The Rewatchables - ‘Lethal Weapon’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan are getting too old for this shit. They revisit the 1987 classic ‘Lethal Weapon,’ starring Danny Glover, Mel Gibson, and Gary Busey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Save at Whole Foods Market. We're also brought to by the ringer.com as well as the ringer podcast network where we just launched a brand new podcast that's called New York, New York with John Yistremski, who is coming from the fan in New York, their biggest sports radio station. He's a huge New York sports fan, huge pop culture guy, loves all the same stuff we love at the ringer. And I'm really excited to see how this pod goes. There's eight New York teams. He's going to be diving into the whole New York sports scene. Not much differently than I do on my podcast just with general sports. But if you love New York sports, you want to find out what's going

on with all those different teams. Check out New York, New York with John Yistremski. Coming up, I'm too old for this shit, Chris Ryan. Lethel weapon is next. Gun! Raj, you're new foreigner. These two cops can stand each other. I keep getting into trouble around you. The bad guys don't stand the chance. You ever met anybody you didn't you?

Well, I haven't killed you yet. Mel Gibson, Danny Glover. We better register you as a lethal weapon. Lethal weapon, rated R. Starts Friday, March 6th. All right, Chris Ryan is here. This is a one for us. It's really to set up the lethal weapon two podcast,

which I personally think Lethal Weapon 2 is a superior movie. We want to start there? Yeah, so let's talk about this. I think when people think of Lethal Weapon, what they really think of is Lethal Weapon 2. They think of diplomatic immunity and all that shit. Like, they think of the jokes. They think of Leo Gets.

They think of the banter. Lethal Weapon 1 is a different animal. Lethal Weapon 1 is a really dark movie, and it could have been even darker if they had made the Shane Black script, but Richard Donner kind of made it a lot more, like, I don't know if that's softer, but he found more humor in it,

and that's where he took the franchise after this. Yeah, Lethal Weapon 2 is WrestleMania 3. It's the culmination. It's one of the great events of all time. All time Simmons statement there. To run, you needed to walk first, and WrestleMania 1 was the walking to WrestleMania 3. Lethlethorpean sets up Lithuweapon 2,

which I think is, I don't know, we've litigated this before, one of the four greatest sequels of all time. It's like Godfather 2, aliens too. We had one other one in there that we loved. Before Sunsets on there. Terminator 2? Terminator 2. Yeah.

Before Sunset in the top 10. But yeah, it's really hard to make a sequel that actually improves on the original. Setting up the lethal weapon framework, though, the buddy cop movies. We did 48 hours on this pod a couple years ago. That was kind of the first modern buddy cop movie. but it really didn't take off until running scared in 86, stakeout on lethal weapon in 87. And then it basically became a thing that for the next 35 years

was either done, copied, imitated. I remember maybe 10 years ago, Kevin Smith did cop out with Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis. Didn't work. Wasn't that good. But it was basically Kevin Smith going, I loved lethal weapon. I wanted to see if I could make my own version of lethal weapon.

Yeah. What made this movie succeed where so many of these others failed? It's a multi-part answer, but let's start there. Well, I think that there's a distinction I would make between the buddy cop movie and the buddy cop comedy. And so you have movies like Rush Hour that are actually like buddy cop comedies, but this one is really playing on the opposites attract. These guys are oil and water.

Can they stay in the car together, much less solve the case together? and I think that that's where they get a lot of the energy, but like the very specific and very unlikely pairing of these two actors, which I don't think in a hundred, if you tried to cast this movie a hundred times

in 1986 or whenever they cast it, I think it would be like one out of a hundred times you pick Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. And they wind up being, you can still see it today when they still do. They did a video trip to Richard Donner a couple of a while back. Like, they still have it. They

still have this sort of like one and a hundred chemistry between two performers. Yeah, Donner said that. He had a, he said they screen tested them together. And this is what Donner said. It took about two hours. By the time we were done, I was in seventh heaven. They found innuendos. They found laughter where I never saw it. They found tears where they didn't exist before. More importantly, they found a relationship on just one reading. So if you asked me about casting, it was magical, total dynamite. Glover was in color purple before that. He had bounced around. I don't, I don't feel like he was like legitimately famous. He had like a recognizable face.

I think color purple probably jumped him up a level. But he certainly wasn't, this wasn't like getting Sam Jackson in the late 90s or anything like that. He wasn't super famous. Yeah, and it's the mid-80s. And this script is not written for a black actor necessarily. And he's also playing older, which is pretty rare.

I think he was 40 in real life playing a 50-year-old. So they had to be left piece. I think he was like 15 years older than Rian. 13, yeah. Yeah, I have that in, There's some complications with that whole plot. We'll talk about it a second. Gibson, so he does, and we're just going to talk about Gibson.

We're not going to get into all the other stuff. Maybe we'll do in what stage the worst. We'll do it for 10 seconds. Yeah, there is actually one, one age, what's each of the worst thing I want to talk about there? Gibson, 1981 to 1986, becomes a star. And we see this happen sometimes where somebody's a star. Everyone knows he's a star, but they haven't had the vehicle that has officially cemented. the star yet. Russell Crowe is like this in the 90s for a little while there. And then Gladiator

was like the planning the flag. I am now an A-plus lister. But people had kind of seen it for years. It was almost like in the NBA where it's like, Trey Young, it's going to be somebody. You're treating him like a star and he hasn't won a playoff game yet. That'll happen sometimes with these actors. We saw it happen with Ryan Reynolds forever. And then it finally happened for him. Other times it's people they anointed and it never happens at all. With Gibson, he did three Mad Max movies, which, you know, I'm a little older than you, but those were like big movies. They were really important early...

Especially Road Warrior and Thunderdome, right? Because Mad Max was a little bit more of a cult movie. Road Warrior was the accessible... Basically, they redid Mad Max's Road Warrior. But then he was in Year of Living Dangerously, Mississippi, the River and the Bounty. And all of these were Mel Gibson. he's an A plus lister, but none of them really made it. And then lethal weapon catches him at the perfect time,

which is why this became a franchise. Yeah. So he brings like a certain intensity to obviously everything he does. But I think that when you look at some of the people that they had thought about for Riggs and you think about what the movie would have been like had Gibson not done it, he brings out the kind of, does this guy actually want to live quality? You know, and when you see him, when you're introduced to him in that trailer, he looks like a guy who has cores for breakfast. You know what I mean? Like it seems like that's his lived experience and the live wire energy and especially, man, the eyes, like those big bulging eyes that he has for most of this movie. It's just like you feel like you're really like living on the edge with this guy. Yeah. And it's, I think, pretty natural to compare him to Russell Crow.

Sure. They're kind of, you know, same genre, different. generations, but they bring a lot of the same things to the table. I think the main difference between them, Russell Crowe always there was a calmness with him. Like he surveyed the scene. He had a way about him where he was always calculating how do I win this? How do I take advantage of this? How do I survive this? And those were when he's at his best in our favorite movie Proof of Life, Gladiator, beautiful mind, wherever. It's like, yeah, LA confidential. Sure. him surveying things, him kind of soaking stuff in and making decisions. Gibson's energy is just different.

And when he's been at his best, it's always been like, this guy might fucking lose it. This guy, don't fuck with this guy. This guy will do anything to get out of this situation. Even in ransom, ransom leverage that perfectly. I really, we're going to do ransom at some point. Ransom leverage that quality had perfectly where he's like just this rich guy, he's got his life together, but now you have these kidnappers and they're fucking with them. And then finally he fucking snaps and he goes to the TV station and he does this thing and

talks it in the camera. They're telling him not to do it. He does it anyway. Then he has the phone go, give me back my son. And it's just. Guys, is this back to back rewatchables with giving me back my son references? Well, it might be. But yeah, and that was lethal weapon was the movie that tapped into that.

And I think that's a really unique quality for him. I can't think of any other A plus. solicitor who had that quality. Yeah, I always think of when you, if you want to like put some piece of lethal weapon in the museum, I always think of the jumper scene in this movie where he's just like, do you really want to jump? Do you?

You know, like, and you're just like, Jesus, is this going to happen? Like, because it's the first time where that movie kind of like leaves the earth. Because you don't know why they're like, it's kind of like this side scene. And, and, you know, Glovers, Murta's still getting used to knowing rigs. And it gets to the sort of crux. of the tension of the movie,

which is essentially, you've got a guy who is contemplating taking his own life in Riggs, and then you've got a guy who seemingly has it all in Mertau, but Mertau feels dead inside. And so he gets this guy in Riggs

who awakens something in him in his 50th year in his midlife crisis that brings him back to life in some ways while also saving Riggs's life. It's just like really, really, really tight, clean storytelling

in that regard. One of the things I like about this movie it feels very 80s on the one hand, but it doesn't feel too dated. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's still really watchable. It's a movie that's almost 35 years old.

