Talking Pondo: Clerks and Say Anything with Ben Apuan

 In this episode, first time guest Ben Apuan joins the podcast. He brings along the movie Clerks. Marty and Clif give Ben the movie Say Anything to watch.

This week on Talking Pondo, Marty and Clif are joined by Ben from Chasing the Whimsy for a deep dive into two landmark films that helped define independent cinema: Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything (1989) and Kevin Smith’s Clerks (1994).

On the surface, these movies couldn’t be more different. One is a heartfelt, romantic coming-of-age story, the other a black-and-white, foul-mouthed retail comedy. But together, they capture the shifting cultural moment between the late ’80s and early ’90s, when indie filmmakers proved you didn’t need studio polish to say something real.

The conversation digs into Clerks as a once-in-a-lifetime debut: it's handmade feel, sharp dialogue, budget-driven creativity, and the birth of the View Askewniverse. From newspaper machines and 37 infamous confessions to Jay & Silent Bob’s unlikely legacy, the crew explores why Kevin Smith’s $33,000 gamble still resonates decades later.

They also connect the dots between both films through music, tone, first-time directors, and a shared DNA of alternative cinema that celebrate authenticity over perfection.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

I don't think he had any idea he was gonna make more movies about these people.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

I don't I don't know. Not when if not when not no, not until this scene got released in the world.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

But of course, if he had been able to shoot the scene that happens at the the uh funeral home, the deleted cartoon sequence, you would have actually seen Joey Lauren Adams before he even met her and had the money to hire anybody like that. But you're right, you're right about all that.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Welcome to season three of Talking Pondo. Talking Pondo is a podcast where Cliff and Marty give each other a film to watch and talk about them in detail. Some episodes will include a special guest.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

James Court sells cigarettes to a minor will not be seen tonight, so we may bring you the following whimsy. And I was thinking if he existed in the clerks universe, he would be busted for selling cigarettes rather than ripping off elderly people.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Well, and I I like how you folded in Whimsy, which is in the Clerks movie, but also has something to do with our guest today. Yes, isn't it? So that's pretty that's pretty slick. That's well done. We're not usually that well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

We don't usually think that far ahead. So we're back once again. It's Talking Pondo. I'm Marty. I'm Cliff. Bringing a couple movies. Yeah, a couple more movies this week. Uh movies that go hand in hand this week, but are also polar oppos opposite opposites, opposites in many ways, as I'll get into. Uh, we have Say Anything from 1989. Is that right? 1989. And then we have Clerks from 1994. Two movies firmly from that alternative film scene of the late 80s, early 90s. And uh one of them's about uh a guy that knows how to handle relationships, kind of, and there's the other one's about a guy who really doesn't know much about anything. Absolutely clueless. So it's kind of kind of funny the dichotomy between these two. Uh, we have a special guest today. Yes, we do. We like to bring guests on. You know that uh we got Ben from Chasing the Whimsy today. That podcast. Yeah, hello. Welcome, Ben. Welcome, welcome. Yeah, we met Ben over at uh Tuscon, Tuscon. I don't know how I'm supposed to say it. It's the Tucson Science Fiction Fantasy Author Horror Convention, something like that, right? But we go to it every year here in Tucson, and we paneled together uh on one panel this last year, and it was like, well, shit, it's it he's gotta come on the show. And what better movie that Ben brought to us than Clerk's because not only have Cliff and I been called the Kevin Smith of the Southwest, which I think is pretty hilarious if somebody would call us that because we've written movies about people that work in retail environments that are comedies. Yes, yes, they don't be on TV right now, and then of course, Ben has been a massive uh view of Skew universe fan, from what I've been able to gather from listening to a bunch of his podcasts over the last few months, where you've gone to Chronicon in Chicago so far, and yeah, pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Oh yeah, uh we did Chronicon two years in a row, uh the the last year and this year, or 24 and 25. Um, and yes, I do love the VSQ universe. Um, if we go back, we got episodes 37, uh Ming Chen, Brian Johnson, and then we had Walt Flanagan, uh, who we will talk about a little bit in uh in the clerks review. But yeah, I I definitely enjoy the VSQ stuff, man.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

That's amazing. I I you I can't believe you had all three of them on your podcast. That's absolutely I'm I'm I'm I'm jealous, envious, and that's awesome and astounded all at the same time. I would that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

Yeah, they were good guys. Um, a lot of fun. Ming Chen is always he's been on a couple of times. Um, but yeah, uh the the view iskew audience, uh the listeners and and the fandom uh that follows uh Kevin Smith and the View SQ are amazing people. Um the the vibes that you kind of get from uh Tuscon or Tuscon um a little bit the same when we go to Chronicon, but a little bit more like high energy, um and a bunch of just everybody quoting movies and just playing uh cosplay with Kevin Smith stuff. So uh yeah, good times.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yeah, I I listen to Tell Em Steve Dave every week. I know I think Cliff is like maybe a once in a while, but I I'm I'm there pretty much every week. So when I was going back over some of the whimsy episodes and I hear heard you tell the story about how you uh were talking to Brian Johnson when you got their phone number, I remember I was I remember hearing that episode, and now I know the guy who was the person who ended up calling over there instead of saying, Oh, sorry, you get this phone number, and it was pretty terrible.

SPEAKER_04 5:32

It was totally an accident, but yeah, it was so it was uh I by when we heard that episode, uh I freaked out. Uh, and I called my son, and I was like, You have to listen to this. And then I played him the clip of it real quick, and I'm like, that's definitely us.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

I'm a I'm a big Smith fan. I think anybody who's seen Marty and I's movies would know that we're both big fans. I uh I lived in New Jersey, went to school there, so I I I've been to the stash, the original stash, um, the new stash. Um I've met uh I got a I have a Walt Flanagan story where I I bought uh while I was in the stash, they were selling the um the weed dealer, the union cards that he should, you know, something like that. You know, you can pack by a pack for like five bucks, right? And so I bought a couple and he just threw like 20 in a pack and he was just like, here, take them. And I was I was buying um, I think the widening guy series, and Kev, Kev had them on, he had just released them, they had them on the wall and he signed them. So I grabbed this all six of the series, and they're driven drawn by Walt, and Walt's checking me out. And I'm like, I look down at the books, go, Walt, did you draw these? And he goes, Yeah, and I went, Well, can you sign them? What the fuck, man? And he goes, Oh, yeah, I guess I should meet. And he starts popping them all out and he signs them and pops them back. I'm thanks, man. I really appreciate it. So, you know, my my those book sets are signed by Walt and Kev, which I uh are really, really precious to me. Um, I've been I've been to RST Video and the the Quick Stop, you know, I've been in there to grab soda, I've I've I've done the pilgrimage there. Um, I've seen uh I was I was saw Clerks Three when Kev did the tour. Um I've I've seen him live a bunch of times. Marty and I've seen him live a couple times. Yeah, the get old and Phoenix about 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I saw him, I just saw him recently um on his own tour, his I think it's the oral sex tour. And Jay was supposed Jay was supposed to be there, but he missed the fucking flight. And so so Kev did a whole he did a whole 25 minutes uh talking trash on Jason Mews for missing the flight, which was fucking awesome. Um, but yeah, huge, huge fan of Kev's work. I think he's really influenced Marty and I and kind of as as like yeah, I think for a lot of filmmakers, he's kind of shown like, look, if you want to really do it, here's a way to do it, right? Slowly and get it done and independent independently. You don't have to wait for somebody to give you a shitload of money. Here's how you can do it. You know, here's how here's a way you can tell a story, right? Two guys in a store, bam, done. You know, I I he didn't give you a lot of location, he gave me a few extra locations, but it's mainly 85%, one location, one thing that you do anyway. I can call it a lot of people.

SPEAKER_04 8:12

He was also real big uh like his whole second act of uh podcasting. Yeah, he took that same indie vibe of movies and and built the podcast networks modcast where he he had his show.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

Yeah, he was super smart about about uh uh uh online, getting online getting involved really early. He was real smart about that.

