, an enchanted puppet is walking through the streets of Italy.

Yep. And everybody's like, oh, cool, cool, man. What's that? Magic puppet? Ah, cool. Hey, they give him a nickname. Hey, Woody. You know, they start to punch him.

They throw balls at him. Like, no one's frightened by him. He is a part of society, which makes me go, did he do this before? I don't know. I like, is this a town where this happens? How does Pinocchio end up matriculating in? school. How does he get a desk?

How does he know to go there? How does he get... Did attendance get called Pinocchio? New student, Pinocchio? How did that happen? I mean, simply it happened the same way that everything in this movie happens. He just sees something and gets in line.

Yeah. Then he's there. On a bus, going to school. He just simply sees a line of boys and just tags on to the end. I mean, there are worse ways to go through life than to just sort of... Tagging along at the end of a line of boys? Is that what you're suggesting?

I mean, I'll give it a try, but I can't imagine it going well. I got to say... What's the story? You guys getting on this school bus? All right, I'll do it. I got to say... I mean, you have to remember, there's quite literally nothing in his head. There's nothing inside his head. How does he know anything?

How does he know anything? Well, that's the weird thing about him. He knows enough when he's immediately born to give Geppetto a bar of soap for the bath. Well, he crawls in with him. But then doesn't know other simple things. Like, you're like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. All right, weird.

Yeah, there are some weird things. I just want to say one thing about the school, and I think this is about, you know, I just want to say, like, this is where Italian schools are so great. so great. You just show up any day to put you in. You know, it's not like American school system.

It's a real good school system there. You're really negative on American schools. I want... Also, I guess girls just don't go to school there in Italy. Yeah, are there many women? There's not many... Yeah, there's not many... There's no...

I don't think I saw any young girls at all in this film. There's a couple who are watching the puppet show. Okay. And that's it. The puppet show, by the way, that music was all done by Brian May from Queen. Oh, wow. He wrote a seven-minute puppet opera for that. You can hear it on the soundtrack, which also includes a song from Stevie Wonder.

To be fair, also, there will be more girls in class when Geppetto gets around carving them. That's true. I felt like the fun that we didn't have in this movie and the scenes that I wanted to see were, and maybe I'm remembering the cartoon? Yeah. Yeah, but we never got to see him also pretend to be a puppet.

Like, have to, there's one scene where he just sort of falls asleep. But the sheer comedy of watching him have to pretend to have strings and be a puppet when he is a, well, not boy, but whatever he is. A sentient lot?

A sentient... A sentient doll. I felt like there were just so many missed opportunities there. There was also very little of what I consider to be Pinocchio's, like, true thing, which is there was very little lying. There was very little nose growing because he lied. I thought that was the whole thing. I thought that was Pinocchio's like whole.

That's what I know about him. With great power comes great responsibility. They kind of blew it out in that schoolroom scene. It grew so big, so fast, so awesome. so oddly, fallically, too. Like, you're like, never again. I never need to see. I've learned my lesson by watching that nose grow so

dramatically. Do you have the scene with the, in the whale? In the, this is the scene, this is overtly sexual. So they're in the, they, they, they, they, Pinocchio and Geppetto have been swallowed by

the Lorenzini once he's turned into the sea monster. So they're both in the the monster's belly and they crawl all the way to the monster's throat, but it's too tight to get through. They can't, we can you go? Okay. It's too tight to get through. So Pinocchio's idea is he'll use his nose to stretch out or irritate the animal so that they can get expelled basically. So basically they do like reverse bulimia here and they make him puke from the inside with his long, long nose. But by the way, they could have totally gotten out

through that total. Now, look at this first moment where Pinocchio's nose enters frame, while he and Martin Lando are in the same shot is pretty sexual, I think. Eye contact, eye contact. I know what I have to do. I hate you, Papa.

I never, ever missed you. That's your lie. To his mouth, right towards a little. his mouth. I never wanted to be in something. I mean, what? It's a... It's such a bold shot

to just have the nose, the flesh-colored nose, enter frame. It's a lie. I have Pinocchio, and maybe I didn't watch it that closely as a child, but the story was always, this is a puppet who lies too much, and his nose grows bigger.

He does want to be a real boy. But in order to become a real boy, he has to stop lying and start telling the truth. And that's how he becomes a real boy. I also thought that there was morals throughout, but the nose never stopped. The nose growing was always a thing. Here it just kind of stopped.

