My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 386 - THE PENGUIN EPISODE 2 (PLUS KEVIN SMITH!)

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

The Basement Boys recap and review the second episode of #ThePenguin entitled: 'Inside Man' - and then Robbie describes the first three episodes of #AgathaAllAlong to Clem, who hasn't seen any of it! Then, Kevin Smith joins Robbie Fox in the Basement for their first ever one-on-one interview, discussing 'The 4:30 Movie', sneaking into movies as a kid, Kevin's favorite needle drops, his thoughts on James Gunn's upcoming Superman movie, and more! 00:00 INTRO/PENGUIN RECAP 31:43 AGATHA ALL ALONG SPOILERS 52:23 KEVIN SMITH INTERVIEW **************************************** My Mom's Basement is a weekly podcast hosted by Robbie Fox, started in March 2019, to discuss movies, music, comic books, wrestling, mixed martial arts, and more with his friends and idols alike! Subscribe on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-moms-basement/id1457255205 Follow Robbie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatrobbiefox Follow Robbie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobbieBarstool My Mom's Basement Merchandise: https://store.barstoolsports.com/collections/my-moms-basementYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Hello and welcome to My Mom's Basement presented by Barstool Sports. It is Robbie Fox and Clem back for another Penguin edition of My Mom's Basement. We're going to be recapping the Penguin episode two. We're also going to be talking a little bit of Agatha all along. People have been asking, are you going to watch it? Are you going to be recapping it? I have watched all three episodes. Clem has watched none of it. So at the end of our Penguin recap, I will just describe all three episodes to Clem, and that's how he'll be following along. And if you're listening to this on the

podcast feed, the episode is going to cap off with an interview with Kevin Smith. If you're on YouTube or Rumble, it's already on our channel, so you can go over and watch it there. But it was a big week in the basement, Clem. We got a lot to talk about. A lot to talk about in the basement right now. My voice is a little bad, so I apologize to everyone out there. We had the Mets game yesterday.

I've been sick for about a week. So we're struggling through it. We're on the struggle bus, but we have a lot of stuff to talk about. And, again, The Penguin, I think we both agree was a good episode. Agatha Allwong, I've heard good things. I said like a month or two ago, I'm not going to watch it

because I didn't love the trailer. I didn't love the idea of the show and I'm not a horror guy. So it was kind of like, it just may not be for me. However, the reviews so far have been pretty good based on what i'm seeing on twitter and whatnot and people are telling me clem don't watch it like keep the

good juju flowing and i think at this point i think we kind of have to right so i kind of like this idea we did something similar back in at one point during one of the met seasons where they were sucking i was like i'm not watching tonight's game. And then KFC would describe the game to me. And I'd be like, oh my God. And then he's like, and then we blew the game. Like, oh no. But then we came back in the ninth.

I'm like, yeah. So I think it's kind of like a fun way to do that with the show. And I get to kind of learn some stuff about Agatha. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who's not watching it. But it sounds like from the people that have watched it so far, it's actually not bad. I don't know if I can say good, maybe good, but not bad. Would that at least be the least we could say about it,

which is a good thing. We'll get into it. Okay. I think people are excited for the description version of it though, because when I tweeted that we would be doing this, I had a lot of good feedback. People were excited. I think like you said, maybe people that aren't even watching it, just want the cliff notes, just want the spark notes and I'll give it to you on this podcast. But first, yeah, we are going to talk about the penguin episode two,

not as strong as the pilot, which you would expect most pilots, they try to kick the doors down. But I thought, again, very good. My main takeaway was kind of that. Sophia Falcone is stealing the show. I know we talked about her last week, the mother from How I Met Your Mother. Spoilers. Now I know that and everything. But, man, like this episode, again, I was kind of blown away by her.

And that's not to take anything away from Colin Farrell. He is still amazing in his Tony Soprano penguin-esque role. And every week it just feels more and more like he's Tony Soprano, but it's never a detriment. It never hurts the show. It never feels like a rip-off despite it, you know, existing in a very similar realm. It's not often, maybe that's not true. Batman villains, oh my God, my voice is so bad. Batman villains are not usually like the likable anti-heroes and that might be a little extreme,

but like you're usually rooting for Batman to kick their ass. Like the Joker is an awesome villain, especially obviously Heath Ledger's, but at the same point, you're like, this guy needs to go, right? And you're like, can we just maybe break that

no killing rule batman because these guys are a real problem whereas with the penguin i'm kind of like kind of fucking like i'm rooting for him i am rooting for this guy and he is a legitimate bad man bad person i'm glad you said that because i also had the same takeaway this week watching things go wrong for the penguin gave me this feeling of like not anxiety but like just like viewer anxiety like fan anxiety of like how is he gonna get out of this one and i was like how am i thinking this about oswald cobblepot this this like little snake who's just this you know big ball as danny devito and burgess meredith back in the day. It was just like an eyeopening watch for me.

Episode two of like, man, I'm rooting for the penguin right now. Like how did they do that to me? And they didn't make him like the most likable guy. He's in a classic mob where he's likable. And then they'll remind you that he's evil and he's actually the worst, but it's like very little content went into me being a Penguin fan. It was episode two, and I'm rooting for this Oswald Cobb. And he's not a great guy.

So, yeah, it's very, very impressive. And even the world they're building now with showing us more of the Falcons, Luca Falcone, Carmine's brother coming into the fold, and they're bringing us back to Arkham with dream sequences. They're giving us a little bit more on the hangman what that could have meant for sofia i think they're like crafting a very good universe right here where i wouldn't be surprised i know colin farrell was like i'm never seeing that fucking penguin makeup ever again and i'd be happy i wouldn't be surprised

if they built a series where you could do like a season two and a season three on this, even if it comes after the next Batman movie. Just keep Oz Cobb alive and keep giving us mob Batman. I called the Gotham City Sopranos and the official Batman account responded to me this week. I thought that was funny. Yeah, and it's going to be one of those things that might end up being kind of a mindfuck when in the next Batman, the Penguin is at his full powers. And he's fucking up Batman, fucking up Gotham. We're like, this is the guy we were just rooting for. There's a chance they may kind of like hit those parts where they remind you why you like him so much.

Or there might be a thing that's like, I can't believe we just rooted for this monster to like survive and climb up the the organized crime ranks and then he ends up being the motherfucker that the penguin is in all the jokes so i i love that kind of stuff i always like when they make the villains more relatable more likable again some would say that's problematic that i like the villains so much as i'm looking at my magneto helmet and my thanos glove uh but it's like i think that's one of the coolest parts about magneteto in particular is you do see a reason why he does what he does. And as we learned in our Secret Wars reread, it's like, he's kind of, you know, we can see both sides of the equation with him. And I don't think Oz is nearly the same. And I think they're going to hammer that home. But

yeah. And then, like you said, with Sophia, she kind of is what everyone said that actress was going to be. She's crushing it. It feels more than just a Penguin show, which I'm sure Colin Farrell is kind of happy about, where it's not just him lifting this whole franchise on his back. And again, I said I will not talk How I Met Your Mother anymore, so I'm not going to talk about how there is an alternate ending of How I Met Your Mother. That's out there. If you go on YouTube, I blogged it on the site.

I'm not going to say you can go and read that and watch the video. And it's a billion times better than the original ending. I'm not going to say that. Cause I said no more, how am I really? But that would be the last thing I would say, if I did say there's no, how am I going to talk?

That's right. But you wouldn't say that. So we're not able to go there. We're not going to talk about that. Let's get into the episode a little bit. There is a lot of stuff that there is to break down uh before we even like go to the first thing i just wanted to also make note of one of my favorite moments little things in this episode is the moment where he's speaking a little bit of spanish i'm like oh my god that makes sense he's a nightclub

owner of course he speaks a little spanish and he's mixing it up with like you know ladies of the night and last episode and he he's like, hello, ladies. And he's walking past. He gives him the Val Venus a little bit. But yeah, Sophia meets with Alberto to open the episode in Arkham. And you think at first maybe we're getting a flashback, but it's actually a dream sequence because he's got no pinky. And then he gets his head blown off in front of her. I appreciated how this scene looked exactly as the riddler interrogation looked in the bass like it was exactly one for one almost like the set was still up and they

were just like oh we could still use this uh and she's in therapy we find out this is her like flashing back in therapy dr julian rush is her therapist i'm not sure if he's from the comics but great opening where he's like you're safe you're safe you're home you're not in arkham anymore and she's like i'm not safe because i'm home where it's another like classic mob trope that they're leaning into here of like yeah you might be safer in the can than out of the can and yeah exactly and they said in arkham it well i the outfits are exactly the same, the same collar that they have on. You're seeing the collar and you're thinking with her. And our boy Heavy Spoilers did say there is a chance this Rush guy is a villain. It may not be 100 percent the same person, i think the the guy might even be a psychiatrist

or psychologist at some point in his past or one of the universes so we'll keep he did they hung the camera on him and gave him some scenes where you're just like this feels like more than just the weird light thing too you're like what's going on with this is he doing fucked up things here is he working for another family immediately i almost thought she was gonna kill him just as like why'd you put me through that boom because she's ruthless we know she'll shoot anyone at the drop of a hat but yeah i don't know he's something he's uh i mean i guess it's it's kind of uh i don't know the words ironic or no fitting it's fitting it's agatha all along talk as well.

