The Rewatchables - ‘Purple Rain’ With Bill Simmons and Wesley Morris

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to rewatch a movie called ‘Purple Rain.’ The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Wesley Morris dive deep into Prince’s 1984 acting debut, staring Prince, Apollonia, and Morris Day. Watch this episode on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel! Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to get to this thing called Life. Oh, my God, Purple Rain is next. He missed every bit of it. He risked too much for the one thing that meant everything. His music, the story. All right, Wesley Morris is here. This movie came out 40 years ago. summer of 1984.

Jesus Christ. I remember why I saw it in the movie theater. I made my dad take me in Cape Cod. It was just, it was the two of us, little father-son movie, and then Apollonia and it got a little awkward with me sitting next to him. But I don't even know

where to start with this, but maybe we start here. Eddie Murphy, 1982, Michael Jackson, 1983. Perfect way to start. Prince, 1984. We go from the 81 era where Richard Pryor is like basically the only big market movie star where the Jeffersons of different strokes are the only TV shows that have black stars in the top like 40. And, you know, music's fine.

But then all of a sudden these three comments come in one year after the other. And not to be this person, but you also have to like spare a thought for the Cosby show starting. Yeah, you're right. that that matters. That could be 1985, because even though it launched in 84, 88 was when it really blew up. So yeah, there you go.

And so on all, like basically the only reason to sort of say that is that there are all these prongs happening, right? All these entertainment prongs. And suddenly there are black men occupying most of them, right? TV, movies, music. And they're all, except for Bill Cosby,

Prince Eddie Murphy and Michael Jackson, there, I mean, there's something about their demeanors that isn't standard. You know, Eddie might be a little confused about why we would be classifying him with Michael Jackson and Prince, but. Well, he's, but Eddie's doing, he's on still the biggest sketch comedy show,

but then he's got movies coming out and there's, he's just occupying this piece of turf as a 21-year-old guy where we're like, holy shit, what's happening here? I think with all three cases, because Michael and Prince had been around. Prince had released the albums. Michael had been around since he was a kid.

But in all three cases, there was a holy shit moment where it just felt like each person was about to be the biggest star of the decade. And it happened year after year after year. And, you know, it's funny because we're going to talk about Purple Rain,

but Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are not in it. Right, because he bumped them out of the time. And while this movie's being made, well, maybe not while the movie's being made, but while Purple Rain is, Purple Rain Mania is happening, Jimmy and Terry are making control with Janet Jackson.

You know, Whitney Houston's debut album comes out a year later. It's just, it's a really fascinating time. And there's an inflection point that's different from the 70s and black people. where it was, everything was still being classified as soul music or funk.

And what happened in the 80s is all of the so-called niches that black music was being stuffed into exploded into mainstream popular culture. And so, you know, all of the 70s priorities are present in prints and in aspects of Michael Jackson. And, you know,

the criticism against witness, was that they were non-existent in her music, although she's bringing some other older traditions. And then you've got, like, but the thing about Prince that is so exciting is, and it's hard to remember this now because everything he embodied in 1984 and 83 and, you know, the late 70s is kind of normalized now.

Nobody was calling him queer back then and meaning it in a positive way. Right. And so his ideas of gender, his ideas of race, his ideas of self-presentation. It was kind of standard in the 80s for people to look like Prince, but it wasn't by any means normal for what he was doing at all. You know, I was thinking about 84, and I remember writing about it for page 2 a million years ago, like just what a crazy year that was in all these different ways, those sports and movies and music. I mean, that's the year Michael Jordan goes to the NBA. That's the year Whitney starts taking off in the Cosby show.

There's like 100 things that happen. But Prince following Michael Jackson, because thriller comes out near the end of 82, but 83 is the Michael Jackson year, right? That's when the Motown special happens. That's when it just seems like he is the biggest music star we've had maybe since the Beatles. And then Prince shows up a year later, even though he'd been there, but shows up with this music movie, which usually don't work.

We grew up with Elvis movies and Beatles movies, and this was a format that usually, if you put a star at the front of a music movie, it's probably going to be bad. The acting is going to be bad. Maybe there's a couple good songs. And instead it goes the other way. And the album's amazing.

The movie's amazing. The movie actually does well. You have MTV happening at the same time. Then Purple Rain became this, I think it was on HBO for like three years straight. I think it was just on Tuesday at 10 o'clock for like five years in a row. That's how I watched it. I mean, I didn't experience it in the other way.

But I don't know if there's ever been a better movie vehicle for a music star. I can't think of one. Because even like Blues Brothers, Greece, Travolta is not really a movie star, right? Chicago, that's a musical with actors. Walk the line. That's Phoenix playing Johnny Cash. Starsborn has Christopherson and Bradley Cooper and maybe Lady Gaga and a Star is born.

But it's nothing like Prince. It's a different thing. The closest thing that I can come up with is like a hard day's night, right? Like it's before Prince. It's the Beatles, basically. The Beatles are the only band. And maybe the monkeys, right?

Because the monkeys... Oh, that's a good one. But the monkeys sort of lived in this enclosed television universe. Yeah. And the songs were the engine for a lot of the episodes. But this is different because the Beatles were already famous. They were already, like, globally famous when those movies come out. And they're trying to figure out how to take a thing that was electrifying on the records

and especially in the concerts and to put it in movies. But they never did that, right? Those movies were never about the trying to capture the live experience of the Beatles. Well, and they also, they didn't last 40 years later where you could watch Purple Rain tomorrow. And there's five or six scenes where you're just like, holy shit, is this the most talented person who has ever been on a stage? Right, right, right. And, and, you know, in the case of Hard Day's Night, you're giving yourself over to Richard Lester. Yeah.

And you get a sense of like how fun the Beatles are to be with. But Prince and Purple Rain, then, you know, to just like close this complete loop, desperately seeking Susan comes out a year later. And that's a movie that's just about Madonna as a vibe, not Madonna as one of the biggest artists in the world too. The thing that makes Purple Rain so. extraordinary is there had never been successfully been because Dylan made, you know, Dylan's got a movie

Bob Dylan. There are like David Bowie and Mick Jagger in the 70s acting in movies. But Purple Rain is the first thing that is from start to finish the album that you were already listening to present it to you. in movie for. With the plot that actually made sense with the songs.

I mean, as well as we're going to do. Like when he's playing beautiful ones, and it actually intersects with the plot, same for Darling Nicky, which I can't wait to talk about. So when we're talking about it compared to the other, I'm not calling this a musical, obviously, but music movies. No, yes.

And you have like the Chicago type of movie. You have the Blues Brothers type of movie, Right. Then you have like Greece. Then you have Walk the Line, which is like a biography or the Ray Charles movie that Jamie Fox made. This movie isn't really like any of those. And I don't even really know how to categorize it. And I think it kind of lives alone in its own space where it's like, I'm not sure this ever happens again where you catch the right artist at the exact perfect point of his career,

making the best album he's ever going to make that's going to be about to become this phenomenon for nine months and somehow they're just making a movie during all of this. I think the odds are like 100 to 1 this ever happens again. Eight Mile is the only thing I can think of that is doing... I mean, eight mile is Purple Rain, right?

But Eminem, right? But the thing about it is it's a lie. You know, it's a... I mean, Purple Rain is lying, too. but it's myth the myths between m&m and prince are different and the priorities are different yeah um but it is about the myth of m&m is being this particular kind of rapper not the guy who would be slim shady right like a serious you know i worked my ass off to win these rap battles and life was hard for me and also i'm not crazy i'm not this i don't you would never have any idea that

that Eminem was the other kind of great rapper he is based on 8 Mile. Prince, there's no secrets here. Like every inch of his artistry is on full, active, thrilling display in Purple Rain. And all you're thinking when you're leaving this movie is like, what is 1985 going to look like for this guy? Right. I was going to say, like, you could almost make a case that Apex Mountain is purple.

Because that's how Apex Mountainy Prince was in Perperin. You know what else? I wrote down, 2024 is the, it's the era of the hagiography, right? Like all the documentaries are produced by the people that made them. We have these movies like the Elton John movie and the Bob Marley movie. And that's just kind of where we're going,

like these sanitized. We're fully there. We're fully there. 1984, 40 years ago, Prince was like, fuck it. I'm going to play this complex, abusive, fucked up narcissistic diva who not that many people in the movie even really like him and he's fucked up and he might be a waste of talent. And Prince is like,

sign me up. That sounds great. Can I just absolutely crush like six scenes? Do I get to act? And can the last 15 minutes of the movie be one of the best concert films ever filmed? And then that's in. Then we're off and we're ready to go. Questlove had this quote about how he thinks Purple Rain started hip hop culture, whether historians want to admit it or not. I thought it was ambitious. I thought it was a take,

but he was basically saying you had the beef between Prince and the time. You had just this is basically hip hop, even though we didn't know what hip hop was yet, and just all of the pieces would eventually come. I don't know if you have a take on that one. I hear that. Also, I mean, it's important to mention that in the background of all this happening is the like the the the simmering of you know the most important musical

format in the last genre in the last 50 years right right hip hop is is is is becoming important and it's already it's already extremely present in the lives of most you lots of lots of people um and it's eventually during this period making its way onto the pop charts. So there's this other thing happening in the background, this other other major thing happening in the background. But I don't know. I feel like I hear what I'd be curious to know when Questlove said that.

As opposed to, I'm not, I'm inclined to agree with an, like, an aspect of it. But it's not like there weren't, it's not like Kulmo D or not Kul-Mode. That's a little bit later. It's not like the Queens and Brooklyn rappers weren't all. already fighting over who invented the art form. Right. Right. But I hear what he's saying in terms of localizing the battle to a case of personality disagreements, right?

Different styles of self-presentation, sexuality, stage presence. Well, let's talk about that because you have Prince who's basically James Brown and Jimmy Hendrix have a kid. who also becomes the best stage performer of his entire generation. And by the way, it's a generation with Michael Jackson in it. But I still think Prince is, you know, I think anybody who's ever seen Prince in person on stage when he actually gave a shit that night would probably put him first or in the top...

