The Rewatchables - ‘The Karate Kid’ With Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo wax the car, paint the fence, and sand the floor to capture the true essence of the iconic film ‘The Karate Kid,’ starring Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, and Elisabeth Shue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Rwatchables is brought to you by State Farm. Around here, we love talking about movies that we watch, rewatch, and watch again because they're just that good. It's the thoughtful details. The little things other movies don't have that keep us coming back. But when it comes to insurance, we can't get enough of State Farm. They have all the details we appreciate that make insurance easy. Monitor your coverage, pay your bill, even file a claim through their app, which was

awarded Best Insurance Mobile App 2019. And thanks to their network of 19,000 agents, you'll have someone local to walk you through options and hope you choose a policy that means your individual needs first cookie cutter coverage best of all they give it to you straight no gimmicks no games just guidance you can count on it's a no brainer go out and get the insurance you deserve get state farm like a good neighbor state farm is there get a quote or find an agent at state farm dot com we are also brought to you by the ringer dot com where we are still writing about sports pop culture a lot of nostalgia stuff this week We blew out the office.

Did a whole bunch of things on that. New movies coming out. Binge watch recommendations. We have it all. As well as the Ringer podcast network where just this week, I'm looking, we're taping this on a Wednesday. House of Carbs. Ringer NFL show, Ringer Dish,

against all odds, the Ryan Marciillo podcast, the big picture, the watch, Bachelor Party, the press box, a whole bunch of things for you. We also have JJ Redick has a new pod coming with Tommy Alter this week. So you can check all that out. We also announced today a new podcast that's in the works that's launching in April. It is called The Wire Way Down in the Hole.

It is hosted by Van Lathen and Jamel Hill. They're going to watch every episode of The Wire and do a podcast about every episode. So it's some DNA of the rewatchable, some DNA of binge mode. But we are giving the wire the respect and adulation and admiration. that it deserves. So if you want to get ready for that, you can watch the wire on HBO Go. You can watch it on Amazon Prime. It's free on that. I would also recommend the oral history that our friend Jonathan Abrams wrote about the wire. If you want to really get ready for the wire, why wouldn't you? There's nothing to do right now. Throw yourself into that and check that out. Coming up, Rissillo and I are going

to do the Karate Kid, and we're doing this because I asked everybody for donations. I was trying to raise $50,000 for the Greater Boston Food Bank, which we pulled off. One of the carrots that I waved, we would finally do the Karate Kid as a rewatchable. This podcast is as insane as you probably expected it would be. Here it is. What's the matter? Mommy not here to dress you? Karate Kid is coming up next. This is the end of the line. Tell him me. Did I tell you about the pool here? is this only fool you guys got it? The future seemed far from terrific.

This place is a dump. You should go back to New Jersey. Hey, I know it's hard, but we're not quite as, are we? Until he met the right girl. She's beautiful. I say she's beautiful. I think she's beautiful. You got your address?

You got it. But that only angered the wrong guy. In the end, it will be a Daniel's hands. In his body. And most of all, in his mind. Concentrate, focus, power. Remember balance. No mercy.

Columbia Pictures present the Karate Kid. Hey, what kind of belt do you have? G.C. Benny, G.98. All right, Bill Simmons is here. Ryan Rosillo is here. Sadly, we're doing this remotely. I really would have loved to see your face. and reactions in the room.

Not just you, but producer Craig as well. But we're going to do this remotely. It's quarantine month here in the United States and a lot of places around the world. What better time to talk about the karate kid. Daniel Leruso basically quarantined from his own high school. Only one person would talk to him. This became, this is at the end of the Rocky sports movie run,

which really starts with the longest yard in 1974. for Rocky popularized it in 76. And then we just start making these sports movies in every genre leading up to the Karate Kid where they just unabashedly remade Rocky with karate, with the same director as Rocky, John Aveltson, and somehow this became an iconic movie that lives on.

Riscilla, what do you love about this movie the most? Really, that it's the same premise as so many things, but I don't know why it's executed better in this one. I mean, I have some guesses, but this isn't new, you know, new guy shows up to town. And for us that were taller toeheads in the 80s, like this was our cross to bear, that you would watch these movies as a young,

white, blonde kid and go, so I'm just going to be an asshole when I grow up? Like, that's between this, better off dead, one crazy summer and Billy Zabka, aka Johnny Lawrence, where you're just like, this is what, you know, because I was young and impressionable. I go, so wait, wait, like in the late,

in the late 80 years, early 90s, I'm just going to be a jerk to everybody. Like, that doesn't seem like a great, great deal. So it was a real awakening for me. And, you know, I read the, I used to do this thing. I don't know if you did it too, Bill. But like when there was a popular movie,

I would actually read the book that was adapted after the movie release. So I read the book, too. Do you ever do that? Like, it wasn't like this was based on this, you know, plenty of movies like just as we were talking about, Matthew Modine and Vision Quest. that was a novel. But they used to do this thing.

I don't know if they do it anymore. They probably do. Where like even the Michael Keaton Batman, they came out with a book version of the movie that was to be released. So as a little kid, I used to read all those all the time. Yeah, this one, they made the book after the movie and the script, which is always fun.

Yeah, it's, look, it's hard to explain 1984 pop culture to basically anybody under 35. But, you know, you're talking the explosion of cable. MTV, more channels. We went from 10 channels in 1979 to a bunch more channels. And this was one of the first movies that was on all the time.

HBO, we actually had, when I was living with my dad in Boston, we actually had the little HBO box where you turned it on and you flipped your TV from regular TV to the HBO box. I never had it for real until I was living with my mom,

my stepdad in Connecticut and we had HBO. And they didn't have the rights to a ton of movies. So for whatever reason, the summer of 85, they're just showing Karate Kid all the time. And it's one of those movies you could jump into at any point. You know, it's a textbook rewatchable. But when you talk about the plot, it's just an unassailable plot.

Here's the plot in one sentence. Lovable Loser Daniel moves to California, feuds with moped riding karate bowl. gets his butt kicked repeatedly, turns to a Japanese maintenance man for guidance, learns karate, learns about life, falls in love, enters the tournament against the bullies, gets injured in the semifinals,

fights his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend in the finals, and probably gets the win the end. You can't come up with a better sentence long pitch than that, right? I always thought the breaking bad pitch was the best. Give me that one. chemistry teacher has never smoked in his life terminal lung cancer was part of a company that made billions and he opted out early on he has a handicapped son a baby on the way says fuck it he's gonna cook meth because he's awesome at it that's pretty good when somebody when somebody was asking me about like

stuff i was working on and i went well you know i have this one thing what he goes shut up shut up He goes, breaking bad pitch. Always think the breaking bad pitch. And the guy recited that to me, and I went, wow, I got some work to do. Yeah, we, I always like, if you can describe anything in a sentence, it's probably going to work. You go to 1984. When I was writing for page two in 2004, I wrote a whole piece because it was the 20-year anniversary of 1984 about just what an unbelievable sports and pop culture year that was. Because that was the year they finally stopped tape delay in the NBA finals.

You had Magic versus Bird. You had the 84 Olympics, which Russia didn't show up. So America basically went everything. You had MTV taking off. You had some of the most popular artists of all time in their prime albums. You know, Michael Jackson, Prince, Huey Lewis, Bruce Springsteen. You've gone down the line. It was just a free-for-all of great stuff.

And then the movies that year, here are the top. 10 movies of 1984. I love this. I love when you do this. Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones of the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, Beverly Hills Cop, the Karate Kid. I left that Eddie Murphy on SNL, by the way. The Karate Kid, Police Academy,

Footloose, Star Trek 3, Romancing the Stone, Purple Rain. And then if you want to go, next five, Terms of a Deermint Splash, some movie called Grand Canyon, Tightrope, and the Natural. And then beyond that, you also had Revenge of the Nerds,

Bachelor Party, Friday 13th, Part 4, which in my opinion was probably the best one. And it just keeps going and going. 16 candles. This is when the John Hughes movie start. It's Scarface's comes out at the end of 83, but really is out in 84. So on and so on. It's an incredible year.

But this one was one of the ones that lived on. And when you look at like kind of the legacy of this movie, first of all, it spawns, how many sequels? three. Three sequels. I almost ordered the wrong one, by the way. Yeah. So twice when I went to watch this last night, and I'm just going to be sending my expense report to you for the $3.99.

Please do. I almost ordered it in Spanish. And then the second time, like the preview starts up or it lets you close out. And I'm like, why? I was like, I don't remember KRS 1 being the intro music to this. And I almost had the Will Smith one or the Will Smith. It's Jaden said. That would have been tough.

Yeah. I actually thought about just then watching that and prepping this the whole time, seeing how long I could go. Could I made it 30 minutes just recapping the newer version of the remake? But anyway, not a big deal. Although what? Karate Kid 3? Is that with Hillary Swank? Yeah.

So we have three sequels. The fourth one is Hillary Swank. Okay. So just a shout out, right, Brookline High. Because I thought that was important to get that in there. Oh, good. There was an animated series that I don't even remember. in 1989. There was the remake with Will Smith, Will Smith's son. And then we have the TV series sequel

that they've done two seasons on YouTube that is actually excellent. It's called Cobra Kai. And that is the series that really got my son into it. So they were able to lure in this whole younger generation by not just remaking it for his generation, but actually update in the series so that it made sense with the movie. I thought how they did that was about as inventing as you could get with a YouTube series. But they took all the characters for the movie. They're all 35 years older and put them in this 2019-20 world, update some of the arcs.

They flip it a little bit. So you start to wonder, wait a second. Was Johnny Lawrence the bad guy or was Danielson the bad guy? A lot of the stuff they did, I thought, was really smart. But let's start with Johnny Lawrence. So probably the defining 80s movie. movie villain. He was played by Billy Zabka, who did the 80s movie villain trilogy of Karate Kid, just one of the guys, and back to school. And his lights out. He's great in this movie.

Rasello, I know you probably deep down are rooting for Johnny Lawrence in this movie. Are you rooting for him and against Daniel Son? What is your reaction as you watch this again? Initially, when I first saw this movie, so I had to be like eight or nine, you know, Daniel skinny. I was pretty skinny. I probably related that a little bit more. But I think I'm maybe the first rewatch. I go, you know, this Johnny character's making some really good points. And I'm convinced today, as I have been for years, is that Daniel's son deserved

almost all the beat downs. You know, you show up, you've been on the scene for five minutes and you're firing on Elizabeth shoe, who's Johnny's girl. And even if, like, you know, even if they're broken up, although one of the other guys in cobra kai has a great line where they're like didn't they break up and they're like she did he didn't which is just awesome because that like a lot of guys could probably relate to that line um i just look daniel on the first couple minutes you know i know we're talking about johnny lawrence here but they show up to the new apartment which apparently is still there and the mom

is so excited to be like hey look at this sunshine look at the palm trees and danny's like oh coconuts are going to fall on your head and she's like look at the sunshine he goes I missed the smog. And then he immediately wants to be back in Newark, New Jersey. He's kind of pushy at school. He's staring at Elizabeth's shoe nonstop at the beach scenes. And then he gets his ass kick. That's all within like 20 minutes.

