The Rewatchables - ‘Days of Thunder’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Kyle Brandt

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Kyle Brandt are more afraid of being nothing than they are of being hurt after rewatching Tony Scott’s 1990 sports action classic ‘Days of Thunder,’ starring Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Michael Rooker, and Nicole Kidman. Watch this episode on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel! Producer: Craig Horlbeck Video Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, rewatchables fans, you already knew we're coming to Boston for a sold-out show on March 27th, but what you did know is we're sticking around that weekend. We're going to host our first ever rewatchables film festival while we're in Boston. We're screening some of our favorite movies, movies that we have done on this podcast, plus maybe a couple others, at the historic Coolidge Corner Theater. We're doing it all weekend from March 28th through March 30th, one of my favorite theaters in America. we might even make a few surprise appearances at a couple of these screenings. It's your chance to see some of our favorites as they were meant to be seen on the big screen.

Classic mob heist, Boston movies we love, Goodfellas, The Town, The Departed. Oh yeah, we're doing heat. Again, it's going to kick off Friday, March 28th at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline. Visit the ringer.com slash events. For showtimes and ticket information, hopefully we'll see you there. This episode is brought to you by Adobe Firefly, the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video generation. Built for today's creative process, Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast. Because the asks aren't getting smaller.

And the timelines? Ooh, yeah, still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life. Learn more at Adobe.com slash Firefly. This episode is brought to you by Apple and AT&T. Scroll long enough and you'll hear it all. Miracle diets, fitness trends, you name it. But with iPhone and Apple Watch, you get meaningful insights from a very trusted source.

Your body. You can track sleep quality, cardio fitness, and more than unpack all the information in the health app on iPhone to get a picture of your overall health. These health insights are developed with clinical experts from start to finish. Find out more at apple.com slash health. Apple Watch is not a medical device and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. The rewatchables is brought to by the Ringer podcast network where you can find what's it called the watch? Yes.

That's it, right? The unprudestaged TV podcast. CulturePod with you and Andy Greenwald. You're on the big picture as well. Try not to sound very exciting. Specials sometimes. Yeah. Not a lot of Sixers talk there lately.

That's my life. Yeah. We can find you. Where can we find you? Tell us. It's offseason NFL. We can find me on the Good Morning Football program as always. I did it this morning for four hours.

I'm ready to do more content with you for the NFL media group. And I'm ready. Let's do it. Is it good to get you groggy after four hours of content? Or are we just getting like, I don't know. It's like you've played your second NFL game in the same day. No, but the good news is I had a 72-ounce mellow yellow, so I'm ready to rock.

Let's go. Change my tires. Days of Thunder. I guess it's sports movie month. Let's go. The speed. I see me drive. Control something that's out of control.

Absolutely. The thrill. And lasts long after the ride. Tom Cruise, Days of Thunder. Ready at PG-13. starts Wednesday, June 27th at theaters everywhere. All right, fellas. I guess it's officially sports movie month.

We did Rocky. We did Best in Show. We did Days of Thunder, and we're more than halfway through March. This was a special Kyle Brandt request. Yeah. Why? Well, listen, very personal to me. I've never spoken about this publicly,

but I first seduce my wife with two packets of Sweet and Low. So it's a very personal story. No, listen. Is this movie T-Mootop Gun? Yeah, maybe. But Bill and Chris, it's great to be here. I have not watched this movie in like four years after dozens of watches. And as I'm watching it on the rewatch, as the credits are coming up, each name that pops up, I find myself saying, fuck yeah.

Like over and over. And it became like the Team America, Tom Cruise, fuck yeah, Tony Scott, fuck yeah. Hans Zimmer. Fuck yeah. Fred Thompson, fuck yeah. Is it a great movie? no but it's really fun and it was like running into an old friend

and it hit that 1990 it comes out and it's just on cable for the next 15 years just straight and you could jump in when you want what's your relationship C.R. Yeah like Kyle said I also regard this as essentially like cloned top gun

but man this clone looks good and I have to say that as far as like movies that have aged well in terms of like if you get a good if you watch on 4K or something like that. This movie has no business looking as good as it does.

Tony Scott, despite the fact that it sounds like Don Simpson was doing eight balls and pushing him out of the way of the viewfinder every five seconds shoots the shit out of this. And you really can just jump in and watch like a few races and a few scenes of tall Nicole Kidman

kissing short Tom Cruise up against the wall. And you're good for the rest of the month, man. Yeah. And it's awesome. So one of these movies that, as the years have passed, becomes just more interesting from all the side plots of when they made it, what happened with Cruz and Kidman. The half-ass internet research for this movie is almost too much. It was one of the rare times. Like, you know, if we're doing boogie nights or something like that, there's going to be a shitload of research and it's worth it.

This is like, how long do we go about Don Simpson? Do we go an hour? Do we go three hours? Like, what's the time limit? pod about Don Simpson try to catch himself in the movie? Well, we might have to because, you know, Don Simpson and Jerry Brookheimer, these legendary 80s and 90s producers, and they're starting this giant Paramount deal they did, which according to Premier Magazine was five movies, $300 billion, which is crazy.

And there's been podcasts about these guys. There's been books written about them. The story has been told ad nauseum about just how crazy Don Simpson was. this was the craziest he he was during this entire run 1990 where he's just like budget fuck it is it 35 million let's go 65 what's let's just argue on the racetrack about a scene for an entire day while we pay you know hundreds of extras and then not film the scene this is like the kind of shit you would see in a movie about hollywood that would seem like Wow, they really went for this movie.

This is crazy. This actually all happened. This budget ends up being like $65 million. If it was actually $65 million, I'm six foot three. Right, about 100. You guys, I'm sure everybody has different takes about what's happening with the economy now, but I think we can all agree. We want to get back to a place where a movie production can literally take over the city of Daytona.

Right. And put up neon signs outside of nightclubs and whatever that say days of thunder. where their producers just lured over the city like Kings. And Tom Cruise has like a coterie of like handlers. And all this, like, this must have been such a mind-blowing thing just to be fly on the wall for that it actually is almost as good as the movie itself. Yeah, we're coming out of the cocaine era. We're coming out of it. That's right, Bill.

There was no cocaine upset. Don Simpson's trying to keep it alive. And it's that 80s excess era that's still kind of going in 89.90, these big budget movies, a lot of sequels at this point. I was trying to think, like, in 2025, what would be a more sure thing idea than this was in 1990, where you have Simpson and Bruckheimer and a red, red, red, red, red hot Tom Cruise, basically redoing Top Gun with race cars.

There's no scenario where somebody could be like, all right, it's going to be, let's say, Shalome. Yeah. It's going to be Shalame. Okay, who is a producer that was more reliable? at this point that Simpson-Bruckheimer. I can't think of one. What's the sport that hasn't been dove into like this?

I can't. Like, Kyle, I don't, I just think this is like a 101 in a weird way, even though the movie's not great. No, if you heard today that Shalomey was teaming up with Chris Nolan to make some crazy thing, that's really cool. But it's not the nitro glycerin effect of Tom Cruise over the last five years he had with Jerry Bruchheimer. And you're right.

It sounds like a fake movie that would be made in a movie. like Christopher Maltesante making Cleaver. It's like Days of Thunder even sounds like a fake name. It sounds like a stupid fake name that would be in a movie. And I love that Simpson's going to get shine here today because Bruckheimer, I think, is so much more famous, contemporary to the young people. But it feels like Simpson was really the wild one of the group and everything you hear. Right.

Well, Simpson, so they're talking in the premiere magazine. And basically the premise of this is there hasn't been a cool race car movie. since Lamont with McQueen, which is a very cool movie. It's a little dated now. The movie is like 51 years old, but it's still cool, and I think it was really inspirational for people who care about cars. The Porsche that was in that movie, I forget what actor had it. It was like Kevin Costner, somebody like that.

Got the actual Lamont car? Seinfeld bought it for like a million dollars in 2001 and sold it for like $25 million in the last year. But it was, and since that movie, there was a couple other ones like Bobby Deerfield happened. People kind of dipped in this pool, but I felt like, yeah, I think they felt like this was sitting there. And the other thing that was in that premiere piece was how excited NASCAR was to welcome these guys into their world. They basically, this is like if somebody made an NBA movie now and they were like, hey, we need the actors to play in an exhibition game. We need to have all your uniforms.

We need like scenes of them in the four. fourth quarter playing with your players. They're like, cool, take it. What about a regular season game? Okay, great. Let's put them in that too. We'll do 10-day contracts. That's how crazy this was Kyle.

You know what it's like, okay, so dark night rises. The NFL is like, you're not using our teams. You're going to blow up a stadium. That's crazy. However, when sudden death with Van Dam goes to the NHL and is like, can we have the penguins and the Blackhawks, even though we're going to blow up the stadium too? They're like, sure. You're going to make a movie with the NHL?

Please, we love to have you. You want Yager? Yes, and we'll put them in the movie. We don't care. Take it. That's the NASCAR here. So the premise of the, or the bones of this movie, CR. Yeah.

Tom Cruise will go into the moment he's having his career. Bobby Duval, big shot Bob. Fresh off turning down Godfather 3 for $5 million. He's like, you know what I'm doing said? Days of Thunder. Nicole Kidman, 23 years old. Had only really done Dead Calm. I saw Deadcom in the theater.

We all marked it. We were like, this lady's, this lady's great. Really interested to see what happens with her. Did not expect to see here in Days of Thunder with Tom Cruise. Michael Rooker. Yeah. Kyle, we'll say, we'll put him on the side. Oh, we're going to talk a lot of Rooker.

I think this might be our third Rooker together. We do a lot of Rooker. The rest of you guys can do the Tom Hanks and the Daniel Day Lewis. Yeah. We do Michael Rooker. NCR. I was going to say, I think Rooker has officially passed Daniel Day Lewis in rewatchables now. When we do the rewatches, Rooker is going to get like a special achievement for some of his great moments. So we got Rooker. We get John C. Riley. We get Carrie Owes.

Who just keeps popping up in movies in the 80s and 90s, but there's no carry always conversations. We get Fred Thompson, Randy Quaid. We get a produced by Simpson and Brookheimer. Story by Robert Town and Tom Cruise. Yeah. This feels, this felt flimsy to me, C.R. Well, apparently the idea for the movie came from Tom Cruise and Paul Newman doing like a charity race. And Cruz got obsessed, had been obsessed with racing since he was a kid. And then he got Robert Town, who's a big running sports, like aficionado, a passionate fan.

But let's just say they weren't at Starbucks banging out plot points on a yellow nopad. I'm guessing. agree. But Robert Town becomes like Tom Cruise's Sense for the next four or five movies. Right. So this is a written by Robertown. Robertown for the younger ones listening. Legendary screenwriter.

China Town. Champoo. Last detail. Yeah. If you're just mentioning, hey, who are the great screenwriters? His name is going to come up in the first five, six names you mentioned. So he's in there. Music by Hans Zimmer and Jeff Beck. Fucking A. Go, Kyle.

I mean, just go. Listen. Just cook. right now. Zimmer, you can have your John Williams. Zimmer is my goat. We just saw him in the headlines for the Oscars, but he has handed this white trash redneck NASCAR script and said, just make it cook, Hans. And I said, I got you. If there's a wheelchair race, I'm going to score it. And he is one of the stars of this movie. Not to step on casting what ifs, but movies first offered to Harold Faltermeier, our guy. Yeah, really? And Harold goes, you know, I'm not feeling it.

Can I introduce you to my friend Hans Zimmer? And they're like, sounds great. And Hans is like, I'm thinking there's some like orchestra stuff, but like a heavy electric guitar. Yes. And we just and that's my and they're like, go cook Hans. Yeah. And I say in the middle of movie, we put the guns and roses usual losing one out of nowhere.

Let's do it. I met Jeff Beck at a dinner party. He's going to come in and do the electric guitar. And then directed by Tony Scott, CR. Yes. Tony Scott now moving into first place in the all-time director rankings. As it should be. In the rewatchables, tied for first now.

I was thinking about this with unstoppable, with Top Gun, with Days of Thunder. Is there anybody better at shooting moving vehicles than Tony Scott? Yeah. No. No. Like maybe the best director of like movement that we have, we ever had. And Chris, Tom Cruise has talked about this many times on record. He still thinks there are things.

ripping off of this movie and the way that they shot that and how good it is and how good it looks. And I remember when the three of us, I think the last, the three of us were last together on Roadhouse. And after we made some like stupid comments at the beginning, CR jumped in and was like, this movie looks great. Yeah. It's got bones. And this movie for all its idiocy and wheelchair racism we'll talk about, it looks amazing. And I think Cruz was super proud of. He still is. He still talks about it. So there's, uh, I sent these guys, um, a video that NASCAR has put up all like these, uh, old Daytona 500s of the CBS broadcasts of Daytona 500s on YouTube. You can watch like there, like two and a half hours or whatever. And it's really awesome just to go back in the time

machine and see how like TV broadcasts were in 1990. Right. But one of the cool things about it is you can watch Daytona from 1990 and see how a CBS TV camera shoots it. And then you can see how Tony Scott and Ward Russell shoot it and all the color they find and all the shadow they find, all the texture they find. And it is literally what cinematography is. It is seeing something that isn't necessarily there and embellishing things and lighting things in a way that brings out story. And it's so awesome to check it out.

