The Rewatchables - ‘Dazed and Confused’ 25th Anniversary With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey
Episode Date: October 2, 2018The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey came here to do only three things: “kick some ass, and drink some beer” and rewatch the 1993 high school classic ‘Dazed and Confused,�...�� starring Milla Jovovich, Adam Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Jason London. and many more and directed by Richard Linklater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly, here to tell you that we have a brand new podcast called Halloween Unmasked,
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There's trouble in the suburbs.
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But Lori doesn't know that her friends are dead, and she doesn't know that she's walking right toward the masked killer of Michael Myers.
The movie is Halloween.
And Halloween just, it was like a...
It was a breath of fresh putrid air.
He's a pure unknowable evil.
I'm film critic Amy Nicholson, and this is Halloween Unmast,
a podcast series from the ringer celebrating the remarkable and terrifying rise of America's
most revolutionary horror film.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast to Halloween Unmast and watch her back.
I think the scariest part was that he doesn't die at the end.
So when you're 10, it's like, that guy's still out there.
We got to get him.
Today's episode of the rewatchables.
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I only came here to do two things.
Kick some ass, drinks a beer.
Looks like we're almost all out of beer.
Not out of podcasting, though.
Days to Confuse coming up.
And he was in a cult.
And the cult was in the aliens, man.
You didn't know that?
Somewhere between free love and safe sex.
Finney.
Tie-dye and button fly.
We should be up for anything.
Ed Sullivan and MTV.
So stupid, doesn't it?
There was a generation.
The 60s rocked.
The 70s.
They obviously sucked.
That was.
Dazed and Confused.
Maybe the 80s will be radical.
Reddit R.
Now playing at Select Theaters.
All right, Sean Fantasy is here.
Chris Ryan is here.
It's the 25th anniversary of Dazed and Confused.
There are some anniversary pieces about it.
I rewatched it last night.
A staggering amount of young Hollywood talent.
It's a movie that if it was released now would have Matthew McConaug and Ben Affleck on the poster,
along with who else?
How would they do the poster?
Do those two?
Zellweger.
Yeah, Zellwager.
Yeah, Zelliger.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Who comes right after that?
Is Parker Posey, the most famous person after that?
Yeah, Parker Pose.
Yeah.
I guess it would be McConaughey, Affleck, and then just a whole bunch of other people.
Yeah.
But this was a cool area.
You had school ties, what year of school ties?
Like 91, 92.
Then you had, what was the other one that was like the big group movie?
I mean, you know, movies that were drawing from this generation.
Oh, dead poets.
Yeah, dead poets.
So it was like, dead poets.
Oh, it's cool ties.
And then this movie were like the three movies that found basically 15 actors that we would spend the next 25 years.
When did you first see this movie?
I don't think I saw it in the theaters.
I think this is just a movie that was on through college.
It was a great VHS.
A couple years later.
Yeah, a couple years later.
How about you, Fantasy?
I didn't see it in theaters.
I was probably too young to see it in theaters.
But whenever I saw it, it was the first time seeing it after like a hundred,
more times were coming in 100 consecutive days.
Like, it was one of those movies that it was like,
this is a part of me now.
I will watch this all the time.
Yeah.
And I don't know if it was on TV or on VHS or what it was,
but it just,
it like instantaneously went into the movie lexicon.
And I don't even really know why.
Like, I guess we'll talk about that.
Yeah.
It was another slow burn movie.
It was what?
It was another slow burn movie.
I didn't see it for five years.
Really?
I didn't see until 1998.
And it wasn't anything personal against it.
Then that there was like about two years there where,
especially because in my pot smoking circles, Massachusetts,
you got to watch this movie, man, it's great.
I'm like, all right, whatever.
And then it was just on cable one night.
And I think it was after Goodwill Hunt that came out when I saw it.
I was like, is that Afluck?
It just kind of started watching it.
And then it was like, wow, all right,
I'm going to watch this all the time.
I saw this at a crucial time where I could still remember high school,
but I had just enough perspective to like laugh about it
and think about it in a different way,
which is, I think a lot, it resonates for a lot of people around my age
because it lionizes a kind of time in your life
that you will look back on as this crucial, important time,
but you have just enough distance from it to be like,
that was stupid, this guy was probably a jerk.
These rituals were probably ridiculous,
but I still remember these things like crystal clear.
76, 77, 78 are great Hollywood years
for just like high school movies.
High school is very distinct.
There's not even cable TV yet.
It's just everything centers around,
kids trying to figure out somewhere to go
and it was usually just them driving
and sometimes they would end up like in the woods.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean Linklater said over and over and again.
He was trying to make American graffiti
for kids who grew up in the 70s
and obviously that's what Lucas was trying to do
in 76 or 73 whenever American graffiti came out
for kids who were born in the 50s.
So it's this timeless thing that keeps getting rebuilt and rebuilt.
Do we have, I guess mid-90s is coming out soon
which is Jonah Hill's movie
that is kind of like, in some ways,
going to be his version of 20 years ago
when I was in high school here is what my life was like.
And it's something that kind of happens with every generation.
Yeah, I think that when people tend to make movies
about this generation now, they tend to be closer
to be something like spring breakers,
or even the sort of more like genre fair,
like 13 reasons why,
where it's like how social media is destroying our brains and that kind of thing.
This movie, Assassination Nation just came out last week,
and that's kind of what that is.
It's like social media in high school is destroying everything.
would like Super Bad be the last movie like this where it was just like let's just all go hang out.
Yeah, I mean, we had smaller, more personal versions of it.
I think both eighth grade and Lady Bird kind of do this.
You know, they kind of try to put that stuff on screen, but they're so focused on one character.
This movie in particular really bounces around.
There's like 18 characters that you have to follow, which is really rare.
They keep introducing them too.
I remember when I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I had this babysitter named Teddy, who was in high school.
Because, you know, my mom was working at night.
I think my parents had just gotten divorced.
And Teddy was, and we got along really well.
And one night he's like, I'm going to take you out with us.
And I'm like, awesome.
I was like nine.
So this is, you know, 1978 range.
So we went out, we got in his car, and it was like he picked up two of his friends.
And they just kind of drove around for a couple hours.
And we ended up park somewhere.
And they were like drinking.
And then that was the whole night.
And then it kind of came back, dropped me off.
And that was what framed my.
entire thought process of what happened when kids came out until I was like 16.
It's like, so that's what, so when you go out, you get in a car and you drive around,
but that's really what the 70s were like. They didn't have anything to do.
It's also what the 90s were like. I can tell you for sure that I would drive around in cars,
parking places, go to a park called Memorial all the time. You'd go and you'd just stand in
the parking lot and you'd drink. But you could at least rent a movie back then and do stuff like
that. You could at least. We weren't doing that. Hang out in a basement.
Yeah, that's true. We did do that. We did do that.
But I mean, it does feel like it's still kind of timeless.
Like, this is how teenagers while away the hours, you know?
I also thought that this movie captured a kind of fluid,
a social fluidity that is actually, in my experience,
truer to life than a lot of Hollywood renderings of teenage life
where it's like very, very, very, like, the battle lines are drawn.
The jocks are over here.
The nerds are over here.
And this movie, it's like, you just wind up in the backseat of a car
with a bunch of people and you're like,
oh, hey man, like what's up?
And it's not as like you have to show
some sort of like pass
to get into a guy's car or to talk to somebody.
It's just a lot more lifelike.
That's what this movie has.
Is it has that feeling of,
it's organic.
You might just be standing next to a soda fountain
or a pool table or getting a beer
or talking about basketball
and you have no idea who you.
And it's like, oh yeah, this guy.
I know him kind of.
But sure, I'll go out and like go on a beer room with you.
Whatever, man. Let's do it.
Yeah, do you have beer.
or do you have pot?
Do you have a fake ID?
Those are like really the three crucial questions.
They do something really, really smart.
Linklater, who I think is loosely basing this on himself,
makes Randall Pink Floyd the center of the movie.
And Floyd is friends with the jocks because he's the quarterback.
He's friends with the nerds,
which we just kind of accept at the beginning of the movie
when he's hanging out like Adam Goldberg.
I think it's because he's smart.
And he's also friends with stoners who are neither jocks nor nerds.
And he's this kind of like fulcrum of the movie, you know?
And even though the movie doesn't really have a,
a main character per se.
He really brings all of those parties together.
It's just a really smart way to get all the groups going and make it.
And also, I think you're right, Chris, like, for high school, for me, there were definitely
popular crowds and not popular crowds, but everybody knew everyone and everybody was interacting.
It was more sociable than you'd make it seem if you were, like, watching the breakfast
club.
And it felt like this tribal warfare.
It wasn't really like that.
It was, like, sometimes a jock would beat up a nerd, but a lot of people were friends.
I think it was a really fun time to be a little.
high school, which is one of the reasons I love this movie.
There was like a specific music scene happening where, and that's like the star of this movie
is the soundtrack.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's just a murderous row of great songs that specifically belong to 1976 range.