And Frankie and his crew are like, this guy sucks. That one of them actually has a line that says, boy, like, let's like, you have some real cool friends, Frankie, Frankie Fernandez, who, who put on Daniel. Freddie Fernandez. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Freddy, Freddie bailed on. He sold his Daniel Laruso stock quick. So as I watch this whole thing figure out, like you have to, when you move to a new town, you have to figure out the hierarchy. You can't just roll in there. Oh, and then he got kicked off the soccer team for punching a guy. And again, this is the first 19 minutes of the movie. So I'm very team Johnny here. I know that's where you want to go. I didn't want to distract you, but I'm setting the foundation for it. I have a lot of thoughts on the soccer tryout, which we're going to get to later. But yeah, look, the 80s villain can go really badly. Like, even if you look at Cryta Kid 3, Mike Barnes.

Croticid 3 is one of the funniest movies in the past 35 years. It wasn't intended to be a comedy, but it ended up being a comedy. And Mike Barnes is, like, kind of the terrible version of Johnny Lawrence, where it could go badly with the wrong actor, with the wrong writing. And it's just you become a self-parity pretty quickly. I actually thought Johnny Lawrence not a self-parody and even when he gives the trophy

to Danielson at the end it seems kind of believable even though it's not these guys are in a blood feud for the entire movie but at the end he's like all right you're right so gives him the trophy

and I'm like that's unbelievable no but that's like the quickest when I watch that I go Johnny really turned quickly there like he well you want his respect yeah but you don't lose a fight you've hated this guy for two hours He's going after your girlfriend.

And think about the all-time mind fuck that one is, is that the girl that you're still into whose parents want you to have her instead of this weird LaRuso kid, where a mom whose car doesn't work. You know, no offense. But, I mean, those are just the way things work sometimes when it comes to parenting. Bill knows that. And when all of a sudden, the girl that you loved are still into the whole deal,

and she's in the back with an injured opponent. and then as Johnny's about to be handed the trophy because Daniel can't make it to the mat, she runs out to be like, oh, hey, by the way, he's going to be good. We have, like, Miyagi's not only a car collector, which I can't figure out where that money's coming from, but he's also a healer. So, you know, if you're Johnny, I don't know how he was ever supposed to win that fight because he's still clearly in love with Ali, with an eye. And he's looking at this being like, this is, like that part of the story isn't developed

enough. So the more I watch it, the more I think that Johnny was right. that Zabka was right, and he's the real hero of the movie, and it's a sad story. It's not a coming of age. It's not redemption. It's sad. So you think he should have broken the trophy over Daniel Sanz's head? I'd just be like, hey, could you date somebody else?

Consider it of my opponent right now? Well, plus, she's on the sidelines, like right next to the mat for all the matches. I don't know what was going on there. I don't remember any other athlete having his girlfriend or wife that close to the action the entire time. Like, maybe go in the stands? they give him like 20 yards well remember remember he was like i needed her as my translator so yeah at that point you you're in the match i maybe the girlfriend can go 20 yards away and sit in the first row so zabka uh an incredible trilogy and i don't want to sleep on his performance in just one

of the guys either which is probably the lost great 80s movie and has the nudity as a plot in probably the best way of any 80s movie but uh so we have that we have mr Meaghi, another fantastic character who I wrote a long time ago was a cross between Mickey from Rocky, Pop from the Longest Yard, and Confucius. And I think it's really hard to explain to this movie's been around now 36 years. It's hard to explain the shock value of Pat Marita being in this movie because when I was growing up Happy Days was the single biggest sitcom of the 70s. It was number one every single year. Everyone watched it. It had the Fonz, Rich Cunningham. and Pat Marita played Arnold,

which is a character that hasn't aged that great if you go back and watch the old Happy Days. He plays a lot of the worst case scenario Asian clichés that you would see in a movie or TV show. He owns Arnold's the place that they would all hang out. And he was kind of like the Ken Jong of that era if you're going to compare him to anybody and then ends up doing Mr. Miyagi.

It was shocking that he was. he's in the movie. He gets nominated for an Oscar. All of this was I compared it in 2002 to have Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell just got nominated for an Oscar in 2005. That's the shock value of that. And I don't know

what it would be for now. I guess maybe it would be the butler from Jesse, the Disney show. If the butler from Jesse just was nominated for an Oscar three years from now, hard to explain how crazy that was, but he's awesome in this movie. They didn't want him to be in it. Was it Wine Trab?

who's the producer was like, no, stop it. Well, I don't want him. Not at all. And you're right. He was this, the Ken Jong thing is perfect because he was, he had like this weird, what was it, the nippy hippie? That's, that's what, that's what his name was. Like he was this comedic actor.

Right. But I mean, that's how he, you know, refers to himself in the lead. Because I watch a bunch of the interviews. He's like, they constantly are like, this is a big character. It's this sensei type dude with, with all. you say Confucius, like we can't have this guy doing these cliched, you know, butt of the joke, happy day stuff. Like, we can't have him do this, which is a very common thing and anything for anybody that's on air, whether it's scripted or non-scripted or anything. Like, everybody kind of goes

through this where you're like, oh, well, you're good at this, but never do this. And the decision makers are always, always so afraid to be like, no, no, you're only allowed to be in that one lane because we don't want any confusion. We don't have any these things. And then, you know, there's so many stories where it's like, just let me try to do this. And he's perfect for it. Like, it's it's one of those things where you go I can't fathom anybody else having this character like Jason Alexander like there's a different guy that was going to be George who's you know a guy that it probably

would have worked but it just seems 20 years later you go no like there's no one that could have ever done it and the Mr. Miyagi character is another one that could have gone really wrong in the wrong hands with the wrong writing with the wrong performance and you know how I know that because it went really wrong in karate kid three which is just a first.

flat out disturbing movie. I don't know what they were doing with that movie. It turns into a homoerotic friendship in the third one. There's a lot of stuff going on that's just like, what is happening. Daniel Son's in his 20s, only has one friend who still does this guy. He's on dates. He's bringing the date over to meet the maintenance man that it's his best friend. It's very strange.

None of that matters in Karate Kid 1 because they actually pull it off. The other character who is really good is, uh, John Crease, who was another perfect 80s movie villain. He's running an Aryan karate machine. The studio is amazing. The sign, did you see the sign outside the studio in the street corner? Like, one of the great signs of all time. And I still don't understand why they didn't open up a chain of COBRA Kau Karate

Studios. I feel like that would have worked, right? Definitely would have worked. I mean, just the concept alone that in, and I don't really know how the geography works out because they're at the beach, but he lives in Recita, but it's some sort of Valley High School. And then when they see Elizabeth Shue and her friends and Freddie and those guys are like, hey, they're, they're from the hills. I'm like, I feel like, I feel like the school district would have been tightened up a little bit more, but that's not really, that's not really

a huge issue. You know, I've just, I've just pointed. Yeah. Well, you know, I've been living out here a little while. I was like, is that really that close? Like, would you really, would you be at this weird beach with kids from recita and also girls from Beverly Hills. Like I guess it's everybody can go to Malibu, right? There's no laws against it. So as I was, I was thinking about this concept, like imagine there being a town where a psycho Vietnam vet is like, I'm going to open up, as you said, this Aryan nation of like, of, of death seekers who also are in a motorcycle gang and happen to be in high school. Like that's, that's, that's. That's incredible.

And where do I sign up? Yeah. Well, they, I didn't realize until I moved out here, there's some geographical challenges with this movie. You know, even like they go to the beach when Daniel son meets Allie and the moped guys show up. But you think about it, like, what beach would that have been? Daniel's from Recita.

She lives in the hills, which I don't really understand. I guess maybe that's Calabasas. I've never heard anybody, I've never heard anybody talk about like the hills that way, but I'm assuming that's where it is because receded and Calabasas are close together. But there's no beach within, you're talking 25 minutes

where you can get to like Malibu, but those guys are on mopeds. So, you know, these five dudes just show up on their mopeds. It's like, where are they coming from? It's at least 40 minutes from where they live. It's always, it's a little ambiguous. us. But anyway, John Crease, Martin Cove, who is just perfectly cast as Crease, and he's a guy who easily could have been in any action movie in the 80s. And in fact, he was. He was at Rambo

First Blood Part 2, but could have been in any of those things. So he's awesome. And then we got to hand it to Machio. I, you know, we'll talk later when we do casting, what ifs about all the possibilities for who was going to play Danielson. There's something about him that's just perfect for the character because he is kind of annoying and you can see why all these all these motorcycle karate dudes would be like we just got to kick the shit out of this guy hey let's let's run him off a hill and maybe he'll tumble to his death there has to be something annoying enough about him that it's believable but that these guys would all go let's just torment this guy and and until we break him right yeah there's i don't know how much you want to do here

with this, but there is something so unique about him being the kind of unlikely hero. And, you know, we're kind of kidding around a little bit, but he is annoying in this. And that's different. Like, instead of being this perfect character that you're rooting for all the time, you, I guess, I guess I'm kind of like, you know, just, just chill out a little bit, man. And then he, he's just not going to. So I think that New Jersey, that Italian thing, the strong mother and the mother, you know, it's probably going to be mentioned for the waiters award here on this one.

But that's just different. It was like they, they weren't going to originally cast Larusa. And it was Daniel Weber was the name of the character, which is always kind of interesting, like going through script stuff. And all the times you'd just be like, I just want to write a freaking name down so I can get to the rest of this script here because you'll spend all this time being like,

I can't name another guy Tim Jones for Christ sakes. Yeah. And it's Daniel Weber. And then he made a joke like, hey, you're going to have to make this, you know, because it's Ralph Machio, like you're going to have to figure out a way to give this kid an Italian name. So I do think that even though it wasn't on purpose, this Jersey, strong Italian mother, his whole deal.

And there is that one scene when he comes back from getting his ass kicked again after the Halloween party where he's trashed his bike, where that scene had never hit home with me the way it does. It might be the best back and forth dialogue that's almost above this kind of movie where he's like, you never asked me for permission. She's like, you know, I'm right. He's like, I just want to go home. home, I want to go home. That scene's incredible. And although the dialogue in that is is almost like tear-jurking a little bit, because if you're just thinking of like, okay, this high school kid,

it sucks. It's not going well. Nobody likes him except apparently the hottest girl in the school, which doesn't make any sense. And, you know, he's basically like challenging his mom and his mom's admitting, like, I know this sucks for you right now, but like I needed to do what I needed to do. And it's a great scene. So a little macho background. He was in a show called Aide's Enough, which was yet another iconic TV show from the late 70s that everybody watched. It was Dick Van Patton was the dad. He had eight kids.

It's a show that they've remade in a bunch of different ways without actually giving credit to the show. But he had eight kids. His wife, the first year, ended up dying of cancer in real life. So they had to recast the part. So he ends up remarrying,

has a stepmother. And right around year four, year five, the show started to get a little gamey as some of these, 70s shows they were starting to run out of ideas. And Machio comes in as like the, they decided they had, I can't remember if he's a runaway or they adopted him or whatever.

So that's how he became famous. And then the outsiders happens in 1983. And that was a movie. Coppola is doing it. Anything Coppola was doing back then is a massive deal. And he's making a huge, huge stink about how I'm going to find the next generation of great actors and ends up doing the outsiders, which was a huge book, S. E. Hinton. Everybody was kind of waiting for the movie adaptation of it. And that movie had C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze,

Rob Lo, Emilio, Emilio Estaviz, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane, and Ralph Machio, who plays Johnny, who ends up dying during the movie, and it's, um, spoiler alert. But, you know, a memorable performance. So by the time Karate Kid happens, he, he, he, he's, you know, he's a memorable performance. He, he's the most famous person in this movie other than Pat Marita. And it's not like they pulled him out of nowhere, I guess is my point. This movie had an $8 million budget. It made $91 million. I can't imagine how much money it's made sense with re-airs and all the times it's been

on all the movie channels, on everywhere. You could tell me that it's made another $300 million. You could tell me it's made another $50 million. I don't know how those numbers work. This movie was really well. reviewed. Roger Ebert, four out of four stars. He said it was an exciting, sweet-tempered, heartwarming story with one of the most interesting friendships in a long time. Roger Ebert. So that's it. We're going to take a break and then we're going to go to the categories because we have

a lot to cover here. Hey, if you're looking for a podcast that deep dives into the coronavirus, COVID-19, facts, things you need to know, everything else, I would recommend. science versus a podcast from our friends at Gimlet that finds out what's fact, what's not, and what's somewhere in between. They do all the hard work or sifting through all the science so you don't have to. And right now they have thrown themselves into this virus and trying to figure out what's true, what's not true. I would highly urge you to check this out.

