The Rewatchables - ‘Swingers’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan always double down on 11 as they revisit the 1996 classic ‘Swingers,’ starring Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the Ringer, I'm Tyler R. Times. When I spoke to NFL star Cam Newton in January, his mindset was clear. I want my whole career to be in Charlotte. Cam won't be getting that wish. He was released by the Carolina Panthers in March. Cam is a complex figure, and my interest in him goes far beyond his exuberant smile and transcendent style of play. Cam broke the glass ceiling in American athletics, ascended to a place in a sport that few black quarterbacks have ever reached, making his fall that much more dramatic.

Over the past year, I've traveled the country speaking to coaches and teammates, friends and family, reporters, and even briefly to the man himself, trying to unravel the enigma that is Cam Newton. I uncovered contradictions at every turn. How can the hardest work on the team be depicted as a bad leader? And how can a franchise icon with the NFL MVP and Super Bowl appearance on his resume? may be so abruptly cast aside. The Ringer NFL show presents

The Cam Chronicles. The series premieres Monday, July 13th. Rewatchables is part of the Ringer podcast network. My name is Bill Simmons. I apologize for my audio fiasco on Sanos-M-Must-Fire. I am having audio fiascos left and right. We had to use the Zoom audio for the last podcast. This time around, my levels are good.

This is the second time we have tried to start recording. I'm actually recording this time around. I'm with Chris Ryan and Sean Fennacy. You guys are so many. You don't even know it. Swingers coming up next. I don't want you to be the guy in the PG-13 movie. Everyone's really hoping makes it happen.

I don't want you to be like the guy in the way that are moving. You're a bad man. You're a bad man. You're a bad man. In the city of Los Angeles, where everyone is a player. What did you guys do? I'm a producer. Mike can't even get a seat on the bench.

Where do I know you from? You ever been to be. The ha-ha hole on Pico? Oh, you're a comedian. But now his closest friends are getting him back into the swing of things. Vegas, baby, Vegas! How are you doing this evening? What do you drive?

Cabalier. It's a nice touch. So how long do I wait to call? Two days is like industry stamp. Well, how long are you guys going to wait to call your babies? Six days. Miramax presents Swingers. Wow.

Get a nightlife. This movie came out 24 years ago. It is an indie movie icon. It is one of the great LA movies ever, and it has aged like a beautiful bottle of red wine. Sean Fentasy, your single favorite thing about this movie? Well, I was thinking about it in relationship to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and I talked a lot about how much I love the character of Cameron. And this movie is like if Cameron was the star of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Mikey is the Cameron to Trent Ferris, and it's fun to watch them flip roles here. It's fun to see this sort of a movie from this guy's perspective. perspective, and it's part of why it makes it such an amazing movie about friendship. Does that make Sue Sloan Peterson? Well, it's a question of whether Heather Graham is Sloan Peterson if you subscribe to the Cameron was also in love with Sloan theory, you know? Chris, what about you? Yeah, it's just like, what if you and your friends mattered?

Like, what if you and your friends mattered enough to make a movie about him? And this movie, while it became a huge success, I think, on home video. and also on DVD and cable. I still think of it as this like, hey, me and my friends are going to scrape together whatever money we can find, guerrilla shoot this thing that's about our lives and just see if anybody bites.

And it just so happened that they had like three generational talents involved in it in Doug Wyman and Vince Vaughn and John Fabro. And yeah, I just think of it as one of the ultimate hangout movies. It's a true indie movie because we had other indie movies. think like Pulp Fiction is considered an indie movie and it's not really it has major stars in it and it had enough money to go in this movie is like you know they're telling Favro to open the fridge because they can get light from the fridge and that will help the light they're filming in bars not even telling people in the bars they're filming there and they're throwing parties

not telling people at the party they're going to film scenes and it's a true indie in every sense everything about how this movie got made is completely organic lucky and a lot of ways. And then how it hits is huge. And yet it didn't hit. It wasn't successful when it came out. And I think it's a really important point about this movie. Mid-90s, I love movies. I went to see every movie. I didn't see this movie in the theater. I didn't even know about it. And I feel like I was like a nine out of ten knowing what movies were out, what movies I should go see. I was reading everything. And I just kind of missed it. And my friend Jen Morris, like three months after the movie came out. I think it was out in Blockbuster at that point. And she's like, have you seen swingers yet?

And I was like, no, what is it? Is it good? And she's like, you would love it. You have to go rent it. It's your kind of movie. And that was it. And then like a lot of the movies we cover on this in the mid-90s, it hit that cable rewatchable over and over again. It's on. And it is one of the most quotable rewatchable movies of the last 25 years. I really believe that. Yeah, I think. I think, it also, you know, you described it as like a true indie and it's obviously a Miramax movie, which was sort of the most dominant indie brand at that time. And it's a movie that's in dialogue with all these other indie movies. You know, there's that famous sequence where they're talking about Scorsese and how we shot Goodfellas and then Reservoir Dogs and the relationship to that. And

then there's this big homage to Reservoir Dogs. And you can tell that Favro and Lyman looked at what Tarantino did just a few years earlier and were very self-consciously trying to ape that same story of, you know, having this story that is very personal to you, that is very inspired by a lot of other movies, being obsessed with Hollywood, and then finding a way to make that your movie, you know, and the way that they did it is so amazing. I'm sure we'll talk about it in detail. But like you said, they basically beg, borrowed, stole, and hustled through every single moment of this movie. And that's part of what makes it so charming, I think. It feels like it's so intimate, you know, it's so close to everyone's face and everyone's experience. It's also really strange because when I

saw this movie. I can't remember. I very well may have seen it in the theaters in the mid-90s, but I certainly remember when seemingly overnight, every single person was telling each other they were money and calling each other double down. But when I was young, when I saw it, the idea of staying out until six in the morning was still pretty far-fetched to me. And now, almost 25 years later, I live in the neighborhood where they shot most of it and drive by these places and you know Vince Vaughn is Vince Vaughn and John Favro has become one of the biggest blockbuster directors and Doug Lyman is still shooting 74 extra days on a Tom Cruise movie and getting it taken away from him and stealing it back and whatever the hell is going on with

them. So it's just been kind of a fascinating trajectory for everybody involved, even the audience, who I think probably has like, when they watch this movie, they probably remember as much about their own life when they saw it as they do, you know, what's happened to them. movie since then. And it's it's not pre-internet because the internet starts taking off in 96, but it's basically pre-internet. Has a couple things in here that were things that I felt like were unique to my friend group at the time because I'm basically the same age as the guys in this movie. Vegas, we had just started going there the year before. I had never seen that in a movie. Guys going to Vegas, the excitement of going to Vegas, but then the trip is way longer than

you think it's going to be, and you're just kind of holding on, then you see the lights and you get rejuvenated, and you go to the casino, and you have $300, and that's it. And you have to make that $300 last the whole light. All that stuff, I just never seen in a movie before. Guys playing video games in a movie, like they play NHL 93, which was, you know, this is an iconic run of, I thought it was 93. 94 was the next year. This is, they play 93. 93. Yeah, this is the headbleed year. The year after was the you could go around the net and just do the whole thing. But I had never seen people play video games in a movie. But my friends and I played that video game all the time. We played hockey video games for three years. We would get in fights like the fights that they got in there. And I think, you know, Apatow the next decade, I think tapped into some of this stuff too, the dynamics of male bonding. There just weren't a lot of movies like this. I probably, less than five where I was like, oh, those guys remind me and me and my friends.

It's a really hard thing to pull off. And it's a very low hum of a story. You know, there's hardly really anything going on in this movie and that it doesn't, it never really matters. You know, you're so, you just feel so close to these people, obviously like we feel close to these people. For me, I was, you know, 14 when this movie came out and just

at the early stages of getting obsessed with how movies were made and what they did and reading magazines about movies that were coming out. And so I, well, I definitely didn't see it in theaters. had a lot of awareness of it because it was another one of those movies. It was sort of like self mythologizing in real time. Like they sold the Swinger's screenplay because the story of Favro writing that story was such a big part of the origins of that movie. And so like to me, I was aspiring to have male friendships in my 20s where we played video games and went swing

dancing when I was a teenager, you know, like obviously didn't totally work out that way with swing dancing. But, you know, I thought that they like, they brilliantly told their own story while also making something that they loved, which is such a huge part of making a movie a part of history. Bill, I have a question. Yeah. How many bowling shirts did you own? Never got into the bowling shirt thing.

