Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - The Return of Dangerous Bangers

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

The guys convene for an important meeting of the Dangerous Bangers Association to determine whether or not James L. Brooke's 2010 film How Do You Know is, in fact, a banger. They touch on non-descript movie jobs, the pitfalls of finding a husband when you could simply be a softball coach, and good, wholesome love triangles.  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: www.tiktok.com/@QQPodcast www.instagram.com/qqsorenanddaniel www.twitter.com/QQ_SorenandDan

So hello again and welcome to the first video podcast episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. The podcast where two best friends and comedy writers give each other questions and give each other answers. I'm flying blind without my notes, even though I've said the same thing for six years on this show. I am one half of this podcast, senior writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents, and guy who is increasingly getting sweaty for being on camera for the first time in a long time, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Buu. Soren, say hello! Hello. It just occurred to me with horror that at the end of this, I don't know how to end it because I don't remember any of the things that I'm supposed to say. I don't

remember, like, I don't remember, I don't, I'm not sure that just like off the top of my head I could say what your Twitter handle is. No and we've got so many different things like we have Twitter Instagram and an email address for the show and there's no consistency on QQ with Soren and Daniel Soren and Dan they're all. And you'd think by this point I'd said it so many times I would remember it. But no. No. No, I've not committed that to memory. It just falls right off every single time. But we're doing a new thing right now.

We're doing a video podcast. It's the dramatic return of one half of the After Hours table on camera. Yeah. Actually, it's nice. I guess this is fine. But it's nice to see you in person. It's nice to see you too. Yeah. It's good to look at you.

I think it's going to keep me really honest it's good to look at you I think it's gonna keep me really honest and focused on this podcast to not have I just feel like like my video games on the computer while I'm checked out

and I was like oh good so we're just telling a story about the mall right now so I can let's check out Reddit for a while

yeah I think that's probably true well time will tell I guess yeah well we should do maybe like a do do do do do do strike update I think that's probably true. Well, time will tell, I guess. Yeah. Well, we should do maybe like a do-do-do-do-do-do-do strike update.

Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do strike update. There's no, I mean, I don't have any. I just want to make sure that you don't either. Okay, no, yeah. I don't have any strike updates. I really wanted to, a big part of me being out here in Los Angeles, which is where we're filming this for a month, was I was excited to protest with you and and and march around and strike with you but this not happening broken foot yeah so you'll notice that both dan and i you actually get to see this in person but like yeah we i have a cast this is the cool sleek cast daniel has a very cool sleek

uh i got my band-aid wrapped around his foot. Yeah, it was bring your child to the hospital day. And someone's kid really wanted to mummify my foot. And I think they did a pretty shit job. Yeah. Not even to give them, like, child credit. No. So I'm sure at this point you're feeling the pain of, like,

the wrapping itself is now more painful than the actual injury. 100%. Yeah. I had a lot of that. I had these two fingers wrapped and like what developed in between them looked permanent. Like it was like, uh,

first of all, they got very wet and the skin got very loose in there. And then some fluid started to fill in a very specific area in between the knuckles where they just barely rubbed against each other. And, uh, and, and I got these like huge gross blisters in there that i couldn't do

anything with for a long time until i finally unwrapped the whole thing and like rewrapped it myself assuming i could do it right and even now there's like an edge in here that is fundamentally changing the the fingerprint of my whole palm like the what would be the lines of like oh that's your lifeline like that kind of stuff that's all altering dramatically because of this injury you'll never be able to open your home safe that just uses your handprint ever again oh my god my guns i know oh no um yeah i it's really pain i mean for a while i was putting duct tape in here but that just looks so it was oh did it look shoddy non-professional soren did Now, before you got the cool removable cast, how long were you in the urgent care splint? Okay.