Well, and then the other cool pieces, so in the 90s, we have the Square TVs all the way through the 2000s. And now widescreens really helped us. HD, you can get this on 4K Blu-ray now and it fucking looks amazing. Bill, do you wet your beak? Did you get this on Bluroy? You know, I didn't, because it wasn't going to show up in time, but I'm going to. Okay.

I'm going to get this in Rush, actually, because, as you know, I love Rush, but I think those too. So in the all-time rewatchable standings, Cruz is now up to 16 rewatchables movies. He is a three-movie lead over to Niro and Pacino. But more importantly, Tony Scott moves up to nine in a tie with Michael Mann. And I don't know what we do now, C.R. I feel like we almost have to get Michael Bann. We have a few left.

I think we got to shoot one next. We can't have him be tied for first with anybody. Yeah, but we're running out of man. So we're going to have to attend Michael Bann movie next month. Yeah. No, there's some good ones left. Anyway. Yeah.

I just wanted to flag that because I, you know, I know Michael's a huge fan of the pod. He is. Takes it really seriously. And I don't think he wants to share first place with Tony Scott. Well, we've been teasing the revise for a while. Yeah. Well, maybe that'll be it. So Richard Petty.

of this movie, the only thing they got right was the numbers on the side of the cars. I don't think this was very well-like. Settled out, Richard Petty. Tom Cruise's first prime, 1986 to 93. Yeah. I think it's similar to LeBron, Brady, some of the great athletes, where it's like, oh, this first specific prime of Top Gun, Color of Money, Cocktail, Rain Man, born the Fourth of July, Days of Thunder, Far and Away, Few Good Men, the Firm.

it's like this confined eight-year run. And then we get a little weird with the interview of the vampire and all of a sudden we're at Jerry McGuire into Eyes Wide Shut, Vanilla Sky, which is kind of like the first mission impossible. That's kind of the second cruise prime. Then we end up with that long stretch following Oprah's sofa where we get Reacher. We get some good ones, some bad ones.

It's a little like when Brady didn't win a Super Bowl for a while. And then Top Gun Maverick. and then some Mission Impossible. Now Cruz is like in his fourth prime. I'll say, yeah. I'm going to add you tomorrow in that in that prom tomorrow. Yeah. That other prime.

Yeah. So four prime. But Kyle, this was the first cruise prime. And he's basically playing variations of Pete Maverick Mitchell in as many movies as possible. Where does Cole Trickle rank for you in the cruise rankings? Because I was kind of maybe one of my least favorite cruise characters of this run. run. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, Kirkland brand Maverick.

It's not the best character. It's not, it's a funny name, but we never get, we never get this scene, like in Maverick, he has the scene in his tidy whitey's where he breaks down over Goose's death, and that's a really powerful scene. He does really good acting. When you're talking about this era of his prime, and I had this in what's age the best,

it is Cruise with the greats of the old guard actors in the ring delivering. He goes from 86 to 93, Newman, Hoffman, Duval, Hackman, Nicholson, every single movie, it's him and a first ballot hall of fame are doing high drama. And I like that he jumps off giant buildings right now

and it's fun, but he used to go at it with the giant actors. And this kind of brought me back to that. Yeah, and then Leo kind of followed that blueprint a little bit too. How can I work with great directors and great stars? But yeah, this is a great run. So, and then he's in Few Good Men and the Firm. You know, a few good men is like these super cocky, sarcastic crews. Rain Man is the full of confidence, charisma cruise.

Cocktail is, to me, Pete Cruz. That's like my favorite cruise. I just love cocktail crews. And then this is kind of in the Top Gun Camp, right? C.R. is there, I guess color of money is a big charisma, like Street Tough Cruise. But I think that the thing you're locating is probably a result of the fact that they didn't really have a script when they started shooting this thing. So there is like...

Or when they finish shooting this thing. Gestures towards like Coles, you know, father being, you know, a financial criminal and ruining the first part of his career. Then there's like, this is a guy who wears button up white shirts all the way to the top. And yet is in NASCAR. Like, where's he coming from? What's he doing? He's from Eagle Rock.

I think ultimately at the end of the film, I walk away with it being more of a movie about the Duval character than it is about Cole. And it's about the deval character learning to like trust a driver again after what happens with John C. Riley's dad and everything. But yeah, for me, this is way more about racing than it is about people. And it's way more about watching shit go fast

than it is about like guys doing great scene work. Kyle, do you think Cruz was trying to make this guy like enigmatic trying to figure him out? Was this like, was that like the cruise angle? because it's a pretty muted cruise performance. Like, you could argue this easily just could have been Kevin Costner. Like, this isn't like a cruise-dependent role.

Whereas the other cruise movies, like, you can't have cocktail without cruise. You can't have few good men without cruise. This, I feel like you could have other actors. Those guys of his ilk are always begging for demons. Like, there's legendary stories about Leo DiCaprio would follow James Cameron around Titanic. Be like, you've got to give this guy some backstory. This guy is a huge pussy, Jack Dawson. He's just totally nice.

and there's a little bit of that going on with Cruz. Like when he's Maverick, he's referred to as like, it's got to be hard when you're Pete Mitchell's kid. Like, that is a heavy burden. This is like kind of just an idiot who shows up in a motorcycle and his character twist is that he doesn't know anything about cars. And like a completely, completely half-baked father storyline that CR just talked about.

And it's probably because they're like, you know, guys, shouldn't we figure out that dad thing for Cole in the third act? And they were like, just more fucking racing yeah and Cruz basically it is like watching like LeBron on like the 2018

Cavs just being like I'll turn it on this game and put up a 32 11 and 12 yeah he has like four scenes or he's like I'm going to cruise it up this scene so it's enough that he still gets the win for being Cruz it's interesting too because like there's probably more Vince

from color of money than there is Pete from Top Gunn in this movie where Vincent in Color of Money, it's like he's being manipulated. Like, what does Paul Newman call him? Like, you're the, you're a great flake, you know, like, you're kind of an idiot, but I can use that. I can use your, your arrogance and your idiocy, you know, against other players. Cole's confidence and his sort of like, I don't really know anything about cars. I just know how to drive. Like, that is a kind of electric idea, but they do away with it once.

a brain surgeon falls in love with him. Yeah. You can see somewhere in the middle, they were like, no, Cole's actually emotionally, you know, he's, like, very, like, unpacked so that we can have Nicole Kidman

be in love with him. Yeah, I think if you're redoing this movie and you could cast anybody from any era, this is like a Brad Pitt mid-2000s part. Well, they're doing it now, right? I mean, kind of with F-1. This is like, you want the guy to be handsome, a little enigmatic.

I can't read them. Cruz Cruz has too much charisma to do that And I think he wanted to be that But you know Eventually you can't you can't contain your inner Tom Cruise I think some of the things he has going for him in this movie It's great Cruz hair

Really really really cool hair For 1990 Maybe the best hair he's ever had Really like a full pert plus commercial A lot of body And then listen The Top Gun comparison He's really good at a tight shot of his face

wearing a helmet with his name stenciled across it saying one line at a time when he says, Harry, this guy's going down. It's fucking awesome. It feels like Maverick is back. It's cool. You left out one piece of the cruise pie. The blank face of fear.

I don't know how this is going to turn out. Maybe I shouldn't do this, which they use leverage perfectly with the smoke scene. Driving through the wreck being the blank cruise. I'm not sure this is a good idea face. It's his re-engaged Maverick. He's going through the rack, yeah. He's sitting there saying, talk to me, Rowdy, talk to me.

He's looking at Rowdy's dog tags. And it's like, trickles reengaging. Yes, it's to the note the same motion and scene. Do you think they thought about calling Rowdy Goose or no? Goose burns. Nicole Kidman, her first mainstream movie, because Dead Crom was an indie. She's 23 years old in real life playing a brain surgeon. Just want to point that out.

But she could have a little doogie-houser action going there. She could have just been sticking grades. She aced the STTs in Australia, whatever their version of it are. Probably cool. Yeah. She looks fantastic. Yeah, it looks great. And when you think she's been in our lives since Deadcom, but really since this movie,

and it's a 35-year run and just thinking about, what was that movie called, Baby Girl? Baby Girl. Fucking insane movie. And she's still cranking it along and making weird sex movies and still going. This person here, it's all. almost like watching like her, the Nicole Kidman now, like her red-headed daughter is in this movie.

Like she just seems so young. And now you watch this movie with this whole backstory of, oh, Cruz and Kidman fell in love on this movie. C.R. Is this the prequel to Eyes Wide Shut for you? Yeah, I have some eyes wide shut notes actually later for the different category. Okay. Good. Yeah. Great. Cole Trickle,

loosely based on the careers of Tim Richmond and Jet Bodine. Tim Richmond, we did 35, 30 in season one about was a pretty crazy NASCAR driver. I ended up getting HIV, passed away. Pretty tragic story. Before Days of Thunder even came out, right? Yeah. Yeah.

But Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he thought the movie was based on a robbery between his dad and Bodine. And then they stole a bunch of NASCAR stuff. Like the Cole and Rowdy would drive to the dinner thing together. That came from an actual meeting when they were trying to get Earnhardt Sr. and Bodine to to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, kind of get along better. Cole deliberately blowing his engine by overreving.

That was a famous Tim Richmond story. He did it. Trickle Camp Pit because the crew is too busy eating ice cream. Apparently that happened in 1987, Southern 500, Ben Parsons. And then Cole and Rowdy destroying rental cars, apparently in the 1950s, these two NASCAR superstars, I know you're very fond of them, Kyle. Joe Weatherly and Curtis Turner.

Those are my guys. Supposedly we would just rent cars and then just fuck them up and race them. Ever since I got Enterprise Presidents Club, I do that. You do? Yeah. You and fantasy on your way to shoot?

We like to drag race civics. Just crash it into each other. Can I ask you guys, what's your, 1990, what's your relationship to NASCAR? Because for me, this kind of slots into one of those movies,

like, to some extent, Rounders, color of money, this, a movie that goes really in depth into a world that I am like, that's cool. I'm not going to

become a NASCAR fan or a billiards fan or a like a hold and poker fan but i am very interested in this movie's version of this world so the complaints about this not being accurate to me don't really bother me that much okay i don't care but if if they did this about a football yeah and probably took the liberties they took with this movie the three of us would be going nuts they would do we only 10 guys on the field for the final for the final sequence like what are they doing and i'm sure nascar Reddit is up in arms about how it's treated. But this is a NASCAR movie like point break is a surfing movie or roadhouse is a movie about, you know, owning a bar and what it's really like. It's, it's ridiculous. So I get it. But I'm just, listen, when I was in 1990, I was in fifth grade and what

I knew about NASCAR was this movie. And if you went to Hardee's, the restaurant, they had little matchbox cars you could buy and I had a couple of them. That's it. I'd never seen a race, you know anything about it. It was this movie. I just remember the summer, I think, I think it was after a sophomore year in college. I just saw it for Cruz. It didn't make me want to care about NASCAR at all. It did make me wonder why there weren't more NASCAR movies. And then every once in a while, who was that Bert Reynolds movie with Slice Stallone,

Bert Reynolds Driven? Oh, yeah. 2000 range with Kip Pardue from Remember the Titans. For sure. And that was like, every decade somebody goes for it. But I mean, I'm sure when producer Craig pops in, he's just got, he probably, he hadn't seen this movie until last night. And this is, this is basically Tal Dagan Nights is a parody of this movie.

Yeah. Right. So that's, I think people's relationship under 40 with this whole world is Tauldegan Nates. I thought the NASCAR back then, because NASCAR obviously made that big push where it's like, actually, secretly, this is the biggest sport in the country. Yeah. They tried to do that a couple of times. 10 years ago.

But this, it was still like very much like a regional phenomenon, I think. Like, I was aware. I think my dad would watch like the Daytona 500. and every year I'd be like, so this is like their Super Bowl and he's like, yes, but it's also the first race. And it's like, it would always,

that was basically, it was like Indy 500, Daytona 500 were the extent of the car races that I would watch. I think NASCAR is Apex Mountain for sports that you have to be there in person to really enjoy. And that's what everybody says.

And like I've gone, I went to a race once. I went to a race 15 years ago and it was outside Chicago and you cannot fucking believe how fast the cars are going. Yeah. You watch it on TV

and it looks like they're, crawling. And I remember I got to like, I got to go in the pits and like super randomly. This was the time in the Chicago area that Rex Grossman was there. And I was like, what's up? Rex Grossman. And he was enjoying it too. But when you go, it fucking blows your mind. It really does. Rex is like, I'm thinking of taking us to the Super Bowl and then completely falling apart. Kyle said, that sounds great. Yeah, but first, have the opening kickoff be returned for a touchdown and your dumb ass still blows it. Yes, that's what he was talking about. My relationship as a kid of the 70s and 80s

with this whole world was every once in a while Sports Illustrator were right about it. Like I just looked it up because I remembered it was Cole Yarborough. I didn't remember who the other person was. But there was a big fight in 1979 between Cole Yarborough and Bobby Allison.

