The Rewatchables - ‘Any Given Sunday’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: August 7, 2017

HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Chris Ryan to induct ‘Any Given Sunday’ into the Sports Movie Hall of Fame. They break down Oliver Stone’s bizarre editing (02:25), Cameron Diaz�...��s underrated ownership chops (08:15), Al Pacino’s last great performance (11:16), the Tao of James Woods (15:15), the eye-opening concussion/painkiller subplots (16:44), Jamie Foxx’s breakout role as Willie Beamon (21:17), the craziest cameos (34:27), and where the “Inches” monologue ranks in the pantheon of great sports movie speeches (45:04). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:01 All right, listen up. Let's it up. Inch by inch by play, until we're finished. You're five feet, nothing. A hundred and nothing. Shut up, old man. I ain't going nowhere.
Starting point is 00:00:10 If we played them ten times, they might win nine. But not this game. Not tonight. 60-minute falls out. It's a paramedic sort of matter. I must break you. Welcome to the rewatchables.
Starting point is 00:00:22 We're brought to you by Seek. The presenting sponsor of the Bill Simmons podcast, the easiest way to shop for the best tickets thanks to their revolutionary grading system. Download this. Seekek app today or go right to Seekek.com. This is a podcast. Chris Ryan and I did a few months ago about any given Sunday, a movie that came out in
Starting point is 00:00:42 1999 was polarizing at the time and has become exceedingly rewatchable. It is not a rewatchable hall of famer. I'm not even sure it's an honorable mention for the rewatchables, but it is a sports movie Hall of Famer. We've moved all the old sports movie Hall of Fame podcasts we have done. And actually, we did Jerry McGuire, Moneyball, Blue Chips, Wait. Men Can Jump and Any Given Sunday. So if you miss those, check out the rewatchables feed here.
Starting point is 00:01:06 Inch by inch is any given Sunday. Chris Ryan here. How you doing? We did Jerry McGuire. We did Moneyball. Yeah. It seemed like it seemed like slightly more people listen to Moneyball. Oh, statistically.
Starting point is 00:01:19 Did you look at the advanced metrics? The advanced metrics of the Moneyball podcast was about 0.2% higher. That might say something demographically about your audience now. Maybe people think Jerry McGuire is a rom-com. Well, any given Sunday is not a rom-com. And coincidentally, it's been on recently. On HBO, they've been running what they've been calling a director's cut, which is funny because it's six minutes shorter than the actual theatrical release.
Starting point is 00:01:43 There's a couple of directors' cuts out there that are like that, where it'll be like the movie is actually worse because the director's cut or shorter because the director's cut. I personally like the four-hour when they eat's get the whole thing. Well, if you're going to do a director's cut, make it different. Yeah. Like the almost famous director's cut is like, what, 30 minutes longer and it has all the extra scenes that almost turn it into a different movie. The Miami Vice Director's Cut has a different opening. It's a phenomenal. You and I both love that movie.
Starting point is 00:02:11 So this one's not really that different. My opinion, if you're going to do a director's cut of any given Sunday, actually have a real director come in and get rid of all the crazy edits that Oliver Stone made and try to make a better movie. And it's so funny, I am more conflicted about this movie. is a sports movie than I think any other movie we're going to do other than maybe he got game. There's so many good pieces in this movie and I enjoy it so damn much. And then there's some spots where Oliver Stone just goes ISO ball. He's like, clear out, clear out. Yeah, it's just Oliver Stone on the wing, waving everybody away from him. Every once in a white, just randomly. Yeah. It's like we've just scored 12 straight Oliver Stone. No, no, no, we don't want to ISO him.
Starting point is 00:02:52 Him coming out of natural born killers, so this was like a pretty, you know, fertile period for Stone, but he had started to decline a little bit, I think commercially. And Nixon didn't do as well as he had hoped. But he'd still had that like... He had U-turn. And he had U-turned. And he'd done U-turn.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Nixon, it was going to be Nixon any given Sunday. And in between the two, he slapped U-turn in there. And that was just like one of the weirder watches you're going to get, if you check that out. Jennifer Lopez, Sean Penn,
Starting point is 00:03:16 kind of like a hitchcockian western thriller. It's not very good. Yeah. But you still see a lot of the stuff that he started doing with natural-born killers. He's applying like these kind of like kinetic fast cuts. I think there's like something like 3,000 cuts.
Starting point is 00:03:30 I can't remember there's some insane amount in this movie. JFK is a little bit of that too. Exactly. Different film stocks, like flashbacks using newsreel footage, all this stuff. This movie tends to use some of that, those same formal tricks, but to sort of try to paint these football players as like guardians of heaven. Like gladiators. Yeah, gladiators.
Starting point is 00:03:51 Exactly. So it's the kind of thing you can imagine him in some Hollywood Hills house, explaining the movie to somebody. He's like, so it's going to be a football movie. It's going to expose what football really like how brutal it is. But during the movie, I'm going to intercut some Ben Hur and some gladiator. Every once in a while, Dennis Coyd's face will dissolve into the sky. People in leather helmets.
Starting point is 00:04:14 Yeah. And it's going to be old school, new school. That's what I'm going to. And people are like, yeah, Oliver, it sounds great, good idea. So I think one of the main things we're going to talk about with this. This movie came out in 1999. we're going to probably talk about how pressing it was but I did want to ask you what was your do you remember what you thought of it when it came out Not only do I remember, I saw it in the theater and I think I wrote a review about it on my old
Starting point is 00:04:37 website. And the big takeaway for me, I had three takeaways. One, it's just like classic Pacino. Yeah. And I think that still holds up. Two, it was a breakout movie for Jamie Fox. This was the guy from In Living Color and a variety show who just, I don't think anybody had ever really considered as a real actor.
Starting point is 00:04:55 And he was a revelation in this movie. It's like, wow, Jamie, when it came out that he was playing the quarterback, it seemed crazy. It's like, really, Jamie Fox? Yeah, he's been in great white hype and, you know, random roles in the truth about cats and dogs and stuff like that. It's like, they couldn't get Will Smith and Will Smith passed. It turned out Puff Daddy was the one that passed or got fired depending on whose story you believe. Yeah. I believe the puff daddy threw like a girl story. That's the one. And then the other one is the other thing I also believe is that this
Starting point is 00:05:21 movie just kept getting postponed and postpone to postpone and postpone and he was like, I'm, I have a lot of money on the line to go on a tour. I have to get out of here if you guys aren't going to make this money. But the third part of this, which still holds up, is the cuts. Yeah. And the fact that in the theater, it almost made you sick. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:45 It was like a disorienting. And after two, it was like 170 minutes in the theater. Yeah. It's a two and a half hour movie like as, yeah. And after a while, you're just like your head spinning. A scene that should have been really great that wasn't because. Stone was just out of his mind with the directing was when Fox goes to Pacino's house.
Starting point is 00:06:04 And they have the kind of the conflict. And it's right when Beeman's really starting to feel himself. And Pacino's going old school. And they're trying to have this moment. And it's too, it's a great actor and somebody who's about to be a very good actor having kind of a moment. And Stone's just cutting away. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:21 He's showing pictures. It's like, can I just enjoy this? I just connection to them act. That's actually a really cool scene. Yeah. Yeah. Just stay out of the way, Oliver. So let's start with Pacino.
Starting point is 00:06:33 Sure. He's basically playing the heat cop. Yes. What's the heat cop's name? Vincent Hanna. He's playing Vincent Hanna. Now, Vincent Hanna has left the Miami. The Los Angeles police for us.