Which was a lot of nights, by it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's no question. I saw Prince nine months before he died. at some bar in New York City. He came in three hours late. Before that, there was a DJ who played for three hours,

and I danced, if I never dance again, I will have danced all my dancing waiting for Prince to show up, because that woman killed us all. And then he shows up, and I remember this is a moment in time, the cast of Hamilton and the cast of the, color purple, it's like he was waiting for their shows to break or something. And they come into this bar and they're waiting for, he makes them wait. So Jennifer Hudson is standing there where she was still with David Oetunga. Yeah. And, you know, Leslie Odom, I believe Leslie Odom was there.

Like a lot of the Hamilton cast is there. And we're all just waiting for Prince, who comes, plays for 20 minutes, disappears, goes to eat. There's a rumor that he's going to come back after he has his dinner. By the way, it's 1 o'clock in the morning. Yeah. Comes back and plays for like another 20 minutes. It just was, this is what people will do for this man is not sleep because he might

play 40 minutes of like semi-committed music. Yeah, that happened at NBA All-Star Weekend, I think in 2014. and I was there with Rembrand and Julia and a couple others and was like Prince is playing at this party. It's like, no way. It's like, no, he's doing it. And everybody's just kind of, and then all of a sudden he came out and just did print stuff

and it ended with him just dropping his guitar and walking off. And we're like, is he coming back? It's like, no, not coming back. I just want to say really quick, I just want people listening to us talk to understand something about you, Bill, which is I was looking for like, I feel like we've been poised to have this conversation

for a long time. The Purple Rain? I actually thought, yes. I thought we had had it. And so I looked through my phone and like, did we do it? I don't remember, but I'm not sure. You have been talking about doing this for three years. Everyone throughout, I would watch either a scene or the entire movie and I would just text

you and I would be like. Yeah. Because I think, well, we'll talk about some of the rewatchable scenes, but he has a couple scenes in there that are just like nothing that's ever been captured on film. We should also mention when we started working together at Grantland and we formed a podcast network that eventually became, we had nine of the 10 biggest podcast of the ESPN. You formed a podcast called Do You Like Prince Movies with Alex Poppidamus? I think it might have been one of the nine.

There weren't a lot of pods back then. But that was Alex and I called our show. That was the title of your podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Because you liked more than Purple Rain. were other Prince movies that you defended. I think Graffiti Bridge

is a totally good, weird movie. And Under the Cherry Moon, another, that is just bad. But it's bad in, I mean, we'll get to like Apex Mountain and all that stuff and all the things you can do with the power

that you have. And it clearly on Under the Cherry Moon went to his head. Yeah. Well, that's your classic, I flew too close to the sun. creative endeavor. And nobody's telling him no at that point, right? Nobody's telling him.

He's like, I'm going to zag. I know everybody love Purple Rain, but I just was on concert for a year and a half playing basically this really elaborate, crazy show that was the movie every night over and over and over again, and now I need a zag. And that became under the cherry mood. And I think Sign of the Times is also good.

I really like that. Well, that's like a really, I mean, that's, if you're talking best concert films, that has to be. at least mentioned. This album sold 15 million U.S. copies, 25 million worldwide. They released When Doves Cry in May. It hit number one.

The album was released before the movie. That became number one. There was real buzz before the movie came out, and Prince isn't doing anything. There's no like, oh, Prince went on Letterman. He's like, I'm out. I will do no promotion at all. but the album is a phenomenon.

And right at a point when Thriller was kind of starting to die down because Thriller they got 18 months out of, you know, that's just pulling like the seventh best song from Thriller and releasing it. It's top five. Prince, this album stayed number one for 24 weeks. When Doves Cry and Let's Go Crazy, we're number one. And then the album comes out and it crush.

I mean, the movie comes out and it crushes. And it all leads to, he wins an Academy Award for Best Original Rock Score, which, by the way, they eliminated the category of the next year. They were like, fuck this. He wins two Grammys. There's two spin-off albums from the time in Apollonia 6.

I can't believe they were able to get 10 Apollonius 6 songs. I don't know if you listen to it, but what you're saying is barely even true. Well, the funniest thing about all these offshoot albums that weren't Prince albums, but all the songs sounded like rejected Prince songs.

Even in this, Even in this movie, the I want to be a modern era. Like that easily just could have been a rejected Purple Rain song. And he just gave it to Des. What a hero. So then the years pass and this album still lives in the stratosphere. Like Rolling Stone did their 500 greatest albums ever. And Purple Rin was eighth.

And then you- Apple did theirs and it was number five. Yeah. And then you actually look at the album and it's like, yeah, that was a great album. But then you see it all laid out like on Wikipedia. or Spotify, wherever, and it's like, holy shit. That album had the highest batting average of any album in the last 40 years. There's just hits everywhere. And then even the cameos from the other stuff.

It had a really weird effect on Prince, though, which everybody who loves Prince, he was just never the same after this came out. It fucked him up. Later, he called it, my albatross. It'll be hanging around my neck as long as I'm making music. Another time, he said, in some ways, more detrimental than good, a pigeonholed me. And if you read the stuff, like there's a really good oral history that did about Purple Rain with a bunch of the people.

He just was so famous. Part of what made him prints was he was really collaborative with all these different people. And within a couple years, he's riding in his own bus. He's staying in these giant hotel suites where they're moving the special piano in from city to city. And he was just levitating too high above to actually collaborate that way.

And some of the quotes from people like Wendy and Lisa, They were just kind of bummed out about it. Not even really mad at him. It was just like, this is just the outcome of what happened. He became too famous. I think it's deeper than that. Right. Like, there's so much, this movie is such a rich text for all of princes,

both his genius and his problems, right? His inability, the understanding that he has about what his musical intelligence and like innate talent can do, the effect it has on people. And there's a sense that I think he thinks that he could have done it without those people. He could have done Purple Rain without the revolution, right? Right.

And the beautiful thing about this movie that I always forget is that Purple Rain starts as Purple Rain is the reconciliation track, right? Yeah. It's the thing that Wendy and Lisa are writing that they want Prince to pay attention to. Yeah. And that's the song that sounds the most like it came entirely from Prince,

but is in turn, like in the movie, the only collaboration, among the, at least the three of that, where you know, the audience knows they wrote it, he performs it, and tells the audience before he does it, that it's their song. Well, and then it has, and then there's that. great moment at the end when he's playing they're playing it near the end and he walks over to wendy and and she's she's kind of watched them making eye contact with them like trying to have a moment with him and

he and he sees it and then he leans over and kisses her and she almost starts crying and it's yeah i and i don't think that was like in the script or anything i think they just had a moment it is real that is real and the thing about that relationship is they were so connected to each other as a band. And he didn't, he thought of, like, the James Brown thing is real, right? James Brown, notorious band leader, notoriously abusive band leader. He, Prince, absorbed all of those lessons from James Brown, but also, you know, he grew up in a tough house.

His dad used to be a musician, used to be a musician, held his musical failures. he blamed the two kids, two of his kids for not having a music career. Because he had to be a dad, he had to raise a family. And there's so many lessons being practiced here. And you think of, I mean, it's clearly, it's a work of fiction,

but it's not a work of fiction in the way that a movie typically is. Yeah, because Prince, Prince always says how, like, this is a movie. I was playing a part. It's like, okay, there, come on. There's some pieces of you in that part. Just admit it.

Yeah, but I was going to say, like, it's mythology, right? Like, he is, I mean, first of all, I mean, he's not called Prince in the movie. He's called the kid, right? We never, we don't know what this kid's name is. He's just the kid. So that's a myth, and there's a mythology or is a fairy tale or a fable in and of itself. We know is, we know as the last, the initial of his last name is L. That's the only information, man, he's the kid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's an L. His name's like Bob Lawton. That would be deep. Francis Gum is his birth name. Wait, so 1999 blows up the album. Yes. That's from 82, right?

Yeah, Prince tells his manager, Robert Covello. I want to star in a big studio movie. and if you don't find me when I'm firing you. He's like, fine. Couldn't figure it out. Talks to a fame screenwriter, the movie Fame, William Blin. Prince has hammered out the plot points of the movie. So there's some notepad that has Prince's thoughts of how Purple Rain should go.

Give it to this William Blin guy. He takes a stab at it. Then Albert Magnoli, who was just a music editor or music video editor at that point, he joins his director and rewrites it. and somehow it's coherent enough on top of the fact that Prince tells him, hey, I have 100 produced songs, so let me know which ones you need. He was like, 100 that nobody's heard? He's like, yeah, we'll just dip in a lot of those.

And the rest is history. $7.2 million budget made $70 million. It's the 11th biggest movie in 1984. In 1984, how many movies in the top 40 do you think had non-white stars? Top 40. Isn't 48 hours, 84? Beverly those cop. But there's an Eddie Murphy,

Purple Rain, and there's one other. There's three total. 84. I'll tell you the answer. DC Cab? Breaking. Okay.

All right. That was. That's it. That's all I had. That sounds right. That sounds great. That sounds great. Our guy Raj,

love this movie. Him and Cisco both had it. Top 10, 1984. Raj eventually called it one of the great rock movies of all time. He gave it three and a half stars when it came out.

He said, Purple Rain has an interesting solution on the problem of trying to combine a dramatic story with a lot of musical footage, long passages, brief, sharp,

highly emotional dramatic scenes, dramas condensed and intense emotional exchanges. The result is one of the best combinations I've seen of music and drama. Prince and Apollonia come across with

really exciting romantic chemistry. I like the movie. That's from Raj. And then Prince said a few days before the premiere, he had a nightmare that Siskel and Ebert hated the film and Ebert ripped it apart. And he said, I dreamed those two guys on the TV reviewed the movie and that fat guy was tearing me up.

The opposite happened. So there you go. Prince intersecting with Ciskel and Ebert. We're going to do most rewatchable scene. It's brought to you by Nissan. Find your path in the next. Nissan Pathfinder, Rock Creek. This is really hard, Wesley.

The first 11 minutes of this movie, holy fucking hell. Oh my God. Holy hell. Yeah. We just start with... Deal the below it. We are gathered in a day

to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life. It means forever. That's a mighty long time. But I'm in. It's something else. The afternoon. Burning happiness.

You can always see the sun day or night. So when you call up that trick in Beverly Hills, you know the one. It's like, what's going on? And then all of a sudden we go into Let's Go Crazy. But we're also following Apollonia, jumping out of a cab. We get to see Prince get ready. We get to see Morris get ready. This is the opening of Cabaret.