We're going back to WandaVision. This guy's on the sus list, right? He is. Number one on the sus list right now. Our sus list is like a full FBI most wanted with this show, but he's definitely there. For like a civilian, he's very high on the sus list. Yes. Yeah.

Exactly. And I rewatched The batman and i recommend anyone who didn't do so before the show do it now again i think no it's on max it's definitely on max so if you're watching the penguin obviously you could watch batman the batman and it's it's better than i remembered because again that last act does go a little too long i kind of like like, I think I fast forward. I'm just like on my phone for a little bit. It was stuff you didn't really need to see. But the first two parts, three parts,

fantastic. Fantastic. And I think it was the first movie I'd seen since COVID. So it was a lot of weird shit going on back then. Getting a full rewatch and kind of seeing, like you said, how they made a Batman movie into like this, like it was grittier. And now we're getting the mob version that has some Batman characters in it. I'm pretty happy with the way this world is being built right now.

I rewatched The Dark Knight last week. I had never seen that movie. No, I'm kidding. But I did rewatch it. So did I, Bob. I mean, it's the official movie of this podcast. I rewatched it like right after The Batman, like two days later. I was like, you know, I'm just going to rewatch The dark knight again because that's a thing that we do every week or so just

every week it's just like you put it on i saw a tweet that was like maybe i mentioned this on the podcast there was a tweet that said uh the dark knight convinces you it's the best movie ever made while you're watching it and i was like but yeah no it's just always the best movie ever made every single time and every single time it hits for me i i can't stop quoting it every scene i'm like saying the quotes before it comes up my fiance's like all right all right we get it you know all the quotes from the dark knight i know all of them and they're the best my mom's basement our logo should say my mom's and then base and then dark knight it's like when bella's deciding bart's cast and the simpsons and he writes millpool because he's just thinking about going to the pool of all time

my mom's base dark knight yeah uh we see oz visits maroni in prison and also maroni's wife nadia who talks like this i i couldn't believe how gravelly her voice was i thought that was crazy she's like the person who puts the thing in her throat yes i shouldn't have smoked all those years now i have emphysema yes i had an uncle like that shout out uncle joe rest in peace he had the whole thing and everything but yeah his voice kind of sounded like that before he had that too so it didn't change much to be honest the camels the years worth of smoking camels did that to him um But they talk about the new Don Luca, Carmine's brother, and how Oz kind of forced Moroni's hand to take the fall. But I love the way Oz was kind of like, ah, whatever. You're still on top now.

It's like he brushes it off as like, whatever. I caused a mob war between two of the biggest families in Gotham. But you're on top again. You're wearing the ring, right? You're happy about the ring. And Nadia is, I don't want to say she's like Logan Roy's wife, where she's kind of like running things while he's getting old. But while Maroney's in prison, it seems like Nadia is running some shit because of the way she talks to him. When she says in another language, like, oh, he's a dog, but dogs could be trained or something like that where it's like

oh they're trying to play oz as he thinks he's playing them everyone has the guns up it's the office gift right now everyone thinks that they're getting the advantage nobody really knows right now that we're still in the power vacuum uh zone but everything goes haywire when oz tells maroney about falco and he's got this shipment, drops again, going, why don't you hijack it? And they have this whole plan, I'm not going to sit in the supply car, so you could hijack the supply car. Right at the last second, Johnny Vitti's like,

it's your fucking mission. Of course you're going to sit in the supply car. You've got to watch all the supply. You've got to watch the drops. Goes Haywire, they rob it. He's got to make the decision do i stick up for the maronis who i just told about this drop or do i just kill them and stick with the falcons he goes with the maronis gets away it was in this moment where i was very rooting for him

couldn't believe it another great song too forget what song it was on the radio but as he's like crashing there was a funny song playing and stuff and really good uh action scene another episode where this and then later on when they have like a the hostage comes back or one of the guys that was here they took hostage it just keeps putting him in that walter white tony soprano how is he gonna dig himself out of this whole scenario? Yeah. I, so first of all, the women,

again, you have Nadia and Sophia and they both like, don't trust us, but they, I think both think they can make him do what they want him to do, or at least like be able to be able to like catch him red handed at some point and then kill his ass. And I know at some point Oz is like episode,

I'm going to say episode five. I'm going to have you back. i got these two broads you know he's gonna say broads and they're both got my neck right now kid i don't know what to do vick what should i do with these two broads you need two glasses or something no i have a fucking not someone's gonna go called toots probably yes definitely gonna get a toots it wait it wait me so much to have it in front of my throat kid uh i i have to put my hand up on this and it could be because like i was watching it early in the morning or there's just so much these characters so many of them are kind of npcs and i really don't get to know the faces i was confused about whose side of the drug deal we were on i'm like all right we're in this car so does that mean we're with the falcons and the

maronis i had no clue and even for like a good chunk of the episode i was like i don't know who we killed again so i was i was a little confused there because i'm like are we in the falcons warehouse are we in like the maronis warehouse that we haven't seen before i was just confused during all that that's just me uh and i also just wanted to shout out because i heard i believe my nine-year-old daughter told me that joke about why don't seagulls fly over the bay because then they'd be bagels and i thought that was good fantastic joke and the organized crime joke about the difference between the government and the mafia is that one of them is organized i thought that was fucking fantastic am i right bob am i

right hey indicted yeah yeah yeah i love that clip everyone is reposting the mayor adams the like look under your kid's pillow. Something as simple as a crack pipe. I mean, the word goaded gets thrown around a lot these days. Goaded video. Absolutely. Goaded video. Makes me laugh every single, my fiance had never seen it.

I got to show it to her for the first time. Oh my God, we were dying laughing. That's like an out of order sketch. It really is. And the way it cuts too it's just like look behind a picture frame bullets behind this a gun it's just like what why is your kid carrying a fucking doll in their backpack like it's a grown kid carrying a baby doll of course it's fucking out of order and then you pull the back and could be a crack pipe could be a knife off the best so funny if you haven't seen that mayor adams could be a crack pipe video check that out not to get political on the podcast but must watch in all time must watch videos so

tell me he wouldn't be a great batman mayor oh he absolutely would be he'd be the guy that like mayor bella real beats in the election or something i don't know what her political affiliation is but it just seems like she would get out or she would get in right as he got out or something we might get her in this because we saw her in a uh like in one of the news clips at the beginning of the penguin i wouldn't be surprised if the penguin has a run-in with the mayor at some point i could see that yeah she's pretty good i a pretty good actress. I believe it's mayor-elect, Robbie. I don't think we want to use the incorrect terminology here, isn't it? Oh, because she hasn't been sworn in yet, right?

I believe it's mayor-elect. I think you're right. Please don't mess that up. If we're going to get political, then she'll have to be correct. So Johnny Vitti is pissed. He's yelling at Oz for the shipment going wrong, the hijacking and everything.

Sophia has his back. She's like, I don't know why you're more concerned about the product than the lives and whatnot. And she suggests there's a rat in the family. Luca doesn't love that being brought up. I think her saying that right as Luca gains the Don power makes him feel like, what are you accusing me of? Like not being the rat, but being unorganized, People not trusting me, people not falling in line with me. Oz tells Victor how he first became involved with the mob business.

This is Carmine Falcone's driver. Talks about someone talking to the feds and having to be killed and everything. And he has like a bunch of ladies of the night come over. Hookers? Am I allowed to say hookers? I prefer ladies of the night because it's just such a hilarious term, but I think you're fine either way. Well, they seem like good women. Roxy, Eve, all these people.

