The Worst Idea Of All Time - Episode Six - Mum

Episode Date: October 8, 2018

We go further down the rabbit hole with regard to Hollywood accounting, Guy receives a phone call from his mum and Tim floats another conspiracy theory related to the film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🎵 🎵 Record a podcast, let's record a podcast, because it is so lonely in this room Hello, welcome to episode 6 of the worst idea of all time with me Tim Batt And myself Guy Montgomery And just to start you off this week guys I'd like to take a leaf out of REO Speedwagon's book They of course are the band you've just heard And encourage you to live every moment, love every day, something, something, before your precious time slips away.

And I couldn't think of a better way to live every moment than listen to us rehash our sixth viewing of Grown Ups 2. This is the beautiful irony of the podcast, folks. The worst thing you could do is watch the movie yourself, and the best thing you can do is listen to us talk about the movie we've just watched. That's right. Doesn't really make any sense, but we're going to make it work. We took notes again this week.

It's been a while since we've done that. Yeah, we got off the note-taking track, and we're back on that track. It's funny. If you look at my book here, Tim, you'll see it starts off reasonably sort of organized. There's even little crosses to denote the start of a new thought. You've got like a hierarchical structure of ideas where there's trees. And then it just devolves as the movie goes on. You've just written Kmart

into absolute chaos. And huge letters. And then it just comes out as scrawl at the back I stopped about 45 minutes in I just couldn't do it anymore I too have taken some notes Let's wade in shall we? Guy? Well what I wanted to do today was sort of just hammer out for myself

just the markers, just the points in the movie when I go, all right, great, I know where we are now, just so I can gauge where I'm at. And I thought it would be really easy, but it's all just depressing dross pretty much until the dinner table scene. Like, there's a few moments when like there's the football scene when adam's dinner table scene that's really far into the movie i know so i thought i'd come up with markers before then but i just i just i just couldn't i was just like this

is just shit we speculated a lot during the film today about what we could take out and you could oh yeah no yeah by which you mean if we were to edit the film what you could take out, and you could... Oh, yeah. By which you mean, if we were to edit the film, what you could remove from it, what would be left on the cutting room floor? It would be pretty much everything before the dinner party scene. Yeah. You don't need all that context to understand what happens at the party after the dinner.

It's not a dinner party, is it? It's just dinner time. Fuck, man. It's already gone bad. This podcast has already gone off the rails. It's tanking it's uh it's interesting when you get to your sixth watch of a movie because you just yeah very early on you get all depressed and ah it's all darkness hey i'll tell you what i did do guy well wait do you want to talk about these checkpoints anymore or no let's move forward abandon that something that

people have expressed a little bit of an interest in is the Hollywood accounting yes which is I went and googled it and I found out that that's the term given to this strange accounting practice

that's often applied to films and film franchises and I've found out a few things Adam Sandler's name very commonly associated with the practice

he was actually last year Forbes did an article in December at the end of the year and named Adam Sandler as the number one most overpaid actor in the world. So that's looking at how much he earns versus how much his films earn. That dude is associated with rorting the bloody system. It's shocking.

Can you expand a little on this? I feel like every episode we're going deeper and deeper down the conspiracy theory path. It's not a conspiracy theory. What Hollywood accounting is is the pseudo-legal and definitely unethical way that you count whether a film is profitable or not in Hollywood. Because if it is not profitable on the books, like according to the books, then you don't have to pay people like the writers very much. Because usually their percentage is based on net which means once you take away all the turn your bloody phone oh is it it's my mum calling i'll show i'll pick it up pick it up hi mum

hello you sound sound rather long where you? I'm just recording a podcast. Oh, right. Okay. Well, I might leave you in peace and you can bring me back then. That sounds like a great option. What did you want to talk about? I wanted to see if you were in town on Sunday week. I'm going to come up on Sunday week and stay the night in Auckland and then catch the train

to Wellington with Miranda. Sounds like a bloody good time. Hold on, I'll just look. We thought we'd take our boys out to dinner. Oh, I might. I think I'm doing the footy at our film festival. I'll call you back. This is very unprofessional.