Like he never grew again, and he seemed to tell lies later in the movie, too. I felt like mostly, like, you know, wouldn't each adventure involve lying or not or learning lessons that are significant towards becoming a better person, thus warranting, becoming a human boy,

and falling through on being the best, possible version. Isn't it a morality tale? Each of them should be something a lesson learned? I think that that was what they were trying to do, but they also introduced the moral compass of him so late in the movie. Like that peppy character comes in so late. I mean, because here he goes, like this is Jiminy Cricket talking about miracles. So I can buy a miracle. Any particular brand? Real boy brand.

Here's what works. You dig a hole, you plant your gold, you let it cook. The first lesson about trust is learning whom to trust. Didn't this gold deal seem a little shaky? I don't know. A little. And let me guess. You ignored your instinct.

Didn't you? Maybe. By the way, we're watching CGI. We're watching CGI on top of CGI here. It's like they're like they've created a character that what you said, it looks so bad, and then it's on top of something that doesn't look great either.

And this is a long scene between two CGI characters who are not there and don't look good together. They don't look like they're in the same world. It is clunky as fuck, this stuff. Wallace Sean

was the original voice of this cricket. Amazing. Was in the trailer, and they said, in the voice of the cricket, Wallace Sean, but something happened, and he is not the voice of the cricket in the movie. But this is where he kind of thinks... You know, if maybe, he's the president of the cricket union. He keeps on saying he's the president of the cricket union,

and union rules say that he has to stay with Pinocchio, but are crickets moralistic creatures? Well, that's like... Is there a cricket... Are crickets in this world like Guardian Angels? One is assigned to a boy or a child and is meant to look after... I don't know.

I don't know. I also could not understand the cricket. I just simply could not hear what was being said. Or I'll be falling down on the job. No. Look. Again, I watch everything with subtitles on, so I'm mostly just reading.

I forced Paul tried to watch this movie with subtitles on, and I turned it off. It's true. You want to enjoy the magic of the cinema that's happening. You respect the visual image. I prefer to watch my movies and read them. But yet, one of the characters you could not understand. That's part of the joy of movie watching.

Maybe they wanted it that way. Well, clearly, we have some questions about this movie. We've barely kind of tackled many of them. I'm sorry. We have not talked about everything. I mean, we are getting it to it where I wanted to open it up. Landau Bates Inc. Close. Puppet tries to get in bath with him,

question mark, exclamation point. How does he know how to talk? Question mark, question mark. He does impressions. Nose boner. Go ahead. What was it? Doesn't Leona freak out that the puppet can talk and walk, etc.

I wrote down this. I wrote down this isn't his job because Jepeda goes, you keep each other busy while I'm at work. So he just makes all those fucking puppets for fun. And then, And Leona says, oh, I've made these clothes for puppets.

And I'm like, is there so much puppet commerce going on in this town? Well, Lorenzini basically thinks he's going to get rich with a puppet show for kids, which itself is... And the parents don't attend... The parents don't attend with the children either. That's like, go out, go see your puppet show. I mean, okay, here we go. How does he have teeth? How does Pinocchio have eight?

full set of white human teeth. I'll go to one better. How does eating hot peppers translate into breathing fire? Great. This man eats a chili pepper, blows into a horn, and creates more fire than a giant flamethrower. All of a sudden, it looks like once upon a time in Hollywood, and he's got these chili peppers to thank.

He gets, during the production of his play, Pinocchio gets paid mid-show. That's as if someone walked on stage currently and gave me this show's income. He's like backstage and Lorenzine, he's like, show's going great, Pinocchio. Listen, here are the gold, here's the gold I owe you, you're going to be a star,

everything's great. He's like, quick, you're on. What? also Pinocchio seemingly falls into a puppet orchestra because the conductor is a puppet and then I was like wait so are puppeteers like if they are controlling musician puppets that's some amazing puppeteer way

assumed in the pit were real musicians and a real conductor and that the puppet conductor was part of the show but my question was also what are the puppeteering tears making of Pinocchio. I mean, that's a threat. They're doing, of course. That's a threat to their livelihood. Their whole industry is about to collapse before their very eyes.

Puppeteers should want this kid dead. Yeah. This, I don't know, it might catch. It might catch to the other marionettes. Maybe they're going to become alive. That's an adventure. When the puppeteers union joins up with the crickets union, to eradicate Pinocchio?

I mean, this is like a puppet, this is really a union story. I mean, union all the way. I would love it if in the sequel Pinocchio steals an apple and turns back into a wooden boy, a wooden puppet. You don't have to like it.