I got to say, I probably only had one or two. You didn't have one that had like slick written across, like maybe a gas station jacket, something, nothing like that? No, I mean, I was living in Boston when this movie came out. And this whole world that they were in seemed so far. far away from the world I was in. Everything about it, even though the guys had no money, it was the only thing I could identify with.

But the way, the nights that they had and all getting in their car and driving in different places, like, we took cabs and bus. I'm like, why are these guys driving everywhere? But you don't know, because I'm not from L.A. Going to these clubs and, you know, going through the kitchens and things like that,

there's just a vibe. And it's funny because I think I've even talked on my podcast with John Hamm and Adam Scott, people like that about there's this whole ecosystem in the 90s of young actors who just moved out to L.A. and had no idea what was going to happen to them. Right. And that's every decade. But I think specifically in the mid-90s, there was more people than ever that were out here. And a lot of them knew each other. And a lot of them knew Favro and Von. Like Adam Scott lived downstairs from John Favro. Cam was in the middle of all these guys. And it was that whole kind of generation. They knew

these guys, they knew what these guys were trying to do, they were capturing the world that they were in, and then they pulled it off. And I think there was like real happiness crossed with like real jealousy for these guys. He was like, fuck it, man. This is my story. And they, and they just did it. And I, to me, that's one of the legacies of this movie. It perfectly captures this really weird 90s young actor thing. I think also, Chris, if I'm revealing too much, please let me know. but I mean, Chris and I moved to Los Angeles in 2012. We moved to Los Felis. We moved out together to do something in an industry that we really looked up to and

we're excited about and played golf on the par three at Los Felis and went to a lot of the same restaurants. The Dresden is still open. You can still go there and have a drink. And there's something like weirdly aspirational, even though those guys are broke and even though they're kind of like bouncing from party to party getting rejected by girls all the time. They're always like on the back foot.

Every character in this movie, even though it seems like. a very like male dominated masculine thing. It's all about these guys basically embarrassing themselves over and over again. And it's like it's weirdly relatable in that way. You know, it's aspirational just, but the ceiling is very low, which is part of the reason why I think you can look at that version of LA, which is in some ways so different from the way that it is now, but in other way is exactly the same.

Like some of those places look exactly the same. Some of those apartment buildings, you know, on Franklin look exactly the same. It's amazing how close it still feels to our life. The 101 still looks like that. The opening credits. Those pictures in the opening credits, a lot of the stuff could be taken now, right, Chris? Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Fennacy and I were unlucky in that there was not the, we moved out here for the express purpose because we thought swing was going to come back again. We were like, and, you know, we had gotten fitted for suits, you know, like Sean invested in all this hair wax. It was really like a lot of like a lot of sunk cost, but I think we eventually came out the other side.

But yeah, I mean, the thing that bad, the actors in LA, it can seem a little bit masturbatory because you're just like, oh, you guys are just like so obsessed with yourselves. But like, there's a really great depiction of like dreams and humiliation. Like these guys all want to be huge stars. They want to like they want to be these big, you move out here to do that. If you want to be like a workman like actor who pursues art, you could stay in New York and do theater. But they all move out here. And they're all being absolutely dunked on by life every day.

Like not getting pilots, not getting, like can't even get a role as goofy at Disney World. And that is the kind of like, that sort of up and down nature of it, those swings are what make it so good. Yeah,

and what's weird is a lot of people have tried to make versions of this movie and most of them have been bad. The young actors trying to break through, it's usually a recipe for disaster. When I moved out here at the end of 2002, you know, there were just as somebody who loves movies and TV and there were just things I wanted to see, right? I knew I wanted to go to the Pepperdine Campus because that's where Battle Network Stars was.

I knew I wanted to go canters. I just had to see it. Number one is Pepper9. No, no, no. It's not number one. It was just in the mix. I knew I wanted to go canters because I had seen it in so many movies. I was like, I got to go to Canters.

I got to get a sandwich at Canters. I knew I had to go to the Dresden and the Derby because it was like those are the two places in Swinger. My wife wanted to go too. We went within the first two months we were here. We went to both places because we felt like we had to. It's really funny that a movie that didn't even make $5 million just cracked the short list of,

I'm moving to, oh, I need to go to these places that these guys went to. I think this is one of the great post-release success stories we've had because to not even make five million bucks and to really go out with just a whimper like this movie did, but then have the lifespan that it had after. I did a piece, I did that quote gimmick when I was at ESPN. I did like end of the year quotes for the NFL season. I think O2 or O3. And I just used Swinger quotes.

And I just wrote about how, you know, how this had become this iconic, rewatchable movie, basically the premise of this podcast. What's interesting, because I reread the piece, there was like a little bit of sadness about how it had turned out for Favreau and Vaughn. And it was like, this movie's so good, these guys haven't been able to really match it. And especially with Vaughn, who was in a lot of stuff,

and it had really became a hot property in the late 90s, and he was in Clay Pigeons and Psycho and all these different things and Jurassic Park. And Trent kind of hung over him like a chef, And it took him, I'm going to say six, seven years to break out of it. And then he ends up becoming like one of the leads of the comedy boom that happened. Meanwhile, Favro, who he ended up on Friends a year later. And then he made a Rocky Barsiano movie.

And it's like what his weight was going way up and down? It's like, what is this guy? And then he becomes one of the most successful directors of this century. So it's funny to go back and read that piece and be like, man, it's too bad. I feel a little bad for these guys. They can't break out of this swinger thing, and now they're both massive successes. Well, they tried to go back to the well with Maid, which is like a pretty fun movie, but obviously doesn't recapture the magic of swingers.

But I think really what happens is old school happens. You know, old school happens and we're like, oh, this is Vince Vaughn now. This is who he is. He's actually not beautiful Trent who's slim and single and in his 20s. He's a guy who's in his early 30s who's hitting midlife crisis mode, who's got a family, and who's got all that anxiety and jitteriness. and hilarity that comes with all the Vince Vaughn stuff in the 2000s, but there's like a little bit of a, you know, weird sadness.

And also he's like clearly a comedy star. He tried so hard in that period in the late 90s, just like Favro. You know, they really wanted to be taken seriously and they wanted to be serious movie stars. And that actually wasn't what they were best cut out for. You know, Vince Vaughn was that J-Lo movie? He was in the cell? The cell, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, Vince Vaughn, once he figured out, don't play double down Trent again, but play the guy who used to be double-down Trent eight years ago and is trying to hold on to that fun part, but it isn't totally there anymore. Then it took off for him. He also had a really good Aniston relationship that was timely. When she broke up with Brad Pitt, they did that movie The Breakup, which I don't even really like that much, but it seemed like that celebrity relationship made him ascend to a whole other level. I think when you go back and watch this, especially in comparison to like some of the other indie films from right around this era, kicking and screaming and even like some of the Kevin Smith stuff, especially clerks. When you watch swingers, it's so big. Like all the gestures are so movie star big. And even now, especially, I was watching some of these scenes and I was like, man, they're really almost hamming it up. Like, there's almost like, it's almost like over the top. But you realize that's the difference between, and I don't mean this make this sound unfair, but it's the difference

between like Vince Vaughn and like Chris Eagerman or something. It's like having that kind of like, I can fill this whole screen with my shit here. Like my bit is like so mainstream. It's just dying to get out of here. And it's not like cloistered and kind of like, you know, the people who get this joke are going to love this joke. Like they hit beautiful babies and double down and all the jokes in this. They're like, did you get that? I'm slamming the button on it. And it's, I guess it almost feels like it was destined to be this. successful. Yeah, the whole, like, I don't want you to be the guy in the PG-13 movie. Everybody's really hoping makes it happen, you know, like he's really going for it in a way that a lot of those

90s indie movies were like not necessarily subtle, but they were cool. They were laid back. They were kind of like dispossessed of what they were going for. And these guys were, you know, they were influenced by mainstream movies. Like, look at the, look at what kind of director Favro turned out to be. He's got a lot more in common with Steven Spielberg than he does, I know, Spike Lee or Quentin Tarantino, you know, he's a mainstream guy in this movie, even though it feels very intimate and very personal, it's pretty mainstream. It's pretty accessible. It's a monster performance by Vince Vaughn. He owns every scene he's in. You would have bought all the Vince Vaughn stock in the world after you finished watching this movie. Like,

oh, that guy's clearly going to be a major, major star. And it's one of the most memorable characters. It's really a distinct, this is a one of a kind. I can't even compare this character to any other character I've seen in a movie. What's interesting, he doesn't get nominated for an Oscar, obviously. But I think if we redid the Oscars, which we're going to have to redo every year of the Oscars, if we don't have sports, if all the sports falls through over the next six months. Get ready for me and Sean just redrafting every Oscars. Here were the best supporting actors. Do you know who won in 1996? That's the English patient year? Cuba Gooding Jr.

