Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Beyond Blunderdome With Steven Sajdak

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

Season 11 has officially begun! And for this episode about an unlikable maker of films, we're joined once more by Stephen Sajdak, cohost of the great We Hate Movies podcast! Together we transport back to a time when Mel Gibson was a huge guest star and not a giant embarrassment, plus we dig into the send up of Hollywood circa-1999. So get ready for some stuff that hasn't aged well in our big season 11 premiere! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

bling blong everyone our new podcast mini-series talking mission hill is now exclusively on patreon put on your spicy pants every friday with a new podcast covering each episode of the cult series from simpsons legends bill oakley and josh weinstein five dollar subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons can hear every episode plus plus all of our previous mini series about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsley, sign up for Talking Mission Hill today! Alright! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where it's hell being Mel. I'm your host, Undead Lottery winner Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological

exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert. And I'll gladly destroy a car for a free movie ticket. And who do we have on the line? I am Steven Sadak. And you can just call me the evil dog guy. I mean, honestly, the shifty dog. And today's episode is Beyond Blunderdome. Hollywood, here we come.

Hollywood, here we are. Hollywood, here we are! Stop doing that, Mom. Today's episode aired on September 26, 1999, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real-world history. Oh my God! oh my god oh boy bobby welcome to season 11 ashley judd revenge film double jeopardy tops the box office tlc's unpretty is number one on the billboard music charts and harry potter fever reaches new heights in the u.s as prisoner of azkaban has just come out and will top the new york times bestsellers list for the next three months so it's harry potter time hardcore in 1999 i have no cultural connection to any of these events yes i remember

unpretty as a thing uh because i was i was very heavy into the trl especially in the year of our lord 1999 hoping for the new metal to to triumph over all the pop songs i remember that uh very clearly i remember like unpretty like i just could see that video in my brain when i closed my eyes yeah yeah is that how like damn i'm pretty every car if you want i i know scrubs i can talk about scrubs in their opinion on scrubs but uh yeah is that one of those songs like every girl group or like uh just uh girl singer would do the patronizing like, hey, ugly people like firework? Sure. Yes.

Yeah. Or I guess we we are setting an unreasonable standard. However, they're not trash. Yeah, it's I think those come from a point of guilt of eventually it was like, oh, I'm as an as a popular artist. I'm upholding impossible beauty standards. So I need to make a song about how it's okay to be ugly as well. And Ashley Judd, this isn't even her first one, but she is the queen of women in their late 30s, early 40s revenge films.

There were like, Steve, have you done any of these on We Hate Movies? There were maybe, like Henry said, four or five of these thrillers, the Judd thrillers. We did, I think it was called Twisted a couple of years ago. It was like an Andy Garcia, I think Sam Jackson's bouncing around. It's like a serial killer joint because that was their thing. It was revenge stuff, serial killer, courtroom. It was like an Ashley Judd genre pretty much because it was just like put a male male cast behind ashley judd and watch it go double jeopardy remains a crown jewel stay tuned we're definitely gonna do it at some point

it's bonkers yeah i did see this on uh not in the theaters but on dvd i did see double jeopardy like the because the the concept of it was so great a woman gets framed for murder she goes to jail for a few for a certain amount of time and once she's out she finds out her husband faked his death but now she can murder him and get away with it because she already has been tried for his murder let's see how that holds up in court yeah i feel like legally like all right you got uh arrested for vehicular homicide of bob mackie but if i shot him in the head later, I feel like that's a different crime. Well, I guess. Oh, dear God, I hope so.

That's up to the lawman Tommy Lee Jones in that film. She's usually partnered with Morgan Freeman, but Tommy Lee Jones is the older man in this film. So when this podcast comes out in April, people are going to say, I can't believe Stephen Sadek actually did shoot Bob mackie i thought i had the law on my side there and uh the harry potter books i was hearing about them in 99 but i didn't start reading them until honestly the second movie came out in 02 like this the first movie was 01 and i was like harry potter i'm mad the simpsons are making a joke about it on a treehouse episode the next year was when my friends started to get into it and i finally gave into the mania

around when the sixth book came out that's when i and now i have read i've read half the harry potters and seen all the movies and uh you know it'd be nice if JK Rowling, like it kept her legacy. Good. Just, just, just, just enjoy the money. Yeah. It's a ton of money to enjoy. Exactly. The best thing she did after the books was saying what happens when the wizards poop in their own robes.

I mean, why would you sit on a toilet if you could just make poop disappear? Exactly. It's a really good point. But yes, welcome back. Steven Sadak from We Hate Movies. Hi, thank you guys for having me. As always, this is a treat. This is part of my quarantine.

So any time to spend talking to people is a treat. So thank you for having us. And I have to highly recommend your new miniseries. It's covering both 90210 and Melrose Place twice a week. It's been quite a treat to listen to those. Yeah, were either of you guys 90210 or Melrose Place kids? I watched a little Melrose, but honestly not that much. I think I might have watched the first two or three years of 90210

because I had an older sister, and I still do. And it was like, I guess this is what teenagers are into. I'll watch this. So yes, I am familiar with the entire cast, but I know nothing about Melrose Place. Yeah, I had the older sister, which was my kind of excuse. I was sitting very far away from the television and eventually got closer and closer. And then I'm like, man, that Dylan is a jerk. And just totally got into it as a kid.

I would say even if you're not into these shows or really haven't even seen an episode, it's kind of an excuse to just sort of it's 90s culture. It's like we're talking about high school, all sorts of stuff and just sexiness. I mean, it's the sexiest thing we've ever done for sure. Yes, this is season 11. We have begun it. Our 30th anniversary exploration of the first season is over. And we are now back into 1999 and the 11th season of the simpsons

some some call it the best season no no but uh but i do feel and i was getting this feeling with season 10 is that uh they're trying to run i mean it feels like they're getting bored with the family and they might be running out of stories for the family so a lot of season 10 and 11 is like stories about hollywood and show business and lindsey nagel becomes like a major player i'm surprised she's not in this episode to be honest yeah i mean the um the woman is basically lindsey nagel yeah she's yeah yeah uh though i should mention too if we're talking about production as we like to this episode and the next three the first four are production season 10 episodes okay the first

production 11 episode is treehouse but yeah this one especially just feels unneeded when they a year ago did the alec and kim episode of that was already very hollywood yes uh it's it's very like i was i was trying to like gear up for this because i haven't i haven't watched this episode in forever and i was sort of like what are my favorite like celebrity simpsons episodes and they're always like one-off jokes like i was i watched you know crusty gets canceled and like all of those are perfect because they're all just like hey we have this celebrity let's do a quick pastiche of their actual personality in service of a joke that actually benefits the show as opposed to the other way around i guess and it wasn't really like a 22

minute suck job on one celebrity well the michael jackson one was it's true yeah that's why it's now banned from all existence yeah i'm sorry i said michael jackson after suck job i'm sorry yeah uh i think i also think that the simpsons they uh they zigged where south park zagged where south park especially at this time was just like fuck all celebrities all celebrities are scum and this is just like a glowing tribute with a little bit of self-effacing humor of one celebrity so i think they're just kind of reacting the opposite way you know it's good you bring up south park because i do uh know, there's lots of things you can critique South Park for. I do think one thing I like about Matt and Trey's iconoclastic anti-Hollywood nature is that when they got famous enough and the famous people were like, yeah, let's hang out and I'll be on your

show and I'll do all this. Other than making George Clooney bark like a dog and having Robert Smith from The Cure show up, they pretty much never had voice guests on. And they at least tried to stay away from the fame situation of it more than The Simpsons did around the same time. Because it's hard when you're supposed to be satirizing these kinds of things to really get in bed with these things.

That's why you get an episode like this where it is so forgiving of Mel Gibson, which is hilarious because this is... i mean this was back i mean mel was sort of australia slash america's sweetheart at the time oh yeah i mean let's let's first we all know what we think of mel gibson right now um we should think about what 1999 mel gibson was and what a big deal this was like i'd say other than a beetle this was the most famous guy they'd ever had on the show to this point uh and even if you don't like mike scully's uh you know writing style or the direction he took the show i think he was very good for the show and

that he got some of the biggest guests yeah he was he was focused on getting big guests and this mel gibson was the star of a million giant films but also a highly respected artistic filmmaker at this point too and was regarded by a lot of people as the sexiest man alive like they i think it was overblown a little bit but i do think like our moms and that age group did find him attractive in a conventional way like he was known as a handsome hot guy he was a hunk he was a hunk yeah he was a hunk yeah when we did what woman want on our show i was sort of shocked how which i think is about about here maybe it's 2001 or something like that like how like the hunkiness kind of pervaded even though like like he's totally hot

in like those in the mad max movies but like once he just gets into dad territory he looks like a ham like a literal ham you know it's not even like i mean he's obviously a good looking rugged blah blah blah but like it's not i wouldn't call him sexy in the in this era of mel gibson yeah i think he was just coasting on those sexiest man alive fumes since like maybe 1990 and he should have turned in his car at around 97 probably i mean yeah the way he looks in say 87's lethal weapon he's a handsome guy but also like the more you get to know him the less you like him too i mean but even in 99 so what's interesting with him is like even

in 99 he was saying stuff like you could find quotes with him is even in 99, he was saying stuff. You could find quotes with him that were definitely like, oh, that's homophobic. It's Mel Gibson, and he's saying stuff. He had many bouts of homophobia and sexism and even some racism that would appear in the news. And people would just be like, eh, cover for it. In the 90s, these things could happen, and you really could just PR your way out of it and everybody's like yeah we all forget michael jackson even didn't even get canceled in the 90s right yes yeah he at least had to like sit in a corner for a year yeah because i mean look the thing is that i mean like people you know bash twitter rightfully or

wrongfully but it's like that everyone was so removed so if you were like fuming mad at mel gibson you'd be fuming mad at home. And that's kind of it. As opposed to like being like, yo, I'm going to like really, I'm going to add Mel Gibson and really talk shit. And like,

you know what I mean? Rightfully or wrongfully, you can't, you can't, you couldn't do that then. And these things died on the vine a lot easier than they do now. And also you couldn't go to Wikipediaikipedia and just click on personal life controversy i love that heading i uh that it's i go for that of like how many times is this person

divorced or are they gay that's you exactly me and my wife it's like all right it's it's it's i forget who made the joke but early early life is the are they jewish and personal life is are they gay you are so right god like uh mel gibson would be mad reading that early life section my my partner has her own wikipedia page and i don't i'm a little bit jealous but i know if i have mine there might be a controversy section and i am terrified of that uh but i mean yes now well honestly now mel gibson is so different from 20 years ago and yet not different enough i'd say i think it's uh it's annoying to me that he got to come back i the bob hasn't seen budget of course i don't know if you have uh steven but they they make up a basically mel gibson type and the point of it is of his character is like he does these

things that are very cancelable and he's canceled but then he just comes back and he's like yeah i came back now i get to do more that's just me that makes sense i know i'm not a bojack guy but yeah it's it is insane how that's like how that he's back and like as back as he is where not just like directing movies still but also like you know he's in that daddy's home movie like that people liked that it was like kind of like oh he's a rough and scary guy or something it's just so weird to me yeah and that especially when he gets to be in things that like are about trading on the fact that you know he's racist like yeah it's like oh i'm a villain in something because you know or like his most recent movie dragged across concrete is about cops who and they're annoyed at being filmed by people

and it's him with vince vaughn another beloved celebrity i love him yeah uh but boy so yeah that's that's why this one is almost impossible to go back to any in any way objectively like it's just it's the mel gibson episode he's in it they say his name at two minutes in and he never goes away i remember at the very least like at this era of the simpsons that this was one of not my favorite episode at the time but like one of my favorite current episodes like one that i was quoting with my friends a lot in 1999 i feel yeah i think if you had some reason if you'd ask me in 99 what's your favorite like season 11 simpsons i'd be like oh probably the mel gibson episode i

