CINEMISSES! Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

In this episode, Matt and Tug delve into the neo-noir film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, written and directed by Shane Black. They explore the film's stylistic blend of humor, action, and character dynamics, particularly focusing on the performances of Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer and the deep homage the movie pays to pulp fiction classics of the 40s and 50's. They also reflect on the film's impact and its relevance in today's cinematic landscape, considering how societal changes might affect the portrayal of characters and themes. Finally, I do realize that Val Kilmer played Doc Holiday in Tombstone rather than Wyatt Earp like I said. I am sorry and I still want to be your Huckleberry.

Check us at INSTAGRAM

Find us on X

EMAIL: Cinemisses@gmail.com

Transcript

Matt Loehrer (00:00)
Hey, tug. Hey, I was I was thinking the other day, have you ever watched one of those old 1950s hardboiled crime movies? You know, the ones with the flawed, cynical hero who's maybe a private eye, femme fatale with killer looks and dark themes with even darker sets often in the back streets and alleys of New York or Los Angeles and thought.

Tug McTighe (00:01)
Hello Matthew.

Matt Loehrer (00:20)
This movie would be even better if it were set in the 2000s and start soon to be comeback kid of the millennium, Robert Downey Jr.

Tug McTighe (00:26)
I have thought all of those things simultaneously to one another.

Matt Loehrer (00:30)
Then my friend, have I got a movie for you? It's the directorial debut from Shane Black, writer of such hits as Lethal Weapon and Iron Man 3. And this neo-noir black comedy has everything but the kitchen sink, but swap the kitchen sink for a severed finger. It's kiss, kiss, bang, bang.

Tug McTighe (00:47)
Very excited to be here. And this is our homage to the recently departed Val Kilmer, who when you go back and look at what Val was, that was a pretty busy guy for a long time. And as we discuss a lot on this podcast, we love Matt, probably because you and I are that guy. We're more like that actor, guy actor, character actor than we are like leading men. But man, that dude's a leading man. He was good looking guy.

Matt Loehrer (01:11)
100%.

Tug McTighe (01:14)
was, was cast in a lot of stuff, iconic roles like, you know, Chris in, real genius and, and, ice, ice man in, in, cop gun. Good Christ, hub top gun. Try to say it.

Matt Loehrer (01:25)
Top Gun.

And I one thing I loved about him is that I

think I feel like he was always pushing himself as an actor to try something different and do something new.

Tug McTighe (01:34)
I agree.

This was certainly against the roles he had been having in the late 90s, early 2000s, Leading man, Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, et cetera, et So yeah, I'm down. Okay, wait a minute. This is our first cinemass where neither one of us had seen it. So a little against type, just like Val Kilmer here in this role. were, me too, we're both gonna.

Matt Loehrer (01:44)
Absolutely.

Very good.

That's right.

Absolutely kind of exciting though.

Tug McTighe (02:03)
both gonna tell each other what we thought we knew, which frankly for me is precious little. So carry on, sir, you go ahead.

Matt Loehrer (02:09)
Yes, great

point. What I thought I knew about this going in is pretty much nothing. I vaguely remember the title from 20 years ago when it was in theaters, which probably was not very long. I didn't know who was in it, who directed it. Best of all, I didn't know what it was about or what it was gonna happen in the movie. I came in completely cold and I loved

Tug McTighe (02:28)
And that is

your default setting for movies. You want to be surprised. Yeah. So I'm similar. I knew it was Shane Black and I knew he was one of the mercenaries who was unceremoniously slaughtered in 87's The Predator. He wrote a few more movies that I either like or would like. I knew it starred Robert Downey Jr.

Matt Loehrer (02:33)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Tug McTighe (02:49)
Val Kilmer and I knew this was right around when when when Downey were you know Downey jr. Had probably five or seven years of just drug alcohol problems abuse in and out of in and out of therapy So this was kind of a big comeback for him, right? And I also knew that our friend Eric Malin who is at scene stealer Eric. He's a movie critic He loves this fucking movie. He he has been telling us about this for

over a decade. So, Eric, this one's for you.

Matt Loehrer (03:17)
Yeah.

He might actually listen to this podcast episode. Alright, so hit the log line. What do we got?

Tug McTighe (03:21)
Yeah, right, right not for us but for kiss kiss bang bang All right

after being mistaken for an actor a New York thief is sent to Hollywood

to train under a private eye for a potential movie role. But the duo are thrown together with a struggling actress into a murder mystery beyond their comprehension.

Matt Loehrer (03:39)
Okay, here's my take on this. As far as log lines go, that's like Star Wars orphan meets people. Like that, like so much happens in this movie that that's. Right, that's so a lot happens in this movie as we'll go on. Right on.