I think Bobby Allison. Yeah. And Sports Illustrated wrote a story about it. And I was like, whoa, these guys fought on the track? Like NASCAR seems kind of cool. And then never watched it. And then the other thing would be

if it was on a network that had football, they would promote it. Yeah. Coming up next, Daytona, but it just never took. I always felt like it was just kind of in the south, just kind of happening over here. You know what, Bill? When I used to, when I used to work with Jim Rome, we would book NASCAR drivers as guests. And the reason we would do it is because they would talk shit and they were open and loose.

And it wasn't like basketball or football players. They don't care. So you'd have Tony Stewart on and he would say some crazy bombastic thing about another driver that no player on the Knicks would ever see. say. So they were really good talk show guests. And they were always, the NASCAR's always providing them. Anybody you want. They're trying really hard. And that was part of the draw of the personalities. Like the first two months I had my podcast for ESPN 2007. Tony Stewart was one of my first guests. Did Tony Stewart call in on the subway fresh take hotline? I don't even think it was a subway

fresh take yet. And I did the research and I saw that he had a car number 33. So I was like, oh, this would be a good icebreaker. My favorite number. Larry. Bird. And we started off. I'm on the phone with them so I can't see him. And I'm like, yeah, you know, you're one of my favorites because you race number 33. And he's like, I'm actually number 20 or whatever he is. I only ran 33 that a couple races. So it was just couldn't have been off to a worst start. And then he withdrew. And it was like one of the, it's probably the worst that he ever ever did for the podcast. To Kyle's point, though, about like how loose those guys were I was just talking before we started recording about, uh, I think it's the 88 Daytona

500 I was watching last night. I kind of went down the rabbit hole. CR. Rabbit hole. Just doing the work. There's a Richard Petty crash in the 88 500. Really bad. It looks really bad.

But they like, you know, pull him out of the car. They're like, tone the car off. They're like, oh, this is so bad. This is so bad. And they go down into the, you know, the infield. And they have like the sideline reporter guy is outside of the medical tent. And A.J. Hoyt walks out of the medical tent. He had been in there, too.

and they're like, AJ, how's Richard looking? And it's like, what if he's like, Richard's dead? You know? Like, I was like, what are you guys doing? There's no, this would be like basically like going up to AJ Brown and being like, Sequins in the tent. How's you doing in there? And AJ Brown was like, I think he blew out his knee.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You remember when a Rogers tour his Achilles, they went to Tyrod Taylor and said, how's how's Rogers look? And he's like, oh, he's fucked. I'm going in. I'm worried up.

We're take a break. And then when we come back, we're in talking. about a famously fucked up shoot. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses.

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but up, limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. This movie was filmed in and around Charlotte and Daytona Beach. And when 25 to 30 million over budget, they say, which is probably really 50,

because we had Simpson and Bruckheimer, we had Tony Scott, legend, a rewatchables Hall of Famer. I'm not positive he was that easy to work with from time to time. So you have him, and then you have Robert Town

who's on the set with like crazy power, and then you have crews. And it's the four guys and then sometimes crews just arguing about everything because they keep changing the script. The crew members apparently

made so much overtime that they didn't have to work for like six months after. Scenes were written the day of the filming. This almost seems too crazy to be true, but apparently Cruz would have cue cards on the windshield because the scenes were being rewritten

so fast. He wouldn't know his lines. And Towns sometimes would be on the radio telling him what to say. Well, Cruz ends up almost crashing because of the cue cards. So they decide that's a bad idea. They have to put the earplugs like he's a quarterback in football with Towns as the OC calling him plays. Where are you saying, Kyle? Tom, Tom, right now on this turn, say, I'm dropping the hammer. Say it. Say it. Tom, just I'm dropping the hammer really quick. filming finished three months late and it's crazy shit like towns really wanted i guess duval's character to have an awesome barn so they built the barn town's like i don't like it let's do it again knock it down they build it again he's like sure and now still didn't get it right they knock it down

they built it a third time he's like now let's use the one we scouted before so they built three barns didn't use any of the barns for like four weeks of filming now i just want to say yeah i will die on the hill of robert town should get to do this and this is what i right for yeah when you hear stories like this you kind of understand why they shoot everything on the volume now and everything is like vFX and cj it's like we're never getting back to the place where one coaked up screenwriter could be like build me another barn well chris that video that you sent of the real race where they shot this movie one thing that jumped out to me is that in the CBS coverage, there is a shot of cold trickle on a spine board being lifted up from a helicopter

that is not in the movie. So they paid for a fucking helicopter to lift up Tom Cruise. But they show shots. They show them. They don't show the wide shot in the movie. You're right. It's not in the movie. Like, you got to use that if you pay for.

They don't even use it. I think it's because I wonder whether it's supposed to have happened. Well, no, it is, you know, it happened to the Winston 400. They just probably decided that. The other thing is they did all these reshoots. They went all this money over budget. and then realized after they finished the movie that they didn't have cold trickle crossing

the finish line and the biggest race. And had to go back and redo that part after it was already done. It was probably the only thing that really truly mattered to get on camera. They didn't get. Simpson and Bruckheimer they spent $400,000

and this is 1990 money. So what's that? Like $2 million now? A lot. To have part of their hotel that they were staying in. converted into a private gym. Oh, my God.

That also had a large neon sign on it that said days of thunder. So that happened. Simpson had a whole closet of Donna Karen dresses, and he would offer women that he met, either the dresses or come be my assistant, stuff like that. They were throwing parties every night. Disgusting and amazing detail. Yeah. They had parties with people like Tone Loke rapping.

They, post-production was five weeks instead of five months because they took so long to film this thing that they were like, this movie's coming out June 27th, 1990. This is it. It's coming out on this date. They don't finish until mid-May.

They now have five weeks to edit and finish and complete and get prints out for the movie. Paramount was so upset afterwards that they asked for a $9 million refund on the profit participation from Don and Jerry. We're told, though, and then ended the relationship that it just started. So basically like Buffalo gives Josh Allen that $330 million deal.

He has one bad season. They're like, we're out. We're just going to pay you off $120 million. Done. Bill, my mind is wandering to that gym you mentioned. I'm just wondering like- $400 million gym. What happened to it?

No, what were like, what were the top five exercises those assholes were doing in that gym? I think it's a lot of like curls for the girls, bicep, tricep, decline, breast, calf phrases, like all the aesthetic stuff. Calfe,

you're such a sweetheart for thinking that there was any exercising going on and that you... Maybe they really used it once. Yeah, no, but can you imagine if there's one guy

who's like, guys, I just want to get a pump in with all the other stuff going on here. I think the best time to get a pump in, the best time to get a pump in was probably between

7 and 9 a.m. in the morning because that would be the Rissillo hours. Yeah. Ryan's like, hey, like, well,

Rissler's like, can I work in on that lap, pull down, Jerry, Jesus Christ. I don't know if there was a lot of gains being made in that gym. There was one of the stories about it. They're talking about the gym. Yeah.

And they make a point of saying how Cruz didn't work out in the gym because he was renting a house and built his own gym in the house. They're just like, they're shooting $100 bills all around the Carolina area. Has there ever been a scene stealing location award for something that's not even in the movie? Yeah, I know. I want to hang in that gym. The gym. Well, they did a lot of press.

too about this paramount deal they did. They took the newspaper ads for themselves, congratulated themselves. They did all that. So Hollywood was lined up at this point. Hollywood was in full fuck these guys mode. CR sent us a spy magazine one pager where some of the stuff that we're talking about was in there.

But it's like 450 words. And it's everything you need to know about like Hollywood access. It's somehow, it's basically written like a very, very erudite party. report. And this person is obviously talking to people on the set, but it's just such a great portrait of these guys just going full Babylon. Well, and it fucked up. So their next movie is supposed to be Beverly Hills Cop 3. Yeah. And still catching Eddie at the tail end of before, I think he moved into a different phase of comedy. And that gets delayed for three years. By the time they make it,

it ends up being one of the worst sequels in a while. But then Simpson just is a fucking mess for most of the 90s and then has the one last comeback with bad boys and Crimson Tide ends up breaking up with Bruckheimer and then dies, overdoses. Here's an unanswerable question. And you mentioned this. Is Cruz part of the decadence? If it's

blow and women and party and all, is Cruz into that? He's in Scientology by this point. He's like fully, yes. Yeah, because there was even like a little tidbit about how the brain surgeon who's Nicole Kibben's boss is named after his like

one of his Scientology associates. There's some slightly weird crew stuff with that. I like Cruz, but, you know, he gets divorced from Mimi Rogers near the end of the 80s. There's stuff in here about how he selected Nicole Kidman to be his co-star in this. They started dating. And it does feel a little recipe-ish. And we'll leave it at that. $60 million budget, allegedly, I'm going to say it was really about, what, 85C.R.

Yeah, 8590, yeah. The $400,000 jib, maybe not in that budget. it did make 157.9 million. Are you going to ever have a Don Simpson phase for me, Bill? Like, are we ever going to really ball out? I've had it. It's like Watergate. I can just go back and do it again.

I've already done it. I've already read all the books, but I'm happy to redo it if you want. No, I actually mean like when we go to Boston for the live show. Oh, me having a Don Simpson thing. Yeah. I want to see you out late at night in the combat zone, you know, putting up a days of thunder gym.

I'm too afraid. the lembias put the fair god of me okay that's it i just you're also fascinated by it but i'm i'm probably like crews i like being peripherally near where the debauchery is happening and i like hearing the stories after but keep me out of the rooms but do you ever think about the fact that don simpson was probably your age when he was making days of thunder like oh i think he was younger yeah was he oh yeah okay i think i think during the cocaine era like my 55 was like like 42. They look 55.

Yeah. Don Simpson was 37. Holy shit. Wait, wait, wait, 47. Sorry, 47. So Johnson's my age making Days of Thunder. Yeah. So you just add another 10 years.

Cruz made $9 million plus points for this movie. It got nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound. Roger Ebert, three stars. Days of Thunder is an entertaining example of what we might as well call the Tom Cruise picture. And then goes through all the beats of Tom Cruise movies, which I don't need to read. Parts of the plot are beginning to wear out they're welcome,

but the key ingredients are still effective. And then he says about Nicole Kidman, Kidman has little to do as the love interest and doesn't make much of an impression. I disagree. I think she glasses it up. Yeah, I do. I thought she looked awesome.

Our guy, Quentin Tarantino. Loves it. Loves it, yeah. I saw this. This is awesome. I'm a big fan. To me, Days of Thunder is the movie Grand Prix and Lamont should have been. Shared at a big budget, big stars, and a big director in Tony Scott,

but I had the fun of those early AIP movies. I just don't think it works if you take the whole thing too seriously. He also loves Tony Scott, we should mention. Speaking of taking this thing too seriously, I just want to throw out a Robert Town quote about this film. Days of Thunder becomes the struggle of a driver

to replace his belief in his own infallibility with the true courage of a man who recognizes that even if some things are beyond his control, he must go on to face them if he is to race, to win, and to live his life. Come on. That's what he said. That was not my takeaway. He's driving and he goes,

Son of a bitch! And like, that's basically it. Yeah, that was not my takeaway. That should be a new category. Okay, Bobtown. Sounds good. You're good there, bud. Got it.

Yeah, I mean, Bob Town probably was thinking about this. like the way, like to me without limits, the other, the pre-Fonté movie with Billy Crudder. That's the version of Days of Thunder. Bob Town probably had this head, but that's not what is on the screen. That's not what Tony and Don were thinking. That's not what they're thinking. All right, categories. I'm swerving with you guys.

I have two categories at the top before most rewatchable scene. Oh, yeah. What you got? I move some stuff up because I think it's too important. The Chess Rockwell and Brocklanders Award for Best Character Name. Yeah, come on. Our nominees are Cole Trickle. Rowdy Burns

Harry Hogg spelled H-O-G-G-E or Buddy Bretherton I think it's Rowdy Burns What do you think Kyle? I think this category could be renamed the Cole Trickle

and Rowdy Burns Best Name Awards it's it's Rowdy Listen, Rowdy says it all and again a guy named Rowdy directed Roadhouse

and you know what you're getting from someone named Rowdy and his last name is Burns which is also like fire It's just absolutely perfect.

Rambunctious fire, Rowdy Burns. That's the name. We're due for a rowdy in sports. Yeah. We are. Like, if I guess Abdul Carter is a pretty good name, but like Mason Graham in the NFL draft right now, Mason Graham's name was Rowdy.

And he was like, it's Rowdy Graham, the Michigan defensive tackle. I'd be like, Jesus, that guy's got to go first. It should be a, Roddy Graham. It should be a quarterback who kind of like flames out at Notre Dame or USC and winds up at like Washington. state or or something like that and sets the world on fire. It's like Rowdy Burns is back.

He'd be like Johnny football. Yes. It'd be like that. I think it's been a long time since we lost Roddy, Rowdy Piper. So it's like we're due for a rowdy. We do for a rowdy. Yes.

Well, another category. This is a brand new category, C.R. Okay. 376 movies. I think it's a decent ad. You're still surprising me. The Dr. Claire Lewicki Award for worst character name. Why is her name Dr. Claire Lewicki?