Jerry McGuire. Oh, nice, nice. Our other nominees, William H. Macy and Fargo. I'm good with that one. Banger. Edward Norton, primal fear. Banger. Some dude from Shine.

Armand Mueller-Stahl. Yeah. And James Woods and Ghost of Mississippi. I'm positive Vince Vaughn could have taken that spot, the James Wood spot. They could have given it to him. Do you remember James Woods in that movie wearing like five pounds of latex makeup?

Yeah. Byron Dela Beckwith. 85 years old. It's terrible. That's a classic old guys voting for the Oscars. Old white guys. Like, oh, man, I see James Woods, man, all that makeup. Premier Magazine was also like clear out for Woods. So I wrote this in 03 about why I thought this movie was going to last.

Reason number one, captured struggling actors in L.A., the surreal scene in Hollywood, and everything you ever loved about Vegas, I think that's still, that's, still stands. Number two, nailed the, quote, guy in his mid-20s who gets totally obliterated by a girlfriend and can't move on phenomenon, as well as the subtle dynamics of the male bonding experience. I think that holds too. And if anything, I think this is one of this signature. I can't get over this breakup movies that's probably happened, right?

It's basically the real theme in this movie is this guy can't get over his girlfriend, but his best relationship in his life is Vince Vaughn. and it's like he's going to, there's going to be another Lorraine, there's going to be more Lorraine's. But Trent's like his guy, that's the relationship that really matters. And he kind of realizes that as the movie went along. And then the other thing that held up, or didn't hold up, launched a retro swing craze. I think that died. And a handful of quotes that seeped into our everyday vernacular, even years later.

Most of those died. I still think Vegas, Vegas, baby Vegas, had a long shelf life. The Vegas is no longer cool, but I think if you think about the 2000s and the Vegas Renaissance that happened, that really started, you know, 98, 99 range and then became popularized in the 2000s. Swingers was one of the things that kind of launched it. I think those Vegas scenes were really important. Sean, you love Vegas. I do. I'm sure like subconsciously, I was convinced that I should I should go there all the time and try to be cool and order a scotch from watching this movie. But the point of the scenes is not that Vegas is cool.

Because Vegas is not cool. Like, these scenes take place in the Fremont. You know, this isn't like the Caesars where you're walking the floor and you're, you know, a titan of power and wealth. Like, these guys are losers. They're broke,

like you said. They don't know how to gamble at all. Like, that's one of the most painful scenes in the movie is when he sits down a $100 table. Fantasy, do you actually think that that blackjack scene is more painful than the Nikki answering machine scene?

Oh, I don't know. I mean, this is an underrated cringe comedy Hall of Famer. Like, there's a couple of moments where your skin is peeling off your body as you're watching Mike fuck things up. But that's the thing is like they're kind of making fun of the idea of the high roller of like the original Oceans 11 rat pack thing. They really like look up to those guys and they love that lifestyle.

But like they're not even one one thousandth of where those guys were. And Vegas likewise was like, as you said, Bill, it was kind of on the, it was on the downside. It was on the backside of being cool at all. for old people. We used to stay 95, 96, 97. We would stay at Treasure Island, which was a step up from the casino they went to, but still pretty beaten up.

That's on the strip, though, right? Yeah, and then I remember in 98 or 99, we upgraded to Mandalay Bay, which was new at that point. And that was like, oh, yeah, we're fucking, we're living life now. We're at the fucking Mandalay. Joey Bishop over here.

But, you know, we were saying four guys to a room, the whole thing. I remember I wrote about Vegas for the first time in March of 99 for my old website. I wrote about my whole weekend in Vegas. I just did like a retroactive running diary of it. And I had no idea if one person was going to like it. Because that's, you just didn't know. The internet wasn't in the shape, you know, for three, four more years. And it was like, all right, I'm just going to write this.

There's a lot of funny things that happened. I feel like people might like this. And it was the most popular thing I wrote in the first two years. Like it got passed around the whole thing. And that was when I think we fully realized, oh, shit, Vegas. And we had been going there from March Madness. And March Madness was still underground. And then something shifted, I'm going to say early 2000s,

where that first weekend of March Madness became just a madhouse. When did Oceans come out? Vegas became Vegas. Oceans was early 2000s. Oh, 102, yeah. I think I wonder Bill, like, if it's, it was probably for a few reasons. One, like sports betting becoming a bigger part of the experience there. The decinos and the strip getting really built up at the same time.

And it also being, like, weirdly kind of cheap, you know, like, it actually wasn't that expensive to go there relative to other, like, vacations or bachelor parties or, like, it was very conquerable in a way that I think made it easy for people to go there, even though it seemed kind of glamorous from afar. Like the version of Vegas that I go to now is, you know, me being a fucking weirdo and like gambling alone and not talking to anybody and like quietly getting drunk. Like it's, I'm not like going to tow and then, you know, picking up cocktail waitresses. This is, this feels like it's almost happening in a different city. And it is literally happening in a different century. Yeah. I mean, for me, Vegas in the late 90s was just playing blackjack at the same table for 12 hours. And then 20 years. Oh, wait, that's still what I do. Forget. Forget my point. So Favro said about the less than $5 million in box office. He said it wasn't until years later that it built momentum on video, became part of the culture and the language. Then it became what it is now. Lyman, Doug Lyman said, I got a call from somebody at Buena Vista home video who said, Miramax screwed up.

Your movie is way too good to disappear like that. We want to give it a huge push on home video, which is what happened. Not only did they flood the blockbusters with it, but they did. Remember those stand-up poster things they would have in Blockbuster? Yeah. They had that swingers thing with Vince Vaughn holding the drink out. And you would walk into Blockbuster and you would see it. And they kind of single-handedly turned it into a thing.

I remember when I was living with the best man in my wedding, Jeff Gallo, we were living in Charlestown. We had a Blockbuster near us. And they had a Halloween stand-up poster thing. And he told the guy, when it's time to replace this with a different movie, here's my number. We want to take this for our house. One day we got the phone rang. He answered. He's like, what? And he just ran out of the house. And I didn't know what happened. I thought like something terrible. And he came back lugging this

fucking Halloween Michael Myers thing. But yeah, that Vince Vaughn thing, if we ever have a ringer podcast network studio again, I would love to find that on eBay because that was an iconic thing. What do you think Roger Eber thought of this movie? I bet he liked it. I think I think you liked it. Three out of four stars. Raj. It's not a terribly original. Rodge. Rod wrote, it's not a terribly original idea, yet the movie is sweet, funny, and observant. Not a terribly original idea. Fuck off, Raj. This movie was totally original.

What movie did this steal from? I feel like this was a complete original. Well, I mean, I think like the Brothers McMullen just came out before this. There was this feeling like there were a lot of movies. about a bunch of guys hanging out and trying to do something cool with their lives. You know, like, what's the movie that you, Chris, you always talk about one of those like early 90s movies. Not amongst friends. There was another one. Not sleep with me, though. That is one too. Bodies rest in motion? Bodies rest in motion. Yeah, like there were, there were a bunch of movies like that that all kind of looked the same where like four white guys were like holding a martini glass on the cover and you're like, what is this? But Swingers itself just had like so much more character

and so much more personality. And it was very sincere without being hokey. And I feel like that's why it cut through. It's funny how swingers and kicking and screaming are the two movies from this era that have aged by far the best, like by far. And they both had really awesome directors at the helm. Yeah. I think you watch clerks now and it almost you can feel how cheap the budget was for that.

