Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Dangerous Bangers: Drop Dead Fred

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

It's real Dangerous Bangers hours. The guys discuss the 1991 comedy Drop Dead Fred, bad movie moms, good imaginary movie friends, and peak Phoebe Cates to decide once and for all if Drop Dead Fred is, in fact, a banger. Watch this episode at https://www.youtube.com/@QQPodcast Help us grow the show by following us on socials and doling out some sweet, sweet engagement: https://www.linktr.ee/QQPodcast

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, I wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? What do I be? What was it I did? Where did all the bad things go? I forgot it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Word it over Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien

Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here Video edition. I am one half of that podcast. Senior writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents, and reluctant return YouTube star Daniel O'Brien. Joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say, explain how we got here. Hey, everybody. It's me. I'm so happy to be back. I needed this. It's just good to be back in front of a camera.

Oh, baby. Oh, baby. It's just good to be back in front of a camera. Oh, baby. Oh, baby. It feels good. I insisted on us doing this. I needed it from Daniel, and he flew all the way out here, and we're doing it. Now, I don't actually, I don't totally understand. I think that we're trying to save our podcast from what I understand. That's true, yeah.

For listeners who don't know, we are, you can listen to this podcast like you always have, but you can also watch us do it in real time in front of each other on YouTube at QQ Podcast, where you can see us occasionally look at each other and engage with each other. You can see me fiddle with my cast. I do a lot of that. I do a lot of that if you're only listening you missed just how much pure vibrating Soren did when he was talking about being happy to be back on camera you're also missing our wonderful set design we got our show logo

there it is without our names interesting we've got the cool bass that I do a solo on peony I do a a solo on every episode

I think most of them have been cut for time but show them all again yeah they're in there and then a guitar that I

I'd noodle I'd noodle on you'll hear it throughout the episode probably unless we cut it I don't know why we would it's really good stuff

came out of that we've and we've got the the don't know why we would. Some really good stuff came out of that. And we've got the world here. Because we... Because that's what we're trying to heal. With this. As you started doing the intro,

I was already lamenting the fact that on video, you have to bring a different energy. Because you saw i pointed right yeah and i was like oh fuck uh it's so much more low stakes when i'm doing it my garage and i'm like i can just wander in there and be like all right let's just get started and like i can be pretty low energy and everything when you're on camera it's just doesn't play man and i've never the last time we did one of these I am realizing now I was not thinking about

what my face was doing while you were talking because when I'm listening to you I forget that a camera could be in fact two could be on me and they could cut to me at any time and I'm sure I'm just like and then I said a funny thing just turn off

yeah yeah well yeah just turn off yeah yeah yeah um well so last time we did an episode of this we ran longer than we wanted to yeah and so i'm thinking this time maybe we just jump into it okay jump straight into the game because we this is like the return of the gangster uh no that's not we're calling it we're calling it dangerous bangers yeah the gangster return of the gangster uh no that's not what we're calling it we're calling it dangerous bangers yeah the gangster return of the gangster is a uh outcast song oh okay all right um so uh our quick question is hey is this movie still good yeah we're just gonna bring in a movie that we really like and have liked in our past but have not revisited in several years

and we're letting the other person watch it and they're in our past but have not revisited in several years and we're letting the other person watch it and they're going to tell us whether or not this movie holds up and also is not problematic i think i think those are two it's two pronged yeah because holding up and not being problematic can really be two different things there's a lot of movies like gangs of new york if you watch it's a great movie but it's got like some fucking star wipes and stuff in it where you're like oh no, no, that doesn't hold up at all. And like Cameron Diaz, you're like, it really becomes clear that she should never be in a period piece now. And we were so forgiving then.

It's just times change. Yeah. At that time, it was just like Cameron Diaz. Yeah, she's a star. Put her in the movie with the other stars. Of course. What's the problem? What's the problem?

It'll make a million dollars. And a million dollars, by the way, then was 175 175 even that i don't think is enough for a movie um okay so uh last time we talked about how how do you know which is a movie that daniel brought to me my attention and um i hated it yeah i did not care for. And so it was deemed not a banger. Yeah. We also, just to sidetrack, as we always do, because you mentioned things being problematic, I realized we were talking about something in that movie

that was very, like, a dated treatment of women where Reese loses her job and then, like, well, now I guess I just have to fall in love. And I said, out of instinct well it was 2010 i think we need to pick what date is okay because 2010 is not that number keeps going up as i keep aging and we that's not the system we should use yeah it's very troublesome uh that there are movies from like 2016 where i'm like oh we used to say it was the 80s and now we're just like well obama was president nobody cared about anything everybody

was happy um yeah i say and we also problematic because one of the movies i brought daniel's attention was called monster squad and monster squad's got a lot of hard uh f F F bombs in it. Um, and using homosexuality as a slur and some other stuff. Oh, um, at one point some kids photograph a woman changing against her will and then use those pictures as blackmail. Yeah. Uh, kids, the heroes of the film, the people we've been rooting for. Yeah. Uh, that's, that's tough. Um, and I, I don't want want to derail us too much but I realize that I have to do this with music too because for a long time my song my go-to song in karaoke was

do you know what it is? Funky Cold Medina? yeah Funky Cold Medina from Tone Loke now he's scrubbed all evidence of that across all formats and that's a song about essentially Spanish fly. It's a song about an aphrodisiac that you can make people want to have sex with you and the different ways that he uses it. And like spoiler, not great.