Tug McTighe (03:45)
Right, right, right. Orphan on a desert planet meets some folks. Yeah, that's not in that log line, right?

So yeah, there's a lot going on, Again, we talked about Shane Black, neo-noir 2005 black comedy crime film written and directed by Shane Black. This was his directorial debut. He's gone on to direct a lot of stuff. Robert Downey Jr., as we said, Val Kilmer, as we said.

Michelle Monahan plays Harmony, Corbin Bernsen shows up after I recognized him. He was in LA Law forever. He was in Major League. It's partially based on a novel called Bodies Are Where You Find Them from 1941, so significantly updated. And again, like you said, it reinterprets, I think, the hard-boiled

Private dick walking the gumshoe walking the beat Getting involved with a femme fatale who may or may not be a murderer who might be setting him up to be a patsy So it really has all of those tropes Produced by Joel silver who produced a shit ton of movies Lethal Weapons Streets of Fire weird science commando diehard Roadhouse

And everybody's favorite Bruce Willis jam Hudson Hawk, was a stinker. FYI. Yeah. Maybe we'd like it now.

Matt Loehrer (04:52)
I feel like I should watch that again. Maybe I'd love it now.

Tug McTighe (04:58)
Okay. Yeah shot in LA LA is definitely a character in this film. You know how like Blues Brothers Chicago is a character. The LA is definitely a big part of this and It debuted In at the 2005 Cannes Film Fest and was released in United States on October 21st 2005 Received received positive reviews from critics made 16 million bucks. So

not not not the best outing but it did make 800 grand profit so at there's that

Matt Loehrer (05:25)
Yeah, these today that would be like a million dollars. It's not that much more.

Tug McTighe (05:27)
Right, right, almost a million. And

you know, when we do our sort of research here, you know, we're not going very much further than Wikipedia team, everyone, so you're looking at the research team. sometimes it'll say adjusted for, or it'll say it did well on video or it, so I don't know anything about that if it did well or people seem to like it, it's got a good, it's got good ratings, we'll get to in a minute.

Matt Loehrer (05:50)
I do know it did a lot better overseas than it did domestically. So most of its earnings were domestic. I think it made four million domestic and the remaining 12 was overseas box office.

Tug McTighe (05:51)
Okay, okay.

gotcha, gotcha.

All right, so he also wrote The Long Kiss Good Night with Samuel L. Jackson and Gina Davis. And it just didn't work. And he was bummed out. And he decided he was going to do something that wasn't action-oriented. He said he got a rejection letter from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It said, Mr. Black, we've reviewed your application membership. We find it's not appropriate at this time. Perhaps you'd care to reapply in the future when you have more credits. Woof.

He's like boy they didn't like me at all. And the subtext I guess is sort of like he said the subtext was like hey get out of here hack you freaking loser. So again he wanted to do something else but then he started down the road of romantic comedy and is like you know here's two kids in LA falling in love he's like I'm gonna make a rom-com I've never done a rom-com.

And then James L. Brooks, who was a famous rom-com guy, liked his draft, but felt it wasn't, it was, was in focus. And then, then this led to him falling back to what he does. Right. He went to his bag of tricks and he's like, well, let's insert a car chase. Let's insert a fight. Let's insert some action set pieces. And then it sort of eventually turned into this. Yes. Gay, gay Perry. Right. No.

Matt Loehrer (07:12)
Right, and they added the private detective, Perry, who was, I can't imagine, but can you imagine this movie without him in it?

So the fact that he had to add that into the script, I thought was hilarious.

Tug McTighe (07:20)
No. Right. that was,

yeah, gay quote unquote Perry is the Val Kilmer role.

Matt Loehrer (07:28)
Right, so Black said that was his attempt to break stereotypes as he'd never seen the gay guy who kicks down the door, shoots everyone, and bails your ass out before.

Tug McTighe (07:39)
Right,

he was talking like, when you say, he's got a gay friend at that time, you sort of knew what you were getting. So he just flipped it on its ear, which I think really works here.

Matt Loehrer (07:49)
Right, but to me, as I watched this, it reminded me of Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles. And people will say, that's crazy, but he wasn't the joke. He wasn't the butt of joke. He was the man running the show. He was the hero. He was the star. Yeah. And everybody who didn't get that, right.

Tug McTighe (07:54)
yeah,

No. No. He's the coolest dude in the flick. Yeah. And Perry's really cool. Yeah.