Cabaret opens exactly the same way. Oh, interesting. It's the, you know, you're at the Kit Kat Club, and Joel Gray's doing his, you know, welcome and benvenue, welcome. And Michael York is arriving in Berlin at that very moment. And you, I don't, you're not seeing Liza Minnelli quite yet. She doesn't come for like 12 minutes into the movie. And she's got that great number where she's got a purple, purple sash in her hat. Yeah.

This movie is definitely a wear cabaret. Like, purple is, is part of Sal. Bulls' signature color situation. Prince has a great guitar solo. Apollonia debuts a bunch of different great looks that I got to give her credit for of just her watching Prince play. And sometimes her face is like,

I can't wait to jump that guy's bones. Other times it's like, this guy's reaching a part of my soul I didn't know existed. Then it's the... I don't think she really didn't know she had a soul. I mean, this is that kind of acting. Right.

Yeah. And then there's the, this guy's hurting my feelings. Just some great faces for Byrne. Then we get the waitress Jill that she bumps into. Jill Jones. Jill Jones. Who I really liked. Oh, I love Jill Jones.

Jill Jones is one of the princes protégates, right? Yeah. That's a sad story. We don't have to get into that. But basically, you know, she's made up to look like a Jane Mansfield, you know, I guess Nancy Allen, I guess is the closest thing to 19, 84 that she looks like she. Little Melanie Griffithish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's go crazy. And it's like, man, I need a cigarette. That was great.

Nope. We're bringing out more than the time. It's time for Juggle Love. Let's go. 90 seconds later. Yeah. I think I was thinking in person, this would have been like one of the top three greatest moments of my life if you were just there that day when they were like, we're going to film these back to back. Let's go. But can you imagine being there for that? Let's go crazy right into Jungle Love? No. I mean, I think the triumph of the movie, I mean, this seems, might be obvious, we don't need to say it. But I mean, this is just one of the best cases, one of the greatest cases ever made for, for, for, for a, I'm putting in quote, live performance, right?

Like, because it's not, it's not live, live. But there's just something electric about Morris and Jerome on stage, the way. that those, because this is the MTV era, we have to be, we have to keep, I don't know if you need to keep hammering this, but the way that these sequences work are just completely different from how they worked in a musical.

Right. And even two years earlier, they're different. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Fossie, the, like I bring up Fossi again, just to say that part of what he was a pioneer at is the sort of, I guess the psychological explanation,

of a musical experience where there can be choreography on stage but also in the house, right? And so the great thing about that opening 12-minute sequence is not just what's happening on stage. It's the stylization of the audience, right? Everybody in the crowd has a look. Yeah.

And they're framed, that look is being framed numerous times and then intercut with what's going on with Prince and the Revolution on stage. Yeah, the club just seems amazing. I mean, the club is a character and they shut down the club

for 25 days and gave them 100 grand. They're just like, we're filming her. And every piece of it, even like the little balcony where there's just like the five dancers just on call, ready to do shit? That is my favorite moment. I mean, I've got a lot of favorite moments

in this movie, but that moment during Jungle Love, where one guy starts doing the, you know, starts dancing. Yeah. And then the guy to his left. Yeah. Yes. And then there's three guys just all synchronized doing the same move so far away from the stage and so far away from the audience.

It's just for the camera. It's just for us. So we don't get to give out this award a lot, but it's one of my favorite rewatchables awards and I'm just going to give it right now before we move to the rest of the rewatchable scenes. The Tom Seismore, for me, the action is the juice award for best toe-to-to-to-moment

for a non-star with a major star. The time just being like, oh, thanks for playing, let's go crazy. We're going to follow that with Jungle Love. Absolutely the action is the juice. Because they're like 97% as good and as fun to watch, and I have a lot of thoughts on them for later.

All right, so that's... World Bill in which, like, I take my grandmother, or my grandmother takes me to this movie because I would have been too little to go by myself. Like, my grandmother takes me and she's like, Morris Day. Right. I need his phone number right now. Like, there's just a world in which people who don't know what's going on are like, sign me up for the time.

I'm taking all the stock right now. I got to say I lost a lot of stock on the time. I mean, I was a teenager. I didn't have a lot of money on it. But, you know, I did put some stuff down on the time. Didn't go great. All right. Next one.

Take me with you. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It's the bike ride. We get a bike ride. We get prints unveiling the first of 28. What would you call the smile? Simper. I don't want to show my teeth, but I want to show some sign.

The prince simper? He's simper. He's simper. He's like a little. You know, we made, we, we teased, because we love Prince, we used, that was, when you teased this movie, you would make that face. And then Chappelle was like, 20 years later, Chappelle's like, hold my beer. I'm going to do the best version of Prince ever.

The thing about that look, right, is, I mean, he is dressed, we should say, he spends the in, so we don't see this dude in a t-shirt and cheese. Yeah, he's dressed like Sigfried and white. for the entire movie. He's dressed like he's about to tame a lion. He looks like the prince in a Renaissance painting. Yeah.

Like he's dressed for oil paint in the 15th century. Well, thank God he's dressed for a motorcycle ride. And fortunately for us, Apollonia was also dressed for the motorcycle ride. And then he takes her to this actually is in Lake Minnetonka. And they have some bad dialogue. Will you help me? Nope. Pardon me?

Nope. I want to know why? Nope. Because you wouldn't pass the initiation. What initiation? Well, for starters, you have to purify yourself in the waters of like Minnetonka. What? You have to purify yourself in Lake Minnetonka.

I think the bad dialogue exchanges are actually one of the reasons I love this movie, but then he tells her she has to purify herself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. And, you know, Phoebe Cates, Fast Times is still number one, but Apollonia for the teenage boys of the 80s, this was one of the scenes. I just want to be clear about this moment because I'd always remembered it, I'd always remembered it as his telling her she has to do it. He doesn't tell her, I remember the punchline, which is that it's not like Manitaka. but but but i remember it as being like he didn't say purify he's like you've got to take your clothes off

and get in there and baptize yourself yeah like all he says is you got to purify like part of this initiation for love with me is you got to purify yourself in the waters of lake minotaka which she receives as i have to take my clothes off and get in this water right now because that's what i'm being asked to do so i think this woman has had some experiences that she needs to deal with. And being in a relationship with this man is not helping. Right. Because even she goes in, in real life, she almost gets hypothermia, comes out.

That's all legit because the water's freezing. But then he does the thing where he pretends to drive away and he's got the prince smile. And then she has the reverse Apollonia smile. Like, I'm enjoying the flirting here. Like, I know he's not actually going to drive away. And I'm happy to play this cat and mouse game with him. but that whole scene memorable to say the least. That leads to our next one.

And there's a lot of great moments in there, but I'm just trying to play the hits. We have a Morris Apollonia date that the kid notices, and he's like, oh, you know what? You know what's going to be perfect here? Beautiful ones. So we get the dialogue of, your lips would make a lollipop happy,

and Morris is just hitting on her doing stuff. and then Prince comes out. I mean, I think this is his greatest performance in the movie. And I think it's one of the great performances ever. It's unbelievable. Nobody was doing shit like this in 1984. That is really insightful, Bill. I mean, I say it's insightful because, I mean, I know that the band thinks that this movie is a documentary, basically.

and that Prince essentially he was really going through something and I don't he's so invested in that moment like the there are parts where he's not acting anywhere in this movie honestly except maybe the scenes with the parents but that moment

is so clearly intense and angry well the How about the part when he's really kid, like, there's some point where he's like, Steph Curry just hitting threes from 35 feet, where he's prancing around. He does like the,

pulls the jacket at one point, and he's just like, he's just pulling the energy everyone in the crowd. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be there. And then that kid, they do that great slow zoom on her. Because he's basically like, hey,

are we doing this or not? And Morris is in the Zoom for the first part. And Morris is like, Jesus Christ, this guy's like, how am I going to bounce back from this? Can I get some more champagne? And it just goes in and she's just like, this guy is singing this song to me and I'm losing my mind right now. He's just so on fire in that scene.

And I don't know. There's been other moments with him. He's had a couple like famous award show moments when he would just pop in. He was great. The AMAs in 1985. He had that one rock and roll hall, fame one. There's good video of him, but it's hard to imagine a bit. better five minutes from him than that performance.

The other thing is, I think it's like a borderline lip sync because they made all of these songs in concert. And then they sang over the tracks. Right. So they're singing, but they're also performing at the same time. And you wouldn't know. You would think he's doing it live. You wouldn't know.

I mean, the commitment from everybody is so hard. Just the choreography, just the choreography of the band, right? Yeah. There's a moment in Let's Go Create. that is, I mean, there are a lot of erotic moments in this movie that have nothing to do with sex per se, although this movie is extremely sexual. And I find that moment during Let's Go Crazy, there's the moment where he kind of masturbates the guitar. Which moment?

There's five guitar masturbation. There's the first ejaculatory guitar. The guitar shits a cum shot at the end of the movie. Right. Yes. That's also, we didn't get, don't. Talk about premature. Okay.

So, but there's a moment where he and Wendy are so locked in with each other. And their moves are so synced. And she is so hot to me. I totally agree. I thought Wendy was an icon. Also, good actress. Yeah. Everyone's kind of a bad to mediocre actor in this.

And she's actually like, I had that written down. I just think she's electric in this movie. Anyway, that's a great one. The next one would be the When Doves Cry montage leading into Prince and his dad, which is basically like a top line, top latch 1984 music video.

And it's funny, in the research, Magnoli says to Prince, they're in post-production. They haven't filmed this part. They filmed a lot of stuff, but they don't have it. And he's like, I need like a song for a montage. Do you have anything? And the next day, Prince is like, here's when Doves cry?

and that was then they craft it along there and it kind of does some heavy lifting because we get one more dad scene and then we go right into Wendy yes Lisa and we go into computer blue but the wind dove's cry music video that's not a music video

it's the scene is really good where do you stand on Clarence Williams in this movie I mean you know that man has had a lot of bites of the apple and this was he gets better as the movie goes it's not a huge huge part.

Yeah. But the interesting thing about this film is that it is doing the same thing that the all-black musicals of the 40s did, you know, the Vincent Mandelli, you know, cabin in the sky and stormy weather, which is, you know, light-skinned black people, great, dark-skinned black people, not so great. The only major dark-skinned character after Jerome is the dad. Yeah. who beats up his white wife

and smacks around his in the movie, biracial son. Prince is not biracial. This is a whole fantasy that he had about, you know, being neither nor both and.