Not that the ways that he chooses are not so hot. In fact, at one point gives some to his dog and his dog starts having sex with his leg. gives some to his dog and his dog starts having sex with his leg. Um, I can't sing that. I realized that in the middle of doing it at karaoke where I was like, ah, this is tough. And there's one line in there where he's like, he, he uses it on a person who then turns out to be a man. And he thought was a woman. And then he, he's like, I had to get out of there. You know what I'm saying? This is the eighties and I'm down with the ladies and that's that line used to be very funny to me when i was young because it's so so dumb and it's so dated um but just doing that verse where he's like trying to get get a woman to have sex with him by feeding her drugs and it turns out to be a man he's like nah fuck

that i gotta get out of here. What could happen to me? I was like seeing it. I was like, I can't do this song anymore. It's really rough. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, the movie I brought to Daniel's attention is Drop Dead Fred.

And just give a synopsis of that. It's a movie I've, to begin with, never seen. And I was so in the dark about it. Everything, including cast, was going to be a surprise. Like when you told me to watch this movie, I had to double-check. Was it Drop Dead Fred, Drop Dead Gorgeous, or the John Cusack?

Better Off Dead. Better Off Dead. And I know nothing about any of those movies. So I watched Drop Dead Fred, the correct one, and the movie starts. And the movie starts, it's a little girl in bed and her mother is reading her a bedtime story about a princess who falls in love with a prince and they live happily ever after. And the little girl asks if they really did live happily ever after. Mother says, yes, of course, because the princess was

very good, very well behaved. And if you you're well behaved to get rewarded with a prince and little girl says what a load of shit and the mother is taken aback then we get the title sequence great movie which is uh like a lot of movies in the past an incredibly long very involved title sequence like that's a thing that we used to spend time on in movies this is a lot of like stylized construction paper graphics that's a thing that we used to spend time on in movies. This is a lot of like stylized construction paper graphics that show a lot of things that are gonna happen in this film a lot of cartoon stuff about like Stuffed animals getting their heads ripped off and like poop being smeared places things that that don't make sense You don't realize the first time you're watching it that you are seeing a bunch of stuff that's gonna show up later But it's a lot of visuals from the movie done in this strange cartoony construction paper style.

One thing that got me very excited seeing this credit sequence is seeing the name with Tim Matheson and knowing that it's an 80s or 90s movie and Tim Matheson's in it. I'm like, oh, we're going to get a prick. We're going to get a real prick. This is great. He's never been a good guy.

I can't wait. The movie, after the credit sequence, we smash forward to, we assume the little girl is now grown up Phoebe Cates. She is distraught and trying to get back her boyfriend, who is Tim Matheson. She is, or her husband. She is on a break from work and she goes to him at his car dealership place where he works. And he's in a suit and he's like totally a prick and she's like i want to get back together and like before she can even say what she wants to say he's like no no no you're right we should split up you're absolutely

right this is the right thing for us he's like like very much gaslighting her he's like you were the one who told me that i should go and be happy with annabella this other girl that i'm dating she was like i don't think i would have said that. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, you did. We get the sense that Tim Matheson is a dog. 10 out of 10 prick score right away. She chases him down in her car and is still shouting like, get back together with me, get back together with me, please. He's like, it's over.

We're getting divorced. Goodbye. And he speeds off. She pulls over. She goes to a phone booth to call her friend, who we don see yet and she is distraught over the divorce she still has her car she doesn't know where she's going to sleep that night uh as she's talking a random carjacker a random like guy walks by and sees her car has a golf club smashes the window takes, leaves. And then she is still talking. She does not see this going on.

Another guy walks over, sees a window open, steals her car, drives away. It's broad daylight. She looks, oh no, that's my car. She has to run to her job as a court stenographer. And she gets in there late and says, I'm really sorry. I lost my husband and my wallet and my car. And then she gets and sits and starts to type again. And the judge says, real quick, stenographer, approach the bench.

You're fired. And I don't think that's how it works. I don't think because... It's a cool thing to do for a judge. It's a cool thing to do for the movie, for the judge. Where's your stenographer now? You need that for law. You need it.

On her way out of the courtroom, she's carrying her absurdly large box of stenographer paraphernalia, and she bumps into a hunky childhood friend of hers named Mickey, who was just like a happy, cheerful guy from her past who is really happy to see her again. He doesn't work in the courtroom, he explains. He's there because he's getting a divorce. And he's really happy that he got to keep his cute daughter in the divorce. He has a picture of his daughter, like safety pinned to paper clipped to like court documents, just like, look, here's the daughter. I must have brought this to court to show the judge, can I have her still? But this is done to establish, like, she's got a hunky childhood friend who's clearly been thinking about her for a long time.

He is also recently single. And he's a single dad, so we get the sense that he is a good guy. And he says, she's great, I love her, but she is a lot, kind of like you were at that age. She's like, I wasn't a lot at that age. I'm like, yeah, you were. You did pranks to my grandma.

You were, I mean, like, it was only when your mom was around we were all scared of your mom she's like my mom's fine what are you talking about and and then he was like yeah it wasn't you it was you know you never said it was you it was always drop dead fred your imaginary friend and she this is the first time she's thought about drop dead fred in a long time big smile she loves the memory of fred this imaginary friend that to her was very real mickey fuck off for an hour or so she goes to try to stay at her friend's apartment her friend is carrie fisher that rules uh and then her domineering mom shows up at carrie fisher's apartment like you're not staying here you're staying with me and phoebe case tries to put her foot down i'm staying here no you're staying with me and so and the mom wins she is now back in her childhood house and you get a little

glimpse of what this mother was like because she she can't there's a rope in the blocking off the living room that says do not enter do not step on the rug and the mother is very much like we are going to get your husband back tomorrow you're going to do what I say and we are going to get your husband back tomorrow. You're going to do what I say, and you're going to get your husband back. Stay out of the living room. Very type A. Yeah, yeah. Phoebe goes back to her childhood bedroom, and there is a jack-in-the-box that has tape over it.