I don't want to say it could come out now. I think they would do some stuff differently, but it moves in a way that a movie now would move. It's tight. It's built around stars. It does some things that I think just got ripped off left and right. This movie rips off 48 hours in a lot of ways, even with some of the casting.

some of the way some of the scenes move the Nick Nolte character in 48 hours Jack Cates Gibson's basically they just flip it where they make Jack Cates like kind of the Reggie Hammond wildcard guy but even like way more of a degenerate and alcoholic and more of a death wish to Jack Cates had but there's you can tell Shane Black you mentioned wrote wrote this in 85 there were a lot of revision stuff like that but you can feel the 48 hours influence in this movie right Yeah, I mean, I think that this is also the cool thing about this movie is it's like a, it is a very 80s movie

in some ways, like some of the fashion, like the LA, you know, Koki vibe of the Hollywood Hills. But it's very much rooted in the 70s and it's, it's like as much of a Vietnam movie as it is a cop movie, which is kind of cool. Like, you know, one of my favorite novels is called Dog Soldiers by this guy, Robert

Stone, and it's about veterans coming back to the states and dealing heroin. And each one of these guys in the movie like Mr. Joshua and Hunsacker and McAllister and Merton Riggs are dealing with Vietnam in their own way. And it's kind of awesome to see an action movie that is actually rooted with some kind of like sense of history to the characters. Like you don't really see that a lot. One other good thing. And it's very Shane Blackish. And I feel like he's tried to take this moment and incorporate it in a lot of other movies combined with the Joel Silver thing,

which we should mention, who produced us, who did a bunch of great 80s, 90s stuff. the way this movie starts, there's a girl. The helicopter shot, yeah. Semi-topless. There's cocaine. She's in some sort of dreamlike state. You're definitely in L.A. Is it supposed to be Century City, right?

Yeah, it seems like Century City. Which is kind of cool because that's also where the Diehard Tower is. It's like did all 80s action was set in Century City. And anytime you saw cocaine in a balcony, you just know, you know the girl's climbing on the balcony. It's happening. and she jumps off and just seems like she falls 130 stories into this car and it's like, we're off. But you could see like Joel Silver's like, yes, this is like inject this in my veins.

Yeah. This is like his dream way to start a movie. And all of it feels very 80s to me. I don't know if even in like 1989 a movie starts this way. This feels rooted in the early mid 80s where cocaine is everywhere. And it just seems like a natural way to start a movie. It's like, oh yeah, of course. this girl's going to do cocaine and jump off a balcony.

I love how it does, you know, from the gutters of Los Angeles, like the grimy, like, eating hot dogs and drinking Pepsi in the street to, like, the beautiful condominium towers and the rich, like, excessive life, like, all the stuff. And then the nightclub where Mr. Joshua and McAllister are taking their meeting with Mendez, you know, like, all the stuff that just seems like subterranean underground L.A. and also rich, excessive, coked out of their mind, L.A. It's weird that in the buddy cop movie genre, we saw this work better in TV than we did in movies for a long time.

I used to love Starsky and Hutch when I was a kid. The kind of back and forth with those guys, you know, is basically the foundation for what we would see in some of these movies.

Same thing with, like, you know, the Duke brothers and Duke's a Hazard, where it's like, oh, we got to solve this thing and there's going to be some banter and stuff like that. Then Hill Street Blues was another one

where Michael Warren's character, I forget the other guy, the black cop and the white cop where they were kind of out and they were kind of like lethal weapony. Yeah. Spencer for hire had this kind of dynamic a little bit. Yeah, Vegas had it a little bit.

But it never really happened correctly in movies. And then I feel like running scared got lost in the history of this whole genre. It comes out a full, year and a half before Lethal Weapon, I think. I honestly think it's just as good of a movie. I think it's just as entertaining and just as enjoyable. The difference is it didn't launch this entire franchise kind of solar system than Lethal

Weapon did. There are four lethal weapons over the span of 12 years. And they're making a fifth. They want to. Yeah. And it vaulted Gibson to like Super Dupor Star status. Running Scared kind of came and went. And the way that things are going now, like they will make a young Riggs and Murta in

Vietnam Limited Series one of these days. You know what I mean? It's just like I'm so much IP. It's like, you know, one of the things that's so cool, though, is, you know, we've been doing a lot of 80s action blockbusters this year specifically on rewatchables. You guys just did Commando. And, you know, for the most part, you think about Schwarzenegger and then like the kind of tear down as like Van Dam and Seagal and those guys and like the big muscular action things. But the real story of those movies and the real story of what comes right out. afterwards with like the rock and up to like the big blockbusters like Armageddon is unconventional casting in those roles and finding like really interesting actors to play these

very physical action movie parts right like and it's like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are just 35,000 times better than these roles necessarily demand them to be yeah it's a good point what Glover said the Glover character is important too and I think we got to put some context on that because you have the Cosby show comes in in 84 and now we have this nuclear normal upper middle class black family that becomes the most successful TV show we have and was a game changer in a lot of ways because those kind of families just weren't on TV. The lethal weapon family is very similar to the Cosby family where it's just like yeah he's got this wife and four kids and he's turning 50 and they come into the bathtub and they surprise him with a cake and that's it. Like

We didn't even get that in movies that much. We didn't get characters like Murta, they were always white. And I don't know. I just, I feel like that, I feel like Murta is a weirdly important character, just in general in the big scheme of things. Yeah, I mean, it's, it was colorblind casting, I think, to some extent in the first one. There's the line when. Yeah, they said they weren't looking for a black actor, right?

It was like just best available actor. And we get to that in casting what ifs, the kind of people who were being kicked around, but the only time it's really mentioned, if I remember correctly, is when Dixie's house blows up and the kid is like, is it true that cops shoot black people? Remember, and they're like,

they kind of like laugh it off? It becomes a much bigger part of the second film because of the South African apartheid villains in the second movie. Murta's race becomes like a little bit more of a significant factor.

But in the first movie, it's just treated matter of fact. Like it doesn't, it's not really remarked upon as much. And that in itself was kind of revolutionary. We have the shame black thing, which threatened to become an error,

but didn't totally become an error. No, but it, like, he was part of, like, that Joe Esther Haas' like explosion of we'll pay top dollar for scripts that we think have blockbuster potential. And so this script, I think, goes for 250K, even though it gets, you know, it gets rewritten. And he wrote, he wrote Lethal Weapon 2, but that Lethal Weapon 2 script was heavily and almost entirely

rewritten. He goes on to have like basically Last Boy Scout, Long Kiss Goodnight, a bunch of movies that go increasingly higher and higher in their purchase price, much like Joe Asterhoss, who we talked about a lot on Basic InstinctPod. It feels like some sort of error. And Premiere magazine ties into this too and just like a general sense of like that screenwriters were actual people we should know. I would say until the late 80s,

the only screenwriters anyone had ever heard of were Robert Todd or William Goldman. Other than that, it was just like these anonymous people. And then all of a sudden, the screenwriter, what they paid for the movie, all this stuff became like part of the dialogue about the movie before we even knew about it. And now I think it's kind of gone back around

to where it's almost closer. I mean, look, I'm sure people would disagree with me. but I think it's kind of almost going back to where it was in like the 40s and the 50s, where it's not uncommon to have like writers rooms working on big superhero movies. It's not like the singular original idea that you sell for a million dollars and it's one movie and that's it. You know what I mean? It's more like, can we make 10 movies out of this?

Can there be a spinoff series? Can we do comics? And there's tons of different writers working on like Captain America Incorporated. The Joel Silver piece of this. This just seems like somebody we should have been friends with. Joel Silver? Yeah. Coming home in a body bag?

He rips off. For people who know, no, Joel Silver is obviously the inspiration for Saul Rubeneck's character and true romance. It's a very important character for me and Bill. Yeah, which be Saul Rubeneck was a category for a while before we gave it to Vincent Hanna. Joel Silver just rips off, Commando, all the lethal weapons, the first two diehards and predators, all the predators. There's just some of its highlights.

go look at his IMDB. He had a specific taste. He did the Matrix, too. Yeah. Eventually, I'm just talking about it in this whole run for, he was involved in 48 hours and had like a pretty legendary feud with Michael Eisner at one point about 48 hours. And I think it's always been unclear if Eisner wanted to replace Eddie Murphy or not. There's always been a he said, she said stuff about that.