And not to step on some of the stuff later, but they spent like one-sixth of the budget just
on the music.
It shows.
I think they spent 200 grand on the Aerosmith song that starts it.
And it's like, sweet emotion is crucial to start this movie.
free ride's crucial to end the movie
but it was this music renaissance
from like 72 to 77
and even like Kiss and Frampton
and 76 is one of the best music years ever
so to put this movie in that year I thought was smart
and by design
most of my high school class was pretty into rap
by the time this movie came out
and certainly from 93 to 95 when I graduated
it was mostly like rap was the dominant
cultural expression of my high school
Yeah.
But we recognized, I think, or I certainly recognized once I saw this movie.
And since then, it's not necessarily even the music as much as the importance of music plays in people's lives.
Yeah.
And especially at that age as you're starting to identify yourself through music, you start to just basically prioritize that to the point where Aerosmith tickets would be the most important thing.
Just the same way, maybe going to see Wutang Clan would have been the most important thing, or going to see the Beastie Boys, or going to see Tribe Call Quest, or going to be.
to see Def Leppard or going to see Green Day. It doesn't matter. It was like...
Or dressing someone up like a member of Kiss.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that... It's just a great time.
You know, if they do it a year later, all of a sudden now, this goes a little bit in it,
and just feels... This feels like the last pure. All I care about is rock and roll and getting
stone and going into the woods and trying to get laid and drink a beer, and that's high school.
Yeah, and Link Later was so rigorous about the songs that he picked. If a song came out,
three months after the setting of the movie,
they wouldn't put it in,
even if you really wanted to put a Deep Purple song
in that he was listening to kind of at the time.
If it wasn't specific to, I guess,
is it May 76 or June 76?
Yeah.
Then it wasn't going to be in the movie.
Yeah.
That's how I am with my Spotify playlist.
Yeah, I try to find it.
The miracle of this movie is its mundanity.
You know, like when you are growing up
and you're in high school,
the things that blow your mind
are going to play mini golf with your friends
or the first time you have malt liquor
or the first time you hear a single or a CD single of something,
it's not those major, like, I fell in love that night moment.
It's not, that's the night I threw the winning touchdown pass.
It's these weird little, like, micro moments.
And it's because your life hasn't become regimented yet.
Every single night in high school has, like, this possibility that when you're in your middle
age and you're like, yeah, you know, every day I go to work and I have a family and I see the same
people and we do the same things.
And there's a degree of responsibility and professionalism and decorum in my life.
Like, this is that time in your life.
where everything is basically improv every day.
And you're also learning how to express yourself
and how to feel about things.
And I think he captures that.
It's so true to life.
And it still is a great movie.
He does a great job of not making it like Slack
or of making it this kind of diner.
You know, has a little bit of Hughes' quality to it
that you're just like, man, I would just watch this over and over again.
I think John Hughes was, he said he wanted to make a John Hughes movie.
but set in
1976.
I think that was...
I think it was almost like
an anti-Jews movie.
Or an anti-John movie.
What was his quote?
It was like, I'm conscious
that I'm making something contrary to that.
You know what I mean?
Like that has like a certain idea about the 80s.
I'm going to make a movie about high school
that has like different ideas, right?
The thing about Linklater is he's always trying to make something
that feels real even if it's animated
or done in different times.
Like if you look at what he did with boyhood,
he's trying to capture something accurate
to people's lives over a long period of time.
If you look at Slacker, it feels like quasi-documentary, you know, it's not as scripted as most movies are.
If you look at this movie, he's trying to make a movie that looks, sounds, acts, and feels like what high school was for him in Texas and the 70s.
There's something kind of admirable about that, but it doesn't mean it's less entertaining.
You know, this isn't like a Ken Loach movie or some, like, it's not like a seven-up documentary.
It's a fun movie.
Yeah, he said at an event for a reunion for the cast and the crew and everything, he said the drama is so low-key and dazed and confused.
I don't remember teenage years being that dramatic.
I remember just trying to go with the flow, socialize, fit in, and be cool.
The stakes were really low.
To get Aerosmith tickets or not, that was the big thing.
By 2001 or two, I love this movie so much, I used it for the movie quotes gimmick.
Yes.
For NFL.
That's a special award.
Really is.
And that also, those four years also was probably the most pot I ever.
That was my biggest pot per week's whatever.
my status for that. Your poundage was high. Yeah. Yeah. And this is a movie specifically designed for
that. Closeman wrote about it and he said he wrote about it for the criterion thing and said he had seen
it like 65 times and 64 he was stoned. It's funny if you're not stone, but it's also,
there's a few movies like this. Like I think outside Providence is like this too. There's a select
small group of movies that if you're stone just become way funnier. It's almost like there's these
little Easter eggs that you're putting on these stone goggles and you can see.
all these things you didn't see, this is the champion of that.
You guys probably saw it in high school.
I saw a little bit after, but yeah, like, very close to it.
It was before high school for me.
So it's kind of like set the template.
I saw it after college.
For how you're supposed to engage with high school.
So it was sort of like Slater is not only what I thought a stoner was like,
but what all the people who became stoners in my high school acted like.
Yeah.
You know, like they were modeling themselves after these archetypes that he created.
And even though Linklater is trying to do something that's true to his life,
like he's oddly invented this whole vision of like what a person is.
Like this is what a young woman acts like if she's like Parker Posey's character.
This is what a young woman acts like if she's like, you know,
Joey Lauren Adams's character.
This is the Slater.
This is the Sasha Jensen Don character.
Like weirdly, it's just the life imitates art thing.
I don't want to get off on too far of a tangent here too,
but at this point in the mid-90s,
like classic rock still held a pretty big piece of the popular culture pie.
That was still something that it was pretty normal.
for teenagers to become like Big Pink Floyd and Hendricks fans.
Even though grunge was happening and rap was happening and everything else that was going on was happening.
Like WMMR, the radio station in Philly would play dead, like full dead concerts and like guys I knew would like be like, are you listening to the dead show tonight?
You know, it was and it was getting, it was still like a really huge influence at that time.
So that was crucial to I think people getting into this movie.
It was that it was like almost this Disney animatronic world.
to live in if you liked that, if you liked classic rock and liked that culture.
It did something interesting though, because like classic rock before I saw this movie in my head
was Beatles, Stones, you know, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley to some extent, weirdly, like
Cream, 60s bands, early 70s bands.
This movie is full of like pop metal and pop hard rock, like Zizi Top, Black Sabbath,
Deep Purple, like all these bands that I actually just didn't, I'm from New York,
like that stuff was not big.
You could see it being really big in the South.
But it didn't have a lot of legacy.
So it kind of turned me on a ton of records that I probably wouldn't have listened to otherwise.
That's cool.
We listened to a lot of that in the mid-80s.
But we also, like when I was in high school in the mid-80s, we really only had about 15 to 17 years of decent music to choose from.
And not a lot of CDs and things like that.
So all these songs, like the Frampton Comes a Live concert album, that was like a go-to CD.
Weirdly, Steve Miller wasn't in this.
I don't know if you missed the year cup.
Yeah, he might have been a little earlier.
But Steve Miller, a lot of the stuff that was in there, some of those early Aerosmith albums.
No, living in the USA, is in this.
Steve Miller, right?
I wrote in 2000, I guess, too.
No movie captures the mid-70s better than dazed.
That surreal, goofy time between the Vietnam War and the MTV era, when people did drugs with no repercussions.
Unprotected sex was accepted and encouraged.
You could haze and humiliate people without the threat of a lawsuit.
People spent their nights driving around aimlessly getting high, tossing down bruise, knocking over mailboxes.
knocking over mailboxes and hanging out in abandoned fields.
That now we're 40 plus years away from that.
Like I wonder, my daughter was watching like 20 minutes of this with us yesterday,
me and my wife.
And her big note was like, why are they being so mean?
Really?
It was Parker Posers, Posey screaming at the kids near the beginning.
All right, you little freshman bitches.
And then we're going to get you with the paddles.
And she's like, what is this?
Why are all the kids so mean?
and she just couldn't process it.
My high school experience was kind of like this.
We didn't do it.
Yeah.
We didn't have quite so rigorous a initiation routines,
but there was definitely initiation stuff.
There was definitely, they didn't use paddles,
but there was high schoolers definitely drove
to the parking lot of my middle school
and taunted us and waited for us to come out of school
before we were going to ninth grade.
Like that literally happened in my school.
Yeah, it's also really common for conversations
to turn on a dime to become.
something, roasting.
Like when Slater's like,
check you later.
And then,
God's like,
God's like,
God's like,
that was pretty much
80.
Girls don't want to hear that shit.
Yeah,
and that was like,
88% of my interactions
in high school was like,
this is pretty cool.
It's like,
is it cool?
Shut the fuck up.
Like,
yeah.
It would just blow up
in your feet.
It was like,
oh, I should open my mouth.