But I don't know. I mean, Clarence Thomas, Clarence Williams. Clarence Williams III. He's fine. He's doing this job. He looks rough.

And anybody... Do you know Link was my first favorite TV character ever? I was just about to say anybody who was watching this movie probably even kids might have known that this guy was Link on the Mod Squad.

Yeah. My dad found these like preschool stuff where I would write my name down as Link, which I don't remember. Stop it. I swear to God. Really? It was like three or four. I love Link. I love the Mod Squad. That was my first favorite show. I mean, Peggy Lipped.

Next one, Darling Nicky. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. insane isn't a strong enough word for this scene no i can't imagine being there when he played this the song itself is is pretty great and also the lyrics by 1984 standards

were like she's doing what she's masturbating in the magazine what what's going on um the performance itself how he's trying to mind fuck apollonia is just like this is the scene where you're like is this guy kind of

Evil? What's going on with him? This is the scene for you? This is when it hammers home. And then we get Billy Sparks's big scene as the club manager coming off this. This stage is no place for your personal business. Nobody thinks your business but yourself. I love that Billy is really close reading the songs. Billy is more engaged than anybody except for Prince of the Revolution in this music.

Right. Like he knows, I mean, this is going to go in the nitpicking realm later, but has Billy heard this music before? Like, I have a lot, a lot of questions, but we'll get to that later. Billy's basically a tipper gore proxy because he doesn't want the club to be that raunchy. So the scene before, or like the song before, Computer Blue, that's when Wendy kind of goes to her knees. And she's like fake blowing the kid. as he's like having like his guitar orgasm and billy's like what the hell is it and then we go to darling nicky so it's not the kind of club billy wants to run he wants first avenue to be a family business um i just want to tip the scale a little bit while we're like laying out these most rewatchable scenes and just say that this this sequence is extraordinary because it the movie itself is extraordinary for what it for how faithful to the album it is right um But the

going from Computer Blue to Darling Nicky is as it happens on the album. And there is something about the transition here, the movie's faithfulness in the all of the

action being balanced at the same time. It's just, it's a great musical, it's a great moment for the band. And it's just like him with no shirt, totally sweaty. Well, in computer blue, he's got that mask thing on. Like he's had eyes wide shut.

Yes. The lingerie over the eyes is, but he can see, right? That's the thing. He's just wearing like lingerie on his face. Right. Like a superhero, which I want to come back to, by the way. Oh, the superhero thing. All right.

We got to keep moving. Let's go. I mean, there's really two more scenes. I this is a short one but Prince figuring out Purple Rain on the piano I just love it's short but but we go right into from that like he's finally like his dad is in the hospital he finds the papers so his dad lied to him his dad actually did write music down starts playing the Purple Rain on the piano and then it goes right into time performing the time performing again um and then mocking him after. Let's go crazy.

I want to say just about the writing down to the music, how deep and historical and black that is. And this idea that a real musician among a certain class of black musician doesn't need to write it down because it comes from

your soul. And to record it is basically to take a snapshot of it and to lock it in time and lock it in place. But there's something about the dad's awareness of how illegitimate of a certain kind of musician it would be to write this stuff down. But also, on the other hand, as a matter of melodrama and sentimentality, Prince needs something to discover and remember his father's glory days.

But it also proves that his father is probably, we don't know, an intuitive musician, but also like a classical musician, right? A jazz musician and a classicist. So there's that. Yeah, I had that in unanswer rolls. I guess we could do it out. Francis L, what was his career looking like? Probably late 60s, early 70s,

probably a jazz pianist. Possibly, I mean, computer blue in this movie is his riff, right? Yeah. That's something he come up with. I don't know what format it would. go in. But I mean, if he's writing this stuff down, he's probably a jazz musician. How's the family for Morris is one of the worst digs. It just cuts so deep when he says that

the fence. He's like, oh my God, that's like the meanest thing anyone's ever said. Morris, I want to like you. Why do you have to do that? I'm coming around to Questlove, the more that we get into this. It actually is. It is, this is a hip-hop beef. Last one, the last, it's the last like 16 minutes of movie. Ladies and gentlemen, the Revolution. Does the Francis L dedication. I'd like to dedicate this to my father. Francis L.

It's a song, the girls in the band wrote, Lisa and Wendy. Wendy does the look like, holy shit, we're playing it. This song has to be great for how this movie has built up toward it.

And it's great. Yeah. It actually matches the moment in all of these different ways. It's the title of movie. It has to be an A-plus, and it's an A-plus. But interestingly, let me make sure I'm 100% sure about this. But I'm actually curious about, like, do you think the movie should have ended there? No, no. You could make the case,

but now you're in my head. It actually could have ended there, but it actually could have ended there, then we don't get, I would die for you and baby I'm a star and we don't get like Prince just, we don't get him running backstage. We don't get him sitting there hearing the applause. We don't get the incredible Jill cameo with the, hey, and she's just tears come down her face. Then he sees everybody. Then he comes back on and he's like, that's it. He's finally connected with the audience in the right way. So I think we need it. Right. Because I just think that, that, you know, this isn't, this is the one out of sequence portion of the movie, right? well that's not true

it goes in and out of sequence basically but the album of course ends with Purple Rain that's the last song now oh you're saying like from yeah I got you from a song sequence it's out of sequence right but I'm wondering

I mean that moment is so effective but I I always forget that there are two more numbers left and they're part of this sequence this last performance basically. Well, if we don't get the last song, we don't get the guitar cum shot. Really, the movie's not building up to Purple Rain. It's building up to a guitar ejaculation.

But the movie and the album are arguing two different things also, right? The movie is making a case for Prince as the biggest star in the world, right? Like, he is claiming, you know, there are these odes to thriller, these like callbacks to thriller. Michael Jackson's thriller video where he, you know, takes all the ray out and then turns into a werewolf. He tries to scare Apollone at some point in his lair. Right. I think that the movies, the movie's point is that I'm a bigger star than Michael Jackson. I'm a better star than Michael Jackson. I can do things on this stage with my instrument metaphorically and literally that Michael Jackson isn't even trying to do and couldn't do even if he did try.

And I'm sexier and more realistic companion to the ladies than Michael Jackson is the other piece of this. I was hotter as a kid from Michael Jackson than I was for Prince. Nobody was like, oh my God, Michael's, Michael's lansome pipe this week. Look out, ladies. Michael Jackson's filled horny tonight. Well, you know what's funny though, Bill? along those lives, there's that moment where he takes before you get

before we get, I think we are not when doves cry yet. This is right before when doves cry. He takes Apollonia to his basement. Yeah, it is weird basement. He's living in mom's basement. He's writing a Twins blog. Nightmare on Elm Street territory down there.

Yeah, it is pretty creepy. I mean, even the music is going dark. It knows that it's kind of in horror movie land. And it understands that there's a in that in that nether region of his life. But there's a moment where she touches him and he says, she touches him and she says,

King Kong. And he goes, stop. And then he touches her and she says, no. There's just some weird, I don't know, it's like, it's not S&M, right? But it's like kids trying to figure out how to initiate sex. Right. Because after that, they're off to the races.

It's like they can't stop. Oh, yeah, we got a little, yeah. Like King Kong, King Kong is deep. What do you got for most rewatchable scene? You have to pick one. Oh, the end. The end. The end.

The end. It is so exciting and also unnecessary. I'm actually, I find, I'm perfectly comfortable arguing that this movie should have ended a purple-oriented. It should have ended. You can get the same slow motion shot. You can find a way to send this band off in a blaze of glory. At that point, Apollonia is an afterthought anyway.

Right. There's no romantic tension to settle because all of the tension, romance-wise, is between him and the music and him and the band. That's the resolution that needs to happen here, not things with her. So I think it's those last three songs. there's 20 minutes. I vote for beautiful ones and the Apollonia Morr's state

happening into beautiful ones is my favorite part of the movie and one of my favorite sections of any 80s movie. That was today's most rewatchable scene brought to by Nissan. Take on those big bad trails of the 2024 Nissan Pathfinder

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always monitor traffic and weather conditions. We'll take a break, come back. This episode is brought to by Pure Michigan. In Grand Rapids, every moment feels like a scene worth replaying, every riverside stroll, every slow afternoon sipping small batch brews, every guitar riff drifting out of the city's brand new amphitheater. This is a place where everything feels cinematic. Like you've stepped into a highlight reel that's yours to explore. ranked as the number one city on the rise from LinkedIn, Grand Rapids invites you to find a rhythm all your own. Season after season in Pure Michigan. Find your season at experience gr.com. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. Right now at McDonald's, you can get great deals all day with McValue.

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What's the most 1984 thing about this movie that's not Prince? The boomboxes playing cassettes in a boombox. I'll give you that as a choice. I'll give you the haircuts. I'll give you Morris having a brass waterbed. All giving, should I or should I not engage in domestic violence as a plot device for the 11th biggest movie of 1984? And I'll give you, in real life, the female leader of this movie, Apollonia, was dating David Lee Roth. Doesn't it?

Doesn't it figure? What do you have for the most 1984 thing about this movie? I mean, I like yours. I think the boom boxes are important. I also think that the most 1984 thing about this movie is its form, right? It's the way it's been edited. There are cuts in those concert sequences

that go from audience to stage to somewhere in the club, and then that obligatory, I don't even know what we call this shot. I bet you Sean Fennessey knows. Like, it's, or Chris Ryan, actually. Like there's that It's like an action shot But there's nothing in it but like whir It's just like a whirring shot of a camera

Of something being panned to the left or to the right And it's just there to connote To literalize action But there's no action in it It's just a camera panning across Who knows what And it just looks like it's connecting Two disparate fields of energy

With just the swoop Of camera stuff that shot happens a handful of times in this movie, and it is such a, it is such an 80s way of literalizing the figurative and of like creating an energy that does not, we don't use, it doesn't get used at all anymore.