think it's pretty good like yeah there were there were funny bits in it now i watch this there's a non-mel gibson things in here a couple times too that made me go like yeah like that but uh but i guess how did mel gibson end up here why is he on the simpsons well i know the answer you're asking rhetorically yeah this is rhetorical uh i guess uh mel gibson and was it david stern simpsons writer daniel stern daniel stern the the wet bandit himself oh the wet bandit so brother of simpsons writer david stern there was like some kind of school fundraiser and they needed a joke writer yes okay and Scully's kids go to the same school as Mel's kids and Stern's kids. And so Daniel Stern, I believe, hooked them up together. Julie as well. So it's not just Mike Scully, Julie Thacker,

both them as a television writing duo, they worked with Mel Gibson too in writing jokes and they just befriended them and they hung out with them and I definitely think the homer in this episode is Mike Scully and how he felt hanging out with Mel Gibson and I think like even though they're from different countries and Mel is much more famous than Mike Scully I think what uh you know unites them is they're both almost the same age and they both grew up like extremely Catholic yes yeah though I think uh Mike Scully rejected that Catholicism much more than Gibson did. That's the move. As a lapsed Catholic, I gotta tell you, that's the move. Although, I mean, you look at Mel's lifestyle, you would not think he is living the life of a

devout Catholic man, but he'd tell you different, I think. All you need to do is be an asshole and go to church on easter and you're totally so yeah scully was working with mel and friendly with mel and so of course he's going to use that to get him on the show and mel said that like it would impress his kids too his kids would think he's the coolest guy in the world for getting to be on the show i mean that's why the executives are name check because they're named after his kids all three yes he had six well so it's his wife and his five kids then he actually had a sixth after this episode aired but the first and last name of all three executives is either a child or his wife like that's that's why they're not uh these characters never came back either

and also his assistant is in this episode and his manager's name is uh checked in this episode as well so it's a big, doing a lot of favors. A lot of favors. But I mean, Mel's doing them the favor of being on the show, I guess. I will say he's, I mean, like for this episode, for a season 11 episode, for a celebrity-centric, almost non-Simpsons episode, Mel Gibson's really kind of funny in this. You know what I mean? Like he gets the timing and stuff it's not like because sometimes people especially actors that have to do voice stuff it doesn't necessarily always work a lot of the time but like he is good enough at like finding a voice

a way to make his voice funny and like hit the joke yeah no i i haven't felt this can conflicted since uh complimenting james woods in his Yeah. He's a good voice actor. Like Mel Gibson, no one would argue that Mel Gibson isn't talented. Sure. He's a talented actor and director. He is really good at that stuff. And so, yeah, he doesn't disappoint in this show. That doesn't make me want to see Mel Gibson movies right now.

No. Yeah. But he is very talented. And based on the commentary, he was all in on it he was not like showing up like crusty to record his talking crusty doll thing he was there recording with everybody not just doing his own thing via satellite from his home yeah and then he like came in more than once to do pickups like nobody would you compare that to a different asshole alec baldwin when he did the show didn't try half as much wouldn't come back in ron howard gave it his all

hell yeah yeah he's apparently not an asshole from come back in ron howard gave it his all hell yeah yeah he's apparently not an asshole from stories anyway well ron howard became like a cast member for a little while he's got a lot of episodes of him like as this ron howard character yeah we'll be seeing him again in about five episodes i think for hello gutter hello fodder that's the thing that they don't find a character for mel gibson here you know what i mean like i i think that the the best celebrity bit is the john travolta stuff a because he's not in the room and b because it's like it's a simpsons character he's silly he's flying a plane all the time like oh it's a card he's asking him to move like it has comedic weight but not the mel gibson part and he talks like vinnie barbarino yes exactly i can't believe nancy cartwright notable

scientologists could not get the king of Scientology on for a line. What good is all those Thetan payments she's been making if she can't get Johnny T on the show? Her OT level wasn't high enough. Or low enough. I forget how it works. I forget which. Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, this is Scully hanging out with his friend.

And he is the only credit writer on this. They say, like like he fully wrote this script and they didn't make too many changes to it and as far as like a self-insert script about hanging out with the celebrities go this is pretty good though i also think like if it was bad what were what was the writer room gonna say like hey boss your script is bad about the famous guy you're getting to do the show. I'm like, no, they can't say that. The Simpsons will be right back. Welcome to the break, everybody.

And I hope your popcorn isn't in need of salt because we're really enjoying this week's podcast with our special guest steven sadak thanks so much for coming back on steven and everybody should check out his awesome podcast that he does every week we hate movies check that out and you know that podcast just like us is supported on patreon talking simpsons and its sister show the weekly what a cartoon podcast is supported at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for just five dollars a month you'll get to hear every episode a week early and without ads like this one as well as getting to hear our many exclusive interviews and podcasts that are on that website for instance if you're a patreon subscriber five bucks a month every friday you get to hear our limited series that's going on

right now talking mission hill where we cover the entire series of mission hill including some of the lost episodes in the talking simpson style and you'd also get to hear all of our previous patreon exclusive mini series for a futurama king of, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So much cool stuff that you can only hear if you're a $5 and a patron at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. But if you want to be even cooler than a Batman impersonator in Hollywood,

then you need to sign up at the ten dollar a month level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get all that five dollar stuff i just talked about but you also get to hear our monthly what a cartoon movie podcast where we cover a different animated feature film chosen by our patrons once a month often we're talking for over four hours about those movies movies like our most recent one toy story 2 this month we're doing space jam and we have a huge back catalog of great ones iron giant akira kiki's delivery service too many to name but it's a amazing back catalog of podcasts. So please, if you'd like to hear over 70 hours of exclusive podcasting content from me and Bob, sign up at the $10 level at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. i want to flash forward ahead of this uh the relationship with mike scully and mel gibson

they will be working on shows together like for at least the next five years uh mike scully and his wife julie thacker would co-create with mel gibson a sitcom uh and like that's one of the craziest things about the sitcom they make complete savages is that a co-showrunner of it is a woman but it is like one of the most misogynist shows i've seen in a good long time yeah based on the where you're telling me about it it sounds like they're making an early 90s fox sitcom on early 2000s abc yeah yeah which only happened because people want to be business mel gibson i would say that i mean all right well so the show is called complete savages show ran by mike and julie though mel gibson directed the pilot and two more episodes and he was very involved the first thing mel gibson directed

after the passion of the christ is the pilot for the complete savages that's crazy and he also plays like a troy mcclure style character in educational videos on the show and i watched that he plays uh officer steve cox and uh the joke in the first one is that one he has a ridiculous must fake mustache on that i think this joke is like mel gibson is wearing a dumb fake mustache this is ridiculous and the other joke is that he has a beautiful young girl with him who he tells to shut up which uh very uncharacteristic for mel gibson scully you know they did the show the pits scully and thacker didn't go scully went on to work on

everybody loves raymond and then late 2003 november 2003 they sell the show complete savages and one of the execs they sold it to is david kissinger the son of henry kissinger so and if you want to make a tv show you gotta work with war criminals or pedophiles or both listen that that kissinger kid worked his ass off to get where he was okay i don't want to hear it he was waiting tables he paid all those dudes he started in the mail room so i watched the first episode of complete savages which is on youtube and uh it is a show about a single parent father who is the father of five boys which which is an inverse of Julie and Mike Scully's home, which is five girls. Though it is the funniest thing is that Mel Gibson has five boys and one daughter. And when he makes up his fake show, he's like, yeah, definitely the five boys.

No daughter. We won't have a daughter here. No daughter. Nobody wants to see that. Yeah. And it is about them all being incredibly disgusting and gross and a testosterone-fueled monster man. In the pilot, two women speak. One is the girl the boy has a crush on, so she has literally nothing to do. And the other is a fat girl who they all make fun of for being fat the entire episode.

But it's okay because she's mean i see and of course it's a you know heavy set actress who has to be who oh and who's young to a teen so she has to be called fat on a television show many times and it's really fun to watch uh and also there's jokes about how the the man's ex-wife left because she was a complete psycho who put glass in meatloaf and served it to people so got crazy bitch joke there too pretty good i gotta say that uh we're good friends with mike scully hopefully after this episode we still will be and uh i think the early aughts were just a rotten time for uh like humanity so all the humor from that era is so much crueler and so much uglier it's

hard it's really hard to go back to you're mad you're mixing like south parkian like let's go really edgy and extreme with like dad jokes you know which is a bad place to be it was a different time and he was writing it for the time and also i mean you're writing it for mel gibson and to please mel gibson so he's like, uglier, hate women more. And again, that's why it's so shocking to me. Like, Julie Thacker worked on this one? But I also think another thing that hurts the show is that they were too spoiled by Simpsons. So the Mike Scully years are some of the most scatological years of the Simpsons.

And it works more than it doesn't i would say but the gross jokes on it work in part because or or the jokes about the father being cruel work because it's a cartoon but when you see live action people do disgusting things you just feel gross and dirty like they they actually kind of steal the plot from trash of of the Titans where in the pilot, the boys refuse to clean up. So they're just living in garbage. And it's just gross. Like it's not funny at all. It's only disgusting.

Case in point, when you watch Homer Simpson choke Bart, it could be funny. It could be silly. You watch Robert De Niro choke Leonardo DiCaprio in this boy's life. It's not so funny yes a very good comparison so that was Talking Complete Savages

thanks for listening everyone Steve where can we find you you can find me well the last thing I want to say about Complete Savages is the star was

Keith Carradine David Carradine's brother he's a really underrated actor he played Wild Bill Hickok on Deadwood right before this series premiered other Simpsons folks did work on it donick carrie brian scully tom gamble and max pross and even dan castellaneta

plays a crazy science teacher in one episode uh and he's doing silly voices as the science teacher so it's it's fun but uh yeah no it's a bad show it's uh it's not very good uh mike scully we go on to do so many better shows after this like i i like his duncanville show and he worked on parks and rec he's he him and julie thacker are good writers i think but you know when you're working on a passion project for mel gibson no pun intended but when you're doing that with mel gibson you make what he wants to make and uh i think he definitely hates women and so you do that the show got canceled january 2005 and of course that would only be 18 months before one

mel gibson's get pulled over in a classic prank of anti-semitism and drunk driving operation sugar tits is in offense yeah yeah and then and then of course the the leaked audio from the voicemails. It's all bad. Can you believe that was 10 years ago, that leaked audio? That was 10 years ago on TMZ, the horrific stuff. He did his community service by making the beaver. He did make that beaver. No, and I mean, folks like Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Downey Jr., Jodie Foster, they all spoke up for him of just like you know he has substance abuse problems he doesn't mean these things like i think when an alcoholic says things you should believe him but

what do i know i'm not jodie foster uh but also though like he it especially hurts this whole family man thing in this episode because he was known as the family man of hollywood because he would unlike many actors who go through multiple wives he was married to the same woman for like over 20 years he she left him the day after his 2006 dui so yeah that's a it's a good time to get out and uh you know he had a he's had a couple wives since then currently his wife is 10 years younger than his daughter is oh i thought you're gonna be like she's she's 10 years younger than him i'm like oh how refreshing no no absolutely not she's 29 he's 56 yep so that's that's the mel gibson corner there but i'm sure we'll talk more about it now

but uh why don't we get into our first clip of the episode one of the few clips that have nothing to do with mel gibson homer sees a commercial for an electric car. This feels like them being very, this is already the insider-y-ness of like, no one in middle America could get to an electric car in 1999. This is all based on the fact that David Merkin, one of the writers and former showrunner, was friends with Kevin Nealon of SNL. And Kevin Nealon had an electric car back then. And he brought it to this to the studio to

show everybody and so that was inspired by uh kevin nealon yeah yeah so again built into hollywood connections even the opening gang uh but yes after homer sees a funny commercial about kids choking on uh fumes and it being pulled away by an electric car which now that does feel dated everybody's got electric cars now like it feels feels weird to hear somebody bought a car that isn't at least a hybrid, though this could be our Bay Area bubble talking when I say that. The electric thing really took me away. I was like, oh, wow, they did. I can't imagine. I just don't remember even thinking about electric cars until the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? Yeah yeah that came years after this absolutely yeah it actually is pretty forward thinking in the simpsons to do jokes of electric cars but i just

lost all my petrol dollars by the way so this is very insensitive uh the year those aren't worth the barrels they came in bob uh but yes uh they decide they're going to get a free gift and they head over to the electoris distributor test drive the electoris today to get a free gift and they head over to the Electoris distributor. Test drive the Electoris today and get a free gift. My children deserve to see me get a free gift. I'm proud of you, Dad. Buying an electric car will help clean the air up and protect the earth's supply. You're faking this to get the gift, aren't you?