So also just as LA is a character in the story, so are these Johnny Gossamer pulp novels that are just exactly what you think. They're the pulp fiction version of this movie. There's a hard boiled detective named Johnny Gossamer who's always getting embroiled in the wrong case. And even at one time it said,

In these Johnny Gossamer books, it's never one case. It's always like two or three cases that all come together in the end. And that's what happens in this movie too. So you see that homage of these 50s and 60s pulp fiction detective novels. This Brett Halliday who wrote Bodies Where We Find Them. And then Raymond Chandler, the chapter titles in this are Raymond Chandler books. So, and again, those Johnny Gossamer novels are exactly

what Raymond Chandler was writing.

Matt Loehrer (08:59)
so Shane Black's co-writer on The Nice Guys, found Anthony Bagarotsi, described his writing process this way. He would write a scene and he'd come back the next day and he'd write another scene that had nothing to with the first scene. And then he'd come back a month later and he'd have all these scenes and he'd say, well, know, most of these suck, but we can use these three. So these could be almost three scenes from movie. So it's really kind of quantity for him.

Tug McTighe (09:16)
This sucks.

Right.

Matt Loehrer (09:26)
which is an interesting part of the process, just kind of cranking it out and here's a scene and this could happen. And I think later he comes back in, it was described as a torturous process that produces lots of really great scenes. So I think it's not a bad way to go.

Tug McTighe (09:27)
Right.

Yeah, and you

see that when you learn that fact, when you hear that story, you see the movie consists of a segment of set pieces, not set pieces in like car crashes or explosions, but there's the set piece in the party. There's the set piece out in the bar when he is hanging out with Perry at the stakeout. These scenes, again, they're sort of stitched together.

which I think is similar to what we do where you're like, we need 50 ideas, 50 bad ideas to get to the one good idea. So you're just creating as much volume as you can.

Matt Loehrer (10:13)
Sure. So that's kind of the whole process.

Tug McTighe (10:17)
So the script was titled at the time you'll never die in this town again, which is a pretty good title Was rejected before Joel silver his buddy came to the rescue and decided to produce it Johnny Knoxville was was attached at one point wolf And then Hugh Grant was was involved so

Matt Loehrer (10:33)
Ow.

I would have thought,

I never would have thought Hugh Grant until I saw Guy Ritchie's The Gentleman. And he was so good in that and against type. And I think that's what makes these roles memorable and cool is when it's an actor that you think you know, like Val Kilmer playing a character that you haven't seen.

Tug McTighe (10:41)
And the gentleman, he was great in that, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

right, Benicio del Toro was in the conversation as well. So Robert Downey Jr. Learned about the movie from his then girlfriend and then he married her, Susan Levin, who worked as Silver's assistant. And he sort of pitched himself. He pitched himself and came into audition and they really liked just again in that sort of Robert Downey. This is the beginning I would say of the Robert Downey as Iron Man.

as Tony Stark, it's quippy and quick and self-effacing and just that Robert Downey character that he's been doing the past few years. So again, I think Robert got the job and then they brought in Val Kilmer, who wanted to do, like you said, something different, wanted to do a comedy, hadn't done a comedy since, probably real genius, really. Top Gun and, not Top Gun, but Top Secret and Real Genius right out of the gate. And then a lot of dramas.

Matt Loehrer (11:34)
Yeah, and top secret.

Right. I wonder too, I think about actors that we like. And when I say we, I mean you and me, but I also think everybody. Some actors like Robert Downey Jr. You just like the guy and that's who he is in a movie. So you're right. As I watched this, I thought this is Tony Stark. He's doing Tony Stark, but he's really doing Robert Downey Jr. And when we talk about Kurt Russell, how much we like him, I listened to him doing the thing commentary and he was the same guy. He's the same guy in everything. He's Kurt Russell.

Tug McTighe (11:47)
We, the Royal We.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes.

We

want our actors to be actors. You're Daniel Day-Lewis, you're Meryl Streep. We want our movie stars to be some version of them.

All right, so it's called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang because it was based on a song from the James Bond movie Thunderball called Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which was also called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang because that's what this Italian journalist who couldn't figure out what to call James Bond called him Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. So that pretty much sums up a James Bond movie in a heartbeat.

Matt Loehrer (12:41)
So to get the neo-noir look he wanted, Shane Blackscreen, 1960s films like Harper and Point Blank, cinematographer Michael Barrett and production designer Aaron Osborne were viewing these and taking inspiration. Osborne in particular drew inspiration from detective book covers by illustrator Robert McGinnis.

Tug McTighe (12:53)
Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (12:59)
who was brought in to draw the covers for the fictional Johnny Gossamer novels that you see throughout the film. You see these covers and they really harken back to the pulp 60s and 50s stuff. So McGinnis, Robert McGinnis just passed away last month. He passed away in March. He was 99 years old. He was legendary illustrator of pulp covers and posters. And if you've ever seen the iconic breakfast at Tiffany's poster, illustrated poster with the black dress and the long cigarette holder.