I definitely went to school
some Parker pose these two.
Darla,
you know,
that was,
that's a type.
That's a type of person.
Yeah.
Yeah,
one of the things I really like
about this movie
I've never seen totally captured in another movie
is the whole phenomenon of the juniors becoming seniors.
And their chest just puffing out.
And it's like, this is the year we own the school.
And we're going to go undefeated man.
And I mean, that's a real thing.
I can't think of other movies that really nailed that.
It's like you basically buy an ego from the store.
And you get this giant ego.
It's in Friday Night Lights a little bit.
A little bit.
In the TV show, because, you know, they start.
I think they're sophomores when they start.
Did you guys have a lot of interaction as a junior
with the senior class?
Was there like we're going to hand over traditions to you
and this is how you're supposed to be?
I mean, I went to a small prep school,
so we were on teams with all the older kids.
I don't know what it's like at a bigger high school.
I went to a big public high school.
I had the thing you were describing earlier,
which is that I was lucky to kind of fall in
with a couple of older kids
when I was making the transition from eighth to ninth grade
and so I got to go out with them a couple of times,
and that was very instructive.
And that kind of like teaches you how to be in the world a little bit
because you say one stupid thing,
and they're like, don't be stupid,
and then so you don't ever say anything like that ever again.
There was no, like, baton passing from junior to senior, I don't think.
It was more like talking to much younger kids about the way to be.
It also tapped into the whole seniors going after the ninth grade girls,
because that's a thing all the time.
And it was always kind of, there was always a certain type of guy that did it.
Yes.
It was just kind of there, and I'm sure it's still there.
Like, I think about it with my daughter's going to the ninth grade next year,
and it's like, you're not dating anyone who's more than year older than you.
I'm just breaking it to you now.
I will say, I never came across a Wooderson in my real life.
Like, I never met a guy who's like 21 and trying to date 14-year-olds.
No, I met Wooderson's popped up more when I was in late teens, early 20s,
and there would be a guy, and they'd be like, how old's that guy?
He's like, that guy is 32.
Right, exactly.
Really?
And he's still at the bar every night.
That's interesting.
The guy in screaming has their version of Wooderson is the Eric Stoll's character.
Yes.
Who's there for eight years taking classes and stuff.
A lot of the high school hierarchy stuff, I've just never seen done better than this.
Let's go through, they spent $7 million on it.
It made $8 million.
It's an official flop.
Considered a bomb.
Yeah.
And it's weird because it's a 1993 movie.
And I think in 1993 is like singles.
And, you know, 1993 is a very distinctive year.
I don't feel like dazed and confused.
It feels like a 96 movie to me.
Like it came out like two months before Swingers.
But it didn't.
It came out in 93.
And I don't, I honestly, don't even remember it coming out.
I'm sure I read the articles and just were like, oh, whatever.
It's a slow burn thing you were talking about.
It took long time for it to get into the consciousness.
Yeah.
The biggest what if here, too, is this movie is that Linklater had imagined it as a much more experimental film.
Yeah.
Like he had imagined doing this movie where they were basically going to do two shots.
It was going to be two guys in a car, however many guys in a car, listening to all of, I think, Fandango by Zizi Top.
Yes.
And the movie was going to last as long as the album.
And they were just going to talk over the...
Three times.
They were going to play 30 minutes.
They were going to play three times. They were going to play three times of a 90-minute movie.
Yeah. And so, and it was just set in a car.
That's a bad idea.
But that's also, like, think about how different, who knows what happens with Affleck if that happens?
I don't even know.
But he, so Linklater weirdly actually did this a few years later with this movie tape, which is a very complicated movie.
But it kind of all takes place over one night.
And, you know, he's obviously obsessed with like capturing real time, you know, when things are actually happening.
That goes back to the boyhood thing, tape, all the before.
and after movies are like that too.
I'm glad it didn't turn out to be
the Fandango movie, though.
93 and Rotten Tomatoes from the critics,
78 from everybody.
I know you care about that, Sean.
I don't.
Roger Ebert.
Here we go.
Three stars.
He liked it.
Ebert's on a hot streak on the rewatchable.
God bless the dead.
He's had five good opinions in a row.
Congratulations to him.
Congratulations to Roger Eber.
Congratulations to Roger.
I'm coming around on you.
Ben Affleck, Parker Posey.
Randall Pink Floyd, played by
the London who was not on Party of Five, but the other London.
They had a nice little power play of who is heavy up again.
Jason, not Jeremy. Jeremy had a lot of problems.
He did have a lot of problems.
He did have a lot of problems.
He did have a lot of problems.
It's a good engine. It's a good engine.
Joey Lauren Adams, who would become famous on chasing Amy a couple years later,
in Mallrats as well.
Adam Goldberg, who played Chandler Bigg's roommate and friends.
That's right. Among saving private Ryan, many other things.
McConaughey was Wooderson.
Anthony Rapp.
Anthony Rapp, who was in the news recently.
He was.
For not great reasons.
A well-known stage actor in New York.
Tied to the Spacey stuff.
Giovanni Rubisi's sister.
Marissa.
Yes.
Now known by some people as Beck's wife.
And a couple people who never made it, including Mitch Kramer,
when we get to him, Slater, the long-haired stoner, played by Roy Cochran.
Great performance.
And last but not least, a borderline comedic genius, Don Does.
And I don't know what happened.
I don't know why Sasha Jensen was one of the biggest stars of our life.
I agree.
I don't understand it.
I would love to find out what happened to that, dude.
I don't know.
You didn't mention Michelle Burke, who's also someone I'd like to talk about.
Which is a sister?
Makes a move on Randy Pink Floyd at one point.
She does.
I got a lot of Michelle Burke thoughts.
Should I hold them?
Are they negative or positive?
They're neither negative nor positive.
They're just like, why wasn't this person famous?
She was in the Coneheads movie and this movie in 1993.
and I was like, well, here comes a new huge actress in America.
And then she basically never worked again?
Yeah, that's weird.
There's a couple of people like that.
Like, Don, I don't...
How does Don't leave this movie and not become a breakout star?
I don't know.
Sean Andrews, too, Pickford.
You didn't really see that much of him in the next 10, 20 years.
Yeah, that guy seems like he could have been like a serial killer in a movie at least, right?
Fell in love with Miliovovich on this movie.
They got married briefly.
Did they?
And they got to annulled quickly.
And then he didn't really work that much.
He was a bunch of people like this.
was like 17. We're going to get to him later.
Coming up, we have the categories, and
this pod will get a lot more fun. First, let's take
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All right.
Most rewatchable scene.
Normally this is an easy category to figure out
the five or six choices.
This whole movie is a rewatchable scene,
and it's not really,
it's even hard to separate it into a cat.
All of a sudden, it's nighttime,
and it's like just there's no time.
I never know what time it is until the very end
when all of a sudden daylight lights out.
I came up with these five, if there are any more, tell me.
And it's more from like,
I could show you a picture from the scene,
and you could instantly be like,
oh, that scene, and I know the music's playing,
and I know exactly what happens.
So the first one is
Wooderson going on the pool hall
in slow motion
and they're playing Hurricane
Bob Dylan
It's just fucking great
It's just a great four minutes
We may already have our answer
It's a great 70s hang
It's just like the entire movie
cracked into one thing
When the guys go breaking the mailboxes
I just always enjoy that
Don Dawson in the front seat
Just laughing his ass off
And people did that in the 70s
We did that in college in the 80s
For Halloween
We would go to this rich part of Worcester
and people would have the pumpkins out.
We would just go and we'd break the pumpkins and drive around
and we thought it was like the funniest thing.
People were idiotic in the 70s and 80s.
I love when the angry hillbilly pulls a 9mm on them.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
The paint getting dumped on O'Bannon.
Nice little sting operation.
They get the ninth grade girls involved.
They get a little retribution.
One of the most committed Affleck performances of all time.
He's really fucking pissed.
Gets in his car.
We never see him again.
He's just gone.
This performance and his performance in mall rats was like,
I guess this guy's just going to play a dipshit in every movie.
And then now he's, you know, Batman and he's in Armageddon.
Adam Goldberg getting his ass kicked.
I really enjoy.
I don't know why.
I like how.
It's a very realistic fight.
It's realistic.
Like he puts some thought into it and outthought himself.
And the guy just gets him.
And there's, they cut to Cole Houser.
Somebody's trying to separate it.
He's shoving the people back to kind of let him go.
And then finally, Randy Pink comes in and with McKinney and saves it.
And finally, the ending is just phenomenal.
I actually think it's probably the best two minutes of the movie because you see all the characters in one place.
They're just happy.
It's four people that would not have been together eight hours earlier and they just kind of end up in that car together.
They're listening to a slow ride and the car is going.
Then it just sees the road and it's just the road's going to nowhere.
It's going over the Submaternary Hill.
Yeah.
And then it ends.
It's just really a smart way to end it.
Yeah, like all the little stuff that leads up to that, too,
with everybody going back to their house.