And it basically feels like a home movie. This isn't like Sicario, but it is like you're like, I cannot believe how good this looks, considering the fact that Doug Wyman was using spare film from other companies, like, used roles of film. Like, even there's stuff with, like, when they're coming back from Vegas and they're sitting outside of the sign that says 278 miles to Los Angeles, like, this is like a Hollywood movie. And they're guerrilla shooting that while, if you read the Great Linaural history, like, while someone's about to arrest them. Right. They had no permits. Yeah.

They finished filming it. they were wrapping up like the exterior shots and the cops showed up and were like, where are your permits? And they did one of the really smart thing to class it up, which is they spent a shitload of money on music, you know, the music in this movie, which is such a huge part of it.

Part of it is, you know, that swing revival stuff and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. But mostly to me, it's like, you know, there's just like all-time classic like Tony Bennett, Dean Martin's songs on the soundtrack.

And then you have all this 70s funk music that plays in the middle of the movie when they're traveling from party to party and like pick up the pieces is in here and the King Floyd song. Like there are all these like really honestly like huge number one hit style songs in the movie, which feels so, it's such an amazing contrast to this like little dingy shot on a 35 millimeter documentary camera movie that it makes you feel like you're, you're not just watching somebody that's something in somebody made in their backyard. You're watching a Hollywood movie. People always want to know what the DVDs are behind Sean. And in fact, They are all big bad voodoo daddy bootleg live concerts.

Yeah, I have the total collection. Yeah. And squirrel nut zippers too. Yeah. If you've learned anything from the rewatchables over the years, people listening, when you're making a cheap movie, spend most of your budget on the music. It's usually the best. Like even remember we did the Cruel Intentions one?

And they spent like 20% of the budget on what was that closing song? The, uh, that sampled the Rolling Stones. The verve. Yeah, Bittersweet symphony. Yeah, when the tables turned on Sarah Michelle Giller, and it costs like a million bucks or something and they didn't have the budget and they're like, fuck it. And that song ended up making the ending.

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All right, before we do the category, Sean, has an important question. We talked about this a little bit on the Ferris pod, too, but Bill, were you a Trent or a Mike? You want me to give my mics? You want me to give my mics? You want to. I want to give my mic thoughts now? Sure. You can answer my question, though? I think I had points of my life where I was a mic and other points where I was a Tread.

Okay. Given your hostility to Troy from reality bites and Kevin from St. Elmo's Fire, I regret to inform you that you are Trent. I'm going to save my Mikey thoughts, because I have a whole section near the end on Mikey. Me too. Categories.

I try to narrow this down because, I mean, honestly, the whole movie is rewatchable. Well, it's also a real flow movie. So you could be like this 25-minute section or this 25-minute section. So the drive to Vegas fucking kills me when he's kind of, he talks him into going. And then all of a sudden he's in the front seat. He's in a suit. He's counting buddy. They're screaming Vegas.

He's, you got to put a suit on, hold the wheel. putting a suit on, they're screaming Vegas. What the hell are you wearing? I thought you said we're gonna wear suits. Oh, Mike, you gotta stop worrying about it. Christ. Come on, man. If you're wearing a suit, you look like you gamble,

they give you free shit. It's in the back, all right? I'll put it all when we get there. Uh-uh, no way. No, turn around. I'm going home. You gotta show up wearing that suit. All right, already, okay?

I'll put my suit on, grab the wheel. Hold it steady. I'm telling you, this is how you do it. I know. I'm watching you when you drive up. Bye, bye, bye. It can work. I'm serious.

They're going to give Daddy the Rain Man sweet. Do you dig that? We're going to Vegas, Mike. Vegas. Do you think we get there by midnight? Money, we're going to be up 500 by mid-light. Vegas. Vegas, baby.

And then the next cut is them just driving sadly along the highway. And it's just like, wow, that was a good idea two hours ago. All of that. I mean, honestly, you could go from there to they hit the strip. They're in the convertible. He tips the valet. They go play blackjack because the next rewatchable scene is, the whole blackjack scene is amazing.

I'm not 11. You always double down on 11. I know, but it's $200. It's blood money. I can't double down it. Mike, if you don't look like you know what you're doing, I just shut up, man. I can't, you know what you're doing for a second.

I can't. I just can't. You just tell you. You make sure to stay down. I think I love all black jack scenes. But that and then ending with the Mike he's devastated. and Trent does the, you're a big winner.

I'm going to ask you a simple question. I want you to listen to me. Who's the big winner here today at the casino, huh? Mikey, that's who. Mikey's the big winner. Mikey wins. Mikey wins. Look at me.

Look at me. Your money and you know what else? You're a big winner tonight. I want to leave. You're a big winner. I'm going to ask you a simple question. I want you to listen to me. Who's the big winner here tonight at the casino?

Huh? Mikey. That's who. Mikey's the big winner. Mikey wins. That's fucking answer. Oh, I'm fine. I'm an asshole, but you know what?

You're the big winner. That whole 11-minute stretch, I think, is you can probably team together. So, and then they go get breakfast. And then the next scene with the, I'll have the pancakes at the age of enlightenment. And she does the hang-on Voltaire. Like, it's just fucking humming for 15-solid minutes. You also, in that whole section, you get, what does he say? I'm going to pull a Fredo.

Yeah. Two God. I'm going to five me two weeks. Just pull a frado. I look, the other thing, they go, they try to pretend they know how to gamble. They get at the table. The way he gives the money is perfect. Like, that's total, like, amateur move, like counting the money before he give it to him.

Everyone knows the dealer counts some money. And then the three black chips back, the witness staring at it. And then when he actually loses the double down, which you could see coming from a mile away, and just the looks on their face. It's like 21. And it just goes to Fabro. He's got that craze look at his face. All of that is just, every piece of that is magnificent.

But is that supposed to tell us that this is Mike's first trip to Vegas? Like, he doesn't know how to gamble at all. I think these guys are just kind of secretly losers, even though they carry themselves off as not losers. Like, Trent, who's supposed to be this amazing, worldly guy, has no idea how to gamble. It's incredible. He's basically like the only thing he knows is you got double down or 11. That's his only move.

The next one is the par three at Los Feliz. You notice I didn't mention her once today. I didn't want to say anything. Why? It's kind of like not talking to your pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter. What do you mean? Like you didn't want to jinx it? Kind of.

I don't talk about it that much. I didn't mention it once today. It's end of pin. The only reason I mention it. at all was to tell you I'm not going to talk about her anymore. I thought you'd appreciate that. I do. I do. Good for you, Mikey. Get there. Play it out. I decided me get back out there. Get there.

Get there. 150 times later. It's still funny. The putts like six feet short. Get there. We shot a thing there last year with Scarface. For Calloway with Scarface and House. It's just so much fun to drive. The place looks exactly the same. I mean, I don't know how long it's looked like that, but it has to be worth 60 years. In the, at least the, from the course side, like, I think the sort of little cafe they have there, but the guy who sits in the little booth and gives you like your scorecard and just smokes cools all day has been there since Trent or since Rob and Mike were there. The sign's been there. The course is exactly the same. It also captures the whole, where these struggling actors

who seem like we should have something to do, but we actually have nothing to do. Let's go play a part nine for three hours, because what else am I going to do all day? I'll just sit at my house and play video games. They're also still using the same friator at the restaurant that they were using back then if you want to get some fish and chips or chicken fingers.

Also, I love, this is very identifiable, I'm sure, at least for Chris and I, like opening the round at the Los Fields par three with an eight or a nine, you know, like that's... Counting. Count that's recognizable. Yeah.

Good Ron Livingston, too. Does the kind of not talk to your pitcher or no hitter, throws that line out. Next rewatchable scene. Dare I say, the greatest video game scene in the history of movies. This is such bullshit, man. This is bullshit.