SPEAKER_04 8:34

Um, but he but he was always uh real big on telling people, like especially when you listen to the the uh Batman Beyond stuff. Uh he's always telling people for years of like get out there and tell a story, have fun with your friends and family. Um, and that was a little bit of the genesis of where the podcast uh from uh Whimsy comes from. Is I got my my 15-year-old, my five-year-old, we're going to Tucson. We got um, we got my daughter's aunt. Um, my uh my mom hasn't been on you, but um like we have all this friends and family come in and we're just having this great time just doing it together, um, and really following those uh indie vibes. Like, I don't have the best camera or microphone, but we make it work, right? That's the best thing.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

Yeah, yeah. You do what you do what you can, you make it work. You know, that's I can't think of another um indie black and white that's like that one. Like there are a lot of black and white films and some indie black and whites out there, but that clerks in particular tends to just stand out as this one type of film. I I don't know how else to say it. And I don't think honestly it wouldn't work as much in color. We we should probably get into those at some point more. Well, I guess we can start with clerks.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Slacker with uh Richard Link later. Yeah, you're going right off on my notes. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

You know, I was thinking uh Jim Jar, I was thinking maybe Dead Man Jim Jarmouche or something like that. Let me read the intro to clerks here real quick and we'll jump into it. Um clerks, 1994, rated R, hour and 32 minutes long, a day in the lives of two convenience clerks named Dante and Randall as they annoy customers, discuss movies, and play hockey on the roof store. That's your um log line. Storyline is Dante Hicks is not having a good day. He clerks in a small convenience store and is told to come to work on his day off. Don Dante thinks life is a series of down endings, and this day proves to be no different. He reads in the newspaper that his ex-girlfriend Caitlin is getting married. His present girlfriend reveals to have somewhat more experience with sex than he thought. His principal concerns are the hockey game he has that afternoon and the wake for a friend who died. His buddy Randall Graves works as a clerk in the video store next door, and he hates his job as much as Dante hates his.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

What's a newspaper? It's funny when you look back at these older films and there's things that were part of the plot devices that a younger generation would be like, What? A newspaper? But yes, newspapers were a very prominent thing years ago. It's how we got our information. I delivered newspapers for many, many, many years. And so when I first saw this movie on home video when I was 19, I had a major issue with it, major issue, sir. Five minutes or so into the movie, when Dante opens up the newspaper machine and he steals all the fucking papers out of the machine. Now, of course, I realize it's because his delivery driver is an idiot and didn't give papers for the store, so he has no choice but to take the papers out of the machine. But as someone back in the day who was, you know, delivering papers for a living, and when people steal the papers out of the machine, the paper plant doesn't pay for the papers, the delivery driver pays for the papers. So I'm like, well, fuck this guy. He's telling people it's okay to steal newspapers, which is funny because now it doesn't make any sense. You know, there's a few paper machines here and there, but it's like, you know, that's so long gone. But it immediately put a bad taste in my mouth when I was watching the movie, and it was like, well, what the hell? So uh spoiler alert, the ending of part three doesn't bother me as much because I'm like, yeah, fuck that guy. He was stealing newspapers. But you know, it's just kind of funny. But I years later, I got into the movie around the year 2000 after the Clerk's cartoon got me back into it, and I was like, okay, Dante, I'll forgive you. Your driver was an idiot. He wasn't stocking the store properly.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

I think it's I think it's important to point out that to anybody listening, if you don't know what he's talking about, so a paper machine is this is this box that used to sit outside of you know different stores, and you stick a quarter in it, and you stick a quarter in it, and then you'd pull a handle and the door would open, right? Then you could and there was just a stack of papers in there. And there was nothing to keep you from taking two papers if you wanted two papers, other than your own personal sense of honor. Do you know that people would steal newspapers?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

It seems like an absurd notion. I know.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

But so but so so yeah, so in clerks, Dante goes and he sticks a quarter in the machine because of course the store doesn't have any papers, and the last thing he wants to do is listen to people bitch, because he always gets already gets what do you mean I have to drink this? There's no ice, I have to drink this coffee hot, you know, shit like that. So the last thing he's gonna do is listen to somebody bitch about papers. And as somebody who helped my friend Marty deliver in papers, the people who have papers, and I I also in my 30s had a did a little nighttime delivery as an extra job for a while. And people who fucking get papers are obsessive about getting the newspaper, it's a big deal to them, and they fucking they they want to have certain sections that they read obsessively, and it's very important. So Downtate's not gonna listen to that shit, he's gonna go out to the machine and steal every paper in that machine just to save himself.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah, it's the same person delivering to the machine anyway, more than likely. So nobody thinks about this stuff when they watch this movie. No.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

Uh, I love the idea that uh as a social norm, uh that people would just take one. Like you have the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

People think they're being watched, right?

SPEAKER_04 14:05

It's like yeah, the honor system. Or yeah, or the idea of like, why do I need seven of these things if I'm going to work?

unknown 14:10

That's true.

SPEAKER_04 14:13

But at the same time, like it's a it'd be a weird like social experiment to see like what would happen today if you were able if you put something out there and how many people would take them all. But yeah, it's uh the the idea that clerks is this this moment in time in which like society was like there was a certain level of trust that everybody knew.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

Yep. And it was just assumed, like you just you you just put a quarter in, pulled the door, and and got one paper. Right. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

And some type of people would leave like a paper jammed so that it wouldn't shut all the way, so the next person can get a free one. And every time I see that, I'm just like closed in the door.

SPEAKER_04 14:54

Oh, there was there was a trick back in the day. So you had the the big square block on the front of it and had like these two little wing tips on it, right?

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Yeah, two little handles, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:03

If you pull and hit it at the exact same time, it would unlatch.

SPEAKER_03 15:07

Oh, see.

SPEAKER_04 15:09

So so I would I was that guy who was watching clerks who was like, I'm gonna be destructive and just start breaking stuff. But yeah, there was a little trick back in the day that you'd be able to dislodge it if you hit it correctly.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah, those machines, they were uh not very not very strong.

SPEAKER_03 15:26

So we start with so we start the movie with vilification, which is abusively disparaging speech or writing. Um and we get right into it with you know the store being locked. We go through this whole series of like it's just a bunch of montages. We he plays an entire song over the opening, over the credits and over everything. I mean, he plays this, he drops the needle on that song and plays it all the way to the end, three minutes and something, as he's showing you Dante's house, showing him, you know, get having to come into work, opening the store, stealing the papers, all that stuff, and then finally getting behind the counter. And then very quickly, he uh has an argument with his girlfriend over the amount of blowjobs that she's given to men, right? Um, and of course, it's the famous 37. My girlfriend sucked 37 dicks in a row. And then, of course, the even better one is try not to suck any dick on the way to the parking lot. Hey, you get back here, which is my favorite fucking line of all fucking time. It's just because that dude just kind of just nonchalantly just starts walking away and he's like, Hey, get back here.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

You can see already that the tone has shifted from the 80s sex comedies where yes, we'd show all these shenanigans. Now it's part of the dialogue of a funny witticism of how we get the sexual stuff in the movie, so it's switched from uh your porkies to clerks.

SPEAKER_04 16:54

Well, it was nice is Kevin Smith uh always had that voice where he wrote conversations very similar to what him and his friends were having. And it's interesting that while he was making this film, he didn't really think about like the necessary, like I would assume if you were gonna make uh like a teen movie in the 80s and you wanted to go like PG 13 on it, obviously you'd have to dial it all back, right? But he kind of just didn't worry about it and kind of just spoke to what he wanted and how clever he wanted to be with it. Um so it was always it was super interesting um as a kid growing up watching this thing and being like, oh my god, this is how I talk with my friends when my mom's not around.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