I was in that for three days. So, showering with it. Yeah. I found that the best thing I could do was take a bread bag, because bread bags are long and thin. You know, like the long plastic bread bags. And I would put that on. I'd just slap a rubber band around it and then shower with that uh that worked out great i'm at an airbnb now and none of my stuff is with me not that like if i broke my foot in jersey and had to shower with the stuff in my home it's not like I have one of those special things for that,

like I used to have for my wrist, like a medical-grade shower protector. I would have, with my items in my house, I would have been able to put together something competent. I'm in an Airbnb that is not really decked out, and I'm going through all the drawers, and I'm just tying a garbage bag around my foot at this point. I'm just opening what should be the stuff drawer with like rubber bands.

And also my wrapping keeps coming undone. So I'm like, where are your fucking safety pins? What are you? You have so many laundry detergents and no safety pins or rubber bands. Where are your scissors, you maniac? I mean, you know, somebody was out in the woods and had to do like something pretty quick. And I saw that. I'd be like, well, we can do better than that than that yeah we'll find something that's better than that the guy who

who did this i don't think ever wanted to do his job or maybe just didn't want to have anything to do with me he like checked me in in the beginning and he performed the x-rays and he tried to find a boot but couldn't find a boot and then made the splint and every step of the way it seemed like what are you late for the a date you want to catch basketball's not on for another two hours just like please do this thing that i'm supposed to wear until i go to a different doctor i had the same experience well those technicians man i think that they are they have no bedside manner first of all yeah uh across the board i've been to now because i broke my toe a while ago and like the technicians are always just

like don't listen i don't have to deal with your shit i'm not a real doctor like i never had to learn that that stuff and so like when she was wrapping my hand she like stopped and then went back and she was like i'm gonna do the fingers and so she did these fingers for no discernible reason other than to like, to hurt me. Cause they, they didn't, they turned out they were completely unnecessary to be part of the wrap. And when the doctor,

the bone doctor who then took off my wrap, like put this on as he was taking out, he was like, who did this? I was like, yes, I knew it. I knew that she sucked.

Like, why is she doing that job? Her job is to just check the x-rays. Then in somebody else who has like, understands human beings, like a nurse or somebody comes in and she sucked like why is she doing that job her job is to just check the x-rays then and somebody else who has like understands human beings like a nurse or somebody comes in and she's like oh this is gonna suck for a while i'm so sorry like they're gonna give you like the late the real the how it's gonna go the lay of the land but that didn't happen instead i just had this one woman who was like basically smoking a cigarette right there being like oh what's the fuck what can i do to this kid oh here we go i'll get i'll wrap this up in this terrible way right around

his neck a little bit uh so should we talk about what should we talk about i want to talk about the uh game we're playing okay yeah it's game we're playing we've played it uh famously twice before it's called called Dangerous Bangers. It's inspired by Kieran Culkin. He invented the game with a cast and crew of Succession. The rules are simpler than they sound. How are they, by the way, since you've been talking to them? Because you got this game from them, right? It's been such a whirlwind.

It's been so wild, all the press. Yeah, yeah. It's a game that's simpler than it might sound. At first, you have to take a movie that you think is great, you think is a banger, but you also haven't seen it in a very long time,

and you're not entirely sure if you can trust your memory on this, and you need to present that movie to someone who has never seen it before, and they're going to see it with fresh eyes and in modern times, and you will decide together if it is in fact a banger last time we did monster cops soren brought that to me a movie i'd never seen before it's not monster cops monster squad yeah i thought you were being intentionally demeaning okay oh okay you don't

know it okay uh we determined it was a banger, and I brought Soren French Kiss, and we determined that was a banger. Absolutely. I loved French Kiss. And now we're going to start with a movie that I brought Soren in the same world of French Kiss of romantic comedies. It's a 2010 James L. Brooks movie called How Do You Know? James L. Brooks movie called How Do You Know and it stars Reese Witherspoon

Paul Rudd Owen Wilson Jack Nicholson in his final film performance yeah star-studded cast and like that sort of thing

is that people just show up out of nowhere who are in the movie for like five minutes and are incredible actors Tony Shalhoub Hank from Breaking Bad uh

Herc is in it that's right Herc is a baseball player Herc is in it for like a minute um Larry from Perfect Herc is in it. That's right. Herc is a baseball player. Herc is in it for like a minute. Larry from Perfect Strangers is in it. There's like all kinds of people show up where you're just like, oh, shit. Okay, well, this is a new character that's like going to be in this for quite a bit. No, like Hank from Breaking Bad.