We learned on the radio that Sophia killed seven women as the hangman, or allegedly, because she's out of Arkham now. We don't really know what happened there. I assume we'll get the backstory at some point. She also bribes Detective detective marcus wise with helping her he didn't really want to go back into the corrupt cop business she's like you used to help carmen you could help me and give them some drops give them some money and eve the one who he used as an alibi in the last episode the lady of the night he used as an alibi comes to him and is like hey i'm not stupid i know alberto's dead you came to me in a panic that night things were going strange am i in trouble now he says no because of johnny

vd's blackmail photos that he had he's like nope i got these blackmail photos everything's gonna be fun victor the poor kid was so uncomfortable the whole time i just just felt bad for Victor. They just keep putting, he keeps being put in spots by Oz for him to feel awkward in their mom's house with the hookers. He's checking his phone a bunch about he's he, maybe he has a girl or a sister or a cousin or someone. Gabriella, I think was in his phone and he's checking about that. Did you catch any,

anything else on the, the Gabriella girl? I didn't really know what they were talking about. I don't know if he was concerned about her in the flood, her getting killed, the missing persons. I didn't pick up on anything there. I mean, if the kid didn't have a speech impediment, he probably would by the time Oz is done with him. Because he's just putting her in spots. But he also doesn't have it when Oz is around.

So it's like, that's some buddy-buddy shit right here. That's his boy. I like the building here. Again, I know people don't like the actor. I'm rolling with Vic. I've had enough for my child. He was okay in this episode. He didn't bother. That's fair enough. I also...

It's such a tough... You're just trying to impress the girl or talk to her, and then she's like, oh, that's the place that basically got flooded to hell and everyone's dead there. That your home did you lose anybody in in uh in uh crown point or something yeah it's the older on did you lose anybody like of course the whole fucking place is flooded so i thought that was pretty interesting uh the one so first of all there's about pinning it on jimmy vd that is a vd vd i think jimmy vd yeah is he do you know if he's a batman character johnny vd johnny vd he probably is to be honest so in the show i did when they were like

pin it on johnny yeah he was i was like shit i don't remember which one that is i do like luca i know there's something about the cut of his jib i'm like i could see that guy as the next head of the family or he's going to be this little transitional before penguin or sophia or whoever takes it i kind of like the cut of his jib uh vd i think you're supposed to kind of just dislike him he's just because him and penguin are banging heads and then the other guy uh who is milo this guy every time I look at him, I'm like, this guy's from something. And it was bothering me, Bob. It was bothering me for a long time.

I looked it up. He's in Band of Brothers. I'm like, that might have been it because I just watched that for the first time. It's a great series, which you'll hear from anyone who's watched it. Definitely recommend. But I was like, I feel like this guy was in Doogie Howser, but I know he's not Vinny from Doogie Howser. I looked it up.

He's Jimmy from Doogie Howser. Wow, know he's not Vinny from Doogie Howser. Looked it up. He's Jimmy from Doogie Howser. I don't know. Wow. What a pull. That is from the 80s. This brain stinks, but somehow, some way, it fucking knew. It remembered that there was a Jimmy character in Doogie Howser MD, and I nailed it. So shout out to me for that one.

That's a basement boy pull. Your brain is dialed to basement. Like you might not be able to do algebra and quantum physics and shit, but that poll, knowing someone who's in Doogie Howser in the 80s and then is in the Penguin as a full, you know, grown adult, that's crazy. Oh, Bob, and let me just say one more thing here because I'm looking at his IMDB right now. His name for the people at home listening and watching is James Madio, M-A-D-I-O. And I'm here like, I could have sworn he was in hook too, right under Doogie Howser.

He's in hook. And I was like, I knew he was in hook. Jimmy Pellegrino and Doogie Howser, apparently, which I don't remember at all. I just kind of said, he looks like a Doogie guy. And then I'm going here and he's Don't ask which is just one of the lost boys so he's just one of the lost boys he's probably a tier two to three lost boy depending on how you feel i personally think rufio's trash i'm happy he's dead spoiler alert fuck rufio then my you know the the big boy i love him i love uh oh there you are peter kid and then i think below that is

don't ask which is our boy here milo from the penguin so based on my personal power rankings luca won milo two that scumbag johnny vd three which i feel like the johnny vd death that's gonna be the mwah that was a good death like he's gonna earn his death from the penguin this season i hope we get to see that i hope we get like a fucking penguin choking him out or something yeah yeah that would be good which um and and then you said about sophia has a body count of seven women and then i'm hearing i think it was heavy spoilers it was like it might have been girls in addition to women because then when she heard the oh the younger kind of grabs the girl and i'm like so i mean sophia is a bad girl but is she like a bad girl like really that scene was crazy

too like when the cousin comes over and you think like all right they're family this is how cousins interact and then the daughter walks over and she gets so protective and scared right away you're like okay she's she's doing the thing where you're like, let me be nice to this kid. So if something happens one day, maybe I'm not on the list. Yep. Monster shit. Legit monster shit on a Sophia there.

Poor Oz's mom has been wandering around like Uncle Junior. She's kind of a mix between Uncle June and Livia at this point. And he's doing the whole, what kind of son am I? If I'm not a son, what am I? They go to Alberto's funeral. He talks to Sophia outside. There's a lot of protesters protesting the fact that she's even out of Arkham Asylum. His mother did not hold funerals for his brothers. I thought that was a little detail that they threw in there. That was interesting. Made me think about Penguin in a way I never thought about him having brothers. It was like, oh, weird. I don't know if it was an iron claw type having brothers it was like oh weird i don't know

if it was an iron claw type situation with the mom or what i don't know how depressing it got but it sounded pretty depressing it hoyt bob it hoyt when my uh my brother didn't have a problem you got it you get the hoyt um and then he talks about taking his mother out to dance to get her out of the depression it's kind of a likable moment. Then he gets the, like, we need to talk text from Nadia. We find out later it's from Nadia. It's about the fact that one of the Maronis was not killed at the hijack, was taken in by the Falcons, and he's about to rat. And then they get into the whole thing.

Victor's supposed to plant jewels. He's not able to do it. So Oz has to kill the Maroni in the basement, has to stab him. Another moment that I don't mean to keep drawing Breaking Bad and Sopranos comparisons, not able to do it so oz has to kill the maroney in the basement has to stab him another moment that i don't mean to keep drawing breaking bad and sopranos comparisons but him having to make that decision in the basement reminded me a little bit of walter in the basement season one with the plates where it's like i don't want to do this i'm forced into it not that it was that was walt's first kill him all that stuff but just gave gave me similar vibes. And then everyone's brought into a room after the guy is discovered.

And it's like, oh, fuck. They're going to look for the killer right now. And you see when Oz gets into it with the bodyguard, you're like, he must have planted that knife. And, of course, he did. Right before Sophia is about to shoot that guy, Luca shoots him and tells Sophia, go back to Italy. Like, you ain't safe. We don't need you here. Go to Italy.

She obviously takes offense to that. And we end the episode with her and Oz teaming up her being like, Hey, do you want to help me take over this family? And I think he says, let's dance. Let's dance. I'm ready. I'm ready. I just dance with my mother.

I'll dance with you too, honey. Even recapping that like makes me like not like appreciate the episode more but like recapping that i'm like damn that was some good shit yeah and again this is it doesn't have to just be comic booky shit it can just be a good five a good mob show fun mob show it's i like when oz is has to think on his feet and go on the fly he did it last episode with the body in the trunk. And, you know, obviously Vic had to do all that. Vic fucks up when they're doing it on the fly this time.

And now you have to see what Oz did there. And I appreciated how you feel like, oh, he's going to plant it on Johnny. That would be too obvious. He plants it on the bodyguard who we had talked to beforehand. So there was a lot. I like the way, I think the name of the episode is inside man or something like that. So I, I, I was, I went in thinking, Oh, this is going to be interesting. We're going to see who the rat is or whatever it may be.

And it's just like a, a fun show on Sunday in the midst of NFL Sunday, the Mets were battling for their playoffs lives. I was still legitimately looking forward to nine o'clock with the penguin and it's going to continue with thisclock with the penguin and it's gonna continue with this right because i think it's just a a good show sophia is a bad bitch do you think she's sophia with an f because it says ph in the credits but i feel like oh does it i've been writing f in my oh maybe we'll just give her that she must be ph yeah i don't know yeah if if she if she had it with the f she would overtake Sophia with the F.