But they were feuding to the point that eventually when they do who, frame Roger Rabbit and Joel Silver was involved. He had to pretend he wasn't involved or Eisner wasn't going to greenlight it. Just this was an era where you had guys like Joel Silver and Don Simpson and you had pretty, pretty lit people making larger than major movies. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, I think we've told some Don Simpson stories over the course of the run of this podcast like that we've read. And it's just like him, Brockheimer, Silver. And then our boys, the, the weird like, The arms dealers, like the Mario Kazan and stuff, Kzar and stuff like that.

Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar? Our dream narrative podcast, trying to find out if these guys existed. Next on Gimlet, a 10-part series for these real people. Yeah, how many like attack choppers did they have to sell to make this, like, to make red, red heat? They were laundering money for Saddam Hussein. And then Richard Donner, we got to talk about him. Yeah. some of his highlights.

He directed this movie. I think his first theatrical movie was the Omen. Great start. A movie that we will do on the rewatchables at some point. I have a lot of thoughts. Omen's Superman. First two movies out of the gate. Omen's Superman.

And Superman, that was probably the first time that Hollywood was like, we have this massive franchise. Let's take a chance on this young director to helmet versus give it to some sort of old, whatever. So he does that. He does inside moves. My favorite movie that I demanded that you watched and you never did.

I know you haven't watched it yet. I fucking said, I told you was on Amazon Prime. I apologize. I will watch it this week if you want me to. I'm sorry. How many times have I asked you for anything? Like nine times in my life? It was like, Jason Seppson's tweeting,

has these great tweets. Can we hire him for a blog? That took two weeks for you emailed them. Inside moves. This is taking six months. weeks. I don't know. You think I'm slow rolling you? I'm not slow rolling you? I don't know. It's like I have to hit you over the head with a frying pan to get you to do stuff sometimes. Inside moves is

incredible. It's my favorite Richard Donner movie. You've never seen it. Okay. I will watch inside moves tonight. And all of you out there who haven't seen inside moves, you suck too. It's not just Chris. Producer Craig. It's not. If Craig has seen Inside Moves before me, I will retire from this podcast. I have not. Yeah, thank you. All I know is there is multiple scenes with the 1979-80 Golden State Warriors and Inside Move. So how you haven't seen that movie is incredible to me.

I fucking love that movie. He did Lady Hawk, he did the Goonies. And then basically is like, all right, I'm going to cash out now. He directed all four lethal weapons. And he dabbled around. He did Maverick. He did movies like that, but basically he cashed in on the lethal weapon franchise. When I think of Premiere

Magazine, I think of Maverick, I feel like they had like five issues dedicated to the making of Maverick. It really did. In all of premiere magazines, checkpoints. I remember, I was like, is this going to be the greatest movie ever made? And I went and saw it when I was kidding. I was like, these guys just play cards? Is that it?

I'm glad fantasy isn't here because I feel like he would say a couple things about lethal weapon that hurt our feelings. You know, he's snobby about action movies sometimes. I think he really likes Lethal Weapon. Really? Fantasy? Yeah. I don't know.

He gets snobby about action movies. But I do wish he was here for 45 seconds on Richard Donner because this is somebody who is a major awesome director who did really interesting work but there's never been a Richard Donner conversation ever. Yeah, you know, I think that he kind of comes up,

comes of age in that Spielberg Blockbuster Director era but is not very closely associated with that Spielberg-Lucaz, Scorsese-Copola group. And maybe he doesn't have a masterpiece. Inside moves aside. Maybe he doesn't have the

the jaws, the raging, the taxi driver, the whatever is like the thing that jumps him up a level. But it's essentially the safest pair of hands in Hollywood for 15 years. Do you know what I mean? 20 years. One of the most commercial directors I think we've ever had. And I think his movies feel like a little, like, safe. I don't even know. Like, I mean, like, I'm trying to think of like a comparison to him. I think Zemakis is a decent comparison point. Yes. But he never really even made his back to the future. I guess lethal weapon is

back to the future. But Zemeckis even had like the boy wonder element to him. Like when he was directing, he was like Spilberg's protege. Donner was also like worked with Spielberg. Spielberg executive produced Goonies and everything. Like it's not like he didn't have associations with these people, but for some reason it's never been looked at really, it seems in that same way that we look at like a Zemeckis or a Spielberg. You could tell me he probably made like $280 million someone. I'd believe it. Yeah. I think he made some very smart choices. over the years. And I'm sure, like, after lethal weapon two, those guys were basically naming their price for three and four. Oh, yeah. Can you imagine what the lethal weapon three, like,

perk package was? Oh, my God. Because two was a monster, and we'll cover that when we do lethal weapon, too. Roger. Oh, Craig Horlebeck did dig it up to Donner? 200 million net worth for daughter. Wow. 15 million dollar budget made $120 million. $100. Roger Ebert. Do you know the answer to this one? I think he liked it. Four out of four stars from Raj.

Incredible. His review is basically an orgasm. He just loved this movie. And one quote was, this movie thrilled me from beginning to end. It thrilled me too. I agree with him completely. So when he says beginning end,

he's like, this movie thrilled me from the moment I saw a tapas prostitute jump off a balcony. after a lot of lines of cocaine. But yeah, I'm with you. This movie also thrilled me from getting in. We're going to take a break, and then we're going to do the categories. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?

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Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. All right, most rewatchable scene. We'll start here. I just wrote it down as Riggs has a drug bust flips out. The Christmas tree bust.

This badge ain't real. You ain't real. Oh, you sure are. Crazy son of a bitch. You go crazy? Yeah. Are you calling me crazy? You think I'm crazy?

Yeah, you want to see crazy? You don't see you. Now, that's a real badge. I'm a real cop, and this is a real fucking gun. Okay, pal. This scene's amazing. Yeah. You love a lot of things about this scene,

including a side actor who will get to with the Dion Waders Award. I think he needs to be mentioned. But this is everything we want from Riggs. We establish in two scenes, basically, that this guy is a full-fledged. a tick. He swallows a mouthful of cocaine on a switchblade. That's your introduction to him. Yeah. In the fields. It's also, and I think we'll probably talk about, I want to talk about this for what's age the best. It is the Christmas element of this movie, which is pretty big, you know,

bigger in this movie than I even think in die hard in some ways. So it's just like, what a moment. And then it's got that, that energy that we were talking about, that wide-eyed energy, where he does the three-stooges bit with these guys. And you're just like, what the fuck is this guy on? And, well, the answer to that is he's on a mouthful of cocaine that he just put in his mouth on a switchblade again. That is what a cop does. And it's so funny because like, in a lot of cop movies, they're like, you know, like the big leap that they need to make is like, you can't use, man. You can't, don't get, don't get into your own shit. And Ricks is just like, I've already had three cores. So this is kind of leveling me out. I've never seen a cop flip it on the bad

guys before. And then a couple other movies have ripped this off since. But when he's doing this, shoot him, shoot him. And he's just yelling and- Shoot this fucking guy. The guy holding the gun on him. It's like, wait a second, what's going on? Hey, shoot him. Drop it, freak. Hey, shoot him. Shoot him. Shut the fuck up. Somebody shoot this prick. Freeze! Shoot him. Stop! Shoot him! Somebody shoot this prick, shoot.

Stop! We'll shut the fuck on. Put him down. I'm wearing you. Shoot me. Shoot him. Shoot him. Shoot him. All of that is brilliant. And then when he flips it on him, and he hits the thing, and it's just a great scene. That's just an awesome action movie scene.

Next one is the handcuff jump, which is another awesome action movie scene. You don't know nothing. Don't touch me. Take it easy. Look, I didn't do anything wrong. I know, that it's not like you're murdering anyone or anything. That's right.

That's right. Same way I look at me. Same way I look at me. That's right. I know you're hurting. I get it. Okay. now, come near me.

Come on. Come on. Give me a break. Well, your guy, my boss is down there and he's watching me. So I've got to make it look at least like I'm trying to save you, okay? Come on. I'm just gonna stand here and talk to you. That's all. There's a jumper on top of the roof. There's really no reason for this scene to even be in the movie.

It's just, it's a, we need to prove out crazy rigs is. And it introduced Murta, because, like, the whole idea that they're introducing in the beginning, because, like, I also love, like, the scene where Murta is in the office and all his cop buddies are like 80s men cry, Raj. Like, you got to get in touch with your emotions and he meets Riggs. Yeah. And the whole thing is like, is Riggs trying to basically get a pension for getting like, you know, a psycho pension is what they call it? Yeah. Or is he actually suicidal. And like the, the jumper scene is just basically like, yes, you know, like both. Or not, no, he's not trying to draw a psycho pension. It's also one of the scenes that you kind of forget what's

going to happen as you're watching it because it's so good. And then it's like, oh, yeah, I forgot. They actually do the jump. I got to say, Chris, I mean, I can put this in one stage the best, but people in a movie jumping off a building onto that giant, what do we call those things? They're like the inflatable raft thing that they jump into. Yeah, the big cushion.