What's his name? Dean Norris. Yeah, Dean Norris is in it as like a baseball coach who's there for literally 30 seconds. You know what? I'm just realizing it's going to be very gratifying for me doing this podcast. Answering questions like that and not having a computer in front of me. Oh, can't make that. I'm so dependent on you.

I'm going to be like, Monk Dan. And you can just be like, yeah, Tony Shalhoub. So anyway, what do you want first? Do you want to tell everyone what the movie is or do you want to hear? I would like you to tell everyone what the movie is. Okay. Or before that, something that you and our audience should know is I love this movie so much. I haven't rewatched it for this podcast because that's not how it works.

this movie so much i haven't re-watched it for this podcast because that's not how it works and uh i have tried to show this movie to so many people and they have not liked it in the same level that i have not only that but they they they don't even understand why i like it and i can barely articulate why my biggest question for you was going to be what do you what is it you like about this okay great because there are some movies that i can show someone and they they they're like it's not for me but i understand yeah if this came at a certain point in your life and like ooh lightsabers must have been fun when you were a kid or jurassic park must have been exciting when you were a kid but i show them how do you know and they're just like what it's not like you're a huge baseball fan you know it's not no that that i think that would actually hurt you if you're a huge baseball fan for this week.

Okay, so how do you know is the story of Reese Witherspoon, who is a softball player, famous softball player. She's on a bunch of Olympic teams, and she finally is too old to play softball anymore. She's now 29, I think, or like verging on 30. And I guess in the softball world, that's where the door shuts. As the door shuts. Um, as the door shuts, she's also meets two men. And one of them is going through his own crises. He is a,

he's a business, business, business boy. Uh, I'm not totally sure what his job is, but he's like a business boy and he's being indicted by the federal government for something. Yes. Um,

and he works for his father's business business business company yes father's jack nicholson and then uh the other person that she meets is owen wilson and owen wilson is a baseball player he's a pitcher for the nationals and he's makes a bunch of money and seems like a really great guy except he's just kind of a doofus and kind of a womanizer and a little bit of a narcissist. He's playful, golden retriever of a human being. Yeah. But they do, she sleeps with him and they borrow a beat that I think is taken from real life Derek Jeter rumors, where he has like gift bags and like matching outfits for the women. Yeah. The first thing thing he does he says the toothbrushes are in that left drawer and she just opens it up and

it's just this array of toothbrushes because this happens so frequently and then she's like he's like you don't have to go home back home in that dress like here's a juicy outfit that you can wear and it's like what size you and they still have all the stickers on them like it's like you're at the mall um and yeah she does not like that but uh she does like him because he's so nice and like his approach to everything is so earnest and honest and even though he's not like a great guy like he's trying he's genuinely trying to be a person a good person and likes her yeah he's not as much as he's like a womanizer and like as you imagine famous professional baseball players and athletes would be i don't believe he cheats on her in this movie he's seen he does yeah well but he doesn't

he doesn't understand it as cheating he says that he gave up everything except for anonymous sex which is like a pretty that may be okay so there's one good bit in it oh no i actually have another one uh earmarked that i want to bring up because i there was a moment in the movie that made me genuinely laugh but the general premise of the movie is that they don't she doesn't know what to do because she's got these two guys to choose from and her career's over so it's time to move on to love i guess and uh one of them offers nothing because he's going to jail soon has no job prospects uh worked worked for his dad and but he's just like the most charming kind guy in the world who's who really likes her and then this other one yeah