You know, like Wiley Wiggins' character going home
and his mom catching him and Sabrina going home
and getting the kiss from Anthony Rap at the end of the night.
Like, all of the kind of we're wrapping this up is really well handled.
Yeah, and that's where Pink kind of just admits, like,
this football's not for me, man.
And Don's like, you think it's going to be a big deal.
And he's just like, all right, man, you got to do you or whatever.
It's got to be the Emporium.
It's got to be the Entrance to the Emporium.
I was asking Sean this yesterday.
If you were filmed walking into a bar or a party in high school,
and you had to pick, like, the quintessential song to soundtrack you doing that in slow mo.
In slow mo.
What do you think you would pick?
Probably that song.
Hurricane by Bob Dylan?
No, it's just so good.
How can you top it?
That's like saying if you were getting thrown out of a garbage truck, it would be like the second half of Lela.
But, like, I guess, I was going to, I said to Sean out.
I see if it's like a different type of.
Yeah, it's like if it's your life.
It was like, your life in high school, your life in high school, you're walking into a party.
What's the song that's soundtrack in your slow-mo walk into a bar or a party?
I don't know. Sean, you answer it first.
Can I live by Black Rob?
That's great.
I said cash rolls everything around me, but Wu-Tang.
So both do you went with rap songs or hip-hop songs?
Yeah.
Kids in the 90s.
I mean, there's a million rock songs.
There's like a whole lot of Rosie by ACDC.
That's a pretty good one.
Yeah, I mean, like, that would be like, I would, I would,
definitely say like it would be cool to do houses of the holy.
But if we were saying in the mid-90s, that's what...
In that time, what would have been the appropriate song?
My high school class sat around for almost two years, basically just reciting skits to each other from Wu-Tang's first album.
This would have been mine.
This was always my dream to the beginning of the BS podcast.
Is this the doors?
Yeah.
Is this Roadhouse Blues?
No.
Roadhouse Blues by the Doors?
No.
No, L.A. woman.
Oh, L.A. Woman.
Okay.
The beginning of it's so good.
Can I walk somewhere in slow.
Motion.
Maybe Jason Gallagher make that happen.
You're really like, you're begging to do the doors on rewatchables.
Is that Ray Manzarek's music out here?
CR, you say the day and the time for the doors, rewatchables.
And I'm there.
I think it's interesting that you both pick tip-up songs.
I don't know what that says about either.
It says that we are obsessed with and grew up listening to a lot of rap.
That's fine.
What's age the best?
Feel free to add your own choices.
Sure.
McConaughey.
the 70s music, the cars, the cast, the high school hierarchy thing.
What else?
The limited temporal narrative structure, the fact that it's taking place over one day,
never gets old for me.
Man, I just, every time I watch that, I love movies or TV shows that are, like,
condensed into this action takes place over X amount of time.
And it really does feel like a whole day.
And it kind of reminds me of when, you know, when you were back,
in high school, the social part of your day would kind of start as soon as you got out of that
last class. And then you would have like some kind of practice or a game and then you would go out
afterwards. And like, that was like seven to ten hours of just like hanging out and doing fun
stuff. And he really captures that. He really captures that day to night feeling.
For Chris, the action is the juice. It is. As always. I love the, I, it's really hard to say
not the cast. I mean, this is McConaughey's first movie. You know, that's, so if you combine
McConaug,
plus hitting on this
great golden generation,
plus putting all of these people
who would go on
to not have careers
and creating indelible characters
for them,
that's actually maybe even bigger
because if you look at
McConaughey in 1993,
even if he's never done anything,
it's easy to say like,
that guy's a fucking movie star.
Yeah, but there's like
no tape on this guy.
It's like drafting a guy
with no tape.
He said he had done
one Miller-like commercial.
That was it.
It's incredible.
I'm looking up
when the time Nikil came out.
What was that,
Yeah, there's this whole thing with McConaughey around this time where he is, I think he's on the cover of Premier Magazine.
96.
I specifically remember the intense McConaughey is a list star.
Because it's a lone star and a time to kill.
And for a time to kill, they really went for it.
And it was like Vanity Fair, Premier, Energy Weekly.
He's like doing John Sales and Richard Link later, but he's also doing Grisham.
And they're like, this guy's a star.
And that's when Days to Confuse really started to get the cult classic stuff because they were like, they saw him as Wooderson.
He said, he tells.
He tells this story.
He tells it in a making of documentary
about Days and Confused.
On Friday, he was no one.
And by Monday morning, after Time to Kill it opened,
he was a famous person getting stopped on the street.
And it was that quick for him.
He'd done a couple of things, obviously, before this,
but that movie changed his life.
And it's weird because that movie
is definitely less well remembered than Days and Confused.
I mean, Days and Confused is a much more generational
beloved movie than Time to Kill.
Although I do remember liking a Time to Kill, I will say.
Time to Kill was good.
I defended Time to Kill.
Christian was like,
Yes, it is there to die!
I hope they burn it hell!
Grisham was like the MCU back then.
It was like the Marvel.
Those were like,
we got so excited for the firm and the client.
I watched the firm like three weeks ago.
I'm starting to warm up to the firm rewatchables.
Yes!
I did it for you guys.
Yes!
I know Zach Matt hates when I clap,
but that's,
that warrants a clap.
That's huge.
It's a really interesting movie.
Oh, wow.
I'm ready for maybe season seven of the rewatchables.
I'll spend two hours talking about Hackman.
I have more...
Brimley.
Brimley in the firm.
Great Brimley.
Great, great, great,
Hackman in that movie.
Yeah, that's it.
Hackman, like, weirdly sexual and romantic
for no reason at all.
It's like, why is this guy attractive?
He's like, anyway.
A lot of confidence.
A lot of confidence.
He goes right after it with Triple Horn.
I think the answer for what's age the best
is the combo of McConaughey in the cast.
And I really enjoy seeing McConaughey at that point of his career.
I have a little more McConae info in a second.
I missed a couple that age the best.
If you're ever watching days from the beginning
after you've seen it too many times,
count how many times Don gets into a car with somebody.
It's like 15.
He's just always getting in a car or he's in a car.
It's like Don's whole character other than there's like two scenes in high school,
but he's just in a car basically the whole time.
He loves to cruise.
Another thing that's aged the best after this movie,
well after a young picture by the name of Tim Linsicum became famous
and looked like adult Mitch Kramer,
and that became a running joke basically for the entire 2000s.
He really did look like,
Mitch Kramer, who was a picture in the movie.
And then the other one that's age the best, I just noticed this in the rewatch this week.
At some point, the three nerds in the car, they talk about the theory that President Ford's
concussions were, football concussions were affecting the economy.
And I was like, the president Ford's CTE subplot.
That is age the best.
Yeah.
It's relevant.
Do you think President Ford at CTE?
Yeah.
It's in play.
If we believe Chevy Chase's portrayal of him, yeah.
That was great.
What's age the worst?
Number one, Mitch Kramer.
The biggest flaw in this movie.
He's fucking terrible.
His performance? His performance is bad.
He's a bad actor.
He's miscast.
And that leads to the second What's Age the Worst,
which is Mitch Kramer's pitching,
where they had to use a cutaway.
It makes Freddie Prince and Summercatch
look like Pedro Martinez in 99.
They had to use the cutaway.
But when they use the cutaway,
you can see him releasing the ball.
And he's releasing it like next to his neck.
Like he's had like a herniated disc.
I just can't believe they tried to sell us.
I know it's high school or maybe even J.B.
Eighth grade.
So he's like the innings eater.
This is Texas baseball.
You can't have,
I have to believe.
So I think Linklater,
I think everybody wants them is his reaction
to fucking up the Mitch Kramer casting over anything else.
Because those guys and everybody wants them were awesome looking baseball players.
That might be the most credible baseball movie ever made.
Yeah.
Everybody wants them.
It's so weird.
The guy was like Mike Trout.
What's the name?
That guy's a badass.
I like that guy.
Oh,
Tyler had.
Yeah, the guy from Teen Wolf.
He's like Mike Trout.
My only counterpoint is that if you go back and look at baseball players from the 70s and 80s,
it's not like they were athletes in the way we think of Bryce Harper now or Mike Trout.
Like Mike Scott, the old Houston Astros pitcher.
That guy looked like a science teacher and he was like, I think he won the Cy Young.
Yeah, let me tell something about that guy.
He's a fucking cheater.
And he tried to cheat the Mets out of the World Series in 1986.
So fuck him.
Here's my counter to your counterpoint.
There's footage on the DVD making of criterion
of Wiley Wiggins having a catch with Richard Linklater.
It's one of the saddest things I've ever seen.
He can't catch the ball from three feet away.
I mean, he is completely uncoordinated.
So your objection is if they're not casting him for his pitching,
they sure as hell weren't casting him for that.
So I did research on this because it's the rewatchables.
He lied.
The part of it was that he was a baseball pitcher,
and he said, yeah, I've played baseball.