Starting point is 00:06:49 And now is a longtime football coach. 37 years in the game. 37 years in the game. I think when they start this movie. Who is he like Jeff, like a less success? or more successful, Jeff Fisher? I get the impression, I mean, this movie's right on the edge
Starting point is 00:07:05 to where the coaches all sort of started changing their looks. So I saw him more as like the last of the Bear Bryant, Tom Landry types. Oh, like the Chuck Knoll, Don Shula, Residoo. Yeah, life for guys who've just been with the same team. Shula, yeah. The era before Jimmy Johnson. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:07:21 where guys are coming in from college or leaving after three or four years. So he plays Tony DeMato. And he's basically on. on his way out. He's got this new owner, the daughter, played by Cameron Diaz, Peak Diaz. Yeah. She wants to make changes.
Starting point is 00:07:38 Who's the offensive coordinator's name? It's Aaron Eckhart playing Nick Crozier. Who's like a Josh McDaniels type. I have a whole Nick Crozier thing. I will do it now. Well, it's just that I'm, I'm, so Nick Crozier this movie comes out in 1999. I think that there is a 85% chance that Lane Kiffin sees this movie and decides to become an offensive coordinator based on it.
Starting point is 00:07:58 He starts working at USC two years later. You're telling me that he didn't see any given Sunday and said, wait, Aaron Eckhart's definitely the star of that movie. And all this stuff in there about, like, he wants to air it out. It's all about modernizing the game. And then he's like bucking against Domato and he's telling the owner, he's put the Christine Paganacci or whatever Cameron Diaz's character's name. Weird damn.
Starting point is 00:08:20 And she's like, I'm not going to spend another year under him. And you see that actually, and this is crazy. Is that this random Oliver Stone movie that came out 1999. You see this play out all the time with these hot shit offensive coordinators who want to get out from under their, like, conservative coaches. This just happened with Lane Kiffin and Nick Saven. I know. It taps in us so many things that either were happening that nobody had put in a movie or still happened to this day. Like the offensive coordinator breathing down the old head coach.
Starting point is 00:08:49 Yeah. The owner trying to be a shifter. Like she, first of all, the fact that there's two Miami teams in this movie is hilarious. Yeah. Well, so is it two Miami teams? In the, here's one thing I never got clear about this. Is this the only football league? Or is there also an NFL in this, in this, in a even Sunday world?
Starting point is 00:09:06 Because they're like the cross town rival, like they have a cross town Miami rival or whatever. But they never said who it was. Okay. So she wants to move to L.A. Because they're going to build her a new stadium. Right. Which are basically, by the way, something that happened in the NFL for 20 years is people threatening to leave wherever they were to go to L.A.
Starting point is 00:09:22 Like the, as is this, the, you know, someone basically inheriting a team from their parents. Right. Yeah. She wants to get rid of Pacino, who's past his prime and promote Nick Crozier. Yeah. And she wants to build the team around Willie Beeman and cut Capruini, who's Dennis Quaid's character, the old 39-year-old quarterback, two-time Pantheon Cup champion. And LTT, who played Shark Levo. Shark Leveau?
Starting point is 00:09:46 Shark Leveh. Luther Shark Leve. She wants to get rid of those two and build around Willie Beeman and Crozier. Good plan. I think she was a good owner. She's a great idea. Moneyball before it came out. It was like, great ideas.
Starting point is 00:09:58 Christina Pagniacci. Yeah. Really was way ahead of her time. The best part is, her introduction is she's, this really agitated presence in the owner's box. And in the first scene in the movie, Dennis Quaid gets crunched on a high-low sack. He plays Jack, quote, Cap Rooney. You know, that's his nickname Cap Rune. He's basically Dan Marino slash Brett Farr of seven years later.
Starting point is 00:10:20 And apparently the hitting was so real in the filming that the guy who was like Quaid's stunt double almost tore his ACL on that hit. And it's great because she's immediately getting on the phone and she's like, I got to find out the market for quarterbacks. Like, what's this guy doing? Get me this guy. And you think that that's crazy. But then when you watch the Joneses in the Cowboys Owners Box, you're like, I can totally see them doing that.
Starting point is 00:10:41 I agree. The characters from this movie, that would be the most fun in real life if they were actually in the NFL. She's probably number one. Oh, yeah. If you had a hot female owner who's kind of like Dan Snyder, if Dan Snyder was a hot blonde. Yeah. And Angie Dickinson is around who's kind of still there.
Starting point is 00:10:56 But he's like, yeah. With like a drunk hot 40 years ago, mom kind of lingering who always has a drink at her hand, there's that great scene when she goes into the locker room. And Stone's just like, I need an extra who looks like a football player who has the biggest dong imaginable. And Cameron's going to come in and walk right by him. She just walks by the guy. But it's actually a really effective scene because it shows like she's been around football our whole life. She's not intimidated by these guys.
Starting point is 00:11:22 But she just waltzes in. Willie Beeman ends up hitting on her. But back to Buccino. No, this was, I think, his last great performance. And this is a great actor who his first major movie was Godfather One, which was 1972. Goes all the way. He's, him and the Niro are the most important actors of the 70s.
Starting point is 00:11:42 Kind of takes a break in the 80s for reasons that remain unclear. Did some Broadway. It might have had some personal issues. Comes back with See You Love and then just starts ripping off movies really for the next 10 years. Finally, when's the ask her for Son of a Woman. Heets a classic. Does any given Sunday and the insider in 99, that's pretty much the...
Starting point is 00:12:01 Right. I think the insider was first. And then the only other one he did was insomnia. But we're talking about four years later, he's in Gile. Yeah. And it's the wheels have come off and he's turned into the scent of a woman of Pacino and everything. And Bill Hader's doing impressions of him. He's really great in this movie. And when we're researching it, initially it was Clint Eastwood.
Starting point is 00:12:18 And he wanted to direct it. He wanted to direct it as well. If Clint Eastwood is the coach. It's a totally different movie. If Clint Eastwood directs it, it's a totally different movie. It might not be back. Yeah, it's an hour 40. It's 89 minutes.
Starting point is 00:12:28 It ends abruptly. Yeah. But then the second one that they went for was who? De Niro. Oh, De Niro, yeah. Doesn't work with De Niro. No. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:39 Doesn't work at all. Pacino's perfect because, you know, there's like five, he has like five great scenes in this movie. The Inches speech, which we'll get to later. The dinner with Beeman, which we just discussed. The, at halftime with Dennis Quaid. Yeah. after Caparuni plays in the first half with his broken body and he's like, I will never forget what you did.
Starting point is 00:13:02 That was great. The ending after the game, walking on the field with Willie when they finally find common ground, it's just great Pacino. And then I gotta say the ending, that's one of the best sports movie endings. This sort of where everybody has their sort of post script kind of? Yeah, it's credits.
Starting point is 00:13:17 It's like, oh, the movie's over. And it's like, Pacino comes in. And he's like, I decided to leave and thank you to Christine. and Pagniucci. I think Nick Croix is going to do a great job. And he does the whole thing. And it's like, oh, this is nice. And then he's like, I decided to take a job with that new expansion team in Albuquerque.
Starting point is 00:13:38 It's like Albuquerque. It's like, Albuquerque. They have an expansion team. And I'm signing Willie Beeman as my franchise player. It's like, what rules are this? I know, seriously, it's the Beeman rule. He exploited the Beeman rule. I guess he was a third string quarterback.