She would be the Sophia with the F. If she, if she fumbles the criminal. The fast going bag. Sophia with an F and the F stands for. Call me hangman. Call me hangman. Someone's got to make a podcast logo or something with her on it that would be pretty funny

um and i think this ep this show not just this episode this show is hitting for more than just batman fans too because i saw a stat that it's the top rated modern hbo show other than the last of us and house of the dragon it's number three so it's doing really well it's a show where i feel very comfortable recommending it to people like even i was saying that dave i was saying glennie like people that haven't even seen the batman yet like you don't even really need to see the movie you should because it's going to help you and it's a great movie you'll enjoy it but you can just hop into this as a mob show and enjoy it my fiance was so excited for it on sunday like lady fox is like oh we got a new penguin today. And it's just like, cool that it's hitting everything. And it's doing

a good job of like this Brown is being a mob show that keeps it light and keeps it fun. It's never dark and depressing. It might get there for scenes. Well, I'm sure we'll get there towards the end of the season, but as of right now, it's still fun and moves and they use the fun music. It's really well done. I'll tell you right now, the, some and it moves and they use the fun music it's really well done i'll tell you right now the some of the sofia stuff is going to get dark and depressing i'm calling making that call right now it's not exactly calling my shop but i think based on the way she looks and some of the ways she acts i'm gonna say that's gonna get ugly there but yeah my i said to my dad i was like oh i just watched this penguin show really he's like oh yeah i watched the other day with

your brother i'm'm like, really? Because he's not a comic book buy. I don't know if he even saw The Batman. But I think he just heard it was a good show and he checked it out. He liked it. He didn't love it, but he liked it. And it's like, yeah, that's all you can really ask for. So, again, this is a win because I don't trust the people at Max to make the right decisions on stuff, considering they chain they

took out the letters hbo from their app and their pro their like main product when it's the only thing that's fucking like the driver of it right is hbo and these are the people that fumbled the nba away on tnt this whole time order discovery whatever this conglomerate is zazloff david zazloff's the head of it. So the better this does, the less they'll probably try to fuck with it and maybe give it the right budget and you'll have less cuts to the DC stuff. And they can just let James gun and all the people under him cook without being bothered. And that's all I can ask for.

Yeah. All right. Let's tell the people about game time. And then I'm going to describe three episodes of Agatha all along to you. Game time is the absolute best in the business. We love getting out to live events, whether it's a concert, a football game, comedy show, whatever it is, we always use game time. It's the official ticketing partner of Barstool Sports. And they now have a game time picks feature. So if you're looking at the website right now, if you're in the New York City area, game time picks on Wednesday, October 16th, you could go see Billy Eilish at Madison Square Garden. One of the hottest tours in the world right now. $196 gets you in the building. How about Saturday, October 5th, ALDS? Who knows at Yankees? Home game won, $73 gets you in the building.

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those tickets now for any one of those amazing prices. Download the GameTime app today and use code MMB to easily score great deals with new Game time picks what time is it game time we love game time they're the best the absolute best in the biz makes it very very easy to buy tickets all right i'm gonna describe one episode at a time to you and get your thoughts i have just very general broad strokes now episode one i was pretty impressed with episode one opens as like a detective procedural show it's stylized in the same way wandavision is stylized and they even do a beginning that says agnes of westview it makes it look like mayor of easttown or like true detective so it's her like investigating uh there was like a blunt force trauma murder victim by a Creek and all of the

co-stars. I didn't even realize this or the Wanda vision cast. So like neighbor Herb and Doddy, all of them, they're back. Herb's back and he's great. So like right away, I was like,

Oh fuck. Yeah. We're back with Herb. Like, all right, maybe this is going to be good. Right. She finds a library card with the dead body so she brings it

to the library dotty's working at the library the book that was checked out was burned years ago and there's a hole in the library it's like weird but you kind of put together oh this is probably the dark hole dark hole right here did we have daddy on the sus list at some point i feel like we had daddy on the oh yeah we had everyone on the list we had everyone on the list except maybe her yeah yeah so no her was definitely on the suss list at some point he was right i think i think we did the hedges were like fucking herbs trimming the hedges motherfucker we thought he was a robot or something because he froze i think that's right yeah that was bad um but they find the soil under the nails of the murder victim is from eastern europe not westview so you're like oh are they going where i think they're

going with this sokovia introduce aubrey plaza yep they introduce aubrey plaza and she's kind of with agatha right away where you can get the vibe like i think aubrey plaza is a witch who knows agatha's in a spell right now thinking she's in a detective show uh but it's good stuff and then like she's fucking with her someone tries to like steal stuff from agatha's house like a teen kid so she chases him down puts him in jail interrogates him and then he says some latin shit and you don't know what's going on but what's happening is he's breaking her out of the spell he wanted to get caught to break her out of the spell and she sees a body tag on the body finally it says wanda maxim off and you're like oh shit she's discovering

wanda's dead for the first time and rio says wanda's been trapped you gotta claw your way out of this and she like rips off every, it was in the trailer a little bit, rips off every like persona. So she goes through all the WandaVision eras, goes into a black and white and she's been Agatha all along. It was dope. It was really good.

Then wakes up, realizes she's been trapped in Westview for years, runs out of the house naked and runs up to her. It's like, how long have I been here? He's like three years. So she's been trapped. This is three post-wanda vision i think and her and aubrey plaza like fight a little bit she convinces aubrey plaza hold off until i have my powers because she has no powers right now she's like we'll we'll have a one-on-one match and you could try to get

your avenger whatever when i have my powers. That was episode one. A witch's code, you gotta let the other person be full witch, give a brooch, cauldron, hat, everything. So that was episode one and I was like, that's pretty fucking good. It was like interesting. They talked about dead bodies, Wanda. All scale like three.

Which like, you know, I didn't know what to expect, but I was happy with episode one. One two episode one yeah go ahead so one is agatha along the theme song no no uh no like intro theme no nothing like that okay i could live with that as long as well i guess they did the it was it was no it was the the ag like agatha of or agnes of westview. It was like a true detective style. Like a country song almost. But it wasn't like a, they didn't have like an Agatha intro that extends to every

episode or anything. Episode 2 picks up right where this left off and it immediately kind of becomes a different show a little bit. The teen who we don't know his name wants to go down the witch's road he's like i could do little tricks but i want to do real magic i know that's what you want to do as well i broke you out of this spell with my curse and

you also find out when she thinks she put him in jail she really just locked him up in her closet like she was really going crazy with this spell she was never a cop she was never that was all fake um and we hear the salem seven are after her so she's like all right you broke me out of my spell i don't know who you are and she says what's your name and he goes to say it and like his mouth like almost like pixelates like he's got a spell over his mouth where he can't say who his name is or what his backstory is i think skipping ahead here i think he's one of wanda's kids but ralph boner we're talking ralph boner no that's one of his brother brother that's right i think he's billy or tommy or some shit who would that be or the other one uh shoot white and Wiccan Wiccan

Wiccan and Speed oh god are we gonna go but I'm saying are they boner kids or are they real kids I don't know I think they're I think the one kid is real and a theory I've seen that I believe and again skipping ahead I think he wants to go down the witch's road to get his brother who's like trapped or something gotcha that would make sense to me but they assemble this coven it's patty lapone uh sashir zamata and ali on a bunch of witches they go to like a fortune teller they go to like a potion shop and they go to a hot topic which made me laugh one of the witches just working on a hot topic. And again, the team can't talk about his past when he tries to give his backstory, his mouth all pixelates and you can't understand them. I don't like when they do that.

I don't like pixelated mouth. It was, it was, it's a weird, it's not like pixelated either. It's like something goes, it's like skin like connects. It's weird.