She removes some of the tape, and then out comes, eventually, drop-dead Fred, the titular imaginary friend. We see a brief flashback of the first time Fred appears in young Phoebe's life. The little girl is asleep in bed, and a gross, dirty, gnarled hand comes out from behind the pillow and slaps her on the head to wake her up. Speeding up a little bit, Drop Dead Fred is here. He has red hair hair wears green clothes he is so excited

to see Phoebe Cates again she is a little excited to see him because there's clearly so much memory and affection there he is an off-putting presence

he is a loud British punk who screams a lot he's chaotic he calls her snot face he immediately picks his nose and rubs it on her and instantly wants to get back into playing the kind of games that they used to. And he's like bouncing around her room and destroying stuff and trying to break stuff.

And his first act of mayhem is he goes outside, steps in a bunch of dog shit, walks his hands back into the house, and then smears the dog shit all over the living room that we're not allowed to touch. A lot of this movie is different scenes of drop-dead Fred showing up

and trying to cause mayhem and then disappearing and it looking like Phoebe Cates is the one responsible. All of it topped with Phoebe Cates' mother being more and more stern and more and more like this woman would have been a terror to grow up with.

And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but throughout all this, the movie where Drop Dead Fred is doing increasingly damaging things, are we led to believe that it's possible that this is Phoebe Cates and that this is all in her imagination? Yes.

We'll get to it, but there's only one scene in the movie where it seems like it's not in her imagination. Like if you're looking for evidence, there's only one scene that I clock. Drop Dead Fred is the only one who sees her husband cheating, right? And she tells her. Oh, I guess there's two moments. Yeah. So the one moment is she and her mom are out shopping so she can dress

more like her mom and they get home, they open the door and there's a note on the ground that was like, like waiting for them in the house. And Phoebe Cates takes it up and reads it. And it's a letter from what she thinks is a letter from Charlie to come meet me at the apartment. I want you back. It's actually written by Fred. It was a trick.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but it's really like a an early title version of tyler durden yeah and i'm really trained the whole time to look for clues like is drop dead fred real or are we gonna see a scene where it's just her smearing dog shit on the floor and causing all this havoc are we gonna get one of those scenes we don't but the movie continues like this where adult phoebe her stated goal is we going to get one of those scenes? We don't. But the movie continues like this, where adult Phoebe, her stated goal is, I need to get back with my husband. And drop dead Fred, who is an agent of chaos and is like bummed that she grew up, also thinks his mission is to help her get back with Charlie, her estranged husband, because my job is to make you happy. And if that's the thing that's going to make you happy, then that's what I'll do. And then I'll disappear after that. Her mother's goal is to get her back with Charlie as well.

And throughout all of this, Drop Dead Fred pops up and does mayhem and is very stressful and impossible to reason with, which I understand is the point of the movie. But when I want him to just be quiet, I don't understand why he just doesn't like, don't press the button, just please follow the rules. The movie is also interspersed with flashbacks

to young Phoebe Cates and her adventures with Drop Dead Fred, which are also, like, really chaotic mayhem. They, Drop Dead Fred's like, let's play burglars, and they rob their own house. They, like, steal a bunch of shit from their house. Break windows. Break windows, throw the stuff out the window uh the father calls the cops and uh but the line gets cut by fred fred or phoebe

yeah and uh so he doesn't know that the cops are actually arriving when the cops do arrive he attacks them and they get confused thinking he's the burglar and they send him to jail. It's not low stakes mayhem that they're doing. Her dad goes to jail for a while. Yeah. And like later on, like Phoebe Cates like sinks somebody's house. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, we'll get there. We'll get there. So we get all these flashbacks of mayhem and the present stuff of mayhem. And one of the things we learn in the flashbacks is how much joy little Phoebe gets with drop dead Fred. It's like really real that this is her only friend and her mother controls the entire house and her mother is unreasonable and mean and cruel and like even shuts down the husband, doesn't let him speak. They get the quickest divorce I've ever seen where she is yelling at Phoebe Cates as a little girl and talking about how much she hates her daughter. And he is trying to be like, be reasonable. It's okay.

She's like, what do you know about raising a kid? He goes, apparently nothing. Takes his coat and leaves. Divorced. Hell yeah. And just walks out of the house and they're done. And we never see him again. Maybe he fucking died.

We don't know. Uh, back in the present, she is still trying to get Charlie back and uh, she goes to stay at Carrie Fisher's houseboat for a while. So, Carrie Fisher has an apartment, right?

She does. But she also has a houseboat. She also has a houseboat. Okay. This is the best scene because it's a very horny scene. She goes to show up at the houseboat to hang there for a while. And she confides in Carrie that Drop Dead Fred is back. And Carrie is the only one who like softly believes her. We meet this 60-year-old guy that Carrie Fisher is fucking. And our introduction to him is we just hear him from the upstairs part of the boat. And we're like, are you coming back to bed, dear?

And Carrie Fisher turns to Phoebe Cates and is like, he is an animal. He goes all night. Yeah, it's very disruptive to have Phoebe Cates at our house because she was like, there was a marathon fuck session happening upstairs. We just hear his voice for a while. And then he comes down and he's like a full blown suit and a 60 year old man. And it's like they leave Phoebe Cates is taking care of the boat

and then she swears she sees Charlie on his boat so she tries to move the houseboat out into the water to follow him. Drop dead Fred of course can't be reasoned with. He wants to play pirates and he wants to press lots of buttons in the boat. And he breaks the boat.