And then they got there.
And he literally couldn't play baseball.
And they had to edit around it.
as it is not a big deal unless you've watched a movie a hundred times,
but it ties to a bigger question of,
what did Mitch Kramer bring to the table in this movie?
And what would have been in the hands of like 12, 13-year-old River Phoenix
in this movie or somebody of that caliber?
It's not like there weren't good actors in 93 who could have played a 14-year-old.
It's true, but I do think, even though he's not a good actor, I agree with you,
he's got something, eighth grade is such an awkward time,
and a lack of confidence is so important.
And he's like a vivid.
The bad acting works in his favor.
It does.
He keeps touching his face and putting his hand at the bridge of his nose.
That's like his signature move.
And that is something that you do when you're nervous and you don't know what to say
and you're trying to figure out how to be cool around people.
He captures something even though he is...
You don't think River Phoenix could have done that?
I think River Phoenix could have done that.
This is like weird.
You're like, what if James Dean plays Mitch Kramer?
I just said, what are we talking about that?
I wanted to morph from that character.
What if Dante-era-Puccino plays Mitch Kramer?
He's bad.
What if the doors Val Kilmer?
What do you think of Kristen Hino Hosa, who plays Sabrina?
She's the other eighth grade girl.
I liked her. I thought she was good.
She plays a very low key.
It's a movie that's full of big performances and she's more laid back.
Mitch had to be cooler and I got to be honest, we had to see him pitch.
That was such a big part of, because basically they're setting up as like four years from now he's Randy Pink Floyd.
I've got to believe that in the eighth grade.
You have to have some sort of aura about you.
And I need to see you play sports.
Randy Pink Floyd, I have no idea how.
big he was. I have no idea how
realistic it was that he should
have been the quarterback, but I believed it.
He carried himself like a quarterback.
What position does Don play? Oh, Don was like,
I would say, defensive end. He looked like a linebacker.
Yeah, maybe outside linebacker.
You sure? You're crazy though.
Like a safety maybe?
Cole Houser was clearly the best guy in the team.
What do you think Cole Houser played?
I think Cole Houser was left tackle.
Okay.
And I think he was like defensive end captain.
You think Mel was like a right guard?
Which one was Mel? The black guy.
I think Mel was.
defense.
What is O'Bannon's
like,
O'Bannon's the right
tackle.
He was like,
he,
Pink literally says to him,
like, he's a good
guy to have blocking for you.
Even though he repeated senior year.
This is,
I can't believe I didn't put more thought
into this before.
What positions everyone put?
What kind of QB?
Where was McConaughey?
What was he?
Like a running back?
A tailback.
Yeah, definitely a tailback.
Yeah.
You don't think,
you don't think Wooderson was a QB?
Although,
we do get a look at
Wooderson's receiving skills
when he throws the keys.
So maybe he was like a Jerry
Rice-style wide out.
Different offense.
This is this is pre-West Coast offense too, right?
Yeah.
This is a lot of ground and pattern.
So we're not looking for a lot of yack here.
We're not looking for a lot of yards after the catch.
Do you think Pink was like Mansellish?
I think he's like Stabler.
No, no, no.
He's slinging it.
No way.
I think he was a scrambling really fun quarterback.
That's what I mean, like a Manzell.
Okay.
Like a young Jim Zorn.
Tarkington.
Yeah, like a young Tarkington.
Okay.
All right.
So you're not with me on Mitch Kramer.
I think that's the wrong.
Well, I just think it's okay that he's a bad actor.
And I would say that in almost no case but this one.
The other one they missed out on, and the IMD backs it up, is that Sean Andrews, who you mentioned earlier, who married Milia Yoavovich, played Pickford.
He's key in the first couple, like, first 20 to 25 minutes.
The research of this movie, they actually phased his part out as the filming went along.
How come?
Because nobody in the cast liked them, and he was actually in a feud with Jason London.
He fell in love immediately with Miliovovich.
which isolated themselves from the rest of the cast.
And not to step on internet research,
but they all lived in Eratosin together.
And it was just like a free-for-all party hookup.
So it was like Survivor.
They had a showmance.
They got targeted by the alliance.
The movie literally opens with them driving in that incredible car.
I mean, the first thing you see is those two together, that couple.
So as everybody was turning on this and Linklater was a big like,
who's vibing with who kind of director, totally willing to add scenes and ad-libs,
here's McConaughey, who's supposed to be in two scenes
because he's not in the class,
and he's like lights out and clearly a movie star,
and they kept giving him scenes.
And apparently at the end,
it's supposed to be Sean Andrews driving the car at the end.
But by that time, they had already kicked him out to the curb.
And McConaughey's on the football field scene at the end,
which was supposed to be the other guy.
And McConaughey's in the last 50 minutes of movie, basically.
It was not supposed to be.
I would love to know whether or not,
I mean, Nikki Kat hadn't really done a lot of movies
at this point, but he was somebody who was
a pretty cool actor, like, a wrap right around
then. And he's in that scene where him and McConaughey
are looking under the hood of the car. He's like, you gotta get
some shoes on this, man. Look at white
lightning over there. Like, he's standing
next to McConaughey. I wonder if he's like, this guy's
basically an extra. Because at
that point in the movie, I wonder if they started
to phase him into the movie more.
McConae definitely stole Sean Andrews
Thunder. Although, Sean Andrews
is not good in this movie. In a time to kill in 1996.
Oh, yeah. They're boys.
But you know, like all of the most memorable
Wooderson scenes are all either improvised or written on the set.
You know, the L-I-V-I-N is written by McConaughey on the set with Linklater.
Even the scene where he rolls up to the top notch and he invites the nerds, particularly
the Redhead to the party, like that scene wasn't in the script.
And they just created it to kind of draw more characters together.
And Wooderson was the glue.
It's weird that he wasn't there from the beginning, but he obviously becomes the second
most important character in the movie.
Well, also, he's in what's age the worst because Witterson's thoughts on stature
Tori rape have not age great.
Maybe a predator.
Maybe a predator.
We'll just leave that one there.
So you're a freshman, right?
Yeah.
So tell me, man, how's this year's crop of freshman chicks looking?
What'd you're going to end up in jail sometime or so I know that?
No, man.
No, I'll tell you.
That's what I love about these high school girls, man.
I get older, they stay the same age.
Yes, they do.
The hazing and bullying is also not age.
aged well.
What has aged the worst for you, Sean?
What's your pick?
I mean, not a lot.
There's the version of the country that we live in now
where it's like none of this stuff is acceptable.
And society has 20.
43 years away.
That stuff's kind of out the window.
But as far as like the making of the movie,
the actual watching of the movie,
it holds up pretty well,
partly because it's a period piece.
So you're not holding it against the time it was made
because the costumes are great,
the music is great, the performances are good.
It's full of stars.
Like, it's not really riddled.
with too many problems.
Mitch Kramer.
Yeah, it's Kramer's pitching.
You got me.
Kramer's pitching.
Oh, it's fucking bad.
Now I want to watch them having a catch.
It's really sad.
Now I want to watch the 86 Stroes versus the Mets with Sean.
I have the DVD, actually.
So if you buy the box set of the 86 World Series, which I have,
it has all the games against the Red Sox, but it also includes the NLCS.
The game six is in seven of the NLCS and shows us some of Scott's chicanery.
And he's a crook.
And I'm glad he's banished from this game.
casting what ifs.
Affleck and Hauser were cast over Vince Vaughn.
He was the runner-up for both parts.
Oh, I didn't know that.
He lost to Affleck first, and then the Hauser part.
They're going to cast him, but Link later was worried that he looked too much like Affleck.
Can I just say...
I don't think that Cole Hauser is a very convincing Texan.
No.
You know?
By the way, I don't know how many of these people were convincing Texans.
I don't think it mattered.
Not a lot.
But that's one part of it.
There's not a lot of accent work in the movie besides McConaughey.
Yeah, maybe the accents.
Yeah.
René Zell Weger audition for Parker Posey's part did not get it.
Claire Danes did not get the part of Sabrina.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
She looked a little too young, they decided.
She's a better actor than the woman who got the role.
Ashley Judd did not get the part of Jody.
Wow.
Yeah.
You know what part you did get, Chris?
Valcomer's wife in heat two years later.
I'm done with you.
Guys know where I can get some bread?
Deal.
The Deane Waiters Award is, I don't even know what we do with this.
It's a tough one.
Macaigne might be in the movie too much for it.
Same for Don Dawson.
I think you can't give it to Macaenae.
Let's be a little more creative.
I was thinking Posey.
She's in like four scenes.
She was going to be my vote.
Posey at the high-pitched initiation scene when she's like,
up, up, and like losing her shit.
Right.
Cracked up when I watch it this week.
She's like fucking Hannibal Lecter.
It's so funny.
I think Posey's the answer.
I think a lot of other people are ineligible
because they're in it too much.
Posey's in four or five scenes.
Is Slater in too much?
Slater's in it too much.