It looks fucked up. But the last, they need like one last witch for their coven and agatha just grabs miss heart who is like the one from wandavision who's like the sweet old lady she's been in a million things in the past um the whole time she's like i don't think i should be doing this and my name isn't miss hearted sharon why do you keep calling me by my wanda name and they're like that's fine the salem seven arrive and they start singing the witch song which it made me feel like acolyte all all over again they're trying to open the witches

coven the road or whatever and then a small fight they sort of start to fight agatha doesn't have any powers but she can absorb powers and use them so she's trying to bait the witches into using their powers on her and then she'll be able to use powers, but they don't fall for that. And they just go down the road. So episode two is all like, we're assembling the team. You're going to Patty Lepone and you're being zany and wacky in a fortune

teller shop. And you're going to so-and-so teasing the kid. It wasn't as good. And I felt like I could sort of tell it was starting to go down this road episode three was a little bit more of the same from two so we're we're we're not where we were after episode one fair no that ball scale on this one i would say like one and a half maybe okay it was like it was never actively hard i was never like oh this is horrible it was just a little bit I was never like, oh, this is horrible. It was just a little bit boring and a little bit like it didn't keep my

interests. Did, was it like, this is the acolyte all along. It felt a little acolyte. Yeah. It's like, it's a, it's lighter and maybe like funnier than the acolyte. So it makes it a little easier to watch than that. The bright,

bright colors and shit. Catherine Hahn is very funny. Like the whole show. She's funny. But yeah, I don't like the kid, unfortunately. And he's not a kid.

He's a teen. He's got a little bit of an angsty teen thing going on for him. And it's just, let's get into episode three. Sharon, Miss Hart is just petrified that they brought her down the witch's road they're now in this fantastical journey you know neverland area she's again like i feel like you guys are kidnapping me and all the witches kind of

feel the same way i'm getting sick of sharon shit right now i just heard here in the storage for five minutes i'm like she is complaining a lot yeah i think she's i'm pretty sure sharon was the one that was in That 70s Show. The mom from That 70s Show. Oh, yes. She's the best. You know what I'm talking about? I love... You're back in on it. Oh, I'm in on Sharon. Now I'm mad that you're bothering Sharon. Stop bothering Sharon so much.

Yeah. Agatha doesn't care. Nobody has their powers when they're in The Witch's Road, so they're going to be put through trials. It's like, we'll see if you can pass every test, if you pass every test you get to the witch's road then you make a wish at the end whatever it's kind of a yeah are they hammering home how important the witch's road is too yes oh the witch's road is the series it's like the whole series okay i think the whole series is going to be on the witch's road, which I'm already sick of it. Again, not a horror guy and things like witches roads.

I just do not care about. I do not like, it's just not my thing. I'll never go to Salem, Massachusetts. That's a problem. It may not even be Massachusetts. It may be somewhere else,

but I'm pretty sure it's Massachusetts. I think it's Massachusetts. I will never go there. I'll never go to anywhere named. There's a North Salem, New York. That's the closest. They have a conversation with the, with the teen where they're like why why would anyone want to hide you why would anyone want to hide

your powers and again i'm like i think it's because she's he's the son of the scarlet witch and it's like you can't do that there uh sharon almost dies in quicksand gets her purse sucked into it uh and then they go into this nice house. They see a nice house in the witch's road. They go in and they all get transformed into, they almost look like they're like real housewives. Like they have nice clothes right away. A nice house. The kid is no longer wearing like he has like eyeliner and piercings and shit.

And they're all gone. He's got his hair combed. He's getting like a nice sweater vest on. And they read this riddle. There's a riddle when they go in My age has value. I'm no fun alone. I mess with your mind. My tricks are well known What could that be if you were on the witch's road My age has value. I'm no fun alone. I mess with with your mind my tricks are well known bottle of wine a bottle of

wine i got it a bottle of wine oh my god i did that you would be good on the witch's road listen if anyone's going on the witch's road anytime and they need like a partner companion this guy treating it like an escape room you would be great maybe maybe i am on the witch's road and i'm just telling you guys i don't follow the show because then you guys won't go on the witch's road like you're not supposed i imagine i'm glad he got it frowned upon to go on the witch's road i imagine the witches don't want anyone on their road is that fair thing yeah i don't i don't think the witches want anyone on the road because it's not going too great for sharon who's not a witch what well i guess the teen isn't a witch either but he like kind of wants to be and it's like so they drink the wine not realizing it was a poison it was a test

oh so they all go into like their face blows up all of their faces and it looks like they got like crazy botox and plastic surgery or something then it goes down and they have to make an antidote with the blood of the teen because he's like he was the only one that didn't drink it so he's the blood of the unsullied or something um and we also learn through their hallucinations and their crazy poisonous hallucinations agatha gave up a child at some point and nobody knows what happened to that child and they mention that child could be an agent of mephisto and they say the m word and the first time ever it was like oh they said the m word finally and i don't think that kid is an agent of mephisto he could be but they're trying to tease that it's the teen in the show they're trying to be like could be you i think it's a red herring and again it's going to be the wanda kid but they brew the potion the antidote with teen's blood and then

sharon is still i don't think she's dead but she's still passed out unconscious she looks lifeless and they're able to like get to the next part of the journey through the oven so they just like crawl into the oven as if it's like the trash compactor shoot in Star Wars. And they put her body in the oven and shit. And that's how episode three ends. Again, probably an improvement on episode two. But I would say this one was maybe 1.75 balls, maybe two balls. It's not much, but maybe a little step up. Nothing has been excruciating to get through about this show.

Nothing about it would make me recommend it to anyone. It sounds kind kind of like the acolyte without the lightsaber battles pretty much yeah yeah how so i saw the rick dalton you know leo pointing memes and i thought i saw the word mephisto flying around how good did it feel to hear that word said after all that fucking sleuth work we did there it felt good even in this even like i would have rather heard it in wandavision or one of the shows we wanted to hear it and even in agatha when i had my guard down and wasn't really looking out for it it was just like all right he exists they're gonna get to him one day even if it's years down the road he was mentioned they're gonna get to him one day. He's in the class. He's on the whiteboard.

Yeah. He's on the whiteboard. Exactly. That felt good. See, I'm happy I didn't spend – is it an hour-long show? Don't tell me. No, no, no, no. Half hour.

With the Disney Plus credits too, it's long. So it's probably 25 minutes apiece. That makes it easy as well. Spending 90 minutes or whatever of my life, maybe it would have been worth the trade off just to hear the M word, but I know I would have been Mr. Grumpy pants. The Mets were probably losing at that. I would have been a real,

like it's probably for the best that this is how I did it. I would have loved to hear the M word myself. I'm going to probably go search for the clip now so I can at least hear it. Yeah. But yeah. Okay. So Mephisto's out there. I was going to say they can't kill Sharon just because that

woman is so beloved. They killed a dog, though, in WandaVision. So I feel like anyone can really go. Question for you. Yep. Would you rather have to drive on the Witch's Road or on Rainbow Road? No.

Very tough. And it's very long. It's very tough, but I pick Rainbow Road because I think, like, I control my own destiny and fate on Rainbow Road. If I drive off the road, it's my fault. Witches Road, I don't know what they're throwing at me. Like, that riddle, I don't know if I would be able to solve that bottle of wine riddle like you solved it. So, I don't know. You know, Team Z takes a lot of shit on the dozen for

easy questions. They're grooved towards us. If you look back, I solved some of these puzzle questions where I don't know where in my brain I pulled these things. Again, anyone who listens to podcasts knows how shitty my brain is, but it occasionally comes through, and that's one of those spots. And I hate Rainbow Road. This is a take,

and I don't know if it's even a hot take rainbow road sucks when someone chooses rainbow road as like the level like usually will be like winner gets to choose it's like dude come on that's like eight minutes of our lives like we can play like about if you want to go hard i always saw bowser's castle is like a real where you cut your teeth as a legitimate player. That's like real ones. No. Yes, exactly. Whereas Rainbow Road, it's like, it was cool the first time they showed it. And I know it's the last level, but it stinks.

However, I don't think, I don't think it stinks. I, there's probably one Rainbow Road I'm thinking of. It's very, very long. I do not like that. All right. The other ones though, I can say, I can't just, I will say all rainbow roads are bad. Just some of them. Yeah.

We can agree on that. I look at rainbow road, like wonderwall. Like it's not their best song. It's the most popular and it's not their best. So it makes you want to shit on it a little bit, but like, it is fun when you're in the midst of it. You say rainbow road,

everyone knows what you're talking about, where you say DK mountain. There's only, I think Bowser's castle is probably the only one that is another one. That's probably been in every game but bowser's castle is also just a mario level at this point so yeah rainbow road is is it it's necessary but not great in my opinion yeah yeah i think that's a fair take this is the thing about rainbow road as much as it sucks you don't have to drink people's blood to stay alive on it so So that's why I think you would choose Rainbow Road over The Witch's Road. So that's our take

on Agatha all along. We brought up Rainbow Road. That sounds more fun than whatever the show is doing right now. How many episodes? Eight episodes of this? Or six? I don't even know. I think it's probably eight to line up with Halloween. Halloween would be...