He goes into the engine room and just starts smashing things and breaks that and sinks the boat house. And I want to briefly stop down and talk about Phoebe Cates is incredible in this movie. She is allowed to be so funny and so weird and crazy. And she plays so much of it with a straight face. There are so many details. When she goes to tell Carrie Fisher about her house sinking, she just stands outside of a conference room

in full glass, soaking wet, looking around as if she's not soaking wet. And she's like, Come here. Carrie Fisher finally comes out and excuses herself. She's like, So I've got some bad news. Do you know how you used to have a house? Well, it sank.

And it wasn't me. It was Fred. And so Carrie gets in like a fake fight with like, where's Fred? Can I strangle him? Am I strangling him? Yeah. She has a nice lunch with Mickey, the guy from the first scene. Yeah.

And she and Fred is there the whole time, and she is just trying to engage with Mickey. But Fred is obviously causing chaos, and when we see her point of view, he's grabbing her arms and moving them around and trying to knock stuff off her table. To his point of view, to Mickey's point of view, this is all just her fighting Fighting with herself doing some really great

Bruce Campbell evil dead 2 stuff where she is like not in control for not in control like but like doing idle hand stuff It's very fun and Mickey in like like a pure playbook of Underwritten Female leads in movies and of the 90s is just like so taken by everything she does you know they've like romantic comedies where like the guy is terrible but for some reason the girl is just like i love it because yeah i i'm not the focus of this movie he does that role he was like why did you do that why did you just throw spaghetti because i'm crazy you're crazy in the best way and he's throwing spaghetti in this restaurant and they get thrown out of the restaurant

and then she just leaves for a while. And every time he pops up, he's doing more of that. Just joyful, like... He's just the most kind. I love how violent and weird you are. I'm going to yes and it forever. Yeah. She causes so much damage in something, again,

that her mother decides to take her to a vague mind doctor of some kind. A child psychologist. Yeah. A psychologist but for children. Because it was the same one she had when she was a kid. We get a fun reveal where all of the kids who are in this room for imaginary friend purposes, they're imaginary friends. We can now see them.

And Fred can see them. And Phoebe Cates can see them. And they just do like bits together for a while. And they know each other while they know each other like Fred gets there and it's like namby pamby yeah it's very exciting and there's one that they all kind of fucking hate like this guy yeah there's a social dynamic to all the the invisible friends it's such a great reveal it's really really fun they all like it's like the Beetlejuice waiting room like it after death where like everybody just all of a sudden knows each other and they're all like yeah and the big hallmark of drop dead fred as an imaginary friend is he is disgusting he's grotesque yeah it's shit it's boogers it's spitting it's it's like this role

like very unpleasant and all of them are like that they're all like hey fred watch this they rip their neck open or their head explodes and And it's great fun. And the mother comes out with these green pills from the doctor. And the doctor is like, give her one of these every day. And the imaginary friends let Fred know like, oh, if she takes those, you'll die. You'll disappear. The movie continues. The movie continues. She is basically under house arrest with her mom and some giant nurse that her mom hires to like make sure she's fed and has these pills.

She eventually breaks out and finds Fred again. And they're like, let's go to Charlie's big party and let's win him back there. And so she goes to the party and she's going to try to win him back. We, uh, Fred does a Fred thing where he slides on his back on the ground and looks up someone's dress.

And that person is not wearing any panties. And he's very excited. And that person happens to be Bridget Fonda. And you forget that she's in this movie, don't you? I did not remember that Bridget Fonda was in this. Phoebe finds Charlie at the party and wants him back. And then Bridget Fonda walks up. And Bridget Fonda is the Annabella that we've been talking about from before

and they are clearly together and Phoebe goes a little bit crazy on this and leaves and doesn't know what to do with herself. Starts to think she's going to be resigned to taking these pills forever. But then Charlie, for some reason, decides, I do want you back. Come move back in with me.

Let's be married again. And for a brief period, this seems like it could be a good relationship. Like, they're very clearly fucking a lot. They're in love. Yeah. They're really into each other. Yeah. And she is willingly taking these pills.

That's right. She's becoming an adult. Yeah. And Fred is dying this whole time. yeah uh and fred is dying this whole time and finally with like one of his last acts because she tries to make charlie a mud pie is like isn't this don't you think this is cute and fun that i did this like no it's like okay i'll make you a romantic adult salad good and as uh she's making the salad and fred is slowly dying and mad that she's eating salad. Fred discovers by hovering above the wall in the next room, he can hear Charlie talking to Annabelle on the phone. Giving like amazing prick exposition of exactly what you need to be overheard.

Annabelle, Annabelle, you know I'm still in love with you. She doesn't know anything. I can handle her. Of course we can still be together. Very incriminating stuff. Yeah. And he's like, Phoebe Cates, please just open the door and listen to what Charlie is saying. Please, you can take the pills.