I really didn't like, I really didn't like, I was surprised at the end to realize how attached I was to Pinocchio, the wooden puppet, because I really did not like seeing his ears. gnawed off like that. Or ripped off, too. The donkey

ears are ripped off by Lorenzini. And there's just those sharp edges. Those sharp red edges. Don't you think that his ears should be deformed? Like he should have like cauliflower ears when he turns into a boy because of that? Because at the end they make, like at the end it feels like someone goes,

yeah, what happened to all those boys that were turned to donkeys? And the narrator quickly is like, ah, yeah, they all got fixed. Where was the serum? We didn't see that scene. I saw a donkey walking with Pinocchio and that donkey is going to live, I feel like those boys did not turn back into humans

but they just are glossing over that. You win some, you lose some. I mean, this reminds me of a story my grandmother used to tell. Oh, God. Let's all prepare ourselves. My grandmother used to tell me this story when I was a kid that I needed

to lock the door to my house because when she lived in Garden City, this where my grandmother lived in New York. She was like, when I lived in Garden City, there was a little boy, and he didn't lock his door. And one day, he was in his bed. I already know this is deeply irresponsible of her to have said.

And he heard footsteps coming up the stairs slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. And then he's gotten really nervous and he got under his bed, and he was under the sheets and the door opened, creak it out. And then the boy looked, and it was the local butcher. And he got scared, and then all of a sudden the butcher grabbed him. And the mom came home.

The boy wasn't there. She brought home her chop meat. No, Paul, stop right now. What are you talking about? Paul? And your grandboy? And the mother. What are you talking about?

And then as the mother was making hamburgers for her son, she started making hamburgers, that the hamburger meat starts like, Oh, no. The meat knew? Because the meat was the boy. The meat, but that, again, that's, no, once it's turned into meat, the kid wouldn't know. At that point, it's just meat, you know. Oh, what?

That's unreal. I am shaking on my inside. My grandmother was a part of the cricket union, so I won't put that out there. What are you talking about? The step of that story is fundamentally irresponsible. And I told you a much abbreviated version of it. That the butcher came, so your grandmother lived in Garden City in an environment where meat was so scarce that the local butcher would go house to house, looking for unlocked doors and kids left.

alone at home. Yep. I was a latchkey kid. Was this because you were a latchkey kid? Yep. Was this her effort to be like... She was trying to get you when you came home from school

before your parents came home from work to lock that door. Yeah. And her... Yeah. I mean, that's probably wasn't effective... Like me. Like me.

Hire someone in a like butcher's apron with... Like to just stand outside your window like... Chopping in those knives. Chop it up? Wow. Oh boy.

That could be the T-shirt. The T-shirt could be the butcher outside the window. As I'm telling you the story, I'm realizing that I think the element that I've messed up is that the burger meat was already frying when the boy says it. So the meat is like ready to be eaten at that point. It's not that much worse.

It's not like, I mean, whether it's cooking or not. The kid's still been through the chop. But I think the addendum was, and then she did serve it. And then she served it? To who? Her husband. So they, this is starting to fall apart. I remember like a boy being eaten too, but I know that this memory of the mama, mama,

like that's where I cut off. And I think that she may have just added that they ate him as well. but that feels like a cruel twist at the end. It's a total snowpiercer. All right, well then, should I not tell you the second story? Because now you're telling me this, it makes me realize this. I mean, this seems like more like in good fun. I think this is in good fun.

Wait, hamburger story was in good fun? No, this story I'm about to tell you, but maybe it is my perspective of it. Okay. I am changed. This is. I really am. So. Catch Paul telling your children similar scary stories?

No, and that's what I feel like I have to say, you know, Paul is such a wonderful man. He really is. It's so shocking to hear these things. Go ahead. Let me tell you this story, and then you could tell me for my barometer's sake if I'm off or not. The first time I ever had a camping thing with my friends, I had two friends over where he put tents up in the backyard. before we went out there for the night, my stepfather called us into the living room

and said, guys, I don't want you guys camping out in the backyard because there's a police report on TV that a serial killer just escaped. Prison. And he's loose, and they said for us to lock our doors. But the kids came over to do camping out in the backyard. And so we know we really want to camp out, we really want to camp out. And he's like, okay, you can camp out in the backyard.