The king's stuck in this game. You should play another team. I took the Kings to the cup. Yeah, against the computer with the off sides. They're a finesse team. They're a fucking bitch team. Scores! Oh!

Bitch. You're a fucking bitch. Watch out. Oh, motherfucker. Do not fucking hit my elbow. It's not even so much to me as it's Roneck. He's good. Oh, is that right?

First video game scene ever in a movie, as far as I know. No. The Wizard. The Wizard, man. No, I'm saying like dudes playing Madden or NHO or PGA or one of those. Like, it's never been seamlessly integrated in a movie like this. They picked, you know, there was that heyday of NHL. This was the 93, but 93.

994 and 95 were like the glory years of that game. So they have one of those. Roanick is really essential that they picked him because Roanick was way too good in that game for a couple years. I don't know if the guys who made it were a Black Hawk fan or whatever, but the fact... Vaughn's a huge Blackhawks fan. Vaughn's a huge Blackhawks. Right.

But Ronick was a god in that game and they just kind of double it. And he's scoring goals over and over again with Roanick. But Bill, the Kings are a finesse team. Right. Took the Kings to the Cup is great. But then him making Gretzky's head bleed is so fucking funny. And him getting mad. But then it has that other piece of it where the delivery guy comes in and they start

fuck with Mikey because he's taking the order. He's like, Mikey, is he cute? Is he cute? Have him come in. And they do that whole thing. And all of it is just, it's just lights out. Tire scene. Yeah.

I, uh, I, I, I remember wanting to. play more video games because they were playing video games in the movie, and I was already playing a lot of video games at that time in my life. So it's pretty influential. I sadly, deeply identify with Sue in that scene because as an only child, I would frequently go undefeated and take the flyers to the cup in those games. Yeah.

Against the computer. And then as soon as I had to play a friend and they would decimate me, I'd be like, the fucking controller's broken and just throwing shit. I gave you the good controller because you came over, but this is bullshit. The other thing is they couldn't figure out how to make Gretzky's head bleed. And when they're editing the movie, this is from the Grant-Lenora history, they had to have Vince Vaughn actually come over and just repeatedly try to make Gretzky's head bleed until they finally were able to capture it.

But it was actually really hard to do that to somebody in that game. So they pulled that off. I think Wayne Gretzky is a loser in this movie. for a lot of different ways. The kings get disparaged. He gets knocked out. All that stuff. The next one I have is the whole Heather Graham scene,

which, first of all, I mean, Heather Graham, catching her at a perfect time. The whole him trying to suck it up and pull off his hole, finally try to take the lessons of Trent and talk to a woman successfully. And then they go dance. She basically makes. some dance and then they have this swing dance moment. And they keep cutting to Trent and Sue.

And Trent's like crying. He's so happy. That's just really good stuff. Plus Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, who they kind of just were like, hey, do you guys want to be in this movie? Those guys were like, sure. And they end up like being in a Super Bowl halftime show a couple years later.

And then my other one is the late night diner scene with the, our little boys all grown up tonight, Trent jumping on the table. Apparently that was ad-libbed when he jumped on the table. Any other rewatchable scenes for you guys? I think the whole Nikki run, meeting Nikki at the bar, then getting the number, pretending to rip the number, and then going back to the apartment and calling Nikki 10 times. It's like, it's painful to watch. Like I said, it hurts to watch Mikey fuck that up so badly. But it's also like, it's just so amazingly well done. Still so effective.

You still feel for the guy every time. Love that scene. God, I get, like, I get sweats just watching that scene. Even if you hear you describe it, it makes me uncomfortable. Hi, this is Nicky. Leave a message. Hi, Nikki, this is Mike again. I just called because it sounded like your machine might have cut me off before I finish leaving my number. Anyway, and also, sorry to call so late, but you were still at the Dresden when I left, so I knew I'd get your machine. Anyhow, my number is 2-1. I watched this movie with my daughter who had never seen it.

And she actually, like, I got to say from an attention span standpoint, you know, because she's looking at TikTok every time we watch anything. And the amount of time she actually looks up at the TV versus back at her phone. Usually it's 50-50. This was like about 80-20. She was watching the movie. That answer machine message, she was like, what is he doing? Why does he keep calling? Like, she was just so confused.

Does your daughter know what an answering machine is? No, I had to explain it to her. I was like, back then, they used to have answer machines. Any other rewatchable scenes? I mean, you know, like, I think maybe just the bouncing from the party to party. The party to party to go to the dress, then to seeing Marty and Elaine, you know, like the conversations that you have with people about like didn't get the pilot and it was a piece of shit anyway. You know, all that stuff is really great too. That also felt like I was getting like a little window into a world that didn't know anything about.

Yeah, the whole movie's rewatchable. For me, it's the video game scene is my favorite. if that's on. I'm just watching. Yes. What's age the best? Great opening credits we mentioned. I love the pictures of L.A.

I liked how they did it. The careers of Vaughan and Favro, which again, as we said near the top, you maybe wouldn't have said that in 03. You would have said, oh, man, these guys, this movie, like, you know, they hit a grand slam out of the gate. I wish they could recat.

And then I was like, all right, well, they definitely did that. The This Place is Dead anyway, guy. He gets that light off twice. Alex Desert. Yeah. It's great. If both times he says it, the place isn't dead at all.

It's actually like, it's just nobody's paying attention to them. Yeah. Vegas baby Vegas. First time I'd heard it. I stole it liberally for many columns. I, they do a great job

of establishing what a loser, Mikey is. And it's really funny with it. Just like subtle shit like Lisa works at the MGM Grand she's a Dorothy. Yep, I'm a Dorothy. And Favro goes,

well, we're not in Kansas anymore. And there's just dead silence. So what do you guys do? I'm a comedian. He's the least funny guy in the planet. There's nothing funny about him at all. And it's funny how that keeps happening. You mentioned the,

I don't want you to be the guy in the PG-13 movie. Everyone's really hoping makes it happen. It'd be like the guy in the rated R movie, blah, blah, blah. Marty and Elaine. It's funny, you go, you go to the Dresden, you see them, which I did a couple times, early 2000s, and then even later, like late 2000s. And they look exactly the same. They might be alien life forms. I'm not, I'm not sure they're humed.

They don't seem to age. They've been the same age for 30 years. I don't totally understand it. I saw them perform last fall. They were still doing their thing. Same shit. They look exactly the same. Did you just go to the Dresden or were you going to see Marty and Elaine?

No, no, no, no, an acquaintance was like, let's go get a drink. I'll meet you at the Dresden. And we had a drink and, like, frequently when you go to a bar, all of a sudden, it's two hours later. And it was like the nine o'clock time. And they just came on and they just started playing in the middle of the week at night. They were like in their 80s. It's crazy.

So does that mean they were in their 50s in this movie? Because they seem like they're in the 70s in this movie. I think they're in their 80s. I think they're in their hundreds now. Another What's Age the Best The whole The pre-Ur

concept of just Everybody in their own car Going almost like a Convoy from party to party Because that's really what LA was like Until about 2014-15 Any other

What's Age the Best for you guys? Hanging out in diners Oh, diner hangouts Which I feel like I don't do enough Of obviously I haven't done any of Since this all started but is like a top five location to hang out?

Oh yeah. Diner's, you know? Like, is there anything better than like intermittently getting a coffee cup filled with like okay coffee? I miss getting coffee at like 10 p.m. and that being okay. You know, like I've aged out of that time in my life when I could get a giant plate of pancakes. Yeah. At one o'clock in the morning and have a cup of coffee to just kind of. I'll have the two can.

Yeah. Yeah, I do miss that. That's aged well, but also poorly in my life. Sure. Also, those kind of diners are harder to come by than maybe you give, like when I lived in Charlestown for like 10 years, we just didn't have a diner like that. But when I was in college, we used to drive to the heritage, which was about a 10-minute drive from Holy Cross. And we would just go there and we would get breakfast, talk about the night before hang out. They had an alma called The Heritage.