Has that ever not been awesome? Every single time, it's great. It's also great because they don't, they never show you that they've brought this inflatable cushion here. So, like, you're just like, oh, my God. Is he going to jump onto a car? Is he going to jump into a bale of hay? Like, what's happening?

It was really, really, really great. I love that scene. I wish the actor in that scene was like, I wish it had been like Bill Paxton or somebody that we knew. I wish it was Ellis from Die Hard. It's kind of like the bad version of Ellis. I've been having a terrible time over at Nakatomi Plaza.

Next scene is, Riggs Murta when Riggs comes over for dinner Not the dinner scene But the after when they're hanging out in the boat Kind of getting to know each other They're in a boat but there's not on the water They're just in a driveway There's some good interplay in that

And then It's just That's a chemistry scene That's why this movie works Because those two guys have chemistry I'm gonna go home I lost track We resolve anything here tonight

Yeah we resolve plenty It's a result that the wife takes out the garbage Earl Your daughter smokes grass In the house And it's illegal You don't know a hell of a lot About boats

And you got a hell of a nice family there Thank you Little known fact is When I did my interview for Grantland I told you I did a guy in Lios From a thousand yards out And you were like Oh my God

You were like I was only one of three guys in the world Who could make that shot Like okay cool Do you want to work with Robert Mays? The daughter dessert I'm sorry, the daughter Desert Exchange

which Where is that? Is that in America? Is that the Mojah? Saudi Arabia for that scene? What's going on? I think they shot it. It looks like they shot at White Sands,

but maybe they shot it in the Mojave. I don't know. I mean, what are the coordinates? How did we get there? I had this in nipicks. I have no idea how we ended up there, how,

everyone's on the same page. If you ask me, that feels very Joel Silvery. It's like they're doing this downtown L.A., grimy, urban movie. And then Jill Silver's like, we got to go to the desert and have a chopper chase the limo. I mean, the thing is, look, we've lived here for, I've lived here longer than you. Yeah. I've also driven around way more of California than you, thanks to use soccer. I've been in every part of Southern California, basically.

To go to a place like that, that is like a two and a half hour drive. Yes. That is not like, hey, so leave downtown LA, take a right, take a left, get off at that third exit, and you're there in this sweeping white desert. You're driving for hours. Hours. What is the more awkward trip to the desert? This or seven?

Oh. See, seven. Hmm. probably this because I just there's nowhere even three hours for Illinois. It doesn't look like Palm Springs. It doesn't look like they're driving out to just east of LA. It's ludicrous. But it's a really good scene. I like that we incorporate the sniper piece with Riggs. Yes. I enjoy that he's on there just laying people out and of course he gets caught. Very tough 1987 technology where they don't figure out a way

for Riggs to be able to communicate with Mertals. All of it is like, Roger, move, move, Roger. Right. Next scene is the, I just wrote, Riggs escapes, kills everyone, strip joint shootout, 101 shootout. It needs to say this is my winner. It's incredible 11 minutes.

It's just nonstop. The movie just all of a sudden takes a giant two to cocaine and we're off. Yes. And the first line is when Riggs and Busey are finally like, you know, get, when Briggs is being tortured by Busey and Al Yonge, like, you're just like, this is all of the 80s in one room. Yeah.

Torture. We've got unnecessary rain or water. We got Gary Bucy. There's no shirt on for no reason at all. Our hero with his hands over his head, but he's going to be able to get out of this, even though he's chained up. Yeah. And it's just great.

See, Martin, we have a problem. Since we have Murtaugh, we don't really need it. But I believe in being thorough. Yeah, I've heard that about you. I love the strip joint part of it, where they just shoot the bartender, but strip joints are such a weird place. We talked about this for Terminator.

It was just a rough decade for pedestrians in action movies. Oh, yeah. And they're just kind of walking through. It's like, oh, shoot this guy, shoot that guy, go out. And then the 101 shootouts kind of underrated. Like, I don't even, that's one of those were just having lived here for almost two decades. It's like, how did they even pull that off?

How'd they get that many cars on the 101? Was that at like four in the morning when they're filming that? It definitely had to have been in the middle of the night. Yeah, exactly. And that was also, it just seems like this is like the best decade for when action movies could seemingly take over a city. Yeah. Like, it was just not, it's not like Atlanta or some like sort of like more anonymous

looking place. It's like, that is definitely like down the street from our, from our ranger offices. Yeah, that part of. the 101 that they take over, I have never seen where it wasn't at least semi-bizzy. Yes. And they're just like, we're going to shut this down and film four days of action movie scenes here. Another highlight for this is Riggs running versus Tom Cruise running. We can break this down later or we can break this down now.

So who do you think wins just in a 100-meter sprint? 87 Riggs versus 86 Cruz. Yeah, Craig, cue the video team for this one. This is just a natural breakout. I think if you're doing like, you know, in baseball, when they have, they can gauge the mile an hour coming off somebody's bat. If we're able to just gauge peak mile an hour, I guess they can do this at the NFL combine.

They're doing this in the NFL a little bit with D.K. MacK., MacKhaft, things like that. I think Riggs is just faster. I agree. I also think that it's notable that Riggs, I think for the last 30 minutes of this movie is barefoot, but does none of the problems that John McLean does. No. Yeah, it's a one choice to have a beerfoot. For the last half hour of Diehard.

Briggs is just like, I'm fucking, I'm like Carl Lewis. Like, watch out. I think if you're doing the hierarchy, Robert Patrick and Terminator 2 is one. Like, I do think he might have been faster than Usain Bolt. Well, he was on them side by side. A cybernetic organism, but yeah. But even like the actor himself, like, he's just flying. He's really like it's almost like its own special effect.

Who would you be like the most surprised by, if, like, you found out this 80s actor was actually the fastest 80s actor. Most surprised. Oh, Schwarzenegger, because he's got so much muscle. Yeah. Gibson and Cruz are both short, so it's hard. They can film it in certain ways where they're,

it just seems like they're flying, but I don't know how many, how much ground they're actually covering. Cruz was really good at running for him. I think the firm he probably peaks. Yeah. But I think Riggs, it really does feel like he could have run all day. The endurance factor with Riggs,

and maybe the little, cocaine was helping him. I think we also, we give Cruz a lot of credit because Cruz has continued to run. I think Gibbs is slowed down in a lot of ways. But,

Gibbs is still tearing off 4-440s in more of the worlds, you know? Right. I don't know if Mel Gibson ever, what did Cruz do? He broke his, what did he break on that jump?

He broke his ankle in Mission Impossible. Yeah, I think Gibson saw that. He started laughing. He's like, I could have made that jump in two seconds. And then the last rewatchable scene is, what do you say, Jack, would you like a shot at the title?

One of my favorite, just random movie lines, probably in any action movie. It's so good. Would you like a shot at the title? I just want to walk around saying that to people. What do you say, Jack, but the title? That scene is fucking insane. Just Danny Glover turning his front yard into an octagon and just being like no cops are allowed to interfere.

It seems like there's 19 violations happening. There's violations of police conduct. There's hip-o violations. The first time you watch it, you're just like, yeah, for sure, this makes sense. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if this happened, you know. But then when you do when you think about it and all the cops are showing up and he's like, no, no, no, I take responsibility. He's like, back off.

It's amazing. And apparently in the internet research for it, apparently there was four more minutes of the fight and they actually like cut it down because it was like too much. Yeah. Too much fight. It was like the audience is worn out. I felt like it's long where it was. I can't imagine having four more minutes on it.

And it culminates with the most 80s thing. The thing I think about most with the 80s is he's not dead yet. It's like in diehard and lethal weapon, the guy always comes back to get shot one last time. They can't resist. Even sleeping with the enemy has it. It goes through the 90s. But if Busey killed them at the end,

I think it replaces the Red Sox beating the Yankees is the biggest comeback in sports history. the 2004 Red Sox If Mr. Joshua comes back Yeah Joshua just ending up killing Riggs and Mertah After losing with 40 cops on there My most rewatchable scene is everything from Riggs escapes through the 101 shootout.

What do you have? You know what? I'm going to go with one that you haven't mentioned. Okay, great. I'm going to go with Hunsacker when he gets killed, the helicopter shootout. Yeah.

And, and Riggs running after the helicopter and emptying two clips into the Pacific Ocean. This is a scene that essentially Shane Black redos in Iron Man 3 anyway. But I love just the backstory of those, the mercenaries running heroin back from Vietnam when they like reconvene and decide that they're going to do that. And just like him, him just being like, you know, you're going to spill, you're going to give me the name. And then getting shot through the eggnog and just. that chopper out of nowhere, which I have also some nitpicks about. But that scene is like the pullback.