Starting point is 00:13:49 His contract probably wasn't, like, solid. No. I mean, he had been, he had been on his 14. but the most incredible part of this movie, and it's a movie that somebody's eyeball comes out of their eye and a hit. Yeah. Is that Albuquerque got a football expansion team?
Starting point is 00:14:04 I would love any given Sunday, too, when the Albuquerque breaks the record for least amount of people at a stadium for their first AFFL season. I also, you know, I kind of want to talk about this. I'm not so sure Tony DiMotto is a good coach. No, he's not, but great speeches. Do you know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:14:19 Great speeches, but there's a lot of bewilderment. First of all, I never trust a coach who the guy closest to him. him is the doctor. In all the shots to the sideline, it's James Woods who plays perfectly named Dr. Harvey Mandrake, the orthopedist for the team. Have you ever seen a cutaway shot to the sideline when the orthopedist
Starting point is 00:14:37 is standing next to the head coach and kind of like clapping and is like, yeah, great call Tony. Powerful doctor. So there's just a lot of like bewilderment on his part. He's got his like play call sheet, but he does a lot of not just talking to Nick in the booth, but turning
Starting point is 00:14:53 around to look at him while he's up in booth like I would love to see that if Jason Garrett was like turning around being like what are you doing to me down here it's awesome it's just like those little things that they get slightly wrong that are really amusing but I just don't think Tony's actually a good coach do you think when they did the breaking bad prequel they thought about having albuquerque having the expansion team there and those guys haven't seen tickets the albuquerque expanded universe that would be great I always wanted them to cross movies and TV shows things like that we'll get back to to Pacino but you mentioned
Starting point is 00:15:25 Dr. Harvey Mandrick. Jimmy Woods. Jimmy Woods. You and I both love Jimmy Woods more than anyone. I've watched Against All Odds, which is a pretty terrible 80s movie. But it's like James Woods just piqued James Woods out of his mind being James Woods doing James Wade's, like in car races and trying to kill people. I almost wonder why his career wasn't better. Who doesn't enjoy James Woods? Why wasn't he in like an HBO show?
Starting point is 00:15:56 James would seems like a kind of litigious person right now? Is that what it is? Is he like to? So I just don't want to venture too many guesses about what could. I mean, I think he's just got a very distinct personality. Reputations being difficult. Yeah, perhaps, right? I think they, because in the early 80s and late 70s. I'm not afraid of James Williams.
Starting point is 00:16:12 He just sued a dead guy. He sued a dead guy. He'll definitely sue Chris Ryan. You know, he was in the Onion Field and once upon a time in America. And he was in Salvador, which is his first time with. with Oliver Stone. I think he's just like a really good... He's just like one of those unique presences.
Starting point is 00:16:30 I mean, it doesn't even matter what the movie is. It's just you're always going to get James Woods, who is completely bad shit. Right. Yeah. He's always James Woods, no matter what the character is. James Woods could actually slip in here.
Starting point is 00:16:41 I mean, this is a little earlier than what the sports movie Hall of Fame parameters are. But I could actually see James Dix Town is actually an underrated sports movie with Lugossett Jr. Yeah. No? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:51 I'll have to watch it again. We talked about how this movie is prescient. Yeah. Wasn't just with the owner and all the stuff they're trying to do, but the concussions and the painkillers, which is why it's so funny that the NFL, maybe funny is not the right word. It took them another 10 years to even acknowledge
Starting point is 00:17:09 that football might cause concussions. Yeah. And you have this movie in varsity blues came out the same year. Concussions are a huge part of this. Like here's some quotes. Caparuni, I got blank spots in my memory. I shake.
Starting point is 00:17:21 I can't even hold a spruce. spoon. LT's character. How about another shot, Doc? Give me some of that cortisone shit. Tony to cap, you just need the needle. Diaz, when she's talking about how she'd cut LT, nobody's going to sign a $2 million concussion case.
Starting point is 00:17:37 Yeah. These are all lines of the movie. In the movie, LT has three concussions in five months. They get him to sign a paralysis death waiver before the final big game. Now, for what it's worth. These are all things going on in a 1999 football movie. Your mileage may vary on how reliable this sources, but Barry Switzer, who appears in this movie,
Starting point is 00:17:59 was kind of like, this is kind of ridiculous. There's some stuff in here that's just totally insane, like making a guy sign a paralysis waiver. Not the eyeball coming out of the guy's eye. Not LT, chain sign and SCB at a party. But yeah, there's sort of the turning point of the movie in a lot of ways is when James Woods' character, Dr. Harvey Mandrake, is fired because Matthew Modine,
Starting point is 00:18:21 who's the internist and is the guy sort of responsible, I guess, for them being... He's the good doctor. Yeah, he's the good doctor. He kind of rats him out to coach and says that Mandraig's been switching test results and obscuring people and feeding these guys drugs. It's pretty... I mean, it's very seedy. It's got that.
Starting point is 00:18:39 It's perfect that it's in Miami because it has a kind of like... It has that sweaty grease all over the movie where it's kind of like, yeah, I bet there is like a mini mall where people guys go to get steroids here. Oh, no question. It does pass the... rule of any movie filmed in Miami is a good movie, or at least the watchful movie. Even Pain and Gain, which is a terrible movie, but it was set in Miami and I enjoyed it. It doesn't really matter what happens.
Starting point is 00:19:01 They had initially sort of been in working in conjunction with the NFL, and I think somebody from NFL films sent Stone, a bunch of footage to work from. Oliver Stone's big thing was that he had seen Saving Private Ryan and he wanted the football scenes and the movie to feel like Saving Private Ryan. And he started watching some of this footage, and then as soon as the NFL found out what the movie was about, they were like, we're not cooperating with this, you know. And they probably shouldn't have. Right.
Starting point is 00:19:26 And that was one of the things when it came out, it was supposed to be like an unfinching look at professional football. Yeah. But yet it had L.L. Cool J as the running back and Jamie Fox is the quarterback. So people didn't really know what to make it. Right. But Oliver Stone had a lot of juice at the time. Sure.
Starting point is 00:19:43 Yeah. It still was, I would compare it. I think Tarantino is obviously a much better and more accomplished director, but it was still still, if he was releasing a movie All Over Stone, it got everyone's attention. It was in the same decade that he had made JFK. I mean, he's still a pretty major dude. But even natural born killers, I think, was really ahead of its time type movie.
Starting point is 00:20:05 So then when he would have a misfire, like, U-turn, he still knew, it was like, oh, you turn, are you going to go see it? The reviews are bad. Well, it's Stone, like he had, it was at least in that mode. But he's pretty nuts at this point. There's a really good untold story of any given Sunday on Complex that our buddy Tom Scolianopolis wrote. That's where we got the P. Diddy story.
Starting point is 00:20:24 And there's a great point where this director of photography shows up for the first day on the set. And Stone comes up to him and says, welcome to Vietnam. This is for any given Sunday, not Platoon or Board of the Fourth of July. And he's just like, what the fuck is going on? And they wind up, it's because Stone was like putting gopros on guys' heads before you could even do that. But like putting a steady cam on a pogo stick and sticking it in between, guys were
Starting point is 00:20:48 playing football in this movie. Yeah. You forget, like, the NFL in the 90s and the early 2000s. Like, the way they filmed the game was really primitive. They just used a wide shot of the game. And it wasn't until this movie and then the ZFL when they put the camera behind the quarterback. Now you watch, like, that's the most important camera that we have at any NFL game. Right.