He's the smartest Vulgarian I've ever heard. Like he's it's it's his characters are a mixture of like really intelligent people with decent vocabularies who are discussing, you know, the flo philosophies of life and things of you know, the things that are affecting them, but also if you know, like why and how they're affecting them. It's not just, you know, oh, I want to play hockey on the roof, but all these things are keeping me from playing hockey on the roof, and the fact that I won't close the store says something about me that I won't go play hockey on the roof. And they're having that discussion, right? Uh while at the same time talking about 37 blowjobs and taking shits and you know, all this other crazy stuff that they fucking, you know, and Jay and Silent Bob out front, you know, uh go down on you like a circus seal. There's all this vulgarity in the film, but there's also all this kind of, I don't know, I wouldn't say highbrow humor, but there's some indecently intelligent conversations going on at certain points in the film, right? Where um it's surprising. And that I'll say this a lot of it feels very true, like you said, like and I don't think it's not like we talked exactly like that, but we have those same conversations with our friends, right? Like you, you know, the the the scene where he's talking to her, and you know, how many girls have you had sex with? And he's like, 12, and she gets mad at him, and then he turned he he just asks her a simple question and she lets slip that she gave some dude a blowjob, and he he goes, Well, how many blowjobs have you given? And now suddenly the tables are turned on her, right? And that's a that happens in relationships constantly, you know. That's if you've been in a relationship that you've had that argument and had suddenly turn on you like that. That's so per perfectly natural and normal, and I think that's what makes the film feel so um real, gritty, gritty, and and lifelike.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

He explores that more in chasing Amy with the dwelling on people's sexual past. And it's funny because Alyssa Jones is mentioned in the movie. So he's already strangely enough building his viewers. Even though I don't think he had any idea he was gonna make more movies about these people.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

I don't I don't know. Not when if not when not no, not until this scene got released in like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

You know, it hurts the story more than like universe building. It just later on, you know. But of course, if he had been able to shoot the scene that happens at the the uh funeral home, the deleted cartoon sequence, you would have actually seen Joey Lauren Adams before he even met her and had the money to hire anybody like that. But you're right, you're right about all that. Uh this is the only pure movie that Kevin Smith made, I feel, because he went right to Mallrats after this, so it's like, okay, here's the budgets, and even by the time you're doing Chasing Amy, you now have your actor friends who I mean when you look at clerks, it's like you're shooting this in the middle of the night, you barely knew what you were doing, it's so handmade. Like you were saying, it he was just putting it all out there, not worrying about it. Chase Chasing Amy has that one shots, it has the feel, but it's got Van Affleck in it at that point. It doesn't have a bunch of unknowns, and it feels like it came out of nowhere, you know. Chasing Amy feels like clerks, if clerks had a bigger budget and a couple of known actors, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

The rest of them, yeah. The rest of them, when he gets into Maratz and Dogma and and and Jane Silent Bob Strike back, I know exactly what you're saying.

SPEAKER_04 21:01

And well, the the beauty of Chasing Amy was they they wanted it originally budgeted for like 10 million, and they uh uh the studio uh bookmarked um who was it, David Swimmer, yeah, and um uh was it Ben Steeler or somebody?

SPEAKER_03 21:20

Can't fucking imagine the past of that movie. I can't imagine that.

SPEAKER_04 21:26

No, but I love the idea that he was so passionate about his work, and even though Ben Affleck was in it, I don't know of how big he was at that point because this is still before um yeah, he wasn't super big.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

No, he wasn't this is before goodwill and all that stuff, right?

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Yeah, just before. Um, but the idea that he he resonated with these people in his uh his sophomore film uh Mall Rats, he was like, I there's something about these characters with Joey and and Ben and even um uh Brody, uh Jason Lee, where he was just like, I like what these guys. Guys did with Maw Rats. So let's do it again. And the budget like uh got trimmed down to like less than 500,000. Yeah. So what was supposed to be 10 or 5 got all the way down. Um, so he still worked a uh a nice budget film with chasing Amy.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

Yeah. Um I think that definitely has that more handmade feel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:22

Um a little clean you can tell the growth that he's had um in those handful of years, uh, with just a little extra money, um, and definitely more comfortable with with what he was doing having coming out of Mall Rads.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

I think it's what sets him apart from a lot of the 90s directors because a lot of them they uh made kind of a semi-mainstream movie right from the get-go that was popular. Like you look at Reservoir Dogs, he's hiring name actors and stuff. Yeah, but you look at El Madiachi, that's another one where it's a pure film where it's like you just pulled that out of nothing. Right. And so it's just that that scrapping. I know Quentin made a movie before Reservoir Dogs, but nobody talks about that one, apparently. Uh I've never seen it. Have you seen that one, Cliff? The one that he saved up money at the video store to make. So he does have his own.

SPEAKER_03 23:18

The only thing I've seen is uh he did a he did a project piece for the Sundance workshop where he shot he shot some of the scenes of Reservoir Dogs, but he used I think one of the actors was was still one of the actors that I think Kaitel or somebody was in it, was in it, but uh they changed he changed all the other actors. He didn't have he didn't have those originals.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

So yeah, it reminds me of like why I like some of those indie uh horror guys from the 70s and 80s because a lot of their first entries, like Evil Dead and stuff, it's just oh, you made that out of nothing. You had no studio backing, you barely knew what you were doing out of college, and it has that unique feel that when they start getting money, their movies are still awesome, but there's nothing quite like that first didn't know what you're doing, stab in the dark, which leads us back to Slacker, which is the movie that apparently inspired Smith to make clerks. And I remember going to see like a Spike and Mike's Twisted Animation Festival or something, and seeing the trailer for Slacker for the first time and getting that feeling of this is different. What what is this? You know, and now of course we've seen what Link Later's gone on to do, and then then Smith is using actors from Days and Confused Link Later movie in Chasing Amy and so on. So it just starts to get all mixed together in there.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

I I get you, I get what you I know exactly what you mean, and I had that feeling with um with uh sex lies and videotape when I saw that when I saw that I wrote this something's something's completely different, but this is not it doesn't resolve itself, it's this weird sort of strange slice of life kind of I don't know. It's I I really thought it was something different and interesting.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

But you know what sets this one apart the most? Who starts with the comedy and in black and white? Most people would start with like a horror movie or something, you know, to try to get your way in. And it's it's amazing that that this even got pulled off. There's a lot of secret sauce in this that made it work. Obviously, it's the Smith and Mosier connection, but this time through, I realized no David Klein, no movie. Because he had a DP that kind of knew what he was doing, and so if you had a DP that didn't know how to make the movie look even as good as it does, is the movie as successful? We see Klein goes on to work on freaking Hans Orion and shit. Probably probably a bigger career than Smith had, yeah, it's pretty crazy. But I was like, Oh yeah, people they sleep on Klein, but he's a very important part of the the mixture, too, you know.

SPEAKER_04 25:55

Yeah, absolutely. He I believe he was the one that suggested putting it in black and white. Was like we can't as as your DP, he's like, I can't. He's like, we gotta do it at like if we shoot it at night when it's closed, you don't have to worry about lighting. Um and the whole idea of like we can save a bunch of money if we do this thing in black and white. And then they're like, sure, like they the idea that what drove this this career was this budget idea, this idea of like we gotta try to keep this thing on a budget. And he's like, and they all the decisions that they made um were all budget restrictions, basically. Uh like all the the the little nuances throughout the movie that you like, uh like Walt Flanagan plays like six uh like six different people in the movie.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Oh, so does so does Mojer. I mean Mojer's in there playing at one point. Yeah, at one point Mojer yells at himself.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

Yeah, yes, the some special hockey roof in the top scene.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Yeah, fantastic. And we see Flanagan.