It's like the helicopter pullback from the estate and you see the whole cliff side and Riggs is just shooting out into the ocean. It's great. Where do you think that was filmed? You would know better than me. It seems like Pallos Verde, right? Palace Verde, yeah.

That would have been my guess. Yeah, there's this weird mid-80s helicopter run we had that quickly ended with the Twilight Zone. but they got super ambitious with helicopter stunts. Yeah, they had airwulf. And they had them in the desert too when the helicopter is basically riding on top of that car trying to fuck with it. And you're just watching going, wow, this is super dangerous.

What was the police helicopter movie? Was that blue thunder? Did you ever see that? Yeah. What did I ever see it? Who the fuck are you talking to? You're still mad about inside moves. Inside moves.

All right, so you have that one. A lot of people don't know this. It hasn't come out. and some of the journalism about Grantland in the four years, but initially started as we were running heroin for ESPN, as part of the thing. People thought it was a sports and pop culture site that tried to do some multimedia stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, but we were running heroin out of LA Live for like three years and nobody ever found out about it. What's age the best? I'm going to start here. I love when fucked up guys live in mobile home trailers. It was one of my favorite things about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, too. If you really get it right, it just, for the certain character, you just get the wide shot of them sitting on that depressing sofa with the TV that's too small, drinking the beer that's probably not cold enough.

There's some chips. Always a dog. There's a fucking mess. There's always a dog. Sad dog that has the worst life ever. We never see that dog again. But is unflinchingly loyal. Yeah.

Who's feeding that dog? Who's taking care of it? Who's coming in to walk the dog twice a day for the three days that Riggs is gone? We don't know. We've seen the dog once. Is that supposed to be Venice? Like, what beach do you think he's on?

My guess would be Venice. But you could basically take that scene and interspers it with Brad Pitt once upon a time in Hollywood. And it's the exact same trailer, whatever. Yeah. Right? It looks the same, the same beats.

He's only missing the can of Alpo. Gibson's NHL hair is phenomenal. It's unreal. This stretch from 87, then Yarmir Yager basically ruined it, and then everybody kind of backed off and regrouped. But there's this five, six year stretch of the giant blown out. There's hair dryers. There's product. It's got to be longer in the back.

Only a few people could really pull it off. It's really impressive. I don't think it's a wig either. I think it was his real hair. It definitely was his real hair. I have no idea how you even style it because it doesn't actually look like blown dry. it looks like it should be like slick back almost, but like it just puffs out.

Yeah. It looks like he came off a motorcycle. Yes. With the hair, even though he did it. It's great. I love the movie ends with a classic Elvis Christmas song. I think Elvis's Christmas content was completely underrated.

It ends with I'll be home for Christmas. I love that one. I love Blue Christmas. Elvis's Christmas album, I think, is iconic. Should we do the Christmas in L.A. is what's aged the best now then? Oh, yeah. Okay.

Obviously, Murta's wife is Darlene Love, who is the singer of Christmas Baby Please Come Home on the Phil Specter album. And like a lot of Shane Black movies, this is set during Christmas. It's set during Christmas in L.A., which is, as Bill and I know, and many people do know, it's like a very specific time in L.A. Because obviously, it's like, it's still 70 out, you know. But the city changes a little bit at Christmas. Like, it is kind of this weird, beautiful vibe in L.A. at Christmas. and it's also incredibly lonely. Like as Shane Black talks about really well, like he's just like, it's just like a very natural pause in the year's calendar.

And he said that he was like, I think one time he was, he said that he was out, he was at a taco truck or something and that he looked over and saw like, like a little Virgin Mary statue lit up with Christmas lights. And that was like,

he's like, if you look hard enough at Christmas, like there's all these little crazy, like beautiful signs of it. And it's just like, it is easily my favorite part about these, this and this and, diehard is just like the weird vibe of the Christmas.

Like everybody in this movie says Merry Christmas to each other in this. It's just great. It's a little less congested here too. It's a fun time to be in here. And then what stage is the best? Just the chemistry of these two guys is really unique. Yeah. Yeah, I would say that like my favorite example of this is when they're at the shooting range.

That's pretty much as written. But they're banter and the way that they're going back and forth about telling. And they basically are making up a story. about what Dixie may or may not have done that night with Amanda. And you're just like, these guys playing off each other while they're doing their little shooting drills and their games and stuff. It's so cool. It's so great.

She actually says shit. Right. Another one stage the best. Just the whole helicopter scene, the way it shot, the cliff, the wide shots of it. There's just some really good filmmaking in this movie. They do just, and they do so much of L.A. They do the beach. They do downtown.

They do like Hollywood. It's great. They do the Mojave Desert. Oh, wait. That's three and a half hours away. Any other What's Age the Best for you? No, I had Christmas and the dynamic between the two guys were my favorite. What's age the worst? Mel Gibson. Yeah, let's do Mel. So obviously, very troubled man and you can read a lot about what happened to him in the ensuing years after he basically like rises to the very top of Hollywood, Braveheart is essentially like, you know, is, like, if you're talking about Apex Mountains,

like making Braveheart is basically as apex as you can get in Hollywood. And it all comes crashing down. He had a lot of problems with alcohol. He's got a lot of problems with saying really reckless and fucked up shit. I think the thing that's aged the worst is that some of that is actually in Riggs. And I guess, like, you could say it makes the character more realistic or something. But there's like some weird, like homophobic. part of Riggs that comes out a couple of times in this movie. And since Gibson himself has also grappled with that, I think it's like, that's age the worst. Yeah, Gibson was in real life, turned out to be a bipolar, self-destructive alcoholic. Yeah. And whether that was always the

case or whether it came out later, it's affected his work. And the guy's been in a lot of great movies and he's been in a lot of iconic movies. And I think if none of that stuff happened with him. I think the whole lethal weapon franchise would be remembered a little bit differently. Even like doing this movie, it's like, I still love these movies. I'm able in my head to separate the movie from some of the other stuff, right? I can watch O.J. and the naked gun. And it's kind of amusing to see O.J. in there, but it's not like, oh, man, I can't watch the naked gun now. This guy killed people. It's just like, all right, he's playing a part in a movie. I think what's weird about this one is Riggs was such a likable.

beloved character that it's just hard to separate the Mel Gibson piece from it. I'm able to do it. I really enjoyed rewatching this movie. I was really enjoyed watching Lethal Weapon too. But yeah, it just sucks that this was, I think, one of the biggest actors we had in the last 40 years. And he was really self-destructive. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't have much more to say on that one. More, what stage is the worst. The daughter-dad dynamic is really strange. I was hoping we would get into this.

I'm really attuned to this because I have a daughter. She's 15 now. And A, my family would just never come in with a birthday cake when I'm in the bathtub. It's just not happening. That was so weird to me. And then at the end of the bathtub scene, the daughter like leans in with like, hey, daddy, it's my, you know, blah, blah and kisses him on the cheek. It's like, he's naked in the bathtub.

What the fuck is going on? And then when he leaves the house, she's, she's wearing the dress and he's like, wow. She's a heartbreaker. All of it is so weird. And on top of it, with the casting, she's 27 in real life when she films this. Glover's only 40 playing a 50-year-old. And Mel Gibson's 30.

But looks 55. Yeah, it's like this forbidden. Uh-oh, don't like have an attraction with Riggs's daughter. We don't know how old she is. I'm guessing she's supposed to be like 17, 18. Yeah, I think she's like in high school or something. High school, but we don't know. She might be 16.

she might be 18, she's 27 in her life. And Riggs is having like a little bit of a moment back and forth if they're at the table. And on the one hand, the actors are three years apart. So it actually seems a little too real. On the other hand, it's like Riggs is supposed to be like 38 in this movie and she might be 16. So all of it is fucking weird.

But in the first two scenes that she's with Danny Glover, like she kisses him. And it's just like it's not how dads and daughters act. It was just fucking strange to me. every time I watch this movie, I'm like, why do they play that this way? Why were they trying to like tell us? I get it. I really don't know.

Like, it is actually one of those things that I was too young in the 80s to remember any of this. But like I just don't think that this is how it went down in the 80s. Yeah, it almost seems like movies being written by people who don't actually have teenage daughters. Like basically everybody in the movie doesn't have a teenage daughter yet. And they just don't realize like how in real life your teenage daughter is, just sullenly sitting in her bedroom,

not talking anybody for two hours. But nobody is like this excited to see their dad. Glover's cell phone has to go in what stage is the worst. I think it's the first filmed use of a cell phone, right? Yeah, so I saw that in the research. I think, I don't know, I guess this movie must have come out

before Gordon Gecko on Wall Street. Gordon Gecko is Wall Street's 86 or 87? Wall Street was 87, so I'm not sure. Maybe producer Craig can check this out as we're talking about. Gecko's on the phone on the beach, right? He's got that giant fucking thing. And he's like, hey, wake up, buddy. Money never sleeps.