Okay, bye now, bye. I love you. I'll call you back. This is very unprofessional. Okay, bye now, bye. I love you. I love you, bye. She loves me. A little candid moment for you there. Back to Hollywood accounting. Return of the Jedi, for example, despite having earned $475 million at the box office

against a budget of $32.5 million, has never gone into profit. That's how shady this practice is. So it cost $32 million to make. It made $475 million, yet according to the books, it has never made a profit. I don't understand.

So they do things like, when you're doing the expenses on a movie, everything's just based on percentages and usually things like marketing are just 10 and it has no bearing on how much you actually spend on marketing you just say money written off as marketing and so that's not profit that's an expense exactly there's also shell companies that you can form under the movie like form a really expensive catering company to just draw funds out of it so you funnel them out to some somewhere else that you can this all sounds incredibly illegal um well it's pretty legal like it's been going on

for many many years and it's basically it's very prevalent in hollywood spider-man 2 a hugely uh popular and well-doing movie it was a box office smash and stan lee never got paid because his uh his cut was based on percentages and he ended up taking taking, I think, Sony to court over it. And did he win? I don't know. Who cares? I'm just giving some background to Hollywood accounting, bro. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly something that we should dig into a little deeper every week.

You can't give me too much information at one time because I won't understand what's happening. I can't wrap my brain around it. That's fine. Hey, you know what else I found out? Oh, yeah. No, I don't. This is just from the watch. It's not about accounting.

We're taking a very big sideways step here. I reckon Adam Sandler's very insecure about his penis. Okay. I didn't pick up any of that in the film today. I'll tell you why I did. So that scene where they're at the quarry and they're made to jump over Suicide 35 with no clothes on

Which is the jump And then his son Sees his dick And it's like the worst thing in the world So that was a clue And also the bit Where the deer is tearing through the house And the son

Is naked in the shower and that's a big deal. There's a lot of references to Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler's family's dick. Look, this is definitely you losing it a little bit here, Tim. You know, I don't even know how to rebut this. This is probably one of your worst theories

that you've had so far. First of all, he can't be self-conscious because he makes the jokes at the expense of his penis about jumping off suicide 35 you know like he wrote the movie he wrote the line for his son saying i just saw my dad's dick yeah secondly they're joking about masturbating around the bloody table with this this this same son it's a weird that's like that's that's nothing to do with an ugly or gross

that's just like it's uncomfortable to talk about whacking off over the hot girl in school with your dad in front of your mum come on

yeah right fair play there's no there's no meat on this theory what else have you got what else have you been cooking up over there

um my other theory is that uh Brayden Brayden it's gonna sound silly now my theory is that Brayden... Brayden. It's going to sound silly now. My theory is that Higgins' son is a warlock.

David Spade, who's Higgins. So Brayden is the sort of thug guy who comes into the movie from Florida. Yeah. He's overgrown. He's violent. He's monosyllabic. Yeah. Why is he a warlock?

Because there's a couple bits that just kind of allude to the fact that he's got a slightly mystical you know like a supernatural side to himself i'll i'll fill you in on the blanks number one he is um david spade's son and yet he's absolutely massive that was the first thing that pipped my interest to the warlock theory that is that can be explained away with the plot because you look at david spade's love interest in the movie and this she's much bigger than he is she's a bodybuilder of sorts oh yeah maybe maybe maybe higgins has got an attraction to bodybuilders and so the mother of this child is also big all right fair enough but explain this to me then guy montgomery when they're in the quarry and he comes up and sees that David Spade is not at the soup kitchen,

which he assured him that he was at and why he couldn't take him to school, etc., whatever the fuck it was. He emerges from the water and on his hand in pen is written, wait, what is written? Soup kitchen? I believe the words are soup kitchen. Fuck, I thought I wrote that down. If it was a soup kitchen. Fuck, I thought I wrote that down. But anyway, he's written it on his arm that basically the soup kitchen was a lie. At what point did he have the time or opportunity to do that

while he was on the water? We saw him take his clothes off before he jumped in. No, look, I mean... And then at the end of that, he emerges, like he goes back down into the water, just disappearing out of shot, which really alludes to the fact that he like lives underwater. There's another bit as well. When he destroys the frat house to the extent where there's like spray paint everywhere,

like all over these really tall walls, there's teepee thrown around. He had no opportunity to be able to do that. There wasn't enough time that fast. I think, you know, you're probably losing it now, Tim, because all of this stuff can just be explained away as lousy script writing and lazy editing. There's no way they made some, like, secretly supernatural character

and planned him in the middle of the movie. It's just a shit movie. It's just shit script writing. But what if it's not? Well, I was actually interested in brayden in this screening for a different reason i was trying to figure out whether or not he might be autistic because he never really says any fully formed sentences the first thing he says he walks up he's got the piece of paper he says to david spade you're him which makes sense but it's it's

very monosyllabic uh and then david sp says, all right, we've got to get you to school. And his response is, no school. Summertime. And then it goes on. I've got other stuff. He goes to the school. That's the next time we see him. He's in the classroom.