But I like the nice things you said about me. Thinking of saying goodbye to gas? You betcha. Bart? Well, that shut me up. Hello. I love your planet deeply, and I'm interested in purchasing one of your electronic autos.

Well, it's always nice to meet people concerned about the environment. What kind of mint? First fart on The Simpsons? I think first... Yeah. And it's always nice to meet people concerned about the environment. What kind of mint? First fart on The Simpsons? I think first, yeah. And it's Marge, it's a really weird fart. It's a sign of things to come, I feel. Yeah. Putting the first fart into Marge's butt in the show is a weird choice.

I think the joke works, though. Because Marge, it's the last person you think would have the inaugural fart on the simpsons that's true and it's uh it is it feels like it's a comment about somebody complaining that simpsons shouldn't have gas jokes and then they have bart said that shut me up like but yeah i think it should also be noted that when they're working on this matt graining is hardcore into working on futurama's first season so i think some things in here i mean honestly if matt graining had the power he had before over the show i don't think there'd be a simpsons meet mel gibson episode of the simpsons i i don't know i mean he was in the office so i'm sure he didn't like this talk took him entirely by surprise but we also know later in the season saddle sore galactica is like i never even watched this i

only heard it was bad so he's kind of less involved in this season i think that's how marge farting and mel and hanging out with mel gibson i think that's how that happens uh also the commentary on this is is fun but it is clearly recorded in like late 07, early 08. And Mel, everyone knows about Mel's DUI, but they are not talking about it. Yeah, yeah. Maybe they're like, ah, Fox had cut it anyway if we did make a DUI joke. Yeah, so I also think Homer in this episode is just written as irredeemable from the get-go. Just an awful monster.

Just using people and caring about nothing but free things and learning nothing and learning nothing yeah which when the dad on complete savages is written this way it's just mean and cruel like i think without the cartooniness or your stored up love of homer simpson a dude acting like homer simpson is just an asshole yes yeah you would not want to hang out with this homer simpson at all though i do think the i think too they are feeling the i think this is a dirtier meaner episode because they are feeling the pressure of family guy in south park too you know they they want to be hip and edgy that's that's where they are that's why they kill a bunch of mermaids

underwater in the next scene first real mermaids on the show too that scene makes no sense to me like one homer is so stupid to think he can drive his car underwater but it does work kind of it does work and he's able to drive back and he electrocutes a bunch of mermaids like real mermaids show up in her which like i guess that's no sillier than in season four where homer fights a giant tarantula this escape yeah yeah i'll let them have their mermaids sure but yeah it it is an odd thing yeah the the alien he's got his probe like there's that stuff the fantastical like a quick cutaway to a fantastical thing is fine but like for some reason homer's zapping mermaids was just like, I cannot. I'm not there, guys. Yeah, it's just, I mean, also, Homer has never been this stupid to this point.

He's like, yeah, it's an electric car. It can drive underwater. There's no starting point of that way of thinking. And then they somehow get that car the rest of the way back to there and just dump it. And it talks. Yeah, it talks. It hadn't talked before that but talks now sure i like the talking it's a good it's a fun i was a sucker for robot jokes you know the

skull years have a lot of in pain robots who complain about their pain why was i programmed to feel pain uh and so then i think one of my favorite jokes in the episode is the joke about how sitcom writing works yeah it's like they they have to wait for a scene to start before doing anything important so like why did we wait to look at these i don't know seems odd uh so who here has gotten tickets to a pre-released film as part of some contest or giveaway never uh steven no i never did i was never part of a test group i did see secret window it wasn't it wasn't exactly a test screening, but it was a preview screening. And I don't know. I didn't get a comment card or anything, but it was earlier than the movie.

You'll see those. You would have seen those on the streets in New York. People will try and get you for them. But they're always on a Tuesday afternoon, which I could never make. Ah, OK. The ones on the streets in New York, I've gotten the like do you like comedy ones but not not a movie offer uh but in uh suburban florida i did get to do one of these once in a a giveaway i think it was through a mall or something but it was i got to see a pretty good one 2003's hellboy

i got to see that ahead of time nice me as a comic book fan i was dying to see hell boy anyway so getting to see it early felt pretty good was it a full-on test screening where you got the card or was it just a preview screening i bet we were being filmed or the execs were like listening to reactions but i didn't have to fill out a card or give reactions to it yeah that's a good point yeah this probably would have my secret window as well but yeah i've never been i i would would have loved to have gotten the card one of these days and this commentary because they just put out the movie it is so full of talking about test screenings and how they're haunted by test screenings and just how it's a flawed process that does not make your movie

better that's why their movie i we don't like the simpsons movie by the way we just did a podcast about it a few months ago our buddy matth J. just did a podcast about it through his podcast network. I can't stop thinking about it recently, and this brought me right back to that, about them saying, look, oh, that one woman in Portland almost lost us the throw-the-goddamn-bomb joke, and just talking about all of these instances and just

trying to judge people's faces in the audience, and it just seems awful. It seems like not a good thing for comedy. It kind of makes sense to, like, you know if you're if you're writing a funny a sketch show you want to perform it a couple times to see which jokes work and cut this joke and cut that joke but like it in practice especially because the audience is going to be so vast it's hard to just sort of say well this guy didn't like it so it's got to be terrible or this guy loved it it's got to be the best yeah i mean i

think in general you could diagnose later simpsons years with a sense of a lost confidence in their their writing like they they second-guess themselves too much in general but the show's always had like a lengthy rewrite process and changing lines up until like the day it airs like that they did that so i can see why they extended that process to test screenings for the movie but i think they just had too much time and money for the movie so they could overdo it like for the tv show they got an air date so they can't keep showing it to audiences but for the movie it seemed like they're just like the description they have on the commentary of like they're watching two different audience tapes at the same time which have to all be in night vision

too you know so yes they're just watching a night vision audience react to stuff and you're like did every single person in the audience like this one joke or not and how can you make a funny movie that way yeah and a lot of the scenes they're watching are just unfinished animatics that are just like still drawings that are snapped between so yeah it's just it's a hard thing that way yeah and a lot of the scenes they're watching are just unfinished animatics that are just like still drawings that are snapped between so yeah it just it's a hard thing to judge yeah i like on the commentary at least matt selman could be like maybe this is a flawed way to make movies like this is what they can say when al gene or jim brooks isn't in the room they can get away with that it's you're always better off just guessing like what makes the people in the room laugh if that's if that works that's you know what better off just guessing like what makes the people in the room laugh. If that's if that works, that's you know what I mean?

Like and what makes me specifically laugh as opposed to what makes, you know, the lowest common denominator chuckle, you know? Now, I mean, you know, it's good to listen to other people's advice sometimes like some when you trust you don't want to completely close yourself off to the rest of the world like say mel gibson does but well actually yes so mel gibson enters into the story here and we get to hear again this it feels weird now hearing march so strongly compliment mel gibson but i do think this is really how a lot of women felt then and i in case the viewer doesn't know who mel gibson is Yeah, yeah. And I wonder, too, if this is, if we say Homer is Mike Scully, do you think he did, this is him joking about how he's kind of jealous that how much his wife loves Mel Gibson more than him at the time? Seems like he could be part of it. Yeah. Hey, we never opened that envelope to see what our gift is.

We didn't. That's odd. Seems like we would have done that right after we left the car place. I know, but we didn't. Well, here it is, so we can open it and find out now. Perfect. Aw, movie tickets.

It hardly seems worth destroying a car. There passes to a test screening of a new movie starring... Mel Gibson! Who else is in it? Who cares? Mel Gibson! Mel Gibson is just a guy, Marge. No different than me or Lenny. Were you or Lenny ever named sexiest man alive?

I'm not certain about Lenny. Besides, it's not just his chiseled good looks. People magazine says he's a devoted father, goes to church every week, and likes to fix things around the home. Let's make love. Okay. goes to church every week and likes to fix things around the home let's make love okay uh you're thinking about me right of course homie aren't you thinking about me i will know

that's great i forgot there was that extra zing to the joke yeah i laughed at that i am now i like that marge i always like when marge gets to be a sexual being on the show and not just a cooker of things i like that i also like i like the me and lenny runner it's a fun it's a funny gag it's yeah they finally are we we just talked about this in our interview with john vd where he talks about creating lenny and how he regrets how lenny and carl are just these lame characters who somehow became major characters. And he said he felt like Lenny came into his own when the writers realized that Lenny is such a weak character. You joke about what a weak character he is.

Exactly. And yeah, you know, Marge's compliments to him just sound sad now. Though also reminds me of that story story winona ryder shared which was pretty great about in the 90s she was at some party with him and he told a very anti-semitic and homophobic joke to her nice well when he found out she had a jewish background he called her an oven dodger oh christ yep yeah i think winona ryder winona Ryder shared that after it was public knowledge of Mel Gibson's background. She's a peach. She got worse treatment for stealing a bag

than Mel Gibson did. From some rich person's store. Who cares? Exactly. Shoplifting v. anti-Semitism. I know where I'm going to land every single time. Thankfully, Stranger Things happened, and Winona is back.

Wino is at least on a higher level now again. All this stuff about Mel Gibson, they also mentioned that in Nancy Cartwright's book, she talked about how turned on she was seeing Mel Gibson at the recording. So, you know. Maybe it's just a middle, especially at the time, like a middle-aged

woman fantasy of like mel and you know he was a daddy he was like you know handsome in that way i suppose it just it is so weird like to watch like fawning over him like as a teen idol kind of but though this was also before we had all of the you knowfueled monster men who are stars in the movie now. Mel Gibson is in great shape in Lethal Weapon, but he looks nothing like Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth looks, any of the Chris's. They have different growth hormone bonds that Mel Gibson couldn't have then.

Yeah, it is so weird to think about how quaint you watch any action movie even like you know a van damme movie who's always in like really incredible shape but like he's so small and like even like just you know chris hemsworth office worker is just this enormous hulking tree of a person that's like this is just a different world we live in uh but uh yes so we head to the screening we get like an ain't it cool news joke which that's crazy yeah yeah that uh the the joke of somebody going to a screening to then report about it online that was how ain't it cool news made their bucks back in 1999 like you'd go there to see like

what oh they found somebody who got to watch star wars episode one months ahead of time what happens in it what's it what's it all about is that troll uh is he canceled now oh he's 10 times canceled harry knowles yeah yeah oh yeah yeah he is highly canceled thank god so it's funny they created it they didn't need to make up a harry knowles for that joke it could just be comic book guy this show got me it was funny i like and i i had i like that he brought his entire huge desktop computer the mouse afterwards is really funny too i i think now you know unless you're a super secret movie like an mcu movie i think you just accept that you'll you'll do test screenings and somebody will probably share the

the facts online about it like oh as part of our old job we saw guardians of the galaxy before release where they did they take our phones away or did they just say you will go to jail and we will murder you yeah i think they just warned us no phones yeah but uh well and also we as part of our job too i got to see like wreck it ralph ahead of time and they're like just don't tell anybody okay like but but that wasn't an mcu film the guardians one was actually pretty loose for an mcu film i was surprised uh but these test screening things they still get out the last time i read an interesting one of those was i still haven't seen uh the most recent x-men film and as a comic book fan i thought i'd never miss an x-men film but uh when i read the test screening reports from that phoenix movie i was just like no

i can't do it not you can't get me again x-men films it's tough it's it's it's not that good of a movie i'm and i'm so forgiving of it because i'm such an x-men nerd and i like and i i always kind of thought that that second cast or i don't even know third cast at that point the sophie turner jean gray and all that stuff i was like oh there could be something there and i kind of wished for more and it never really happened well i do i think the the team x-men has some of the best women in superhero comics their characters but i think many of the people who were making those movies didn't really care to write them in any interesting way. They were into boys. That's why. Well, yes. One of them was. I'm an apocalypse apologist.