Jack O'Dow would always order the Heritage. We would always laugh. He was like, I'd have the heritage. But it was like, we would just go to this diner and hang out for two and half hours and eat breakfast and drink coffee. And there's a bunch of those in L.A. There was even a – there's one near our office. Called Swing. Well, yeah.

The 101 diner is just like kind of up the street from where our offices are in like – Yeah, that's the diner in the movie. Yeah, and that's the diner in the movie. I mean, on Long Island, like, diners are a lifestyle. Yeah. There's a diner on every corner on Long Island. Jersey Shore, same thing, like Cape. I think diners have taken a big hit with COVID, unfortunately.

Oh, yeah. I know in LA, a lot of them have gone down. Tough one. And the music we mentioned, which is age really nicely. I would say, though, what's age the best is just the Von Favro dynamic and how that evolved over the years where, you know, these guys have now a 25-year careers. And it's pretty cool to see them in this movie at an early stage.

I think Doug Lyman, too. I mean, Doug Lyman really is like one of the 10 or 12 most successful directors of the last 30 years in terms of just the number of movies he's made. I mean, obviously the way he makes movies, Chris and I talked about it on The Edge of Tomorrow podcast. But it's a pretty crazy style and you can even see in the Grandin oral history, like the risks that he took and the way that he pushed the limits with things. But he's just, he's able to capture an energy on screen. He's clearly so good with actors and gets actors so excited about doing the same. this work. I don't know. He's like, he's done really well. Also, they got Ron Livingston and Heather

Graham at pretty great times, right before they started to get real famous. True. And Ron Livingston, this is basically who he is in every movie. He's really likable in this, though. He is. And I think he does a good job. He's kind of almost a moral conscience of the movie in a lot of ways. And Heather Graham, you know, she does this and boogie nights basically within six months of each other. what's aged the worst. The club. The club on cars. Remember?

The club had a whole run there for 10 years. I haven't seen a club in forever. But that was like a real thing in the cities in the 90s. My daughter was like, what is that? Yeah, I don't know what happened. I think OnStar and GPS and all that stuff probably makes the club kind of like if you've stolen the car. But yeah, I used to always, I remember when I was like in high school and college, I had like a Ford tempo and then a Toyota Corolla, my mom's Toyota Corolla.

And they were pretty bad cars. And I would still put the club on. But like I would never lock the club. It was always ornamental. So I'd be like, if someone breaks the window because even though they seem the club, they can have the car. But I'm going to leave the club on. You know, I just not going to lock it so that I have to unlock it when I get in the car.

My daughter was confused by the club. I was like, yeah, 25 years. ago, cars didn't have alarms, you know, it's just kind of what we had to do. Answering machines, unfortunately, is age the worst. They don't exist anymore. Don't get mad at me. The reservoir dog's homage has aged the worst because that movie is now 29 years old. And I think if you're like under 30, there's a chance you might not get it at all.

It was so funny in 1996, 97. You're like, oh, this is great, great job making fun of reservoir dogs. And same thing for the Goodfellas walking through the kitchen homage. Both of those have aged the worst only because as the years pass, I think it's harder for people to get the joke. I think there's two other, so those two choices, which are super self-conscious commentary on movies. And then there's two other interesting choices that they make. The one is at the beginning of the movie when the answering machine talks back. to Mike, where you're like, what kind of a movie is this?

Like, is this going to be like... That's an age of worse for me. I wish I hadn't done that. And then the other one, which I think is like more subtle, but is basically the same kind of like whimsical flourish as when he looks over at Lorraine and he sees her and then she's a bunny. And he sees the bunny and then he looks back and then it's Lorraine again. And it's because of, you know, the bear and the bunny speech that Trent gives.

And the movie otherwise is this like, not hyper real necessarily, but very intimate and very like normal seeming kind of life that these guys are living. And it has these three or four little moments that kind of stick out now and have not, don't really work as well in the movie, I think. I have just a personal what's age the worst having been broke in Vegas and gambling. The $300 chips, you're out of there. I don't care how much of your manhood is at stake. There's just no fucking way. Those stakes are too big. You're getting out. You're like, oh man, you're just taking the chips or going to the table that has the bearded guy and the old lady. The old lady is hitting on 17.

Yeah, because you just drove four and a half, five hours. I also think for another wood stage the worst, just that drive to Vegas in general, they're leaving at night. I have a huge question about that. It's a crisp drive. In real life, they're getting there. It's seven hour drive. They're getting there at like two in the morning.

Okay, so it's dark when Trent calls Mike. Yeah. And he's like, we got to go. We got to go to Vegas. So let's say it's like 7 or 8 o'clock when Trent calls Mike, right? Yeah, they're not there until 2.

He says they're going to get there at midnight. They obviously don't get there at midnight. They meet the girls at the bamboo lounge at 6 a.m., right? And then doesn't Trent have like a audition at 9 a.m.? I guess he blows off that audition, but they get to Vegas at like one or two in the morning, right? Yeah, because you figure they say, start gambling it too. That lasts maybe two hours and then they have to kill two hours until they go

meet the girls so they go get breakfast. I think that part lines up, but I don't, I think that's a six, seven hour drive. Yeah. Fantasy's like, I can do it in four. I would do it. I would do it in 315. That's my world record for Vegas, L.A. to Vegas, 315. 315? Yeah. Doing 105 the whole time. Yeah. I've done it. You want a challenge? He's not driving. No, first of all, don't. Sunday morning, drag racing.

Get out of here. Casting what ifs. Only have a couple. Lyman said in the great literal history that Jason Priestley wanted to play Vince for a little bit there. And if he had signed on, they could have raised a million and a half dollars

got the movie made. And then Livingston said Vince was the last person that got the okay to be in the movie. they really wanted somebody they could stick on the poster. Look, I love Priestley. 902 and O, one of my favorite shows ever, he could not have been Vince.

That's a disaster. Thank God that didn't happen. They asked, or like distributors or money people wanted Depp to play Trent. And Favreau really wanted to direct and was pushing hard to direct, pushing hard, pushing hard. They were smart enough, much like the Goodwill Hunting guys,

smart enough to know that they needed try to star in the movie, this was going to be their one break. He finally gave up the directing thing, became a co-producer, let Lyman do his thing, and then he could kind of read between the lines and the post-production editing process. They might have butted heads a couple of times. And Lyman's a famously difficult guy, right? Yeah. And one of the great things in that oral history is you see these sketches that Fabro made of what he saw as a movie. And, you know, they're basically storyboards and a lot of them are really close to what the movie turned out to be. So he clearly shared that with everybody and he clearly had like a very big vision, not just on the page, but

on screen of what the movie was supposed to be. And you know, this turned out to be two of the biggest like really power broker directors of the last couple of decades. So obviously it wouldn't be surprising if they were they butted heads a little bit. Although Favreau has been very diplomatic about this in the past. We did oral histories at Grantland of Boogie Nights and Swingers. I don't know who assigned those, but it might have been me. And Heather Graham would not be interviewed for either one. We went 0 for two with her. I don't know what we did to Heather Graham.

She's wasn't interested in discussing either one. She's waiting for her own oral history. She wants like the giant, like, you know. I don't know what we did to Heather Graham. You'd think she's Merrill Street. Best that guy, a.k.a. the Joey Pants Award. So this could go one or two ways. Like Patrick Van Horn as Sue was never in anything else again.

He's almost, if you saw him, you'd be like, Sue. And Alex Desert, as that this place is dead anyway guy, I feel like he's been in other stuff. I just can't name any of them. But I wanted to give it to somebody who had a little more esteem. Dina Martin, who we talked about in the Dazed and Confused podcast, it's basically this and dazed and confused. And that was it.

But I always really liked her. I thought she was cute, was such good actress. had a nice, really likable vibe, great voice. I don't know why more good things didn't happen for her in the 90s. So I vote for Dina Martin for this. I like her. Alex Desert is big in PCU. I like Alex Desert a lot.

He's so money in PCU. Yeah, I like him. So money. The Vincent Hanna, give me all you got a word for most overacting. I didn't feel like anyone overacted in this movie. Am I missing something? I don't feel like anyone dialed it up. I'm going to give it to the guys that Sue confronts in the parking lot.