and then this other guy who's also really likes her but like and has all this stuff but he's just there's these these little elements that aren't working for her and uh and now she's got to decide okay a lot of good people in this movie and the movie that i just described and i was hearing it as i was saying it i'd watch that that sounds actually pretty good this movie is is so weirdly paced and the timing is so strange and like everyone's choices in it i there i i mean i even like hesitate to call them choices it feels like everyone's just sort of like let's just go to the next scene he's just moving through the movie in a way that makes it feel like a movie within a movie where like reese witherspoon is up for a role in some other movie and she's like her character's up for a role and she's like and i got

the softball role and now you're like you're gonna see bits of that movie throughout the other movie it feels exactly like one of those where like they, they're like, well, why are we bothering to make this look real? There's a Catherine Han, an early Catherine Han role where she plays, uh, an employee of Paul Rudd and Jack Nicholson's company. Uh, and she's like eight and a half months pregnant or so throughout the entire run

of the movie. And at one point she, uh, looks like she's going to swat Jack Nicholson, her boss, just like, she can punch him one because he's being rude to his son. And she like has to stop herself or,

or Paul Rudd stops her. And that seemed like that's from a different movie. That's no longer a human being in this movie of other human beings. There's a couple of moments where it does feel like an acting class exercise where like, they're like, somebody got these sides and like, they're like,

well, why are we going to choreograph this? Who cares where she's like sitting there thinking about, she's getting mad at him, but we're not clear on like what's going on. The dad is just talking down to Paul Rudd. Yeah. We've just met her and she's in the room and she starts doing like this.

Like she starts getting antsy in her seat while she's watching jack nicholson and then she's like and it looks like she's like she wants to fucking bat it's not clear what's happening at all like they the they are not giving you any indication as to what characters are feeling along the way they're just like this person is clocking a thing and they're feeling something and in a way where it's like i don't know what's going on anymore unless she gets up and tries to punch him and paul rudd stops her and it's like what why does she want to hit him like then you have to backtrack and think about what the thing we learn eventually because we don't know it at this time is paul rudd is being indicted and is probably going to go to jail and we find out as the movie goes on that Jack Nicholson is responsible for all of the financial crimes

and is setting his son, George, up for it. Yeah. George is Paul Rudd. And it's just like, you're young. You're going to go to prison for me. I did these things. You're going to take the fall. So in the earlier scene, before we know that,

but Catherine Hahn does know it, when Jack Nicholson is berating his son, she is... Ready to hit him. Now her anger makes sense. Yeah, but you Han does know it. When Jack Nicholson is berating his son, she is... Rated hitter. Now her anger makes sense. Yeah, but you have to go so far into the movie to know any of that. Yeah, you have to watch the whole movie, everybody. Okay, I have a couple questions for you about this movie.

What do you think? And like, just like off the top of your head, what do you think Jack Nicholson and Paul Rudd's job is? Okay. Business finances. the top of your head what do you think jack nicholson and paul rudd's job is okay all right all right business finances what business phones phones business i don't even think that's i don't think it's phones banks it's something that we have no idea we we are never to understand it like they and i don't think honestly i don't think the writers knew i think that and that's the same with softball this is a movie where they had to give these two jobs and then the jobs had to be pivotal to the story but they never bothered to learn anything about either of the jobs yeah like the softball in it is it's rough yeah that's that's very much a 2010s uh well i can't play softball anymore what am i supposed to do marry a baseball

player i don't know can you coach what what's yeah what's that yeah so you sounds like you're a pretty good softball player you could probably stay in that world somehow yeah the women there around hank schrader they're like old softball players who are like helping to field the team for the next olympics that seems to be a job as well like there's lots of jobs you have available to you but she's like now i to go find a man to make me money in a really strange way where everyone's just like, yeah, that's how it works.

So yeah, she plays softball, kind of. There's a couple of scenes in the very beginning when the credits are rolling where you have somebody who looks a little like Reese Witherspoon actually playing baseball. She is not, it's so clear at every single stage that she is not an athlete, just the way she carries herself and everything.