Just do this thing for me. Yeah. So she opens the door and listens to Charlie. And he is, thankfully for our purposes, continuing to do very helpful one-sided exposition. I love fucking you, Annabella. Don't worry about Phoebe Cates. Who cares about Phoebe Cates? I'm going to do very helpful one-sided exposition i love fucking you annabella don't worry about phoebe cates who cares about phoebe cates i'm gonna do this forever yeah and so she decides secretly yeah a long time uh i'm gonna leave this guy for good now but i don't really know what to do and in a very strange scene fred is lying on the ground and says just come

with me and so she like collapses onto him yeah and goes into his body and they disappear into this dream sequence of uh her house and she goes into the house and uh at some point needs to manifest a tree so she can climb up to the different floor on her house it gets very surreal surreal. It's very, very surreal. And she confronts her mom and says, I'm not scared of you anymore. You can't control me. Goodbye. And then she, a very warm scene,

goes into her childhood bedroom, and it's young Phoebe Cates taped to her bed. And she removes the tape and hugs her. And it's like, you don't have to be scared anymore. It's a really good adult version, freeing the young version by traveling through time in some way. And then she awakens back in Charlie's apartment and we learn that Fred is like,

you don't need me anymore now. This is what I was supposed to do. I have to go now and you have to do what you need to do. She now has a very similar scene where she confronts her mom in real life. Charlie calls, tries to get back together, she hangs up the phone, done with Charlie, and as she's leaving her mom is like, but I'll be so lonely if you go.

And Phoebe's like, you should make a friend. And then she leaves. Oh, scathing. And we don't know exactly what she's going to do. We find out in a nice wrap-up scene where she is dressed insanely and Carrie Fisher is doing power walking. One of them is dressed like a lunatic and Carrie Fisher is smoking.

And we learn at the end of that scene Carrie Fisher's like, good news. I've made millions and millions of dollars off this floating condominium sinking. So I'm rich now. Thank you, Drop Dead Fred. The last person we check in on is Phoebe is leaving to go to parts unknown. She comes across Mickey and Mickey's cute daughter who is causing havoc and like inspired

the current nanny to quit. And the cute daughter was like, it wasn't me. It was dropped at Fred. If he was like, what did you say? And Phoebe can't see him. But Fred is, is now like,

He's got a new kid. He's passed down to this cute little girl. It's, the nanny says, you're gonna have to find a new nanny. She starts walking away

and then gets trapped in like a Looney Tunes style lasso trap. Snare that pulls her into a tree. It seems heavily implied that Phoebe Cates

and Mickey are going to end up together. She will at least be this girl's babysitter and be a person who understands the drop-dead Fred of it all. It is interesting that they don't bother to give you that part. That they're like, no, it's not a love story. Yeah.

That's not what this is. It's like, no, this is a story between a girl and her friend. That's a very good exposition of what's happening. A lot happens in the movie. Yes, there's a ton. And it's like, it is, it's just, so much of it is like flashbacks and then flash forwards to them,

to this girl or this woman and then her friend and just things going wrong and she has no control over it. Yeah. But she's still, I can't say enough about how good Phoebe Cates is in this movie and how much fun she gets to have. I also can't say enough about how

disgusting Drop Dead Fred is. But he's really good, right? He's really good. It really shocked me. Because I... When you start to understand the premise, oh, it's imaginary friend, but for an adult, that's fun. That's a really good idea for a movie.

He is like, he's not a clown. He is destructive and mean and nasty. Yeah. And like, he gets his head caught in the refrigerator door and it comes out and it's like all flat and stretched. It's unpleasant to look at.

It's a very like visually disgusting movie. So what I really enjoyed about it as a kid, this is a movie that I've loved since I was pretty young. And my brother and I used to watch it all the time. And first of all, the little girl in it is incredible. The little girl who plays little Phoebe Cates is like that. You never get that from actors and from child actors. And she's so good in it. And I think part of the reason is that he is really

good with kids in it so like he is really gross and disgusting but like in exactly the right way where i don't know if you ever seen a movie with like ryan gosling with kids like my blue valentine stuff or like oh this guy's just fucking good with kids like a lot of this i think is improv his scenes with her are great yeah and you you, like, he's more protective of her as a child, and you really buy that, like, he is either an invention of her mind or, like,

unnecessary magical spirit that was like, I am here to protect this girl and to, like, give her the joy that she can't get from her parents

and her weird, isolated dollhouse life. And their dynamic is so warm and pure and fun. It's a little bit stranger with Phoebe Cates because she's an adult and she's an attractive adult. And they're like really close in each other's space a lot. And again, he's rubbing snot on her.

There's like constant intimacy with them running around together and being so close and like screaming into each other's mouths. And it's like, where is, where's this going? Is he the prince that we talked about in the beginning that she ends up with? They do. They do kiss at the end. Yeah. Which is like that. I remember that vividly as a child where I was like, wait, what?

Yeah. Before he disappears. Yeah. They kiss. So it is. I don't know. Let's not talk about it. I don't want to think about that part. Early on,

when they're going to do the robbery, he's already dressed for it. He's like, we've got to get your sweater all stripy. And he's just rubbing shit on her sweater. So much of that feels like this could not have been scripted. Or when he slides underneath the mom and he sees under her dress, because he does this a few times. Drop Dead Dead's Fred is also very horny.