And then we camped out in the backyard. And in the middle of the night, we would hear this noise like, and then he would basically run into our tent going, and then we all got really scared. Oh, you think? Oh, you got real scared, huh? and I was about eight or nine. That is so young. To even tell an eight or nine-year-old

about a serial killer is insane. To even make an eight-year-old aware of the concept of murder for pleasure or compulsive murder. To explain that is insane to three eight-year-olds. never mind, then represent yourself as that serial killer throughout. Those kids are somewhere telling this story right now. I didn't remember that until right now, but I always thought that was a fun night, a fun camping night.

Was your stepfather Ted Bundy? Kind of. It's been fun, Chicago. What a great town. Oh, boy. Maybe we should go into the audience. Yeah, I'm going to start crying. We need a pallet cleanser.

All right, but before we do, I'm going to put on my special hat. I'll hold the mic hat. This is just so... Can we get house lights? All right, so here we go. I want you to introduce yourself with your Italian name. We heard a lot of great Italian names here tonight. So introduce yourself with your Italian name.

And let me hear your question. Yes, you, ma'am. Come over here. What's your Italian? a name and what's your question? Here we go. All right. Jacino. Great. And your question? My question is when Jepetto created

that puppet inside the monster with like the spare fish parts and eyeballs, what did he use to keep it together? Fishing wire. Fishing line. Why didn't that fish boy come to life? But by the way,

that monster had only been alive for minutes because he drank the his eyes bugged out. And I guess like his inner creature was a giant whale seam? I mean that was a bizarre connection. It should have been like

a rat or something. All right, we're up here in the balcony with someone wearing a How Dare You shirt. It's a June homemade shirt says, how dare you? From our Drop Dead Fred episode,

your name in Italian, your affiliation, and your question. My legit Italian name is Nicolet Isabella Sonocachiano. I'm a team sanity. Actually, the shirt is for The Late Show. Okay, got it. Yeah. So my question, comment, so everybody, you know, you've been saying that everyone doesn't really see Pinocchio as a puppet.

Except Don French, the baker's wife. She's the only one who sees him and fucking flips out. She's screaming, she's throwing things all over the place. She's the only woke person in this entire movie. Or is she not woke? Because she sees differences and freaked out. But that's a good point. I think, oh, see, I thought she was just mad.

I thought she was mad he was ruining her food. Well, he was eating all the cream. You know, I don't think she was afraid of Pinocchio. I think she was upset that he was ruining her food. all the food she'd made for the wedding. Wasn't that it? She's saying, get out of here, you know, whatever. I feel like...

I also thought she was like, this is a creature. I'm most scared of this creature. I must kill it. Like, I feel like if it was a boy, she wouldn't be throwing pots at its head. I don't know. I think she would. I mean, she's...

Remember, she's Italian. Fair point. Sir, your name, your affiliation, your question. My name is Gregory. Great Italian name. Team sanity. You don't think it's Gregorio? My question is

since nobody in this town seems to be able to tell the difference between a boy and a puppet, why wouldn't the guy just hire boys to be in his show? Great question. Finally getting somewhere with the balcony. All right.

Because, I mean, the simple answer is, well, Pinocchio, does look. Well, yeah, but I guess no. I guess they are... It's a Marionette show. We're not going to hire children. Yeah. And what, tie strings to their arms? Oh, yeah. We're not going to...

Do you think they upside team sanity? You think that it's okay to just tie strings to kids' arms? Oh, no, no, no, no. You're right, Jason. There's a lot of that this guy really cared about the kids. That's why you turned them into donkeys to skin them. Hey! To make drums. Italy needs skins. All right, ma'am, how about your question?

Your name, your affiliation, your question. Okay, my name is Milan. Didn't make that up. Team sanity. Okay, great, thank you. So my question is, at the end of the movie, they say that the donkeys turn back to kids based on doing good deeds.

How do donkeys do good deeds? I mean, come on. Donkeys can do good deeds all the time. Donkey, they can, like, pull the cards at a soup kitchen. Yeah, I mean, donkeys, I think of donkeys as worker animals. Didn't donkey do a lot of good deeds

in the Shrek movies? Yeah. To answer your question, Team Sanity, lots of ways. Because here's what I think. When I look at don't think their net energy is negative. They are capable of positive actions. Maybe it's Team Sanity

thinking that things donkeys can only be bad. Ma'am, your name, your affiliation. your question. Jacqueline. Great. Thank you. Can we talk about the point of view shots

from Pinocchio where he's basically like a serial killer shots? Yeah. Was it like Friday the 13th inspired? It was frightening. A lot of the CG characters had point of view shots in order to make them

cheaper. It's cheaper to shoot point of view shots than to have the CG shots of them doing stuff. So they would do that a lot and it was, I agree, it was very unsettling. All right everybody, clearly we had opinions

about this movie, but now it is time for... Why do I feel like you guys are part of an a cappella singing group? Now it's time... They have a pitch pipe! We are literally getting told to get off the station. Here you go. Now it's time for second opinions.