I think my bless her heart that she is trying and she's like doing, she's kind of like got like an arrogance to her that I think athletes specific to athletes, but she, she's, she just doesn't have it. Like like it's just so clear that this person has never played a single sport and they were just like whatever it doesn't matter and like and what does paul rudd do it doesn't matter it doesn't matter yeah it is a child's idea of both of those jobs yeah and but they become so pivotal in the story that you have to kind of like track what they're doing and that that becomes impossible. Like Paul Rudd's getting in, he's being investigated by the federal government for some sort of like, not even like wire fraud.

Like it's like something like that though. Like there's a bunch of money missing. And then as like we get the explanation of how that money went missing, that doesn't make sense either. It's like, we get it from Jack Nicholson. He's like, I paid off an Egyptian. And you're like, well well that's a different thing that's not that's like because there's like money that

has like been been embezzled or like stolen from different sections of their business but then he's like what happened i was in a hotel room and i paid off an egyptian and that's illegal and uh for like something in egypt and i was like what surely you did more work than this like this cannot be the thing i mean i feel like that is just like a vague allusion to abscam the the corruption scandal in jersey from years and years ago that was dramatized in american hustle that i also don't totally understand but was a real famous thing that did involve a sting operation where money changed hands from one person to uh a chic that makes sense it makes sense if they are trying to use a shorthand that's already happened in the world because they do not do any explant there's no heavy lifting there

then just the fucking pacing of this movie sucks out loud. It's so bad. I almost reached out to you before you started it just to say the pacing at the start of the movie is very strange and bad. And you need to stick with it. And some people, I think, can stick with it. And some people, I think, if you get a bad taste in your mouth right in the beginning, then you're going to have a hard time with that movie. I think there are, as I try to figure out why I love this movie, there are a couple of obvious superficial things. I like James L. Brooks as a writer so much.

Yeah, so as good as it gets, right? Yeah. Newsroom. Simpsons. Yeah. Network. room simpsons yeah network i i he writes in a like not in a way that people speak but in a way that really appeals to like my worst impulses as a writer i'm just like i like how smart everyone is i like that they they they manage to speak in lines like you make me want to be a better man

and what if this is as good as it gets all that kind of stuff i'm just like i'm here for how do you know good how do you know i'm here for a good line and he is uh one of the best at writing them so i like that uh i famously like a romantic comedy where there's a love triangle and you don't need to necessarily hate the person who's going to lose at the end like when i wouldn't because spoilers by the end of this movie, uh, Paul Rudd is talking to his dad and is like, I really love Reese Witherspoon.

And if she doesn't love me, I will go to jail for your crimes. I will do that kindness to you. Um, so like either root for, it's up to you if you want to root for me to make this work with Reese or not. Uh, but just know that's what the stakes are. That that's gonna be my decision whether or not she loves me she does inevitably choose paul rudd we don't know if they're gonna get married but it's just like

this is the one that i want right now this is the thing that makes sense and when owen wilson loses you feel a little bit bad about that i'm glad that there's not a scene where owen wilson is like a huge asshole to paul rudd it's not Wedding Crashers where Bradley Cooper openly cheats the day before his wedding and punches Owen Wilson out. It's not one of those where it's like, we need the audience, we need to give the audience a reason to root for Paul Rudd. No, we're going to root for him because he's Paul Rudd and his face is closer to Reese's face on the poster and so that's what we're going to do and I like a slightly more balanced and realistic love triangle than that where she is really like weighing decent options and there are pros and cons to both and I picked what I think is

the better one and like Owen you're going to be fine but I feel bad for you right now and I like the reality of that other thing I like about this. And I like the reality of that. The other thing I like about this movie, and I think the real reason that I will always... It has more positives than negatives in my balance sheet. There are three really great scenes that I love. I love her scene with Tony Shalhoub, the therapist, in the beginning of the movie, when she's really not sure what to be doing with her life.