Tug McTighe (13:05)
These books are, yeah, they're everywhere.

wow.

Good for him.

Absolutely.

Matt Loehrer (13:27)
He made that you've probably seen a bunch of other stuff too. James Bond posters and movie posters and such. So when he did the illustrations for the books in this, he was only 80 years old. He was just a kid. Yeah. And then the...

Tug McTighe (13:37)
He was only 80. Yeah, just still banging them out. All right, that's great. Okay.

We'll talk about the cast. Robert Downey Jr. as Harry Lockhart. I don't really care about young Harry and teen Harry. Val Kilmer was Gabe Harry, Van Shrike, RIP, rest in peace, Iceman. Michelle Monahan was Harmony. Ariel Winter, I do care about this one. Ariel Winter was young Harmony. And Ariel Winter would find massive success just a few years later.

as Alex Dumphy in ABC's Modern Family, Matt, who knew? And then you got Corbin Bernsen as Harlan Dexter. That's really the big cast. Larry Miller shows up for a couple scenes comic and Seinfeld Fran. Larry Miller shows up as an agent, a couple scenes. And then Laurence Fishburne in an uncredited role was the Bear in the Gennaro's beer commercials, which I thought was kind of Yeah, right? Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (14:03)
I thought she looked familiar.

He's still good.

I wish I'd known that when I saw it.

There's another character, Angela Lindvall as Flicka. You realize they put her in there for the sole reason of having one joke. My friend Flicka. That's the only reason she was in the movie with that name.

Tug McTighe (14:30)
Yes, my friend Flicka, right, that's right. She's in two scenes, yeah.

All right, well, Shane Black, we talked about a little bit, American filmmaker and actor, lethal weapon writer, monster squad, last Boy Scout, last action hero, like a lot of tent pole action flicks. He created lethal weapon. He's best known for his role as Hawkins in Predator. And you see Hawkins is reading comic books.

In that movie and he gets just murdered first He's the first guy to go And and it's cuz it had the predator had third act problems like a lot of movies do and they're like, hey, bro You need to get off screen and into the writers room to help us fix this movie up

Matt Loehrer (15:12)
Yeah, he had said, they'd said, hey, we need help with the script. And he said, well, I'm an actor. I can't help you. And they said, OK. So they killed him off from the movie. And they said, hey, you're not an actor anymore. Let's get to work on the script.

Tug McTighe (15:17)
They just got to cut his head right off. Right.

And he's got a real, it's funny, Matt, we keep choosing these movies and we're not really trying to, where, you know, some directors are sort of, I don't know that they have a style. They're obviously technical and obviously know their way around the camera and lighting and cinematography, but he's got a style, he's got a vibe. So we keep choosing these directors that sort of have a recognizable sort of way of creating.

two main characters become friends. There's difficult protagonists. There's always a, they become better at the end of the movie. He does a lot of this real quippy, bing, bing, bing, bang, bang, dialogue, boom, boom, boom, like so much so that we won't even get into half of it. And a lot of them happen at Christmas, just like this one did. So he must love Christmas.

Matt Loehrer (16:04)
That's true.

He made his directorial debut with this movie in 2005 and afterward went on to write and direct Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys, and The Predator in 2018, which was a sequel that I think didn't do terribly well. What did you think of The Nice Guys?

Tug McTighe (16:19)
yeah, I like the nice guys, Gosling and Gladiator, Russell Crowe. Right, I'm just calling him Gladiator. I liked that I did know it Shane Black, but now of course it was. Very similar to this, two guys quipping at each other, two private detectives on a case. Again, I think that's a really fun movie. It's just fun like this one. I think that one held the story held together a little bit better than this. We'll talk about the third act problems of this.

Matt Loehrer (16:23)
I'm here, Russell.

Yeah,

I feel like this was a dry run for the nice guys. Like, yeah, he came back and said, if I were going to fix all the things that I didn't like about the first one, how would I do it?

Tug McTighe (16:44)
100 % without question.

Hey, years later, I know

what to do.

Matt Loehrer (16:52)
Roger Ebert didn't give this a great review back in the day. And I like Roger Ebert a lot. you know, rest in peace that guy. I listened to him about movies. I think he knows what he's talking about or did. He gave it, I think, two and a half stars. And one of his complaints was that the writer, Shane Black, he couldn't get out of his own way trying to be funny, like mugging, kind of mugging for the camera. And the nice guys didn't do that.

Tug McTighe (17:01)
You guys.

Yeah, fair. Fair, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (17:15)
It was funny, but it wasn't trying so hard.