I would also highly urge you to self-quarantine and stay away from other people for the time being, if you can, as long as your job allowed. Listen to the experts. Listen to podcasts like Science Versus only on Gimlet. All right. Most rewatchable scene. Man, there's some good choices. Let's start with the first beach fight scene.

We already covered. We have no idea how the bike gang got to this beach. That was at least 40 minutes away from where they lived. Also, who rides mopeds on the beach? Not sure I've ever seen that before. Assholes. We have some soccer juggling from from Daniel son

that is presented as he's this forward-thinking pay-lay type guy but if you actually have a kid who plays soccer he's doing very basic generic soccer stuff everybody's reacting

like he's discovered plutonium he doesn't butt out Johnny comes in he's just pissed off there's some OJ Nicole kind of vibes with the whole Allie Johnny thing that aren't really explored

but are definitely uncomfortable comes in breaks her race radio just throws it down. That was uncalled for. None of her friends stick up for her. And then Daniel Son just waltzes over to get his ass kicked. Gets one

good punch in. Cheap shot though. Cheap shot. Johnny thought he had him and then But you know, that's defend yourself at all time. Right. I can't blame Machio for doing that. But Johnny should have been ready. And obviously his training was a little subpar. But then really, really

finishes off Daniel son and Freddie and his friends just immediately dump him. That's it. Thanks for coming, Daniel, son. We'll never see you again. You sure pick cool people to be friends with Freddy. Where do you find this guy? Come on, let's go.

Good guy. I have in my notes here, this is the scene that convinced Rosillo to start working out when you were like eight. You were like, I'm never letting this happen to me. It took a lot longer than eight, that's for sure. But I think that the thing. that was, it was always this kind of funny thing with this where in the very first scene when Machio kicks open the door to their new rental property and then he knocks over Freddy and

Freddy's like, man, what was that karate? He's like, I bet you can kick some ass. And Machio's like, yeah, a little bit. You know, not a big deal. He's like, he's like, can you teach me? He's like, yeah, sure, man, no problem. Anytime. Anytime. And, you know, he does have this, we keep getting back to this, but like, there is something about LaRuces character where it is just very different. It's different than some of these, you know, other kind of, like even John Cusack and better off dead kind of makes more sense. And there's, there's not like this extra layer to it. But I think that Jersey, that whole thing with him, and I'll stop repeating that part of it. But is, is this movie trying to get you to believe that he's like a really good karate guy and that he's going to be

able to hang with Zabka in that scene? Because we know the way it's movie works. He has to lose that fight. But I just thought, like, I guess they didn't want to make it that he ends up winning this tournament out of nowhere after just doing some handyman work so that there was some foundation because they show that kick. They show him looking at the book when Miyagi first goes to visit the apartment and he's like, oh, what are you doing? He's like, karate's like, oh, from a book. I just always thought that was kind of a funny little lead-up where you're going, are you trying to get us to believe that he has a chance in this? Or is it just that they don't want to make it seem that absurd his ascension into the martial arts? I think they wanted to make it seem like

he thought he was hot shit. But then he obviously was. wasn't because he just gets annihilated by this dude word of Michael Jackson, red jacket, whatever the, that jacket was in for, I would say, nine months max. And then immediately was never worn again. They're also, this is Elizabeth Shue's first scene. And when you're talking about like the Mount Rushmore 80s movies, babes, she's got to be mentioned. It, you know, you're talking Kelly Preston, Elizabeth Shoe, um, Apollonia and Purple Rain. It was a, there was a nice little run here just in general for people I had a massive crush on when I was a teenager. And she's right there. And it pays off, you know, later on. She's in a bunch of stuff and then

ends up winning an Oscar. But this scene's really good. Good start to the movie. Sets it up. The next rewatchable scene I have is the Halloween fight scene, which yet again, another terrible career move by Daniel Laruso. I'm not sure why he thought this was all going to work out. like putting a hose over Johnny Lawrence as he's taking a dump and smoking a joint. Was he taking a dump? Do we know for sure? No,

I think he was just smoking a joint. Okay, whatever he was doing there. For a guy that smokes weed, he was pretty intense. Yeah, he was really trying to roll it. So he does that. And he had a walkman on too,

which is a weird move. Like, don't you think you want to be listening to people if you were at a high school rolling a joint? Yeah, like a teacher coming? Yeah, yeah, he didn't care. He's Johnny Lawrence.

He's not afraid of anybody. Yeah, tunes or tunes. So terrible game playing by Daniel Son. I don't understand how he feels like he's going to win that one, especially he runs, what do you think, like a 5, 540? He's so slow in that scene, trying to get to that second fence. Slow legs. Yeah, like get him up and down.

And then those other kids just seized on him. That was like a fullback picking up a fumble or something. He looks like he's an animal kingdom just getting chased down by the Cheetah's. Great 80 song during that, whatever that 80s. song is where it's like danger it's really one of the only two-year stretches you could have played that song in a movie

and then you have them just kicking the shit out of them you have the leave him alone he's had enough no no mercy Johnny leave him alone man he's had enough all the side when he's had enough man what is wrong with you Johnny the enemy deserves no mercy

right right right right you're crazy all the side when he's had enough man and that's one of the best lines ever. I'll decide when he's had enough man. This kid's in high school. They're literally killing Danielson. And then Miyagi goes hero ball. He's Kobe 2006. He's just like, I got this. I'm taking out everybody. I'm taking out all five of you. It's unclear whether some of those chops really would have incapacitated somebody where you're just like basically

unconscious because somebody gave you a quick chop to the breastbone. I don't know. How do you feel about that? Well, I noticed it immediately. I mean, there's a double punch there where you're like, why did the two guys stand perfectly? But again, we're doing that thing where, you know, it's an 80s movie. Like, of course he was going to have to throw a double punch where two guys barreled over. But on the finishing move to Johnny, where Johnny's feet, and we'll get to his footwork later, because Zabka is just a magician out there. He's great.

He's unbelievable. Like, watching it again, you're like, this kid must have been a sick athlete. So shout out again. But when he's kind of getting ready to throw some kicks and he's switching up his feet, um, yeah, Miyagi gets him flipped over. sort of just an arm toss and then he kind of finishes him with just a slap on the

tummy. I don't know. Johnny Lawrence wouldn't go down that way, not the guy I know. Yeah, I was disappointed in him too. There's a little Easter egg in this. This is from an oral history that Sports Illustrated did. Machio said they filmed this scene

at 4 in the morning. Billy, meaning William Zabka, Billy was supposed to fake a front roundhouse and he just nailed me right in the jaw. you thought I would have gotten hurt more. I was throwing all over the place. And then Zapka says he leaned into it. It wasn't my fault.

But in the movie, in the movie when Zabka nails him, he actually really does nail him. That's not like a movie chicanery. He gets nailed by that one. So that seems great. Next one, most rewatchable. Miyagi goes to see crease. Just some incredible crease here.

Also, my son noticed something because he demands. First of all, Shout out to my son for demanding we did this as a rewatchables. We watched this day two of the quarantine on Saturday. He wanted to watch it. He had just banned out Cobra Chi again. He's like, we're watching Cry to Kid, and I want you to do a rewatchable is about it. I'm like, all right.

So when we were watching this scene, there's a guy doing knuckle pushups on the left side who's... 60 of them. Yeah, crease gets mad at somebody who tells them, during the whole scene he's doing these knuckle pushups, and you figure they've probably filmed, what, 20, 25 takes of the scene. So shout out to the knuckle pushup guy. But there's some really good crease in this scene. My favorite line is, no one touches the prima donna until after the tournament. Great stuff. What else do you like about this scene? By the way, in that scene, Elizabeth Shoe is not in that scene, but her brother from Nell Roos Place. Andrew Shoe is one of the other Cobur Kai in that scene that you don't hear from.

As is Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds. Lamar had an incredible run. I didn't like Lamar's chances just based on Lamar knowledge rewatching it. Because Daniels of taking him out in the tournament a little bit later. Yeah, that one's just tight. It was tough to like reverse engineer believing that Lamar was a really tough member of Coma Gobi Kai after the first revenge of the nerds. I'm just, you know, it's kind of like the opposite of what happened at Pamarita.

So, you know, when Kriza apparently like, that's, he was, he was very much, I don't know if you have to be a big time method actor where you just go Daniel Day Lewis, where you're that guy for months. around the set when you don't have that many lines. But apparently, like, that was Crease's deal. And he wasn't really a black belt, though. There's only three real black belts on the entire movie. True.

He was not one of them. Yeah. Also, great shot of the All Valley Karate Championship's poster in this scene, which you can find on eBay. I do not own it. How do you not have that? Well, it's, I would get it if it was the original one. I would go all in.

I'd be like, I'm just getting this. if it was like the actual one from the movie. People have reproduced it. Not hard to reproduce. It wasn't the most, it wasn't like a Leroy Neiman painting. No, no, no. Just some graphics.

But you get a t-shirt. Yeah, you can find it on, on eBay. Next rewatchable scene when after Daniel works on Miyagi's house for 10 minutes of the movie, he's just remodeling his house, basically, and finally gets frustrated. And Miyagi goes, confronts him.

and then does the show me sand the floor. Show me wax on wax off. Show me paint the fence. Now show me wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax on. Hats on. Hats on.

Concentrate. Look at my eye. Oh, it wasn't just about Miyagi getting his house remodeled. He's actually teaching these kid karate moves. This is a ridiculous scene, and I still enjoy it. it was really long i don't i think it's longer than 10 minutes bill because that would be something

and again these guys were all established enough believe it or not like you're good to point out here like not only are we talking director but so many elements of this this movie like you can just get away with different things but i don't know if a first time guy would have been able to say yeah like in the middle of the movie it's going to kind of have this dragging maintenance part where it's going It would feel like an HD TV episode. And I cannot emphasize this enough, but being young after that movie and the amount of time guys said wax on, wax off to each other in class was in the thousands. Yeah. Guys were saying it for years afterwards.

Wax on, wax off. And they were like practicing the different moves. So a little bit like how 11-year-olds wanted to become fighter pilots, a top gun. I wouldn't say there was a ton of kids, like hoping to do chores. but that was just that was one of those every single person was conscious of what the term wax on wax off met. Yeah, I agree. Next scene, the country club scene. This isn't technically one of the five most rewatchable scenes of the movie, but there's some great stuff in here.