So I don't know what's first. But this was the portable radio shack model launched circa 1986. Don't think my stepfather didn't have this because he did. Did he? He was also like one of the first ones with a car phone. He was very like so delighted to have portable phones. This was such like a big deal in the mid-late 80s. I just really wonder what would have happened to society if lethal weapon was first, according to Craig.

I really wonder what would happen to society if we had, because you remember when cell phones first came out, like, you know, like it was basically like, use this if your car breaks down. You know, like that was basically the extent to why you would. Yeah, if you would need a cell phone, it would just be like, you can use this basically to be like, hey, like I got a flat. Can you send triple A? And like it's, what's age the worst for you? No, that's pretty much it. The Gibson stuff. is probably

Gibson counts like four times the normal Gibson and Rianne Mertar are the big ones yeah cat you know actually

let's put her into the actress who played her I thought she was good you don't like Tracy Wilson told Tracy Wolff I just thought she was too old

yeah I mean that's just casting yeah you know she has this I don't know I just thought she's too old I was thinking like this well I'll do it

and recasting coach casting what ifs there's this whole weird Bruce Willis Mel Gibson thing where Bruce Willis could have had lethal weapon and Mel Gibson could have had diehard. We probably need to do a what if pod that is just that. If Mel Gibson is John McLean

and Bruce Willis is Martin Riggs, like what happens to the planet? I have a hot take. I think I like both of these movies a little bit more if they switch movies. I don't really believe that Bruce Willis in 86

could be a super soldier. Like, John McLean is really streetwise. That's how he gets through diehard. That's how he gets through that night. That's a good point. It is an older Bruce Willis. He's not somebody, I believe, could run down, like, a car on the 101 barefoot, the way that Bruce, the way that Mel Gibson can.

Fair. So you're saying Bruce Willis as the kind of the everyman thrust in this situation. Yeah, when you see Mel Gibson and he's naked at his trailer, you're like, that guy's cut out of fucking limestone. Like this guy, you know what I mean? Bruce Willis looks like, like, you know, me, you know? Yeah, that's fair. I would have loved to have seen them switch parts.

It's almost like a sports thing where I've been like, oh, Brady and the New Orleans Saints offense and Breeze for the Patriots, what would have that have been like? Right, right. Mel Gibson turned down, starring roles in the fly, and the untouchables. So is that Elliot Ness, I assume? Yeah.

Yeah. To do this movie. Wise move. Apparently, he was also going for James Bond and in the Living Daylights. And they cast Timothy Dalton because Albert R. Braccoli turned Gibson down

because he wasn't British. Bill Gibson is James Bond over doing the Lethal Weapons series is a pretty fascinating fork in the road, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are people who really like the Timothy Zalton James Bond movies,

but it definitely changes like there was a period of time there where I think the James Bond movies are a little bit more like of a cultier item rather than like what they are now which is like a billion dollar franchise every time they come out.

When you say there are people that like the Timothy Dalton James Bond movies are you talking about people who have had a head injury? Who are those people? Are those people out there? What person has that opinion? I've never heard of such a thing.

Those movies are terrible. he's terrible and he never went out and do anything. Do you like Brosnan? Yeah, I think that's another good movie. What If? I think they made Brosnan, they made him stay in Remington Steel, the show that has had no cultural currency for 30 years.

And instead, he would have been an incredible James Bond, I think. Well, he did do. Pierce Brosson did do James Bond. I know, but when they were trying to get him to do it. We had to wait like, what, 10 more years before he actually got it. At the time when they were trying to get him, he was like young, up and coming. it's a bummer.

Script was purchased for $250,000 and then they started trying to find a director which included Ridley Scott. Yeah, this is another the Ridley Scott version of this movie is

it probably looks better, I guess, but is also it's not as funny. More serious, I bet. Yeah. So Scott had had recent tensions

with Warner Brothers because of Blade Runner. We're still pissed about stuff so the dude's like fuck that. We're not doing it. and we're not doing Ridley Scott. So then they talked to Donner and Leonard Nimoy,

who apparently had some directing juice at this point, but he was working on three men and a baby, which became very successful. So then it ends up being Donner, and the rest was history on that one. They had Brian Dennyhe lined up for Roger Murta. Dennyhead had been a cop in First Blood

and a cop in FX, a movie that I don't think has, I guarantee producer Craig has never seen FX. It's a weirdly influential movie. I think it's to be in the 80s OG. Yeah, FX is really good. Yeah.

I don't remember the last time I've even seen it or had anyone talk about it. Then he said, no, he didn't want to be a cop. They had Michael Bean being batted around for Riggs. Bean hive. Bean Hive just on the rewatchables just continues to get wins.

Love him. And he was filming aliens. Couldn't do it. fucking Michael Bean. There's this whole other alternate universe career could have. A lot of people were offered the Bucie role for Joshua, including Steve Railsback, who was amazing as Charles Manson, the number one Charles Manson ever, in my opinion.

And then John Saxon, who was busy filming Nightmare at Upstreet Part 3, couldn't do it, tough blow for him. Sorry, guys. So they kind of stumbled into Bucci, who was the opposite of Red Hot. he was the Buddy Holly story Oscar nomination then was ice cold had to audition for it lost a lot of weight for it then the other thing Shane Black said once

he really wanted William Hurt to play Martin Riggs which almost broke my brain yeah I that that is like again I don't think that you get the same Riggs quality like I do not believe William Hurt as a super soldier but I do believe William Hurt as like a damaged Vietnam veteran and that would have just a completely different move

The Hurt-Deneghi version of this movie is a movie that, like, you and I have seen five times, but no one else watches. Yeah. Yeah. It is not a movie that spawns three sequels and an eventual TV show and all the other stuff that happened. Best That Guy, aka the Joey Pants Award. There's a lot of them in this movie. I'm going to go super obscure with my pick. Cruise from 48 hours to another 48 hours, the guy who played Cruz.

Yes. He's in here as Mendez. has a whole scene. Ed O'Ross. He's playing hot too. Ed O'Ross, playing hot. It was just good. I had to look him up.

I realized I didn't know what his name was. His name's Ed O'Ross. He's my choice. I'm sure you have a different pick. I got a couple. I think shout out to Mary Ellen Traynor, who plays the therapist walking with Sergeant McCasky,

her Captain McCasky. She was Robert Zemechus' wife for a time and she was in Romancing the Stone, Goonies, Action Jackson, Die Hard. She's one of the newscasters. She's in Scrooge. And, of course,

Of course, she was in Rickshay. Great, that guy. Grand L. Bush, one of the Agent Johnson's from Diehardt, is also one of the cops. He shows up in, uh, in, you know, he's the winner because I don't even know, I didn't even know what his name was. Let's go with Grant. What it was that I am to be. That's a great one.

I also want to mention Tom Atkins. I was in junior high, dickhead. Just like Saigon, slick. You're right. That guy's the winner. Okay. I wanted to mention Tom Atkins, who I think is Tom Atkins, but he's the guy. what was the guy's name,

the Vietnam guy, who gets killed? Oh, McAllister or Hunsacker? Hunsacker. Hunsacker. He's Hunsacker. Tom Atkins,

the lead in Halloween 3 season of the witch. That was where he really made his bones. The most inexplicable sequel that's ever been made where you have a Halloween sequel that does now Michael Myers in it.

I still can't figure out what happened. The Vincent Hanna, give me all you got award. I think this goes to Hunsacker. Oh, really? Tom Atkins, Because of the scene. And you kill them for me, Raj.

You find them and you kill them. Like he just, he just like he had nine cups of coffee for 10 seconds in that thing. I don't give a shit. You're a police officer. Roger, I know you're a fucking police officer. Kill them.

Just kill them. I would go for him. Who would you have? I got to admit to you, man. I have Jimmy Skaggs as Coke dealer number one. You buy all this? I'll give you the best tree on the lot for free. Who wants it all?

Beautiful. All right. Congratulations. Maybe a nice six-footer to put it under, huh? You want a tree? Yeah. I'll tell you what. I'll give you the best tree I got in a lot for nothing.

Hey, thanks. But the shit's going to cost you a hundred. All right, fair. We'll split the vote on that one. Also, I always love when you're looking at IMDB, and it's like somebody with a relatively significant part, but their only character name is like Coke dealer number one. That's the best.