Starting point is 00:21:10 That dangling thing right behind the QB, when you can see what Rogers sees, the NFL wasn't filmed like that. So you see a movie like any given Sunday in the theater. It's like, oh, I feel like I'm in the game finally. Yeah. And so that part was cool. This is 99, so that's right around Greatest Show on Turf. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:27 Well, what's funny is Willie Beeman, Jamie Fox's character, who, you know, he's the third string quarterback, black, different kind of style. He's supposed to represent, like, the future of where stuff's going. Capron. He's like the old school, traditional white quarterback, tough, going to have to carry him out to get him out of the game. and then Jamie Fox is the stereotypical new wave character. He's me, me, me. He makes a rap video. It's kind of hit some beats that I wouldn't say they're racist,
Starting point is 00:21:59 but they're definitely a little stereotypical. They're probably like they, whether intentionally or not, he pushes it so far just to make his point, but it winds up making the movie feel a little bit aged. It's a little stereotypical. But Willie Beeman's an amazing character. Yeah. I love that conversation.
Starting point is 00:22:15 The thing about that, that scene with Pacino when they're talking about whether or not he's going to ever like respect the game and he's a quarterback, you know, a leader, like all these guys, they'll break their ribs. But his whole story about how like I got screwed in this recruiting thing or like when a booster gave me a suit to wear to some other guy's wedding
Starting point is 00:22:35 that I didn't even know. And then when I got like in like, what does he go to junior college or the pros and like they try to make him into a cornerback? He said he dropped five rounds. He made him quarterback. He said it wasn't racism. It was placism.
Starting point is 00:22:46 Yeah, and he's like, I had to try and tackle guys that are like 100 pounds heavier than I am. And he's like, this is like, hurt my shoulder and they wouldn't let me get better and all this stuff. It's actually really detailed. It's pretty interesting. And unfortunately, Oliver Stone kept cutting away to Gladiator and Ben Hurd. Right. Pacino said, you're a goddamn quarterback. You know what that means?
Starting point is 00:23:04 It's top spot kid. It's a guy that takes the fall. Who will break their ribs and their noses and their necks for you because they believe? Because you make them believe. That's a quarterback. There's some definite overriding in this script, but I still enjoy it. It's apparently, like, it was like three or four different scripts for different movies that were like, ended together. It was like the guy who wrote the doctor stuff.
Starting point is 00:23:26 He actually went up becoming a doctor on Biggest Loser. Yeah. And he, but he used to be the doctor at like the Rams, I think. He's actually, I think Jimmy Kimmel's doctor. Is he really? Yeah. No way. He knows him really well.
Starting point is 00:23:37 Is Jimmy like, give me the needle? It is the cortisone. Yeah. But so the Willie Beeman happens in 99. And it's right there in this wave of, oh, here comes the black quarterback. It was a big storyline. The next year, Aaron Brooks on New Orleans kind of reenacted the Willie Beeman thing a little bit. He came in off the bench.
Starting point is 00:23:59 He was pretty good. They had a very similar style with the way they played. And I remember I had a column on my own website at the time. Like, oh, my God, it's Willie Beeman. Like, this, it's finally happened. I mean, I grew up in Philly with Randall Cunningham. And it was just like the amount of time I spent. for like the first 15 years of my life seemingly
Starting point is 00:24:16 listening to people debate whether or not Randall Cunningham was a pocket pass or not, whether or not he... Yeah, like, who even cares? Yeah, but it's just like it was insane how much people were like, well, I mean, you know, that's not really a quarterback, you know?
Starting point is 00:24:27 Right. He's a running back or quarterback? Yeah. Well, then Michael Bick shows up a couple years after this movie and blows him in, but, you know, I think it's really important when you rewatch this movie because Jamie Fox is now a star.
Starting point is 00:24:39 I don't know what the equivalent would be of right now. what to the 2017 version of this where you'd be like that guy's the whatever I thought between this and Ali all the sudden I was like Jamie Fox is a real actor Jamie Fox has good scenes in Ali
Starting point is 00:24:55 A couple years later he does collateral and that kind of solidifies it But I'm not sure who else could have played Willie Beeman If you go through it's like Will Smith probably too famous at that point but I don't think he would have been a good
Starting point is 00:25:05 Billy Beeman. I kind of have a lot of respect for all the guys in this movie because you know they had real football players playing in all the other positions. Ricky Waters is in this movie, Terrell Owens, you know, LTs out there.
Starting point is 00:25:16 And I guess a lot of the extras were basically XFL or arena football league guys or played Canadian football if they weren't already NFL guys. So like, even if there are stunt doubles, those guys all pretty much look passable as athletes. I think Foxo is the most realistic quarterback we've had. There's probably other people who are equal to him, but he's in the conversation.
Starting point is 00:25:38 Reynolds was great in Longest Yard going way back. Brendan Fraser in school ties Really good Really effective Now he's an overweight security guard In the affair Overweight what is he Correctional Guard or whatever
Starting point is 00:25:53 But it's very rarely Have we had somebody That really does look like a quarterback Yeah It's usually like a Vanderbeek Type situation Where they're cutting him from weird angles And
Starting point is 00:26:05 Yeah But I really believe that he could have been a quarterback Yeah for sure I mean he's a little short But that's about it But he actually plays that up where it's like cap is so tall and kind of like the statue S quarterback. And Beeman has almost like a Drew Breeze kind of like jumping over the line to see kind of thing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:20 How did you feel about Bill Belomay as not the Terrell Owens? I don't know who would have been. Yeah, I don't know who he's supposed to be. I mean, like his scene in the- He's more like an Andre Johnson, but his scene in the bathroom with L.O. Cool J is pretty legendary. I don't know. When he talks about his sausage, yeah. He's in there.
Starting point is 00:26:37 El-Cool-J convincing running back. Yeah. And also really good. I got to get mine. Yeah. Like Ricky Waters type of like, yeah. That was kind of what the running back, the stereotypical running back was at the time. Right.
Starting point is 00:26:48 Me, me, me, I got to get mine, all that stuff. Like that actually was pretty realistic. They, so he has a fight with Fox in this movie in the shower. Yeah. That I always thought was a real fight. I actually always thought he punched him in the shower. And then come to find out when research this movie, the fight actually happened on the sideline. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:06 When they got into it on the sideline. Apparently, oh, Cool J punched him. And Fox got mad. I was like, don't do that again. So they filmed the scene from another angle and he kind of hit him again. And then they just went at it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:19 And apparently O'Cool J won, but there's a lot of bitterness after the fact with them for a couple years. Then eventually they made up. But that's one of those early internet stories that would have been so much more fun in 2017. If like Drake. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:33 Drake and Jarkey Rosen get to fight. Yeah, whatever. Like, that would have been awesome. So can I ask you a question? like now it seems like you watch this movie and it almost seems tame compared to what we think about the NFL now, right? Do you think it seems tame? Because like there's a cocaine hooker bathroom scene, an eyeball comes out of an eye, there's
Starting point is 00:27:53 cortisone. Some of the violent stuff like in terms of all in the field. Like I think that the game, it just looks different now. I mean, when you watch football and this sort of captures that part where I remember when we were kids, like growing up it is like, I just remember Phil Hissims handing off to Joe Morris and kind of be like three yards. Yeah. Pretty cool.
Starting point is 00:28:10 And they start, we're starting to get into like a more of a wide open offense here. But, you know, I kind of wonder whether or not this game, like this movie, you could put it out today. And it would, it would feel pretty realistic, I think, in some ways. I thought watching on HBO, I thought it was realistic. Yeah. It seemed like not that, didn't seem like it came out 18 years ago. You know what? Wasn't realistic, though.