When you rate films five stars, makes no difference who you... Ashley and James. Our opinions called from Amazon, there were 69. Total reviews for the film, 67, five-star reviews. And here we go.

This is all compiled by Nate Kylie. This one starts off from Marianne Fideli. She goes, it's what I wanted. Five stars. She needs to be on a watch list of some sort. While you read these, can you go back to the preferred Pinocchio image, please? I'm staying right here and waiting for my mirror. You're caught the one.

All right. This one. Just so you can remember, this is the movie the person wrote the review about. This one is written by Cheryl. It says this. This is an unusual production of Pinocchio. You think? My teenage son said it gave him nightmares.

Five stars. Okay, I don't think she understood this, the rating system. That's a mom, that's a mom who parents like your grandmother. Georgia Galeri writes, a must-buy for children and child daycare centers. Five stars. I don't think we should be putting this in the child daycare center. This one, this one is from Linda S. Kaufman. my sister's granddaughter loves it.

Five stars. Kind of a delayed... All right, sure. What should I do today? I should write Amazon reviews for my niece's favorite movies. Or my grandniece. And we will end on this one by A. Harenberg,

which writes this. Kids films nowadays are pillow soft when it comes to scary moments. But this movie was dropped like a ton of bricks on 90s kids. Pinocchio's story pretty much follows the course of a classic fairy tale starting out whimsical before taking a

dark turn. And I mean seriously dark. I wasn't terrified as a kid, but I'm willing to bet others in the two to six year old crowd were petrified. Two? Five motherfucking stars.

Oh boy. Before we get into whether or not we'd recommend this movie, because I think it's pretty clear what we think about this movie. I wanted to bring up this little piece of trivia that I found about it, which is Aval Halley, our producer on the show, she finds all these movies, she found this terror night scape for you, also found that this

movie spun off a CD-ROM interactive video game starring one of the stars of Ladybugs. And I just wanted to show you, this is the girl from Ladybugs, if you remember. So here is... She was the one that Rodney Dangerfield is like, don't worry. When you get older, you're going to be pretty and everybody's going to like you or something like that. Yes, exactly. So now here's, you are the new Pinocchio.

Martin Landau talks to you like this. How are you going to be able to find Pinocchio? You're not even made of wood. He will help. So you get to find Pinocchio. follow along with her and then this is where it gets terrifying at the end of the game when she's talking to the donkey

boys. Oh, turn this off right now. That's a donkey girl? Yep. Then he turns you into jackasses. It could never happen to me. It just did. This game

is straight up terrifying. That's a game? That is a CD-ROM Interactive. game, they just took out all the choices. And by the way, this movie throws around the word jackass a lot for a kid's film. Some

notes... And is it like a jerk-off game? Asking for a friend. The movie came out in 1996. The tagline was, it's a new angle on a classic tale, and that's no lie. And here's the thing.

The budget for this movie. $35 million. What year? 96. Wow. Opening weekend. Three point eight million. Wow.

By the way, that's not nothing. No, the movie came in. I think the people probably went to go see JTT is at the height of JTT madness. The movie came in a hundred out of all the movies made in 1996. The top three were Independence Day, Twister, Mission Impossible.

It was beaten by Jingle the way, Dragonheart, the island of Dr. Moreau, Escape from L.A., the Quest, the Glimberman, Kazam, and the Phantom, but it beat Barbwire and Lonmore Man 2, which we didn't cover on this show.

But that's a little fact about it. Wait, there was a Lawnmower Man sequel? Yep, Lonmower Man 2 Beyond Cyberspace. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. Jason, June, I go to you now. Would you recommend

this movie? Of course not. No. No. You don't even think it's interesting to watch a little bit? I don't. Yeah, no. I didn't care for it and it was not fun enough. Yeah, I mean, I have to spend time erasing some images

and imagery that I saw. Now, to be fair, after this scene, I came and went to sleep. The scene, of course, Jason's referring to as Pinocchio has cream all over his mouth. That's what we have is our still frame for the whole show.