Bank robber number three. we had a guy I think maybe it was the guy from ghost Willie Lopez somebody that we did in the past where his IMDB was just a litany of those drug dealer number one convict number two

member of bike gang yeah yeah I love those the Jed Nelson Award for the person who seems like they're in a different movie than everybody else so who's the ringleader who's who's uh Busey's boss in this movie

oh McAllister yeah I don't know what movie he's in I think he thinks Whatever movie it is, they're like wear a lot of turtlenecks. Yeah, he's dressed differently. I don't, he doesn't seem like somebody who ever would have represented our country. He's like a bad guy who should have an accent, but he doesn't. Bill, I hate to tell you, he seems exactly like someone who might have been in the CIA.

Yeah, fair. Yeah. I just don't really get anything about what he's doing. He doesn't seem like anybody who would ever have been a leader at any point. You don't like his team building exercises where he's like Mr. Joshua. roll up your sleeve. That whole scene with Mendez where he's just like,

you guys are on fucking Pluto, man. I know. We should have put that in most rewatchable where it's like, I'm going to light Busey's arm with a candle. Everything that guy's doing in this movie, it's,

I was trying to think what I would have wanted, and I almost think like Jack Palance and Tango and Cash, I think is who that character should have been. He needed to either be three steps crazier or gone the other way bring it down a better actor.

Like William Hurd in that part where you're just like, wow, this guy, like a Lithgow. I need either a better actor or I need a complete self-parody of the part. I'm getting neither. I think Bucie's really good in this movie, obviously. But I think if you compare it to die hard,

it's tough because, like, Rickman is the McAllister of that movie. Like, he is the big bad, the overall guy. And I think Luthe's the Weapon misses that. misses having like the villain. And I actually don't think lethal weapon as a series ever really had like a, you know,

like this, the South African guys and the second one are good as villains. But they're not, like, there's no Alan Rickman in them. His name in the movie is the general. He was played by an actor named Mitchell Ryan, who, other than this, I mean, this was the highlight of his career. I mean, he had, he was in the Halloween. He was in the Halloween, the curse of Michael Myers. he did a lot of TV stuff.

Like, if you look at his IMDB, it's like heart to heart. Yeah, isn't he in gross point blank? Hunter. Yeah. It feels like he was on Santa Barbara, the soap opera for a while. St. Elsewhere.

He was a soap opera actor. It almost feels like somebody called in sick is my takeaway with the casting. Like it was supposed to be somebody really good. Like Sam Elliott called in sick. Yeah. Like something happened. He's just not good in this.

I wanted more from him. Dan Waiter's award. Runner up is Bucie. I think Bucie is appropriately lit in this movie. And, you know, he didn't hit 11 threes, but I think he did a lot of stuff. He revived his career. He set up a very important point break moment for himself.

But I think you had the right call. You texted me. Police hat guy in the scene when... The Christmas tree scene. Shoot me. Christmas tree scene. he's got one line just do your thing.

It's just this so Riggs is obviously he escapes the last drug dealer and puts a gun under this guy's chin and he's going to kill him and this guy comes running into the shot

wearing a hat that says police and he goes, don't waste him rigs, it's not worth it. And I feel like that guy is in every 80s action movie but the fact that they're just wearing police hats is the best. Everything about it. After you said that to me, I went back and watched it.

I was dying. Bucy Runner. Recasting Couch. So if Tracy Wolf, eight IMDB credits, four were lethal weapon. She went, apparently just didn't, she got married. She had kids, the whole thing. I think she was too old for that part. I think she's a good actress, but I just thought she was too old.

it's like prime Lisa Bonnet time just throwing that one out there instead of doing Angel Heart maybe she does this movie the other one I had was the doctor not as you said was that was that guy not a real actress

like would it like the little like maybe a little spark with there maybe a little Mimi Rogers as the doctor I like Mary Ellen trainer but I see what you're saying yeah yeah something maybe a little sexual attention with rigs something there And then the general, I think, is the winner for this. Like, I could think of 100 actors.

I would rather have than the general. Yeah, Sam Shepard bring in, like, somebody. Like, just get, get, like, Harry Dean Stanton would have been a good general. Like, that would have had a lot of juice. Oh, Harry Dean Stanton would have been a good one. Even, like, let's go big. Let's get Deval. Just like, DeVal.

Three days. Here's $3 million. Basically, just do your apocalypse now scene. Yeah. Just do your guy from Apocalypse. That character is. missing, like, in Roadhouse, the dude who owns the whole town, Gus, whatever his name is, bad actor. I can't remember his name. But he's just like the complete over-the-top self-parody,

bad guy. Even that, I would have enjoyed more. We'll take a break, half-ass internet research coming in a second. If you're a QuickBooks customer looking to grow your business without the growing pains, you need the Intuit ERP. Upgrade to Intuit Enterprise Suite in a matter of hours. It's the AI-Native ERP from the makers of QuickBooks. Learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP. Hannity presents. In the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated weed whacker guys. Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere. And in the blue corner, the challenger, Extra Strength, Hannity! Eye drops and work all day to prevent the release of histamines

that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner, by knockout. out is Padiday. Paddy. Bring it on. All right. So we said Shane Black wrote the screenplay in mid-85. His initial intention was to do an urban and western. That eventually evolved.

Did you know Mel Gibson has a horseshoe kidney? No. What does that mean? It means his two kidneys are fused into one giant kidney. Is that what allows him to such incredible sprint speeds? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe that's why he's.

he's had so many issues. Jackie, the actress who played Jackie, or Jackie Swanson, the actress who played Hunsacker's daughter, did the high fall on her own. That's committed. I thought was amazing. So that's why it looks so realistic

because it was. In the scene where Riggs was contemplating suicide, there's an actual bullet blank in the chamber, which Gibson pointed at his head, leading to our point that Bill Gibson's been fucking crazy this whole time. On the edge, yeah. The prop, the gun was a Beretta 92F, which was also used by Bruce Willis and Diehardt.

It's since been retired. There's some good deleted scenes of this movie. There's a director's cut that's like seven minutes more. Alternate ending, too, right? Alternate ending and an alternate opening. Apparently, there's a scene where he's drinking alone in a bar. He's accosted by thugs, beats all of them, gets booze. They tell him, like, don't ever come back, but blah, blah, blah.

that one's gone. That kind of leads me to my one big piece of internet research, which is that the shame black script, the original 85 shame black script, is available online. You can find it pretty easily. And it's fucking crazy. It opens with like, I think a school shooting and like Riggs uses a rocket launcher. There's a lot more Vietnam stuff in there. It's a lot darker. There's more stuff about Mr. Joshua, I think, in there. It's been a while since I read it. But if you want to dive deep, it's out there. Right. The alternate end. was Riggs and Mertas saying goodbye to each other. Mertas said he was going to retire.

Riggs told him not to. And then... That's on YouTube. You can see that. Yeah. The fight scene four minutes longer. Apex Mountain.

Gibson, no. Glover, no. I feel like Glover is probably lethal weapon too, right? Because then he's got Grand Canyon coming out that year and it just felt like he was... Yeah, I mean, I think you should make the argument that Glover is on Apex Mountain. Like, Silverado and Color Purple.

are the movies he does before this, and I wonder whether that would be considered his Apex Mountain. I'm not sure. I would go lethal weapon to Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon was a real... That was a thing when that came out. That was another premier magazine

covered that like it was Godfather too. That's like a weirdly problematic movie when you watch it now. Yeah, it's kind of a precursor to crash in some ways. It really is. It makes some of the same mistakes crashed it and tries to solve all of these huge problems that America has tidily in two hours.

and I don't know, there's some stereotype shit going on. Busey Apex Mountain. Wouldn't that be Buddy Holly story for him? I mean, he got nominated for Buddy Hawes, so I would say that was it. How about Donner? It's this or Goonies, right? I think it's probably this because it sets up the next three and makes him generationally wealthy. Helicopter shooting.

It's his Supermax contract. Yeah, it's a Supermax. How about helicopter assassination scene? I have another pick. I can't think of another one. Go ahead. Godfather 3. That seems fucking awesome.

Yeah, but you don't get enough of the actual chopper in that. You just know it's there. It's all the noise, but you don't see a lot of flying. How about first blood? Yeah, that's good. It's built around helicopter shooting

for like four minutes there. Yeah. I go to the first blood. How about cocaine balcony jumps? This is probably literally Apex Mountain for that. Can I give you enough? another one?

Sure. Jenny Gump and Forrest Gump doesn't jump. But maybe if you're just cocaine balcony, hint of a jump doesn't happen. I still say Jenny Gump because you're so terrified she's going to jump. We've been doing a lot of what ifs in this pod. Like, you know, if you switch the characters, Jenny Gump with Manda Hunsacker, how is Forrest Gump's life different? Yeah, she wouldn't have been able to be in it. How about jumps into a giant inflatable trampoline life raft thing?