Yes. And he gets told to go and find a seat. And he just walks up to a redheaded kid who offers him his wallet. Like, he's going to take my wallet. And then he says no I sit here like it's all very primitive

that doesn't mean he's autistic that just means he's what if we do something we're not supposed to and then he goes

you lied about when he's in the police car you lied about the soup you lied about the soup I think I don't know I think between our two theories we can figure out

that we're definitely watching this movie too much because neither of us are coming up with anything good here it's just a shit movie character look at how much we're reading into it

I want to talk about what's that you got an email or something I don't know what that was I want to talk about John Lovitz who's someone who's come up in the podcast a lot

because there was a line that I love that we haven't mentioned in the podcast that he says where he has gotten there early before the yoga-ish, the aerobics instructor. Squat aerobics. Squat aerobics instructor appears. So he's the janitor, John Lovitz is. He comes up and he starts taking the class

for his own sexual gratification and demanding that these women do things like bend over to expose their buttocks to him and jiggle their breasts around for his amusement. And the line that he says when the real instructor comes along and basically calls him out, John Lovitz says, say it's true even if it isn't yeah like keep this lie going he doesn't say something like uh help me out here or i've got a thing going he said he's just something about say it's true even if it isn't i think that's when the movie can be fun is when

it sort of plays on its own absurdity its own stupidness exactly and that is a that is an inherently stupid and accordingly very funny line yeah so i love that line i'm sure we've talked about that before no i don't think we've talked about that line specifically because um we've gotten distracted with other john lovett's fantastic moments yeah uh hey can i talk about something real quick we got a tweet no we got a facebook we've got a facebook group now. Join up to that. Worst idea of all time. And someone said we should hone in on some things,

which we definitely haven't done this week, as you can tell from our scattered shotgun approach. I love that idea, and that was where I got my motivation to try and find these marker points at the start of the movie. But honestly, your brain starts melting out of your ears while it's playing, and it just becomes really hard to sort of control yourself essentially i spent my challenge for this movie was i i put my phone on flight mode and threw it on the couch across the room and i was fine for the first sort

of 40 minutes and then you could see me battling with myself to not pick up the phone just to focus on the movie and it just becomes impossible to i don't know i guess we could try harder i wrote a poem yeah yep lay it on me cool do it like you're doing it in speech and drama so say the title by timbett and then oh it doesn't have a title make up a title now um beautiful by timbett gorgeous blonde flowing Beautiful by Tim Batt. Gorgeous, blonde, flowing. Shiny like a Ferrari. It's David Spade's hair. Because the person who requested we hone in on stuff

suggested that we might want to talk about the haircuts in the film. So that's just my little tip of the hat to you. Thanks to Kat who recommended that we hone in on that. That was very cute. Just while we are here, I've got one thing I'd like to talk about. How long have we got? Another ten, mate. Ten minutes.

All right. First of all, is Steve Buscemi? Yes. Now, Steve Buscemi has got some of the most telegraphed gags in this whole flick every appearance that he makes is a fucking nightmare and uh and it's sort of it's it's got me wondering because steve buscemi is i think we've we've touched on earlier he shows up in nearly every adam sandler movie billy madison he was like the weird guy who he bullied in high school and he puts lipstick on like that was a funny cameo he was in mr deeds i think he was in big daddy is crazy eyes um i don't know who's crazy eyes

and mr deeds i've seen a lot of adam sandler movies anyway uh and they're getting worse and i'm wondering why first of all i'm saying that adam sandler movies are getting worse so is the steve basheemi cameos. Yeah, like each by magnitude individually. Like the movies are getting worse, but his appearances are getting even worse still. Relatively speaking to the movies. What I'm wondering is why, what dirt does Adam Sandler have on Steve Buscemi that warrants his continued appearances

in these just awful films? Because Steve Buscemi, he's established himself. He's put his hand up as a pretty decent character actor now. Maybe something even more, a leading man. You look at Boardwalk Empire. And you look at his other films, he's not touching any of this sort of low-hanging fruit comedy. Con Air comes to mind.