Oh yeah, so we have three and then another. Because they debuted with two, right? Would I be right about that? One season, nine episodes. Weird. I don't know about... WandaVision might have been nine, too. That's maybe part of the reason we thought there was going to be a secret

final episode. They got to have ten, right? They got to have ten. The stupid calendar with the heart remember that yeah all the little fucking breadcrumbs we were looking at oh my and that was in pandemic we had nothing better to do and our brains were shot we were just looking for happiness and hope and we're like oh the mcu the one thing we can count on is the mcu being great that's what we were saying back in you know basically the last thing they did was endgame and that fucking rocked it's like yeah

man that was a decade's worth of stuff and no problems with production to get there and we instead had to deal with that bullshit which again wandavision was good i this was another question i had from this episode real housewives part yeah did it feel like it was they were kind of doing like all right we did all these other eras in wandavision we're gonna now bring the real house because i think that's a cool twist if they it wasn't like i wish they leaned into it more i wish it looked like a reality show when they got there and they had like talking head interviews of like yeah i thought dotty was a bitch in that moment like something like that yeah but it was just kind of the aesthetic and the look and it did come off like hey we did all

these eras so we're going to continue an era thing with like something we haven't really put them in before. It I kind of appreciated that, like doing something different every episode to make me remember, oh, that was the Real Housewives episode. Like, I'm down with that. And I loved the episode one stuff where they made it look like Mare of Easttown or True Detective. Like, that was really cool. So I do like that. I felt a little bait and switch with the uh wandavision cast being in the first episode like seeing herb seeing all these people that made me go like oh shit they weren't even

big characters but it made me like have a good reaction to have that point to the screen i remember them i like them and now it's like you only get sharon because they're on the witch's road i want to cut back to her i want to cut back to her. I want to cut back to Westview. I want to see stuff like that. Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe we got some people in the basement that love him as well. But, yeah, good, not great, I would say, as far as Agatha. It's okay.

I don't even know if I would say. I would say, yeah, I'd say good might be a little too much. Basically, we're saying, okay, two ball, 1.75. I wouldn't say like it's horrible. I wouldn't say it's unwatchable. It's going to get the review bombers, of course. How gay is it, to be honest? Because I know the gay thing is a big thing.

It's pretty gay. They're talking about it's the gayest MCU show. It's pretty gay. If you're into that stuff, like it's pretty gay. Be honest now, because I know it's your boy. Is it gayer than Captain America? Yeah. It's a little gayer than Captain America. Don't you say mean who knows people i've seen people make crazy edits of cap and bucky and they

want to ship that bromance there's weird corners of mcu twitter clem there's weird corners back in the 40s i'm sure that shit didn't fly but they you know they get to the modern world hey fuck it's a different time for us now pal yeah all right that was the penguin and agatha all along again if you're listening on the podcast feed we're going to throw it right over to my interview with kevin smith really special for me if you listen to this podcast you probably know nobody has inspired me more professionally, creatively to go after all of my dreams and stuff more than Kevin Smith. So that was like crazy awesome.

I've got to sit in on Lights, Camera, Barstool interviews with him, but never do a one-on-one interview. He remembered me. He was so nice. If you're on the YouTube or Rumble watching this on a video feed, go over and watch it on our channel now. Hashtag fuck Rainbow Road. Hello and welcome to my mom's basement presented by Barstool Sports. It is Robbie Fox and I am here with the one and only Kevin Smith talking about the 430 movie. I could see you're at

Smod Castle Cinemas where the movie was filmed. I've been there. I love the theater. I loved being able to watch this movie and turn to my fiance and be like, look, that's the theater we were in. It's fun for residents of Jersey or people who have been there, especially.

How are you? I'm so damn good, man. But that is a particular kink with this flick. We're playing it here, of course, naturally. I think this might be the only theater left playing this 430 movie at this point because it comes out digitally october 1st but it'll play here forever like literally every sunday at 4 30 we'll have a screening of it from now until like the place shuts down why not how many movie theaters star in their own fucking movie everything about it is

fucking adorable so yeah it's it started here when it started everywhere else september 13th but unlike every place else it'll always have a home here man which harkens back to when clerks was at the lemley sunset five like when the movie first came out it played for a full year and it went from playing like a daily show to like then just doing weekend shows, then just doing a Friday night midnight show. But it got to live there for a full year. I think we can beat that record now because I know to God it owns this place. I loved the movie. I felt like it sometimes feels like you listen to a song for the first time, but it feels familiar, It feels like you've known it forever. And the four 30 movie has such a comfort movie feel.

Even the first time you watch it, I don't know if it was just like the coloring or the, the filters that you guys added to give it that vintage look or the actual tone, the vibe of the movie. But I felt like it achieved that, like by, you know,

the pool scene early on in the movie, you're like there for it already. It's definitely shot with the halcyon glow of nostalgia to say the least but mercifully uh ron levy rdp had examples to work from like we all grew up watching 80s movies and so he was like i'm just gonna oversaturate the fuck out of this movie and i was like of course yes because that's what it was like so if the moment you start watching it it has almost the feeling of an old vhs movie that you enjoyed um it definitely does not try to do anything complicated so it has all the earmarks of john hughes movies in terms of like boy i hope they get to go on a date. Like that's, those are the stakes.

They're pretty low, but even as in everything in life, sometimes the smallest things are the biggest things ever. And when you're 16 or as our characters are, everything tends to be bigger, man. You're on the cusp of becoming, you're not quite there. You're not recognized. You're not relevant to the culture or society yet because you're kind of disposable as a youth but you know that you have something to say you know you have somebody you want to be that's what's always at the heart of those movies and truly kind of at the heart of most of the stuff i've done most of the stories that i tell i read some review i don't know if it was good or bad but it made me laugh where they were like normally his characters have fucking stunted development and these mini breakthroughs on their way to like growing up

and he goes or whoever wrote it and they said but here it makes sense because the characters are fucking 16 whereas normally he has people doing it in their 20s 30s even their 40s and stuff and i was like oh i guess maybe that maybe that's true. And that has everything to do with having an arrested development myself, a stunted development based on the fact that 30 years ago I got into the movie business and I haven't had to be a real human being ever since. I own the theater, so that fucking helps. Kept things cheap. The memories are predicated on warm memories of childhood, of growing up here at a simpler time when you had no phone to silo into and cut yourself off from everybody else, man. You just had to be a part of things, particularly if you wanted to congregate at the movie theater.

It's the last church at this point, man. Religion has kind of lost interest to a lot of people and whatnot. wanted to congregate at the movie theater man it's the last church at this point man religion has kind of lost interest to a lot of people and whatnot uh school we saw what happened during covid that just ended for a bunch of kids man um and had disruption that they'll feel for the rest of their lives very few places left where total strangers will get together and enjoy a thing you know concerts fucking wrestling and movies still have that primal need to be around others while you hear a story you know it goes way back to the campfire i'm sure so it's i get it i get that people are liking the movie i'm not like i knew it i'm so

relieved because i thought this movie was soft as fuck like this is the movie i made after i got out of the nut house so it's about as fragile as I was when I got out. It has no edge to it whatsoever. Almost no fucking plot, as we know. But what it has is heart. And what I was doing with it was trying to capture a feeling from a moment. And honestly, it's crazy, but I've been doing this 30 years,

but this felt more like a filmmaking exercise to me because consciously going in, it wasn't like, I'm going to have all this dialogue and that's going to take care of everything. It was about capturing a feeling, capturing a moment from childhood that was so powerful, impactful to me that it still resonates at age 54. And then trying to artificially reconstruct that to give it to the audience, to be like, do you understand did you feel that as well this is the first time i realized that's what i was doing on the job when i was making this flick because i wasn't smoking weed so i was like crisp as fuck the whole time

making the movie and i was like what is what is this job that i do and in this instance it's about recapturing a moment and trying to communicate it to the audience. Be like, do you understand? And I realize I've been doing that my entire fucking career at this point. I'm not like one of the greats, man. Like I'm not like a man. He fucking changed the format. But I have been a heart player the whole time. And I think that's what keeps people you know coming back if they even come

back at this point and i think this movie kind of shows that it wears its heart on its fucking sleeve and unlike most of my other stuff it's not like well you gotta see three movies before this will make total sense you can just enter into this one pick it up and go but i'll give a lot of credit uh where credits do man because honestly making this movie going into it i was like the cast has to be good because the script the script is fine like every movie i've ever made i was like the script is the best fucking element in this in this picture that's why we have the cast the script is everything that's the only reason i continue to work this is the first time i made a flick where i was like well the script is nice but like if this movie's gonna work it's gonna based on it's gonna be based on the charm of the performers and thank fucking christ

the kids were there man they're the ones that make the movie what it is it's a threadbare fucking plot and and not a fuck ton of dialogue by kevin smith standard but yet they were able to emote and take you to a place. And these were kids that weren't even fucking alive when these things happened. Most of them were come in 1986 or an egg or whatever the fuck. So I owe a lot to them, man.