Oh, okay. House of Pain? Yeah, House of Pain. You want some of this bitch? Scully? Yeah. Yeah. You know who Scully was?

He was in Big Bad Booty Daddy, right? No. No, he's Rio Hacford, Taylor Hacford's son. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Taylor Hacford, director of Proof of Life, one of the greatest movies we've ever done in The Rwatchables. Married to Helen Mirren, who's a huge fan of the rewatchables, right, Chris? Yeah.

No, she is the last remaining. one. I watched devil's advocate last night. I'm a fan of a man. That's a huge fantasy text. Yeah. Look, but don't touch. That movie's almost an S&L sketch.

It's amazing. The accents, Keanu, Keanu Reeves is, I don't know what accent it is, but it comes and goes. And Charlize is like going for an Oscar. She's incredible in that movie. And everybody else is just in an episode. S&L sketch, and she is Meryl Streep. Do you prefer Devil's Advocate or the movie the Matthew

McConaughey's sports betting movie? Two for the money? Yeah, two for the money. That movie's bad. That movie has a lot of problems. Devil's Advocate is perfect. Deion Waders Award is loaded with nominees. This place is dead anyway, that guy. Marty and Elaine, I think they're eligible.

Heather Graham, basically two scenes. Sue, only in like five scenes. Scully, aka House of Pain, are nominees. I am voting for Heather Graham. She's in the movie for less than 10 minutes and is lights out.

What do you guys have? It's Heather Graham. Heather Graham, and then on the phone call, like throwing like 90 mile per hour Diane Keaton bits at Favreau on the phone at the end about like, that's Franks Notch's birthday, but I don't even know. I'm supposed to call you.

Hello? Hi. Oh, you didn't have to get off. their line, I would have called you back. No, that's okay. I wanted to talk to you. You know, I really could have called you back, but anyway, I probably should wait a two days. That's what my friend said, but, God, I sound like

such a schoolgirl. It's just that, you have this thing, okay, it's in the room, it's a synodra's birthday. It's one of these Hollywood clubs, and, you know, there's no sign. I don't really understand why they don't have any signs. It's just, I'm really bad. I just want to know if you might want to go with me.

I've always been a fan of Brooke Langton. I feel like we've over. overlooked Brook Langton here. You know, Melrose Place, the replacements. She's got a great scene. She looks like the kind of woman you would see sitting alone at a bar like that. You know, you think would be approachable, but then she would blow you out of the water. I don't know.

I like Brooke Langton. A good enough actress to actually elicit real acting for manager's shoe in about six Melrose Place episodes. She really did her best. Recasting couch, I got to be honest, I didn't have any parts I were to recast. I think they did a really nice job. They crossed the board. I'm good. There's not anybody.

We just don't know what happened to Sue. What happened to Patrick Van Horn? They don't talk about it. I think Alex DeZer is like, I see him and we're like, what's up? But like everybody else is like, I've completely lost track of that guy. Yeah, I did some half-ass center research, which is our next category, trying to find out what happened to him. And there's, I didn't want it. wasn't interested in this life.

Got out of it. It's weird. So maybe that would be, I mean, if you're recasting it in a way where you'd want another guy in the level of Vaughn and Favro, maybe Sue is John Hamm. I don't know. We're like like, oh, cool. John Hamm is Sue. But I still like Sue. I think he's good in this movie.

How fast internet research. Fabro said, my dad gave me a screenwriting program. I started the script as an exercise to see if I could write a screenplay. Swingers is what came out. It took them two weeks. Livingston said they got Teller around the same time. Favreau and Livingston just became friends. They were the only guy in L.A.

The other guy knew. And then Favro knew Vince because they were in Rudy together. Vince took Favro under his ring. Livingston popped along. Adam Scott lived downstairs and they all kind of hung out. They, after they did the script, they would do full cast script readings for potential buyer producers

for a year. And they would do it almost like how Jason Reitman does those where he gets like 12 awesome actors to read some movie script. They would just do this over and over again for people. And Vaughn said,

I think they all totally missed the universality of it, a guy dealing with a breakup coming of age, taking a journey with a group of friends, wanting to meet somebody to love. We mentioned how they spent more money on music, in that movie than on the movie,

they paid the most for Dean Martin. Half a million dollars in music licensing, the movie cost a quarter of a million dollars to make. Favreau stole year-so money from the Spike Lee and Michael Jordan commercials. That party scene was a party scene that they threw and just invited all their friends and didn't really tell them what was going on.

But two of the people that were at that party were Adam Scott and Mike White of Chuck and Buck. The Vegas scene, Do you know where they were shot? What casino? The exterior is the stardust, right? Interior was the glitter gulch. Ooh.

Oh, man. Tough. I just don't think gulch ever works. Like, is tough. Yeah, gulch is always a bad thing. Favro taught Heather Graham to swing dance. Fabro said the original script ended with the phone call with Heather and Lorraine. Takes the new girl, camera pulls away,

into a helicopter shot that we couldn't afford, and that was the end. And then Lyman added the new ending because he thought the movie was really a platonic love story between Mikey and Trent. But they realized last second they didn't have a baby,

so they had to go scramble around looking for anybody holding a baby and then convince them to let the baby be in the movie. Movie got rejected by Sundance. They speed rushed it to get in a Sundance, and Sundance said, no. Robert Redford, are we sure he's good? Not here, Bill, not right now.

They rented the Fairfax $2 theater that Sean Fantasy would have loved if he lived here in the mid-90s. Yeah, sad. Had a screening with 500 people. They said it was 490 friends, 10 possible buyers, and it crushed. And everybody was trying to buy it. And they sold it to Merrimax for $5 million. Then they had to premiere up the street from my house at the Vista. They got the Jaws theme music because they sent.

approval to Spielberg, who saw some of the scenes from it and was like, who's that with Vince Vaughn and cast him in the Lost World Jurassic Park movie. So that happened. And then the bear monologue, you're a big bear, all the like, you're PG-13, the whole thing. Apparently, Vince Vaughn really did say that to John Favro at one point. And this is autobiographical with Favro where he left a girl behind and the whole thing. So apparently that speech was somewhat similar to this speech they used in the movie. So there you go. Apex Mountain.

Wait, Bill, can I just tell you that before Chris and I do a podcast every time, I give him that speech? Like a big bear with fangs and claws. You don't know what to do with the bunny. I don't know, man. I can't do Pacino this time. You know, ever since I left New York, I feel weird about doing Pacino. Who would Pacino have been in this movie? Marty?

Marty and Elaine? What if Petino was Sue? He could have been House of Pain. I need a gun to protect myself. Apex Mountain. The Kings of a Finesse team! Doug Lyman? No.

I don't know what Doug Lyman's apex was, but it wasn't this. Born, honestly. Well, I don't know which one. Like, how many did he do? He just did the first one. First one, yeah. Oh, he didn't do it. I thought he did another one.

All right. There you go. Probably born. Vince Vaughn. Wedding Crashers. Or old school. Yeah. I would say wedding crashers for him.

John Favro? We are living in it. It's been that way for 10 years. Yep. He's in charge. Iron Man to Demandolian. I would say it's, I would say it's Iron Man.

Because that was Robert Downey as a superhero and John Favre directing everybody is like, what the fuck is going on here? And then the movie becomes a monster and sets up everything he wants to do after that. Brooke Langton, she's on Melrose place when this movie comes out. So I'm going to go Apex Mountain for her. Sue, definitely. Apex Mountain for Sue. Yeah. Early fun underground Vegas. Abso fucking Lutley. This is Apex Mountain for Vegas before Vegas became commercialized. Hockey video games, yes. Big Voodoo Daddy. I'm going to playing the Super Bowl halftime show is probably Apex Mountain for them. Yeah, but I would say swing revival in general.

This is probably Apex. The Derby, yes. The Dresden, yes. That's all I got. Dina Martin. Picky Knits, we already did the Vegas drive. I don't have any of their nitpicks, do you? I just have a probably unanswerable question.

Okay. Best quote, we mention a lot of them. I enjoy having to see Boys in the Hood. Now one of us is going to get shot. What the fuck. Don't you see boys in the hood? Not one of us is going to get shot. You fucking bitch.