Tug McTighe (17:15)
Dialed it back, Yeah, dialed it back. I also like, he breaks the fourth wall right away with the narrator. I love breaking the fourth wall. And then he also, you hear his disdain for the Hollywood studio system and the studios and the agencies. He's always making fun of the movies and he's digging at those guys. a couple of those and he really made me laugh.

Matt Loehrer (17:31)
Right.

Absolutely. So here's his filmography. And you've heard of all these movies, except maybe one, but there's reason for it. 1987, Lethal Weapon and the Monster Squad, which I never saw. That's fame and that's kind of achieved cult classic status in the years, recent years. 89 gave us Lethal Weapon 2, The Last Boy Scout in 91, Last Action Hero in 93, which at the time I thought was terrible and probably is.

Tug McTighe (17:47)
Wolfman's got NARDS!

100%.

Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (18:05)
The Long Kiss Good Night, which I actually thought was pretty good. And it's basically late female Jason Bourne, basically. And then he did Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. In 2007, he did AWOL, which was a short film that he wrote and then donated for the American Film Institute.

Tug McTighe (18:07)
Yeah, never seen that one.

Okay.

Matt Loehrer (18:19)
He did Iron Man 3 in 2013, The Nice Guys in 2016, The Predator in 2018, and he has a movie coming up called Play Dirty that I think he wrote a long time ago and has been trying to get made.

Tug McTighe (18:30)
Gotcha. All right, the tomato meter 86 % the popcorn meter 87 % so again one of these movies that didn't do so well, but over time as gained an audience and you know Basically the same score from critics and folks And folks that watch movies pretty good score Opened October 21 of 05 Like you said didn't make a ton of money here in the US Did a lot better overseas end up with about 16 million

Matt Loehrer (18:46)
and a pretty good score.

Tug McTighe (18:59)
Earnback its budget down. He was disappointed in the in the box office, but he really liked This movie down he did and he said this was my calling card that got me an Iron Man He was very aware of that. So and then He brought Shane Black in like we said to do Iron Man 3 and Look, there's a lot to talk about about our DJ He was down and out

Matt Loehrer (19:18)
Alright, little payback.

Tug McTighe (19:22)
between probably 95 and 2001 or so. But he got so, I mean, he was in and out of rehab, in and out of mugshots. Got sober, popped up on Ali McBeal, screwed that up. They fired him. Then did a few movies like The Singing Detective and Gothica and finally Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. So this was really him pulling himself together and getting back on the front foot.

Matt Loehrer (19:43)
Exactly. And without this, who knows? I did kind of a deep dive on Robert Downey Jr. because I realized as much as I'd seen him, I didn't know that much about him. I knew there was a Robert Downey senior who was his dad who did some movie stuff. But more important to him, he was a drug user and his mother was an alcoholic. So Robert Downey Jr. Yeah. His dad gave him smoked weed with him when he was six. He gave him cocaine as a child.

Tug McTighe (20:02)
Yeah, right from the jump, right from the jump it was Trump.

Matt Loehrer (20:11)
Robert Downey Jr. himself said that doing drugs with his dad was a bonding experience for them and he had no other kind of normal thing to relate to. So it's not surprising that he was where he was. But at this point in his career, he'd been to prison, he'd been to rehab for what so far has turned out to be the last time. And he just wanted to work. So he lip synched in an Elton John video. He did voice work on Family Guy as like Lois's brother.

Tug McTighe (20:17)
Wow.

Matt Loehrer (20:35)
he, think, would take whatever he could get. He couldn't get insured on because the movies have to take out insurance on these guys in case they flake or do something weird or don't show up one day. So Mel Gibson, who had co-starred with him in Air America, agreed to cover his insurance for the singing detective. And then Silver got him, gave him that role on Gothica and withheld 40 percent of his salary, but at least he hired him. And by the time this movie came along, Val Kilmer,

didn't drink for the entire duration because he Robert Downey Jr. was, had gotten out of rehab, you know, at some point. Yeah, there's something about Robert Downey Jr. that I think is endearing and people like him, he's not your, you hear so many stories about the Hollywood asshole, like, who is just a terrible person and he's not that, I don't think at all, I think he seems to.

Tug McTighe (21:06)
There you go Iceman!

Yeah. And I mean, he's turned

right. He pulled himself together, turned it into a 20 year run, right?

Matt Loehrer (21:24)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (21:25)
one of the most successful actors in the world. good for him. Yeah, right? Yeah. All right. So let's get into the plot summary. First of all, great animated opening credits. I love when they fucking create an artful, a creative opening credit. Pixar does this all the time. It looks different than the movie. So this was all those kind of illustrations that came from some of those novels. It looked really cool. I really dug it.