At this point, it's just unclear why Allie would ever want to date Daniel in a million years. He's not popular. He's kind of gawky. He's being terrorized by these moped karate bullies. Her friends don't like him. He comes from a different economic background than her. He doesn't have a car. And when he does come to pick her up for a date,

it's with his mom. And they have to push the car to get it started and the whole thing. And she has like the snotiest parents of all time. They're like a cliche of a cliche of a cliche of a cliche of the first time we see them, they're coming back from playing tennis and they're dressed in these tennis country club outfits that probably nobody has worn

ever and just super judgmental and snobby. So then that all leads to the country club scene where he shows up there. He's dressed like a matre d for some reason. I don't know what he's wearing. And Zabka plants one on her after he sees her,

after he sees Daniel son, and he starts backpedaling, crashes into the waiter. Spaghetti goes all over him. And then everybody starts laughing. They're all laughing at him. It's really like the ultimate rich people or evil scene. And it has no place in the movie. It's ridiculous. I just want to know, is there any scenario where an entire country club dining room of people would laugh hysterically because somebody bumped into a waiter who was holding a thing of spaghetti? Are people that evil or am I misreading this? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the other part of this is

the hero, the redemption of the bumbling idiot. I mean, because it's constantly happening with him. And there's even other scenes that they cut out where like he was embarrassed where he sat down on a piece of blueberry pie. And they must have been like, okay, we have him sitting on pie. We have him face planting into spaghetti. We don't need both. You know, so like let's keep the spaghetti scene in. Side note, the spaghetti shot after he like bumps into the waiter and then we see everyone laughing and then back to him. It's like they painted him with spaghetti sauce. There's no way anybody would be that covered. Like they overdid that.

The CGI on that was a little too intense. I guess they're just trying to sell like Daniel's struggle. I don't know. But then they also had to kind of lead up to where he's basically not only is he a jerk for a lot of times. And his jokes aren't funny. And he's kind of cheesy. And he reminds me a little bit like Serpico. Remember when Serpico has that dating phase in that movie.

And every scene of him talking to that girl is like painful. Yeah, what are you? I'm a lion tamer. And you're just like, oh, my Christ. Like, it's just, it's painful to listen to them. Like, I know when I'm really thrown off when I'm like, uncomfortable watching a movie or TV show when a guy's hitting on a girl. Like, I don't know why I still get uncomfortable about that, but I do.

And Daniel has a lot of that stuff in him where it's just not funny. And, um, I do think it's amazing that there are multiple times where he kind of is telling the hottest girl in high school off. that likes him. Like you have no other options. Your best friends is a 70 year old Japanese guy or Okinawa. And you are like putting yourself in this position to what stick up for yourself or be righteous to somehow. And they keep having like once they make it through the whole thing, I have in my notes. That couple fought like hell. They fought for each other. So. Yeah. I'm with you. The next rewatchable scene, Daniel's training scene when, uh, the music's really great in this movie. And

I'm just going to play it quickly here. Daniel on the pier, practicing kicks. And then it kind of kicks in here. Now he's in the boat. It's just great. The shadow of Danielson working out. Really great stuff. High level for the mid-1980s.

And then it kicks in one more time here. It's great stuff. great stuff kudos to the filmmakers and then finally this is going to be my pick I'm just I'm just spoiling it out the year the best montage

he has his first fight his girlfriend and his 70 year old maintenance man best friend are flanking him by his side like his bandini brown and has his first fight he backpedals out of the ring twice gets a warning

because he's that much of a puss and then finally gives some basic fist thing and I don't know who he's fighting or why that guy was even in a tournament but the guy's terrible beats him and you hear Ali go you're the best

and then it just kicks into Joe Esposito's you're the best and that leads to in my opinion it's between this and the beginning of Rocky 3 I of the Tiger as single best movies music montages

which is ironic because this was supposed to be the song originally in Rocky 3 and Stallone flipped and went with Survivor Zia of the Tiger. This was the other one. This is a fantastic sequence. If it's on television, I'm watching it. I'm stopping everything. I've seen it 700,000 times. I'd watch it again right now. It's fantastic. And when you watch the rehearsals, you can realize why this was so good.

They said they had like six different cameras on this and that they basically treated it as if it were in Machio says in an interview curtain, a curtain, where they go, it was live theater. We had real people in the stands cheering. There was some actual, like karate students around. Zapka's like my mom was out there and they were booing me and she was getting upset. You're like, hey, mom, relax. And I really think this is a credit to the director and his vision for the scene and all the different angles and options they had on the final edit.

But it really comes together great. It really does. And the music is cheesy, but it should be cheesy in that moment because we were all really cheesy in 1984. The rocky part is amazing when I found that out this morning because that's what it was supposed to be. but it was also in play to be the theme song to Flash Dance, and they went with Maniac instead.

So this song was also in the mix to be the theme song for two of the other more iconic movies that are song movies. Because Rocky, that Eye of the Tiger stuff, like you don't even understand what kind of deal that was. Like, dudes stop. Dudes had like set recorders, and they were putting in next to it like an AM FM radio and like recording it.

That's how we used to do it. And then you'd replay it with the ads and everything. I think you were killing it, because you had it on tape. That scene's great. The scene's great. And the ref, Pat Johnson, who's one of the actual black belts, and then I don't know how much more you want to do on some of the other things that happen in that scene.

But I think that ref, who's like a real black belt instructor official, he brings this level of intensity to it that works because you go, that's exactly what you would expect. Like none of those things, the MC, the ref. And I think all of these kids are really athletic. and they did a good job. They did a really good job making this thing, kind of like Vision Quest where you go, yes, I'm sure if you're like a badass martial artist,

you think it's a bunch of kids that look like idiots, but it didn't stand out as bad as it could have been or other movies have been with these kinds of scenes. They shot it at Cal State Northridge in a basketball stadium that's called the Matadone, and they decided they would actually make a real tournament. This was an actual tournament. It wasn't like just a movie, as you said,

they had 500 to 1,000 people in the stands. They had a couple hundred people participated in the tournament. And that's why it seems kind of chaotic. There's multiple things going. It seems like you're capturing almost like a reality show with Danielson in there doing the thing. It's really effective. And I got to say for the mid-80s, pretty ingenious how they did it. And then I'm going to save this for later.

But LaRuso Dutch, I have a lot of thoughts about that matchup. we'll save that for a little bit later. The last rewatchable scene, I mean, basically from the moment he has his first fight all the way to the end, you could say the whole stretch is the most rewatchable. It's unassailable last 20 minutes. But from the moment,

he asked Mr. Miyagi to help him out. Well, can you fix my leg? I mean, with that thing you do? After the semifinals. To Miyagi clapping his hands and rubbing them together. And then Johnny's about to get the trophy.

Allie runs out. He said, wait, what? Daniel Laruso is going to fight? And then the guy who we're going to get to later goes, Daniel Laruso is going to fight! And then all the way to the end, then we have sweep the leg in there, we have get him a body bag,

we have a scoring penalties debacle we're going to get to later. We have crease screaming, finish him as the music's building, the crane kick, and then the trophy presentation and the ending. all of it's tremendous. What would you go with for most rewatchable between those two scenes? Or would you go with something else? I love when they get him kicked off the soccer team.

It's school sucks, man. I shut out of here. They're like, who's this, the new kid moved here? He thinks he's going to make the team. He thinks he's going to be good. Like, all right, whatever. And then they size him up.

They size him up pretty quickly. Like, oh, cool, cool dribbling drills, you know, on the beach or juggling drills. we're just going to work this and you know he'd look he sucker punch well he didn't really sucker punch another guy you know the guy that went out he tackled him he got up punched him and then he gets thrown off the team immediately and things didn't yeah i don't know why i like that scene so much but they just you just know what's on like new guys fucked in this one i was gonna save these thoughts for later but i'll just do him now the slide tackle was pretty vicious and i thought

daniel son was correct to jump the guy after and throw a punch i don't know why the coach sided with the guy who did the slide tackle that could have absolutely taken out Daniel Sons ACO. It was like the coach didn't like him either. He's just like, this guy's a clown. Get this fucking guy off the team. Guy from Jersey.

I want him out. I'm going with You're the Best as most rewatchable. Hey, let's take a quick break to talk about the Feeding America Network, the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization. We're going to connect people with food

and end hunger. Donor, staff, volunteers. They all play an important role in their efforts to end hunger in the United States. It's also a great place if you go to Feedingamerica.org, you can find local food banks, I think in almost 200 locations across America. When we did the Greater Boston Food Bank Drive,

this is how I found out where that food bank was on Feedingamerica.org. If you donate to them now, they can distribute money and food to people that need it in all the locations across America. We need these guys more than ever. and ladies and people. So please check out Feedingamerica.org.

Don't be afraid to donate. And if you want to donate to the Greater Boston Food Bank, just look it up there and do it. Thanks for everybody again who supported the Greater Boston Food Bank and helped make this pod possible. Back to the pod. What's age the best in no particular order?

Really good 80s soundtrack. The cruel summer, which we just talked about with that soccer scene, And everything, the music's perfect. Cruel Summer is a song that has popped up a lot in different 80s type of things. And when you hear it, you feel like you're in the 80s. That danger song we mentioned early, there was the date montage where it's like, Young Hearts Beat Fast.

Like the 80s had these songs that really had no depth at all. It was like, I'm in love, Young Hearts Beat Fast, like really like, almost like cavemen. We're writing the 80s love songs. And then you're the best. Really good soundtrack. I think what's the matter, Mommy Not Here to Dress You is the greatest movie in Seld ever.

Well, well, well, look what we have here, fellas. My little friend, Danielle. Hello, Daniel. What's the matter? Mommy, not here to dress you? I'm willing to hear other opinions, but it's got everything. He says it with such disdain.

He brings in Danielson's mom. He's making fun of how he's dressed. It's the triple crown of great insults. You agree or disagree? Yeah, because I don't know who the hell was dressing Machio this entire movie. The very opening scene, he actually has like mom jeans on. I don't know what's going on. Yeah.

Like I think he's wearing his mom's jeans. They're ride up so high. I don't even like them on, you know, girls that wear them now, they're like, oh, cool, these are my mom jeans. I don't understand that thing coming back at all. Me neither. Rousse was wearing those. And then he's got some high-wasted camo pants there for a little while.

So it's like, wait a minute, are you going to be camel pant guy at this school? If you're high school kid wearing camo to school, you just put an entire label on yourself, you know? Like there's just, it's a different. I know camo is pretty popular now, so it doesn't really matter as much. But if you back then, if you were going to go some sort of fatigues during class, then you kind of were telling on yourself how weird you were. So, yeah, that's a really good line. There's also a sneaky line in your most rewatchable scene where all the things flying around because I still think putting him in a body bag is hilarious. and college lacrosse games,

you would just yell, put them in a body bag, and it always got you a couple chuckles. It was a really high efficiency kind of heckle that you could throw out there. But somebody in the crowd, and I don't know if it was an extra yells, you're a cupcake, Johnny, which was a real spin because you go,

wait a minute, somebody's making fun of Johnny as Crease is looking at his bloody nose. Somebody in the crowd yells out and makes fun of Johnny, and I don't know if that was on purpose or somebody just did it because it was funny that there was like, oh, yeah, you know what? There would be a lot of people rooting against Johnny, and Cobra Kai, because these guys have terrorized the town.

Defending Champ. Two-time defending champ. Yeah. The Cobra Kai, everything about this, like, it was, it was, who's the writer of it? He was, his name was. Steven something? Robert Mark Kamen. Not even close.

Cobra Kai, the whole, first of all calling it, Cobra Kai having the snake really inspired, but then the whole strike first, first. card no mercy mentality, which I had a friend who I'm not going to name who gotten some bar fights in his day. And his philosophy was, if this is going to escalate, I'm getting the first punch in. And he would just, you know, if right before it seemed like it was going to about to be a fight, he would just throw a punch. That was basically the Cobra Khan mentality. It's not, it's not great, but it works if you're trying to do what you're trying to do here. Yeah.