She's a fucking redhead from Australia. I think it's... How do they come up with Lewicky? In addition to never filming the checkered flag at Daytona, I think they also forgot to maybe tweet the name from the first draft. Once they hired Kidman, like, couldn't she have been Dr. Claire Sanders? Yeah. Lewiki doesn't sound like it.

What's the story about the Beatles, like Eleanor Rigby, like Paul McCartney, you just opened a phone book and chose a name, and that was literally how they came up with that name. that's how they came up with Claire Looey. To take it out. I don't know, Luicki, fine.

Like, I just watched Youngblood. The coach's daughter, like, could have been a Lewicky. Like, she's living in nowhere, Canada.

Like, but Dr. Claire Lewicky, town's like, boom, I'm taking a break. I can't, I can't believe

I came up with such a great name. Dr. What's the fact that it's paired with Cole trickle and Russ Wheeler, like, those are bangers. And then they just fall off the table.

Would it make a New York Times wedding announcement. Cold Did NASCAR driver Cole Trickles? Dr. Claire LeWiki, 23-year-old neurosurgeon. The Groom War Mellow Yellow-Green. Yes. I think she keeps her name of Claire LeWiki-Tricle.

That's it. Most rewatchable scene. So, Cole's first scene. What's going on? He's had second thoughts. You said you'd look at it. I've looked at him. I pay $2,500 to use his track today, Harry.

Forget it. He needs a brand name like Exxon or Richard Penn. Well, I know a damn race driver when I see one. What's going on, Harry? Is this happened or what? Do us all a favor, Harry. I know a damn race car driver when I see one. Let me drive and won't make a fool out of you.

We get that whole thing. Cruz showing up on a motorcycle is hilarious. How many times has Cruz broken out a motorcycle in a movie if you had to guess? I was trying to do a compendium of Tom Cruise's character entrances. Yes. I think it's something he thinks about. I think it's something that he's very conscious of. It's almost like professional wrestling.

Yeah. One of my favorite ones is like in collateral, which is kind of the opposite of this in terms of like the smoke and everything. But the door just opens and Vincent from, you know, collateral Vincent is just standing full on right in front of the camera. He's so good at making a huge first impression with these characters. I'm so glad you said that. I mean, listen, I think of the Magnolia entrance with the 2001 theme. on the stage. But when he rode the motorcycle through the smoke onto the track on this rewatch, I laughed out

loud. I was like absolutely hysterical. And that opening scene, that scene between him and Rowdy is what you call in scene steady class, like a dick swinging contest. It is so much back and forth. I like that Rowdy goes and sits on his bike to reclaim status. I like that Cole puts his duffel bag on the hood of the car. It's so much back and forth.

I love that scene. Yeah, I had this written later, but Randy Quaid was in Brokeback Mountain and that somehow wasn't the gayest sexual attention movie that he's been in because Cole and Rowdy. Incredible. You build me a car and I'll win Daytona next year. I love when people just say shit like that. You're in a football movie and you get me an offensive line. I'll win the Super Bowl next year. It's like, you're from fucking Eagle Rock, California.

You're racing like, gimmick. What are you talking about? Next one, Cole's first four races, disaster. We do get the Kid Cuddy Pursuit a Happiness Award, Best Needle Jop for Give Me Some Lovin. Yeah, and I would actually go, we need to kind of maybe come up with the subcategory here. I think you can make the argument that Give Me Some Lovin

is the most effective montage song that we have in American cinema history. I was thinking about this that, so I was going to go a different way. Are we at capacity now with Give Me Some Lovin? For sure, but in 1990. Is it almost like in the air tonight for football? games. Like just no more. Like we're good. We had a great run. This is a little bit of a slow first 15, 16 minutes. You know, a lot of talking to car frames. A lot of

like, hold my duffel bag stuff. Give me some loving kicks in. You're like, oh, fucking Tony Scott is here. Yeah, let's damn right. He rubbed you. And Robinson is racing. You get stuff like that. We get to hit the pace car. We get that that we're busy. We're eating ice cream. we get lines like, what do we do?

We end up looking like a monkey fucking a football out there. Can we talk about that line for a second? I had sponsors in the stands and I'm hugging

and holding hands and kissing them in the year and praying for a good showing. And what do we do? We end up looking like a monkey fucking a football out there.

We all work in sports. I work implicitly for the NFL. I have never heard the expression a monkey fucking of football out of nowhere. I don't know what that is.

It's never been said. And I also think it's the closest in the movie that Randy Quaid gets to being Cousinetti. This is one year after Christmas vacation. And when he says fucking a football, he is this close to saying Catherine revving up the microwave and pissing my pants for five minutes. It's so good. I love that line. Great Randy Quaid run.

We also get Cole saying there's nothing I can't do with a race car, which I think if it's story by Tom Cruise and Robert Town, he probably suggested that line. at Starbucks. I'm just throwing it at the wall. You can use it. You can reject it. But just what this guy says? My feelings won't be heard if we don't use this, but I think it's good. Next one, Cole wins his first race. I like the whole concept of I'm going faster.

Everyone else is going slower. Yeah. It feels like there's some deep NASCAR shit going on there. I don't fully understand it. We get the pit disaster. We get crews flip it out. Son of a bitch! This is before he had like the voice leveling stuff because when he screams, his voice goes too high.

Harry lies about the tires I like. And then always fun when it's the boy doesn't have the balls to pass me on turn four. None of us understand NASCAR, but it's like, yeah, that sounds pretty crazy to pass him on turn four. Is he going to try that? I always, that, that line should be on the, the freezing cold takes Twitter account. Like he doesn't have the balls to do it and then he does it. And then also, Russ Wheeler at the end, I know Cole. He always goes outside.

Oh, he's going low. Freezing cold takes. I've raced against him four times. But it's kind of like. It's like for October. It's the crazy Ivan. It's going to go one way or the other. It's not like he can go underneath of you, man.

You might want to be aware. I enjoy that part. I enjoy when they win a race in car movies. Just a brief scene, but Cole getting stopped by the police stripper. Yeah. I mean, that's a very important scene. Do you think that was a Don Simpson special? He was like, I need to rent out this willow tree, light it beautifully,

and then have an unnecessary stripper scene. I think when you say Don Simpson special, odds are strippers and or cocaine are going to be involved. So this case, we get one. What did you think of Tom Cruise? If this movie was rated R, this scene could have definitely, we could have really. But now, we could have explored the studio space with this scene, I think. Well, looks like we found something. What's that?

Concealed weapon. Where? Right here. Now, the only question is, will he actually use it? Well, I have a question about that. And I had this later. But so that woman's a prostitute, right? Like, I don't think she's a stripper.

I think she's an exotic dancer, Kyle. Yeah, I don't think so, Chris. Exotic dancers don't immediately kiss you on the mouth the second they meet you. Show some respect. I did it. I did. And God bless the sex workers. I think, and my question was, does Cole have sex with that woman?

Because, again, the stripper doesn't show up and immediately kiss you in the mouth. That doesn't happen that way. I think she's a prostitute. The implication is there's a little bus orgy right after that. Oh, I thought it was more like he's a bus orgy? No. They all have sex with her? I thought there were more, there's more than just one woman.

No, it's a bunch of guys. It's like Nick seriously. Oh, you're right. I'm the second woman. My unanswerable question is what happens next? Like, right when that scene cuts, like, what do they all do with that woman? Does she strip in front of nine dudes? They let Cruz go in the van?

She goes in the bus with Cole. And they all just wait? Okay. So wait, last question about that woman. And do you guys know who that is, that actress? Do you know this? Can you save it for casting with it? Yes, yes.

I'll save it. Yeah, yeah. It's unbelievable. I couldn't believe it. Oh, I couldn't believe it. Chris, do you know? Do you know Chris? Do you know CR who that?

Okay. You want to do it now? Now, let's save it. Let's save it. Let's save it for the audience. Now they're excited. Yes. Next scene's another short one, but Cole thinks Dr.

Claire Lewicki is another stripper. After the crash. After the crash and puts her hand. There's some violations here, but it leads right to the wheelchair race, which is a phenomenal scene. But this whole stretch is pretty funny. This is probably my favorite part of the movie right around, right around here.

Like the wheelchair, the race. Cole wins his first race, the bus, all the stuff. The accident, all the stuff. I enjoyed the rental car race. The, how did they end up in the water during this, if you had to guess? In the water? In the rental car race. Oh, down by the beach.

All the sudden we're on the beach, just going through water that's spraying. Yeah. But then we're back. My senior year in high school spring break was Daytona Beach. You can drive on the beaches there. There's an actual beach where there's cars. That's a real thing. The valet situation is funny, too.

Yeah. Cole ruins Russ Wheeler's victory lap when he comes out and just rams his car. I love that part. They write in a little cruise Duval. Let's do a little four-minute emotional scene here. Yeah. I'm not getting back in my car. I'm getting it rowdies.

Oh, well, that sounds you're dumb enough to be a race driver. You think you'll hide from your bad. in his car and what the hell for for rowdy if he can run tomorrow he cries you to win the race he's mean he's no particular friend so why because he asked me to oh shit you just want to race again yeah so do you it's really the only time cruise dials it up as an actor for two hours and duval's you know he's going against an oscar winner there's there's a moment and then that is the only problem with that scene is there's all of a sudden not only does Cole know a lot about cars,

but also you're like, we're going back to the guy that died on Harry's watch, which only got mentioned in the first scene. Yeah, thank you. And there's a lot of like forensic kind of like, oh no, he didn't have a heart attack, he was talking, you know, like. Yeah.

Right. Yeah, it's like, what happened? I'm watching this movie for the first time and it was something you casually mentioned an hour and a half ago. What? It strikes me as someone had a moment of sobriety on stage, And they're like, all right, hold on.

We got Duval and we got Cruz coming off Fourth of July. We got to have some acting in this fucking movie. Let's throw a scene together. And you guys just talk about some shit. It felt very ad-lebbed from the hip because you got those guys. They got to act a little bit. I did like the whole idea that Cole blew his engine on purpose because he had the yips. Afraid.

Yeah. Last one, Cole's Big Daytona comeback. Seeing the smoke driving through it. It's symbolic in a lot of ways, Kyle. Little like, I'm sure Josh Allen watches this movie and thinks there's going to be another moment. on a fourth and one. I just got to go through the smoke. That smoke is the chiefs

every single year. He's cool because he got, he got, Joey Bosa, who plays like three games a year. That'll be the difference. For $12 million bucks. We're set.

We're set. I like the big, we got to, I mean, none of us understand race car driving at all, but the whole, we got to get out

before that pace car comes around. They show the pace car back to the thing. Oh my God. The guy can't get the luck that in, everybody. Oh,

oh, we made it. Uh, very fun. And then, uh, he's going high. He's going low. Awesome. Um, I had this later, but I'll do this now. Now, this is really good. This is almost like, this is a social clip.

So if you're the hero of a sports movie and you could pick any, any movie, what would be the single most fun scene to reenact if you were the actor? Because I would make a case winning a huge race in either Indy 500 or NASCAR. and then you get to do the thing where they all lift you up and they pour champagne on you and you're celebrating. That seems like it would be number one. I couldn't think of another one that would be better. Maybe a perfect game running toward the catcher

and jumping into the catchers arms. I thought baseball as well. I was thinking of William Mays Hayes going home on Clue Haywood and the Yankees. He slides into home and the Indians win and they storm the field. Yeah, like that, the dog pile like that. I would love that. What about like a game winning, like a natural Roy Hobbs wins the penning, home run trots.

I wouldn't want to be bleeding. out of my side, but I would like to break the lights with a home run. That's pretty cool. Because then you could do like the Vanderbeek winning in varsity blues end zone celebration. Yes. You could have the Jimmy Chitwood making the jumper at the top of the key to win the state title and the whole the whole arena comes at you. A fun part of it too is with Vanderbeak and with Cole Trickle is you get a victory makeout, like right there in the celebration. That's right.

Yeah. Your first face is awesome. Involve all the characters. Boxing has like you win and everybody comes in the ring. But I really think racing is number one for this. Because you get all the characters in the movie, things poured on you and you get to kiss somebody. What's the most 1990 thing about this movie? So I'll give you three choices.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman falling in love, which seems like it happened 130 years ago. For sponsors, we have Tide, Snickers, Skoll, and Exxon. And then Mellow Yellow. I think Exxon and Mellow Yellow being sponsors have to get there. Exxon was like, nothing can go wrong for us. Yeah, it would be great. They're still cleaning off those poor ducks with just covered in oil. I feel so bad for those ducks.

Guys, we have this spot in Days of Thunder. Yeah, this is the peak. By the lakehouse. We're good. I think that unless you guys can come up with another one, I think I have the winner. Is there anything else you think is 1990? I got one too. Russ Wheeler's girlfriend.

That's what I have. Yeah. She's basically Brigitte Nilsen. Right. With dark care. She has the high top fade and the crazy boxy blazer. It's just like, Chris,

I got the same one. It's Bridgett Nilsson wearing some sort of pantsuit with Mike Allstott shoulder pads underneath the jacket. It's unbelievable. The only thing that was missing was Fred Willard as the announcer going. Look at that happy fella.