He was fabulous in Con Air. I wanted to do Con Air every week instead of this. Yeah, that was our first idea for a film, but we decided it was too good. Too good a film. There's not enough suffering in watching Con Air every week instead of this yeah that was our first idea for a film but we decided it was too good too good a film there's not enough suffering and watching con air every week um i mean is there any because you you're a man who likes to hook into a conspiracy theory is there anything in this do you think adam sandler has some dirt on buscemi yeah absolutely and i'm just trying to figure out what it is like you know that buscemi is a volunteer firefighter right no that's awesome he's part of the um the New York, I think still like fire department at 9-11.

Despite the fact that by this stage he was a very established actor, he went in there. He was part of the, maybe not the first responders, but he was part of the crew who went in and sorted that out. So I feel like he might, because that would suggest he's got some sort of pillar of the community type vibe. And often it's these people who sort of look like they're on a pedestal

to society and communities. They've got some real dirty stuff. They've swept under the carpet. We could take another tack with this because I think Steve Buscemi has proved himself to be a pretty fantastic human and a great guy. Maybe Adam Sandler knows about a medical condition and he knows about it through doing the films with him

because he needed to cover the insurance for him while he was working that would prevent him from getting back in the fire department and the fire department don't know about it. What about that? It's convoluted. I mean, it's not bad. There's definitely something going on here, though, because, and once again, can't stress enough, don't see the movie,

but Steve Buscemi, every time he appears on screen you just want to scream at him get out of there man get out of there it's too late for the big the big dogs but it's not too late for you speaking of this uh i've spent a lot of time today watching the extras so not watching what's happening at the front of the shot but in the sort of depth field out the back awful awful acting much worse than the actual acting is the extras acting it's just it's just a whole lot of people sucking the fight scene you've got to try eh because you know like one of these takes is going to make it to the film so you you've got to try extras and that fight scene is a good example of this there was a bit that i put actually today

was the first day where we've started rewinding and going back because every other day we've been like we can't make this last a second longer than but now we're kind of relishing in the there's a few yeah there are a few a few sort of chris rock acting moments which we sort of earmarked as being low points for the film oh i had another thing I want to talk about but it's gone what were we talking about? The extras? The terrible fight scene there's two extras in particular in one part of the film where they're not landing punches

on each other and it's painfully apparent were you going to talk about the terribly choreographed fight scene between what's his name? Kyle, the instructor nah man, whatever it was it's gone it's gone i mean should we get into our shining light oh yeah sure do you want to go first yep so the shining light is the part of the movie um that we enjoyed because a lot of this podcast

today and forevermore will be how much we hate this film so we've got to pick bits that we like the shining light in the sort of horrible, cavernous abyss in which we reside for two to three hours every Monday. My shining light today, Tim, was a moment brought to us by Chris Rock. So his daughter's about to go on a date with Bumpty, who's the son of Tim Meadows. He's sort of this gawky kind of rapping kid at the school.

And they're at the dinner table, and Chris Rock, he's sort of this gawky kind of rapping kid at the school and uh they're at the dinner table and Chris Rock goes he's just told his daughter she's got permission to go on a date with this guy Bumpty and he's goes to the door here's the doorbell ring he goes to the door he's holding a big picture picture of Pepsi and uh Bumpty says what's up player I'm here for your daughter and Chris Rock just takes like two liters of Pepsi and just throws it in his face. And it made me laugh today. And that was my shining light moment. It's his delivery of that line, that kid.

It's such a full-on thing to say to the father of someone you're trying to date. What's up, player? I'm here for your daughter. what's up player i'm here for your daughter okay my shining light today is um uh adam sandler's son it's alluded to uh quite a few times in the movie for some reason they keep coming back to it because it's such comedy gold that he masturbates in the shower uh that's when is that not funny you know talking about your son masturbating in the shower so the way that he tries to hide this and i think it's greg right who's masturbating in the shower. So the way that he tries to hide this, and I think it's Greg, right, who's masturbating. It's Greg.