No, it's the best way to win because most people are just going to run around and yell at each other. Nobody really wants to do anything. And the guy that actually wants to fight, which is usually the quiet guy, those guys usually win way more fights. You know, like, okay, you guys are all going to yell and get chesty and say what town are you from and all this different stuff or meet me outside or you're dead. And you're like, okay, we're like, all right, now I'm actually just going to punch one of you guys. And so that guy kind of has it figured out. another what's age the best. So in the semifinals,

Daniel Son gets kicked in the knee and I guess tears of meniscus or whatever happens to him with the cheap shot. But the other semifinal match doesn't get enough, in my opinion,

attention, acclaim. I don't think it's on TV enough. It's definitely not on NBA greatest games enough. Johnny versus Vidal. Vidal is the guy. He's Asian.

he's wearing the all-white the long white karate suit and he's doing all kinds of moves throughout the tournament and if you're really watching this movie carefully for the 700, 750th time, Vidal just looks like he's fucking awesome. Like he,

out of all these guys, he knows what he's doing the most. As it turns out doing the research, he was actually one of the people who gave the karate intel. He was Miyagi's double for the faraway scenes of Miyagi. pretending to do the crane kick on the pier, all that stuff. And Johnny demolishes him.

This is a 3-0 landslide. After the second one, like, Vidal's just down. The ref's like, are you all right, Daryl? And he's like, yeah, I'm okay, gets up. And Johnny finishes him off. It's a demolition. And it is like, if you're talking about Johnny as one of the greats in sports movies, which we should, this is his apex mountain right here, right?

Yeah, but it's kind of like the Warriors blown a 3-1 lead, you know, after the fact. So that's the part. Because he destroys Bidal, who is one of the three black belts on this. He's still an instructor in, is it Murrieta? Yeah. California. Yeah. So I was just looking at him this morning.

He's still killing it. And he's so much better than everybody else. Like you can just see how crisp he is, how technically he is. These spinning back kicks are all over the place. And then Johnny just wipes him up. I still think for the sake of the movie, but this is where somebody would differ with me is that should have been a closer fight. It should have been a little bit more back and forth. But then you can't have that fight be that much more suspenseful than the main fight.

And then if you want to really sell the idea of what a badass Johnny is, have him take out the other guy that's looked like he's better than everybody else and have him take him out 3-0. So I can kind of understand like, hey, whatever, dude, it's a movie. We were doing this. One of my favorite things I've never noticed before is that when Johnny's watching Vidal fight before, before he, fights him. He's standing next to crease. Yeah. And you can read his lips and he goes, he's not that good. Yeah. I rewounded like, yeah, like he's murdering everyone at this tournament. It's not even that close. And like just, just all blonde, tall Billy Zabka turns to his instructors.

Like, pheh, you're not even that good. Another one stage the best, the music by Bill Conti, which mentioned earlier. The, uh, the decision not to used the original ending, which if you've seen Karate Kid 2, which I hope you have out there, the first scene in Karate Kid too is the original ending to Karate Kid when Kreece is furious at Johnny for the second place trophy, breaks it, he punches him. It's a whole Cobra Kai mutiny basically, and then he gets into it Miyagi, punches two windows, hands bleeding, Miyagi twist his nose, he falls over. That was supposed to be the end of this movie. What a great decision to end it the way they ended it with everyone celebrating with Danielson,

then him looking over at Miyagi. By the way, don't forget about Freddie and his friends back in on Danielson after the ending. They're the first one celebrating. It's like, where were you, where were you guys for an hour and a half? Yeah, right. Hey, I've been out here eating lunches by myself getting my ass kicked every two weeks. Now I'm back? You front runners?

It was like with a Lakers signed LeBron. You know? All of a sudden you're like, Like, what? Who are all these people? And then another one's age the best. The golf and stuff where they have a couple dates, that was like your dream place to go in the 80s

because, as I've mentioned a million times, not a lot of stuff to do in the 80s. But you had a place like that with video games, miniature golf, some cars. Everyone's just going there. And it's a location for a bunch of different 80s movies leads to the movie date montage, which is really the standard 80s movie date montage.

This is located in Norwalk. I'm not sure if it's still there, but at the time in the day, it was in Norwalk, which is about 35 minutes away from L.A. Two more would stage the best. Can I jump in there real quick on the montage? I'll make this quick. I always thought it would be awesome to kind of do a montage in a new movie that's sort of a shout to the 80s date montage, but the date is going awful, but the music doesn't match it at all. Just silence. just arguments and one person leaves and it's the it's like the happiest music ever i if i ever

really make it i'm going to do that you'll know where it's where the origin somebody's accidentally spills a soda and somebody else um two more the uh mount rushmore of 80's pop culture moms mrs l russo is on there i think i think she's just really likable hits all the right notes she crushes it she crushes of humor she clearly knows there's something unlikable about Daniel but doesn't want to admit it to herself. She's really optimistic, making the best of it.

Her son's just kind of a douche, and she just rolls with it. I have Lucille LaRousseau up there. Here's my other three, not that this will matter to anybody under 45, but Elise Keaton from Family Ties, Mrs. Bueller from Ferris Bueller, and Claire Huxstabal and the Cosby Show.

that's my top four 80s moms. Honorable mention the mom from growing pains. So there you go. And then the last one, get him a body bag. Yeah. So there's a story behind this. The guy who played that guy who,

you know, get him a body bag. Tommy. Tommy. Tommy, yeah. I was just looking at him the other day. That's Rob Garrison, who unfortunately passed away last year. Yeah. So he says in that Sports Illustrated oral history, it's my famous line. I never said that while filming.

I looped it in two months later. I was in the recording booth with John Aveltson. He said he needed two seconds of something. I said, get him a body bag in the first try. Aviltson said, that's going to be a classic. You'll never be forgotten because of that line. And if you look at how it spliced, you hear get him a body bag. And then it cuts to him going, yeah.

So he just does that part. And he was right. It became, you're talking about the great 80s movies lines where it's like, damn it, Maverick, looks like the University of Illinois, goes down down the line. That's one of the big ones. So what's age the best for you out of all those? Well, I love that one. And I love his, his whole performance is peak every single time. Yeah. But what did not catch on as much as that line is when Elizabeth Schu was leaving with Machio after another confrontation. And, and he screams, must be take a worm for a walkway. Yeah, that was tough. Tough.

Did not deliver. So in the Cobra Kai series, he's actually dying in the thing and they do a whole thing and he actually dies in the cobra Kai thing in the series and it's emotional. I remember you tweeting about that series and I go, do I check this out on YouTube?

And now I feel like I have to. Oh, my God. You were raving about it. And I was like, is he too close to the forest on this one. I would be sitting at home going, is he really doing this? No, not only me and my son,

but Shea Serrano, also a huge fan. All right. There you go. Okay. I have for, I also like the mom when they're at the restaurant after she lost her computer science job where he said it's up and coming

and then all of a sudden she's the hostess after waiting tables. Yeah. And I remember reading some more of the backstory, which I don't think is in the actual movie, that part of the script. And I thought that was a really sincere, unique scene when she's like, do you have your eyes on anybody? And he goes, yeah, one.

And then she's like, hotter than Judy. And then Machio's like, Barry's Judy. And the mom is perfect. The line is delivered perfectly. Like, Barry's Judy. And they do have these really sincere connections that, you know, not, they don't always play out that well in a movie. So, you know, that's, it's not like I'm going, hey, I want to watch the lunch scene ever over the fighting scenes. But I haven't watched a movie in a while. And those are just things that kept jumping out to me. I mean, she's beyond cute. blonde though, right? She's got blonde hair.

Lucille, let's go. Here they come. Is she as pretty as Judy? Oh my, she buries Judy in a second. She buries Judy? Listen, you'll tell me about it later. I love you. Yeah, so I would say for Woods Age the best, probably the decision not to use the original ending.

Because sometimes it's the things you cut out that make something great, whether it's a movie or a TV show or a column or a book, whatever. But that was really smart that they cut that out. What's Age the worst? first eight minutes could have gone a little faster. It's like we get it. He's moving from New York. Now he's a recita and the swimming pool doesn't work.

Probably could have sped that up. The Camo Pants you mentioned. The shock value of Arnold, we talked about, the fact that Pat Marito is playing him. The duchy tennis country club parents, a little over the top. Johnny wins the tournament before the crane kick. So what's age the worst to me? So from what we understand from the rules, the punch to the face that he lands on Danielson should have counted. I'm not sure why I didn't.

And that would have been the third point. And every time I watch this, I just get confused because the crane kick is a kick to the face. So a kick to the face gets you the winning point, but the punch to the face doesn't. I don't understand the score. And they also say at the beginning, he asked what the rules are. the alley tells them everything above the waist is a point. So I don't know why that didn't count. I don't know if you have any thoughts or we should just move on.

I just get a little worried with you in scoring because after the Vision Quest thing, like I knew something was off when you were talking about the problems of the scoring. So I don't know if you've gone back and watched that, but there aren't. There aren't any problems of the scoring. Like there's a thing where there's a point added to for something else the other one happens. So it looks like it jumps up on the screen. The only thing that I know about the scoring for this one is that apparently somebody

did like a full-blown. doc on according to most karate tournament rules, you can't do full power. So that might be the, Oh, it's a full power punch. It's not legal. It's a full power punch. Okay, maybe that makes sense. But they've also argued that if you're talking full power on that kind of kick, on a crane kick, that Danielson would also have been disqualified. So I don't know what to make of that one, other than we should probably all relax, but. So I wrote this a while ago about Allie, why she would like Daniel. Here's what I wrote.

Hey, this kid's 5'7, he weighs 100 pounds. He can't defend himself. He has no money, no car. We run in different social circles. His mom has to drive him on dates and everyone hates him. I think I'm in love. Why she likes Daniel's son is the mystery of this movie. It makes zero sense.

Zero. None. There's no, like I guess him, trying to save the radio could be looked at as the heroic act, like back to the future where you go, why would McFly's mom ever like George McFly? And you go, well, because, you know, he was, he was concussed outside and, you know, she fell for him because he was, he was sleeping off a concussion after he was peeping on her that she didn't know about. But she was already staring at him on the beach. That stare down fest on the beach goes for days. It goes for days. Yeah. Like, she's just looking at him.

But then again, here's what I would point out about shoe. Is she so much more attractive than her friends? So is she one of those girls that is actually kind of a loser because she doesn't have any other cool friends? Her friends constantly suck the whole movie. And she surrounds herself with lesser girls in high school to make herself stand out a little bit more. But then again, why would Zabka have dated her if she wasn't the it girl? So I'm really confused about the whole thing. and she already was into him before the radio chivalry act leading to an ass kicking.

The other what's age the worst I have? This is really age the worst. But in college, you know, I went to college during an era where it wasn't really a free-for-all from a romantic standpoint. There was real fear of AIDS. And I went to an Irish Catholic college, probably a little less action than maybe people would be getting at the University of Arizona in 2005. Like, everybody thought, every one of us thought we were getting AIDS back then. Yeah, we were just constant fear. You were so worried about it all the time.

So we used to make a lot of jokes about getting rebuffed with paint the fence, wax on, wax off, or sand the floor. And we actually did call one girl in our school of Mr. Miyagi because it was like, there was just no way you're doing anything but kissing her. I would say that's age the worst. I'm throwing that out there. Casting what ifs. So you're calling yourself out for the nickname.