I think I have the winner. Okay. This is just from the research verbatim. The film's theme song, Last Note of Freedom, was sung by White Snake's lead singer David Coverdale at the request of Tom Cruise. Fucking awesome.

Yeah. Is there any other point in the history of America where Tom Cruise would have requested a song from White Snakes David Coverdale? No. We're looking at 88 to 90. That has to be the window, right? It's also amazing too because David Coverdale is probably like, God, you know, I did, here I go again.

I'm with Tani Ketain. Yeah. In Days of Thunder. And then Nirvana comes like nine months later and wipes him off the face of the earth. David Coverdoll is at an Exxon rap party. And then you're just like, guys, it's going to get better for all of us. He has two million dollars from Exxon to perform Is This Love for five minutes and walk off stage. That's the winner.

What's age the best? Robert Duval is the crew chief. Rarely do you see somebody this overqualified to be in a sports movie where they actually care about the movie. Like Gene Hackman's in their replacements. He's mailing it in. It's still fun.

R-IP Gene Hackman. Duvall's like, I actually like this character. I'm going to explore, maybe I can steal this movie from Cruz. I just think he's really good, I would honestly watch him talking to car frames for like half an hour. Yeah.

He's like, I'm going to build you close to the ground, give you a good restrictor place. Is it a hot take to say this is a top five favorite Duval movie? Pretty hot. Because he's been in a lot of good movies. Yeah. Well, the other take is that this is a Robert Duval movie featuring Tom Cruise and Duval wins the movie. Like, that's another take because every time Harry's on, it's good.

It would be like Tom's scary winning top gun. The hairdos, you mentioned this is the best Cruz's hair has ever looked, ever. I almost feel like there's been some decisions in the last couple years where he's gone to the barber slash hairstylist slash die job person and been like, hey man, here's some days of thunder photos, like could be, how close can we get to this? Well, can I give it a special shout out to

like the top gun comparison. Russ Wheeler shows up with the same ice man hairdo. It's the same shit. It's a blonde spike. It might as well be Val Kilmer. It's ridiculous. I know. But it looks cool.

And curly hair, Kidman, is a special place in my heart. Yeah. Because what happens when when especially really, really attractive woman, have hair like that. They ride it into their mid-20s, and then they start straightening it out, and they never have it again. And I was having a conversation with my wife.

Last night about Nicole Kibben's hair as we want. I think her hair was like fifth on the call sheet. She's like, her hair is amazing. It's amazing. Look at the cars. She loved the hair. It's like a running quarterback, you know? Like, they do it for a few years.

And then it's like, no, no, no, I'm a pocket passer. I'm straight, my hair. It's so good. I just thought she was lights out back then. I remember, did I ever tell you, I was at a restaurant once with the great John Walsh in the early 2000s after I moved to L.A., so it was probably 03. And all of a sudden, Nicole Kidman walked in and the entire restaurant stopped. It was the only time I've ever seen that. And it stopped not because she was famous because she was like so beautiful.

Yeah. Everyone was like, oh my, it was like watching like dolphins jump in the fucking ocean. It was incredible. Everyone was like, oh my God. It's like tall, just like great. But shit, what a great run by her. Two best, age to the best, two Oscar winners, Kidman and Duval, like sharing actual scenes together.

Yeah. I don't think he was thinking this lady is going to be a multi-Oskar nominee someday as he was banging those cold trickle scenes out with her. Bill, did Walsh offer Nicole Kidman a part on a Ron the Horn? Like, wouldn't be one of the panels? Bring them in. Come on. Because I'm going to introduce Sir Eric right home.

John C. Riley, basically. as Reed Rochschild in this movie for a website's the best? Is there any difference with him and Reed Rochchild from what we can tell? No. No, and it's fun because he's intelligent and ice. It's like it's very meta and it's cool. But no, he is, he's young,

dumb, and he even plays guitar like Reed Rothschild does, which is really cool. So yeah, same dude. I think Paul Thomas Anderson was just like, just do the Days of Thunder guy. That's Reed Rochel. And the idea is basically that Duval has kept Riley, that Harry has kept Bucky on because his dad was the driver.

that died under DeVall's bar. Yeah, that story by Robert Town and Tom Cruise. Also, Bill, I have to jump on this, the town cruise. When you mentioned P.T. Anderson, so the scene when Cruz meets Russ Wheeler and he's on the phone and, like, kind of just males in the handshake, that is the exact scene when Jack Horner brings Johnny Doe to meet Dirk Diggler, and he's like, this is a new guy here. Oh, good point. Yeah, it's the same scene.

I bet PT love this movie. Oh, no question, because we know he loves Cruz and Riley, too. Yes. Carrie Elwey's as a dick Just I don't think there was Valcomer is probably 10 out of 10 Best Dicks of the 80s 90s But Carrie Elie was always a solid eight and a half

I have two more but do you have guys Any more? What's the age of best? I burned all mine. What do you got Chris? I'm always here for drunk Tom Cruise It's like watching an alien Try to speak French

Just him having a bud Try to watch a monkey fuck a football Yeah It just really is like So fucking funny And we've discussed this before it's clear that he's never had to drink alcohol in the last 40 years. It definitely seems that way because he's just when he gets drunk in a few good men,

when he gets drunk here, it's just like, hey man, that's not exactly how it goes. It would be like if I tried to film a cocaine scene and I was like, and you rub your gums? Yeah, because he'd seen vinyl ones.

I also just love when Rusty is like, I'm going to pull this rookie's chain. I love like hazing ritual. is happening at 185 miles per hour. Right. Is awesome. Two more for me. I'm more afraid of being nothing than being hurt.

Great yearbook quote. Just pencil, what are we in March? We're still like handing in high school yearbooks. Throw that one in there, somebody. Couple racing lessons, as I've mentioned many times, we don't really understand this world. A couple lessons I took away. Driver has to trust his crew chief.

Sure. Just know that going forward. Tires win a race. It's dirty secret. Not about the car. It's not about the drivers. It's the tires. Don't have two race teams if you're the owner like Randy Quaid. You got to pick one. You're going to have tension. And then this was probably the best advice. They're calculating drivers and kamikaze drivers. Which one are you?

So, Bill, when you're like, I don't like it when you do two other pods on a rewatchables day. Is that because you're trying to keep my tires? Right. You're doing like four. Your tires are like freaking a mess. Can we talk about the wheelchair scene? Is it time? That's amazing. Go ahead. It's just Tony Scott being like, it's like when we were at the Masters with Chang once and he just made us a pizza out of stuff in the fridge and it was like saltines and like a tomato and some broccoli and it was amazing pizza out of this.

That's Tony Scott. Tony Scott and Hans Zimmer are saying let's do the stupidest scene ever. And yet, am I crazy? It's my favorite race in the movie. I like it better than any of the car race. It's more entertaining to me. And if you really get into the tape of it, like dive into the tape, the funniest movie of the wheelchair part of the wheelchair race by far is at one point, Cole's nurse catches back up with him and takes

the handles and fucking rowdy hits his hands away from Cole's wheelchair to preserve the integrity of the race. Like, I'm going to win the right way. And I think the subtext of that scene is Cruz was not to do any driving. in the whole movie. He wasn't allowed to drive the car for insurance reasons. I feel like that scene was his Daytona. This is the one race they let me do and he's fucking serious as hell. But it was actually kind of unfair because he's coming off of born on the 4th of July.

So he's been in the wheelchair. He has reps. For like the better part of the last two years. Well, when I heard it wasn't in the research, but I'm guessing Rooker was in the $400,000 gym just working on a wheelchair treadmill that Don Simpson bought him. Triceps. You're right. He's getting it going.

I forgot to ask you guys what your most. free-watchable scene was because mine is also the wheelchair scene. Chris? Mine is probably the montage, the give me some love and montage. Okay. I'm here for Rooker. And the most Rooker scene in this movie is when he first meets Cole. He's, you run good.

Now get your own car and be in a crowd. Like, I love the opening sin. Taking one more break. This episode is brought to by Pure Michigan. In Grand Rapids, every moment feels like a scene worth replaying. every riverside stroll, every slow afternoon sipping small batch brews, every guitar riff drifting out of the city's brand new amphitheater. This is a place where everything feels cinematic.

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the game and grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The active cash credit card from Wells Fargo. Be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms of play. The Big Kahuna Burger Award, best use of food and drink. Has to be Mellow Yellow just being a sponsor, right? We can't top that. I actually look this up. Mellow Yellow still exists in some markets. Do you know that?

I didn't. It's still alive. Is it Coke's answer to Mountain Dew or vice versa? One of those? Yeah, it's kind of like it doesn't really work anymore, but they don't want to officially cancel it. The only other thing I had was when they finally get to the dinner with Fred Dalton Thompson.

Yeah. And Cole goes for the crudite first. It's like, has a NASCAR driver ever had crudence? Day in the history of mankind. He's from Eagle Rock. Yeah. Would you have Kyle? I mean, do we consider sweet and low to be food?

It is a sweetener. Sure, let's do it. Okay, that wins. You're right. The double packet into the thigh is mine. Great shot, Gorder Award for most cinematic shots. You have one, CR? Yeah, you know, every shot in this movie is pretty much everything that modern blockbusters

are not, but there is a shot at the Daytona 500 when the cars are passing like the last officials before they get ready to start. and there is a low angle shot of all the cars going by and all these fucking balloons are going up in the background and I'm like Tony Scott you are an absolute demon for this this is such a great looking piece

and it's just a throwaway shot but pretty much everything in this movie could be a painting. I zagged Bill. The shot that should be in the Smithsonian is during the physical when Cruz and Kidman are actually standing face to face and you can see how short Tom Cruise is.

He never let that happen again. That's disavowed by him. Yeah, he's only ever been posted up by Kidman and McGillis. Those are the only two times he's gotten dunked on. In the 4K Blu-ray, he actually had them add six inches to his height. Oh, is that right? Yeah, they're the same height. CR, you're up with a flex category from categories we don't normally have.

Yeah, I got Vincent Chase Award. Are we sure this character was actually good at his job? And I got to say, it might have been the brain injury talking, but Rusty's, uh, Rowdy's idea to let his wife design the, $10 million house when she maybe has no background in architecture or project management with maybe like, hey, Routy, maybe one more brain surgery. Settle down. She's from Jacksonville, Routy.

Settle down. That's good. I like that one. The Butchers girlfriend Award, weak link of the film. What do you got, Kyle? All right. So I have a little one and a bigger one. The little one I have is that we never really get full Rowdy burns.

Like he never really goes super, super intense. You don't yell. It's not like he's a very underplayed performance there. And I'm always waiting for that one scene like in Cliffhanger where he just screams at Stallone and goes absolutely nuts. And we don't get it. But my bigger one is just it's a little too much talking going on. In the second half of the movie, we got too much talking. And you're like, get us back to the racetrack.

I get these scenes of Duval talking to the car and them and crews. The second half drags because I think in a race car movie, we just want to see. ass kicking, a little too much talking. I think I had the same. I think I know why that is. Okay. And it is one of my what's age the worst. I think the crash happens too early in the movie. Interesting.

I think it would be cool if maybe that montage scene had been two montages or whatever. It had been five minutes longer. But that crash happens. You don't really get that much time with Cole racing in his prime. Before now it's all of a sudden this is a movie about CTE. you know. Right. I had the, I had right after the middle of the movie, I think it craters for about 25 minutes. Rowdy's battle with a career ending injury.

Just, just kill him off. Cole's road rage incident and her be like, nobody has control. Every scene where Claire is like mad at Cole or they're trying to establish some sort of tension with them, it just doesn't work. Let me out of car, Cole. Let me out of the car. Hot break feels good in a place like this. I like moving the crash later. I think that's a good idea. I would also, you could have talked to me in a Harry's stealth cancer battle.

Ooh. That Chris finds out about when they have the big back and forth in the end. Creed Rocky plot line. I like it. Yeah, just like a little, yeah, a little Creed one. Something's wrong with Harry and he doesn't want to tell Cole and Cole finds out. I think this movie's better off with Rowdy just dies. We lose all those scenes.

Yeah, they goos. We basically, and they probably didn't want to do it because they didn't want to have the goose parallel, but we have that. So that's where they do the line. They were like, we can give Carrie Elway's Val Kilmer's hair. Yeah. But we can't act killer. Guys, they're going to, they're not going to take us seriously if he dies.

Come on. Hey, now we get to do the Elizabeth Shoe as an Oxford Electrochemist Award for most ridiculous casting. A lot of options, but it's hard to pass 23-year-old Nicole Kidman as Charlotte's best neurosurgeon. Bill, I had this. I had this as my flex. I was going to reach to the top of the Elizabeth Shoe Oxford. And I just, I want to establish for the record, if any of us were in 1990 in Daytona Beach, Florida, of all places and needed emergency care, we would get it from a 5 foot 11, 20-something, beautiful-looking Australian doctor who was also completely DTF.

Like, I don't know if that is the fit that you would get. The odds have got to be long. What was a more unrealistic character, her or Kelly Lynch in Roadhouse, if you had to guess? Most unrealistic, why are you living in this part of the world and why are you this good at your job? I think it's Lynch is unrealistic because she's in Jasper of all places. Right. And is a billion out of 10 working the ER and Jasper at least, at least page New Wiki or whatever her name is gets the fallout from NASCAR.