SPEAKER_05 27:03

It's fantastic. Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

Yeah. I think I think what's most important with that is that Klein got the basics right. Yeah, everything's in focus, his F-stops are correct. Um, you know, his when he moves the camera, he moves it correctly. You know, the he doesn't move the camera a lot because they just didn't have the money for it, right? But when he does move the camera, he moves it correctly and he has a lot of places it correctly. A lot of oneers, a lot of good oneers, good good camera choices, good shot choices. The the I remember when I watched this movie in '95 being very confused about the layout of the convenience store. Like it didn't, it I did not realize until I walked into the motherfucker that the when you walk, when you open the door to walk in, the counter's on your left. And it's it's facing like Dante's back is towards the shutters in that in that store, right? So when you walk in, his his he's facing away from the shutters behind the counter, and it's this, it's in the uh oh, that store, by the way, that store stunk. Smelled like spoiled milk. It was it was not a good smell. The milk. Maybe that had an accident or something during my visit. They always pay what they uh break.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

Uh what else is interesting is behind the scenes stuff is uh if you go deep into the Kevin Smith's uh this lore of who he is and where he came from, uh Vinny Pereira, uh the guy who used to work RST, um, they would hang out all the time. And Vinny kind of gave him a little crash course in in film before he left uh the film school. Uh and I think I bet he had a bunch of influence on um uh of how to shoot this thing and uh just some general knowledge of of film. So as they're kind of brainstorming and trying to work out these different shots and then the idea of black and white. Um, I bet he had uh I don't want to say significant, but I bet he had a uh some good feedback with regards to how that movie came out too.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 29:12

Uh real quick, small antidote. I did a uh a QA. Uh no, I was doing some trivia at Chronicon. Uh I was live streaming it and I was doing uh some questions. Guy comes up and like just destroys all my questions, and I realized like 20 minutes into it that it was Vincent Pereira.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Yeah, is that really fair to have the view askew historian answering all my questions? I was there when the mic was written. No shit.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

That's funny.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Speaking of weird, weird, obscure, trivial knowledge. Is dental school the movie in the 1230 movie that they're trying to go see one of them, one of the movies. Because dental school is mentioned in this, and I was like, wait a minute, is he reusing the title? Because that would totally be something that he would do. We talked about the 1230 movie a few months ago, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we did. I was like, that was like the late night movie they were gonna sneak into, kind of the pervy one after the Flash Gordon rip-off and whatever else they were sneaking into. It's crazy the soundtrack that this one has because originally it did not have all this music in it, but once Miramax snapped it up, they decided you're getting all the new hit music in it.

SPEAKER_03 30:37

Like me wrongs in this. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_03 30:44

Yeah, yeah. Every time I hear it, I go, wow, that's quite a poll. And then, of course, at the end you've got Soul Asylum. Um, and then you know, Chewbacca, what a wookie, who doesn't have to be a good one.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Because musically it it ties into say anything a bit, as I'll get into when we get into that. And then they shot this movie in April of '93. And April of '93 is a significant month for me because that's the month where Cliff and another friend of mine, Paul, were both living in my one bedroom house at that point, because we were all couch surfing, and and then I think back and I'm like, we were doing that, and they were shooting clerks simultaneously. And I do feel like this movie somehow captured the spirit of that exact moment in time. If they had shot it in any different time, it just doesn't come out the same way. And you could say that about anything, but you know, this one just seems to have been right place, right time.

SPEAKER_05 31:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Well, what what is there to say about this movie that hasn't been said? I was trying to come up with a few things.

SPEAKER_03 31:48

Same, same. I think, you know, I I think the other part of it that's really brilliant, one of the things that really helped Kev early on was the fact that he created this Jay in Silent Bob character, and Jay is sort of universally loved, you know. Um Kev's kind of a def described him as a sonic boom with dirt on his nose, you know, that kid from the neighborhood of of legend. You know, I heard Jay's Muse fucked a dog once, you know, that that that kid, you know. Um and that's uh, you know, you he really captures that on screen. Jay is this kind of you everybody knows a Jay Muse. Everybody knows that goofy ass kid who is probably a shitload of trouble and it's probably got weed on him and is holding some maybe some acid or something, and you know, he's probably gotten into fights. Been in trouble, yeah. Right. But isn't really also, you know, but also is kind of probably a pretty nice guy if you get to know him, you know. You know, uh I I don't know. I thought it was very smart to create those characters, and I and I it made complete sense that he put them in Wall Rats, he put them in Chasing Amy, and he kept putting these characters in these movies until finally, you know, probably some of his most popular films have been about those two characters. J and Silent Bob Strike Back is probably his most popular movie, uh, other than other than maybe clerks, which you know broke broke the ground for him.

SPEAKER_04 33:10

Uh the the genius, the genius of Kevin Smith was while they were writing the contract for clerks to sell it, they uh whoever he was working with, I forget what the guy's name was, Jim Jacks, maybe or somebody. The idea was like when they wrote up the contract, they made sure that Kevin Smith retained rights to Jane Selling Bob.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

Well, that's just yeah, I would have demanded that myself. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

And it was I the the I the funny aspect of it is is like uh Weinstein and Miramax were like, we don't care about these two guys, we like Dante and the other guy. But then Kevin's just like, well, what do I do with this? With like I like these characters. He's like, let's bring them like he's like, I have two, me and Jay, me and Jay Muse, and that's where we get the extra movies coming from, too, a little bit. So it's like really funny to see uh how they can kind of incorporate like the idea that you have the hindsight to be like, I would like to own these two characters.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's just it's you know, it's become a podcast, it's become a whole thing, you know. And I mean, those guys have been friends for 35 years or so and been through the ringer with each other, and you know, the more you know about that stuff and the more you kind of follow that the path of Kevin's life, there's a you know, there's a lot of interesting stuff that went on with him and Muse, and and you know, uh all that kind of thing. Uh you know, all while making movies and doing all this other shit that they were doing. It's fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 34:35

Well, one of the when you you mentioned uh like the the impact of clerks is like we can be like, oh, it defined a generation, and it kind of in a way it did, and it was different, but it also introduced the idea that Kevin Smith would go to Sundance and would do these like large QA's. Right. Yeah, and what he did was Kevin Smith was probably one of the first like film directors that I can know uh think of that after he would make something would invite people to over to ask questions, and he would he had that relationship with the audience that is maintained or diehard from like even today. That he he builds this relationship with them with the behind-the-scenes stuff and the journey of of him and Muse and Muse's thing, and um before like before '94, you never saw directors or actors going out doing these large QA's to this extent.

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Uh, where he had he does evening whips. Yeah, his evening whists are some of his best stuff, and you know, turning into that kind of for a while, he turned into that sort of Hollywood tattletale, you know, where he would tell on some of you know the Bruce Willis stories. The print story is just legendary, like a stand-up almost. Yeah, almost like a stand-up. But it all it all spawn, you know, you know, circling back, it all spawns from this$33,000 black and white fucking hour and 32-minute movie that he made, you know, that that he had the audacity to make and put in a little festival, and some some guy on the last day of the festival caught it and recommended it, and suddenly he's off to Sundance, and then you know, they make him change the ending because of course you can't fucking shoot Dante in the face at the end of this fucking thing, dude. Like, come on. You know, that's just not gonna work. It's too bleak. Um, but it also gives him the chance to make two other movies before he kills Dante.

SPEAKER_04 36:24

He's running the fourth one right now.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm I'm looking forward to it, honestly. I think it's gonna, I mean, I I I'm very interested to see I do those characters. It was all that'd be great. I would love it. I've lived with those characters for so long, I'd love to see anything else, any other ideas he's got about them, you know.

SPEAKER_04 36:43

Um, it's if like with Clerks 3, like I I always liked Rhinel Hollering, but the performance that he gave in Clerks III, fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Yeah, you can't deny that.

SPEAKER_04 36:57

Um, no, and the fact that he gave all these people this opportunity to do this weird uh movie in the middle of the night over the course of like three weeks, um, that people are still talking about it um and and appreciating the work that they did with it. Like uh Brian O'Holland still talks about it for days. He leans into it now. Um, but yeah, the idea that he took a chance on himself and others um is fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 37:27

Two is uh it's great. Like I I've watched them all three in a row, and it's really great because here comes one, which is this gritty, sort of like uh kind of like a thumb in the eye. You know, it's it's really kind of funny and it's a it's poking fun at everything, and it's it's sharp, and it's kind of it's just really refreshing. And then Clerks Two is this polished, funny, vulgar piece about these two friends who are working at a shitty ass fucking you know, fast food restaurant, and they're they're they're miserable. And then three is holy shit, you know, the the it takes an entire different turn and and be it comes to sort of I don't know, it's like the plane taking off, reaching cruising altitude, and then finally landing, and clerks three is them finally coming in for that landing.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Third movie is making the first movie, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:19

Which is my favorite thing about it. And I and the minute I I heard that as the as the kind of the theme for the movie and how he was gonna tell it, I thought that's fucking brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

It's the it's the best, it's the best idea he's ever had. It was like that's what's right before, because it ends where you go, oh, he's gonna go get the job, but the oh, he made a movie about that's him. So it's like a split earlier universe. Yeah, pretty crazy. Like and subscribe. Both of these movies are are grunge because this movie has Alison Chain's music in it, and then Jane Silent Bob Reboot has Pearl Jam in it, and Clerks 3 has Pearl Jam in it, but Say Anything has Mother Lovebone in it, and two Soundgarden songs. Wow. It's weird, but it's all part of that same time period. So of course it would have all that alternative music in it, but just strange Kevin Bacon degree of uh grunge there. Uh what do you give this one, guys, on a scale of one to five?