And she asks him, like, it's her first time in therapy. And she asks a question that I think is such a great question to ask a therapist your very first time. And it's some version of like, in all your years of doing this, is there like a good question that people should be asking? Or like, what's the best advice yeah she says

is there something you found that is helpful to people that they should know generally yeah yeah it's just she she comes from sports world and she's now out of sports world she's in therapy because it seems like the move to do doesn't really know how to do therapy and comes at it from what feels like a very uh right-brained athletic mind which is like what is give me like a basic what is a good therapy thing what should people know you you've you've done this a lot what are the stats and he's like very gently like that's a that's that's a really great great question and i like what he says as an answer. Do you remember it? Yeah. He says, people should find out what they want and how to ask for it. Yes.

And that is a mantra that I've been repeating for a very long time for myself. Really? Yeah. Whenever I'm struggling with work or life or anything like that, I will go somewhere physically and mentally and just like write down the things that you want, what you want your life to look like, and then figure out how to ask for it, how to get to it.

Yeah. What steps you need to take next. It's been very helpful for me. Okay. All right. Other scenes that I love, Catherine Han delivers her baby in this very dramatic,

like for movie reasons, she's in the delivery room with the father of the baby paul rudd reese witherspoon and jack nicholson they're all in the delivery first time the and and she have met in this movie and uh paul rudd is filming the birth and as the birth is happening her husband an actor i've seen before but whose name i don't really know but he's so good in this scene he falls in like he's already in love with her but he uh decides to propose marriage to her I propose to you that we get married and delivers this really heartfelt uh proposal and it's just so

moving to me and then they do a comedy turn at the end of it where Paul Rudd realizes I haven't been filming this whole time we need to do it again and they do a comedy turn at the end of it where Paul Rudd realizes, I haven't been filming this whole time. We need to do it again. And they do it again. And Reese is like feeding him the lines because she was so moved by his off-the-cuff speech that it's like really opened something up in her heart. And they're like playfully reminding each other how this proposal went. And that scene really moved me the first time I saw it. I think that actor is just so surprising

and so good in it yeah so how it happens is that she's already had the baby they get there Reese Witherspoon meets

alright Paul Rudd is not filming the birth that would be nuts Catherine Hahn meets her and then they're like they find out oh the husband's

down the hall so she gets a phone call Catherine Hahn gets a phone call in there. First of all, she was like, had a baby and then called her boss and was like, come look at it. Come look at me. I just had a baby. Like that's, it's somebody who's never had children before writing a story like that.

So she gets a call and she's like, oh, you're down the hall. See you soon. And then hangs up this landline because I guess her husband called her from the end of the hall sure and so then she's like oh he's coming down and as uh paul rudd turns he's like we should go and then paul rudd's dad walks in and we're like oh paul rudd's dad is responsible for the baby and we're meant to believe that briefly for no reason like there's no nothing doesn't change the story doesn't do anything other than like, then Paul Rudd gets to have a nice laugh with Catherine Hahn about it afterwards.

But, uh, he comes in with presents and then the dad comes in. The dad says, film this. I want to do something. Paul Rudd starts filming and the dad gets down and, and tries to propose.

And it's like, it starts like mealy mouth, but it turns into this very sweet and sincere thing. That scene is so long. I'm glad that you liked it and that you didn't feel that at all. But it's like that was the one that felt the most like a bunch of actors got some sides for an acting class. And now they're all going to go together and perform it. And like they're going to kind of figure it out together.