The single frame montage in Let's Go Crazy is very 1984 too, when it's just like all those collage of people. All right, Wood's age the best. God damn, I love Wendy and Lisa. first of all Wendy's Merrill Streep in this movie even Merrill Streep's like that lady can act

I'm not going that far but I hear him I love when they mock him when he's like what do you guys do here and they play the synth and she's like I'm here to tell you there's something else our music and they're just like so catty with him there's some really crazy real life shit that's in there

that actually just mirrors what happened and he fires them at the end of 1986 also I don't think I knew this forever but I just thought they were friends but they were like one of the first great lesbian celebrity couples but they Oh, Wendy Lisa were in a relationship super you know

confidential about it but I didn't know that in the 80s but they were together for like 20 years and it was became a pretty well-known thing wasn't something there was no way to know that in 1984 but I didn't know such a style Lisa at one point they have that one

scene and she's just got like two-thirds of her boob is just hanging out like they're just so comfortable with with their how they look and how they're just hanging and how they're like battling prince it's there i just love them yeah i think i every time i watch this i remember how much they were my favorite part of the prince experience they have a solo album they did a bunch of albums but the way wendy you mentioned this earlier the way windy wendy clicked with Prince. There was like a little Jordan Pippin with it with the way they moved together on stage.

It was just really special. Prince wasn't, I guess, meant to be with a band long term with anybody, but it's too bad. But he kept forming them and breaking up. He kept trying to recreate these family scenarios and then he becomes

disappointed anytime he realizes that a family is a collective unit and not like a dictatorship that the daddy He's just too famous to be in a family. Yeah, I just want to say that the first Wendy and Lisa album is fantastic. That's it. That's called Wendy and Lisa. That's it. I just love it. It's one of my favorite, it's one of my favorite low-level, like, B-plus albums.

More would say the best. Prince's live performances in this seems like he's actually singing, but as far as I could tell, they weren't recording any of this stuff live. They were just singing over it. I really like the modernaires who somehow didn't end up on the Purple Rain album. Yeah. I don't know what happened. Des Dickerson, man, he he was, he's just a wonderful

person to, like, there's so much untapped. I don't think he knows what happened. Right. No. He was in the revolution, then he was out and around. I don't, I don't really know what the, I want to be a moderner, modern air, modern air.

I don't really know what's going on in that song, but that was very 1984? He made up a word. Yeah. It's too bad or a concept even, right? Like, it's just too bad it didn't catch on. What is a modern air? I mean, I think it's, I think, you know, to be this person, I think it's a Fleener.

It's like a person who, in one sense is, it's Prince, right? Yeah. It's Prince. Prince would be a modern air. So a modern air is like, I want to have a lot of oil in my hair and very heavy jackets and I want to be fucking cool as hell. Yeah, basically, essentially. Morris and Jerome's mirror gimmick I don't know if it's the number one gimmick

of all time for me but it's in the conversation I don't know why I love it so much 40 years later I still love it I don't know what makes it work the way it does I can understand Jerome eventually felt like he didn't have enough to do in the band and laughed and we know Morris had a bunch of problems but it's just so funny to watch those two together on stage

it's such a can't I mean the thing that works with the mirror is it's kind of time Right? I mean, for all that, I mean, every person in this movie has a Renaissance era corollary, right? And there's something, I mean, basically Morris, I mean, basically Jerome is a lady in waiting, right? Like, he is the person holding mirrors for queens and princesses. And there's such a fascinating collapse of masculinity and femininity. in this movie

that feels also very black to me in order to get your hair to look like that, you've got to wrap it up every day. And the first time we see more

is his hair, he's got his hair wrapped. Yeah. It's just, this movie is simultaneously revealing and concealing at the same time.

And that mirror gimmick is, is like the epitome of that revelation and concealment. Because at the same time that Morris is looking, Jerome can't see anything. Right. Yeah, he's holding the barrel like sideways. Morwood's age the best.

Should have mentioned this earlier, but I mean, especially by cable purposes in the 80s, like just this was a movie you could jump in at any time. You'd be like, anytime. Oh, we're about to have beautiful ones? Great. Oh, the Darleneckie scene's coming up.

Awesome. Oh, it's the start of the movie. Oh, it's the last 20 minutes. Like, it really didn't matter. Prince's scene with Jill the waitress when he comes in and she's like, Wendy and Lisa left something for you and he's like, what is it?

A subpoena? Like, the acting in that is like, it's just mid-80s porn-level acting. I love it. Mentioned the fake blowjap with Wendy during Computer Blue. The, yeah, Prince is wearing Seinfeld's puffy shirt for the last 50 minutes of the movie and other parts. And I don't know, did Seinfeld get the

puffy shirt from this movie? Didn't we all think that that puppy shirt was Prince basically? I mean, they got, they called it like a pirate shirt. Yeah, the pirate shirt. I don't know, but I only ever received it as a print shirt. Like, I don't know what everybody else is talking about. That was Prince to me. I'm a sex shooter. Come in my direction. I like it. I'm in. in movie music rivalries always worked for me

just in general. Dave Chappelle is Prince that's been a what's age the best for the last 20 years. The 1980s Minnesota which was

not just like a Minnesota funk scene but there's a whole bunch of other alternative bands and I mean it was like I had no idea I was in the Northeast I didn't know

Minnesota was this burgeoning police school empire yeah Husker Terry Prince, yeah, I mean, yeah, Bob Mold. I mean, there's so much happening in Minnesota at that time. And it was, I mean, as a Philadelphian, when it would trickle over, when it made its way over, as something from Minnesota, right?

That's how I found Husker Do was like this band from Minneapolis. Or I don't know, I don't remember if it was from, I, I might have to receive. It was like the Minnesota era. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So can I just say one thing about sex shooter, though? One of my favorite things about this movie is that somebody in the editing room was like, we got to make sure we keep the scene.

We got to keep the whole song so that when the blonde lady, she's got a line, right? We need to see them. We need to see who's saying the line. Come on, have some fun, kiss and come and kiss the gun, right? Like, we need to see the person saying that line. It's just such an authentic touch. Yeah. And this movie is full of love.

little things like that. And apparently Apollonia was an actress. She wasn't a singer. So they really had to work with her on the performance. They dubbed her lyrics. And she's done a bunch of interviews about this movie since. But she was like, I was terrified. I never sang anything.

They went more for the look with her. That's the other thing about 1984. Right. So Magnoli said, he said it's August 3rd, I guess, 1983. I'm in the mezzanine and First Avenue. One of the songs Prince played that night as soon as the concert over, I ran downstairs. I said, what's that song?

It sounds like a Bob Dylan anthem. He said, it's called Purple Rain. I said, that's the song I'm missing. He said, that's great. Can we call the movie that? And that's how fast the title came into being. I love, you know, we've done 353 rewatchables. Just how simple and stupid some of this stuff is.

Like, hey, what's that song called? Purple Rain. Can we call the movie that? Yeah, sure. And then all of a sudden we have purple rain for 40 years. Any other what stage is the best for you? The obvious, I mean, I think the time, right? I think the time is a band.

I think they remain underrated. Let's fucking do this now. I had it later, but let's go right now. I mean, I just feel like you watch them in this movie and there is just a world in which, so I've got Pauline Kale's review. I just want to read you something about what she says about Morris. She kind of liked the movie fine. I think she felt like she was too old to really get it.

So she writes about how the kids are into it. Always a bad sign. Yeah. Tough stage of her career, too, at this point. But she's still killing it. She's still killing it. This is from state of the art. And here's what she says about Morris.

And when he and his handsome sidekick Jerome Benton, who looks like a dark Douglas Fairbank, senior, dance to the Times music. They have a loose, floppy grace. Morris Day suggests a Richard Pryor without the genius and the complications. Part of the pleasure of watching him is that his musical numbers are shaped.

So is his performance. He uses distance and tension. This is certainly a contrast to Prince who doesn't want us to react to a performance. He wants us to react to him, to his greatness. I disagree, but that's a, like, I see where she's going.

Yeah. Because she's right. I mean, he is, he is so put together and the band is so put together in this movie. And the songs just, sound great in a different way than the songs of Purple Rain sound performed in a club. The time was a club band.

They made club music and Jungle Love and what's, oh my God, I can't even remember the other song. Jungle Love and the bird song. I never really knew what the title of that song was. I just knew I loved it. I can't believe I forgot it. I love that song. But, you know, the thing about the time is they never went anywhere after this movie.

I mean, they never disappeared after this. I think there might have been some substance stuff with the band. This was the height of the Coke era. I don't mean they didn't go anywhere like success-wise. They became very successful. Like, they came back in the 90s. They had fishnet. The nostalgia rea, the nostalgia renaissance was really good for them.

They popped up like they even were in Jay and Silent Bob, strike back. they were the last four minutes of that movie. They were always kind of around. And they just were good at their job. Morris is really, really charismatic, not a great singer, but a great presence. And that always comes through in the music.

His laugh. He's got one of the great laughs. Yeah. All right, some quickie categories. This is a new one, suggested by Kyle Brandt last week. We're in Test Travis Travis Rabbit. Fortune from Rudy,

the Charles S. Dunton character. The Fortune 3 Cloud. a word for most giffable moment. So the most giffable moment of this movie is pick 20 creepy weird print smiles that any of those like side shots of him where he's thinking and then his face turns into like I would vote for that unless you would come up.

Is there another giffable moment? The swoop on Apollonia? I think that there is the look that she, there's an early, I guess it's a, you're panning into Apollonian when she gets to that apartment for the first time and she looks around it and she, it's the best look she gives in the movie to me.

It's not the prince. It's that dingy-ass apartment they move her into. And there's just, I'm like, I always get tricked into thinking this is going to be a great performance just by the look that she gives when she sees how bad that apartment is. That can be used for all kinds of shit.

Great shot go to a word. most cinematic shot was that slow swoop in on Apollonia during the beautiful ones. I like how that looks. I would vote for that. Yeah. Dennethy's Benihana Award First Avenue of the Nightclub. The Kid Cutty Pursuit a Happiness Award for Best Needle Drop. I think the whole movie wins.

I'm not picking a moment. You can't? I guess maybe it's when Doves cried, just kicking it out and over at the montage just because that's like an official needle drop, but you can't pick one. Well, I think that, I think take me with you as a great needle drop because it doesn't happen on stage, basically. Right, and it's a transition. Yeah, maybe that's the answer. Okay.

Big Cooner Burger Word, best use of food and drink. Probably the champagne order. Get my change back, will you? All right. Well, it's age the worst. Some pretty bad acting in this movie. I enjoy it, but not great. I mean, this is one of the legacies of this movie

is not a great movie for the treatment of women. And as the years have passed, it has become part of the legacy of the movie. We got Jerome puts a girl in a dumpster. The kid's dad, every scene with him, he's an absolute awful disaster. The Revolution bandmates joke about Wendy's period.