Starting point is 00:28:37 So they're playing the AFFA. Yeah. They try to win the Pantheon Cup. It's a league that has two Miami teams. And an Albuquerque expansion team. I freeze frame the TV to get most of these names and then went on the line for the rest. Here are the team names they came up with because they show like their schedule for the year. The Miami Sharks are Pacino's team.
Starting point is 00:28:59 The Seattle Prospects. Okay. Kind of? The LA Breakers. Wasn't that a team or was that the Boston Breakers? I think it was Boston Breakers. Minnesota Americans. The Houston Cattleman.
Starting point is 00:29:12 I like that one. The Washington Lumberman. I guess that would be Pacific Northwest. Wait, so there's a Seattle and a Washington? Yeah. Weird. Yeah. Two Washington teams.
Starting point is 00:29:24 That one plays in Tacoma. The Texas Radlers. Yeah. I like that. Is that the Dallas team they play at the end? Unclear. Oregon pioneers. So there's two Seattle.
Starting point is 00:29:36 There's two Washington teams and an Oregon team. This is amazing. They really beefed up the Pacific Northwest. San Francisco Knights, Orlando Crusher's. This is one of my favorites. The Kansas Twisters. Oh, wow. That's a strong name.
Starting point is 00:29:50 The Wisconsin Iceman. Hmm. The Iceman, that's a strong name. How many teams are in this week? Why can't the Las Vegas NHL team be the Las Vegas Icemen? It's a good name. I don't know, a lot of teams of that. The California Crusaders, the New York Emperors, the Chicago Rhinos,
Starting point is 00:30:08 the main Androids. Yeah. So Maine had a team. That's a long flight. That's crazy. Yeah. Long flight.
Starting point is 00:30:16 Tough on the players. There's no direct flights. Colorado blizzards. And then finally the Albuquerque Aztex. You know who I think... I'm taking over an expansion team in Albuquerque. You know who I think might have some points about the amount of teams in different geographic areas here? Who?
Starting point is 00:30:30 Is Jack Rose. Johnson McGee's Jim Rome character? Unapologetic Jim Rome ripoff. Is Jim Rome mad when he sees? this movie? I don't know. I love the cutaway to where he's like writing his column and he's like he's a warrior poet, the 21st century
Starting point is 00:30:46 football player. Oh, it's great. And then he's got his like in the jungle moment with Beeman. He's like, I love it. You're dope. You're fresh. You're original. I know. And then, so one of the unrealistic parts of this movie is Pacino punches him at one point. Right. Which I feel like would be a bigger deal. It might be a suspension.
Starting point is 00:31:01 I mean, I think that like there was just not enough internet there to make that big like a huge thing. It would have just been like, oh did you here? like Charles Barkley spit on someone, you know? Yeah, like when the two Eagles beat writers punch each other. We got an oral history out of that. I know, that was a bigger story than Pacino McGinley. LT. chainsawing a SUV was pretty unrealistic.
Starting point is 00:31:21 Jamie Fox puking on the field? Twice. Twice? I don't know. Yeah. Don't know if we needed that. Don't know if I believed in that one. Not sure if there would be a Blue Angels flyover during a regular practice when the guys
Starting point is 00:31:33 just try and fill it. That happens right when Harvey Mandrae gets fired. Yeah. And there's just like randomly. F-16s flying over the stadium. I would be actually quite alarmed if that happened. All right, a couple important questions for you. First of all, do you think Harvey Mandraig versus Matthew Modin paralleled Willem Defoe versus Tom Barrenger?
Starting point is 00:31:50 I think so. It's all about duality. Is that what Stone was going for there? He's good and the bad. Like James Woods, when he walked off the field, could have raised his arms. Don't you think, though, prestige television being what it is? Can't we get a Dr. Harvey Mandraig spin-off a lot, like a just like an eight episode, like what's Mandrake doing in Miami now?
Starting point is 00:32:06 We always talked about heat check movie performances where like, you know, Jamal Crawford plays 17 minutes and scores 28 points and hits 10 threes. James Woods in this movie, he plays like nine minutes and he goes like nine for 10. He gets the line seven times
Starting point is 00:32:25 and I think he has three steals. And that has an incredible exit speech. Yeah. You know, where he's just like, these guys are gladiators, you know? I will not take the responsibility of standing in front of these guys in greatness. Right.
Starting point is 00:32:38 He's basically like Tony DeMato knew the whole time that they were doing all this stuff to the players, which, you know, I think these are still plots that exist in football right now. Yeah. What's changed? Seriously. Yeah. Nothing. I still think that they... Think about everything this movie covers from the medical stuff.
Starting point is 00:32:59 Now you're going to play innocent. Oh, yeah. Right. But everything this movie covers from the stadium stuff, the public funding of the stadium stuff, the CTE concussions, the power plays among coaches. I mean, are you watching it? I watched it happen with the Eagles a couple of years ago. You see like these kinds of palace intrigue type of situations in the front offices.
Starting point is 00:33:17 Let's talk about some of the casting. Jim Brown is the defensive coordinator. Montezuma Monroe. Montezuma Monroe. Yeah. That was definitely stone. I don't know how many drinks he had before he came up with the guy's name. Jim Brown coaching Lawrence Taylor.
Starting point is 00:33:32 Yeah. And just feel like you're going to get me fired. Probably two of the nine greatest football players of all time. Yeah. And they're doing scenes together. Terrell Owens is in this. Catches a touchdown in the climactic game. Yeah, so what's up with that?
Starting point is 00:33:44 Like, he was, was he just supposed to be, like, there for, like, for, like, scenery or, like, was he going to have a role? Just acting as a wide receiver named Owens. Charlton Heston is the commissioner. Yeah. What a great, great scene from him. How's your golf game? What does he say? He says, uh, I honestly believe that.
Starting point is 00:34:05 woman would eat her young about Cameron Diaz. So you have Ann Margaret, who we mentioned before, who was like, by all accounts, number one in the 60s for all red blooded males. Oh, I think I thought it was Angie Dickinson. It's Ann Margaret. Oh, you're right. Is it Angie Dickinson? That would be one of the best podcasts I could ever have is get somebody who's like 80 years old
Starting point is 00:34:25 to break down Ann Margaret versus Angie Dickinson. Bob Evans, where is he? It was A. Margaret. Bob Evans? Anne Margaret versus Angie Dickinson was like the bird and magic of some year in the 16th. You have the shark with a huge dung. I don't know what his name was. That's why he shouldn't put him in the credit.
Starting point is 00:34:42 Huge dong guy. Yeah. Elizabeth Berkeley. Yeah. As a hooker. Good girlfriend. Call girl. Yeah. Call girl or girlfriend?
Starting point is 00:34:49 Not clear. Yeah. I mean, I think a little bit of both. I think call girl. By the end of the movie, he's like, I've pissed away, everybody, all my money. Everybody who's loved me. We can get to the final speech. Oliver Stone is a hot take color guy.
Starting point is 00:35:03 Yeah. That's amazing. What is he supposed to be? Well, it's a local guy. And the funny thing is that he does stuff that like Bob Euker does in Major League where he like sneaks a drink in between and like his high-fiving. I guess he's supposed to be sort of like a, I don't know, like a Merrill Reese, Tommy. I mean, like just like one of those guys who's like sort of a homer.