SPEAKER_04 39:30

I have to give it a I always give it a five. I think um where I'm at in my me in my my movie taste and humor um and just the understanding of of what he did to make it, yeah. Uh I think it's an important piece of and I I think people still talk about it in film school. Um, I think there's a whole like whole subjects of indie film. And you cannot deny Kevin Smith's place in indie film in the night.

SPEAKER_03 40:00

No, if you if you were if you've ever worked that Mick retail job, if you've ever jockeyed a fucking cash register, if you've ever had to do these work with these type of people, and you have a best friend, is God. If you've ever worked with your best friend at a place like that, then you have had these experiences. You know exactly. You know a Dante, you know a Randall, you know a Jay, you know a Silent Bob. Um not only that, it it kind of perfectly captures '94. It it's like encapsulates perfectly that '93 to '94, early '90s, right? Like just as the 90s were starting to break out and become 94, 95, 96, which is a whole different thing than 91, 92, 93. That's you know, it's a whole different thing, in my opinion. But anyway, yeah, five stars. I mean, it's it's it's uh it's in the National Film Archive for fuck's sake, for a reason, you know.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

Yeah, he shot it in one world and released it into another because 93 and 94 are definitely different years. The movie's not perfect, but in a way it is so five as well. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Yeah, it's its imperfections only lend to its perfection, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Like you said, the audacity that it exists, black and white comedy, yeah, crude humor. Yeah. Well, this shouldn't have any mark of marketability, but yet it did because his writing was strong enough. Yep. So nobody'd ever seen anything like it. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 41:28

And and the scenes are funny. I mean, he moved I mean, he's 20 minutes in before you really look up from the 37 dicks jokes to realize that you're almost, you know, 30 cigarettes right away. So you're 30 minutes in before you really start to look around and kind of try to figure out what the movie's about. And you realize the movie's not really about anything, it's brilliantly done that way.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

It makes you forget its limitations really early. Very quickly. Very quickly. I don't give a shit it's in black and white at all. You've already forgotten the black and white and the the cheapest.

SPEAKER_03 41:58

It's like it's like going to see uh Crouching Tiger and realizing you're gonna do a lot of reading. You know, you're like you're in the theater for Crouching Tiger here and dragging you like, fuck, I'm gonna do a lot of reading, don't care. And the lack of coverage you forget.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

It holds on the same shot for three or four minutes, but you don't mind because you're you're in the you're in the minute, the moment.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

That one with that one with him with Randall and her behind the counter where he's doing her nails. I mean, shit, that's three or four minutes easily of just you know going and going. And that's the manual masturbation of caged animals that takes a minute. I mean, it's it's there's a whole sections that he's doing in just long winners. It's a lot of one. And of course, also because out of fucking necessity, right? Because the more setups, the more time, the more I have to edit, you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

And so some people say that film is just a visual medium, but this movie proves that dialogue is important too. Oh, dialogue is super important, and some people are dialogue snobs. I like to appreciate it all. Movies that have this show it on their face is fine, and movies where people talk a lot is the it all serves its individual purpose. So can't we all just get along different movies?

SPEAKER_03 43:08

So another commonality between this movie and our next movie, Say Anything, is they're both first-time director movies.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

Oh, really? And Cameron Crow had had a little bit more experience in the business before this with but this is his first his directorial debut. So two directorial debuts this week. Interesting. And they're both writers that have had massive influences on both Cliff and I as well. Uh, I've always appreciated Cameron Crow's work. Uh, so say anything. What is what is say anything? I don't have anything clever to say there.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Original title, say anything.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

Still that title, as far as I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_03 43:50

Same. Say anything, 1989, PG 13, hour 40 minutes. A noble underachiever and a beautiful valedictorian fall in love the summer before she goes off. College. Written and directed by Cameron Crow, stars John Cusack, Ioni Sky, and frickin' John Mahoney, Frasier's dad. Oh, yeah, this is pre-Frasier because you also pre-Fraser, but Cheers was still on the air when this was made, so storyline high school senior Lloyd Dobler wants nothing more than to go out with beautiful and intelligent Diane Court. Lori attempts to win her heart over the objections of her overprotective father before Diane leaves for a scholarship in England.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Now while Clark's is still fresh in our mind, we have this character Lloyd Dobler in this movie. And he's the polar opposite of Dante Hicks in many ways. Lloyd Dobler is a 45-year-old trapped in a teen's body. He's way too wise for his years. He still has some childlike, but I guess his little bit of uh you know international exposure has made him a little bit wiser and he knows how to have a relationship and talk with people. Whereas Dante doesn't know how to stop a fight.

SPEAKER_03 45:05

He seems to be he seems to be ready to be grown. Lloyd seems to be ready to be an adult. I mean, I've never seen a kid as who is 17 or 18 who was so ready to be a mature adult, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Like he's you you know, you don't know that stuff when you're that age.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

You just no but it it does make for a very it does make for a very kind of cool character on screen. You know, he's he's a he's a lot of fun to watch. I like his I I think noble is a good way to put him. Noble underachiever is a very excellent description for Lloyd. Um and I wouldn't even say underachiever, just a dude who hasn't fully figured it out yet. I get I get the feeling once Lloyd latches onto whatever Lloyd's gonna do, Lloyd's probably gonna be pretty fucking good at it. Right? But Lloyd just hasn't it's like he says in the movie, you know, I don't want to buy anything sold or bought, I don't want to sell anything bought or you know, bought or manufactured, I don't want to manufacture anything bought or so. I don't know, I can't figure it out. I'm just gonna hang with your daughter, you know, which is one of the great great lines of any movie of all fucking time.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

So you talk about oh go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 46:09

No, go ahead, Ben. Oh uh it's I I just love the how he was so excited, he's so excited the entire movie of just experiencing life and the and like you were saying at the dinner table, he's just like, I don't know what all I know is like right now the most important thing is hanging out with your daughter because he understood like the the the like it was she was go she was leaving and he was like, I'm gonna hang out with you every day I can until you leave. Um, and like that was the most important thing to him. And like I love that he grasped he grabbed on to that uh in like passionately, too.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah, he makes sense that oh go ahead, no please. Oh, he does things that only an older, wiser person would do. Like she's like, I can't have a social life, I can't see you, I don't have any time. Well, maybe we can just do this, or oh yeah, that's cool. And so while it's like Dante would start fighting, or the more younger, impetuous, but he's just like, No, I like you so much that I don't, I'm not going to fight with you.

SPEAKER_03 47:14

That's why you can tell he's just trying to he's trying to trying to find a chink in the armor that he can widen too, right? Like he's like, if I get in here, I'll I'll keep worming worming my way in there.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

He's not he's not overly emotional about it like a young guy most likely would be. True, true. No, you're absolutely right about that. But she does that to him. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:36

I love the scene where she's giving the graduation speech, and the kid before she comes up is singing the greatest love of all, and everybody's cheering him on, you know, and fucking clapping. And that that sort of like that sort of irony is prevalent everywhere now. Like that sort of i i been but Cameron really nails it early, and it's one of my the very early kind of examples of it that I can find because it feels very like uh American pie, national lampoon college that moment does like you'll see that uh over and over again in future movies, future comedies, especially this ironic, like, oh, look, he's being a dumbass, but everybody's clapping and thinks he's cool. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 48:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

And this is an early example of what they would come to call mumblecore, right, Cliff, where like it's it's the sharp, witty dialogue, not going on long, but these like we're already have a joke pre-planned and we're in on the joke, and we can snappily talk to each other, and you go, nobody really talks like that, but it does make for fun dialogue, right? And it feels like it leads more into the 90s longer Kevin Smith, Kevin Williamson type 80s version. This is this is pre-Mumblecore.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

I think this is the stuff that Mumblecore kind of draws from for inspiration, right? Greta Gerwig is considered Mumblecore, right? But I I I would be willing to bet that Gerwig probably has a lot of these type of movies in her lexicon that she enjoys, say anything, clerks, the you know, these longer-winded type of dialogues and things of that nature that are much more prevalent in movies now because of Smith and because of Cameron and because of these people who were kind of in love with just you know hearing the actor, giving the actor dialogue and letting them act rather than slicing the scene up into back and forths and over the shoulders or whatever, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 49:26

Right. Uh the I we keep talking about dialogue. I absolutely love a good talkie, like any movie that is mostly absolutely the best. And what's interesting is when you when you take a step back, if we go into clerks, could Randall Graves have been anybody else other than um fucking what's his name? Um, but like same thing with uh say anything. Could anybody else have delivered no Lloyd better than John Cusack? No, absolutely not. No, it would have been a completely different movie, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:02

It would have, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:04

Uh they they originally wanted um Robert Downey Jr. and uh Christian Slater to play Lloyd Doppler.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Robert Downey Jr.