Because Slater became kind of iconic.
He does.
Incredible thoughts on George Washington's wife.
I look forward to discussing that.
The Joey Pants Award
named after Joe Panelliano
for those guys, that guy, those guys.
You mentioned Clint the bully
played by Nicky Cat.
Yeah. He's really, I know he's
Nicky Cat, but I also don't know what other
movie he's been, and even though I've seen him in nine
things, I remember he was in Boston Public, he was in a time to kill.
He plays one of the stupidest least relevant characters in the movie
The Dark Night when he's... Is he one of the cops?
Yeah, he's one of the cops who's being chased by the Joker
while he's escorting Aaron Eckhart to some place to jail, I guess.
Was that like a cameo? Or was that like, he was like, I'm in the dark night.
This is great. They just cut his roll out.
Column A and column B, I guess.
So he's the runner up for this.
He's also probably could be a little more imposing to be Clint the bully.
Seems like he's about, I don't know, 5'7.
He's a little smaller, but he does have that like greaser attitude.
What the fuck are you looking at?
Yeah, exactly.
I'm token.
But the answer to the Joey Pants Award is the one black guy.
When you said his name, I didn't know who it was.
What's his name?
His name is Mel.
Melvin Spivey.
In real life?
No, his name is Jason O. Smith in real life.
What else?
What was he in?
Jason O. Smith.
The guy who played Mel is named Mel.
Jason O. Smith notably does not have a Wikipedia page.
So I don't really know.
I mean, he is the day.
We should have us named this, the Jason O. Smith, the word.
Jason O. Smith has two credits to his name on IMDB.
Yeah.
One is dazed and confused.
The other comes nine years earlier in a movie called Overexposed in which he plays Jerry Solomon.
And that's it.
We've never heard from Melvin's five again.
What's the log line on Overexposed?
Is that I have a Wikipedia page?
This is quite a salacious cover here.
It says a royal scandal.
A beautiful rock singer in need of some extra cash poses for some sexy photos for a men's magazine without telling her boyfriend.
So why do you think Linklater?
I was fascinated by that there's just one black guy in this movie.
Do you think Linklater was like, should I just have no black people in this movie?
Or I'll have one.
I'm covered.
You know the answer.
What's the answer?
There's only one black guy and everybody wants some too.
it's because he had one black friend growing up.
Weird.
Right?
Who must be?
Like, what other reason?
Why would he keep doing it that way?
Who would have been your dream cast member if we're doing the up and coming McConaughey and
Afl, like all these people on their way up?
From that generation?
Who's the 93 black guy that should have been this?
Is it like Don Cheedle?
Oh, this is a no-brainer.
It's Will Smith.
Yeah.
I was going to say my dream addition to this.
Do you want like a character actor?
No, I want somebody that I wouldn't have known who he was before.
this movie and then they had a whole career.
Oh, that's interesting.
Like a McConae-A. Affleck type.
Oh, but for the black character.
For the black character.
I'm saying 93, we go back.
So I can't cast Phillips Seymour Hoffman as Mel.
No.
He could have been in this movie, though.
Yeah, I know.
He's like right around then.
I go Don Cheadle.
What about like method man?
Oh, wow.
Who would have been not known at this time,
but could have been a credible athlete.
Well, it's got a half-ass internet's research.
I mentioned a couple of these already,
the W's and Mitch's pitching scenes.
When you need a double for a sports scene, you should just hang it up.
It's not good.
I mentioned the Radisson.
Richard Linklater originally wanted the Led Zeppelin song,
Rock and Roll for the movie playing during the end credits.
He didn't get it.
Jimmy Page agreed for Linklater to use the song.
Robert Plant denied him.
As always, Robert Plant was a fucking asshole.
Not that Jimmy Page wasn't, but those two weren't great.
Those guys like money.
The beer in the movie was real beer.
Really?
The miners did not drink beer, but everybody else did.
So I think that scene, one of the best, like, 10-second scenes is Cole Houser just hammered
when he tries to stand up and burps and sit back down.
He might have actually really been drunk in that scene.
Man is said 203 times.
Mitch touched his nose 42 times.
Yet another bow in the air of the Mitch Kramer sucks thing.
And then I mentioned the other stuff about Jovovovich and Sean Andrews, the Annals,
all that stuff.
Can I just save a few other internet research bits?
that we're like.
One is that Linklater made mixtapes for the actors for their characters, which I really liked.
I love that.
Individual.
So for Adam Goldberg, it was all like E.lo and people like E.
Yeah.
And then also that he got sued by a couple of like classmates.
Yeah.
Later on down the line as like saying that they were disparaged in this movie.
I was like, how can you imagine getting like suing a guy over days to confuse?
I guess if your name was O'Bannon, you might be like, hey, that did not cast me in a flattering light.
That suit got thrown out, though.
Can I, quick aside, you know who's on the cover of Wooderson's T-shirt, right?
Yeah, Ted Nugent.
Ted Nugent, Ted Nugent album.
By the way, you can buy that T-shirt. It's online.
Is that true?
Yeah.
I spent some time in Ted Nugent's house once.
It was for another story about a piece I never really wrote, but I went hunting with Ted Nugent when I was in my early 20s when he was hosting a reality show about hunting.
and it was one of the most absurd experiences of my life.
Where was it?
I was in Michigan.
It was outside of Auburn Hills.
And he would put all this quote-unquote wildlife on his property,
is sort of acres and acres.
And then he would just hunt it down and then kill it.
Stop funny.
I'm laughing.
And then he would butcher it in real time.
Like he would murder it and then just immediately start cutting it up
and show you like how all the body parts of a deer work
and how to kill a turkey and pull its feathers out and everything.
He was simultaneously like the worst person I've ever met in the world,
but also a really nice guy.
It was this weird combination.
I've never met anybody like him,
but I've never even told this story.
I don't think beyond like my family.
Yeah, it was weird.
He's still alive?
A really weird two days.
Yeah, he's still alive.
I mean, he's really controversial now because he's a hardcore right-wing guy.
Yeah.
But the records in this movie are great.
And every time I see the movie, I immediately think of my experience with him,
which was very strange.
Which song was it?
there's two different
He has two on it too, right?
I think there's two kiss songs.
He has stranglehold and hey baby.
Those are the two.
Apex Mountain.
You could argue there's zero Apex Mountain people
unless you want to say Link Later,
but I don't think,
I think the second before Sunrise movie
was his Apex Mountain personally.
Everyone else, I mean, unless you were going to say,
obviously Jason O. Jones,
this is Apex Mountain.
I believe it's Jason O. Smith.
Jason O.
The lady who played Jody.
Yeah, Michelle Burke, man.
What happened?
Michelle Burke.
Sean Andrews.
Sean Andrews.
I think Lori Cochran.
Yeah, I mean, like a lot of the...
But these are not like famous people.
No.
You don't think it's McConaughey's Apex, obviously.
God, no.
Right.
What about Wiley Wiggins?
What's that?
Yeah, it's Wiley Wiggins.
Anybody has never really been seen again, I think it's...
But that doesn't really count.
Usually we do Apex Mountain for bigger people.
What about Dina Martin who plays Chavon?
Never seen how are you.
Pecks Mountain. Oh, she's in swingers. She's so good in swingsers. That's right. That's right.
I still have a crush on her. Dina Martin, if you're listening, I still have a crush on you.
Trejo, Bouchemi, or Michael K. Williams? Who would have fit the best? You could have had a young
Michael K. Williams as Mel? As Mel. Yeah. What about, I mean, Trejo would have been fun hanging out
at the Emporium. He could have been there. He knew whaterson. Bochemy could have been one of the coaches.
Bouchemy is like the offensive coordinator. Yeah. Yeah. Reading the letter. All right. No more Mark
Ruffalo, they knew. It is now
the Saul Rubinick.
You want to do it, Chris? Sure.
I treated you like a son, and you
stab me in the heart!
If you missed a true romance podcast,
we renamed the Mark Ruffalo category,
the Saul Rubenick, Stab Me in the
heart category. That's the first time Zach's gotten
to hear that live. Yeah, Zach wasn't here
the last time. Overacting?
I guess, Affleck?
Jesus, Stephen, let the devil
fuck it away. What's the matter
with you? It's fucking pitiful.
Shit is.
What are you looking at?
Huh?
Keep your fucking ass right now.
Damn it!
I think it's...
It has to be my vote.
He really turns it up nine notches when the paint goes on him.
And I think that's a bit in the movie.
They're like, God damn, O'Bannon just takes this stuff so seriously.
Yeah.
Ben...
I don't blame him for it.
I think he played it correctly.
One of the most disturbing sounds in modern times is Ben Affleck's squealing like a pig.
Yeah.
That's really upsetting.
He's very committed.
What's funny is that was a big 80s, 90s joke.
And it's funny how movies will push a sense of humor thing,
but then just too many years go by and it dies.
If we did a squeal like a pig joke in the ringer office,
nobody under 30 would know what the hell was going on.