We're just going to watch that process. Like we're not going to they're not going to know where they're supposed to be at any particular moment like they're just gonna feel see what feels organic and so there's a lot of that there's also a lot of quiet yeah like this throughout this movie there is like a little soundtrack that does like some all the ethereal music you'd expect from a uh a romantic comedy but there's also scenes that are just dead. Like there's no, there's no music,

there's nothing. And then there's long silences between the characters. It's, sometimes life is like that. Yeah. But it's rough in a movie. It's really tough. And when I,

when they were like thinking of how to redo the, the proposal, we go through every step of the proposal again which is like a really tough thing to do in a movie where you just see something happen and then you see some people shittily recreate the thing that just happened it's cool it's not the third scene i loved uh do you remember i mean you saw this last night you finished this movie like six hours ago yeah do you remember the i think it's play-doh scene yes that's very good that's a that's a very much as good as it gets at james l brooks like at his height like way it's it's very poignant but it's also like it still feels kind of natural when the

actors are saying it nothing else did every the actors did not mean a single thing they said in this this movie it was everybody who's just like, listening to Reese Witherspoon talk about how much she loves softball is the funniest thing in the world and how much it meant to her. And like, she's checking a website every day. The way that she's going to find out if she's on the team or not is there's a US softball team website

and it says, team not available. And then one day, team available. And she gets to click on it and she gets to look down the list. And that's a really tough scene because you've got to do an insert of a list of people. You barely know the name of your own character and know that she's not on that list. And so they're like, how do we do this? And so what they've done is there's at the bottom of the screen, there's a little asterisk and says new player.

And then the asterisk appears next to one of the players names it starts blinking to be like this is the new player this is the slot she was supposed to have and uh and then we like kind of zoom in on that and you're like okay that's a lot of work to figure out she could have just gotten a call like it would have been very easy to be like i'm so sorry you didn't make the team it would have been easy for james l brooks to call someone and say like hey how do you tell someone when i don't make a team? But instead, he locked himself in a room and was like, How would I do it?

What makes the most sense to me? If I'm firing my Reese Witherspoon. All right, James, you're the only one in the world. And now, do you remember how the movie starts? Do you have any memory of the cold open of it? The cold open is not her getting hit with a baseball, right? No. That happens when she first meets Paul baseball, right? No. Okay.

That happens when she first meets Paul Rudd over the phone. Right. The very beginning of the movie has no dialogue. And it is a maybe like six or seven minute scene where we watch a boy who's maybe six or seven trying to hit a ball off of a tee and hitting the tee over and over again. And like a lot, we watch, we get to see him pick it back up, put it back on, hit the tee again, and the ball doesn't go anywhere. And he's getting mad and frustrated, but like a kid does it, an actor kid who's just going, and then he puts down the bat. Screams to the sky.

Yeah. A little blonde girl comes and picks up the bat, puts the ball on the tee, and we're led to believe she belts one, like, I don't know, into the sun. Because we don't see any of that. We get, like, a she's a child who clearly doesn't know how to swing a bat. So, like, they're, like, shooting

in a lot of different ways to, like, cheat the fact that this ball wouldn't go anywhere. And we hear the crack of this bat. And then this boy walks over to her after she does it and pushes her down into the dirt this helps the story not at all not in the tiniest bit there's just like this weird cold open that's like this holdout that james l brooks i'm sure was like as he was writing it was like oh this would be a fun way into softball but it's so not useful in any way it's so much more useful if the movie continued to be about softball but then she's cut from the team yeah in a flash forward years later it's amazing it does it does set up a movie where

hey there's this woman who's really great a natural athlete she's really great at softball hey she shouldn't trust guys guys are bad and that movie doesn't happen no and like she has to like force her way up through the field in softball or that she in some way like she doesn't get on the team but like because she's so good in her tenacity like she gets back on it like something like that that's the beginning of that movie yeah it says nothing to do with any of that also there's a point in the movie where one of her friends who is this old soft or she has a bunch of like young softball players, friends. And they're like, she's telling them what happens. I know what happens to players after they quit. They, they feel they panic.