Starting point is 00:35:23 But they seem pretty skeptical about the team in the beginning. Yeah. I like Stone and Tarantino will always sneak themselves into their own movie. Which would totally be my move by as a dr. He's just like calling in something and he just gets blown up. We mentioned McGinley. Johnny Unitas, Dick Buckus, NYA Tittle play coaches. Yeah, all those guys in the opposite.
Starting point is 00:35:44 Remember when DeMontas like, I know this coach? Yeah. They're like, you're going to run the same play for the third time in a row? He's like, I know this coach. There's like eight guys in the box. Like, it's a run. It's a run. Like you calls it out.
Starting point is 00:35:55 Totally. The music we have talked about quickly? Yeah. A lot of like Moby style like big beat techno. Yeah. Really good weird soundtrack. EMX, one of the best EMX songs on this. Jamie Fox has the little thing at the end,
Starting point is 00:36:07 the Any Given Sunday song and the credits. I love a song that's named after the movie. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's a great idea. And then you have kind of the precursor for the Friday Night Lights. Because of the speech. Yeah, that music.
Starting point is 00:36:21 It's not the only time that music, that weird kind of soulful, thoughtful guitar sound. Like the kind of, it's the room's like really slowed down you too. Yeah. I wonder if Peter Burr. maybe that planted a seed. You think? I think it did.
Starting point is 00:36:39 Yeah, of course. We forgot to mention second stringer, Tyler, whatever his name was, who was really the Brock. Cherubuchi. What's his name? Tyler Cherubucci, future Brock Osweiler.
Starting point is 00:36:50 You have the machine gun celebration. Yeah. Which has to be commended. There was two, right? One of them was the machine gun. One was like the grenade explodes. That would be like a 75-yard penalty now. If we're talking about the people in this movie,
Starting point is 00:37:04 I don't, I think we got to give, a little up for Quaid. Quaid and I was going to say Lauren Holly. Yeah. That's actually like, but they have like a, it's great how she flips. I think Lauren Holly is, is my number two character in this movie that could have been blown out into, like if this was the 10 episode Netflix series, could have, like the Roonies could have had their own episode. I wanted, I wanted more about Lauren Holly's life. Yeah. Because it's basically like the prototype of Peyton Manning's wife, who's very nice. I don't, Ashley Manning. He like slaps them and she's just, yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:33 It's the only domestic violence in the movie. Yeah. There's a hint of it when Jamie Fox is getting into it with Lila Rashon. Yeah, and she's just like, oh, no, now you're a star. You don't know. Yeah, there's a little domestic violence in the air, but thank God nothing happened. But then when it actually happens, it's Lauren Holly whipping on Dennis Quaid, who, you know, at the time Troy Aikman was at the end of his career. I used to joke at the time about Troy Eichman's concussion face. Quaid mastered that face, and I can't tell if it was acting or if that's just how he was.
Starting point is 00:38:05 Yeah. But he had that kind of blank. I kind of stunned. My brains are a little scrambled. And he's like, I can't hold the spoon anymore. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:12 There's that weird scene where it's like Nick Crozier, Capruny, Julius, like it's L.O.Cool-J and Domato. And they're talking about whether Beeman, you know, does the right things out on the field. It's actually, that's actually a really cool scene when they're in the locker room. Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:28 I like that scene. I love the LT in the sauna. Yeah. Which I have here. L.T. in the sauna. He says, this is,
Starting point is 00:38:38 by the way, LT delivers like a monologue in this movie. He actually, this is like, look how long this is. This is a whole paragraph. It's a monologue.
Starting point is 00:38:46 He says, for every sucker who makes it, for every Barry Sanders, for every Jerry Rice, there's a hundred N words you never heard of. Sure, the game taught you how to talk shit,
Starting point is 00:38:55 how to hit, but what else? Suddenly there's no more money, no more women, no more applause, no more dream. That's what I'm trying to say to you. When a man looks back at his life,
Starting point is 00:39:04 he should be proud of all of it. Not just the years he spent in pads and quits, not just memories of when he was great. You got to learn that in here. If you don't, you ain't a man, you're just another punk. L.T. Yeah, it's surprising. It's like Denzo Washington. And they don't do a lot like cutting away or punching.
Starting point is 00:39:18 No, he does it off. Yeah. How did he remember that? So should we wrap up by talking about the Pacino speech? Yeah, let's do it. Well, no, we have to, we got to talk about the Willie Beeman's song. Okay. The lyrics are got to get to work. That's right. You know, come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. You know,
Starting point is 00:39:40 my name. My name is Willie. Willie Beaming. I keep my ladies creaming. I'm going to guess that a song that has the words, I keep my ladies creaming. Yeah. You're going to get fined or suspended. Do you think that was written by Oliver Stone? Or they bring somebody in to do that. I think they brought in. I think DMX helped them. Yeah, right. DMX had another song in there. Maybe they got DMX's thing in there. Oh, we forgot one great James Woods quote. You're the internist. I'm new orthopedist. Remember? Bone muscle joint me. Running nose diarrhea, gonorrhea. pink eye you got it James Woodes
Starting point is 00:40:14 Harvey Mandrake Classic Mandrake Can Harvey Mandrake come back? I said I want Could we have a meeting when James Woods We're like hey James Why can't we just do
Starting point is 00:40:21 Bring bloodline back Dr. Harvey Man Drake Just have it be about Dr. Harvey Mandrake Living on Key West I would be so into it All right We didn't talk about the last
Starting point is 00:40:30 football game at all Let's do that And then we'll do inches Okay Last football game Unbelievable fourth downstop by LT Yes Who we think might have gotten paralyzed
Starting point is 00:40:38 It's not like it's wheeled off. There's so many guys getting wheeled off on stretchers in this movie. He's like, all right, but he moved this hand at one point. So I think he just got knocked out. But then so they're running down. They score what seems to be the game winning touchdown, called back on a flag. The whole football, the last football game scene is really, really good. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:41:04 It's really like top notch. And then it leads to like there's nine seconds left. somehow it's like a 200-yard field. It seemed like they're a way. They get a fourth down stop, but they still have to go 140 yards for a touchdown. And they call Comanche. And Nick Crozier's like,
Starting point is 00:41:21 Camanchi and Pacino, who's now aggressive because he's learned from Willie Beeman how to be aggressive again. He's the gambler. He's like Ron Rivera. Yeah. He's like, we're running Camachi. So Comanche is basically,
Starting point is 00:41:34 they send all the receivers out. Jamie Foxx rolled. to the right, along with L.O. Cool J., who's running down the sidelines with him, he scrambles for 20 yards as he's about to get hit, flips it to L.O. Cool J. So it's like a little hook and laddery. Sure. And then L.O. Cool J. sprints down the sidelines, because again, it's a 170-yard football field. Yeah. And then steps out with like a second left. Yeah. And then that leads to the dive. Yeah, well, that's basically the Cam Newton QB sneak. Yeah, but it's, As if, like, the guy is Jamie Fox turns into Edwin Moses and is able to, like, leap from like, again, like, the dimensions of the field are a little weird where, like, now all of a sudden they're like on the 11 yard line.
Starting point is 00:42:18 Yeah. Because his leap is like going forward, but like has like the wrong physical trajectory for a body that would be going in that direction. I think Oliver Stone, they were like, Oliver, there's some continuity issues with the yarder saying. He's like, screw that. Just put it over the bed, hurt. Welcome to Vietnam. Nobody will notice. Just cut to the sky.
Starting point is 00:42:36 I love chaos. Show me Heston. Yeah, so their last two plays are Comanche, which I really hope we see during any of these football weekends with whatever. And then the 11-yard QB dive. But if you had heard that speech, you'd be able to do it too. Yeah, all right. So let's do the speech.