SPEAKER_04 50:13

might have put something on it.

SPEAKER_03 50:15

Slater would have been an interesting choice. That would have been another. I don't mind a little, I don't mind Slater. I think he's a pretty good actor. Um good actor, but I don't know how but you but you don't know if we're he's bringing it, he's bringing a totally different tone to it for sure. Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, Marty, that you were saying about the characters, and I agree with you, is that as much as he tries in this movie, these characters don't to me, they don't feel one. It's like you know a Dante, you know a Randall, you know a Jay, you know a silent bob. You don't really know a Diane Court, you don't really know a Lloyd Dobler. There are they're amalgamations of people kind of mashed together to create this kind of super person for the film. Um, and I feel like you know, when he moved by the time he gets to singles or almost famous, he's much better about creating these characters. Then he goes full. Singles he's figuring it out, yeah. Yeah, but he's figuring out the characters, right? Like it's very clear who these characters are, and then we get to almost famous, and it's very, very clear who you know, he's really starting to really nail it at that point.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

Yeah, you're crystallizing my thoughts on this a bit because this movie, I've always liked this movie, but it I've always felt a little disconnected from it. Like I can't find a grip onto it all the way. I hear what you're saying because it's held together kind of strangely through its dialogue because he's he's figuring things out, so that's why it always seems a little cold and disconnected to me. But I think maybe that's kind of the point at the same time. It's Seattle. You've got Diane, who's kind of the cold, disconnected, but I almost feel like it was made for people who are just a little bit older than us, perhaps. Like I'm not quite in on the end joke of the slightly older generation. It's like gross point blank to me, another QZAC movie where I'm like, I like it, I appreciate it, but there's something that I'm not that I'm not grabbing on to that other people are, and I think, oh well, it's maybe it's made for people slightly older than me.

SPEAKER_03 52:12

I uh uh word, I still love Lloyd Dobler as a character, yeah. As a as a character, I still love the Lloyd Dobler character.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

I mean, we homaged it in Love Song. Absolutely. I love his reverence. Remember how good we had it, and and now you guys are fighting and you won't talk to me anymore. Except we didn't have a specific song that meant to them.

SPEAKER_03 52:35

No, that's true. There was no sex involved in our movie. Uh I feel like Lloyd probably moved into the MMA at some point. Like he's kickboxer, and then probably like by the time UFC started up, he probably got super excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

So we had Don the Dragon Wilson, we had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles last week, and a couple weeks ago we had Energy the Dragon, so we keep up with this martial arts shit.

SPEAKER_03 52:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

Uh it's nice that what they did with with Lloyd was when he talked about getting into kickboxing, like it almost because he was talking to uh everybody at the dinner table or dad, and they kind of made it look like buffoonish a little bit. He's outside kicking the bag with his nephew. Um, and they what do we lost? Like Jeremy McClellan. But as Lloyd grows emotionally, so does his career in kickboxing, and the idea that it like as the movie progresses, we get to a point where he's legitimately doing something MNA MMA related that's like almost legitimate. Like he's just now he's running this gym now where he's teaching kids like the kickbox a little bit, so there's like some legitimacy right uh that they added to it a little bit, which it was super interesting to do.

SPEAKER_03 53:53

Yeah, I like that a lot. I love that party that they go to where he ever seen. He takes he takes Diane to that party. That party's epic. You've got uh fucking Eric Stoltz as the guy throwing the party. He's got early Jeremy assistant, also. Oh, that's interesting. You've got early Jeremy Piven. Um you've fucked you've got early Pamela Adlon in this. She's she's the she does the voice of Bobby Hill, for those of you who don't know.

SPEAKER_04 54:20

Um, she was the annoying sister in uh Greece too.

SPEAKER_03 54:23

Yep, she's but been in damn near every Lewis C.K. television show he's ever fucking made. He's I guess Louis's probably just in love with her. But uh yeah, there I mean, great cast and a lot going on. I wrote 63 songs this year. They are all about Joe. All right. I'm gonna play every one of them. It's like holy shit, this girl needs to let it go.

SPEAKER_04 54:44

Uh what was interesting is the the the the whole party scene is like wildly like important. Like there's so much character development, but like uh but not directly, because Lloyd's walking around and someone makes a comment. Yeah, he keeps checking on me, or people are coming up and be like, sign my yearbook. I didn't know who you were. So it's like all these little bits and pieces that help you like define these two characters like indirectly, which is super interesting way to do it. And by the time they're walking home, I know who both of those people are.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Yeah.

unknown 55:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:21

I know who I like, I could have followed them for four years in a TV series. I know who they are, and we were able to accomplish that in a 15-minute party scene.

SPEAKER_03 55:31

I so uh you know the scene where um BB Newarth, she's a counselor and she comes up to him and they're talking, and there's kind of some weird sort of sexual tension. Oh, definitely right, and so and he's talked to her and he's kind of he's kind of uh not he's not flirting with her, but he's he's being kind of flippant with his, you know, with the dialogue's kind of flippant towards her, and he's being, you know, oh this and that. I really feel like uh whoever wrote Ghost Gross Point Blank was watching this movie, and that like that was the moment they genesis that they had for that fucking for that film was oh, you know, I'll just take Q-Zack. And what happened was he went on to be a you know, work for the CIA and be he just left this party and left Diane Court at the party, went on and joined the fucking CIA and became a contract killer, you know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

So it's the trilogy, and the third one is that was a grand piano where he's the hitman who has to shoot yes freaking all this guy who messes up. Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_03 56:30

That's hilarious. Lily, Lily, Lily Taylor is playing the girl who's singing all the songs, she's great.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

Another see, I keep bringing up the grunge because she has the exact Lily Taylor, February 20th, 1967, is her birthday. She's born the exact same day as Kirk Cobain. Wow. Oh wow, and here she is talking about how she almost killed herself, the character.

SPEAKER_04 56:53

So coincidences. Uh what's interesting is all the side characters you could identify similar to like you did in clerks. Uh, you knew the chick who's always like artsy playing songs. You we knew all the Jeremy Pivans and the guys hanging out at the slipping slip. Like we I can identify with all the background characters.

SPEAKER_03 57:14

Oh, I love that. I love the guy. I love the guys at this at the 7-Eleven sitting out in the parking lot giving him advice. And in fact, some of that stuff made it into the trailer, if I remember correctly, from from seeing the trailer as a kid. Is you know, they you know, well, how you know, well, how come if if you guys know so much about Boo and how come you're sitting over here at the serpent slip and slurp on a Saturday night? It's conscious choice, man. It's conscious decision.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Slip, slip, sip and slurp.

SPEAKER_04 57:37

It could be the quick stop, right? And right. I just love that Jeremy Pivon still looks like he's like 40 years old in this movie. Right.

SPEAKER_01 57:49

He looks older in this than he does in like judgment night and some other things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:54

I love Jeremy Pivot. I was uh we did a uh we we I've been recording a movie series um movies that made us, and I did PCU. Oh, nice. I'm like, this guy's supposed to be 22, but he looks like he's 48.

SPEAKER_03 58:07

Yeah, Jeremy Piven has always looked like he's almost 40 his entire fucking career. His entire career. Marty, there's somebody passed out in the bathroom in this movie. Oh yeah, that's right. Well, there is that's another thing we uh Yeah, a little commonality there. There's a line where someone says uh where I think could Diane, somebody says someone as basic as you, and I was like, damn, the use of the word basic is this early use of basic 1989, guys.