He goes underneath the mom and he's like, oh, cobwebs. Yeah, cobwebs. And there's a lot in that movie that I'm like, I think this guy is doing a bunch of improv. And I was like, what else has he been in? He's been in, so I went, as soon as this movie was over, I went to the Wikipedia page to look for a bunch of improv and i was like that's like what else has he been in he's been in so i went as soon as this movie was over i went to the wikipedia page to look for a couple of things i wanted to see who this guy was and like was he doing drop dead fred in england for years like a mr bean thing which is what i assumed i assumed this was like a character he created for something else that he was doing for a while and then they wrapped a movie around it and no

he's just an actor who's been doing a lot of things and only did drop dead fred once and i just felt like that's first of all how do you not do that over and over again second of all how do you do how are you allowed to do so many other things you're drop dead fred he's so good at that one particular role which is amazing like he's it there's a lot that he has to be doing all the time, and he has to be high energy and moving and talking the whole time, and he does it flawlessly. It's so good. It's such a physical performance. It's so awesome, and he's got to

dial that back between a bunch of different speeds, depending on the scene, because sometimes he really is super supportive, and sometimes he really is super damaging and chaotic. The other reason I went to the wikipedia page is i wanted to know what the critical response was and people did not like this movie i so cisco gave it zero stars we checked in with jacob weinstein who's one of our sound engineers about like where everybody or where these these films sit and like

all the different film critic arenas and like this one is so low i think in rotten tomatoes it has like an 11 percent so people when we say dangerous bangers like maybe these these weren't bangers to begin with well the good thing about our show is that we don't have to take into account imdb rotten tomatoes or metacritic scores it's just if the two of us decide it is a banger. And I'm going banger on this one. It's a banger! I think it's a real banger. I think Phoebe Cates' performance, I think the freshness of this movie and how unpredictable and weird it is.

Even if it is just hitting the same beats of like, he's going to do chaos to ruin this thing. It's neat and inventive ways for him to do chaos and like the structure of it where we're going back and forth in time and you really get to see how adult phoebe gates came to be like how she got fred out of her life and how she is so she refuses to show any emotion for her mom because like a devastating line is when she's talking about uh her mom taping up fred in the first place and saying if you if you ever mention drop dead fred again i'm going to throw this in the garbage and then you know it's going to get crushed and it's devastating for phoebe kates as a little girl and as an adult she explains like that's how i never should have

told her what i loved or i never should have told her what was important to me because then she knew how to hurt me and she would do it over and over again. So that's why I don't, I never let her know what I love or what's important to me. And it's just like, that's a, what a horrible way for a little girl to grow up. Of course she needed a drop dead Fred to protect her and give her some kind of fun and to provide a worthy antagonist for her horrible mom. And Phoebe Cates is a grownup. She, she, when she still needs drop dead Fred, she's so much of like a child still in a way

that is really fun. And when I was, when I was a kid and attracted to Phoebe Cates, seeing an adult Phoebe Cates, but still acting like a kid, I was like, okay, this is up my alley. I understand this. This is good. She's more of a child in that movie than she is in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And you as a kid, you don't want a woman, but you want something. You're not here.

And this feels like a nice way into it. Yeah, this is like a nice it's a way into it yeah this is like a good first gateway woman when was the last time you watched this movie oh sorry real quick Kate's Way Woman yeah

oh my god thanks Dan thanks for getting that I think I watched it when I was probably in my teens was the last time I think I watched it when I was probably in my teens was the last time I saw it so it had been a long time but we had watched it

so much together my brother and I like I as I went through just the Placidopsis just now I was like yeah

no I know all this I have this banked did you think because sometimes when we do these I think Soren's gonna like this movie a lot

and sometimes I think I need I need someone to tell me if this is bad or not, because I don't know. Did you think I was really going to like this one? No, I did not. So this was one that I was scared about, because I was like, well, we had really weird tastes.

We were living up in the cabin. It was just us. And I didn't have friends. And I was like, oh, we should watch Drop Dead Fred. So the only other sounding board was somebody who was essentially another me yeah in my house and i was like i don't know if anyone else will like this movie and then also to hear jacob be like it's got 11 i was like things don't look good things aren't looking good i am trying to put myself in like little kid shoes to see if i would have uh liked it back then and i think I would have because a lot of the stuff that I was reading on Wikipedia,

the complaints people had for it was like, this is too dark for like a family movie. If it's supposed to be for younger kids, it's way too dark. And I compare it a lot to Beetlejuice, which is also dark and gross and weird. And it's like, no, I love Beetlejuice. I never for a second was uncomfortable with Beetlejuice. Yeah. And he does way worse stuff. It doesn't feel like it's,

uh, uh, it's a confused genre at all to me. It feels like it knows exactly what it's doing. And I don't think it's a kid's movie. Kids don't care about her relationship with Charlie. Well, I guess I did.

Um, but like I, I watched it for, for the drop dead Fred Fred but I mean like it was it's like Scrooged it's like it feels like in that same like vein where you're like a lot of physical comedy is happening in it and stuff and a lot of supernatural types of things that would be appealing

to kids but also like you it's got a very adult thread through the whole thing and I liked that more in movies when I was a kid I really thought I was going to find a whole extended drop dead Fred universe that like, well, surely they made

a Saturday morning cartoon of Drop Dead Fred where he just like ran around in Dead Avengers. No, just one and done. Huge, huge failure of a movie. And maybe like,

I don't know. I don't know what Phoebe Cates did after this. If she did a bunch of movies or not. She's done a bunch of movies. I don't know. I don't know her timeline

very well. There's a lot. She's a blind spot for me that is now going to be a rabbit hole because I know she did Fast Times, a movie I never saw. Yeah. So if you want to put that on Banger's list

if you like that or not. You've never seen Fast Times? No. And I saw her in the Gremlins movies. Oh, right. And she doesn't get a ton to do in the Gremlins movies. Her most bonkers scene

is monologuing about her father dying because uh he was dressed as santa claus and wanted to come down the chimney to surprise the kids on christmas and got stuck in the chimney and died yeah and her end of that monologue is and that's how i found out there's no santa claus which is a bizarre thing to say it's also it comes at a time in the movie where like the town is overrun by gremlins. People have been killed by gremlins. And Billy is like,

half paying attention while he's checking for like, phone reception. And he's like, uh-huh, yeah, yeah.