They immediately latch onto a guy and then that becomes their life. And I don't want to be that. That's what the movie ends up being anyway. She's like painted into that corner and she's like no no that's it is what i want i am going to do exactly that it's like okay all right i yeah good letting the dream die congratulations now that's just one of the ways the movies can work then do you remember one character says they want a thing by the end of the movie they either get it or they realize they were wrong to want it and they get the different thing they were wrong to want it yes wrong to want that

yes act one man goes up in a tree act two how do I get down from this tree act three never mind I stay in the tree story structure

do you remember Jack Nicholson's last scene he finds out that George and Reese are gonna end up together and is like briefly good for you. And then bummed and then bummed and like,

all right, let's get the lawyers in here. Is that? Yeah. So Jack Nicholson and Reese Witherspoon, well, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson live in the same building. It turns out they like have these,

their own penthouses in this building. That's how these two keep running into each other as because they're both, he's going, Paul Rudd's going to visit his dad and Reese Witherspoon's going to visit Owen Wilson and have some sex. And, uh, as they're like riding the elevator, that's where they have most of their conversations. But at a certain point, Paul Rudd goes to his dad and is like, Hey, I'm going to take the fall for you. But if there's literally anything going on in my life like if i can actually talk to this girl and it sounds like we're going to get together then i'm not gonna take the fall anymore and his dad's like okay yeah good luck

and like jack nelson is like doing his hardest like he's doing a really good job showing you like he's kind of rooting for his son but also please i will go to jail for the rest of my life if this happens i'll go to prison i'll die in prison yeah i'll die there and interesting fact don't know if it's fun though uh jack nicholson was a late addition to the movie it was supposed to be bill murray oh really how fascinating okay now yeah i'd have to think about that but yeah jack nicholson is like okay uh good good luck and doesn't try to stop his son, but is very manipulative throughout the rest of the movie. And it would be nice in that moment if he was either like,

I'm not going to manipulate, or he was like, I'm going to do one little thing to try and turn the tides here. Doesn't do any of that. Then his son goes upstairs to this party, goes and talks to Reese Witherspoon in front of Owen Wilson, and then comes back downstairs and waits for her. And she eventually does come down. But Jack Nicholson is out on his balcony.

He sees his son down there waiting. He sees her come out. He's like, ah, she came out to see him. And he's like, ah, well, that's the end of my life. And I will now live a life of violence and just sadness and goes back into his penthouse. And that's the last we check in on him. And also Paul Rudd's plan was like, cause he would do like three years, but for some reason his dad would do a life sentence. Cause it's, he's a second offender. And we're following Paul Rudd through that story. He's just like, he's clueless to the fact of like, hey, if like I have anything going on, like I'm not going to do it. And how,

what that would mean for his dad. And then he just fucks his dad, like fucks his dad over. And his dad is, his dad was going to fuck him over. And he found love. And it's not like, I don't even necessarily know if it's,

Reese Witherspoon is going to run away and get married with Paul Rudd at this point. But I do think it's just like, it's almost The Graduate where they're like, we made it together. We're happy. We think we love each other. They do get on a bus. But the Jack Nicholson stuff, they really should

have like text on screen, Jack Nicholson's character died in prison. And then after that, this was also Jack Nicholson's last movie that he did as a favorite of James L. Brooks. That's the end of his career now.

Yeah. So anyway, it was a very bad movie. And one that I was, I usually go to bed each night, like around 11. I was up till 1.20

watching this movie and being like, why am I doing this? Why am I watching this movie? Like, I don't even think Dan likes this. This is like a, this is a joke am i watching this movie like i don't think dan likes this this is like a this is a joke this is a bit i really like it i really like it so much

i'm curious if anyone out there also likes it because so far it's it's just me yeah you're in the anecdotal evidence that i've collected you would would have to ask Reese Witherspoon, but I would say you're batting a zero. I don't actually know how those ratings work. I'll ask Dean Norris. It's a sports question. Yeah. All right. Well, things aren't declared bangers unless it's unanimous.

So I think we've got our first non-banger in this series. I'm fine with that. This was a good one to throw at me because it had no chance. I think it's important to turn to those every once in a while. But that's got to be enough for this show. Thank you so much for watching this episode.

If you were listening on your podcast app, check out the video. It's fun. You can see our faces. You can see how I never know what to do with my hands. And we are on YouTube at QQ Podcast.

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