I'll be honest. I will be an apocalypse apologist until I'm dead. Well, we better just end this next one and talk it out. This call is over. But, okay. Sadly, it's time to play that old death jingle here, because we've got a big guest. Death stalks you at every turn. There it is, death!

Yes, so Edward Christian is played by Jack Burns, who passed away in January of this year. Yeah, just recently. It's so sad. He was around for a long time. He was part of the duo of Burns and Schreiber, and he was also George Carlin's first comedy partner before George Carlin went off on his own. Oh, I forgot the comedy part. I also knew him. He was the head writer of the first season of The Muppet Show and also wrote the first Muppet movie.

He's got a great voice, a great froggy voice. He's very funny in this. And I have a little clip of the sketch's very funny in this and i have a like a little clip of uh the sketch they uh borrow from in this episode it's one of the most famous sketches between him and schreiber it's this uh sketch with he is playing an annoying taxi cab passenger and if you play the clip henry i'll signal to you when to stop it we're salesmen all every one of us we're salesmen you know what do you guys sell huh what do you sell what do you sell uh we sell uh with tinsel salesman tinsel yeah tinsel tinsel tinsel like you put on your christmas tree you know like you put on your christmas tree

oh yeah i i remember now you told me you're uh you're not of the christian persuasion you got it there oh yeah that thing like yeah yeah yeah yeah now you hear that twice in this episode and they're taking it right from that sketch but uh yeah schreiber i think he died in 2002 uh he was caricatured in another mike scully episode as a taxi driver. In Cuba. Oh, in Cuba. Okay, yeah. So he looks like Mario, basically, Schreiber. Back when people actually grew Mario mustaches, he had that mustache. It's funny. Captain Lou Albano got that job instead of him.

Honestly, he was too good. Schreiber was too good for the Super Mario Brothers Super Show. I always thought Captain Lou was a little too big, size-wise. Too tall, man. You need a shorter gentleman. Or a taller guy to play Luigi. Yeah. their super show i always thought captain lewis a little too big like size wise too tall man you know you need a shorter gentleman or a taller guy to play luigi yeah exactly yeah you need to you need to go one way or the other as a short fat man i was like come on uh yeah jack burns like scully loved him it's one of his favorites uh comedy idols growing up so of course he's gonna put him on the show and have him do funny stuff

though the burns and schreiber references in this episode were lost on me until oh yeah like these never came up in like comedy clip specials or anything like that so yeah to our generation of comedy nerds like i think the dudes like our mr show guys they didn't love burns and schreiber they weren't fans of them so you'd never even hear about him they're their bits are funny it's fine the genteel and the jew joking about things yeah i had to i when i looked this up i was like oh because the voice of this guy i mean because you know mel gibson is the celebrity and i was like what this is not a simpsons charis member who is this guy kind of a thing yeah Yeah, he's a really good voice.

Let's hear about this executive and how impressed the people of Springfield are. Good evening, I'm Edward Christian, assistant VP of finance and distribution at Polystar Pictures. I should have brought the camera. Also with me tonight are the dynamic duo William Milo and Robin Hanna who green-lighted all of Shaquille O'Neal's movies including Kazam. Oh!

How's the popcorn, guys? Needs salt! Hey-hoo! Welcome to our test screening of Mel Gibson's directorial follow-up to Braveheart,

a remake of the Jimmy Stewart classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I knew I shouldn't have passed on that. Now, after the film, I'll be handing out these cards for your opinion. We then take your cards to Hollywood, California.

And change the movie based on your suggestions. Any questions? Yes, over here thank you hi will there be any flubber in this movie okay no i'm afraid not ah for crying out glavin i just i love how enchanted the springfieldians are with his meaningless job title and also the executives uh the executive all great i i mean the simpsons are really into mocking executives at this point in the show pretty openly i thought it was kind of weird and it was a weird kind of through line i think i don't think it's really specific and it's not uh not on purpose but it's it's bizarre that

the the movies that were making fun of directly in this are all black movies it's yeah we're talking about the the shaquille o'neal movies then booty call is directly shit on which again it's not a great movie and then later on it's a gibson simpson joint like all three of those are really specific through line like these are crappy movies and they are all of those movies aside from spike lee of course are are crappy but it's kind of it was a weird like specific bent to the episode that i didn't see the first time around they they do mock godfather that's the one the godfather yeah i should say but other than that yeah i mean i guess there were no paulie shore move like who was the uh out of it then yeah who was mockable

in 99 as like a lame leading person or lame comedy guy who couldn't open the film david spade probably rob schneider would be a fine one to do yeah yeah yeah though he's you know he was protecting he has a little bit of the adam sandler protection at this point you know well can we really i mean what what this is about is who you're allowed to make fun of in hollywood because lots of people make bad movies but they don't have to be worried about shack not hiring them in the future you know and that's a really good point. This does confirm that Kazam star Shaquille O'Neal not so bad. So historical proof.

I, I'm glad we're past that now. Like you could, it's not another reality. You're just wrong. Like, you know what I mean? You're just wrong.

And you misremember a black actor in the, in the wrong film. Like, yeah, I, it's also funny to think of a time when Shaq would play anybody other than Shaq in anything. And you misremember a black actor in the wrong film. Like, yeah. It's also funny to think of a time when Shaq would play anybody other than Shaq in anything. Yes.

Now he stars in car insurance commercials, right? And Papa John's commercials. All right. Cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, Papa John's has a Milt Gibson-like comeback they need to make as well. And I think it's smart of them to, like, Shaq is a beloved celebrity. Everybody loves him. Also African-American, so you get away from how racist Papa John Schneider was.

And honestly, you know, I think they should just change it to Papa Shaq's. Just call it Papa Shaq's. I would definitely order Papa Shaq's. You could do, like, the Big Dunk soda that you can get or something like that. He could bring back the Bigfoot pizza. Yes. I would call it Uncle Shack's though, because he's more of an uncle figure to me. That's true.

I wouldn't call him a papa, but they got, I mean, that papa branding, they spent a lot of money on that. But if you eat too much Uncle Shack's, you die of a shack attack. So you don't want that. The problem is it would be like, like oh here's the two big pizza and i would order it and then it would just be a bad situation it's a shack size pizza and it's oh no uh shack he's a fun guy i like that shack he's uh uh though kazam is have you guys done kazam uh no but i i it's it's a it's in the it's it's gonna have to happen that movie is insane

that kid dies at the end of it. It's fantastic. Yeah, and then Wished Back to Life. I haven't seen this film, but I read a synopsis ahead of time. I know you guys did Steel, which is the only reason I know things about Steel. Yes. Steel's quite bad, too. That was the last time he played a guy who wasn't himself in a movie, I think. Yeah, Steel was like, oh.

And it sort of looked good on in a wizard magazine when you put it up against a character like cool but then he has to kind of like say stuff and move which he could not do the behind the scenes on that steel film is so sad because it's like quincy jones wanted to make a major african-american superhero movie and he used all the juice he could to make it but like ultimately warner's, we're not giving you enough money. And the Superman movie it was supposed to tie into, we didn't make that anyway. So fuck it. Yeah.

Exactly. And you get saddled with Shaq as opposed to a real actor. There's a world in which that movie could have been good, you know what I mean? Or important for the time, but it wasn't. And it wasn't. But Kazam is a genie that lives in a boom box let's not forget and and it's really just an excuse for shack to rap because he is also he knows shack fu he's great on the court and he is a rapping man uh but uh you remember he even

would uh oh yeah you didn't watch jackass but like there's an episode of jackass where they're like we hang out with shack this week and shack's just goofing around with him he just seems like a great hang like you know what i mean like you're just gonna have fun if you go to shack's house he's gonna be clowning on you but it's gonna be fun uh and yes executives edward christian robin hannah william milo named after mel gibson's wife then wife robin daughter hannah and sons, Edward, Christian, William, and Louis. Oh, wait, no, there is no Louis in there. Louis got left out of there, man. What did he do? What did he do? I don't know. But the rest are the names of his kids.

Yeah, when I heard these names, I'm like, well, these names aren't funny, so something's up. Yeah, I should have realized. I didn't know that until doing the research, that again, it's just a big wink-a-roo there. And unbelievably, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has never been fully remade, though the closest I could find to a remake of it is actually Billy Jack Goes to Washington. Very different movie. Which, if you don't know the ridiculous Billy Jack films about a Native American action star made in the 70s. The fourth one is the craziest where he becomes a senator and gives a speech about conservation to the Senate. And he does the filibuster in it. That's pretty awesome.

I've never seen a Billy Jack, sadly. Oh, I bet there'd be a good one for you guys. I've heard they're all like four hours long, though. Oh, yeah. I don't think i'd watch that then uh also uh flubber had just been uh released in 1997 so a current joke about flubber there i i i kind of love the is there any flubber in the in the it's a funny joke it's it the idea of going to a non-flubber film expecting flubber And, uh, yes. Is Mel Gibson there, is the question on everyone's mind.

Is Mel Gibson here? No, sorry, but like all celebrities, he's in Hollywood attending benefits for various diseases. Did they like it? Well, they haven't seen it yet, Mel. How'd you get here from L.A. so fast? John Travolta flew me in his jet. Now I have to help him move next weekend. He deliberately waited till we were in the air to ask me.

You know, you really don't have to make this trip, Mel. The screening's gonna go fine, believe me. I don't know. I think this movie was a big mistake. All I do is talk for two hours. I don't shoot anybody. What was I thinking? You shouldn't worry about the movie. William and I both think it's fabulous. And I think we know a little something about the movie business. Oh, Robin, you've got to see the director's cut of Booty Call. It's fabulous. What,

even better than the original? Because that was pretty fabulous, too. And I've seen Booty Call. Look, it's fine. It's fine. For a movie about a booty call, it does what it sets out to do. And it taught us all the important word booty call. Exactly. Booty call lives on in our hearts. That is another we're trying to have sex, but we've got to find a condom comedy kind of thing. Yeah. That's true.

Again, very 90s. Very 90s. Lots of talk of dental dams. Oh, yeah. There is a saran wrap scene in that isn't there too you ever uh trojan war with the kid from boy meets world and jennifer love hewitt oh my god no exact same premise but much wider oh wow man that weren't they a real life couple that those two that would make sense wouldn't it yeah at least you'd be on the set of a disney adventure

shoot was that a writer strong uh no no will friedel the kid in batman beyond ah terry mcginnis yeah that's right yeah writer strong's got to be a made-up name right oh definitely yeah travolta and gibson they've never been in a movie together i don't think they're actually like showbiz friends i mean one's a scientologist one's a hardcore catholic will they ever get along uh in in my getty images search the only photo i could find of travolta and gibson together was at a 1993 panel at show west with uh it's the two of them and sandra bullock talking about movies so that's uh but they've never as far as i could, they were not ever in a film together. Better actor, Travolta, I think.