Claire Lewicki. I think it's the Kelly Lynch scale of ridiculous physicians. Yeah. Do you think that Lewicki is in Daytona because that's where all the good brain injuries are? Or do you think that nobody believes a 23-year-old could do this job so she could only get a job in Daytona? Yeah, this is the best way to do it. But I think she's supposed to be like 29.

Right. But she, I mean, she looks like a kid in this movie. Anyway, what's age the worst? The video game for this movie stunk. I just wanted to get that on the record. It's terrible. Bad, really disappointing during an era where our expectations for video games were starting to go up.

And this was bad. And in general, most driving video games were bad in the 80s and 90s. But this one, I feel like that. You spent $100 million. You fucking build a gym for Simpson and Brooke. where you can't have a good video game, CR? Come on. Yeah, that's a tough one.

What was, like, kind of the preeminent driving game right around this time? Well, arcade-wise, pole position was great. Yeah. Pole position was iconic for five, six years. And Days of Thunder, at least should have had an awesome arcade game with Cruz's face on it.

Like, I don't know how they fucked that up. No, like, in the arcade at this point, there was a game called Outrun. Oh, yeah, Outrun was a... Rad Racer on Nintendo was kind of the standard. Rad Racer was good. Yeah. I mean, there was fun stuff,

But this guy, on the golden eye scale of like movies being made into video games, this is a two. The top gun game was way better and you couldn't fucking land. So this game is really bad. Give me more what stage the worst because I have three left. What do you guys have? There's just too much baggage in this movie. Everybody's got some sob story with the exception of Lewicki. There's just, and it's hard to navigate it.

It's hard to separate it. John C. Riley never even gets like a moment to like grapple with his dad. but Harry's talking about him all the time. I just feel like there was like one too many things on a whiteboard that they put in the movie. Yeah, it's an eight episode prestige TV series as a one hour and 40 minute movie. Yeah, and then the only other thing would be

knowing that they had to go back and reshoot the end of Daytona, I feel like they could have spent one more half a day on nailing Cole's reaction to winning NASCAR's biggest race, which is, all right, all right! Yeah, it's a great one's age the worst. I couldn't agree more. Let Tom Cruise be like, let's fucking go.

Come on. Unleashed Tom Cruise. No, you're right. He should have done the KG. He should have, like, think how many times he unleashes in cocktail, which is only two years before. Like, at least break out that Brian Flanagan for a split second. You have anything, Kyle?

Yeah. I have Cole's courting of Dr. Newicki as one of the most deplorable, ridiculous things that's happened. Four steps of being. a creepy stalker slash assholes. Step number one, you take the doctor's hand and put it on your penis in a room full of witnesses, and they all just laugh. Stage two, you then wait for her in the parking lot by her car, which is what serial killers

do. Stage three, you fill her apartment with $10,000 worth of flowers and balloons, which is the terrible thing to do. And if you do that, they call the cops to have it photographed. And stage four, after you kiss her in the middle of the physical, you walk out and say, how are you ignoring me? Which is really the line from fatal attraction. It's like from start to finish deplorable and gross.

And she apparently just fucking loves it because she's in. It's almost like this is a character who's probably dyslexic and has a massive brain injury. Right. She has to. He has to. That's great. I love that, Kyle. I have some small ones.

I really like the scene when Harry's building Cole's car and he's like, he's got the hands. Yeah. And we see like the frame of a car. And then in 10 seconds, there's the car. I could have gone three more minutes with them, him like instructing people. No, no, you got it. The fenders got to look like that. I was so interested in that part and just is gone immediately.

I could have done a whole scene. Randy Quaid's character is named Tim Dalland. Yeah. This is a movie with Rowdy Burns and Cole Trickle and Dr. Claire LeWiki. We couldn't have done better than Tim. Dalant? Can you just talk me through financially? What's Tim Dallon on the hook for here in the beginning?

It's like he's basically putting up all his money to get into NASCAR and then hoping he gets sponsored. But then over the course of six races is swimming in it enough to have two cars going? So some bigger motorsports entity comes in. Okay. It's like a Hendricks motor sports. Well, Cole won like six races in a row. Yeah.

Oh, that's right. The greatest rookie start ever. I looked up had never had never had. I don't think it ever happened. Yeah. So I think he's looking to expand on the coal, riding the coal gravy train, and he gets the second car,

and then that's it. Is that a nitpick, C.R? Nobody wins six races in a row in NASCAR? At least the way I looked it up. It was something like he had won five out of six or something like that, and it was like, I think that, like,

if you win like two in a row, people are like, holy shit, like we're in a rarefied air here. So this is any given Sunday, but Willie Beeman throws for 590 yards, five weeks in a row. Yeah.

And 400 TDs. all right my big one I'm really excited to share this with you guys let's do it how much how much you you love this awkward Tom Cruise bedroom scenes this is yet another one with the in bed

it's it's he's got their line next to each other it's like did they have sex or are they about to have you can never tell with Tom Cruise in bed it's like did he just come is he about to come what's going on maniacally laughing in Jennifer Connolly's face So much comedy in bed.

Most guys are in bed. They're just like, that girl's hot. I'm going to try to have sex with her. Tom Cruise is like, he's on serious channel of 94 doing like comedy bits on Netflix as a joke. He brings out sweet and lows. There's always props with Tom Cruise.

He can't just be like, hey, you know what I'm going to do is make out with this person. And then then let's do a genital thing. He's like, now I'm going to bring some condiments, some sweet and low. But I was trying to think like the awkward Tom Cruise bedroom scenes of all time.

Go on. This is like an eight and a half. I think that with Gina Gershon and Cocktail, that's like a solid eight. I don't know what they're doing there. They're bouncing around. They fall off the bed. It's like nobody has had sex like this ever. Top Gun with Kelly McGillis is a nine and a half.

And I think the 10, I think a solid 10, Top Gun Maverick with Jennifer Connolly. Which is the most chaste sex scene in American history. We broke it down when we did the immediate rewatching. after seeing that movie twice. I still don't know what happens. Every time it's on, on cable, near that scene, I watch it because I enjoy it so much. He's just laughing. They're just laughing hysterically.

It's unclear what's happened. Did they just make out? Yeah. So, Kyle, why can't Tom Cruise get this right? What's wrong with him? I think you hit something there is that when you watch a bedroom scene, you should know unequivocally if they already did it or they're going to. And I have no idea.

And I will only jump in. I got more sex scenes I'm thinking about. Jerry McGuire with Dorothy Boyd, they're playing a jazz record and she comes out. Oh, that's another one. Good one. Yeah. Yeah.

And then they start doing awkward kissing. And I'll tell you. And Bonnie Hunt's listening to the laughter. It's like, why is there so much laughter? Why isn't there grunting? Yeah. And fucking Luther Vandruff. Bonnie Hunt,

go to a 7-11. What are you doing? Get the fuck out of your, Bonnie. Same best Tom Cruise sex scene ever. Same movie, Kelly Preston. And that's because she goes to fucking town. And he just sits there. And I feel like Cameron Crowe after like six takes was probably just like Kelly.

Just go fucking nuts on him. All right. Just go nuts. All right. I got it. Cruz doesn't get it. No, he's just standing there.

Complete ham. Soon or later. I will have to stop. Risky business train scene. He starts out great with the sex scene. Yeah. Then we have all the right moves with Leah Thompson, which is like a very tender high school. Mm-hmm.

Here's the first time you've seen me without my shirt. It's one of those. It's like very early 80s. I was going to pull my shirt. up. Yeah, that's tough. But, uh, awkward, whatever. But as the 80s go on into the 90s, it just gets weirder and weirder.

And then eyes wide shut. Hmm. In some ways, eyes wide shut. Is the most erotic is done. Is the most erotic. Because that's just like, it's capturing him at his weirdest. But once he was on the sofa with Oprah, I don't know if we ever saw it again, other than a Maverick.

And then a Maverick, I still can't explain it. Are they watching sign? Felden's like are they what what's happening are they waiting for post date's order what are they doing I like Dave Farkazi ha ha ha ha ha what are they laughing about she's like I had this customer yesterday and he tried to pay with a five but he gave me a hundred he's like ah ha ha SNL is so back anyway all right ruffalo hana rubinick partridge overacting award probably cruised in the car a couple times I would say yeah but I do want to go all of

always. There's a very specific thing that Duval does in a lot of his films, which is, fucks with a guy to the point where the guy gets mad at him and then he laughs at him. So when he's doing the ice cream thing and Cruz gets out of the car, and he's like, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Like, a real, like... De Niro Cape Fear. Crazy Duval laugh. Yeah. All right. So the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford Hottest take a word. I have one. Do you guys have one? I do have one. Go ahead. So in my research for this film,

there's a lot of stuff that is unattributed, but I loved this one so much because of what it means to movie history. And I think without Dr. Jerry Punch, there's no eyes wide shut. Because apparently,

it was Dr. Jerry Punch who saw Dead Calm and mentioned it to Tony Scott. And Tony Scott cast Nicole Kidman off of that, thus starting the ball rolling down the hill that leads to Stanley Kubrick, making one of the craziest movies of all time. There's so many

weird sliding doors, nexus event, butterfly wings in this film. If this movie had been more on time, we would have gotten the better Beverly Holes Cop 3. We have basically half the cast of justified winds up in this movie with Nick Searcy and Margotamartendale.

There's all these little things that are so amazing. Wow, that's a good one. What do you have, Kyle? And we never get the Cruz Kidman marriage, like, of all that produced and, like, all the places that that went. Yeah. Mine couldn't be more different. We never get the two kids they adopted that Cruz doesn't talk to anymore. We don't get those either.

Shout out to those kids. I hope you love the pod. Yeah. I was trying to do a Days of Thunder is better than Top Gun Take, but I just couldn't get there. I can't justify it. So it's not. It's not. Fighter planes are cooler than race cars.

So my take is this. I miss Tom Cruise's old teeth. I miss them a lot. And I think that they were better. I swear I thought this movie. I thought this too. I liked it too. They were like going all over the place, but they worked.

They're everywhere. And if you don't know, in the early 2000s, he got braces and he has normal teeth. I fucking like the old ones. They're real. They're authentic. And I love that the biggest movie star in the world had a snagletooth. It was just kind of cool. It was like a B of Julia Roberts had a straight end gap.

And now it's like everything is fucking veneers and it's all the leads to me look perfect. I wish Cruz would go back if you would like unvisaline the thing for one more time. Like before Jordan played his last game in the garden, he wore the Jordan ones. I want the old teeth. They look better. I'm telling you, I stand by it. It's a wonderful, wonderful hotest take. Thank you.

I have a warm-up hotest take and then a hottest take. We've talked about Rooker many times and I think this is a good spot. I still don't understand why he was in a way bigger star in the late 80s, early 90s. When he does this movie, he's coming off, Henry Portrait of a Syracur.

He does see a love. It feels like there's going to be a Rooker moment. We called it the Rooker Sons. Everything people, peaks and cliffhanger. And then he just kind of moves into like, kind of graduated from that guy land and pops up in a bunch of stuff. It's always fun to see him.

I remember when he showed up and walking dead, it was like, oh my God, Rooker. Yeah. This is amazing. I just felt like there was more there. I know Kyle,

we've talked about it. We don't even, almost don't even need to hear your thoughts. Yeah. I hear you. It's like, it's almost like saying like, yeah,

it'd be nice that the Bills won a Super Bowl. It would be cool. I just don't understand what happened with Rooker. I feel like, Like, CR, what was he missing? I feel like he was maybe missing Bill Paxton's sense of humor, because I feel like Paxton, being Seismore and Rooker, we're all circling a lot of the same parts.

And if you had your number one draft choice every time, seemed to be Paxton. And he just missed a couple of those roles. Yeah, so that's a good point with Rooker. Like, could he have been in heat 100,000 percent? He could have played like six characters in heat. So there was, it turns out. like his iconic role was cliffhanger.

Being mad at Gabe for trying to save his girlfriend, which we broke down for 20 minutes. She trusted you and she died. I think, I was right. I think he's missing Paxon's sense of humor, but I also think he's missing Mel Gibson or Val Kilmer's leading man looks, too.

It's like he's, it's not quite there. And listen, he was huge in the MCU when it was still cool, the walking dead thing. He's had an amazing career. Great run. But never the face on the poster. Well, that's not my hottest take.

My hottest take. this movie is way better if Cole Trickle is just Brian Flanagan and it's called Cocktail 2 Days of Thunder and Brian Flanagan has gotten divorced he's giving up the bar restaurant business he always enjoyed driving

and he's just playing Brian Flanagan and he's doing it and he's not that much farther removed than Cole Trickle's actual origin which is they just put me in a car and I was good at driving Yeah like let's just make him Flanagan he's got

every time he looks at the dashboard and Coglins right there and he like pats the dashboard Coglins maybe he has the reconciliation with Elizabeth Shoe but it doesn't work out. It leads to Kidman. I just think it's more I think also like his sponsor has to be Captain Morgan or Malibu Rum or something from the bar. Oh, it's perfect. Casting what ifs. Cruz won and Kurt Russell for Rowdy Burns but Russell did backdraft instead. It's a pretty good what if.