I don't know the names. It's not Keith. Yeah, no, Keith's the younger one. Yeah, it's Greg. So Greg, at the very start of the film, in the infamous deer sequence, which we've talked about ad nauseum in the past, gets pissed on by a deer who catches him in the shower.

There is a back and forth exchange later on that day before they're going to school in which Adam Sandler says, oh no, one of the kids, the other brother says, he says he's taking a long time in the shower, alluding to the fact that he's masturbating. He's saying, in his defense, he goes, all I'm doing is conditioning my hair. That's what I'm doing in the shower.

Yeah, and then Adam Sandler says, that's not what the deer told me. Yes, and then my shining light moment is, Adam Sandler's son says, that deer is a liar. And this is where we're at now everybody I mean it's not a bad line Tim hey you know what else was a shining moment like fucking thing for me I think Shaquille O'Neal is pretty good in this movie

wow that's a whole can of worms for next week no Shaquille O'Neal is good in this movie man he's funny And he's got those big hands Cracks me up That's the only thing that you said during the movie

You said Shaquille O'Neal's big hands crack me up At no point did you say Oh I like Shaquille O'Neal in that bit The only time you comment on him is you like his hands I don't need to like him He just needs to have something funny And it turns out his hands are god goddamn massive that's funny it's not funny i've written down i don't know what this note means most depressing kevin james man bit oh no we were saying that kevin james's cat we see we

didn't talk about this today but we're saying kevin james's character is probably the most deplorable in the whole movie so most depressing is probably kevin kevin james interaction with his family he's a terrible parent like there's a scene where his son's eating from a tub of butter and the son looks up and says this is the best vanilla pudding i've ever eaten and kevin james without even looking up just downcast staring at his plate goes that's not pudding son that's butter but he doesn't do anything to stop him doesn't like five just just lets him keep eating butter obviously worrying his son to to piss away his life and die i want to mention this as well the least skillful part of storytelling in this movie is that they briefly introduce a threat and immediately kill it whereby adam sandler's son

turns out is an incredible kicker in football like he's making these goals from miles away these drop kicks are perfect he's right between the pins and so it gets revealed there's a sweeping crescendo of orchestral music that comes up the people who are in the proper football team at the high school start gathering around and paying attention and then Adam Sandler promptly falls onto him and breaks his leg. All of this happens within about 40 seconds. So they immediately set this thing up that Keithy's going to be this all-star football player

and then destroy the dream, and it doesn't lead to anything. It's just, yeah, it's... It's like so many bits of the film where it's like, well, then why? It's set up for a big gag, and then there's no payoff in the gag And the gag doesn't further the plot It doesn't contribute to the story

It's just filler It's mega fucked man, they keep doing it It's like the deer bit at the start It's not even referenced later in the movie It's like the raft in Kmart and then riding into the It's like everything in this movie Nothing contributes to anything else We're not being positive right now, Tim.

I don't need to be positive. This movie is fucking terrible, and I'm going to have to watch it another, presumably, 46 times. Well, here's a thought, though. Four weeks from now, we'll be almost a fifth of the way through. Yeah, and I'm rewarding us, because I have said that when we get to number 10,

we're allowed to start forming the worst idea in the world of all time slash Grown Ups 2 drinking game. Because I think by that stage we'll know the movie so well that we'll be able to set rules off the top of our head on where we should be drinking through the film. Okay. Are you excited about that? I'm fucking pumped.

No, I'm not. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it i'm pretty i'm pretty excited i'm just real stoked this is over for the week thanks for listening very negative i'm excited about drinking in four episodes time i hope you join me please click on the facebook group and give that a little joiny lucky thing all feedback and suggestions welcome if you have watched the movie please please write a review, send it in to us. We will read it out. We will discuss your opinions. It's getting dire in here. It's getting real dire in here.

And a tease for next week, we track down a very minor actor in this film whose face you don't see. And we have tweeted her on Twitter. We're hoping to get a hit back. She's in a fantastic bit of the movie where she gets slammed in the back of the head with an ice cream scoop we'll bring you the updates as soon as they happen I'm Guy Montgomery and I'm Tim Beck

live every moment Love every day Cause before you know it Your precious time slips away Live every moment