Yeah. I also, I would say that Travolta has more bad movies made than Mel Gibson. He's making them right now, like right now in quarantine, he's somehow making bad movies. But I think Travolta's bad movies are more interesting and entertaining and less racist than mel gibson's true like for sure even his uh stupid uh gaudy film i'd watch that before dragged across concrete not for critics it's not for you guys and yes so they're watching mr smith goes to washington remake homer misremembers that harvey the invisible rabbit is in it which

he mixes up harvey and that and it's a wonderful life yes yeah all jimmy stewart movies i'm surprised homer even remembers those things like that's another thing that doesn't work for me in this episode homer is portrayed as a person who loves movies which i'm like when huh since when yeah i i don't know why homer ever liked a movie uh and also like who is somebody else has to star in this film other than mel gibson but i i like to think behind the scenes nobody wanted to work with him it's a monster the screening's over everybody loves it that again it's just like god it feels like such a real dick suck to be like and everyone in springfield of course loved the movie except for homer it's the greatest film they've ever seen then mel proposes he's gonna pee in an

alley which apparently he really did uh to avoid i get it of being a movie star wanting to avoid a men's room and being trapped with fans that makes sense he said that uh he actually did that when he was coming in to record because he's like i never use the men's room at a screening because people will corner me. So, you know, if you want to stalk a celebrity, check the alley first. That's where you need to look. Frequent public urinator, Mel Gibson.

The least of his crimes. I was waiting for my, we were going camping once a couple years ago. My wife and I went up to upstate New York and we stopped off at a nicer rest stop that had restaurants and stuff in it and all sorts of stuff. And Uma Thurman, I'm waiting for my wife outside the bathroom. It's like, you go to the bathroom,

I'll go to the bathroom. I'm waiting for her while she's in the bathroom and Uma Thurman goes into the bathroom and I looked at her and she gave me this look of like, please do not talk to me. I'm really close to a bathroom right now, you total weirdo. And I'm like, but you're Uma.

And I said nothing, which is always the move i know how celebrities can go crazy like i get it you you walk around and you know that every person knows you like that that would drive me insane i so i get it i get it but uh yeah the the mel gibson here like everyone loves him when he is revealed and everybody turns to him. I do like you get a Nick. Dr. Nick actually gets a joke. It's been a while since he's had one with his. Hi, everybody.

And also talking about callbacks. I doubt it was the writers, but somebody on the animation team gave a shit to draw a new McBain and Space Mutant movies in the background. I appreciated that too like the first uh space mutants reference in season three probably yeah yeah we we talked about that in the when we did the first space mutants episode in the season one thing we just did how it's like wow they stopped doing they just gave up on space mutants after the third season uh but yes uh mel gibson meets springfield is mel gibson here it's mel gibson hey everybody rush over there hi everybody

hi mr gibson thanks for coming folks and don't be afraid to be completely truthful when you fill out your opinion cards. Honesty is the foundation of the movie business. Oh, we'll be honest. We could never lie to you, Mel. Will you be reading the cards yourself, Mel? Well, I'll be reading yours personally. That's it. I'm telling Mr. Stupidest Man man alive what i really thought of his movie hey gibson uh yes sir got a pencil there you go thanks waste my time in front of it stupid appreciate it i just appreciate it that's a good one i I also like that Mo is as in love with Mel Gibson as Marge.

Yeah, yeah. He's very besmitten. I do like the line, honesty is the core of the movie business. That's a funny line. See, these comments about Hollywood aren't so bad. It's just I hate hearing them through Mel Gibson's voice. Yeah, and he even hits the, hi, everybody. You know what I mean? You can imagine in a lesser, not a lesser celebrity, but a less interested celebrity

would not hit the cadence to get that joke right. Yeah, again, Alec Baldwin didn't try half as hard as this. I won Kim Basinger too. Both were kind of just on autopilot. And yes, so Homer, yeah, Homer's reaction to him is just, this feels like how they've written Homer many times since with celebrities. Like, you get all the jokes about Homer hating a celebrity first, and then you get the jokes of Homer liking them and becoming their best friend. Which I think, too, like, the plot of this is that Marge likes Mel Gibson. I think a better episode would be Marge hanging out with Mel Gibson.

Get her out of the story. Who cares about Marge? Absolutely. It is so weird that she... They don't disappear. They go to Hollywood for no reason. It should just be Homer going to Hollywood if that's what we're trying to do. And again, you're setting up the whole thing as this romantic rival thing and then it

dies immediately because it's funnier for Homer to be wackier, I guess, is the idea? Yes, yeah. Well, first let's hear about how the test screening went. The movie tested through the roof now. The sea captain gave it four R's. Bumblebee man says, movie bueno. And we were worried about the Latino market, huh?

Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Worry. Come on, they can't all have loved it. Loved it.

Loved it. Loved it. Loved it despite absence of flubber. Glavin? Oh, here we go. Your movie was more boring than church. All you did was yak, yak, yak. You didn't even shoot anybody.

Damn, I knew it. Don't do this to yourself, Mel. The guy's obviously a nut. Maybe. Maybe he's the only person with the guts to tell me the truth. Turn the plane around. I want to go to 742 Evergreen Terrace. But you promised to help me move. Oh, jeez. That was the same voice he used in, yeah, it looks like.

Yeah, you're right. From Itchy and Scratchy Land. But yes, I also like how apparently Frank writes down his Jerry Lewis exclamations and not just like weird sort of affectations he has. He just writes them down. He wrote out G-L-A-I-V-E-N. He wrote it all out. I think they're making a point here about how you shouldn't,

how it's bad to listen to the one negative voice among a bunch of compliments, and that is tough to do as an artist. I think that's a point they're making here. That's part of it, yeah. And it makes sense because everybody loves it and he wants but also i think that the idea at least partially is that mel gibson wants this to be a shoot him up movie for whatever reason like that's but it never makes mel gibson out to be stupid which it should if that's the case

yeah they are to trust homer you know is a real real lapse in judgment. Yeah. And also like, you know, this Mel Gibson movie, the one thing it lacks that makes it feel like a not a real Mel Gibson movie is Mr. Smith isn't tortured in it, you know? Filibuster is torture, right? Nipple stuff. No nipple stuff. That's true. You know, I guess him passing out from Filibuster is torture-ish, I guess, but he needs to be like physically hurt for him to get off as

an actor, I think. The idea of an episode where Mel Gibson's private jet flies down and then flies the Simpsons from their home to Hollywood, that feels so far removed from the reality of season one we just did. It's like, it's ridiculous how far things have come in a decade. Yeah, I also, I do like the Simpsons are going to Hollywood gag and now they're here or whatever. And like, the Marge bit is very funny, I think. But Mel needs some help with his movie.

I'm looking for Homer Simpson. And I've been looking for you too, pal. Pound him, Dad. All right, don't. Quiet. Dad's gonna get his butt kicked by Mel Gibson. looking for you too, pal. Pound him, Dad. All right, don't. Quiet. Dad's going to get his butt kicked by Mel Gibson. Knock his teeth out, Homer. Listen, Gibson, I'm tired of Hollywood pretty boys like you and Jack Villeney thinking you can have any woman you want.

You see this? It symbolizes that she's my property and I own her. Mr. Simpson, I need your help. Yes? I think you're right about my movie, and I want you to help me make it better. Really? You want my help? Miles, did you hear that? Mel Gibson wants my help!

Mel Gibson! But Dad, I thought you hated me. Shut up. So Lisa playing the viewers slash writers here who go like, you just hated Mel Gibson. We need another half a show, Lisa. Come on. And I do like Bart trying to egg his dad into a fight with Mel Gibson.

That's not a bad joke. But yeah, Homer completely turns on a dime for no reason other than they need a plot of Homer hanging out with Mel Gibson. And I do think the tension between the Marge, and even like the Marge, this is a better written episode, there'd be a little bit of Marge being jealous of Homer hanging out with Mel Gibson, because that's kind of what the first movement is, you know what I mean? Yeah. Carry that over a little bit. At the time of this airing, Jack Valenti was 78, and he would retire in 2004 pass away 2007 he uh was the longtime mpaa boss who he created the rating system he thinks he's god's gift to women he's

also my favorite uh freakazoid joke i was thinking of that yep i loved how you explained how you'd leave timmy and tommy at home and grandpa would be the only one going to see the NC-17 movie. That was a good joke. I do think Mel likes that Homer has a very Old Testament way of viewing marriage. I think Mel Gibson really likes that. That Marge is his property. Then comes a bunch of jokes that

feel really different. Oh man, the first one I'm like, ooh, that changed for you, didn't it, buddy? Oh yeah. Homer doesn't know anything about making movies. Don't sell your husband short, Mrs. Simpson. She's always doing that, Mel. Homer is a brutally honest man, completely tactless and insensitive. Guilty as charged.

The problem I have is people love me so much, they never criticize me. I speed all the time, but cops never give me a ticket. If I don't pay my taxes, the IRS pays them for me. Oh, you poor thing. It's hell being Mel. Come on, geez. I don't have much time, Homer. Will you come to Hollywood with me?

You had me at hello. I didn't say hello. Yes, not getting pulled over would not be a problem for long. Yes. Give it seven more years, Mel. Again, and they just talk right over that on the commentary. They got nothing to say. You just want to keep it going.

You can hear the collars being tugged in that room to the limit. Which, yeah, he was first in 2006 pulled over for speeding and then failed a DUI. And it also had an open container in his car that's uh that's malibu cops for you you can't drink if it's closed henry so come on give him a break also you know i don't want to fully rag on this episode but i do think in 1999 you had me at hello jokes were a little old yeah oh for sure i'm gonna veto that one yeah i wouldn't uh uh and now i don't know if you make

that reference now do people know it is jerry mcguire that remembered of a movie like uh i think people know that line but they don't know it comes from that movie yeah similarly show me the money people like will be like oh they'll roll their eyes and show me the money but i would have no idea where that movie came i mean like obviously people of a certain age would but i mean like a a 20 year old kid probably knows a kid by the the way, because I'm a really old man. A 20 year old person would know what Show Me the Money is or You Had Me at Hello, but probably not know the movie. Yeah, probably they'd be like, today I learned Show Me the Money came from a movie. I thought it was just a cool thing to say.

So, yes, The Simpsons fly away. They have a great joke about how they for commercials will say lines like the simpsons are coming to where and marge is saying it i love that lisa craps on it that's yeah that's a joke it's a good button they land in george kennedy airport a joke about how bad actors starred in four different airport movies oh i forgot that was a joke yeah i mean also it's just a funny like instead of john f jfk airport it's george kennedy yeah i mean i'd rather fly to uh george kennedy than uh bob hope i'd rather i'd prefer it george kennedy lived a lot longer than most of those kennedys

i'll tell you that much for you know keep that kid that other kennedy blood out of there it was all that breath of shirt he took uh it's uh and i didn't even know him as the airport guy i knew him as the joke dude that was hired for the naked gun movies like what a silly character he was in those he's very funny in those movies actually yeah no he's he's a great he was a great actor one of america's best so then they had to poly star pictures which it definitely is supposed to look like the entrance to paramount studios i think uh one of the most like parodied i think it's like one of the most famous studio entrances in hollywood other than of course the warner brothers lot with

the uh the water tower and those animaniacs are in there and uh then we get a joke about how down to earth mel gibson is a minivan. Oh boy, you celebrities sure know how to live. What is this? Toyota Previa? Dodge Caravan. Sweet. Look, they're making a movie. Robert Downey Jr. is shooting it out with the police.

I don't see any cameras. Okay, well Mel and I are working. Why don't you guys do the town? I hear all the stars eat at a place called Planet Hollywood. Can I stay with you, Dad? Sorry, son, but we're going to be very busy. Mel's movie really stinks. Boy, that R.D. J joke also pretty dated, too.

Oh, yeah. Did he do his Oprah apology yet? Yeah, but then he got arrested again. I think he was arrested another time when he was on ally mcbeal and that's like two or three years after this but it's a funny i mean it's just funny the shoe how the shoe is on the other foot like yeah like rdj in this episode is the joke and mel gibson is the hero now likely you do that the other way around yeah they they've they have changed positions you know dr doodle nonwithstanding robert downey jr is like one of the biggest stars

in the world now that movie god uh the and also robert downey jr he was one of the people speaking out on mel's behalf and saying that hollywood needs to take him back oh yeah what a good guy what a good guy but you know in 1999 you're writing this joke you are gambling with robert downey jr's life like what if he od'd before this came out it's a joke thankfully it's not like plot relevant so you can cut it yeah that's true yeah and uh in real life mel gibson drives much better cars than dodge caravan or you can do adr and say it's charlie sheen oh yeah the joke works the same yeah that's true uh that mel gibson you know what he was driving when he got pulled over in 2006?