Matt Loehrer (21:27)
Shoot, you're right. It has been 20 years. Good for him, is right.

I agree, immediately sets the tone. And I don't know if modern audiences don't have the patience to sit through credits, or if we just like, they're gonna, if we don't go right to the movie, they're gonna walk out. If you ever watch the show Archer, which I thought was pretty good with John Benjamin, yeah, Archer was pretty great, but they do a whole intro that's animated, and it kind of reminded me of this, which I'm sure it drew on the same inspirations.

Tug McTighe (22:02)
I love Archer, yeah.

So right, open up, Harry Lockhart is Robert Downey Jr. He is robbing a store right around Christmas time. It feels like he's talking to his nephew and I don't ever tell you who this kid is. But it's his niece, there you go. And he's trying to buy her a toy, well, steal her a toy. And they get busted. Sorry, the alarms go off and the cops show up and they're running away. He accidentally gets his partner shot and he's running away and he bursts into this room.

Matt Loehrer (22:22)
It's his niece. I looked it up. It's his niece. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (22:39)
runs up some stairs, bursts in this room where they're holding auditions. And they think he's one of the actors. Like, well, him the pages. it's a similar scene. It's like, why'd you do it? You got him killed. That was the scene. You screwed it up. You're a loser. And he just starts crying. And he's like, oh, I don't know. I know it was my fault. Oh my god. And like, man, this guy's good. That's method. This guy's really good. So they freaking think he's a method actor. And they go, this guy's got it.

Matt Loehrer (22:57)
Right.

Right? It's old school.

Tug McTighe (23:09)
They bring him out to LA for more screen tests, because they think he's awesome. So this was quite a fun opening for me.

Matt Loehrer (23:15)
Yeah, that was Larry Miller and he's fantastic. I loved him in. He was the dad in 10 Things I Hate About You with Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger. was I first time I saw him. He was on Comedy Central doing stand up, but he was the best part of a movie I hated, which was Pretty Woman. He was the store and the women's clothing store owner, you know.

Tug McTighe (23:34)
We're gonna need some serious sucking up. Well, not only sir are you

a handsome man, you're also very intelligent.

Matt Loehrer (23:40)
It was great. And I think that was all he was in the movie, but that's the only thing I liked about it. So, yeah, he's he was fantastic and he decided he was going to send Harry off to L.A. But he was going to need some acting lessons, right?

Tug McTighe (23:53)
Yes, acting lessons and private detective-ing lessons. Because they want to put him in a private detective movie. So yeah, they did a great job of this where they keep going back and forth in time as he's explaining who the characters are. And you see Harmony, this guy, this cyber cop guy who he stole the, was going to steal the action figure for his niece. Then Harmony,

Matt Loehrer (23:56)
Right.

Tug McTighe (24:20)
scares the guy who was in the movie Cyber Cop who was drunk and accidentally went into her house and then she she scares him with the bat he's hammered he falls he's wearing the suit and then announces the the news people like tragedy struck today where the the the former star of the Cyber Cop series was fell off his balcony and died it's just a really funny bit

Matt Loehrer (24:40)
Most

funny, because he was going to steal when he was in the store. He wanted to. She wanted some special thing and he said, how about cyber cop? It's in the bargain bin so so that after had had it was a terrible movie and all he got out of it was to keep the uniform that outfit. Yeah, that was funny.

Tug McTighe (24:45)
He, so, so how about Cybercop? Yeah, it's in the box. Yes. Yeah. So.

Right. Was the suit. All right. So

Harry gets out to LA. He's at a big, like your classic LA Hollywood party, which is shot in Shane Black's mansion, by the way. Yeah. He meets his childhood crush, Harmony Lane. He meets Gay Perry VanStrike, who's a private detective. He's giving him on the job training. Party host, Harlan Dexter. That's Corbin Berntson.

Matt Loehrer (25:06)
Yeah, he's doing all right.

Tug McTighe (25:19)
He's a retired actor has recently resolved a feud over his wife's inheritance with his estranged daughter Veronica So that's a lot of story in one sentence, which is really the whole story the strange family reconciling etc. Harry harmony. I thought it was a meet-cute That they met but it wasn't you find out she he doesn't recognize her she recognized him They were kids together back in Indiana. So I thought that was a fun. They showed that

Matt Loehrer (25:27)
yeah.

Tug McTighe (25:48)
seen at the beginning when he was the magnificent Harry or whatever, they were doing a magic trick and she's like, I'm gonna be an actress.

Matt Loehrer (25:54)
Uh,

yeah, so he thought she, So he saved her from a relation or a situation at the party where she had passed out and this creepy guy is, is creeping on her and he's like, leave her alone or I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to kick your ass. And the next scene, the other guy's just kicking his ass. And then the worst part is she leaves with the guy that was creeping on her. Um, so I, at the time he said, well,

Tug McTighe (26:01)
Correct. Yeah.