Yeah, I'm calling myself out for a what's age of. the worst. Casting what if... Good recovery there. You mentioned Ralph Machio auditioned. The character was originally named Danny Weber and as soon as he got the role, they changed it to Laruso.

But Machio auditioned for Johnny. That was the role he wanted. He didn't want to play a good guy again. And they were like, no, no, you're going to be Laruso. That's not happening. Thank God. Oh, my gosh. Zabka said, Robert Downey Jr. and Charlie Sheen were both considered for Daniel's son. Robert Downey Jr. is an interesting Daniels sign.

I actually think that might be a better movie. I don't know. What do you think? I don't know that you could argue. You know, it's hard to say, hey, but he's so good, Downey Jr. that I would have loved to have seen whatever version of it. But I really think there's something unique there with Machio that makes this movie stand out more historically. I just do. I think he just, whatever the weird combination of all the different things we've been talking about here for an hour,

I don't know that anybody would have pulled it off that way. Like, what if Downey Jr. were more likable? you know he might have ended up more likable and then I'd be questioning whether or not Zabka was the bad guy the whole time true you're right Downey I think just because he's was such a fun actor back then

and was having a lot of personal problems too but could have taken it maybe in a different direction Charlie Sheen I don't see it all I actually think he would have been better off as Johnny Lawrence totally yeah now others rumored and who knows this is really half-assed but Sean Penn Emilio Estevez Nicholas Cage Anthony Edwards Tom Cruise Eric Stoles.

The only ones we know for sure are Downey Jr. and Sheen. The studio originally wanted Mr. Miyagini be played by Tushiram Mifuni. I forget how to say the last part of the famous

Japanese action actor who was in the Seven Samurai and all kinds of things. And don't hate me because I said the name wrong. I don't know how to pronounce it. I heard Bill Cosby for that role. Bill Cosby.

Well, in this case, they wanted this guy to play it, but he didn't speak English, so they couldn't do it. Bill Cosby would have been, that would have been a Wood's Age to Worst. Crispin Glover was considered for Johnny, but the studio picked Zabka. And then Helen Hunt and Demi Moore were considered for Allie. But Elizabeth Schu got it. And apparently partly because she was in this Burger King commercial that was a huge deal right around the time when they were casting it. She was actually at Harvard at the time. so she took a leave of absence from school.

For the mom, Valerie Harper, who used to be rode on Mary Tyler Moore and was in a bunch of other things, was almost the mom, but then they went for Randy Heller, who played the mom. And then Sarah Jessica Parker was supposed to play Allie's best friend,

and for some reason it didn't happen. That would have been a fun wrinkle because the person who actually did play her best friend was never seen again. That would have added more depth to it, or it just would have been a little bit better. Like she did a good job at being the annoying friend that hates you, but like everybody hates, hate you. Maybe they were right. Maybe

they were right and she was wrong the whole time. I'd like to just set aside a minute or two on shoe. Yeah. I don't know what it is about her, but man, did we really love her back in the day? Yeah. I still sort of do, but then it feels weird to be like 40 plus and we're talking about a character playing a high school girl, but she just, she had this thing that was different than everybody else. And for younger people listening right now, like that was, these, were the hot girls for us growing up. Like, yes, there'd always be some topless scene and police academy that was just mandatory every 12 minutes.

But this was like what we got. You guys got Megan Fox and Transformers where you're like, I don't even know, like, I'm so awkward watching Megan Fox in that first Transformers. You're like, what is this? And then you added to euphoria where you're like, no, no, no. In the 80s, you know, even if she was low-key thick a little bit and, you know, sweats and whatever, she's just so nice. She's so nice that you just fall for. And every dude, you know, whether you were seven, eight, to in high school, you fell for Elizabeth's shoe because

there was just something different about her. And it was even reinforced further in cocktail, although I do think in cocktail, she got a little too upset with Cruz because I don't think they ever established anything verbally. I'm happy. I'm ready to do that as a rewatchable. whatever you say the word. I'm with you. And again, like with the mid-80s, that whole class, there's this movie called Secret Admire

with C. Thomas Howell, where he's in love with Kelly Preston, who is probably the LeBron James of that era for best-looking movie ladies. And Lori Laughlin's his best friend. And she's another one. And then she went on to full house. But, you know, we were so attached

to some of these actresses. Lisa Bonnet and the Cosby show is another one. It's not like it is now where you can just go on Instagram or go on the internet and find a million people that you could have a crush on. We didn't have a lot of options back then.

Next category is Best That Guy, aka the Joey Pants Award. So we mentioned Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds. He's Larry B. Scott. Happy Gilmore's grandma is the crazy old lady in the beginning. That is a classic that guy. Yeah, she lies about, like, I could tell you her from New Jersey.

And then Machio goes upstairs and goes, hey, did you tell her she from New Jersey? And be like, yeah. Like, okay, so now we have a chain smoking liar downstairs. Right. And then my pick for the winner, Randy Heller, who plays the mom, she is near and dear to my heart because she played Gabe Kaplan's wife in Fast Break, the most inappropriate sports movie of all time, also one of my favorite movies. she played Ken Reeves's stripper girlfriend

in the White Shadow and she played Daniel Son's mom and the Karate Kid. Wow. She was also later a lawyer in Melrose Place, another great show. Just her IMDB is all time.

All time. That's like an 80s. It's like an 80s Gary Oldman. Like she's covering all the bases there. She's doing everything. All sorts of range. You do fast break, White Shadow,

Karatea Kid in five years. I don't know. People talk about Merrill Street. That's fine. But, but, uh, that's pretty great. The, uh, next category, the Vincent Hannah, they knew a word. Wait, can I just throw in one that guy? Yeah. Because Dutch is probably the most psychotic of all the Cobra Chi guys. Oh yeah. Would you, would you agree with that? Like, Bobby, he's Chad McQueen, though. He's Steve McQueen's son. I, I feel like he's not that guy. Okay. All right. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if enough people knew that. So go ahead.

I have some Dutch stuff coming later, as this pod threatens to go two hours. Chad McQueen is the first wave of troubled celebrity kids. So you go in there, like the kids from the late 70s, early 80s that are kind of going off the rails during the cocaine era. I think he's in that mix of, and you can see it in his eyes. He's got that kind of a wild look in his eyes. Real wild. The Vincent Hanna, they knew, award for Best Overact.

acting. It's funny, I don't really feel like there's an incredible amount of overacting in this movie. I actually think the acting hits right. You could say maybe the scene when Miyagi's drunk. Sergeant Miyagi, yes, sir. Sajiyan Miyagi report to kill many, J. German, sir. And does the whole thing, but some people feel like that was the scene that got him nominated for the Academy Award.

He definitely dials it up, but I don't really feel like there's an overacting moment, do you? There's really nothing because all the Cobra Kai stuff makes sense. Like, as animated as they are, especially during the tournament, like, those are all the things that we love. So I'm not going to sit there and be like, oh, Tommy poured it on a little too thick. Like, Tommy's letting him have it. Maybe in the war, take a worm for a walk week, but that might be the line more than his delivery or anything else. I think the fan, like her friends, shoes friends have a couple moments where it feels a little annoying. But there isn't really anything.

And as far as Miyagi in the blacked out scene on his wedding anniversary, I do think it's like that's, you know how drunk you have to be to be blacked out in front of a high school kid and off from whiskey? Like, hey, what'd you do last night? Be like, oh, I texted that girl. Be like, oh, what happened? But like, I don't know.

I ordered like seven Steely Dan albums on iTunes. Like, what did you do? Like, oh, the high school kid who lives upstairs, I started asking him to pound Jim Beam with me and he put me to bed. We'll take one more break. Then we're going to finish the categories. Let's take a break to talk about the Ringer Podcast Network, where we're still cranking out about 75% of the content that we had been doing.

Rissillo, Cousin Sal, Dave Chang, Joe House's House of Carbs, J.J. Reddick, you can find all of them there. I would also recommend the Ringer Dish podcast where you can find me and my daughter talking about teen binge watch choices and TikTok this week as, well as jam session breaking down Taylor Swifters, Kim Kardashian. T-time talked about cats on streaming and celebrity and self-quarantine. We're also putting our Survivor Recaps every Thursday after the show airs on Ring or Dish as well. So we're really trying to get this feed going. I would urge you to check it out, subscribe on Spotify, Apple, wherever

you get your podcast, the Ring or Dish. Okay, this is a big one. This is one of the big. This is one of the biggest Dion Waiters Award categories we've had on the rewatchables. I think we've done 106, 107 episodes at this point. I've narrowed it down to three nominees, unless you want to go with Tommy. Is Tommy eligible for this or no? Uh, your call. Your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, pod, your call. I'm going with the big three here. John Crease. Ask leave boy alone to train. You're a pushy little bastard, ain't you? I like that. All right.

No one touches the permanent until the tournament. Is that understood? Yes, insane. Who's really not in the movie that much. And every time he's in it, his stats are huge. He probably plays 14 minutes off the bench here. I think he has a double-double. He hits two threes.

I think he blocks three shots. Dutch, played by the aforementioned Chad McQueen, not in this movie a lot. He's the scariest out. of all of them. He's the one that if there's ever a coup to tie with Johnny Lawrence, Dutch is the guy who's leading it. If it ever turns into Lord of the Flies and somebody's got to take this, take Cobra Kai from Johnny, it's going to be Dutch. He's a kid that he has throwing stars like the good ones. Yeah. And he's, and he's the one, it's the most unrealistic when

he loses, which we're going to get to a little bit later. But when Danielson beats him, it actually just doesn't seem realistic. It seems, it seems, it seems, It seems like Dutch should have pulled a hamstring or something to actually make that better. But he also gets off the best line in the movie. His P.R is out of control. It's in the 30s. It's with Janus in 2019, stuff like that. And then the third nominee, who doesn't get enough of credit, in my opinion, the karate tournament announcer.

That guy. The Daniel Laruso is going to fight. Everything about this guy is fantastic. His jacket shirt, collar combination. He seems kind of drunk. It's unclear who he is. Where did he come from? Is he like, is he the guy who owns the car dealership that sponsors the tournament?

Is he just somebody that loves karate? Like, who is he? Where did he come from? I'm giving it to him. I think he's incredible. He's incredible on the rehearsal. And I'm going to tell you a story. I remember one time I was doing one of those late NBA rations.

shows when I started doing a little bit more of that towards the end of my ESPN run. And, you know, I'd always be on the really late one or whatever. And I'd sit in the green room. I'd watch all these games. And then Zubimahente was a big prep guy. He's like a real buy the book anchor. He's really good. And he's like, hey, Ryan, fancy going over a little B roll with me before we go out there

live? And I was like, yeah, man, whatever. We'll look at some B roll, some stats. So I was like, all right, you know, shows on the screen there. But you can see the rotation in the corner. and like that's kind of the read there and it's something this guy does really, really well. All right. Yeah, yeah. I know Lillard's been on fire. Like he's actually leading all point guards and shooting over 50% from three. And we do like two of them and he turns to me. He goes,

is that the energy level we're going to have with you out there out there on the set? I was like, no. Don't worry about it. I go, I'm just getting my beats down. And when we go out there, it's going to be showtime. Don't you worry about this guy over here. And went out there, had a great show. He's like, okay. I guess I get it. I get it now. When you watch the rehearsals of the MC, the MC makes a few mistakes or whatever, but he's kind of smiling as he's reading off of the script and everybody's sitting around. The rehearsal stuff is so cool. And then once you see him in the actual tournament, the red light goes on and that guy crushes it. And it does kind of look like a guy that may have been an extra on heaha and how he got involved in junior

martial arts. I don't know. But I love that he's a part of it. And I love that it's a passion for him. So we're giving it to him. I think he's the call. I don't think he is, though. Because if Tommy's Tommy's not eligible. Then Dutch? Now, Dutch is just, he's just not in it enough. All right, so crease. It sounds like you want to give it to crease.