I have a casting what ifs lineup here that I do think rivals what we got. You mean Robin Wright being the first choice of Dr. Claire Lewicky? Robin Wright is Claire Lewicky. Tom Seismore is Tim. Kurt Russell is Rowdy or Dale Earnhardt as Rowdy. Yep. That's another one.

And then I like the idea of Paul Newman coming back and doing Harry. Dale Earnhardt Jr. said that his dad was discussed for Rowdy and Dale turned it down because he didn't want to play a bad guy, which goes to show you how little of the script they wrote. Because what they ended up with, Rowdy was 100% not the bad guy. Right. Like,

he actually should have played Rowdy. And I think this would have been a good hottest take. I think you could make a case, like unbelievable career move for Dale Earnhardt Sr. To be Rowdy Burns and a Tom Cruise movie. Yeah. I know he is the most famous driver in that world, but people like me and you,

like we barely knew who he was. Yeah, or it could have been terrible. Who knows? I don't know if you can pull that off. It could have been Brett Farvin something called Mary Eye or somebody. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know. This isn't quite a casting with it, but we haven't talked about it yet. Don Simpson put himself in the movie as driver Aldo Benedetti, B-E-N-N-E-D-E-T-I. Later to be seen an inglorious bastard. This movie wasn't deranged and koki enough.

It had a producer, and you see him in the beginning. And it's so fucking funny when you know it's there. Apparently his acting was so bad and his scenes were so awful that they ended up cutting out a lot of the Aldo Benedetti stuff. He only has one cameo. And then there's the story after, who knows if it's true, that Tony Scott shot long, terrible scenes with him. So Simpson would know how bad he was and just had like five, six minute long scenes of Simpson mangly dialogue. Yeah. So it would get fucked up.

And it ends up just being a cameo. but how much cocaine do you have to be on to think you should be in a Tom Cruise movie? That you should be an Italian race car driver. Italian? He's named Simpson. His name's Simpson. Danny McBride Award for playing yourself.

Richard Petty, Rusty Wallace, Neil Bonnet, Harry Gant, Dr. Jerry Puss. So we have that. Who do you have for Best That Guy Award? Because there's a great one in here. I have J.T. Quinn, who is he's Rowdy's Pitt guy. And he is forever the guy

maximum overdrive who gets blinded by gasoline. Oh, that's where you went first? Yeah. Come on, CR. What do you have? Well, you, Bill, you got a great one? No, is J.C. Quinn or J.T. J.T.

J.T. I have them, too. But he was the chef in Vision and Quest. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. Okay. It's not about the six minutes. He's the chef. It's what happens in the six minutes.

They've been one of the great sports movie characters. Always love seeing him. He also plays the dad and the program. of the quarterback. I had Nick Searcy, who's the Ranger, who says everyone's under arrest for transportation and the alcohol. It's the same guy who's the Ranger in the fugitive who says, Wyatt Earp here is going to take over.

Same guy. And then it goes on to be a Marshall and Justified. Yeah. And he has that great scene. He's in a castaway with Tom Hanks where he's like, we had a funeral and I put Elvis records in. Like that guy's Nick Searcy. He's been around for decades.

Yeah. Margo Martindale is no longer that guy. but this is, I think, her first feature. I like Quinn. Dion Waiter's Award, here we go. So I'm not going to say the winner yet, but Fred Thompson is our runner up, who just calls people's monkeys,

tells a long story about, calls them the Japs with lettuce. Sure does. Fred Dalton Thompson, always reliable to come in and be mildly racist and be awesome, but also mildly racist. The Japanese inspection starts great.

He's not the winner, though. The stripper police officer. on. Lelani Sorrell, AKA. Like, hmm, where does she, she looks so familiar. What else did she do? Fucking Roxy from basic instinct. Yeah.

But we did the basic instinct pot. It was like, why wasn't she one of the biggest stars of the 90s? She does that basic instinct, and then that's kind of it. Was she dating Simpson? No, somebody else was. I have that in the half. The other girl in that scene who's on the bus, Simpson cast, and then ended up,

dating and marrying. But then didn't Tony Scott also wind up dating? Oh, he dated her and Tony Scott married her. That's what it was. Yeah, yeah. She became eventually Mrs. Tony Scott. Hmm.

And she's on the bus. Wasn't Sharon Stone up for the Wiki, too? Like, that could have been the full crossover two years later. I think she was up for everything. But listen, when I was, this movie when I was 10 years old and we had the VHS from Blockbuster, that was a very important scene for us. That was fully erotic, completely titillating on every level for fifth grade kids. PJ 13 erotic.

Yeah. Roxy. Just an iconic 90s character. I haven't thought about Roxy since the pod. Recasting couch director of city. I mean, just get Val Kilmer for Ross Wheeler. What are we doing? What are we doing?

Yeah. You guys could have taken a little bit out of the gym budget and hit Kilmer's. What are we doing? It's there for four days. Just say, hey, I know you're shooting the doors. Can you come down to Charlotte and just... You're shooting the doors. We were to put a flat top hairdo on.

What if he showed up as Morrison? Leather pants? Yes. I'm throwing in for my flex category. Was there a better title for this movie? Okay. And I just not really happy with Days of Thunder. I don't know what it means.

Stupid. What does it mean? It's corny as hell. Yeah. What if you just called it Daytona? Yeah. Or like, I mean, the F1 movie is just calling it F1. You know, like.

Would you call it trickle? No. Dropping the hammer? dropping the hammer's not bad Checker flag Something with tires I don't know what the answer is It turns out days of thunder might be a good title

You know what? It's incoherent though What else could I mean days of thunder could be about anything I don't even know what that means Days of Thunder I don't know It's terrible

It sounds like a storm movie It sounds like Twister Yeah we still don't have the answer Half Fassner Research Only a couple ones Hendrick Motorsports supplied the main cars, and they were actually raced in real races three times to get the extra footage.

Cole and Rowdy raced rental cars in the beach, and they show birds scattering out of the way. Apparently, they put bird seeds on the beach, and the first time they filmed the scene, the cars just ran over a bunch of birds. You can't do that. A bird death. Yeah, PETA violations were had.

Donna Scott, the Pitcawl in that scene with Roxy, broke up with Simpson, dated Tony Scott. they got married, had two kids. And then Cruz apparently got a speeding ticket in Carolina, 85 and a 55 because he was rubbed up. Madass. There's one here, Bill, that might be one of the great pieces of IMDB trivia I've ever come

across. Quote, Nicole Kidman wanted to study neurosurgery for her part, but the producers told her it would be a waste of time. Yeah, okay, Merrill Streep. Some other movies. I saw that. and include it because it seemed too crazy. Do you think that was true?

Yes. Don't worry about it, honey. We need you on set. Don't, could I go and maybe study neurosurgeons? Could I get into the hospital and talk to some neurosurgeons? That's awesome. Apex Mountain Cruise? Probably not.

We're in the cruise vicinity, but I still feel like it's a few good men that range. Yeah, I mean, I think 89, 90, 92. is about is about like we're in that we're in range we're not quite there duval no kid been not yet cruises hair and teeth i think hell yes and yes yes yes nascar no lunatic don simpson stories i think yes i think we this is apex right here yeah i mean my favorite one is still David Milch's from from bad boys, but yes, this is, this is incredible. Cruz as a believable real-life playboy bachelor coming off divorce, landing Nicole Kidman.

I'm going to say yes. I had no questions when I was in 1990. They were so innocent. Rooker, Cliffhanger, right? Cliffhanger, yeah, it's him and Stallone, toe-to-to-to, the whole movie. John C. Riley, no. Carrie always, no. What is Carrie always as a pexon?

Princess Bride. Yeah, I think 87, I think. Hans Zimmer, probably not. Simpson, Brookheimer, no. Mellow. Car racing movies? Car racing movies.

Probably Talladega. I think that's had better legs. And then Mellow Yellow, yes, right? Yeah. But I didn't get better for Mellow Yellow. That song that inspired the soda, song by Donovan,

like an old hippie song, but I think this car in the movie and everything's got to be, yeah. Cruiser, Hanks. Cruises in it. I'm willing to have the Hank's Convo. I can't get there. But Cruz, sure.

So I don't know what the standings are now for those two. What do you have for Scorsese or Spielberg? I would like to see the Scorsese version of this. A lot more cocaine. Simpson's like, yeah, let's have coal become a cocaine addict. Cruz goes on to work with Spielberg a bunch throughout the 90s and into the 2000s. But I always wished he had done more with Scorsese because I love color of money so much. So I'll go with Scorsese.

I got Scorsese, too. Harry had this wonderful system for doing the moonshine. He would slice the barley so thin, it would liquefying the jar with just a little yeast. That's it's Corsese. What role would Philip C. Moorhoffin have played? You could see him a little bit older as Harry. You could seem a little bit younger as the John C. Riley.

Yeah. Rooker would have been interesting. That part, Rowdy? As Russ would have been cool? Like, just as a gear change at the end, showing up and just being like, Hey, Cole. Like, you know, I like him. I had, I wanted to see if we could get him in a race car too.

I don't know if that works, but like full on talented Mr. Ripley, cocky asshole over the top. Yeah, Freddie. And then I also had him potentially just stealing the scene as Big John. It's just turning around and talking about the Japanese this and that I think he would kill. So Philip C. Moffman at Freddie as Russ Wheeler. That's it. Going, going, cool. How's the C.

has a CTE. Racehorse rock band wrestler or fantasy team name. Heart at the top, Cole Trickle, Cole Tricklers, anything with Tricklers, yeah. I got a cool punk band

called Japanese Inspection. I think they fucking rock. We'll see them with the House of Blues. Peaked in the early 80s with a couple songs, yeah. All right. Craig, come on camera for this one because you have a flex category for us.

I'm going to keep this one somewhat wholesome. I'm just going good old-fashioned best quote and I generally think this movie you could probably just enjoy it with the sound off and that's complimentary I mean that in a complimentary way but there's a couple moments where town and cruise nailed it I thought Bill you hit one with I'm more afraid of being nothing than I am of being hurt great line Duval has a line you can't hide from your bad luck in his car great line and then Rooker has a quote where he's like you know when I grew up I hated farming

all I wanted to do was race cars. Now I'm a race car driver and all I want to do is work on a farm. Just like a couple of bangers. I got a second. I'm starting to feel like Craig might like this movie. We'll find out at the end of the pod.

Pickett's a NASCAR driver from Eagle Rock is just ridiculous. You walk the streets of Eagle Rock a lot. See any possible NASCAR drivers floating around there? Just fantasy. Yeah. Jesus.

Lewicki falls for Cole in about two minutes. Yeah, it's tough. Just want to mention that. And he's off to a terrible start and as Kyle laid out the whole stalking scenario with him. Unclear why she doesn't have a boyfriend either. Another classic, like, why don't you have somebody? Because unlike Kelly Lynch and Roadhouse, she's in Charlotte. That's like a pretty big city.

She also is insisting that she works 24 hours a day. Yeah. Which is extreme. Dream girlfriend. Smoking hot doctor is on call all the time. Sounds great. I'm going to watch sports. Tell me when you get back from the.

hospital. Any other nitpicks for you guys? I had one about Dr. New Wiki. Awfully preachy and judgmental about race cars for someone who jumps on the back of a Harley with no helmet and some asshole driving her around that she just met. I don't know if a lot of doctors are just doing that

especially if they're just constantly talking about the lunatics who are race car drivers. It doesn't really jive from me. I have one more small one because this is a movie thing that happens a lot where the passenger wants to get out of the car and then opens the door. Let me out or I'm getting out.

Lady Bird. In real life, I just think Cole keeps going. Go ahead. You're going to fall out of the car. I fucking dare you. I dare you. You're going to fall out. I'm going 80 miles an hour.

I had my two or three here, two of them are interrelated. One is Cole drove indie cars or open wheel cars before NASCAR. Yeah. I just don't think you can get to the level he's at with the level of car aptitude that he claims to have or lack of car aptitude that he claims to have. Couldn't agree more. I don't know what you guys are talking about. like his weird like I don't know how to read thing is is strange but then when he confronts Harry

which would only have taken place like six months nine months later maybe he's like a car expert where he's like oh NASCAR said the carbon monoxide and the you know the restrictor plate so it's like so are you Mr. Goodwrench or did you not know anything about cars? Yeah fast learner maybe and then the other one is just that I feel like this film is too reliant on the high pass. I could have used one more cool car move. Yeah. And every race

basically hinges on can Cole pass this guy high until he passes him low. It's like if this is a football movie and it's just a tush push is the only place. Every single time. We got to get to fourth and one for another tush push. It didn't work last time. Sequel prequel prestige TV all blackcast

are untouchable. So less than six months ago, Tom Cruise is going to do a Days of Thunder sequel. Yeah. And doing it with Top Gun Maverick. I guess he's Harry in this. Yeah. Well, I mean, he might be called.

He might be called still. Is that when Top Gun Maverick was being developed, the whole idea is that Maverick was going to be Viper. Like, but he was going to be the teacher and that these younger guys were going to take over. Just like Jeremy Renner was going to take over Mission Impossible. I will believe Tom Cruise passing the baton when I actually see it being taken out of his cold dead hands.