He's getting shredded by the guy,

That's right, that's right.

Matt Loehrer (26:19)
Why did he do this? She reminded him of a girl he knew from his childhood.

Tug McTighe (26:23)
That's exactly right. So they

give you a little trick there. Turns out that the girl that reminded him of the girl is the girl. Right? And yeah, and I like Matt too. You know, I love the fourth wall breaking. I love the shtick. They stopped the movie because the movie knows it's a movie and he gives you some information. So I love all that. I also love, you know, he is clearly an unreliable narrator. He's narrating it and he is a thief and lied his way into all this. So you don't know what's true coming out of his mouth.

Matt Loehrer (26:30)
Right.

Tug McTighe (26:50)
So there's a lot of meta elements that remind you that this is a movie, this is a story being told by a person. And it's as he remembers it. So you kind of got to take it with a grain of salt sometimes.

Matt Loehrer (27:03)
Yeah, no, I like it. I like that. And the grammar was great.

Tug McTighe (27:08)
Yeah,

she keeps correcting his grammar. I feel badly. Well, you don't feel badly, you feel bad. And I also love the, she goes, now why don't you go over there and hang out with that girl by Brazilian Billy Bob Thornton. And that made me smile. But then he goes, I'm gonna be over at that table by Native American Joe Pesci. And that guy was a Native American Joe Pesci. I was like, gee, that made me laugh. And again, the meat cute, I thought this was a great meat cute. And then it wasn't a meat cute. And for those of you not familiar, a meat cute is.

Matt Loehrer (27:25)
Great. Those were great.

Tug McTighe (27:34)
in a romantic comedy, it's the fun, interesting, out of the ordinary way that our two not together people who will eventually be together meet each other. They call that a meet-cute.

So He meets Perry at this party and Perry says hey, we're we're doing a stakeout tomorrow. It's part of your training your detective training So he goes with Perry to Big Bear Lake and they see a car being dumped in the lake They hear some noises. They're like, I think there's somebody in the trunk and turns out there was so Perry dives in the lake and you hear these gunshots and he he gets the woman out and

And he goes, yeah, she I had to shoot the lock open and Robert Downey jr. Goes and we've got to get out of here Because you shot her in the head and the cops are not gonna he goes. god. I didn't mean to so Perry actually shot this woman who was in the trunk and and this is when Perry then corrects his grammar when he says something And he throws Robert Downey jr. Throws the his gun away to try to rid of the evidence. He goes. did you where's my gun? He goes

He goes, I threw it in the lake, know, uh, get rid of the else. goes, that was, it was a gift from my mother. So there's a little bit of, a little bit of fun there. Right. Right. So, um, we get some good private Dick narration about the case and, you see these two figures that look down that they were the ones driving the car. So we're, setting up a lot of setting up a lot of plots.

Matt Loehrer (28:40)
And also, also when they dredge the lake, when they drag the lake, they're going to find that gun.

And another Shane Blackism where you have one character who's ultra professional and good at what he does and another one who's just terrible. Right.

Tug McTighe (29:05)
Just screwing it up the whole time for him, right?

All right, let's take a pause here and talk about our sponsor, Little Bear Graphics. Are you a private dick? If so, you probably need a logo and you need some business cards and you probably need a website. And even if you're not a private investigator, you probably need those things if you're a small business owner. And that's why you should check in with Matt Lohr at Little Bear Graphics. Matt can do all kinds of great stuff like,

solve murders, he can stake out husbands and wives that are cheating on each other, and he can even design really cool stuff that helps you with your business. In fact, he's actually a little bit better at that than he is with the staking out. But that's Matt, Little Bear Graphics. You can find him at littlebear.graphics, anywhere you surf on a computer.

Matt Loehrer (29:54)
Very nice. I could stake out like a donut shop. That'd be good for me.

Tug McTighe (29:57)
Yeah, that's, yeah. Hey, Matt, hey, Matt, are you

on a job? No, I'm just, I just like the donut shop.

Matt Loehrer (30:03)
If make a French batch, call it in.

Tug McTighe (30:04)
Right,

right. Okay, so Harmony believes that Harry is a private detective. Why? Because he told her he was. Liar. She tells Harry about her sister, Jenna, her young sister, who killed herself. He finds the late corpse identified as Veronica of the estranged family in his bathtub. So the dudes that saw, that dumped the body, picked up the body after Harry and Perry left.

and put it in his hotel room. So there's a lot of shit going on. And it goes on really quickly.