The star of the movie hits a woman. We almost hits her again. It's almost like when we had macho man Randy Savage in the mid-80s where part of the gimmick was like, please, don't hit Miss Elizabeth, please, no. And we kind of get that for the last. last half hour and it's just very strange to watch. I'll be interested in producer Craig's thoughts on that later.

But on the other hand, Prince, Prince defended it over the years after. Like, hey, it's a movie. We're playing somebody who was really damaged by abuse and, you know, that this, it's a character. Here it makes psychological sense, right? It's not just there for the sake of being there the way it was throughout the decade. Like, it wasn't pleasant and it doesn't actually tarnish the movie to me. because it comes from a place and what's interesting, I mean, Morris, I mean, sorry, Jerome throwing that woman who's coming after Morris in the dumpster, not great. But it's in the spirit

of what assholes Morris and Jerome already are. Right. Like they're a particular kind of cartoonish asshole. Prince is like a psychological asshole. And so a lot of the ways in which that psychology manifests itself is through the treatment of women, unfortunately. But that doesn't feel far-fetched to me. That feels very much within the logic of the pathology, if that makes sense. Yeah, we've come through with this problem a few times. Not a problem, but this thing with the rewatchables where it's like, hey, it's a movie. This is art.

These are characters. Like sometimes not every story can be palatable. And yeah, when you get enough of these 350-something movies, right? You're going to have a couple of them. Prince with the puppet is weird. I've never really 100% understood it. Oh, I love that moment. Well, is he actually do, it doesn't seem,

it seems like they're dubbing in his voice. I know, that's how I'm like, why do this if he can't actually do ventriloch stuff? But it's so dark. I mean, I don't know. It does go weird. I mean, I don't know. It's just really, really dark.

And instruct it, too. What stage is the worst? Des Dickerson in the modern airs. This was sadly the peak and then he didn't make the album. I love Des his headband. That's my favorite thing about this. I hate the cutaway in the last song to Morris and Jerome dancing.

In the crowd. It's like you've just set up this amazing beef between these guys for two hours. Now they're just in the crowd. Like, yeah, go get him, kid. He just said the meanest thing ever 15 minutes ago. I know. Yeah.

This is professional wrestling to me. It's like, oh, right, I forgot. These guys don't really hate each other. Right. Well, when you say that, how's the family line? That's pretty rough. Prince and Apollonia, the chemistry. We don't know what order it was filmed.

Right, true. The chemistry of Prince and Apollonia, the looks at each other is good, but when they actually have to act, I mean, there's an incredible casting what if, so I'm going to plant the flag on that and we're going to come back to it. And then Prince's movie career,

which you're on the pro side of, but to call up, I'm not on the pro bono. Well, you like, you like graffiti bridge, which puts you in a minority. But he did under the Cherry Moon. He did graffiti bridge, which there's part of graffiti bridge, because I haven't seen it since it came out, but it was in Wikipedia, it said, making matters more interesting is the arrival of aura, an angel sent from heaven to sway both Morris and the kid into leading more righteous lives while dealing with their attraction to her. And I was like, no wonder I blocked that movie out of my mind? That sounds awful.

but it was like, it's basically the unofficial sequel of this movie. So, Prince did say this about graffiti bridge in 91.

One of the most purest, more than purest, most spiritual uplifting things have ever done. Nonviolent, positive,

had no blatant sex scenes. Maybe it will take people 30 years to get it. They trash Wizard of the, the Wizard of the Oz first too.

We're 33 years in. I still don't get it. So there you go. What's age the worst? I love it. This is really for you and five other people who will 100% get this. But my most, my two most upsetting 80s funk band,

why didn't this go even better than it did or the time and the busboys? Oh. Why do the bus boys just have to peek at Romans with those two songs? Those songs were great. Anyway. I don't know what happened, but this is a great question. I haven't thought about the bus boys since it happened. Go watch for it.

They have two songs that row in 48 hours, and they crush it. Yeah, yeah. And then Morris Day apparently was a problem on the set, unclear why. Rivalry with Prince, maybe some off-the-set stuff. But, yeah. He seems difficult. I mean, like, young Morris just, I mean, young Morris is cute. He's a light-skinned black man, which is, you know, I mean,

it is a real magic carpet ride for some of those kind. I mean, and he's got those great freckles. And it's true, like, the movie sort of builds him as a, like, an object of lust in the public, right? Like, women coming up to him being like, you didn't call me last week. And him being like, I don't care. Right. All right. Some quickie categories.

The Mallory Rubin Award, did this movie need a better sex scene? We don't get to give this out that often. We get prints from behind. Really? Taking some liberties with Apollonia. Like, it's kind of shocking that this was the 11th biggest movie that's like, he's kind of got our hand on our pants, but then it doesn't really go further. And then we see them in the barn for a split second.

But the rumors have always been that there was a pretty heated sex scene that got left on the cutting room floor in the barn. I think we're good. I mean, I believe it. I also think that, I mean, this is some of the best kissing that you're going to see in a movie. You know, like, I mean, you know, one of my big pet peeves with all, with so many movies is the people kissing can't kiss. Or they're like, they don't like kissing the person they are kissing. Right.

And it just is like, if you're really hot for this person, you are trying to eat their face. And he is trying to eat her face. Purple raid. That is real to me. We don't get to give this one too often, too. The Jamie Lee Curtis Unnecessary Nudity Award, the Lake Minnetonka scene. Yes, yes, yes. The Vincent Chase Award for Are We Sure This Character was actually good at his job?

I got to go with Billy the club owner who has Prince in his prime and he's like, I don't know, man, you might have to step it up. The modernaires have one song. You might get bumped. But I have, now this might go in nitpicks, but it's too big a knit to pick. this is the single greatest, this movie is the single biggest indictment of rock journalism maybe in the history of recorded sound. How on earth could this band, let's just say the before you and I and the rest of the audience, get to Billy's club?

How do they not have a record deal in a 5,000-word Rolling Stone profile by now? But Bill, let's just say that like the thing that, like, the thing they were doing two years ago was the songs were the songs from 1999. Yeah. Like, there's no world in which these people with a band this tight with this, with these songs, isn't the biggest band in the world three years ago. Right. And what is Billy doing by not telling anybody that the band exists? like it's just there's so much dereliction of duty here that i don't i don't know what to say like is there nobody in minnesota with a connection to yon winter who's off making perfect at this point

this is this is just total rock criticism and rock journalism malpractice on full display here couldn't agree more ruffalo hannah ribneck part your jover acting word the girl who gets thrown into a dumpster is also the worst actress I don't know. Somebody owed her a favor or something. Like, she couldn't be worse. It is film criticism happening on site, which is what I also love. I love it when a movie is its own critic in some ways.

Was there a better title for this movie? I'm going to say no. No. Can you dig it a word for a most memorable quote? You have to purify yourself in Lake Minnetonka. Okay. The CR thing. Thanks, Luke Wilson could have been Harrison for it.

How to Take a Word? You probably don't have one prepared, but I do. Here we go. Prince was better than Michael Jackson. Prince was a better performer than Michael Jackson. Okay. Purple Rain was better than thriller. The Purple Rain movie was better than anything Michael Jackson did creatively.

I just had Prince over Michael Jackson as great as Michael Jackson was. I think his peak was higher. I don't even know if that's a hot take. I don't think it's a hot take. I mean, I think it, like, to a person who hasn't really thought about this, it sounds blasphemous. But when you, it's an easy case to make, right? He's just more talented. He could also play the guitar as well as anybody in the last 60 years on top of all the other shit.

And I think as a stage performer, if you're going to say, like, Michael was an amazing stage performer. But if I had my choice of Michael at his peak or Prince at his peak, or Prince at his peak, who would I have rather seen for two hours? I'm taking prints. I think the difference, I think the thing that you are sort of alluding to, and I've never seen Michael Jackson live.

I never got to see him. I have heard from people who really know that those shows in those giant arenas were some of the best hours of their lives. The Michael Jackson. Yes.

I can imagine there being a world, having seen Prince Live a few times, where the thing that makes Michael Jackson an extraordinary live entertainer gets tiresome because it is built around an old entertainment model, right? An old showbiz model. But at the end of the day with Michael, you just have these songs. and he felt, and Prince didn't have this, but Michael did.

Michael would speed up the tempo of the songs live so that they just were different. The groove is doing a different thing in concert than it is in the studio. I think I would rather watch a movie with Prince and Michael Jackson in some way. But I don't really know that because Michael didn't make enough.

You can see in the music videos that you watch the movie. I think Michael could have made a movie like this. No, no, no, no, because Michael was really, Michael was really about concealment. And so the, like the thriller music video is more where Michael was going to go creatively, which is that ended up being his creative apex, right? Right, right, right, right. But to think if you, this is a really interesting thing to think about it.

And it's a thing, you know, it's funny that you're saying this because this is a thing that we have been talking about for more than 40 years, right? like who of the two of them is the better X, Y, Z thing. I would rather listen to Michael Singh for longer than I'd rather listen than listen to Prince. Prince has got a great voice. He's in like the top 50. Michael's in the top 10. I think that you're right about the guitar.

I think the way Prince thinks about rearrangement. you know, mixing and matching songs, like how a band works, what a band even is, despite the number of bands he's taken apart and put back together and scrapped and built from scratch. I don't know.

This is a really deep question. I don't have a comfortable answer. I definitely will say, I will say that just from the standpoint of the albums, Prince is the winner, right? Like, Prince, I love Danger which is my favorite Michael album. Thriller is the best Michael album.

But for 10 years, 10 years, Bill, Prince was doing masterpieces after masterpieces after masterpieces. And the idea that the thing that so allegedly breaks the streak is the Batman soundtrack. I'm sorry, he was throwing, he was doing us a favor with that music. That was the most exciting movie of 1999. and they had music by the most exciting musician in the world for it. It just, it's just crazy to me. Take a break.

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Be a 2%ter. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms apply. All right, come back. Two really good casting what ifs for this. After they have everything set up, Warner Brothers and the first mini, he's like, what if we replace Prince with John Travolta? They were like, no. So that happened.