No, I hate my dad too. Could you check those phones? What are those doing? Yeah, where they're in danger, their lives are in danger. She's like,

I have to tell you a story about how I learned there was no Santa. Yeah. I don't think I want to hear that right now. Yeah. But I don't think

I've seen other movies of hers. And now I want to see everything. Oh, hold Santa. Yeah. I don't think I want to hear that right now. Yeah. But I don't think I've seen other movies of hers. And now I want to see everything. Oh, hold on. Okay. Correct me if I'm wrong here. And you would know. She married Kevin Kline. Kevin Kline.

Yeah, yeah. Which, possibly one of my most problematic views. This is very clearly a holdover from a part of myself that I'm trying to shake, which is ingrained misogyny that if someone is good and cool and talented, then they deserve the prom queen, which is what Phoebe Cates was in the 80s to everyone. So when I see Kevin Kline, I was like, yeah, you're so talented. You're so smart. You're so funny. And then I find they're married to Phoebe Case. I'm like, good.

That's right. And it shouldn't be right. And I know that. I'm trying to work it out of me. But I also, I still clearly believe it enough that I had to say it into a microphone. Yeah, no, I suffer with that. When I watched the AOC documentary and then met her boyfriend and I was like, well, hang on.

Yeah, because he's just a goober, right? He's just a guy. He's just a dude. And you in your mind get the idea of this person who's also very beautiful but is powerful and is smart and you're like,

ah, the whole package. Okay, so surely this other guy, he will be big and handsome. He's not big how tall aoc boyfriend normal height um and then dealing with that contending with that on my own being like why soren why well i don't know i just thought he should be big why well you're yelling at me i don't like it um but yeah very much the same way i think that there was a i think i learned that when phoebe cates and Kevin Kline got

married, she decided to drop out of acting and just, uh, have be a family. Okay. Um, I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe I'm thinking of Rick Moranis. I get them confused very often. That's, I mean, so what you're thinking of with Rick Moranis is when his wife died, he stepped away from acting. Tell me, was his wife like the prom queen? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did he have the right wife? His wife, you would love her. She is so huge. She's so tall. Oh, that's so perfect for him. I want that for him. Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure that's the case. I'm pretty sure that she decided that she didn't want to be involved in the industry anymore.

And that's part of the reason we don't see Phoebe Cates anymore. Yeah. Because she kind of just like, she got to a, this might not be her fault. Like she got to a certain age and disappeared. I bet it's not. And that seems to happen to a lot of actresses. Oh no. But anyway, yeah, this was like, this is a favorite of mine i would love to actually revisit i want to watch it ronan is about the age where uh i saw it for the first time

because i rented it alone when i was a kid and my parents were off on a date or something like that and uh i was allowed to be home alone at a very early age and i watched it and then was like i have to show this to someone and gave it to my brother and then we just continued to rent it and watch a lot and or maybe we might have even burned it something not burned it whatever you did to a vhs back then yeah copied it copied it copy copy and and never like never try to take it beyond that point which is like also seems a little crazy when you loved anything when you were young, you're like, like when I got the tone low, low after dark tape. Sure. I was singing it to kids in my kindergarten class or my first grade class because I was like, this will be, they will love Wild Thing. Like they will go nuts for this. Funky Cold Medina at karaoke in 2008.

I didn't know that this started in kindergarten for you. That's very young. Precious. Yeah, it's too young. And I think that age is too young for Drop Dead Fred as well. Yeah. So I think I was probably like seven or eight when I first saw Drop Dead Fred. That feels young to me. Maybe.

But I mean, that was... I guess it's fine. You're so fucking normal. I mean, that was also an era when you were watching movies with your parents because it was not as... You didn't have as many options. There was like one TV and you're all going to watch whatever's on that.

And a lot of times it was dog shit, so you had like a VHS and you're like, we're going to watch Scrooged. And you would watch it with your parents and'd be like i think i like this movie and so i think we just had a different um that's true different witness test for what was what was too adult for kids then that's true there wasn't when i'm with my niece and nephew and they're like we want to we are going to have tv time and they're they know the options scrolling through like there's paw patrol there's this tiny cooking show there's this fucking unwatchable gabby cat show it's called fucking unwatchable gabby cat okay yeah yeah they love it um we didn't have that when i was a kid tv time was still exciting it was like

all right we we rented demolition man so now we're all watching Demolition Man. Now we're all going to watch it. Okay. I just like noise and lights, so it's fine. It didn't matter. Yeah. And there was also that we would go to the movies with my parents. Occasionally I'd be able to see a movie that had been playing there. Otherwise I was just going to go see Leaving Las Vegas with my parents.

But if there had to be a movie for kids there, then I would watch that. And then that would end 45 minutes before there. So I would just wander over to their theater and sit with them and watch the end of Indecent Proposal. Be like, all right, well, that was a movie too. Cool. We all watched movies. Do you have any final thoughts on Drop Dead, Fred? Only that it really made me fall in love with Phoebe Cates.