Like I, I was more fascinated by this movie than while it was happening. Then I was diligently involved in terms of going over and being like, you need to do it this way, or you should do it this way. I let everybody handle their departments and just kind of let it unfold. And like Ken Zhang is a perfect example of that. The manager of my character on the page is so fucking threadbare. And when Ken came, when we got Ken, I was like, thank God, somebody's going to do something with this. And he absolutely did. But the unsung, well, he ain't even unsung.

But the guy I got a shout out and in terms of how this movie makes people feel is Bear McCreary, the guy who did the score. The fucking score is beautiful. You can hate the shit out of this movie and still love the fuck out of the score. It is so evocative. And in terms of feeling like this has familiarity i feel like i know this he wrote a banger of a fucking closing song with his brother brendan and recorded it and it sounds like a song that you've known your entire life it's that fucking earworming and good and of the era brendan sings it in a kind of like oingo boingo ish kind of staccato at times and it feels completely fucking 80s but it's a kind of like oingo boingo ish kind of staccato at times. And it feels completely fucking eighties, but it's a brand new composition. And it has all the yearning of somebody on the verge of,

of becoming an adult, right? It just, the whole score, the song that they recorded, everything feels like kids just before life finally opens up for them, man. It's, I drive around the same areas where we shot the movie because I live out here some of the time and whatnot and my whole life driving around things. I've never had a soundtrack or score for my memories. If I had anything in there, it'd be needle drop of a song that was popular at that time because of bear

bear in this score, man. Now, when I think back to the past, I hear the 430 movie score. It's like he perfectly scored my childhood. He composed my childhood, man. So that's the secret sauce. Honestly, the best thing I did for this movie was like stand back and let talented people do their thing. I'm curious when you're writing it. I know it's kind of loosely based on your own life and not all of your work is, do you feel your inspirations coming through as much in the script or does that come later when you're shooting it and trying to nail down the tone and stuff when it's something that's obviously based on yourself? I like that you usually wear your inspirations on your sleeve

in that way. Totally. Definitely more in the scripting stage. When others get involved, that's when it gets, for lack of a better description, diluted, right? It's in its purest form when I'm writing it. So I could put all the intent in there that I'm going to need. But the moment other people get involved,

it gets diluted. And so you run the risk, and not a bad risk, of it becoming something that you didn't foresee. Something which could be, in many cases, and often in many cases,

better than the version that you saw and stuff so with this it was like the whole opening scene literally happened and to the best of my memory that was how the conversation went um when i called kim lockern back in 1986 and said hey man you want to go out and she was working at china taste the same exact restaurant that's in the movie and stuff now it's called new beijing but you know, I made a big order and then ended it with like six and a half almond cookies in your hand in marriage and shit. That's taken right from fucking real life, man. So much so that when I watch the scene, it's almost like, wow, somebody had a camera on me when this should happen,

even though I know that's not me and I know that's not Kim. So I borrowed liberally for, for throughout the movie for that, like the conversation that he has with his mother on the phone about the fucking wedding. Thank you. I mean, that's so specific. It's not like I was like, I'm just going to fill the air with this. That, that fucking happened. I remember my mom being insanely outraged at somebody's thank you note, you know, because they had like a mild piece of sarcasm or whatnot um and my father walking around with a jar of peanut butter and a fucking

spoon in it while wearing a robe moments like that there's even on this on the porch set of brian david's house when you see his parents before we shot i asked rat face robert holtzman our production designer i say man can you get a net, like a fishing net, put it up on this wall and put some fake lobsters and crabs and shells on it? He's like, yeah, why? I was like, my father, the only artistic thing, the only self-expression I ever saw my father make in his entire life was one day I came home from school and on the front porch of the house, he hung this net, fishing net, and he put like shells that he collected and lops, a plastic lobster and fake crabs on it and shit like this kind of mural of some sort and shit like that.

And it always fascinated me because he was not an artistic person. And yet he felt the need to do it, to express himself. So I was like, can we, it don't have to be perfect, but can you grab those elements? And fuck,

I got to set man. It was almost like rat face had a picture straight from childhood. And it's one of my favorite moments of the movie. Now that's a reference that only three people are ever going to fucking love me. Well, three people other than me, my mom, my brother, and my sister, cause my dad's dead. But when they saw it, they were like, Holy shit, the net elements like that kind of make it real. Even if the audience don't have the same connection to the story that I have have they could tell that you're playing it as authentically as you can i got a

really nice tweet from somebody who was just like i wish that i could remember my childhood as well as you did he's going you captured fucking moments that happened to me and i'd forgotten about them and that's like that's like honestly the highest honor an audience member could say. Highest honor is like, I like your shit. But after that, to be like, you did something for me, you remembered something for me wholesale. And fucking like, now I'm going to hold that. Like that's, that's everything. I, you know, I didn't get involved in film for that. Like I got involved in film very selfishly because I want to be a filmmaker. want to tell my stories i want to see me in my world up on the screen

but 30 years in you find a lot of other reasons why you do it and that's one of them just knowing that like someone's gonna see that feel that and remember something it's gonna make their day a little easier even when the movie's fucking done. Once they've left the theater, presumably my job is finished. But I've always played it that my job goes for years, man. Like if I play my job right, I've got you before you come into the theater and I'm going to get you way after you left, after the story's done. That's still going to live in your head and heart. Absolutely.

You got me for sure. I mean, I think back to times that I wouldn't sneak into movies like this with my friends it would be like my mom being like all right i'll take you to see how to train your dragon if we're going to see the new tyler perry movie afterwards you know it was a trade-off with the parents exactly have you talked about the mid-credit scene of this movie anywhere can you talk about it do you want to talk about it talk about absolutely it was i i gotta give all credit to shane r.a.d so we opening scene of the movie is the very first thing we shoot brian david making the phone call and it's shot in leonardo which is where the quick stop is literally around the block from quick stop so shane at one point as we're shooting on day one he's like and shame was r.a.d on clerks three so

he's way familiar with quick stop he's like do you see how fucking close we are i said yeah he goes you should do a shot of quick stop you should have him fucking looking at quick stop and i was like that's too inside and then we finished the movie and the movie was short like way short the script was like 72 pages so i can't be surprised that the movie was very fucking short and so i had to beef it up and at one point i was like well i could do a mid-credit scene you know where something i was interested in seeing all the characters together because throughout the whole movie you don't you see the boys together you see brian with melody later on but you never see all four of them together and stuff and then you know after the events in the third act I thought oh it'd be nice to see them all hanging out like this is what their life is like now and stuff like that and just for quiet moments like there's a moment where

Bernie and Melody say hello to each other that like just means everything they don't have a whole scene where it's like you know I gave him a lot of shit about you but it's clear that like fucking things worked out so I needed a structure for it and i remembered shane's thing and i was like i can have him have this whole conversation across and then finally at the end reveal that they're looking at quick stuff it felt a little self-serving obviously but when have i never not self-serve i'm the most masturbatory filmmaker on the planet but i honestly like fell in love with the moment like later on it shot between two places we the shot of quick stop we didn't shoot ourselves we took it from clerks three and got rid of the ballards they had added so it looked a

little younger and stuff and across the street from quick stop they've now got apartments so we couldn't used to be a field if you look at the first clerks just open field so we shot that half in los angeles um like two months after we had wrapped the movie the same time that we shot logic and dedrick for the uh astro blaster scenes as well but yeah it was you know honestly necessity being the mother invention i i had to extend the movie and i was like well i without going into the movie itself i can add a ps scene that'll buy us like four more minutes and stuff and and you know it'll be cute and it'll also shout out anyone who's been with me on the journey like ever since and when the movie was done you know i was editing while we were shooting the movie by the time we got to

that point most of the movie 95 of it was cut together um it was you know clear as fuck that the main character was me i was always kind of hoping like nobody will notice but you know it's fucking pretty noticeable so at that point i was like i'm just gonna lean into it and let him stand across from a quick stop with his friends i loved it i mean like as a huge kevin smith fan it felt like the moment at the end of Split when you realize it's tied to Unbreakable and you're like, what the fuck? Everything's connected. I love it. That's awesome.