Brand new Lexus. He was driving around. Figures. Nice. And it's also funny they make a joke about Planet Hollywood because in two episodes, they go to a Planet Hollywood parody again. Like, that's the one where Lisa says, there's no cane in Citizen Kane. Oh, that's the one. Yeah.

And like, Lisa, Marge, and Bart, and Maggie get the story that Lisa and Marge got in the New York episode that Steve was on. Yeah, wow, that's true. And another Robert Downey Jr. joke in that as well. Oh, yeah. No, it's actually, you mentioned that, how Bart has to stick around with them. I think that's why they have a line where Bart says, can I stay too, Dad? Because normally they'd be doing a homer and bart adventure while the girls do something so i wonder if that's why they had homer go like actually this time bart you

also aren't involved in the homer adventure you go away too you're in subplot land with the girls it's not even they don't even get a subplot just like leave them in springfield you know what i mean at that point but then you can do jokes specifically about walking on down hollywood boulevard that's a good point uh so we go first to the editing room they do a joke about animating something at double or filming it at double speed and then they did actually just speed up the animation good work there in the editing machine based on the one at film roman it's uh it's the real life one they were using. And on the commentary, they point out that Mel Gibson, in real life in 1999, fully recut a movie and changed it, Payback.

Oh, right. Okay, that was his most recent movie as of this episode. Yeah, yeah. And so what he and Homer are doing here is what Mel Gibson really did with the film Payback, which I remember liking that one. Are you a fan or not, Steven? homer are doing here is what mel gibson really did with the film payback which uh i remember liking that one have you a fan or not steven i don't think i've ever seen payback i was never really a male head so i i've got like huge gaps in my mel gibson uh filmography which is which

i've actually never bothered to fill in uh but yeah i've heard payback is fun i i i in talking about it now i think i saw every mel gibson movie or almost all of them that was released from mad max to i think well women want was the first one i skipped i think i was like i saw ransom a movie about paying something back and i figured it could pay back after that one and uh ransom is a is a hell of a film Give me back my son That's all I remember Did you see Conspiracy Theory? I like that one Conspiracy Theory is I've also seen that, that's gotta be a stay tuned For the Patrick Stewart alone

You guys did What Women Want And Homer recommends a funny hat montage There had to be one of those in that movie Sent to I'm Too Sexy, right? Yeah, I think it's's well he's got a dumb hat i think there's a fun dress montage he's taking his daughter out and it's like oh that's too sexy that's not sexy enough yada yada yada that whole thing doesn't he also wear women's stockings in it too to feel like a woman or something or am i getting inside the female

psyche yeah that's right poor helen hunt and poor helen hunt in general yeah yeah hey well she just had the comeback of of mad about you so she's doing great it's unwatchable and that i don't know where to watch it it can't be watched no um so yes uh the homer's helping with the movie and then we get a fucking Hugh Grant blowjob joke in 1999. Okay, this opening scene should be in fast motion. Everybody likes that because it looks funny. Mr. Smith is coming to Washington. He's really honest. That could be bad news for us corrupt politicians.

Well, even if he is, big deal. How do you think? I don't think so. Okay, here you need a musical montage where you try on lots of funny hats. It'll let us see your playful side. No. Yeah, but... Just no.

For those of you who've always wanted to see the famous Brown Derby restaurant, that's where it used to be. And on your left is the notorious spot where Hugh Grant Filmed the movie Nine Months I know that's a We Hate Movies episode Nine Months In the Wayback Machine you'll find that one That's a horrific film Robin Williams

Robin Williams in that movie playing like a Russian doctor Yes, yes, you're right And a lot of Tom arnold a lot more and like julianne moore is like the put-upon wife it's just an an odd fit for everybody i wonder if he was not caught on that day if he would that film be remembered at all in any way that's a good point because you were you grads back you know he came back like with eventually he came back within two years of that blow job and he broke that phone hacking case right yeah he did he's uh honestly he's gone quite heroic compared to mel gibson in the years since then but it was indeed on sunset

boulevard in la where he got busted too so uh in 1995 but a knock on nine months is pretty funny but it's a little dated too though for me looking up filming locations wrong nine months was filmed in the bay area not in los angeles uh that's i think that's why robin williams is in it because well robin williams lives in t because like well robin williams lives in tiburon we're filming here anyway let's just have him for a scene yeah that makes sense he's got that coat from patch adams just put it on maybe that inspired him to do patch adams afterwards he like this coat fits i don't wear this so i could be a less silly doctor. But so Bob and me, you know, last year, me and you stayed in basically the areas they're driving by in this episode.

We stayed on Hollywood Boulevard and right off Sunset, I think. And what's missing, it does actually look a bit like how it looked even in 2019 when we lived there, except no Scientology building. Oh, that's true. We stayed right by the Museum of Death, the anti-psychiatry building that Scientology owns. It's got a great name. Yes, yeah. And it's free admission. A couple of times we joked like, what if we went in there? But we knew we'd never come out. We'd never be free.

And the Brown Derby was indeed demolished, the original one that was on Hollywood Boulevard. It was destroyed in the 94 Northridge earthquake. Then comes probably the most remembered scene from this episode, or the most memed joke, I would say, as Homer has quite an important suggestion for Mel. You want me to replace the villain with a dog? I mean, nobody will know what's going on. They will if you set up that the dog is evil. All you have to do is show them doing this. And people will suspect the dog. Maybe this wasn't a good idea, Homer. I'm sorry I dragged you out here.

Let me pay your bus fare home. Now here's your biggest problem of all. The filibuster scene? That was Jimmy Stewart's favorite. And it was fine for the 1930s. The country was doing great back then. Everyone was into talking. But now, in whatever year this is, the audience wants action. And seats with beverage holders. But mainly action.

You really think the end is boring? Oh, Mel, it's the most boring piece of garbage I've ever seen. And it's not easy for me to say that. Hmm, I guess it is a little flat. Okay, let's reshoot the ending. I'll call the hair and makeup ladies. You see if the teamsters will work for free. Piece of cake.

Now where's that kid with my latte? I don't like hearing Homer do a where's my latte joke. Yeah, yeah. I know the joke of it is that homer is being out of character here but i i still don't really like it we were learning about what coffee with milk meant in 1999 like those hollywood snobs with their two liquids mixed together uh that shifty eyed dog that is the most endearing meme of the this episode i think i i see it shared every now and then especially in my simpsons meets pro wrestling fandoms out there uh and everybody did we all

wanted beverage holders on our cups yes we did we and we got them we got them it feels weird if i go to a theater that doesn't have a beverage if i go to like an old-timey theater i'll accept it but i hate having like a giant cold soda on my crotch for two hours i will i mean again it's been weeks since i've been to the movies i am ready to have a cold soda on my crotch oh yeah bring it on any kind of sensation down there would be fantastic well now you go to the alamo draft house and you't even, I spit on a cup container on the thing. I have a table right in front of me. A ninja will come out and take it away. And let me know when my movie has 30 minutes left in it.

Like that's, that's my biggest complaint with those ninjas that come by is that they do like they, I know when the movie has 20 minutes left because they dropped the check. That's why I'm really like, I like Alamo quite a bit as a chain i like what they do and all that stuff and i certainly love drinking at movies i'm a fan of going to those movies only for like uh like blockbuster-y stuff like stuff that i'm like less invested in like from a cinematic level i'm like cool you know what i mean like you can distract me all you want. Let's get a beer. Let's get some good food. Horror doesn't work there. Drama doesn't really work there. I feel I've enjoyed many a Marvel film there for sure.

They're perfect for Marvel movies. I think the last Alamo draft house film I saw was that Harley Quinn movie. And I got to drink one of their alcoholic milkshakes and tasty. Those are fantastic. But that was before yeah in the before times uh but i do like homer saying now in whatever year this is that's a funny joke because intentionally not having homer say the year because this will be rerun forever though that still didn't stop them for this episode being dated and uh there's a funny joke in see if the teamsters will work for free that's that's kind of funny then comes the joke i don't think it's

very funny and i didn't even clip it out but just like so it's the joke that they think ellen and anne hayes are annoying because they are talking about being lesbians too open i mean there are now some good reasons to hate ellen oh yeah this is not one of them. They have a lot of fun with that Eddie noise, the barking dog noise, because you hear it at the end of the episode, too. Yeah, that's right. They really like that barking dog howl, yes. Yeah, I think you're right, Henry.

I was confused and thrown by that, too. I guess it's like, yeah, a we-get-it joke kind of a thing. Yeah, I mean, she kind of made that her brand which like it was important back then but i can see why people be like come on that's enough we're sick of hearing about yeah well i mean also like others our other beloved comedians were making fun of it too like i know mr show did a whole joke about how everybody knows that david cross is bald but he then comes out as a bald man on the show and that was mocking

the obviousness of ellen's sexuality which like you know again when in when she did it it was a big deal and it did open a lot of doors now ellen is an insanely rich like uh jerk pretty much now and and best friends with uh with george w bush let's call her what she is a super jerk a super and and anne hayes meanwhile she went back to the men you know she's but also i feel like they're punishing her for being bisexual i don't know yes yeah i know that that was there was um i think it was the movie i think it's bullworthy that steve martin eddie murphy movie movie? No, Bowfinger. Bowfinger, yeah. Bowfinger, yes. I always get those mixed up. Bowfinger where Heather Graham

plays an Anne Heche type that falls for a woman and then doesn't fall for a woman all for the power. It's a real specific 90s joke of everyone's trying to be a lesbian these days because it's in, in quotation marks kind of a thing.

The commentary that i got at the time was like bisexuality was just like a myth it was just an excuse you're making like you can't do both come on you're just gay right you're either just gay or you're pretending to be gay to attention for attention definitely yeah that is sadly a still prevailing theory uh no there's there's a lot of biphobia i feel bad for my bi brothers and sisters and non-binaries out there who have had to hear shit about being bisexual is not real. It's just staggering how much that comes around. uh yeah actually that bow finger joke it's more mean-spirited than that even because i do believe steve martin wrote that movie and he was a former partner of anne heich's and this was a direct attack on her of just like the heather graham character dates him early in this movie

and starts dating moving up and up with who she's dating until it's the most powerful lesbian in hollywood is who she's dating so yeah i think it was steve martin uh getting get a little revenge on an on an ex i believe uh all right so they refilmed the movie clearly they must have gone insanely over budget to refilm this new uh and boy if the the simpsons they love a joke so much they reused it here comes two yes i mean it just runs in the family right yeah yeah yeah and last heard in season nine's natural born kissers and it's too early to make this commentary but to me it feels like a commentary on the patriots because all i remember about that movie the the criticism about it was like it's so violent it's just like it's it's the

violent side of the american revolution that you don't see that's usually sanitized and that's the movie he would make next summer yeah yeah i mean most mel gibson films are very violent like yeah but though not in jesus violent he made it the most violent thing i i saw the passion in the in the theaters just because i i wanted to know what was up with it and jesus fucking christ i like ebert ebert that was not a joke intended there but i uh ebert made a really good point in his review where he was which he gave it four stars but he's an ex-catholic yeah he did it out of catholic guilt but but in his review he said this is proof that the mpaa would never give a film nc-17 for violence alone because this is an nc-17 film absolutely yeah this violence though is much

more in the lethal weapon style i mean in the scene mel gibson even does his curly impersonation that he did in lethal weapon did it escalate to him doing the curly run on the ground i don't believe that happened i didn't i don't recall lethal weapon four that's the funniest part of this is when he does it on a table with a machine gun that is pretty good i love that he does impale the dude with uh the american flag uh which is great and cutting the president's head off by the way which is illegal to show i think yes yeah that's uh it was a different time in the in the clinton white house i guess and also i love the design on the president that he just like the president uh and also the homer writing himself into the movie with a wink to mel is funny but it also is fully a commentary on the cronyism that made this episode exist. Yeah, like Mel has many homers in this episode.