And then Prince wanted Gina Gershon to be the, the girlfriend. Wow. This was after Vanity Vanity left. Vanity was in Vanity Six. Right before filming. Nobody really knows what happens.

There's the, she went to potentially do Last Temptation of Christ, but the movie got delayed. That's a little flimsy. Her and Prince had a blowout because they were dating. That's a little flimsy.

There might have been drug stuff. She had drug stuff for a whole life. Whatever happened, she pops out. She's supposed to be the Apollonian character. Then it goes to Gina Gershon. She's a freshman at NYU. Prince Flazer out to Minnesota. Plays the soundtrack for her.

And she doesn't want to do it because of the sex scene, ironic. Then they are to Jennifer Beals, who's like, I'm going to Yale. I can't. And now we're in the scrap heap looking for anybody and everybody liked Apollonians looking.

Wait, so Flash dance has already happened. And she's like, I'm going to Yale. I'm done. No thanks. So there you go. best that guy award it's probably Billy the club owner right he has one IMDB credit nobody I didn't know what his last name was

until I did the research for the movie it's Billy Sparks so he's winning that kind of likable I thought he was good I liked him plus he had brought out their track suit yeah he's got a timeless look like I didn't like you sent me a picture

you sent me a screenshot of Billy and I was like this could be from belly this could be from like two weeks ago. Right. He could be at a basket, he could be in like a link skate. Deanne Waiter's a word. I have Billy the club owner.

I have Jerome because I think he's not in it quite enough, so he qualifies. Morris is in it too much. Jill the waitress. Wendy and Lisa are in this movie a lot. I don't know if they qualify either. And then I have the club announcer, the weird guy that comes in and just goes,

I love him. Ladies and gentlemen. the time. He's out of cabaret. That guy is straight up out of cabaret. I think the answer is Billy. Yeah, it's Billy. Recasting couch director or city,

I would not touch any of this. I would. What would you change? I had a really interesting thought about, like, just, like, work with me here. How different a movie is this? if Apollonia can actually give her performance, right? I mean, because I think the thing that makes the movie great

is that ultimately the great performance has all happened on stage, even hers, right? She comes alive on stage. Yeah. Not as alive as Morris Day and the time in Prince. I would argue she comes alive on Lake Minnetonka. That's not actually Lake Minnetonaka. That's your 13-year-old self-talking.

That's not reality. That's not reality. Fifteen. Whatever. What happens if a Liza Manelli gets this part, right? What happens if like you don't give it to like just some beautiful woman? You give it to an actress. Well, what happens if Vanity gets it?

She could actually act. And it's one of the most beautiful women of the 80s. Yeah. I just wonder what happens to this. Because the part. has clearly been written to stand independent of Prince, right? We are watching Prince from her point of view, but we're also experiencing her life without him sometimes.

And I, I don't know. I just don't know who the actress. I don't know who the actress was in 1984, who could have done it. Unless she wanted to go Madonna, which would have probably broken the universe. It just would have brought in fire and crime. gross. They did wind up working together for one song on

Like a Prayer, one of my favorite Madonna songs. What sports announcer would you want to in the director's commentary? Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, somebody else. I'm going to give you, this is clearly Tony Romo.

It's clearly the darling Nikki scene. Oh, Jim, the kid isn't happy. Oh, he's breaking out darling Nikki. She's in a hotel lobby, masturbating with a magazine, Jim. This is going to get ugly. She's ready to grind. I will listen to Tony Romo.

Yeah, well, it's football season. We got to bring Tony back. Yeah, he's getting a lot of my turn. Halfass Center Research. The movie was originally much darker, and they had deleted scenes, like the Sex and a Barn. They had Prince going to Appalini 6's rehearsal and actually fighting with members of the time.

Like a fist fight. That sounds out of Prince's behavior book. They had Prince's mother talking to him. They had a whole scene about his relationship with the father. They cut all of it and kept it going. Prince in real life dated Wendy's twin sister, Susanna, for like a year. Not a good situation there either. The kid never said a word to Morris in the whole movie.

Morris says 18 words to the kid. Yeah. It's all Steve McQueen, no dialogue shit. It's a real flex. That's a real, real flex. I'm not even saying dialogue to. Darling Nicky started the whole Tipper Gore sexually explicit lyrics thing. Literally was ground zero for it. Her 11-year-old daughter was listening to Darlingicki. Tipagore freaked out Al Gore's wife. And we were off. And it eventually led to warning labels on music.

because she was masturbating with the magazine, Jim. Can we talk for a second about how good that song is, though? It's fucking amazing. It's a great song, and I don't, everybody who listens to it multiple times in their life probably has a different moment when it hits them, what musically is happening here. And for me, there's the kick drum sequence where, like, I didn't understand what was going on there until I was maybe You were 35.

I was definitely an adult. I was driving in a car with my friend Donnan and we were listening to the soundtrack and we both like, he almost crashed the car because it hit us at the same moment that like, holy shit, this kick drum is exactly what it sounds like it is.

This rapid fire kick drum, it just, I don't know. He does some, I didn't mention when we did, they, when we did that scene. Just Prince athletically on stage was pretty great. Oh my God. He throws the mic down at one point and then jump falls down and then sings it into the microphone.

And it's like, I don't know, he's like a magician. Of course he was on pain killers. I mean, you watched this movie and you totally understand what toll it took on his body. Right. To be that athletic. He's jumping two feet down, wearing like five inch heels. Apex Mountain. Prince is maybe the all-time example

of Apex Mountain for this because the album's already out. The movie becomes a huge hit. This is about as apexy as it gets. Appalonia, no question. The time, no question. Minnesota sound, no question. No, come on.

All right, it's fine. It's fine. I'm just thinking about Jimmy and Terry and Janet, but that's fine. Minneapolis and Minnesota just as a city and a state. It's conceivable. I don't know if people go 87 twins. What's how?

I was going to ask like, what is happening? Sports-wise, not awesome. Yeah, it's basically more music movies. But Kirby Puckett's coming. Like they're,

I think they win the 87 World Series. They're about to get a team. Like, shit's happening. Magazine masturbating, unquestionably apex mountain. The First Avenue nightclub, still, still kicking, doing great.

Yeah. Clarence Williams the third, no. Riding a motorcycle with five-inch lifts, absolutely apex mountain. Lake Minnetonka, which wasn't actually

Lake Minnetonka, but I still feel like it's apex mountain. Prince is customized Honda-Bannaconda, CM-400A motorcycle. Yeah. Which changes,

changes during the movie becomes a different motorcycle. I noticed. Oh, does it? Yeah. And that's about it. We hit everything.

Is that a motorcycle that we see in movies very often? No, it's from 1981. Cruz or Hanks for the lead role, Cruz? Hanks, as the kid, would be the weirdest fucking movie of all time. Cruz. Cruz could at least give it a whirl, be crazy. He would have, I mean, he would have really, I mean, the thing about this movie is, how would you even, how dare you even think of.

about recasting it. Like, because one of the greatest physical performances anybody's ever given in a movie. I'm saying gun to your head. It's like you have to. It's got to be crazy. Sure, you'd pick Tom Cruise. But racehorse, rock band wrestler

or fantasy team name. It's either Lake Minnetonka or the Modernaires. The Modernaires is a pretty good fantasy team name. I think that's a really good professional wrestling. Ladies, professional wrestling tag. The modernaires. Here they are. The moderners.

They're dressed like des. They become the Rocker Roll Express, but they start as the modernaires. Pickin' Nits. Why did the kid live at home? He's fucking crushing it at First Avenue. Like he can't get like a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Minnesota? That is some real carry business.

I mean, I think there's so many movie references happening here. I think having him live in the house with the parents is really. It helps dramatically, but it's ridiculous. Yes, yes, yes. Why would Apollonia leave New Orleans to go to Minnesota for music? What was she hoping for? She was just like, I'm in on the funk sound. New Orleans is in a lively enough musical place to start my career.

I need to... I'm telling you, she is running from something, and the movie just doesn't ask why. It's a great call. Yes. Well, we know she didn't steal money from anyone because she's only $37. I think jumping into the lake and then getting out of motorcycle is like you'd get something worse than 2020 COVID.

I don't even know what kind of the... level of pneumonia you would get from that. You'd get some level of pneumonia that hasn't been invented yet. We should just try it. I mean, I think the pneumonia is called Morris Day in this movie. Apollonia lives in the cheapest

hotel possible, but then somehow has enough money to buy Prince of Guitar. That's like in the window. I don't know how that happened. The dad, the gunshot to the head and he clearly in the script and in the movie was supposed to die, but the studio threw themselves

in front of that one. But there's a chalk outline like he died. Wait, Warner Brothers stopped to save the life of a black man? Well, apparently, 80's Warner Brothers. You'll love this. This is some deep boring movie history,

but Star 80 the year before, which did not perform well. And they were like, one of the reasons they did perform well was just too gruesome at the end, so you can't have the dad kill himself. So he's in the hospital and he's kind of like alive. But we have the montage.

Prince goes and there's a chalk outline on the floor. Yeah. Like he's dead, but he's not dead. It's so bizarre. It's so bizarre. It makes no sense. By the way, they did that brief shot of Prince hanging. So they put him up there and they put him on a harness and they had somebody sway him to make it seem like he was hanging.

And Prince freaked out. It was like his worst nightmare. He had, like, had a panic attack. That whole sequence is so dark. It really is. There is so much going on there. His brief flash of seeing himself hanging from the rafters of his... Keeps looking at the rope.

I mean, it's just... All right, here's the big one, Wesley. Unless do you... I have one giant one, unless you have any more nitpicks. So how did they play Purple Rain? without rehearsing it. This is an interesting thing to get hung up on.

He's like, this is a song from Wendy and Lisa. They're like, whoa, he's playing our song. They've never heard the song. They've never heard lyrics with the song. They've never arranged it. They just break into one of the great rock anthems

of the 80s that gets a seven-minute standing ovation. He doesn't turn, talk to the synth person, the drummer, nothing. They don't know what the song is. So I assume we're supposed to think maybe they've rehearsed this one or two times, but they didn't know he's going to play it and that scene got cut. Otherwise, this is impossible. I mean, I love, I mean, I know that it's funny because we haven't really worked, we haven't articulated our philosophy of what constitutes a musical. I think you can't be a musical if all the music performed in a movie occurs on a stage.