And I saw it long before I saw Fast Times. And so it was like I had discovered her. Yeah. The other thing I need to say that is barely anything, but maybe we can do this in post in the wide. Get a side-by-side picture of Mickey from that movie with Billy from Stranger Things. And they are identical. Billy is a looper sent here to kill

Mickey and he got sidetracked and just like landed in this franchise because I was watching the movie with Mickey and staring at him like, you're so familiar to me but in a context that makes absolutely no sense. He's in Sleepers. He's in context that makes absolutely no sense he's in he's in Sleepers

he's in Sleepers yes and he's in House of Sand and Fog another banger and I looked at his IMDB to see like

where I might know him from because that's how I was trying to solve this mystery first before I realized he was being looped and there's a lot of movies on there

but not many that I've seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He, he was guy that you just sort of recognize. You're like, I don't really know what I know him from,

but I know. Um, and he's, he's wonderful in it too. Like he's, he's a great dummy, but like a lovable dummy. And I,

I started to realize as you were talking about this movie and how much I love Phoebe Cates, that I think a lot of like my sense of style and like what I think is attractive in a woman. Like she wore a lot of dresses and then like tennis shoes. Yeah. And I, that's a look that like is not super common, but one that I have always loved. And I think maybe I got it from this. It's pretty bonkers throughout the movie in a fun way.

And there's also, she cuts your hair in the movie multiple times. Oh, right. Which you never get to, which I weirdly feel like you don't get to see in movies a lot. But like there's one scene where either she or Fred cuts her hair while she's sleeping to have this like crazy haircut that she just rocks for a while. And then her mom tries to fix it and she rocks that for a while. And it just like changes throughout the movie. Yeah, they all work.

She looks great no matter what. When a hair's all fucked up, it's like, even after Drop Dead Fred does it, I'm like, keep it, it's good, it's good, don't change a thing.

And Mickey says that to her, he's like, I love it, I love that you did that. I like how weird it is. I wish I could do that. Mickey, Mickey. I've been where you are, man.

Like, dial it back. The desperation is too strong. This is a woman who will sink a houseboat like you got to play as a different angle um yeah the only other thing that it reminds me of and another story that i absolutely love is calvin and hobbes and the relationship between drop dead fred and phoebe cates is so much like those two where it's a lot of chaos and there's a lot of, did Calvin do this or did Hobbes do this? And then like some indications that are that like, there's a much darker side to Hobbes,

which is like Hobbes can't eat people. He is a tiger. And like when they, there's, I remember there was one panel where like they go down to the kitchen at night to try and steal some food and they get caught by the parents. And then afterwards the mom is like, why was he pulling out of all these cans of tuna fish and it was like no hobbs was doing it like hobbs was getting in there and he was like i'm gonna eat this because calvin wasn't

gonna eat raw tuna fish um but then yeah like hobbs is occasionally a threat like hobbs will fuck calvin up and i love that about about it. When they did the burglary scene in this movie and the father attacks the policeman on the stairs into their bedroom. They roll around for a while and you hear a gunshot and I really thought this movie was going to get much darker

than it was. Because you know in the future the dad's out of the picture. I'm glad he just went to jail for a while. But it was still like this is a pretty tense moment in this movie. Yeah, you would remind me, I didn't remember that there was like that, that very first scene is a horror movie where there's a tiny sweet girl sleeping

and a terrifying ghost hand comes out of nowhere and like crawls up the sheets at her and then slaps her on the head. Oh, one note for this movie. Okay. Every time she's around a certain flower, she sneezes, and the sneeze sends him bouncing off the walls.

And I don't know what that does in the movie. Apart from we have the special effects to make it plausibly look like we're actually making him bounce around the walls right now. But it's not like... You're right that it never ends and it ends up getting used. It's hit two or three beats

set up in a way that you think, ah, by the end of this movie, she is going to need to sneeze him to safety or sneeze him to destroy something. It's a check off sneeze. Yeah, but it just doesn't... It must clearly just be like,

we figured out this effect. Look at it. Shut up. Look, he's bouncing. Yeah, because it is like the only power that she has over him. Yeah. And it does seem like there should be a time where he's doing too much. She's like, I have to do something.

It sneezes him away. But I don't get that. Maybe that was in there at some point and it got cut. Otherwise, certified banger. Like the music. I don't even remember the music but that's great Randy Edelman

really yeah oh great okay that's a good movie thanks again I'm really happy that you liked it

thank you and thank you for watching and again if you didn't watch and you just listened that's fine you can watch this

on silent since you've already heard it. You can find all of our video pods at QQ podcast. You can also find the show on Twitter. You can find Soren on Twitter at Soren underscore LTD or me at DOB underscore INC. You can email the show at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. We have a Patreon that you could find with some sensible Googling. Our theme song is done by the fabulous Merex. You can find their album at merex.bandcamp. Our show is recorded, engineered, edited, and now filmed by the inimitable Gabe Harder and Jacob Weinstein. And you can find Gabe nowhere.

No. And you can find Jacob. I also believe Jacob does not want to be found. Jacob's made it clear he doesn't want to be found either. We can check the tape. I don't think I took a breath in all of those plugs. No. And I stared through the wall to see if they were...

It seemed like you were going to do a bit at the beginning, which was, you're like, you can find our show on the internet. You can find us on the internet. You can find this on the internet. That would have saved me a lot of internal panic. We should... We're not going to memorize them. We should have a sign with them on it.

If we have the budget for... I mean, us stumbling through it, I feel like is... I could keep doing that. That's part of it? Okay. I'm demanding a teleprompter next time. Actually, when I say us, you have done it both times so far. So I't had to do anything but each time i've been like i know it i know it do you see how far on the seat i'm sitting for these how tense i am yeah it's like we're driving for

the first time yeah uh just wait till we do the ads in video form and then you'll see me white knuckle it yeah all right are they gonna watch us do the as you think that's gonna be advertisers you don't want that i wouldn't do that yeah i've got a quick quick question for you all right i want to hear your thoughts what's on your mind i've got a quick, quick question for you, alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? How did you get?

When will I be? Do you remember? What's it after? Where did all the Oh, forget it Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here