I got to give it to crease over the MC. Because crease, Crease is, you're so right. When people watch it after listening to this, you're going to go, God, he's barely in this movie.

He's what, got four scenes, three? The guy, the guy who's the announcer, I'm not even sure. is on IMDB because nobody knows who he is. I don't even know who it is.

There's that one rehearsal when they do the full tournament where they shoot a full rehearsal and the ref acts like it's serious the whole time. And I really, I can't express enough how impressive these kids are doing this. Oh, I found it. The amount of work that they put it in. Yeah, I found him.

He's around. Nice. It's Bruce Malmuth. It's Jim Hacksaw Duggan. Bruce Malmuth, tragically passed away in 2005. But he was also the announcer in a karate kid too just because they were using the same thing. He was in Lean on Me as the Burger Joint Manager. And he was in pentathlon playing Earhart.

So there you go. He was in seven movies. All right. So we'll give it. I think you're right. We should give it to crease. But I, you could have talked me into the karate announcer. The recasting couch mentioned it earlier.

But I think Sarah Jessica Parker or somebody like that is Alie's best friend would would have made a lot more sense. I do feel like she should have had one, at least semi-smoking hot friend. Because if all those Cobra-Kai biker gang people are going to be hanging out with these girls, there's got to be somebody for Dutch to make a run at.

Yeah, because Dutch, Tommy, Bobby, they don't be like her again. They'd be like, come on, John. Your friends suck. Bring Sarah Jessica Parker. Half-ass internet research. We hit a lot of this, but the backstory of the movie is writer Robert Mark Kamen was approached by Columbia

to basically rip off Rocky because they signed John Aviltson and Jerry Wynchrob had optioned a news article about the young child of a single mother who had earned a black belt to defend himself against the neighborhood bullies. So they were like, go to work. Ryan, you're a writer. You get instructions like this. You kind of just go off, right?

You're like, here are my instructions. all right, I'll go figure this out. Yeah, I mean, it's a little more complicated than that, Bill. So, Cruel Summer came out in 1983, but when it hit the cry to kid, it had a resurgence, made the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, number nine in 1984. Ralph Machio still has the yellow car that he got in the movie. They gave it to him, he kept it, still has it.

A 1948 Ford Super Deluxe Club convertible. Not as expensive as you would have thought online. You can get it for like 20 grand. I'm not sure it runs very well. But I still don't know how Miyagi ended up with like seven or eight of these things. Yeah, back in the day, definitely, it's a little suspicious. He might have had a dark moment where he was bootlegging cars or something was going on. So the scene where he drinks too much that a lot of people think helped win him an Oscar nomination,

the producers wanted to cut it because the movie was over two hours and Aveltson fought to keep it and it got kept. In the oral history, there's this weird thing where Chad McQueen says, quote, he's talking about macho. He says, I never really talked to Ralph.

If I did, I'd say something nasty. I don't know if there was a McQueen Machio thing. I don't know what that was. It just was kind of out of nowhere. You mentioned there were two additional scenes that deepen the Daniel Johnny conflict, which they actually shot and then they cut for pacing reasons because they wanted to build up suspense. One of them was the one you mentioned earlier about Danielson sits on a blueberry pie that Johnny puts under his chair right. He's about to sit down

with Alley for lunch. Daniel sits in it, gets up. He's mad. He takes the pie, smears into Johnny's face. They have a whole fight in the cafeteria. That was taken out. And then there's another one where he's getting a drink at the water fountain lifts up and Johnny's right there and they go at it again. So they cut both of those. And he hands him, uh, he says you're going to sign this. And he's like, what is it? It's like it's a death certificate. And yeah. And what I do kind of like about that where it may have been a little depth to the whole thing is matchio just goes, hey, do you, do you think you might be wrong? Like you can kick my, he basically says in the script that was cut. He's like, you can kick my ass seven days of Sunday. So we get that. He's like, but do you

ever think that maybe you're wrong? And Johnny's like, what? You know, like, who's... And Machio's, like, showing some real maturity here. Machio's like, you're your teacher. So he's talking about Kreis. And then he's like, don't you mention my sensei, you asshole? I would have rather had that scene in there than the extra five minutes of Machio

remodeling Miyagi's house. I don't know. It's just me. The remodel scene is, it's incredibly long. But I think they're trying to make sure, like, yes, this seems a bit of a stretch that all of a sudden this kid's going to start beating everybody up in a real karate tournament. So let's have them sand the floors for five more minutes. I imagine that's kind of what they were doing.

The mosquito catching, in case you're wondering how they did that, a crew member stood out of frame dangling a fishing wire with a fake fly at the end of it. So there you go. If you thought Machio actually caught the fly, nope, didn't catch it. It was, it was now they would just CGI it. I've been trying it all morning. You're saying he never caught it? No, never caught it.

What a waste of time. Machio thought the title was corny. He fought to change it. They didn't listen to him. Thank God. You mentioned Pat Johnson, the referee, who was also the martial arts choreographer. He says in that oral history, he'd been in martial arts since 1963, was sent to Korea with the U.S. Army, learning Tang Su-Doh, a Korean form of karate, came back to the state, started training with Chuck Norris, got involved a little bit in the Hollywood stuff. Zabka said we were at five days a week, four hours a day for the month before we shot.

Then every day after that, they'd roll out gymnastics mats on the set. Apparently, Zabka had never done martial arts at all before the movie, but he was an accomplished wrestler. And after the movie, continued karate and became a second-degree green belt. But hard to believe he was an envision quest. If he was an accomplished wrestler, I don't know what they were thinking there. He could have been like Shoots Buddy or something. Zabka's, I'll just jump this in here because I could talk about him for the entire two hours.

But when you watch his feet, I don't know what he did growing up, but he's a sick athlete. Yeah. Like the way he moves and glides around and then he's doing some of the rehearsal stuff with Vidal. And he goes to throw like this scissor kick that's not really easy to do because you kind of set it up lower and then you finish it off up higher and snap it across the guy's head. But it's part of like the way you set it up. It's almost like a faint with your leg. And then you have to be flexible enough to get it up to actually have it. hit somebody in the face.

Like there's some people that can do it and you don't get it up that high. And he does. Like in the rehearsal, he throws it. It's pretty tight. And then he gets it up high enough and you just go, this. I was so impressed with him in his athleticism that I don't think it gets enough credit. There you go. You just gave it credit.

I mean, it's his footworks like Barry Sanders. It really is. Like the mat stuff, I'm like, who is this guy? So there's some product placement in this that Machio is pissed off about because Columbia was owned by Coca-Cola, which one. of their products on screen. And there's an orange scene where they have to say minute made

in the breakfast scene. And then he's holding a... That's right. He's holding a sprite at one point. Machio's showing up for the shortest amount of time possible. So look out for that. Daniel's number 89 jersey.

You know whose jersey that was? Greg Kittle. It was a replica of a Chargers jersey, a West Chandler. So there you go. And then here's what a... Elizabeth Shoe said in the oral history about having to wear a bathing suit in the beach scene.

Quote, I remember having to wear a bathing suit for that scene, which was a big deal because I felt so uncomfortable. When we started filming, I was given a trainer and asked to stay in shape. Once the beach scene was shot, I went back to eating whatever I wanted, watch. I slowly gain weight throughout the rest of the movie. So those are words. I noticed. I noticed. And then we mentioned Darrow Vidal, who was Pat Marita's double. for basically anything cool that you see Pat Marita doing in this movie.

So there you go. Apex Mountain. This is easy. Ralph Machio, yes. Pat Marita, yes. Every single person in Cobra Kai plus Mark Cove, yes. John Aviltsin, no,

because I think Rocky is his Apex Mountain. The town of Recita, I'm going to say yes. Yes, yes. In fact, I've had some soccer games there, I've had some baseball games there. Pretty nondescript town

the valley, but it's now known as the Karate Kid Town. The All Valley Karate Tournament, No Question, Yes. And Cruel Summer Banana Ramia, yes. Elizabeth Shue, probably no, I would say winning the Oscar. No, no, Elizabeth Shue, she's the only no. High school biker gang slash ninjas, yes. Yeah, red, weird red jackets between that and the thriller video with Michael Jackson. kind of expensive red leathered seeming jackets.

I would say that was for that. And then those mid-80s arcades that have a whole bunch of stuff with golf and everything else, yes. So there you go. Okay. Picking Nits. We've mentioned a lot of these. The soccer tryouts.

Still unclear why Daniel was just banished from the team. I can understand, get out of here, come back tomorrow. I don't understand, like, it's like a run-our test. David Stern thing where it's just like, you're out, you're going for the year. Like he never gets to try it again.

Even the soccer was his thing. He's out? Does he get to play high school soccer? No, that was it. That was absolutely it. I felt like it was quick, but I feel like Machia had already made a little bit of a name for himself. Like, hey, hear about this new Italian, get his ass kicked in the beach, going after shoe. Like, yeah, he's the skinny one that doesn't pass. All right, I'll have my eye on him.

Another picking nits. Why couldn't Mrs. Laruso just get her car fixed? It just seemed like there was something wrong with the starter. How hard was this? Just take it to the shop. Just fix the starter. Look, hey, man. Some of us are living, you know, check to check back in the day.

It should fix a starter. It's $10. I don't know. It's a new place, mechanics. Although if Miyagi can heal bones and everything else, why couldn't he take a look at it? Yeah, take the car to Miyagi. What the hell?

Miyaki's like the car guy. Actually, now that I think about it, of all the things that don't make any sense in the entire storyline, is her not having Miyagi look at the starter. Terrible job by her. The first time Danielson makes out with Ali At the arcade When they make up

There's some flirting He goes for the kiss And then he starts eating her face It's awful It starts out as a normal kiss And then he starts trying to devour her top lip Like he's a zombie And it is one of the weirdest things

My kids think this is the funniest part of the movie My son goes nuts every time he thinks it's hilarious. Like, why is he doing that, dad? Is that how people kiss? I'm like, no, don't ever kiss anyone that way. Having your lip eaten by Ralph Machio, underrated horrible. I feel bad for her.

I can't imagine how horrified she was as it was happening. And that's all I got. Any other picking nits for you? I just need to add to that that it's so bad that I was convinced after the movie, I go, that means Ralph Machio is a bad kisser in real life. Right? I mean, you would think. Who wants to take the other side?

Like, he can't say, oh, no, that's just my, that's my Daniel LaRuso kiss. I think that's the move, though. If you're Ralph Muncher, like, look, I just felt like Laruso, like he's an awkward kid. Maybe he doesn't know how to kiss somebody. So I just decided to attack her upper lip. That would be incredible, though, if that's his defense. And he's actually a terrible kisser. Best quote, we've mentioned all of them except for a man who can catch fly,

chopsticks can do anything. It wouldn't a fly swatter be easier? Man who catch fry with chopsticks accomplish anything. I still think the best quote in the entire movie. My personal favorite is What's the Matter, Mommy not here to dress you, but I think

either sweep the leg or get him a body bag were the two that lived on. Sweep the leg. Sweep the leg. Do you have a problem with that? I still have even 36 years later is something you could just drop in anything. People know what it is. Next category, could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? This is the all-time example of yes,

because they did it and it worked and they figured out a really smart way to do it. And I highly recommend COBRA Kai, the TV show. Okay, I have a lot of probably in answerable questions. And then hopefully we can get this done in the next 10 minutes. I don't, but just let me just add this. I just don't see Billy Zabka or Johnny in this. case, the character of Johnny never leaving Reseda. Like that guy ends up going to a good school, comes back, tells you how sick the parties are, and then, like, is on his second wife of Wall Street, like at 45. I think that's why you need to watch the Cobra Cat TV series. It kind of lays this out.