SPEAKER_01 58:36

Holy crap. Very early use of that. Well, Heathers, you know, you're talking about Christian Splater, and there's a one of the Heathers was in this movie in the party scene. That's right. I don't know. Do they say basic in Heathers? I almost feel like they do.

SPEAKER_03 58:51

I'm not sure if they do or not. I love that most of Lloyd's friends are women in the movie. Like you don't see you don't see him hanging out with like a dude crowd. Like there's not a he doesn't have a uh I mean he has male friends, but the people that he talks to and and confides in and that that are close to him are these these three girls, and I love how much they're pulling for him, right? Like how how really into his relationship and how happy they want him to be. I really it's funny, and you know, how invested in what what's going on with his relationship.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

And you would think that that's where he gets his wisdom from, to where how he knows how to properly talk to women and stuff, but no, because they don't like in typical rom com fashion, they don't have any good advice for him. They don't really know anything either, you know.

SPEAKER_03 59:37

His sister's it's that classic it's that classic rom com trope of you know the best friend who gives terrible dating advice, you know. Uh and it's I I love that the bet the that the the dad is kind of uh uh the the the daughter-dad relationship to me I I don't really buy.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

It's the one weird device to make it where they split.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:05

They could have written that a little better than a clunky dad's criminal thing, but it's it's clunk, it's clunky, and I never feel like Mahoney and Skye are related or you know, father-daughter. They don't feel like they are close, they don't feel like they're very close to each other. You know, it's just um it feels like a guardianship relationship more than it does a father-daughter, you know. Like, well, I'm contractually obligated to tell you don't go out past 10 o'clock, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:34

But like, but that relationship makes sense of why her senior year she knows nobody because it she has like dad has always kind of kept her focused on what the goal is. Yeah. Um, but I the the dad relationship was a little bit weird. Uh I can kind of get it where he's like a little overprotective. I want you to go do the best, but the the IRS thing was super weird. Like this idea that he's like stealing money now. Like, I didn't know where any of that came from.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

Yeah, it's like he's doing the Lori Laughlin thing years before. Yeah, can we say that? She did she's she's out now. I'm gonna make sure my kid goes to a good college. He's stealing from the elderly.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's cashing their checks. Yeah. And then he tries to justify that. Yeah, he tries to justify. I took care of him, you know. I I was there when there nobody else was. It's like, yeah, but you're still stealing, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

I love the two lawyers, like, well, I I can live with that, you know, blah blah blah. They're just you know slap on the wrist and a hundred thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:40

It's funny how uh I noticed the scene where he calls her and he's talking on the phone and he's at his house and he's on a corded phone and she's on a cordless phone. It really feels like a really, especially at that point, a really uh great way to show the difference in like, hey, she's got some money. Her dad, her dad and her have got obviously got some money, and he's you know struggling living with his sister.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:02

Yeah, another example of that is uh cramming a piece of paper in the tape deck to make it.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:14

That's how we used to deal with it. Yep, yeah, I love that so much. Um, and then of course you get that probably one of the best teenage romance scenes of all time is that back of the seat Peter Gabriel.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:27

Uh that's that's really good. It's really, really good. I mean, they they handle that really, really well. I thought, you know, they make a they really make a moment out of it, and it doesn't feel forced or cheesy, it feels uh right for the film and and uh really well done.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:45

And and he came across more as the vulnerable one, very much so.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:49

Yeah, yeah, she seemed much more secure in what she was doing than he did, right? Which I kind of liked, yeah. Yeah, and then of course, we actually get the dad saying the line of the movie. He tells her you can say anything to me, you know, it's buried in there, but there it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:08

Yeah, Laszlo Kovacs. Uh he shot Jersey Girl, correct? He did. So there's the Kevin Smith connection again. And he's he's shot so many movies.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:17

Oh, he's got he's got such a he and it's like not only do we have two uh first-time directors, but these two first-time directors are backed by cinematographers that have, you know, David Klein gone out a great career. Kovacs already had a great career when he shot this, but these guys are are definitely no slouches in the film department in the camera departments. I feel like the film's got some pacing issues. Um, it does tend to kind of it does slow down a bit in the in getting to the end of the second act, especially when we're like you said, when we're dealing with the dad stuff and the uh the the court stuff, and then you know, but I also like the way it resolves itself. I like I like how much of a of a of a man Lloyd Dobler is going to taking his girlfriend to visit her dad, even though she doesn't want to talk to him, going to talk to him instead at the prison and being a man about it, you know, and being a stand-up person. I like Lloyd Dobbler a lot, and I can I get why she likes him and falls in love with him. It makes sense. He's very much a uh uh an individual outside of an entire crowd of people that he's running with. He stands out as this type of person, which I really like. You know, I really I like the I like the character Cameron wrote.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:23

I just don't believe I don't believe Cain's already been overseas, so he's gonna be able to show her around.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:33

Yep. Uh the the idea of like, let's hang out and I can give you like the he's negotiating time of like she's like, I have to get ready to go to England. He's like, well, then let me teach you some tricks and uh like tips on like how you can handle yourself over there. Like he does anything he can to find any time to spend with her, which is fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:55

Yeah. One of my favorite lines in the movie is met her in a mall, should have known our relationship was doomed. That's my one of my favorite lines.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:05

Uh uh graduation when he's like, take a picture of me, and he walks by just so you can just get a photo bomb.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:14

So good. So good.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:17

Uh that's his sister, right? Uh Joe Cusac.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:21

Yeah, yeah. And we didn't talk about that, but I I love her in this film. I I love the fact that he works with her again in Gross Point Blank. I love that again, again, I love the fact that I really feel like there's a moment in this film that inspires gross point blank. There's just that moment with the counselor where as in gross point blank, he talks about talking to his counselor and having that moment where he decides and suddenly goes to the CIA, right? And I just feel like, oh my god, this is perfect parallel.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:49

But uh the the puppy dog love that he has for her is is so fun to just watch him. He never apologized. For who he was, and I love that uh so much for Lloyd, the Lloyd character, is he got the yes, I'll go out with you, and he's like, This is who I am. Um, a little goofy, running all over the place, people know me, and I'm I'm he talks so much and so fast. Um, but then he takes that moment of like, hey, stop, don't step on the glass, and like that whole like like weird moment to just like I'm doing all like I'm trying to impress you, but at the same time, like, hold on, let's I gotta make sure you're you're safe and taken care of. Uh step over here real quick. Um so much like that, she even brings it back up when she's talking to his dad of being like, he won't let me step on glass. Like, that's how much this guy's caring about me.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:44

Yeah, yeah, kicks it out of her way, makes sure she's okay. He's watching, watching out ahead, watch, looking ahead for her.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:50

I really like. Um, it's that funny, you know, that moment where uh he's talking about she's talking to the agent and saying, Well, do you have a lot of things in your home that are value below$9,000? You know, and then I think it's a scene later where we're walking by that fucking jukebox in the living room, and I'm like, you know, it's just such a like you just you want to point at it and be like, yeah, it's right, you know, how do you blind? It's right in front of your face, you know. Uh I I do like the dad, I like Mahoney's scene where he's in the bathroom and he has that freak out where he's freaking out. Like, you know, he knows it's falling apart, it's all coming down. And you know, if only he'd just learned to launder some money, a couple of offshore accounts, he'd have been a lot better. If he had, maybe Lloyd Dobler doesn't run off with his daughter, you know. You know, there's no telling. He screwed it up. He screwed it up. What can you say? It's his fault. I love the ending of the movie, too. I think um that plain bit at the end where they're just talking and and and and he's saying, you know, when it comes on, everything's gonna be fine. When you hear that ding, you know, everything's fine, and it goes ding, and that's it. It cuts a black movie over. Perfect. Yeah, it's perfect.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:01

It's also interesting and it's nice that it's not the boy saves girl like storyline. It's this I like you so much that I'll do anything to be with you type thing. So when he's on the airplane, he's more there as a support role of like you're gonna go on this huge adventure, and I'm just here in the back, like I'm here next to you. Right. And like the the movie plays really well with that idea of like she is still the strong independent female role, and he's just there to help as a support. Um, and it's super interesting to kind of see that dynamic um in a teen movie in '89.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:44