You ain't going to do anything, guys. You fucking asshole. You wake up every day and it hurts a little bit less, and then you wake up one day and it doesn't hurt at all. And the weird thing is it's almost like you miss that pain. Sometimes it still hurts. You know how it is, man. It's like you wake up every day and it hurts a little bit less,

and then you wake up one day and it doesn't hurt at all. And the funny thing is that this is kind of weird, but it's like, it's like, you almost miss that pain. It's fucking great. I'm going to find me two waitress here. I'm going to pull me Afredo. The Kings are Finesse.

There's a million quotes in there. Could this be remade as a 10 episode Netflix show? Next category. Please, God, no. I'm not as allergic, but you would have to find whoever, like, who could be Vince Vaughlin? Like, who is the person

who is, like, absolutely, like, irrepressible like that? They made this show. It's called Entourage. Entourage is the logical sequel to this movie. It's a very good point, Sean. That makes me unhappy. Probably unanswerable questions. What was the most unrealistic part of the Mikey Lorraine extended scene?

That somebody as hot as Heather Graham was sitting by herself at a bar with no guys circling her, that both of them instinctively knew how to swing dance at an incredible. incredibly high level, that she would ask Mikey to dance, that she'd be attracted to Mikey in the first place. What do you have for most unrealistic? I think the swing dancing, like the duel, like all of a sudden, it's just like, you guys might as well be fucking figure skating. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah, even at 14, it was, I was like, what the fuck is happening? How do they know how to do this? It's pretty choreographed. Like, Mike can't get dressed.

And all of a sudden. Right, true. How long did Mikey and Lorraine last? Nine months. I'm going to say six months. I'll take the over. I'll go a year. I think she meets like Ben Affleck at a bar, the real Ben Affleck.

And he's got good well-hunting coming out. Great swinger sequel. He's got like a big movie coming out and she just dumps Mikey immediately. Redefining swingers. Does double down Trent, does he make it as an actor? I was going to ask you this one too. Before we answer that, can I ask you a question about one of Trent's stories? When he's in the trailer with the two gals from Las Vegas,

and he tells the story about going on for the after-school special, and Vince Vaughn was on after-school specials, was that completely made-up story or just an embellished story? I think it was embellished. But there was some truth in it? Yeah, because I think that, because Favro, in the world history, they talk about how all of the dialogue is on the page,

but a lot of the stuff that's on the page is taken from their lives. So I think that that's probably like, it was probably a story that was embellished. Yeah, the kid was probably 16 in the after school special. That's probably that goes. So did Trent make it?

I'm going to say no. So what's he doing now? Working at the par three? Yeah, he's reading tables at the 101. No, he's like a bartender back in Chicago. He moved back after like two or three years. That's a bummer. All right.

let's do it. Why did anyone want to hang out with Mike? So mine is when was Mike actually fun? Because all those guys are like, yeah, Mike, like, so he moved out from New York. You're so money. You're so fine. He's like, Mike sucks. What's fun about this dude? He's awful. What was the version of Mike that was like a good hang? I'm just going to give you some Mike tidbits. You had to talk him into going to Vegas. He has no idea. had to gamble. He's a professional comedian who's not funny at all in any way.

There's no hint of a sense of humor from him. He throws his friends under the bus when they're trying to hook up. He's still stuck on a girl from back home who's dating a guy named Pierre, and they've been broken up for nine months. He can't golf. He's an accomplished swing dancer. And then at the end, Heather Graham, who's just like, just please take me home. I just want to get over my boyfriend

tonight and he can't even like seal the deal with that. He sucks. And I guess the point of this movie is that you still like him anyway, but I cannot for the life of me understand why Trent wants to hang out with him. If I'm Trent, I'm like not answering the phone

when Mike is con. Like, oh, Jesus, Mike is calling. I'm like Sue, give me your gun. This is once again, you guys have proven at the end of a pod that you're just complete monsters. You have no, no, no, no, no. This guy's going through something really hard. He's homesick.

He misses his girl. He's trying to make it in the big city. Who hasn't been there? Who can't relate to that? Explain when he was fun. Was it pre-Michel in college? Like, when do Trent and Mike have their glory days that they are trying to recapture in L.A.?

On the set of Rudy. We know about this. Listen, you never in a million years would want to hang out with Cameron from Ferris Bueh or Mike from Swingers. You just wouldn't know. of in real life. These are two people you did not want to hang out with. But they're great movie characters. I want to almost like, I want to get divorced just to see how long I could talk about it with fantasy. Before I ditch you for good. Yes. Yeah.

And Sean, I'm really going through it. It's just like, yeah, cool, Chris. Like the third time we've talked about this. I think it's Ron Livingston who really, who, you know, who really eats it in this movie. He's the one who has to carry the weight, the burden of Mike's bullshit. Well, Sean, that leads me to my other probably unanswerable question. Is the most unrealistic thing in Swingers Ron Livingston casually unwrapping a roll of salami for breakfast in that guy's apartment? It's an iconic moment. Has anyone since 1920s New York City? And my son. He's fucking salami with like, why does he have like a knife that he's just cutting salami with.

Like, you, you're trying out to be goofy and you eat salami from the roll for breakfast. Like, what are you? One, I've done it. Two, I would do it again in a heartbeat if I had some salami in my home right now. I actually, should I go to my, should I go to the kitchen and get the salami that I have in the fridge? I have spent more time with you than almost anyone else in my life. Give me a second. You've never eaten salami in front of me unless it was pre-slice.

Wow, he's actually going to get salami. My son eats salami all the time. Does he cut it, though? Or does he have like the little pre-slice? No, he does the pre-slice salami packs. That whatever, you get him in the deli. He loves those. This is quite a bit.

Oh, look at this. Here it is, C.R. Right here. Soaprasata, in your fucking face. I will be eating it by hand as soon as we get off this pod. No, I'm going to be cutting it with a knife. Wow. COVID's really wearing a lot of people.

down. Who won the movie? Favro. Favro. Make the case for Favro. If he doesn't do this movie, he might not have a career. And I don't know if that's true for Vince, because Vince is such an amazingly charismatic performer. You can see in the future, like, he's able to sustain himself publicly.

But Favro needed to make destiny happen for himself. and he did it by writing this movie and by being monomaniacal about getting it made and doing it with his friends and doing it the way that he thought it should have been done. And look at him now. I mean, he's one of the five most important people in Hollywood. He just made the last truly great thing that everybody loved, the Mandalorian. Like he's one of the, he's like in a very select, select, select echelon of Hollywood power brokers, really. And it's because of this movie.

Yeah, I just think it's Vaughn because he leaps off the screen. Like, it's just like the obvious thing that like where he's operating at like a level of like wattage that is like 10 times the next closest person. It's interesting. I don't know if we've had a conundrum like this with who won the movie. Who won the movie itself is Vaughn? Who wins the movie in a big picture? Yeah. Like long term success.

Long term way is easily Fabro because Shad's right. Vince Vaughn is happening anyway. He's making it. You know, and whatever. the route would have been. It was going to happen. He was too good. He was too charismatic. But yeah, Favreau, three years earlier was in Rudy going, you're the wild man, no. And he's 300 pounds screaming for Rudy. And I just don't think it would have happened. And, you know, as an actor, it wasn't, didn't really totally ever happened for him either.

You know, he had pretty mixed results there for 10 years. So he was always going to be a behind the scenes guy. Have you ever done a co-winner? Yeah, we've had co-winners. I think there's times where we've just argued for three minutes and nobody makes a decision. Well, it's like there's a macro winner and a micro winner, right? Benzpons the micro winner and Fabros the macro winner. But it's amazing this movie came out 24 years ago. It doesn't feel like it did.

I think there's a lot of movies from the mid-90s that feel like they were made in the mid-90s. This one does not. It's really good. It is on HBO Max, by the way. way if anyone wants to check that out along with HBO Max, really good library. Incredible. I'm constantly impressed by the things they have on there. All right.

So next week, we're going to do Stand By Me, Stephen King, River Phoenix, Rob Reiner. That's happening. So if you want to watch Stand By Me before then, feel free. See you guys next time. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Bill.