Starting point is 00:42:57 I don't know what to say, really. But the speech, I thought everybody agreed that this was one of the great sports movie scenes of all time. Is there some disagreement about that? there's a slight disagreement. I think people think it's an overrated speech. It's, the thing that makes this speech is the fact that it's TMI.
Starting point is 00:43:16 He goes, he starts out and you're like, okay, okay. And then he starts just like, I've pissed away all my money. Right. Believe it or not. I believe it.
Starting point is 00:43:26 If you piss away, if you play your money, any way you play your, like offense, you probably piss it away. And then he's like, everybody who's ever loved me, I've pushed him away.
Starting point is 00:43:35 And it's like, can you imagine your coach all of a sudden just like giving you all this information? information about yourself. I wanted to go further. My breast smells like an ashtray.
Starting point is 00:43:44 I can't get an erection. Jack Rose says that I'm a fossil. It's just a... I can't get an erection unless I'm wearing a nightgown. It's just really crazy to watch, though, because all the cutaways, and there's actually like a really extra long Jamie Fox reaction shot.
Starting point is 00:44:00 Which is actually one of my favorite parts of the movie. It's like he's finally getting through to him. He's staying with him, and it just gets very effective after a while. So it's reportedly based on a Marty Schottenheimer speech, right? That's like the rumor. Yeah, so I looked at that. I mean, granted, we're getting some of our information from the internet. Lord knows, especially when you go to like IMDB trivia.
Starting point is 00:44:22 We could put up stuff there and who knows if it would stick. But they said it was a Marty Schottnheimer, 1989 Cleveland Brown speech. Okay. That it was based on. But Marty Schottheimer's speech was like, one day, my son, Brian, he's going to ruin the jets. That's shit. We're going to go out here. We're going to lose with 20 seconds.
Starting point is 00:44:38 We got this, guys. But there's no record of that speech on YouTube. I looked. Right. But I don't know, man. It's, it's, when you see it all written down and when we do, when we put up this post for the podcast, I just want to run the inch of speech. Sure. It's pretty effective, man.
Starting point is 00:44:58 It's like, he has this one part. You know when you get old in life. Things get taken from you. That's part of life. But you only learn that when you start losing stuff. you find out life's a game of inches. So is football. I started thinking about it.
Starting point is 00:45:13 Like, yeah, man. Start losing stuff. Yeah, it's about the inches. As you get older, sure. The beaches are all around us, Chris Ryan. And it's nice too, because like, it's very much like,
Starting point is 00:45:22 it becomes an, after this movie is so cartoonish for all of it, most of it, it just becomes very human. And that's actually like what Friday Night Lights did was take that halftime speech and then say like, why don't we just make this on the whole thing? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:35 Football is as important as life. and life is as important as football, and everybody who's involved, lives and dies with each other. And it's not like contracts and this and that and the other thing. It wraps up the whole movie. Yeah, it's really good.
Starting point is 00:45:47 It's really good. You know, the other thing that's frustrating about it is Stone Mae, as we discussed earlier, like he mangles the scene with the dinner scene, which should have been better. Yeah. But in this scene, he just leaves it alone. He lets Pacino act.
Starting point is 00:45:59 And he actually does do a couple of subtle things. Like, he'll cut, and you'll keep hearing Pacino's voice, but it'll be another shot of Pacino. Right, a freeze for him. Kind of like reacting. or like sighing or something, and it's very effective, yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:11 Do you like this speech better than the Billy Bob speech in the Friday Night Lights movie? Oh, fuck yeah. I think this is the best speech that's ever been given in a sports movie. There's another one in this movie called Vision Quest that probably nobody's seen,
Starting point is 00:46:25 but the guy gives, at the end of Vision Quest, Matthew Modine does know if he's going to wrestle shoot. The whole movie's about Matthew Modin's this wrestler, he drops all this way to wrestle shoot, and he's friends with this chef at the hotel that he works with. and the girl that he's dating splits and he decides he doesn't want to go through the match.
Starting point is 00:46:44 And who the hell knows? It's an 80s movie plot. He goes to see the chef and the chef's getting dressed. Do you remember this? Yeah. And he's like, you're coming to this? He's like, hell yeah, I'm coming. I took the day off.
Starting point is 00:46:55 And then he tells this whole story about this time he watched this Pele soccer game. And Pele scored and fans are crying and he was crying. And he's like, he's like, it's not, Mo Dean says something like. It's six minutes. Like six minutes on the matts. He's like, it's not the six minutes. It's what happens in the six minutes. That's as good as this.
Starting point is 00:47:17 But this is longer and it's film better. And I don't know. It also tied up the movie because the whole movie, the team's not on the same page, right? Yeah. I mean, if you really like, if they had made this movie correctly and it was two hours, it's really a movie about a team that's split. It's got a fucked up owner. It's got this old quarterback, new quarterback thing.
Starting point is 00:47:37 It's got the offensive coordinator breathing down the head coach's neck. L.O. Cool J and Jamie Fox don't get along. It's got, and then LT's mad at everybody. But then he, the speech, he ties everyone together. He's like, you got to be willing to die for the guy next to you. That's the only way you win. But this speech could have been terrible, which is why I think it's so good. Like, this really could have been like the end of Pacino's career.
Starting point is 00:47:57 If they had cut away, because like the first shot of this movie is literally lightning striking and guys playing football in the sky. So it was in play for this speech to get ruined. And they must have just really known what they had with like the performance and everything and not gotten in the way of it. Because otherwise you would have just expected like the Blue Angels to fly through the locker room or something. It's four minutes and 35 seconds. And the speech is 465 words. Wow.
Starting point is 00:48:23 And Pacino just rattles it off. And the thing is like if that's Quinn Eastwood, there's no way. Oh, no. It's like 20 seconds. If it's Clint Eastwood, they have Nick Cruser give the speech. And just be like we got to exploit their, they're not checking the guy in the. flat. We got to dump it down a lot. Let's go out there, guys. Go through your progressions. Come on, guys. Do your job.
Starting point is 00:48:43 But I think like you look at the great moments of Pacino's career. Because to me, this is really, the legacy of this is it's like the beginning of Jamie Fox's career. It's the end of Chino's Coathector 2 is his peak. It's his apex. That's one of the great acting performance. Like Kay telling him about the abortion, it's an all time seen by an actor. and just the whole thing and how he changes from one to two and his body changes, his mannerisms, everything is amazing. But then Dog Day afternoon, he's great. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:15 And Justice for All, which was kind of early scent of a woman, Heat any given Sunday, Pacino, he's great in that. I really like C of Love, man. I thought he was great in C of Love, man. He thought he was great in the Senara, which we did a podcast a year ago on the Beers podcast. He's great in the Glendary movie. Yeah, he had a lot of great moments,
Starting point is 00:49:33 but I think this speech was was the last one. There's a movie that's on cable sometimes called 88 minutes. Oh, really? What's that? Horror movie. Okay.
Starting point is 00:49:43 He's in it? Yeah, he's like, he's been chasing down the serial killer. And now it's on a college campus and it's just, you know, he's still got the crazy Pacino hair
Starting point is 00:49:54 and he's just kind of at the very tail end of everything. And it's just, this is the last movie he was great. You know, the De Palma was making or was going to make a, Paterno movie with him.