We could do CGI and also do that same speech about LeBron and Luca Dodger. Yeah, LeBron's gonna retire. Pass the torch to Luca. Is he? Oh, one other nitpick I had just briefly is for the extremity of that

accident that Cole and Rowdy get into, Cole just having like the cutest little burst blood vessel in his eye. Yeah. That's his only... It's adorable. Yeah. Get a little scrape in it.

Yeah, give him like a high, high ankle sprain, something. Yeah. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trailer's, Dorsberg, Sam Jackson, No, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony, Romo, Harley, Haasling, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, long legs, or Wilford Brimley in the firm, C.R. God damn, Cole. I didn't know I was working with Super Driver and a motherfucking Australian girlfriend. You better pass Russ on the high side or your lady is going to be doing AMC theater.

intro's a long fucking time, big boy. Get him the fuck out of here. I just wanted to do that for Kyle. I actually think DB would be great. Yeah. We see you, Mr. Trickle. We see you passing high.

You didn't know anything about cars when you got behind the wheel of a 195 file per hour vehicle. That's like going after Vince Carter in the dunk contest. Like what do I? Right. But I've always wanted to do

this one, and I'm so thrilled. I'm going to take my shot. I am going with Wilford Brimley and the firm. Yes. We got crews right there, and I think the premise is Cole is going to leave the race team. He's like, I'm out of here. And then Randy Quaid says his head of security, take Cole for a little drive. Oh, Stripper. And he says, imagine this, Cole. Here's your page. One day walking to the mailbox looking to get her Red Book magazine. What does she find instead? Heartache Cole. And it's the pictures of him with the stripper from the bus. Yeah. Not just screwing Cole, intimate acts, oral and whatnot.

Impossible for a young Australian doctor to forget. That's the scene. I need it. Wow. Those are two great ones. I almost don't want to follow it just with Roma going, he might go hi, Jim. My guy's going low, Jim.

Just one Oscar, who gets it? Hans Zimmer. Don Simpson said Robert Town should get an Oscar. for this for what he did. Disagree. It didn't get nominated for best sounds, so maybe that wins the Oscar. Probably an answerable questions. Cole's Daytona odds.

I have no idea how to do a race car odds, but Cole coming off, major accident, not doing that great. Not his car. I'm going to guess 100, not his car. I'm guessing 100 to 1 or higher, right? Something like that. Yeah. All right, here's, well, I have one more, but do you guys have any in answerables?

I had a question for the, for the panel here. Yeah. Do you guys think you'd be good at driving a pace car? Like a Pontiac out in front? Yeah, I'd just be so nerve-wracking. You're driving like a Chevy Lumina and all these stock cars. Yeah, I just wouldn't enjoy it.

Yeah. I'm going to say no. I think it's very deceptively difficult to drive on those tracks, the way that they're curved and arched and everything like that. And plus, it's like being the drum major in front of the marching band. Like, don't fuck up. Everybody's looking at you. I get nervous just thinking about the question.

Harry telling him to hit the pace car is one of my low-key favorite moments. Yeah, that's awesome. And he's going to do it because he's that stupid. I have a question about Kidman and Cruz. So they met on set. The romance starts. Yeah. At what point of the shoot or at what scene do you think that they were getting together? And was it before or after the bedroom scene? Were they a couple at that time or were they flirting together or not? When did it happen? If I had to guess, I would say really practically speaking, probably upon casting. Yeah. Right away. Oh,

CR. My take was, I think it's right after the violent makeout in the hallway where she's like, I'm not ignoring you. Because honestly, like,

Kidman really goes for it. It's very hot. It's very sexy. And I think after that scene, they're like, we should do this for real. That's my take. And Cruz is like,

I've always like tall girls. Yeah. Mimi Rogers was like 511. Mm. Kind of Cruz's thing. Katie Holmes is like 510. Yeah. Yeah.

Here's my unanswerable. What happens if Duvald does Godfather 3 instead of this movie who's Harry? and I think it's Jack Nicholson. Oh, wow. I was going to say, coming right up Batman.

I think they just throw a giant check at him. And he's like, ah, you guys are gonna, Don Simpson's gonna be on the set, right? That sounds good. All right.

Don's a fun time. All right, I'll do it. But then do they still do a few good men, a few years later? Maybe not. That says another, we get a what if off the what if.

What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? As a hat guy, I would love the Superflow hat that they have. I like that one too. Yeah. I want the, I just want the mellow yellow racing suit embroidered with cold trickle.

And I feel like my eight-year-old could wear it for Halloween costume. It would be fun. Oh my God. That's amazing. I think the mellow yellow suit is the answer. I mean, you could go cars, but we said this is no cars allowed category.

Does he want the award for what happened the next day? We're bringing this back. All right. What happens here? Does he end up with Claire Liewicki? Do they have kids? They don't, right? They break up.

No, no, no. one of the most improbable couples to the last, no way. Unless you see it differently, C.R. I think they're done. Well, so the question is, is do you think Claire becomes okay with the racing, the dangers of racing, or do you think Cole retires after winning Daytona 500 and becomes like a house husband? No. The scene is when they're in bed together, she keeps, I mean, I think they just screwed it.

They're about to. And she's like, isn't there anything else you want to do? Don't you have any other dreams? Like, that's very relatable. You don't want to be in that relationship. I forgot to mention this to nitpicks. She goes from, she's 24 hours a day, saving brains and working on people. And then just available to go to any race.

Yeah, she's just bouncing between Charlotte and Daytona. Yeah. Where's the next race? So it's in Virginia. I'm there. Yeah, hold on. I'll get something to cover my 16-hour shift. I heard Dover, Delaware is amazing this time of year.

Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson. I'm more afraid of being nothing than being hurt. I'm just going to take that into my life. I think I liked Rubbin is racing. Yeah. I did too. It's so everywhere now and it applies to life. It applies to sports, everything.

Sometimes there's going to be some shit that happens, but that's life. What do you have, Kyle, for Best Double Feature Choice? I broke the rules. I'm doing triple feature. I'm doing days of thunder, far and away, and eyes wide shut. I want to see that relationship. I want to see all of it from the beginning to end. Unbelievable choice.

Great job, man. Thank you. Yeah, I'm not topping that. All right. This will get interesting. who won the movie? I got Roxy winning the movie. No.

I think it's cruise is just such a one seed that's hard to knock off. I love Duval, but I'm not taking my eyes off trickle either. I know that I do directors a lot, but I just think in the hands of somebody else that does not, this does not work. Tony Scott makes every car racing scene, every crowd shot, every the smoke going across the road. Like he's just an artist. And I think he makes this thing worth re-watching. I had Duval 1A and Tony Scott 1B. Yeah.

I know Cruz is in one seed. I just love Duval in this movie. And I think he saves it from actually being a bad movie. Yeah. I think if he's not in it, we're in a lot of trouble. And it just becomes like a, and Tony Scott has made these where it's just like, it's just Tony Scott doing stuff, but the movie's bad. I think that's where this lands.

I don't feel that way about this movie. And it's 35 years old this summer. Yeah. Listen, if Tom Scarrett's not in Tom Cruise. If Tom Scarrett's gone from Top Gun, we're going to be fine. But if Duval is gone from this movie, you're kind of fucked. Like, you need that to hold it together. All right, big moment.

Producer Craig had not seen this movie. Come on, baby. I know he loved the runtime, which is like 141. Somehow the rewatchables pod is going to be 15 minutes past it. What did you think, Craig? I have thoughts on the runtime that I'll get to in a little bit. But, you know, it hasn't been the best couple of months for this country, but this movie reinvigorated my love for America.

And I watched it on Pluto, so every commercial break was just the Harrison Ford Jeep commercial. So I was really kind of ready to run through a wall for the red, white, and blue for about an hour and 55 minutes. Why is Tony Scott, who's a Brit so good at making patriotic films for America? Oh, great. That could have been a good unanswerable. You're right. How did he become our most patriotic director of the last 40 years?

Just like raw over-the-top patriotism in this movie. Great music. And yeah, it's like top gun. True romance is like, feels very American. And Tony Scott's a Brit. Crimson Tide, yeah. Crimson Tide, yeah. Craig, how did you feel about in the first 30 seconds of the movie,

no less than three Confederate flag shots in the movie? Yeah, they kept going back to it. Like I said, like I said, Pure America, Raw America. My hot take about the runtime for this movie is I think it could have been a little longer. I wanted actually a little bit more. I think this movie feels like 20 minutes are missing at the beginning. Yeah. Like this movie starts and it's just like Randy Quaid and a cornfield talking to Robert Duvall. I don't know who either of them are. I don't know what the fuck's going on. And then like three minutes later, they're like basically racing. I don't know who Tom Cruise is. There's no backstories

to anybody. Yeah. Now you saying that the movie only had five weeks to edit makes sense because they're like chopping scenes left and right. There are scenes that like kind of cut in the middle of the climactic moment, even the crash. It's so quick when it goes from the crash and he's just getting airlifted and then he's in the hospital. There's like no time to breathe. I wonder how many of those car scenes are like, we only can do one take of this. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. What if they told Tony Scott for like the 15 year anniversary, can you go back and do your director's edit of this with a little more time? I wanted like 15 more minutes. I really did. Wow. There's no closure.

I was expecting from Craig. I know. Craig usually goes so short. There's no closer at all on Rowdy Burns. We're supposed to see him one more time. That's how the movie works. He had the surgery. He's okay.

I want a fist pump. I want Bertier from a member of the Titans in the hospital bed. You show them in the hospital bed cheering and they don't even show him. Yeah. I think Don realized that two months later as he was on rail number nine. It's like, oh, fuck, we should have shown Rooker in a hospital bed. Also, iconic final shot. You guys didn't really talk about it.

Oh, the freeze frame. The freeze frame and the race. I reround it. Watch it like three times. Just, I mean, there's something about the old guy running next to the young guy. Cruz is so happy in that scene. Yeah. Craig, how do you feel about Tony Scott from 90 to 94, 95, four in a row, days of thunder,

last Boy Scout, true romance, crimson tied. Just fucking banging him out back to back to back. One of the greats. It's a bummer. We don't have him around still. Yeah, I know. Yeah, so he's nine. So now he's tied with Michael Bean.

A couple, can I throw like a picking knit at you guys? Yeah. What about the scene? the all-time flag for targeting when that goes unpunished, when Trickle just sneaks out of the pit zone or whatever that's called, and just T-bones,

Kerry L.O. His car? Is it after he wins? Is the race over? Yeah, Carrey L.A's is won. Yeah, he teabones him to ruin the car, and then 20 minutes later, Randy Quaid is back on his side. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to give you a fake, like, my engine.

Also, like, NASCAR doesn't punish him in any way. Like, that, wouldn't that have been the craziest story in the history of NASCAR? Like, you can't, you can't, help him and he's like, that's my engine in that car. Well, Craig, the football equivalent of that is Jalen Hertz is on

the podium with Terry Bradshaw getting the Lombardi and like Chris Jones runs up there and hits him blindsides and decletes him after the game is over. It's ludicrous. You know, Craig just made me think of that this movie's missing. This would have been a good picking it. Where is like ESPN Sports Center? There's such a

natural cut to Chris Berman and Tom Lee doing the some crazy thing happened today in NASCAR Russ Wheeler won a race

watch Cole trickle here comes in and they just do the whole And it's cold magic trickle We get some

Bourbon Yeah Goes after Russ 18 Wheeler Well 90 we would have gotten Maybe Would that have been

Kilborn Back then Not quite Kilborn Yeah We're still Berman Gail Gardner

trying to think I just do Scott's not even there yet yeah it's still pretty early Montgomery Burns yeah because they could have because by mid-90s they were really starting to shoehorn ESPN into these sports movies

but I didn't thought of it yet all right so thumbs up from Craig Way to go Craig It's like my top choice for a movie to be on in a bar and I mean that in a very complimentary way Sure So Cruz 16 rewatchables right now Craig

It's going to be tough to catch him three up on De Niro and Pacino with there's some good De Niro left There's less Pacino Cruz has whittled me down And I honestly used to not have him In like my top three or five favorite actors And it's because I've only seen old Cruz

And I think a lot of people my age are the same way I was texting my brother's in law Who are like 23 and 26 And I was texting them about Days of Thunder Because they like they usually watch Rewatchable's movies with me whenever they're in town They had never heard of it And they're like man

There are so many young cruise movies That I've just never watched And it's like all my favorite cruise I love risky business. I now love this movie. I think I like the persona that Young Cruz brought much more than old Cruz.

Obviously, we only really have Mission Impossible and like a few other things. Yeah, it's hard to go back to that pre-Oper zone where it was like, his approval rating was in the high 90s where it's just like, ah, man, every movie he makes is pretty great.

Yeah. Well, Tom Cruise, we still have a few left too, which is amazing. We still have a bunch of Mission Impossible's left. There's some really good ones. Craig, Thanks for producing this podcast.

CR, always great to see you. Kyle Brandt, a pleasure, as usual. Always to see you here on the rewatchables. Don't forget you can watch this on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel and you can always watch these podcasts on Spotify. See you next week.