Why are you schooling a pig?
It's like a deliverance thing, right?
It's a deliverance thing.
Yeah, it's the Ned Beatty gets assaulted in a very bad way.
Yeah.
Accurate.
Do you think Anthony Rapp and Adam Gris?
Goldberg's characters are self-consciously trying to act like Woody Allen's 70s characters.
Like with that...
Like their parodies of them?
Yeah.
Like that's informing their character there.
I don't think in 76, Woody had hit big yet in a way that he would have resonated with people in Texas.
I don't know if that's a note that Linklater gave, but that's always how I interpreted
Adam Goldberg's performance.
I was like, he's just doing Woody Allen.
Like this is Woody Allen.
Interesting.
I never thought about that.
Like the whole joke that the...
And I guess you're right about Anthony rap too because the Abe Lincoln joke, that's like a Woody Allen joke.
having the dream about a naked woman.
The way they're walking and like gesturing at their temples.
And he's like, oh, and I've been thinking about this, you know, like.
The thing is, though, he's made 10 movies since where characters do that.
So I think it was just his way to have, like, smart conversations.
I was just trying to find, like the witty thing, though.
You guys talk to me into that.
Pop-cultural touchstones for different characters.
That makes sense.
Designing themselves after that.
76 is the year of Annie Hall, right?
That's 77.
77.
What witty movie would people in Texas have seen?
Oh, sleeper?
Everything you always wanted to know about sex, but we're afraid to ask is out by then.
sleeper is out by then. There's a bunch of moon bananas is out by then. Take the money and run.
Let's pick some nits. We already picked the knit of Mitch Kramer's pitching.
Yeah. Anything else? Do you think you could drive around with that many beer bottles in your
trunk? I think the drunk driving in general. I just think the beer just bouncing around in the
trunk, I think you open the thing. It's just going everywhere. I never... Honestly, I've done a version
of that. I don't think it's that crazy. With a hundred beers in your trunk? Yeah. Really?
Because you fill it with ice. You really have... You have to, you line it with a
garbage bag, and then you fill it with ice, and you put enough ice in there so that's packed
tight and that it doesn't move.
Sean had some dark years along the aisle.
Sean is out there with Ted Nugent drinking 100 beers.
I was in college in upstate New York, and there was nothing to do.
Jets in the Islanders.
You and I were in Boston.
It was just the height of metropolitan.
Yeah, but I went to visit my friends who went to school in upstate New York and western
Massachusetts, and they totally would put beer in the trunk.
You're in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Hamilton College, my best friend went there.
It was effective.
That's when I was listening to Wu-Tang and Black Rob.
Any other nitpicks?
It's really hard.
I always just feel so in the flow of this movie.
I just love this movie.
I don't really have any of the movie.
The movie has a couple of weird continuity errors
where it's like, how did that person who was in that car
end up in that car?
You could kind of pick knits around that stuff.
I noticed one like...
It has a little bit of the Amy Adams sharp objects.
Like at a certain point,
driving would be impossible for these guys.
Yeah.
There's one when Don is in the car,
when they almost get killed by the guy with the gun.
And then the next scene, he's...
somewhere else and it just seems like, how did he get there?
What about Mitch Kramer being able to so easily purchase beer while 13 years old?
I think that was very 70s.
70s?
Yeah.
I have another nitpick.
Jody makes a run at Randy Pink Floyd.
Brings him into the woods and starts making out with him and that whole thing.
There was no real sign for it, but there was no payoff for it.
That was the one scene where I don't know why that happened other than just to say he's the quarterback,
he can hook up with any of these.
I think that's what it was.
I think that's what you're trying to tell you.
I mean, she's an important character
because she warns the guys not to be too hard on Mitch,
which essentially introduces Mitch into the movie.
Bad job by her.
I think it's just that he's very desirable
and that he appeals to a lot of different kinds of people.
Who did you want him to end up with?
I just have a thing for Michelle Burke.
I like her.
I think he should end up with Michelle Burr.
I agree with you guys.
Jody Kramer, she was cool.
Burke's the champ of this pot, I think.
Burke.
Good stuff by her.
There's a maximum oral history
where she said she had some shots.
at the 20th anniversary or 15th anniversary, whatever,
and made some comment about Jason London
about how they had kissed and she was in,
but didn't realize his wife was there.
Oh, no.
Yeah, that was bad.
Jeez.
Best quotes, that's what I love about these high school girls.
Man, I get older, they stay the same age.
This was hilarious for about 20 years.
Not as hilarious lately.
I only came here to do two things,
kick some ass and drink some beer.
It looks like we're almost out of beer.
If these are the best years of my life,
remind me to kill myself.
A fucking classic.
A great high school yearbook.
All right, all right, all right.
Became basically the joke with McConaughey for years and years.
All right, all right, all right.
To this day, still his catchphrase.
Well, all I'm saying is that I want to look back and say that I did the best I could while I was stuck in this place,
had as much fun as I could while I was stuck in this place, played as hard as I could while I was stuck in this place.
Dogged as many girls as I could while I was stuck in this place.
Who said that one?
Don.
Sasha Jensen.
Yeah, Don Dawson.
And then say, man, you got a joint.
No, not on me.
Be lie cooler if you did.
The older you get, the more rules are going to try and get you to fall.
You just got to keep on living, man.
L-I-E-I-N.
You want to hear the George Washington speech?
I think we should play it.
George Washington, man.
He was in a cult.
And the cult was in the aliens, man.
You didn't know that?
Oh, man.
They were weighing in that type of stuff.
George Toad Wee.
Absolutely George Toad Weed.
Are you kidding me, man?
He can feel to that stuff, man.
Man, that's what I'm talking about.
He grew that shit up of Mount Vernon, man.
Mount Vernon, man.
He grew it all over the country, man.
He had people growing it all over the country, you know?
The whole country back then was getting hot.
Let me tell you, man, because he knew he was on to something, man.
He knew that it would be a good cash crop for the southern states, man.
So he grew fields of it, man.
But you know what?
Behind every good man, there's a woman.
And that woman was Martha Washington, man.
And every day George would come home,
She'd have a big fat bowl waiting for him, man, when he'd come in the door, man.
She was a hip, a hip, hip, hip lady.
I also really like Slater saying, imagine how many people are out there fucking right now.
I love Slater saying Martha Washington, man, she was a hip, a hip, hip, hip lady, man.
She was a hip, hip, hip, hip lady.
I love Slater.
And I will say something about this, the 93 to 96, there were these little movie monologues that really meant a lot because we didn't have the internet yet.
I remember there's this movie, Sleep with Me, that wasn't great.
Eric Stoltz.
I'll do her fucking watch.
Tarantino's in the kitchen and there's the Top Gun thing about how top.
The whole thing and it was like, it was like mind blowing.
It's like, what is this?
This is the greatest theory I've ever heard.
Like I just wish this was the whole movie, these guys in the kitchen.
Right there.
Yeah.
And then the internet's like there's a million things like that now.
But in 93, 94, it was a big deal.
Even the Martha Washington thing is like, oh, man, great point about Martha Washington.
It's not the internet's full of this bullshit.
And the cult was in aliens.
I was just going to say that.
It's preceded by him saying George Washington is in a cult.
I also, this is one of the best ad-lim lines in the movie.
It's when Parker Posey is just wrapping up her initiation.
And she's like, what are you looking at?
Wipe that face off your head, bitch.
She said in a making of that it was in some sort of, like,
it was in like a check-off play, but it was a bad translation.
So it translated literally to wipe that face off your head.
And she just said it stuck with her.
used it. I thought that was a great one. Don had a great one when early in the movie,
they're just walking down the hall in school and he just fake punches. This kid that's walking
back. It's a classic crazy football bully move.
All right, probably unanswerable questions. First of all, what was Lee High School's
1976 football record? Great question. I think they lost. They're not going to state.
10 and 3, but I think they're in the mix. Yeah, I was thinking 9 and 3. Yeah. I think they
weren't expected to get into state, but then made the tournament the last week upset somebody.
Enough to have a pretty, like, obviously occupied coaching staff. It's not like a math teacher who's also
coaching football. It's like, had a football coach. He had coordinators. He had like a player personnel
liaison guy who was like signed the, sign this piece of paper. So it was big enough, but I don't
think it was on the Friday night lights level of like if you guys don't make state, it's an
national emergency. Do you guys ever sign any oaths of any kind in high school? That was kind of
weird. If we're going to get, that
was probably a nitpick. Okay.
The whole movie, just dramatic
tension revolves around this weird
oath that everybody's supposed to sign it, but we've already
established in 1976. Nobody cared
about anything. Everybody's getting shit-faced
at the Emporium, like every night. It's a stretch.
We think Randy Floyd played, right?
I do. Yeah. He came back. Yeah.
Who did Randy Floyd end up with
at the senior prom? Was it Joey
Lauren Adams? Or
Jody Kramer? I mean,
he's probably just getting high with Wooderson and Slater, you know.