I agree. Yeah, I agree. Um, I enjoyed this one. I don't watch this one a lot, but when I every time I put it on, I really I enjoy it. I think it's it's um uh probably not my definitely not my favorite Cameron Crow movie, but I I like it and I think it's got some iconic moments in it. I definitely think Lloyd Dobbler's an iconic character. Um, you don't have another lot of Lloyd Dobblers in films. Maybe you can find him in the 40s and 50s, but I think Lloyd Dobler's, like you said, he's an old man, a 40-year-old man in a 20-year-old's body. He's a throwback to an older time in a in more of a contemporary setting, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:19

Well, that's why it makes sense uh that Cameron Crow started making movies about adults, like Jeremy, and stuff, because then it's like, okay, that makes more sense for somebody that age to make those those life decisions, you know. Sure. But then kind of the weird self-indulgences he does in this movie that we're talking about, the things we can't connect to, he tends to dip back into that into his later movies like Elizabeth Town and Vanilla Sky and Aloha, where you're like, it's still good, but you've gone back into your own you're making it for yourself more than an audience type thing. It's still interesting, though.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:00

A little self-indulgent, yeah, a little bit. Yeah. But um, I think overall, I mean, I would give this uh I'm probably gonna say three and a half, I think is pretty that's what I said. Yeah, I think three and a half is pretty spot on the nose for it. Again, it does suffer from a few pacing issues and and some other things, but I do think it's iconic 80s, constantly rewatchable type of stuff. What about you, Ben?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:29

I I I absolutely enjoyed it. I go a little, I'll go a little higher. I give it a four.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:32

Um I I I I vacillated back and forth between a four and a three and a half. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:37

Um, I think you go the I go four. I give it that little extra half because of its cultural significance with the the boombox. We haven't even talked about the boombox.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:47

Yeah, I mean, you know, I should probably I'll probably just I should probably when we do our our yearly review, I'll probably bump to a four because I mean, my god, we did literally rip that homage that scene for our film. We literally have a guy in a trench coat holding up a speaker.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:02

Love song of William H. Solanel streaming on Tubi.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:06

And fossil. And fossil. Um I think it was a perfect movie to end the 80s.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:13

Um, you you nailed that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:16

We had we we had so we had uh uh Breakfast Club guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:23

Um Hughes, John Hughes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:25

John Hughes. We had John Hughes doing so much stuff in the the early to mid 80s.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:29

Oh, he really defined the mid-80s. I mean, my guy defined the mid-80s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:38

Um but we had all those movies, and then and as you mature into you know, through the 80s, 89, like we we get this nice, like real mature comparative uh movie to kind of just ring out the last of the 80s to be like we've seen all these other kind of things from uh Hughes, uh Footloose, and a bunch of these others that were you know, they're fantastic to be but to be fair. But the way that Lloyd ends it, like I love it. I love uh say anything I think was really good for 89.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:17

Yeah, yeah, it's um I think they say in the at the party it's claduating class of 88, so it's gonna be 88 in the film, but 89, of course, 89 in release. But it perfectly captures like this is the last of it. Like the this is right after this film comes out, it's gonna be the last gasp of fucking, you know, of uh hair metal and glam rock with fucking appetite for destruction, right? And then a year or so after that, you're gonna get fucking you're gonna start to get, you know, um you're gonna start to get sub pop releasing shit. You're gonna start to hear this grunge coming out. Yeah, I don't know where the phone is. You know, it's it's taking off, right? So it's it's there, it's hinting at it. Like this movie's hinting at grunge and bringing it to you in little sprinkles, but it just slowly starts to come on, you know. There's because the again, the last gasp of the 80s. Marty and I have this theory that that a decade never really ends until like a year or two into the next decade. Yeah, yeah. Like so the 80s don't really end until like 92. Like Kurt Cobain literally just kills the 80s with with uh you know, with smells like teen spirit. He's like the 80s are dead, here come the 90s, right? And so it's it's just that's it's how it always works.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:26

Yeah, you have a guy in like his 30s writing these older than their age teenagers and say anything, and then you have the relatively young man still in his 20s, right? Writing clerks, yeah, talking about you're 22 years old and you're pining for a girl in high school, that can only be written by somebody in their 20s, right? Yeah, yeah. You don't write stuff like that when you get older, so it's just a nice little snapshot.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:52

Uh yeah, it's a the the tone of of say anything fits perfect to the 80s because if you start looking into what we get into the 90s, uh we're getting things like Clueless, um, she's all that, um like some like really like definitely definitely a huge tonal shift from Say Anything in the 80s. I can't think of too many other movies after Say Anything that really kind of that you could look at and call it an 80s movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:26

Yeah, and well, and then by 95, I think it's 95 or 96 when Tarantino releases Pulp Fiction in Reservoir Dogs. Now everybody wants to do Tarantino dialogue and they want to do, you know, well, clerks and pulp fiction the same year, so what a weird change all at once, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:43

Boom, here we are.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:44

That's and I think that's part of why Kevin got away with all that long-winded dialogue because Tarantino was kind of doing the same thing, a lot of a lot of talking about not a lot of his characters talking about bullshit in the film, but actually the dialogue's kind of peppy and smart and interesting, but it has fuck all to do with the plot or the or to drive the the scene. You know, Jules and Vincent walking around an apartment hallway talking about you know Tony Rock of Horror being fallen through the fucking whatever has nothing to do with the fact that they're about to show up in this apartment building and shoot these these motherfuckers and take this suitcase, right? And so uh it it just set a whole different tone, like you were saying for movies. And like you say, we start getting all this stuff. Clueless is a great example. Um, but yeah, this is the beginning. I think saying anything's the beginning, and then clerks is kind of like, oh, here it comes. Here it comes, here comes all this different stuff for the 90s. It was good to match them up today, yeah. Yeah, it was a good I I this was an easy watch. This is this is for for me. I mean, sometimes some of these weeks is a tough watch. You get two movies and you're like, Fuck, but these this is was super easy. This and even last week was I mean, Wind River was a tough watch. I mean, that's not not a fun watch, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:58

But Ninja Turtles was always fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:00

Ninja Turtles was great, but this is a great pallet cleanser.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:02

So you would think we would have done Groundhog Day because it's February 2nd when this episode came out. That's no. So you want to get out of here on a quote. Well, do you got anything you want to plug, Ben?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:15

Oh, that's a good good call. Ben, you got anything you want to plug?

SPEAKER_04 1:16:17

Definitely. Chasing the Whimsy uh is our our flagship uh podcast. Uh, we're up to 156 episodes. Wow, good for you. Um, but check out um everything that we have on YouTube, uh, YouTube at chasing the whimsy.com. I do two live streams. Um, I got a mind pocket show that I do on Saturdays at 8 o'clock that is coming up on uh uh episode 100. So uh I'm trying to do something fun with that. But yeah, chasing the whimsy, all the platforms, um, all the socials. Um, we've got a lot of there's so much content out here right now. Um, so I got something hopefully everybody like. Um, we got Whimsy with the Z, uh, which is my teenager uh podcast. I hang out with five teenagers throughout the month and just and just talk to them and find out what it's like to be a teenager today. Interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:12

So folks, get out there and listen to that stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:15

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:15

Yeah, absolutely. Ben, appreciate you coming on this on the podcast. Um, I hope you had hope you had a good time. We appreciate you coming on.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:22

Uh, this was a lot of fun. I absolutely enjoy uh talking film movies. Same. Um, and I think these two picks were just fantastic. Uh for me to like get my intro in. I'll come back. I'll do some more hardcore stuff, man. We'll get we'll get into some crazy let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:40

Um, well, let's get out of here on a quote.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:42

Uh uh Marty, what do you got? It's so hard to decide. I could easily say you gotta one-track mine, but I'm gonna say, you mean I gotta drink this coffee hot?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:54

Uh I gotta give it out to all Hollering. I'm not supposed to be here today.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:00

Happy scrappy hero pup.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:02

Was that what that was called?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:05

She loves it, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:07

Obviously.