And yet so many musicals where that is true involve rehearsals. Yeah. We only see one rehearsal of this movie. Right. And I think there's something about, to like answer the question that you're asking, I think that that movie musical and for 1984 music video magic is partially responsible for the suspension. The disbelief, some of the disbelief were supposed to. to spend is in it involves how prepared these people are to go out here night after night

and do this work. It seems to just come from it. It's a big leap. Listen, my job is to pick this. It's a big leap. That's all I'm saying. Did I love it? Did I have appreciated for 40 years? I have. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast are untouchable. This movie is obviously untouchable. Untouchable. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Traos, Sam, Jackson, J.T. Walsh, Byron Mayo, Harley, Maye's, evil laughing, Ramon Raymond, or Philip Baker Hall. Can I give you Sam Jackson as Billy the Club?

I was just about to say a young Sam Jackson is Billy the Club. Wendy and Lisa, I don't remember asking you a goddamn thing. The stage is no place for your personal business. Say what again. Say what again. I think Sam might be the answer every time, though. I mean, he could have been a good Jerome.

too. I mean, I don't know. Sam could have been in this movie. Like he, he could have been a bunch of different parts. Just one Oscar who gets it to soundtrack. Okay. Probably in answerable questions. How would you describe Jerome's actual job? Valet? He, yeah, I mean, classically speaking, he's the ballet. Okay. I mean, that's, but, you know, I mean, it's funny because in a movie like this, there's so much insecurity and desperation and sadness and they don't, all the desperate people don't know that they are desperate. Morris is so pathetic and so tiny. Yeah. And in his, in his like self-presentation, like in the meaning of his self-presentation, that it's just so crazy to me that Jerome could be even smaller. Right. Jerome's like, I'm going to attach,

attached myself to this dude. It's really fascinating. Do you think the kid had a thing with Jill the waitress? Yeah, of course. 100%. I think that there's just something about, well, I mean, first of all,

because when she's crying at the end, is she crying because... Those might be real tears, Bill. I mean, I think that... She's crying because she wasn't playing the Apollonian part? I mean, I think she's crying because Prince didn't treat her that,

great. Yeah. I think, yeah, did they, I think those two characters in the world of that movie definitely had a relationship. It's an unspoken one.

Yeah, and she's kind of hanging around. What does it really sound like when doves cry? Is that what it sounds like? Guitar Fica? Yeah. Did Billy eventually kick out the modern airs or Apollonia 6,

if you had to guess? He only had spot for three bands. The kid grabbed his spot. back. I feel like some modern airs, but Apollonia 6th, just coming out, playing the same two songs for a year? I mean, Des could kick it. I would have kept the modernaires. You keep, you keep the modern ears. Can you really masturbate in a hotel lobby of the magazine, or would you get kicked out? I feel like you'd get removed. Have you seen the hotels that were at play? The hotels in New York City? Like, depends on the hotel, Bill. Sometimes that's not enough to get a room.

All right, I have one more big one, unless you have an answer balls. You're going to love this last one. Was Darling Nikki the first disc track? So I went back and I researched all the discracks before we hit the mid-80s. Sweet Home Alabama was Leonard Skinner's disc track of Neil Young? Neil Young, yeah, yeah. How do you sleep? was the Harrison disc track of John Lennon.

But then you have to go all the way back. The first disc track ever, there's actually an answer. It's Yankee Doodle Dandy. Oh, sure. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. That created the disc track. I don't think a lot of people realize that.

And I know I didn't realize that this weekend. Yeah. Stephen Foster. Invent of the district. That's right. It led to some say it led to the Jake Kendrick battle this summer. Best double feature choice. Would you go 8 Mile or would you go graffiti bridge?

I think for fun to be had in an evening, I'd go graffiti bridge. I think for on the nose accuracy, you do 8 Mile. If I'm going to a movie theater for a double feature, I need to go Purple Rain than 8 Mile. And especially because you're going to watch 8 Mile and go, wow, they really ripped off purple for it, rain. Wow, they're pretty shameless. Yeah, 8 Mile would have to go first, obviously.

Oh, you think? I mean, oh, yes. You can't. How can you end? You can't end. You can't. You're right. Purple, Rand, can't go first.

No. No. The Indian Red Zawatneo Award for what happened the next day. I'm going to guess the kid became a massive star. And Apollonia was probably back in New Orleans in like nine months. You're a fool. There is no way. Like, if it hasn't already happened, Bill, why is it going to happen tomorrow?

like did you see all the people lined up backstage that were like agents and I don't know I think it happens I just think it was a belated thing come on I don't know I'd like to think I'd like to think but it's crazy because the next his next stint at that club would be the music

for around the world in a day which is not doing any of what Purple Rain is doing to but that was a self-sabotage album, though. I mean, I love that. It's got raspberry beret. It's got tambourine, which is good live. It's got around the world in a day. I really like that album. The latter. Anyway, go on. You just made a face. That face was like, I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. Purple Rain was the album before it. What piece of memorabilia, what piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie?

I give you the bike. I'll give you the guitar. I give you the jacket from the purple rain scene. I give you the guitar from the purple rancine. Probably the jacket from purple rancine, right? It would be a little tiny jacket. I want the hair. The hair.

I want Prince's hair. That's what, like, that is just some of the greatest, like, impossible hair, impossible negro hair that you're ever going to see in a movie. It just, it's just, and people were trying. They were really trying to get that look. You just couldn't do it. Coach Finstock wore, best life lesson. The movie wants it to be Never Get Married.

That was the most profound scene in the movie. You really thought he was going to say something really deep? Yeah, he's just like, never get married. Or just keep following your dreams. And then who won the movie Prince in an absolute unequivocal landslide? Okay, the big moment is here. Craig Coralbeck's going to come in. he's not seen this movie, I'm pretty sure.

He's like 10 years younger than the movie. And what did you think? So I understand why this movie is important. I'm not sure it's good. We're not arguing that, are we arguing that it's good? No. We're arguing that we loved watching it. I think Bill is.

I'm arguing that we loved it. Great. Okay, all right. Outside of the musical performances, I just, I don't know. I struggled. I think part of the reason, why. I'm watching this, like you said, for the first time in 2024 as a 30-year-old, and I think the cards are a little bit stacked against me.

I also think it's because I don't think Prince has really resonated with my generation as well as others from the 80s have. Craig is right, and that's one of the most upsetting things about, this is why we had to spend two hours doing this podcast. It's weird. His music has not resurfaced in a way that others from the 80s, Michael Jackson, Madonna, whoever else, like later, Abba. and all the one-off big hits from the 80s. Those songs are all, yes, that's all back in a huge way

at bars and stuff like that. And maybe I'm missing it, but there's just not a lot of prints. I had never even really seen Prince perform in his heyday. I had never gone back to look at that. So when I saw the opening scene of this movie, I was like, wow, I kind of get it.

I get Prince now. Yeah. But I don't know how many people my age have really watched that. So you didn't play Darling Nikki at your wedding? I had never heard of that song Yeah my I don't know I think I sent like a screenshot

to my boyfriend who was a who was like in your age area Craig Craig and I don't think he he responded in like with a little bit of surprise I mean we listen to a lot of Prince he's listened to plenty of Prince

but I don't think Prince is as central I mean I think what you're saying is is true I think he is a surprise waiting for people to discover, right? Like, I think... It's one of the reasons we're doing this one. I mean, this is an absolutely beloved, beloved, beloved, beloved movie in a certain age range. And I think under 30, probably not.

Would be my guess. Yeah, it's a movie where when I watch him perform on stage and I listen to the songs live as he's performing them, I find it to be extremely compelling and entertaining. but I don't want to go put it on and listen on Spotify. Like, I'm not going to take these songs with me. They don't stick to me. I don't know if it's the specific style

of that version of pop in the 80s. But yeah, and then outside of this, I mean, this movie kind of feels like a 90-minute or a hundred-minute music video where it has like this, all this ambiguity in Prince's acting, and there's more close-ups of Prince than there are close-ups of any actor

in the history of movies. And thank God. I mean, like 20% of this, movie is just tight on his face and he's not speaking. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Sign me up. I watched it with Liz and it didn't go over well.

Yeah. I mean, that stands to reason. I am not surprised. Like, look, this, I think this movie is more interesting to talk about than it is to actually watch outside of the performances. That is definitely fair. And I also think that because there is a document

called the Purple Rain album, it doesn't but it's funny because Bill and I are talking I really don't think that the one thing obviates the pleasure of the experience of listening to or watching the other

right like the movie to me stands as its own document of Prince's virtuosity and in ingenuity and just actual genius and the album is doing that

but it's sort of showcasing what he can do in a studio. And there's like these are these two extreme representations of what he's good at ultimately serve a similar function, which is just to say like he is the best. But Michael Jackson was going to age better. There's no question. I think making this movie, I mean, making this movie, just making it is commendable. Nobody is putting themselves out.

How about this being the 11th biggest movie of 1984? But I don't think, but I think what Craig is getting at is interesting too because I think that this is a movie about a persona, right? Yeah. This is a movie about the construction of a sort of public identity based on private experience. So he is taking things that have happened to him

and is building a mythology around them. And he was right. that movie did sort of overwhelm our ability to understand who this guy is as an artist. I just don't think there's anybody making music right now under the age of 30. Prince was 26 when this movie came out? Yeah. I don't think there's anybody under the age of 30 who could introduce himself to the world with this much risk and virtuosity in the same way. that Prince does here.

First of all, nobody would give them money. That's correct. But I also don't think anybody could. There's nobody making music right now who can do that. As far as I can tell. I think that's right. I don't think there's any interest from any young artists to do that. The risk is too high.

The upside's not there. Possibly. And in that sense, this movie is a cautionary tale, right? It's like you could do that, but then you would have made your own purple rain. and you spend the rest of your career trying to get past it. Can you imagine Taylor Swift making her version of this?

She would never do it in a million years. She's going to play a really super flawed character and write all this music for it. She's also a different point in her career, I guess. Also, Bill, she's just doing what you just said in the music. I don't think there needs to be like an explicit visual component. All right, we got to go. Wesley Morris, a pleasure, as always,

Great to see you. Craig Coralbeck produced this podcast. Great to see you as well. You can watch us on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as soon as this goes up. And we will see you next week on the rewatchables.