Yeah. I think when he says play the movie Louie, like Louie's the name of someone in his world. His parrot. Yeah, play. But it's, well, I gotta say, great animation by the animation team and the Stephen Dean Moore's team.

The explosion of the Capitol building, really well done. I think it's the funniest part of the capitol building really well done i think it's the funniest part of the episode it doesn't you know what i mean like it's it's just such a silly it reminds me of that uh the marcus zorum joke that they make is that later that's later yeah yeah yeah it reminds me of that like you know take a pot shot at like hollywood action movies that that have no bearing in reality where you could just behead the president you know kind of a thing and the tossing of his senator badge is funny too i do like that that's i believe that's a dirty harry reference okay and uh yes it's the uh the i think another thing that doesn't

work in this is that the studio okay i guess they hate it because they say it's not a prestige film but they would never tell mel gibson to his face he made a bad movie. Or try to kill him when he steals the thing. Also that, yes. But yes, the studio has some notes. Pretty cool, huh? You chopped off the president's head. Bet you didn't see that coming.

You impaled a United States senator with the American flag. Why did Mr. Smith kill everybody? It was symbolism. He was mad. But this was going to be the studio's prestige picture, like Howard's End or Sophie's Choice. Ugh, those movies suck. I only saw them to get Marge into the sack. P.S. Mission accomplished.

But we've already bought five Golden Globe Awards. I don't make movies to win awards. Especially now that I have two Oscars. I make movies for guys like him. Yeah, guys like me. Who are you anyway? Do the words executive producer mean anything to you? Executive producer?

We'll talk. You've desecrated a classic film. This is worse than Godfather 3. Whoa, whoa, hey, whoa. Let's not say things we can't take back. All right, all right, I'm sorry. But this film is never going to see the light of day. Look, they're throwing away a Range Rover. There's no...

Yoink! Come on, Homer. We got a movie to premiere. We've got to get that film back or we'll all be fired. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fired. A little bit of mel's australianess is coming out we got to get to that movie premiere yeah yeah i didn't catch that it's it's weird he's able to muffle it so well in this uh throughout his entire life i like that after he got in trouble australia's like no

no he was born in new york he's not our guy anymore no no yeah yeah i just the idea of carrying around this fake accent forever is very bizarre to me like even just doing interviews and just hanging around be like no i'm an american yeah he's uh i think i think a lot of mel gibson is a phony facade covering for something far darker but the uh the plot gets extremely crazy at this point you have to forget about like the logic and that like there's more than one print of this uh there's also security guards on the lot. Also, the executives wouldn't chase down Mel Gibson in public. Yep. None of this would happen. You're right. It just becomes a silly caper that, again, with the executive producer of the show writes it, you don't as much in the writer's room i think yeah i think it's just in aid of having a big ending kind of a thing and it's like you know i just i prefer more jokes honestly it turns into the action movie homer wants mel to make yeah

that's true they sort of have their own action movie i guess they get to have the joke of what if mel gibson was living an action movie in real life like there's there's that comedy but so they i do like the joke about godfather 3 in that mel is like hey let's not go too far make fun of godfather 3 as if everybody's allowed to make fun of godfather 3 like it's it's the one movie you're allowed to say it's safe mockery yeah uh also those jokes about buying golden globes like that's uh it's it's long been a held conspiracy and probably true that the golden globes are much easier to influence and purchase than uh the oscars are pia zadora was the smoking gun for that one right she's famously the most yeah she's at the time had a billionaire husband who bought the uh who was friends with people who worked at the golden

gloves i what i when i looked at that story one of the funniest things to me was that john waters says he loved her in that movie and that's why he cast her in in hairspray he's like no i love her like she's great and he also homer insisting upon himself as an executive producer that just feels like a repeat of the when you dish upon a star thing yeah yeah he's kind of filling the same role like uh you know he starts off as an assistant but then you know becomes on the same level as the people he's working for yeah well that's there's only so many types of jokes you can make with homer befriends a celebrity and yeah i just i wish they'd at least space these out more than a year from each other at least like and or like just you know mel i mean just i it always works when you either have if it's much shorter again like a cameo and or you

just do a thing wherein you know he's playing a character you know what i mean like a totally different character than you know like ed norton later on when he shows up you know what i mean that that always works so much better because at least you could put it in the world that makes any sense in this world that makes any sense in this world yeah when susan sarandon was on the show she played a ballet teacher like that that's better to me i i much prefer that type of guest star because it at least challenges them to make up jokes for a character not a celebrity unfortunately they could not get irene ryan on the show oh boy man, I kind of appreciate how just desperate and sweaty this joke is.

We're just like, guys, the joke works. It kind of doesn't work, but it does. So it is Irene Ryan, a.k.a. Granny from Beverly Hills, who was dead in 1973. But I mean, this is the ages of the writers. I watched a lot of this show when it was on your runs. I love it. It's a fun show. I'm more of an Andy Griffith and Green Acres guy,

but I do like Beverly Hillbillies. Always missed it. Yeah, that's not where I'm at. It also feels like an incredibly insider joke that apparently movie executives own Range Rovers, I guess. A lot of them do. It was like a highfalutin Californian thing, right? Because we have the character Range Rover Mom

in the show. Oh, that's true, yeah. So it's just like an annoying person of higher class. But yeah, saving Irene Ryan coming a year after saving Private Ryanyan of course uh that definitely feels like a critic joke to me oh it does have the stink of the critic on it and of course aljean is back on the writing staff so uh but yes uh the the duo escape give us the film never and on your left you'll see rainer wolfcastle filming his latest movie, Saving Irene Ryan.

You put me down, you big lummox! Yeah! Shut up, old lady. And stop kicking me there. Watch out! Coming through! No! Over.

Landmine! I'm on it! Night, Mr. Gibson. Nightmine. I'm on it. Night, Mr. Gibson. Night, Gus. I'm getting too old for this crap. How old are you anyway? Well, I've been told I can play anywhere from 28 to... Sorry I asked.

I think the Irene Ryan joke was more relevant than the she's having a baby joke. Yes. Yes, she's still... or she's having a baby again. Yes. Yes, she's still having a baby again. I'm like, no one remembered that movie 10 years before this episode even. Yeah, not one person remembered it. As someone who would often play the Kevin Bacon game with friends, this one never came up in my linkage either. I used to remember every Kevin Bacon movie. It stars him in a lesser

alley sheedy oh yes yeah whatever her name is old mumbly jane mumbly jane now yeah again that that kind of reference to a film from 1988 feels pretty criticky to me feels pretty criticky uh i do like how much how often irene ryan is kicking him in the balls i like that yes also that homer drives into the landmine i thought the joke was that mel's telling him to avoid it and homer drives into it to explode and go these are active landmines on a movie set yeah uh and yes they get in a too old for this shit joke, which is normally said by Murtaugh, not Riggs. Though in, I believe, Lethal Weapon 4, the joke is that Mel Gibson's character also is now too old for this shit. I think they say we're, we did that episode, we did that a couple of years ago.

I don't know if they say we're getting old for it, too old for it. It's a lot and there shouldn't have been a fourth Lethal Weapon. I'll go that far yeah that uh i think the first 10 minutes of lethal weapon four where they fight the iron man guy that's kind of fun yeah that's just a good little cartoon but everything after that completely useless i and i watched it because i wanted to see jet lee's first us film that's that's why i saw it same reason i saw romeo must die which you know is it better than lethal weapon for me probably i haven't i haven't seen that in forever uh but uh yes the joke too of over i do like the one joke at mel gibson's expense is that

homer is just like sorry yeah mel gibson could not play 28 in 1999 no no not gonna happen he was a craggy 29 year old perhaps he was 43 then so yeah and uh these days well the last time i saw him i guess was a couple years ago and he just had a gigantic crazy man beard yep yep during the director's beard yeah which but i don't think i i got angry all over again looking up like oh yeah he was invited to the oscar round table and he like barry jenkins the director of moonlight has to sit near this asshole and talk about the craft of making film like infuriating not fun though what is fun is the hollywood auto museum which uh is actually in las vegas oh okay but they do have a lot of these things don't oh yeah yeah a lot of these like uh i guess uh you know roadside

attractions yeah yeah i looked up that they uh at least one of the locations they don't have the 66 batmobile but they do have michael keaton's batmobile and they have the monsters dragula which i always forget that the dragula song is about the monsters car yeah yeah and also herbie the love bug knight rider general lee the flintstones car from the uh live action film but they don't have the authentic uh burt ward or adam west yeah they don't they they need to get them they could have gotten adam west adam west was doing family guy around this time yeah absolutely would have done this joke as well. Maybe, you know, in like four years, Adam West will play himself in a Batman scene on The Simpsons. But for some reason, they didn't go for him. But Hank Azaria does a great

Adam West. Oh, that's really good. Yeah. But yes, Homer and the family meet back up. Wow, these dummies look pretty good. Well, I've had a lot of surgery, old chap. Shh! Mr. Lomato said he'd fire us if you didn't stop bothering the customers. Homer, what are you doing here? No time to talk. Need to steal a car. Must say powerful but controversial movie. Who? Quick, Mel, get in! Forget it, Homer. Let's just give him the stupid movie Movies aren't stupid

They fill us with romance and hatred And revenge fantasies Lethal Weapon showed us that suicide is funny That really wasn't my intention Before Lethal Weapon 2 I never thought there could be a bomb in my toilet But now I check every time It's true, he does

Do movies mean that much to you, Homer? But now I check every time. It's true, he does. Do movies mean that much to you, Homer? They're my only escape from the drudgery of work and family. No offense. Oh, what the heck. Let's hit the road. Shove over, Junior. That thoughtless destruction will surely bankrupt the museum, old chum.

Shut up! Yeah, this just proves that movies are terrible for Homer. Yes, yeah. And I do like him. I mean, it's so cruel, but I like him saying how shitty his family is right in front of him. They're just kind of ashamed. Yeah. It's funny, but also just more homer being awful yeah yeah uh my favorite line from his very confused speech about his love of cinema is

lethal weapon showed us that suicide is funny yeah they're very very funny uh i think that's and i i do like uh gibson's well that's not really what i was yeah it's a it's a good game uh and uh though now when i hear homer talking about helping mel gibson with well that's not really what i was yeah it's a it's a good game uh and uh though now when i hear homer talking about helping mel gibson with a powerful but controversial movie like that it feels different it's true yeah like in this episode they say this is his next directorial movie but the next one would be passion the crisis like braveheart and then passion the crisis are like eight years apart uh yeah yeah and then he just uh apocalypto then came just two years after passion and uh then there was a big break in his films for some reason yeah uh and that's uh burt

ward fake burt ward is carl wiedergott i thought that was him and uh i do believe that uh mr lamato is again a reference to an old manager that uh mike scully had as a teen so i believe mr lomato had been brought up before by squeaky voice team okay uh but yeah they they said they admitted even on the commentary homer's speech was took a lot of work and they just were never fully sure on this speech homer was making it makes sense i mean yeah i do think that it's got a good joke in there or one or two good jokes but a lot of it just sort of is a bit disjointed for the character then we get a drive by chinese man's theater and man's chinese theater uh and now that's just called the tcl theater it's not chad or i guess tcl's chinese theater now maybe uh i've never you know i bet we've driven by it but we've never i've never been to

that i've been there uh that's where all the handprints and stuff are. Yeah, I was there once. Let's check that out. I want to at least see C-3PO's footprint. I want to see that. Yeah, never did it. And then we get a very mean joke about Judge Judy looking mannish. They will pay off in a year or two. I can't believe they do it twice.

In a much more transphobic joke, too. But what are you talking about, Bob? That's not judge judy that's judge constance harm uh it's it's similar a totally different justice richard's judge judy it looks just like her but yes the uh the chase is happening and uh he asks the one time mel talks to lisa in the episode is asking her to drive the car. Mel has an idea. He throws seemingly himself off of it, but it's really a dummy. Oh no, we killed Mel Gibson.