That makes me so happy. Now, I mean, the nerdiest Kevin Smith fan question I could ask, I feel like, is do you consider this an Askew Universe movie after that? Or is it just like, no, that exists in this world as well? I have a nerdy answer so you know over time i've been able to retcon movies that weren't a skewniverse into the skewniverse so recently in an episode an issue of quick stops that i wrote that'll be out next year which is the comic book spinoff that i do with dark horse um i did a standalone story about Rick Derris and Heather Jones, two characters and clerks were, you know, fucking geez.

He's like, you want to lift? He's like, sure. How about the beach? So it kind of tells their whole story and stuff. And we reveal that like her sisters, Heather Jones, sister Alyssa Jones from chasing Amy and Tricia Jones from mall rats. But we revealed that her parents are Mub and Rini. And Mub and Rini was the name of the video store in Jersey Girl.

So I was able to retcon Jersey Girl into the skewniverse in a very indirect way without anybody being like, hey, man, where's Oliver Trinky or Bart Trinky? So I in this flick, would I consider this a universe? They go see there's a they don't go to see it. But dental school exists in 1986. It's a brand new movie. And in 1994, when Clerks happens, there's a lady standing outside RST who's there for dental school. So it's in could be and they're lying if i were to tell you that astro blaster was never ranger danger there's a couple drafts where it was ranger danger as well but i felt like you know what let me make it as from the surface like apparently an island you know nothing that

needs to be connected to anything else. But if you stay long enough, there's some deep cuts. I love that. We also just passed the 10 year anniversary of Tusk, which I was a huge supporter of from the moment we were the one. Yes. And I was the one I went saw three times in theaters. Loved it so much. Opening night with my mom. Yeah. The whole thing.

What did you want to see with your mom to get Tusk the trade-off? It must have been, yeah, Mamma Mia or something. She's like, you're going to pay the price for this one. One of my favorite moments in Tusk is when you actually use the title track. I think you're so good at needle dropping in movies. Clerks 2 has like, it's a perfect game of needle drops in my mind. Do you have a personal favorite needle drop in a Kevin Smith movie? Let me see.

Tusk is great, but it was unexpected. Like I wrote the script of Tusk to Tusk over and over on replay, but never once intended to use it in the movie. I used it as a temp track for, you know, that sequence where it actually winds up in the flick. Never intended to use it because I knew it would be expensive, man, because we'd had a Fleetwood Mac song in Jersey Girl. It was very fucking expensive.

So the producers of the movie fell in love with the track and they were like, no, we should go. We're going to get it. And it was $250,000 track, which was more than the walrus costumes cost. It's the single most expensive element in the movie and stuff. But it really does make that fucking scene and to be fair if you're going to make a movie about a walrus you

know either tusk shows up or you know the beatles show up and the beatles way more expensive than but tusk just has that ominous the drum track like this is a song if the way i understand it's about mick fleetwood's dick but it sounds so menacing you know and it's it felt like the felt like the movie itself so i love that but let me see what's my favorite needle drop honestly i think it goes to live how does a track in is a toss-up live has a track in zach and mary make a porno hold me up that it plays when they finally have sex when they're shooting the porno and we use it to separate the two worlds um when Zach and Mary are together and in each other's eyes and faces and bodies we're playing that song and it's

incredibly emotional and it has drive to it and whatnot it just feels like fucking freedom and sex then when we cut to the people shooting them, having the sex, that song's not playing, it's just dry and they're having conversations and stuff. So I love the song and I wanted to use that song in mall rats. And we'd had it in an early cut of mall rats, but we had to cut it out live. Didn't want to let it go. And so years later, I was 95 and then 2008 was Zach and Mary.

So it took 13 years. But at one point I was like, whatever happened to that live track? Did they ever release it? And they didn't. And they let us use it and stuff. Then they released it shortly thereafter. So I love that needle drop. But right next to it and maybe even above it is the opening of Clerks 3 has Welcome to the Black Parade.

And that was three years in the making in my head, just knowing what that would look like. So by the time we got to set, that shit shot and cut itself. Like I'd composed that in my head so many fucking times listening to that song for years. And it opens the movie in such a great way and kind of foreshadows the movie in such a great way as well. Yeah, so I love that one. I'm a pop punk kid myself, and I'm in a pop punk band at Barstool.

We play that, opens every one of our encores. So as soon as that opened Clerks 3, I was, of course, over the moon about it. Also, I'm curious, as someone who wrote a Superman movie before and someone who's just a fan of James Gunn, as I know you are, what are you hoping to see out of the next Superman movie? Oh, look, anything James is going to do has my fucking few bucks and probably have all my fucking praise as well. This is a guy who took a concept like Guardians of the Galaxy,

which when they announced it, I was like, why the fuck? Of anything you could make, why would you pick that? Like, oh, my God, what a stupid idea. And yet it's one of the most beautiful movies ever made. Not just one of the best comic book movies, but just a beautiful human movie about inhuman characters and whatnot. So this guy knows how to take aliens

and make them relatable as fuck. Like we've seen him play with people from outer space and make them almost human. What is Superman, if not the ultimate alien? This is a guy who came from the planet Krypton and whatnot, who tries to blend, who tries to be like, space and make them almost human. What is Superman? If not the ultimate, ultimate alien, this is a guy who came from the planet Krypton and whatnot, who tries to blend, who tries to be like one of us, James will find the humanity in that character. Um, you know, it's he's Superman. So naturally we want to see him do shit and he better wear that suit. But the man is what makes that character the most compelling. And that's always the trick, right?

It's like leaning on a guy that flies and bullets bounce off his chest. Those are features, man. Those are great features, but you can't sustain 85 years of comic book history, 86 years of comic book history, a fandom of capturing the public's imagination with just those daring do feats.

It's the humanity of the character that hooks us to the, the totems we love. So I feel like who better than James to like take Superman and nail the humanity, the man in Superman. That's what makes them relatable. You know, you look at the feats of Superman. You can't even do that shit. At least a Batman. You're like, well, my parents got killed and I had money, I could be Batman. But you can never be fucking Superman. But you can be the man.

You may not be able to be super, but you can be the human part of it. And James is really good at getting into human being skin and fucking showing emotions and giving us the feels. So he's a big comic book fan. We know he's a loyalist like fuck. All you have to do is look at the logo of the Suicide Squad movie directed to be like that came right from the fucking front cover of the actual comic book. like a variation of uh you know the the giffen justice league with with um uh guy gardner and hawk girl and and uh mr terrific like i'm fascinated honestly it felt like they shot for so little like it felt like they were shooting and then suddenly they're like we're done i'm like what but i can't wait to see where it goes i I've heard maybe Brainiac. That makes me happy as fuck. Yeah.

But, you know, this is only the beginning. We get to see what the next 10 years of DC comic book movies are going to be like when that finally happens. So I guess we'll get a taste with Creature Commando as well. I'm stoked and I'm stoked to hear your thoughts on it with Mark on Fat Man Beyond when that eventually drops. This is a picture from the first time we met 12 years ago where I got you to sign my Superman Lives script. So I felt like it was full circle to end this talking Superman. That is damn beautiful right there, man. Where was it?

Was that at a Fat Man Beyond? It was right outside the stash. It was for the tough shit signing that you guys filmed for Comic Book Men. Holy shit, man. You were there for that. Fucking that's awesome. Right at the end of Holy shit, man. You were there for that. Fucking that's awesome. That's so wild. Right at the end of the night, yeah. Well, I really appreciate you doing this.

As a longtime fan, this was so cool for me and I can't wait for the future. Always a pleasure talking to you, man. You make me feel good, Robbie. And you're the only bar stool that gives a fuck about me. So I thank you for that. I very much do. I promise.