Number one. Number one for you? Yes. You wouldn't go to the game with Douglas? No, it's definitely this one. It's this one because the guy is just like, because the way that it flips where he's just like, oh, yeah, my boss is watching us.

Come on, give me a break. And then he's like, do you want to jump? Do you really? I would watch a YouTube clip of all the jumps onto an inflatable thing from every movie just compiled into like a 12 minute thing. I'm sure it's somewhere out there. I'm going to look for that when we finish this podcast. Christmas in LA movies?

So it's this die hard. What else? I think it's this or diehard. Basically, yeah. I like, I think as a Christmas movie, I go diehard. I go diehard. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Pickin' Nits. Just going to say Apex Mountain for drinking cores in movies. Can of course. Yeah. How about mobile homes? How about dogs with exceptionally sad lives in a mobile home? I think Nomadland is the Apex Mountain of Mobile Homes.

But I think, I think this is it for cores, though. Picking Nets. It's what family comes into their dad's bath. I'll just never get over how weird that was. You mentioned 80s tropes of these things that the 80s did over and over again. Like the guy who you think he's dead. No, he's getting up. We got to shoot him.

Here's another one. This is an all-time classic. Why didn't they just kill these guys immediately movie? Like, why are they torturing them? What kind of information are they getting out of them? Just like, just shoot them right away. It's actually, I would almost put it in what's age the worst, is that they've captured these guys. Just kill them.

Just kill them. They're like, we need to know what the cops know about our shipment. It's like, just move the shipment day. You know? Yeah. You guys seem to be the ones in control here. So yeah. My vote would have been moved the shipment day to Wednesday and just murder rigs and Murta and move on.

Yes. These guys are supposed to be a high level trained assassin slash Coke dealers. Like, here's the problem. Just solve it. Mertaz We're on a run Because Commando had this too We did Commando

You're on for Predator I'm saving you for Predator Thank you Um Mertaz gunshot wound Kind of comes and goes In this way You get shot in the desert

I would say in the 80s in general Flesh wounds Seemed to happen more You know what I mean It passed right through Was the thing that was said a lot It's just a it nicked me Yeah right

Yeah I feel like get shot point blank range by a guy named Mr. Joshua. He probably murdered multiple people in the movies. Yeah. You're probably feeling it next 36 hours would be my guess. Any other pickinets other than the ones we've mentioned? Yeah, so we talked about Mertah turning his front yard into a UFC event. I would also say that I didn't notice this before.

They didn't hear the helicopter coming to Huntsackers. Right. Right. There's just a helicopter 15 feet away and the guy is like a sniper. I can hear helicopters that are like on the other part of LA in my house. Unless that's the problem, they're just thinking it's just an LAPD chopper, but like that helicopter is real close. So for for Riggs not to hear that would be pretty hard. Also, my favorite nitpick is they're walking in the parking garage after they first met, after Riggs and Mertov first meet. And Mertals like, pulled your file. Saw you were part of the Phoenix program. Assassinations. It's like, that's probably, not in his file. That's a super classified CIA

Vietnam program. Probably not in his personnel file. Yeah, they've never figured out in movies the whole file thing. I read your file. There's no record of anything. Yeah. Other things, it's like, yeah, you're right. You loved your dad a lot. Well, that's probably not in my file. I didn't never mention that. You know, like... Could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? They did it with the Fox show. I mean, they did it. Yeah. And kind of a legendary casting fuck up for that.

Where they had, it was Damon Wayans and Chase Crawford, I think. Two actors that I actually like individually, but I guess together they just never worked. Everything about it felt forced. It should have been like a cable show. It should have been, you know, a Cinemax show or something. And it should have been like profane and violent and all that stuff. But yeah, probably. It was the last stretch of that era where people were doing like,

remake type things like that, not realizing how they should actually do them. And now I think we're in a much smarter era of like, if you're going to do remake, it's got to be different than the thing we loved. I would also make the argument that they essentially did remake this specific movie in some ways with True Detective, at least with the dynamic between the two cops. The family man versus the rugged outsider, but the family man's got problems too, all that stuff. Did Andy Greenwald ever come around on True Detective or no?

I don't believe so. He died on the hill? Yeah. Just like I died on inside Moves Hill. That really hurt my feelings. I'm sorry. Probably in answerable questions. The Cosbys or the Murtax?

Just in Family Feud, who wins? I think in the long tale of history, the Murtax. Oh, yeah. The Murtax definitely. But family feud at their peak, 1987, Richard Dawson, still alive. Who are you betting on? I guess, I guess the Cosbys, especially if Vanessa's husband. Right?

Yeah. A little older. I think Felicia Rashad would have been good. Unanswerable question mentioned this earlier, but are we sure Running Scared wasn't a better movie than Lethal Weapon? It's not. Like, look, I love Running Scared, but running scared is his cut. Well, I think the reasons why running scare is not as good as lethal weapon is exactly

the reason why we want to do it as a rewatchable's, which is when they go to the Key West for like an hour. They're on the roller skates. Talk about chemistry. Crystal and Heinz. How did they not do a sequel? I'm so upset about it. I don't know.

How do you fucking city slickers too? They couldn't have done money scared too. But you know how I feel about city slickers too? They did stakeout too? Is this a Christmas movie? Why isn't it? Well, I'm the person who doesn't think home alone's a Christmas movie. Yeah, you're the Grinch.

You have to determine this. Oh, I just like, just like, because something's happening during Christmas, doesn't make it a Christmas movie. I think that the holiday season is what makes Murtau's, so open to inviting Riggs over a lot. I think because they're having like, you know, it's like, because they're like, hey, he doesn't have anywhere to go for the holidays, is why

they're bringing him by a lot. Riggs is like, I've gotten you a new portable cell phone. The accompanying suitcase is three pounds later than the first version. I like, there's also a really funny tech moment in this movie when they first go, when Hunsacker does his whole, like, you find

them and you kill them. It's in the background. There's a giant display. and his bank for like win a free Mitsubishi TV and the Mitsubishi TV is like the size of a Cadillac. I always think this is unanswerable, but I always think with movies like this, what the police report would have been like to fill out in the few hours after the strip joint 101 shootout.

Just like how the next two hours play out on the LA news. I feel like the helicopters would have been circling over that shootout for what, two-naptives? Can you imagine? Shoot out of the 101. There's a guy, a shirtless guy with no shoes shooting at a car. The new station that is in, that Bucy pretends to work for, like, and that has van, KCOP is a real L.A. station, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Any other in answerable questions? No, I got them in nip picks. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? Gibson's wig, like the, the Gibson wig. If I could get, like, the blown out mullet, like, all.

on the motorcycle. Like, if there was, like, a cast of that, I would take that. I would do the Beretta that he used in the beginning because they stopped making it. I actually feel like it would be worth money. Yeah, probably. But this game-worn, game-used,

Borette. Game-orne-Ber-Ber-Ber-Koret. Okay. Yeah. Who won the movie? I were going to give it to Gibson and Glover together as a duo. Yeah.

I agree with that because it vaulted both of them to... Yeah, and I think that they had a lot to do with, for as much as I'm a Shane Black fan, bringing that material to life. Lethal Weapon. Well, we had to do this one to set up lethal weapon, too. Van Lathan's going to join us for that one. Awesome.

Van Lathan was like, yeah, I'll be there for two. I think a lot of people feel that way, but I actually think one has now become underrated, I think is the legacy of this movie because I think people just gravitate naturally to two and they kind of discount one. Yeah, I think two is a lot more enjoyable. And, I mean, even though in two,

I would argue that worse shit happens to Riggs in two that happens in one. Yeah. So the other thing, so the next action movie as we roll through the 80s and talk about how the action movie evolved, the next one we're going to do is Predator. Producer Craig is going to do this thing. He's going to do a playlist on Spotify of all the action movie podcasts we've done. And we'll try to do them chronologically because we can kind of, it's basically the same

thing. It's just you can see them all in one place. We'll call it like rewatchable's action, something like that. and we'll try to do it chronologically from the 70s on up so that you can kind of see the evolution of it. We did 48 hours. We did die hard.

Have we done a 70s action movie? The Warriors, I think, was the first one. Okay. That's like the first modern one. So we could basically do it from the Warriors on. And if you missed any of the ones we've done, because Speed was one of the first ones we did, diehard was one of the first ones we did back in 2017.

So try to lay out the evolution. of it because once we do Predator, then it's basically lethal weapon to and die hard vaults this to a whole other level and leads to all the rip-off stuff. So we basically covered almost everything

except Predator. So Predator's coming in the next couple weeks. Chris Ryan, pleasure. Thanks, buddy. As always, too old for the shit.