You all saw it. He came at me with a knife, right? Wait a minute. He's just a dummy. I know, but he sells tickets. Let's go. Oh, great idea, Mel. Now it's my turn.

What are you doing? I'm tired of running away. Did Braveheart run away? Did Payback run away? It's time we showed those suits what we're made of. The heck is that? Well, the one on the left is Mel Gibson. I don't know who the other two guys are.

Will you please tell me the rest of the plan? It's your plan from Braveheart. Your army mooned the enemy until they could take no more and surrender. No, they didn't. They attacked us in a horribly bloody battle. Remember? Actually, I didn't see it, but on the poster...

Jump! Let's go! Homer's ass just stops that car dead yeah it's uh i'm remembering how they drew homer's ass in rosebud and they draw his ass twice as big in the in in season 11 yes they really do i also love um well i watched on disney plus and did anyone else did anyone else have Homer's ass blacked out with a bunch of hair? Daryl Hannah's hair? Oh, God. Creeping over the back of it? Well, I pulled out my DVDs for this. It's like a dirty movie but

i guess if you freeze frame it you could see a little bit of butt crap i mean you can see butt for like three seconds on the screen it's not like a it's not like a frame thing but that's too much for disney plus they they added we're a family corporation we've got to digitally add a bunch of weird hair because a we need this movie but b we cannot have a butt it looks like she's being attacked by a triple before she goes into the water it is disturbing uh yeah but homer's ass is enormous here it's fantastic i i kind of like that it it stops the car dead and the joke about like oh uh it's mel gibson and some other two guys which is kind of funny homer's ass is

so big it looks like two asses yeah i i he could be in gigantic asses he could be that's homer on the cover of that but uh yeah i i also love how long they hold the silence on i know but he sells tickets that's a good one that's good and i do like the joke of people not remembering who the lead character in a movie is so they don't say the main character of payback they say did payback run away this is where wall street gets arrested yeah it's yeah i it's a joke that i'm a sucker for brave calling braveheart braveheart is great yeah it's why you name movies the name of the main character americans can only remember so much uh but yes also homer and the mooning so obviously there's no mel gibson you know torture which he loves but mel gibson does

love mooning and showing his ass so they did get that in there homer's memory is correct the troops of braveheart do moon the uh the the evil English and also flash their dicks for a minute too, like for a second. There's definitely some dicks in that movie. Yeah. If you would like to see

Mel Gibson's flaccid penis, it's there. Braveheart used to be a very remembered movie. Speaking of South Park, there was a whole South Park parody of it with the turkeys. Oh, yeah.

That's right. And I just never saw it. I saw it when it was new and it seemed normal. And then I just never saw it. I saw it when it was new and it seemed normal. And then I remember revisiting it and people pointed out how homophobic it is. Oh, right. Yeah, there's the son character who's vilified horrifically. The joke is that the king's son is clearly gay and the king then throws his son's lover

out a window as kind of a laugh line in the movie yes fun times fun times but then in a very odd scene jump cut homer's ass is stuck in the car and then it cuts to the premiere. So there's no explanation of why the movie executives are not after the film anymore. I guess Lisa drove away with it. Or I mean, maybe the move is like, oh, they're going to threaten to sue. But again, you just need that one line. Just all that. Yeah. The lack of explanation feels like nobody gave a crap.

Exactly. And I mean, that's the thing is the chase isn't that funny to begin with. So like to even diffuse it with not a joke is like, well, or it's a joke, but it's not like to make it totally meaningless makes it totally meaningless, I guess, is the idea. Oh, I also read in the Mel Gibson pranks section of his Wikipedia page. Oh, boy. He enjoys mooning so much that to lighten the mood on the set of Hamlet, he even would moon other actors on the set. Oh God. It's like,

Oh cool. I'm trying to do fucking Shakespeare here, pal. Just relax. You're not allowed to yell at Mel Gibson cause he'll probably hit you. Yeah, exactly. That's,

I love hearing about celebrities like him or George Clooney going like, I'm a bit of a prankster on set or like that entire documentary about how jim carrey was pranking everybody on the set of man and the moon anytime someone's a known unknown practical joker that means they're probably not that good of a person just it's a red it's it's not a red flag it's like an orange flag maybe you could be they could be the one nice prankster. But yeah, so let's cut to, just as the show does abruptly, to the premiere. Homer, are you okay? I think so. No.

All in favor, say die. Oh, that digital sound really lets you hear the blood splatter. I don't get it, Mel. How can you be so calm and cool? My stomach's full of vomiting butterflies. Okay, that's it. Let's get ready to meet our public. Well, that was disgusting. Worst ending ever.

I think I'm going to be sick. I'm Jimmy Stewart's granddaughter, and you'll be hearing from my attorney. Ow. Oh, we should have put in the dog with the shifty eyes. So, I think Mo would like this movie. It's so disgusting that it turns Mo off. I guess.

I feel kind of bad because we've just been script doctoring this entire episode, but now I think that they should have saved the violent cut of the movie for the end. That could be the treat at the end. We see the reaction of the executives, like, we cannot show this, and then at the end of the movie, you see what they watched. Or the end of the episode, rather.

Because, yeah, it just sort of... The ending doesn't have any oomph to it, because everyone's just reacting to what we've already seen. Yeah, you know, that's a good pitch, Bob. I like that. Let's call Mike Scully now. We have his phone number. I do like the drawing of Homer trying to walk with the car stuck in his butt, by the way. That's a funny drawing.

It's a real pants around your ankles kind of walk. But meanwhile, the vomiting butterflies thing, that is very ADR, too. I don't know, that everybody hates it. I feel like people would love a violent film like that. I don't know. But I guess I'm just as confused as mel gibson is here and in the big final speech which is a joke about how the opposite is true everyone in america loves violent things but this does knowing out of context it feels like mel gibson complaining about pc culture i. I'm sorry I ruined your career, Mel.

It's not your fault, Homer. I guess there's just no room in today's crazy, gentle America for violent dinosaurs like us. How did the country lose its way, Mel? When did we stop rooting for the man with the flamethrower or an acid spraying gun of some kind? I blame the internet and the return of swing music. Well, whatever it is, we gotta get rolling on our next picture.

Hey, what about a prequel to something? Everybody loves prequels. I don't. Okay, Mr. Difficult. How about a teen sex romp, where you and your buddies are always trying to get some? No, wait! A ghost who wins the lottery!

You could be the ghost or the lottery commissioner. What about Indiana Jones? Does anyone own the rights to that? Hey, Mel! I fell out! That's the bark they love. It's a good joke. It's good.

Yeah. I got to say, I prefer Homer's movie about the driving instructor from the future whose best friend is a talking pie. For some reason. Yeah, for some reason. Which is from the last Star-Studded episode that we did. I can see why Brian Grazer bought that idea. Yeah. A ghost who wins the lottery is the best uh

joke i don't know i do i do actually like you're at the sex romp of him and his friends trying to get some obviously he's so incredibly old it'd be like last vegas he did that with his uh last wife uh now what homer's joking about there is very 1999 though he's he's complaining about star wars prequels then basically describes the plot of american pie and i felt like there were like five different uh lottery movies in the 90s like it could happen to you at lucky numbers and are these uh are these movie pitches done like without the characters on screen so they can kind of fill them in later that's what it feels like yeah well also it's funny homer jokes about who owns indiana jones they are now both owned by disney i know these observations get old but it's it's it still is weird it's still weird to think

about uh also they apparently had a different ending planned where a relative of apu buys the film rights and it's a huge hit overseas oh that's interesting i i think that's at least i think it's at least a more unexpected place to go with the joke is this they they state that the film is bad and then the surprise twist would be oh but everybody loves the bad film when everybody hates a bad film it at least it's not it's the expected thing well the twist is the shifty-eyed dog convince everyone in springfield to turn against mel gibson you're right yeah this is a bit of a whimper of an ending for sure at least with a shifty-eyed dog though that's pretty great like at least yeah you got you want you want the shit you you you

set up the shifty-eyed dog at the beginning you show him at the end i'm laughing yeah that it leaves me with a laugh anyway. You know, maybe all of Mel's troubles are really that shifty-eyed dog. He's been plotting against him all this time. But it's only up from here. No more problematic guest stars, except for Kid Rock. Yeah, nah, boy, I think we got some more.

Actually, yeah. But yeah, again, Mel, boo, he sucks. But I totally, again, I totally get why this was a season premiere. One of the most famous guys in the world. Yeah, it's a great premiere for 1999. A big star-studded one. And I just feel, I guess I do regret a little bit that, unfortunately, because of scheduling,

season 11 has to start with us being so negative about a guest star. We're going to have more fun, don't worry. Yes, yeah. Well, yeah well you got the we hate movies guy here he's got to be negative for sure you made us be you famously hate things i do that's my whole thing i get up hating stuff who would hate a movie uh yes but steve uh tell us where we can find you online and of course about your great podcast yep uh you can find me at steven sadak it's spelt not at all like that it's a s-t-e-p-a-g-n-s-a-j-d-a-k on twitter we i do a podcast with uh my friends uh we hate movies which is a uh weekly bad movie podcast coming out on tuesdays we just are finishing up this week our pirates of the caribbean series we just kind of said fuck it let's watch all five pirates movies which is a

terrible idea oh my lord boy yeah i'm excited i'm excited that it's over with this is steve in we just actually the one at the time of this recording we just did uh curse of the black pearl and that's the best one and i'm already fucking done with them so we got four more weeks to that for myself but you the audience are done already and you can listen to those they're a lot of fun and we're actually just starting our summer blockbuster extravaganza where we do a bunch of fun summer movies all summer long and on patreon we just dropped an episode on the ring last month for gore verbinski and we'll be doing an episode we do we love movies which are movies we actually like so the ring Ring for Grimgor Verbinski as a good movie. And then also this month we're dropping No Country for Old Man. Oh boy. Good times. Yeah, I've been really enjoying the Patreon episode shifting to the loves. It's fun to hear you guys. You're just as funny talking

about why you love something as opposed to why you hate something. Exactly. It's almost as if if we knew that anyone would listen, we probably wouldn't call the show We you hate something exactly it's almost as if we if we knew that anyone would listen we probably wouldn't call the show we hate anything but it's too late you got that seo now exactly no yeah i mean but yeah it is it is actually nice to spread your legs a little bit and spread your legs stretch your legs uh and uh just to enjoy stuff as opposed to go from a negative but even like the negative stuff is never that negative. Anyway, we have fun on this show and you will too at, uh, or,

you know, we're at WHM podcast, uh, on Twitter and WHM podcast.com for all the information you might want to find. Awesome. Well, thank you again,

Steve. Yes. Thank you. Thank you guys for having me so much. This is always fun. I'm always glad to come back. And yeah, I haven't thought about this episode in forever.

Uh, and, uh, for many reasons uh but yeah it was kind of cool to revisit and also see how poorly it's aged in a lot of ways we will bring you back for a less troubled episode but we needed a movie expert and we and we got one there you go thank you guys so thanks again to steve sadak for being on our show please check out we hate movies we love it but as for our, if you want to support us and get all of our podcasts one week ahead

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And there is so much more going on there. Too much to mention here, but you'll get at least 100 bonus podcasts if you sign up today. Everything we've done for the past nearly three years. And Henry can tell everybody out there what's happening at the $10 level. One super long podcast every month just for $10 and up patrons.

That's right. For $10 a month, you get all that $5 stuff as well as our monthly What a Cartoon movie. Me and Bob talk about a different animated feature film in the Talking Simpsons style, sometimes often for over four hours. Recent ones have included The Castle of Cagliostro, The Great Mouse Detective, and so many other awesome ones. You'd get a giant back catalog of them to listen to today

if you sign up at 10 bucks a month at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast. Find it wherever you find podcasts or go. My other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast. Find it wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two exclusive episodes every month at patreon.com slash retronauts.

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