Like, that's his vibe.
Yeah, but who was his date?
Probably Joey Lauren Adams.
Yeah, Joey Lauren Adams.
I think they broke up.
I think she found out about the Jody making a move on.
I feel like monogamy was a little fluid.
He moved over to Jody.
Jody was irresistible.
Could be.
Joe Lorn Adams was very drunk, though.
There's that famous scene where she falls down
and then Parker Posey falls down with her.
You could see, Joey Lord Adams wasn't really with it that night,
so I'm not sure if she ever got that information.
Why didn't Jason London have a bigger career?
He's kind of a cipher.
The character is important in the movie,
but I never walk away from this movie feeling
like, that guy rules. I want to see him in more stuff. He's okay. He's fine.
It's also incredibly difficult. I think that just because you're great in a movie about high school
does not necessarily mean you're going to translate to being great in movies about people in their
20s or the 30s. Those parts are so perfect because they're like, you can play a type,
but then you can also imbue that type with whatever your own personality traits are. You don't
have to like really be this, this like anti-hero yet. So I think that it's not surprising that
you see a lot of people that are in these John Hughes movies in like in days and
confused that don't go on to like these huge careers.
Can I have a counter?
Sure.
My wife loves Randy Pinkfoot.
Really?
Yeah.
The character or the actor?
That both.
Okay.
Just one of her all-time favorites and says she's not alone.
Okay.
Didn't understand why he didn't have a bigger career.
Justice for Pink.
I think he was in this movie a game manager like a Ryan Tano.
Right.
You never wanted to do too much.
Let's go back and think about who we've compared Pink to.
Fran Tarkington
Johnny Mansell
And now he's a Ryan Taddena
I meant his character of the movie
They didn't want too much of him
At any point
But he's in a lot of scenes
And he's the thread to everybody
And it's like
All right, let's say a better actor played him
Let's say like Mark Wahlberg
Played Randy Pink Floyd
You said a better actor
That was good
Can you imagine Walberg playing a Texas quarterback?
Randy Pink Floyd would have had an edge in the woods
No it's like what if it's Leo
Leo is in the perfect age range for this.
Leo would have been...
Leo would have been great.
You okay with Leo?
I'm sure I'm okay with it,
but I just think that there's a certain perfection
to the fact that a lot of the people in this movie
never went on to almost sully this movie
with being like, oh, later on, this guy was Ron Kovic
and, you know, like, I don't know.
I gotta say, Sean just blew my mind.
Leo is...
But then it has to be almost in your mind.
It has to be a movie about pink.
I think he would have overpower the movie.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
There's a certain, like, stability to that.
with the way it is now.
Leo would have made some interesting choices.
I mean, guys, it's a better movie if Leo's in it.
He's an amazing actor.
I think we win if Leo's in it.
Did you have any of the unanswerable questions?
Yeah, I wish I could know how good that Arrowsmith concert was.
That's the best time for Arrowsmith.
76 is like that's two months after Rocks comes out.
Yeah, and they're going to the Cotton Bowl.
That would have been a fucking awesome concert.
So I researched that to make sure that was true and they played in Texas three times that year.
They did.
So he must have researched that.
That's just a great time for that band.
I kind of understand why they're so obsessed with getting tickets.
Yeah.
It's back in the saddle.
That's what that record is.
I think 76 was like a top four music year.
It's probably pretty good.
Think about like just a lot of people on Apex Mountain for whatever the music version of that is.
And also concerts were so important back then.
It was the only way you were seeing anything.
Yeah.
There's also like no a ton of popular music that isn't even representing because it's meant to be Texas.
It's like there's no Stevie Wonder in this movie.
There was just so much happening in the world.
It was so good at that time.
Yeah.
Funk was huge then.
I'm not positive you could play music and I don't know if the cars had cassettes yet.
Probably still 8 tracks.
Yeah, it was like a late 70s.
Yeah, it was a lot of the Tzzi's hop record would be played on.
Who won the movie?
Our choices are Link Later, McConaughey or Martha Washington.
Because don't sleep on how much of a win she took in this.
Don Dawson?
Yeah.
How could he've won the movie?
Not over Wooderson.
Oh, you mean like within the narrative, like the story of the film?
in the movie.
It's got to be, it's got to be
Witters.
Chiffy Chase won Fletch.
That's easy.
His name's at the top of the poster.
Indiana Jones, I know, yeah.
You can make a case link later
when the movie
because this launched a 25-year career.
Yeah, I think that this makes him
more than a sort of experimental filmmaker
who's emerging from that indie scene.
This makes him kind of like this
two-track filmmaker.
Here's my case for McConaughey
and not winning the movie.
Okay.
When I did the thing I did
in the movie quotes in 01,
I had this long paragraph from there
where I took a shot at him
where it was basically like
then McConaughey
and then we thought he was going to be
a big star and now he's just doing
like a bad Wooderson and Preston
and Prestonicham rom-coms
like his career did crater there
early 2000s
and then he had the McConnell
that was all about a renaissance
Linklater I think has been
one of the nine most important directors we've had
he's high since 90
Is this the first Linklater rewatchables?
Yes we've talked about doing
sunrises
sunrise or sunset before
yeah
no we talked about doing the
The five-hour trilogy just gets dark.
And just us crying the entire time?
It's you guys and your wives.
That's what I want.
That's the podcast I want to listen to,
is you guys do all three of those movies with your wives.
That third one's a tough one.
You just kind of look at your wife on the way out.
Like, oh.
It's a war.
Want a hug?
It's an interesting hang.
Yeah.
Link later, it's probably Link later.
I mean, every time he makes a movie,
even if it's not one of his best,
it's always interesting.
he's had such a great career.
Yeah, and this is a masterpiece.
Tarantino has it in his 10 best films of all time.
At least he did a couple years ago.
I think that this is the movie that probably emerges with Pulp Fiction,
and I don't want to hear anything about Bruce Willis' his girlfriend.
It emerges with Pulp Fiction out of that era as like the standalone masterpiece.
I think it is the definition of a rewatchable.
And something we didn't mention at the top,
you can jump in at any point in the movie.
The whole movie's designed that way.
There's no beginning, middle, and end to the show.
this movie.
If anything, if you get it after the baseball,
you don't have to suffer through Wiley Wiggins'
fake off speed stuff.
Did we do a shout out to watch the Leather Man?
Watch it's the other one.
God, there's so many lines that jump out.
Martha Washington.
Before we go,
hip, hip,
hip lady, man.
We should mention the spiritual successor to this movie.
Everybody wants some, which is
underrated, I think.
Like a year away from being rewatchable, I feel like.
I hope it has developed seven more times.
I don't know.
I mean, I know everybody.
It's happening.
People that work here, like this movie rules.
It didn't even make like $8 million.
That also was a bomb.
And also was a movie that was put out just like Disney Confused by a major studio that didn't really get behind it.
It's basically the same story.
I feel like Glenn Glader did that intentionally with the exact same strategy.
Maybe.
I don't know.
There's no way.
Who's going to go see that movie in the theater?
Everybody wants them?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's the kind of thing especially as Glenn Powell maybe gets bigger.
It's Glenn Powell and Zoe Deitch.
They're both in that movie.
Yeah.
And now they're both going to be huge.
Yeah.
No, that movie's really good.
I like that one.
I hope that movie catches on it.
It's like on Netflix for like two years, it becomes like a big favorite of people.
It was, it had a Netflix run.
They tried to get it going.
Yeah, it was on there for a while.
It deserves a bigger audience for sure.
It'll have a run.
Anything else?
The rewatchables.
So we're going on a little hiatus and we're going to do a couple horror movies.
And then I think Shay and I are going to do all four Iraqis at some point before three.
Geez.
It's not much of a hiatus.
When you say all four,
Rockies, there's like eight Rocky movies.
Nah, there's only four that matter.
And we've already done Creed already.
We did that one before.
You weren't there.
You were on vacation?
I was on vacation.
Did you see the Creed 2 trailer?
I did.
There are some people calling it
the greatest trailer of all time.
I think that might be an overstatement.
That's definitely overstated.
I appreciate the enthusiasm.
I had no idea of Lundgren was in it,
so I almost had a hard time.
Oh my God.
Are you okay?
I was like,
I just couldn't believe it.
We should probably check you for a stroke.
How did they get them?
How'd they get them?
How'd they get them?
I can't believe that.
Can I just use this moment.
of public broadcasting
to declare
Roger Sherman's take
on the Rocky movies
being bad as one of the worst takes
are he out of him?
He's out of that before
or do you only do Hoosiers.
Yeah.
No, he's outed it before.
He wrote about Hoosiers,
but he genuinely thinks
the Rocky movies are bad,
which needs to be stated as a bad take.
He talks in a British accent
around the office.
I know, I know.
What can you do?
Fellas, it's been fun.
Thanks, Bill.
Thanks, Bill.
I catch you around
on the next rewatchables.
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