Yeah. All right. You know what? I made a mistake there because I'm talking about someone I don't know anything about. So go ahead. Well, that was my first unanswerable question. What colleges did Daniel and Johnny go to? I have an alley. Let's throw her in too. I had Daniel, a smaller school near L.A. I was thinking the University of Laverne. Cal Fulerton. Probably wanted to be within driving distance of Miyagi. Yeah, Cal Fulerton's another good one.

Miyagi's the only friend he's really ever going to make it. It's his entire life. So he at least wants to be able to see him on the weekends. I have Allie going to USC. And I have Johnny as the all-time definitely went to Duke. I don't think there's any way he didn't go to Duke. He was definitely there. he was friends with

during the late 80s, probably friends with Mark Allery. Maybe Christian Leitner. Is Leitner there in time? Yeah, Leitner's there. I think Allerie's gone by then. I think Allerie was on that 80s 16. Maybe Aletary's gone.

Whoever the white guys were in the late 80s. Oh, Danny Ferry. Danny Ferry and Johnny Lawrence were super close. Ferry's like... Maybe roommates. Yeah, he's like, Johnny, you've got to bring me back to L.A. He's like, no problem, bro. Hey, man.

I got these dudes. We like to get out of a moped. and ride 40 minutes to the beach wearing red jackets. Here's what I think happens with shoe, though. I think she goes to Wisconsin and then transfers back to USC. Oh, interesting. She's like, you know, she's like, maybe she goes to some place smaller, though. Maybe she goes to like Wheaton College in Mass and plays soccer and then says,

now what, I want to go back to the West Coast. This cold thing is awful. I don't know that LaRusa, I keep saying LaRusa. LaRuso is a good student, though. There's a really good chance the day he's carried off. That's the peak of his. life because there's a bunch of other signs. I don't even know if he's getting into Cal State Fullerton. I'm going to guess that kid's not a good student. Maybe junior college for him.

What happened to Freddie Fernandez after the beach fight, but until the tournament, because we never see him again. Is he just kind of avoiding Danielson at every step in high school? Is there a scene that they cut out? Do we know he's in high school? Oh, good point. I thought they saw him at high school. I think he's, we see him one more time. He makes fun of Danielson and then they keep going. So I don't know. The Freddie Fernandez arc, I felt like was unexplored. When they knocked Daniel off the hill, when he's riding his bike and the five guys show up behind him and they basically he veers off, goes down the hill and almost dies.

Technically, is that attempted murder? Like, why is it not attempted murder? I guess is my question. Yeah, we're the cops in this. The cops aren't part of any of this, which I do kind of like in some of these movies where you go, hey, just allow us to tell the story and there's never going to be a cop on the scene anywhere to get in the mix. Attempted murder on that one. Possible.

I mean, he could have gone to the police. It would have made him seem like an even bigger wuss, but he could have done it. But that was early. Like, that might be the only time I thought. I was like, okay, that was a little unprovoked. Like, that's where even I'll admit that Cobra Kai may have been at fault. Yeah. Mrs. LaRousseau's job with Rocket Computer.

did it include equity and had it worked out, would she eventually would become a multi-millionaire? Unanswerable question. Because you're moving your family from Newark to Recita, like there's got to be some upside.

There has to be equity. You and your son, like you have to get like half a point or something. How dumb of a move is the crane kick, in your opinion, and how many people have gotten their asses kick trying it over the last 36 years? Thousands. You think thousands would be the answer.

just because even though like I'm having it I think that's low over 30 years that a thousand guys have tried the crane kick because I'm sure a bunch of guys tried it immediately so it's probably in a couple thousands but like anybody if you're going to pull that stuff out in an actual fight you better be good at it

because if you do that and then lose it's way worse than just getting beat up Darrell Vidal and one of the things written about this movie talks about like what a bogus karate move that actually is and like if somebody did that you just charge them because they're off balance. That, you know, the way the big tactical era for Johnny Lawrence is instead of charging

him, he kind of just, he gets confused by it and just kind of walks forward a little bit and he's just in striking distance of it. If he had just run forward at Daniel's sign, Danielson would have been off balance. He would have knocked them over. Could Miyagi's massage technique have saved Kevin Durant in the 2019 playoffs? In your opinion, game three. Yes. Yes.

There's no debate. That's how I feel to. I feel like this guy was way too special to be in some shack with some bonsai trees and some extra shower curtains. No question. I think he's the Alex Guerrero of the mid-80s. I have two more. These are my two favorites for probably in answerable. First one.

What was Dutch's first name? Because you see, well, you see they do the scoreboard or not the score, like the big board where they have all the names that advance. and it's all last names. So I feel like his name might have been like George Dutch or Bobby Dutch or Frank Dutch. So it says Dutch on the board? It says Dutch on the board. And it's all last names for everybody but him.

Like it says Lawrence, not Johnny. It says Laruso, not Daniels, so on and so on. But then it says Dutch. So that makes me think Dutch was his last name. Bob Dutch, Alex Dutch. Kenny Dutch. Kenny Dutch. Ken Dutch.

Or maybe just Dutch. It's like Nene. He just had one name. I don't know. Yeah. Well, like, if you're in high school and you're trying to go Brazilian superstar, that's a tough move to pull off. Yeah.

But if anyone could have done it's Dutch. And then this is my big one. Miyagi offers Daniel. It's like, it's your 16th birthday. Here's my present. Not that I haven't done enough for you already. You're my only, I'm your only friend. I saved you from getting killed by five biker guys.

I've taught you karate and how to defend yourself. I'm also going to give you a car for your 16th birthday. I have these six beautiful antique cars outside. You can pick anyone you want. Daniel's son takes the best car. And we freeze friend that, me and my son, and we actually like studied all the cars. It's the convertible. Out of all of them, I think it's the best biggest convertible. There's only two convertibles in the back. Nice color. Like, do you take, do you take the best car?

Are you, like, so grateful this guy's offering a car? You'd be like, oh, I don't want to take the best car. I'll take, like, the third best car. This is such a nice gesture by you. But Danielson, because he's a fucking dick, it's like, oh, I'll take the best one. I'll take that yellow convertible. I'll take your A1 car. I'm going to take the best one.

Thanks, Mr. Miyagi. What a dick. Yeah, I mean, if there were, if Macho was living, or Laruso, we're living in the virus right now. He'd definitely be outside shirts off, high-fiving people while he jogged. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's on the strand right now, having drinks with like three of his buddies saying it can't happen to us and who cares if it does. Yeah, no. But you know what? I think there is a zag. You know, you guys are sitting there saying he shouldn't have taken the nicest car. He did just fix up the guy's entire property for free. Fair. I would have taken the same. I would have taken the

second best car. That sand the floor shit? Like, really? I'm finished sanding here. Like, what grid are we working with here? Are we doing a 20 and then a 50? Because that sucks. And then he's double checking it. And by the way, how are you supposed to sand the seams and the edges with the sand the floor move? Like, you're going to have to go up down a little bit there. So there are more efficient ways to teach martial arts. But it wasn't quite the lesson, wasn't it? I think if you're taking the yellow car, you at least ask, I think you bring it up. You're like, look. That yellow car is fucking awesome, but is it cool if I take that one?

Can you give me a sign off? No, he's just like, I'm going to take the yellow one. Give me the fucking case. Thanks. Noggi's place was nice. The interior there? Really was. I've always wondered if I'd like a kind of Japanese finishings

at one of my places. Something to think about. Down the road, after one of your movies takes off. Who won the movie is a really tough one. I actually would accept cases for, Pat Marita, Ralph Machio, and William Zabka. I just think that Zabka's staying power on this one is beyond anything anyone could have ever expected. And apparently, when I remember I first started talking about him on the radio show,

it's probably done on 10 years ago, not that that was super original. But we get emails to the show and wherever Zabka lives now, I don't know if he still lives out here. But guys would say, hey, I ran it. Everybody had like a Billy Zabka story. if you ran into him and asked him about it, he'd love talking about it. But it was like in the coolest way. Like he was really, he got the deal. Hey, that's what I'm known for.

If you guys are having beers and you want me to tell a couple stories, like I'll tell it. And then it keeps it moving. And I've watched interviews with him. I even found one from last year. He seems like an unbelievably like grounded kind of cool guy. Like I'm never pretend to know somebody that I don't know. But he has done better with it than so many other people that have these kind of white,

white hot flashes of success to never be seen from again. And he's just sort of like, yeah, man, that's kind of what my deal was. I guess. But I don't know a lot about him. So I don't want to be acting like I do. Also, unclear why he wasn't a bigger star. Because I thought he was really good. I wonder if he got pigeonholed by being the 80s movie villain and couldn't break out of it.

You know, like almost like Anthony Michael Hall got pigeonholed by being the 80s movie nerd, couldn't break out of it. And that was it when he, when, you know, he ripped off like a really, really great four-year run, but nobody could see him as anything other than the nerd. Maybe that was the same thing that happened to Zabka. I think we give it to Zabka. I think in the moment you give it to Macho or Pat Marita, but I think as the years have passed, I think Zabka won the movie.

He's the best part of it. And it's, in a weird way, the hardest part because it could have gone wrong in so many different ways. So anyway, all right, we did it. No, I want to add one last thing, though, because we hadn't touched on it. Sorry. Elizabeth Shue wins the movie because Machio's so stupid that he's like, okay, I have this shower costume.

She's still into me, despite how weird I'm being. And she wants to go outside. So instead of like, you know, I'm going to go get my ass kicked again. So my guess would be Shue wins the movie in a way, too, because she avoided going outside to hook up with Machio. And who knows where that would have gone. Yeah, good point. know that I do know that Lachio when she goes to Wisconsin or wherever and even if she transfers

back and the mom is like, look, I know things haven't worked out for you, Daniel, but you should go visit her at USC and then she's dating like Matt Linerd's older brother. And it's just, I don't know if he has a real older brother. But like there's no way that Daniel doesn't face massive depression those first few years at a high school because the shoe thing is not going to work out. At the beginning of a cried a kid too, she just dumps him. We never even see her. She's like, I'm out. She was like, what was I doing with this guy? What a loser. So there you go.

All right. I vote for Zabka. I can't believe we got an hour 45 out of this. It was almost as long as the movie. Ryan Rissillo, this was as much of a pleasure as I thought it would be. Thank you. Thanks, man. Okay, thanks to State Farm.

Thanks to Rosillo. Thanks to the Greater Boston Food Bank. Thanks for having me. Glad we could help. Don't forget to check out Feedingamerica.org. We will have two rewatchables next week. And if you want to get ready for the first one, it's going to be fast seven, me and shake.

Serrano, the five-year anniversary is coming up. The most emotional ending of any movie that was geared toward action movie fans and guys specifically that has ever happened. I'm getting choked up just thinking about it. Watch it over the weekend and we'll be back on Monday. Fast set. Until