Starting point is 00:50:06 And I don't think that ever came out or maybe never got made, but it was like there was a lot of problems with the production, I usually can imagine. But it would have been interesting to see him cap his career with a couple of last few great performances. And that would have been an interesting movie, those two guys. Has he made a good movie in the last 10 years? No, I think literally this is the end. Because this is the end of that 90s room where he's like Carlito's Way, Glenn Gary Glenn Ross,
Starting point is 00:50:28 you know, insider this. There's just like so many good movies in the 90s from him. You know what else is great about this? He's back in Miami where he was Tony Montana. Yeah. Which is both the peak and the valley of his career. Which Oliver still wrote Scarface. Right.
Starting point is 00:50:41 Yeah. Right. And the great thing about him in Scarface is it doesn't ever feel like it's Pacino. It's like it's this own character slash person. So if you could get in any given Sunday about any NFL team now, what would you make it about? Who would you make it about? Or what would any given Sunday look in 2017? Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:50:58 Or if they made any given Sunday as like a season on HBO or cinema. I think it would definitely be a TV show now. I don't think it would be a movie. I think a lot of the themes would be the same. But I think the difference would be now everybody would be much more wary of concussions. Yeah. And more of it would be about the perception of, oh, we can't have the fans think this. Or we're going to get in trouble or the league, you know, we can't, we can't do it that way.
Starting point is 00:51:24 And it would be a lot more of trying not to get caught. Yeah. Versus this 1999 movie is more about this is just the way we do it. I mean, I definitely, there's, like, just like watching what happened, Romo and Dak this year, it shows why the cap and Beeman storyline is, like, so interesting. And you would have had something like that. I think the ownership stuff is really interesting.
Starting point is 00:51:44 And they're, like, getting the city to pay for it and leveraging Miami or leveraging L.A. against Miami. Romo never won two Pantheon Cups. That's true. That's true. And Dak was that. And Capruny never went to Cabo and ruined the playoffs. Yeah, I think it would be, I would definitely keep it in Miami.
Starting point is 00:52:01 Mm-hmm. I love the idea of two Miami teams. That's great. I think Levitard and Stu Gatz are definitely in it. The best part about Miami, too, is that you just have these random monsoon days where it's just like no other place in the NFL is there ever like, oh, it's the torrential downpour. People's lives are in danger. I think Stu Gots is Jack Rose.
Starting point is 00:52:20 His last boy scouts set in Miami or L.A. L.A. Miami? No, you're right, L.A., yeah. Where to stand on that. Is that a sports movie? No, there's only like two sports scenes in that movie. But I love it.
Starting point is 00:52:31 I mean, I love that movie. I don't know why they had Damon Wayans store left-handed. Even in the theater, I think I saw that by myself. I'm just looking around on my road, like dying to talk to anyone in the theater. Like, really, left-handed? You're going to complete, you're going to foil a bomb left-handed from 58 yards away. So any given Sunday, we both agree, still holds up. Oh, sure.
Starting point is 00:52:52 It's on HBO. It's on demand. It is two and a half hours of your time, well spent. Yeah. I got to say my wife watched it with me because I had to take notes to, I want to be ready for this and she's like, oh, I don't remember this. I was like, we saw this on a date. She said, I don't remember.
Starting point is 00:53:06 We watched it. She was kind of into it. Yeah. It doesn't really drag. It's very soap opera. It's very dramatic. What would you cut if you had to cut a half hour out of this movie? It's tough because I probably would cut the Elizabeth Berkeley part.
Starting point is 00:53:20 I don't think that that part is like really makes any sense and doesn't really wind up affecting it that much. I would want to keep all the cap and Lauren Holly stuff. And I, even though like the rap video stuff is stupid, it just, It's effective in showing. It would be like a really short time span for a quarterback to go from a bench. Can you imagine if Dak got the start in week two? But instead it's like week six in this league, right?
Starting point is 00:53:43 And he had a rap video by week nine. Everybody would be like, hey man, that's like a little bit fast. It did seem fast. But I would never cut Harvey Mandrake. I would never cut. I think you're right about cutting all the Pacino personal stuff because they did. Apparently his son is in the movie. and that got left.
Starting point is 00:54:02 It's in the Blu-ray. Oh, really? But there's this whole, played by Jim Cavazil. Oh, right. I saw that that got cut out. Yeah. So they cut that stuff out.
Starting point is 00:54:10 So there's more Pacino. I'm amazed that they got stoned to keep this under three hours. I know. I know. He's a legendary, never cut anything out. What was the movie made?
Starting point is 00:54:19 Alexander? Yeah, it was three. And like four hours? It was like four hours. Yeah. Yeah. And it ruined Colin Farrell's life. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:54:26 I think you could get to like 210 with this, but I don't think you could do. Also, it just would be a very effective, of like 45 minutes a week show. You could just do so much different stuff. Well, what was? The playmakers of Nick Crozier?
Starting point is 00:54:37 Yeah. Wasn't this playmakers basically? I guess so, but not with the amount of flair and like the dramatic violence. Last question. What does the rest of Willie Beaman's career look like? And more importantly, what is the rest of Nick Crozier's career look like? Nick Crozier is currently coaching a Pac-10 school. I think he gets fired in a year and a half.
Starting point is 00:54:56 Yeah. I think he might, he comes back with Tony. Yeah. He goes to Albuquerque for a year or two, but it's just not the same. Yeah. And then ends up at like University of Washington. Yeah, or Baylor or something like that. Yeah, he's somewhere where it's like his third stop and he had gotten to the
Starting point is 00:55:14 mountain top and he just keeps going down. And then what happens, what's Willie Beeman's career look like? I think that he has a very, I want to say, I want to believe that he could be like a Drew Breeze, but I think it's probably more like a journeyman. Like he keeps catching like a Vink's young kind of career. It's somewhere between Aaron Brooks and Vic, like where the running QB
Starting point is 00:55:37 where they just took, like an RG3, they took too many hits. Yeah, maybe he blows his knee out. Probably broke his shoulder at some point. Yeah. Didn't become the same guy.
Starting point is 00:55:46 There's a whole round of stories in August about how he's got to stay in the pocket more to protect himself. He's not the same. Guys start scheming. Buccas and United States starts scheming against him. They got enough tape. It is probably out of the week.
Starting point is 00:55:59 in seven years. All right. Any given Sunday. That's it for the sports movie Hall of Fame. The other two we did, Jerry McGuire and Moneyball are on Channel 33.
Starting point is 00:56:07 This one will end up there as well. And then we have some ideas for the fourth one. But we've got to start bringing a guess on that was involved with the movie. Mix it up. It's the last 20 minutes maybe.
Starting point is 00:56:19 Like James Woods. Jimmy Woods, if you're out there, you're so scared of James Woods. Chris like, don't, man. Don't do it. Don't do it. He's a dead guy.
Starting point is 00:56:29 That's it. Thanks to Seekkeek. Don't forget with Seekkeek are presenting sponsors. The only fan-friendly app for buying and selling tickets for sports and music. Drop your own ticket app. Use one built for 2017 and Beyond. Do everything on your phone. Unfortunately, you can't download any given Sunday on Seekek yet, but it does a whole bunch of other stuff for you.
Starting point is 00:56:49 And check out Any Given Sunday on HBO now. Let me see if you can get some front row Albuquerque seats. Oh, yeah. HBO Go, HBO now. Any Given Sunday is on there. Yeah. And the Albuquerque Aztex? Probably.
Starting point is 00:57:01 Seas ticket's still available. You get that. See you. Yeah, good point. Way to bring it around, Chris Ryan. Thank you.

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