This visual. What I want to just point out, you can search this picture at home. If you type in Pinocchio image, this normally comes up. This is not a shot that someone took. This is a press photo for the movie. No. Yes. That's why it has the watermarking on it.

So someone thought that this representation of an open mouth Pinocchio with white cream all over his mouth was the right. This leads me to believe there was a cut of this movie that was a porno. That, like, when Pinocchio would leave Martin Landau, he would get up into, like, sexy Italian adventures. By the way, this puppet took nine months to create and operated by 12 different technicians, 12 different people to control this masterpiece.

I didn't like the scene. I didn't, I'm sorry, I'm just noticing a few things. I did not like when his flesh, when the wood started to turn into flesh. Yeah. I thought that was very creepy and unsettling to look at. Yeah. At that point, it was a relief because it was almost, you knew it was going to be over. And the tear goes and, yeah.

I don't like that. Yeah, it's his, yeah. And by the way, when he does turn into a real boy, that version of the puppet looks just like Jonathan. Taylor Thomas. Like for a second you see it perfectly... Well, it is Jonathan Taylor Thomas. But no, like right before when it's like this, you'll see it like

that... Yeah, he looks closer to him. Oh, I see. I see. Maybe that was a little C.G. I don't know if I would recommend this movie either, but it's so bizarre and so... You don't know if you would? I feel like there are some choice nuggets in here that are worth like watching because it just keeps on going. It's a movie

that when I would turn away for just merely like two or three seconds, I was completely lost as if hours had passed. And it's like, so now what's happening? It's like Game of Thrones. We watched it together and we had to recap scenes over

and over again. We simply were losing the thread. I want to be clear for this audience here and the one at home. You would not recommend watching Drop Dead Fred, but you would recommend watching the Adventures of Pinocchio.

First of all. This is a classic Team Sanity Point of view. First of all. I don't think that I ever went on record and said I would not

recommend watching Team Fred. I just said it's not a good movie. Anyway, people, that show was a lot of fun. And now we have to wrap it up. We have to say, no, if it was between this and Drop Dead Fred,

I'd say watch this. Yes. Wow. Paul, come on now. So, okay. I know it's all fun. I know it's fun to have. a friendly rivalry. There's a lot of energy around it. It's a good time, but seriously.

No, I would watch Drop Dead Fred over this. Thank you. Yes, indeed. Just for the pain, this has scarred me on a deep, deep level. All right, so Jason, June, we have done it. We have had many adventures with this Pinocchio character, and there's one last thing for us to do. That is to say good night. Thank you, Chicago! Hey, everybody, that is our show live from Chicago. Ooh, boy, that was a big one. We are continuing the conversation about Pinocchio,

and it does need to continue on the mini episode, which will be next week, and I implore you. I urge you to check in on what we're doing on the mini episodes. I see that the listenership is going up, and I'm loving it, and we're doing more and new different stuff, and one of the best parts about it is not only talking about the movie that we are talking about on the episode, this course will be Pinocchio next week.

But we're also talking about you. I'm getting to hear about all of your jobs, your love, your life. I'm giving you advice along with Devin and Cody. We're breaking it all down for you. So head on over to the mini episode next week to continue the conversation about Pinocchio. And if you want to call in, you can at 619 Paul Ask. That's 619 P-A-U-L-A-S-K. So continue the conversation about Pinocchio right there.

Also wanted to let you know that Grace and Frankie, season 6, is on Netflix. Right now, if you've not watched a good place, well, you're missing out on Jason and I. It's the final season and a great season at that. So many great appearances. And what an amazing finale this past week. So if you've missed out, catch up. You are going to see some of us on there.

Also, what else do I want to tell you? Oh, boy, so much good stuff. Black Monday Season 2 trailer dropped. So that's online right now. Check that out. It's really funny. It gives you a little taste of what you're in store for in Black Monday season two, which starts March 15.

A big shout out and thank you to Averill Halley. One of our producers for pulling this amazing movie. I mean, she really opened our eyes to a lot of stuff. Nick Kylie, for doing all that amazing research. Devin, of course, who travels across country with us, our producer, Cody, here at Earwolf Studios. Everybody at Earwolf. And we will see you next week for a mini episode.

And if you're bored or you just miss, how did this get made in the meantime? We'll head on over to tpublic.com slash store slash HDTGM to get your official Pinocchio shirt. And if you really just want to reach out and chat, you can do that with me. You can give me a call at, or not call, a text, please. Just a text.

911 877-0657. Let's do it, people. See you next week for How Let's Get Made mini episode.