Matt Loehrer (30:36)
And he finds the corpse.

He finds the corpse in his closet as he's urinating. in a panic, he stumbles over, and now he's urinating on a corpse.

Tug McTighe (30:41)
And he, he, he turns right, right.

He accidentally pees on the corpse. He calls Perry for help, right? Perry's like, here's what you got to do. You got to, he goes, first of all, you got to wrap up the body. Second of all, go find the gun. And he goes, what gun? And he goes, the gun that they planted there to frame me for this murder. And sure enough, he finds the gun. You, you, you get this detective instruction from Perry.

Matt Loehrer (30:50)
That was pretty great.

Tug McTighe (31:09)
Again, to your point, quality, professional, shitbag. And Perry's like, wrap up the body, find the gun, put it in plastic, I'll be there in four minutes. Again, he's helping Robert Downey Jr. figure this out. And they start to talk about, Robert Downey Jr. says, know, in all those Johnny Gossamer books I've read, there was always like two, at least two subplots that came together. And that kind of feels like what this is.

Matt Loehrer (31:34)
Right, like there are two different problems, but they're actually the same problem. Didn't use to do that. Okay, so let's talk about comedy quickly because there is comedy in this. It's not slapstick comedy all the time, but I thought this kind of was. So you tell me if you've got a scene where you have a body wrapped up in a carpet and you throw it out a 10 story window, it can either land in a dumpster or it can hit the side of the dumpster and fly out into the street, which is funnier.

Tug McTighe (31:39)
They're actually the same problem, that's right.

hitting the dumpster and flying out into the street. Much funnier. And it was really, you're like, gosh, that was a tough, tough, tough shot, right?

Matt Loehrer (32:03)
Right, Right, even though you know it's a corpse, you're like, that's rough.

So I thought that was great, but that's how the creative process goes. And I love that that, you know, they had a conversation about what happens to that corpse when it flies out. They didn't say, obviously it's going to hit the dumpster. I mean, they spent 10 minutes saying, you know, wow, jeez, what's better? What's funnier? What's more impactful?

Tug McTighe (32:20)
100 %

sure. For sure they did. Right. So, so you, you get this corpse, the plot thickens, they're gotta get rid of the body. They gotta go dump it somewhere. And then Perry says, Hey, look, man, dude, this is bigger. This is bigger than you. This is bigger than a job. You need to, you need to go to the airport and get, you need to get the hell out of town. And Harry says, no, I got my screen test tomorrow. And then Perry kind of breaks his heart and says,

Look, man, you were never gonna get that job. I'm sorry to tell you this. Colin Farrell's up for this job. They just brought you in to knock his, he wants too much money. They're bringing in guys to just be patsies and to drive his price down. So that was a little bit sad. And then, so he goes to airport and he's like, maybe I should leave. And he sees Flicka, my friend Flicka, Harmony's friend at the airport, Harmony's friend Flicka.

Matt Loehrer (32:57)
That was sad.

Right.

Tug McTighe (33:19)
And he coerces her to give him her cell phone number because he wants to apologize. And now we learn that Harmony's sister, Jenna, younger sister, came out to LA looking for her real father because Harmony told her that he wasn't their real father because Jenna was being sexually abused. Maybe they both were. It's hard to know. So she thinks it's Harlan Dexter Corbin-Vernson because he was in Indiana in 1980.

filming the Johnny Gossamer movie and essentially could have gotten his mom, gotten her mom pregnant. So that's a little backstory that leads us down the road.

Matt Loehrer (33:52)
Yeah,

as I recall Harmony told Jenna that that was her father because she wanted to get her out of town.

Tug McTighe (33:58)
Right. That's right.

So Harmony is working a party. He calls her, right? Harry calls her. She says, I gotta work this party. You gotta help me with the case. So he doesn't leave. He goes to the party. Well, he goes to her house first and he's trying to apologize. And she slams the door and he's got his hand on the door jam and pop, off comes his finger. And she's like, oh my God, did I just cut your finger? He goes, yes, grab it, put it on ice. So there's all this slapstick about trying to put the finger back on and et cetera, et cetera.

Matt Loehrer (34:18)
You

Yeah, that's

a sharp door to just sever it.

Tug McTighe (34:28)
door. And then

he's in a bleeding bandage the rest of the movie.

Matt Loehrer (34:33)
So at a party with Harmony, the two men from the lake, Mr. Fryingpan and Mr. Fire, beat up Harry to convince him to stop looking into the crime. On their way to the hospital look at his finger, Harry and Harmony follow those guys to Perry's latest stakeout, and Harmony goes to warn him, leaving Harry asleep in the car. Now, is there a problem that you have with this scene?

Tug McTighe (34:54)
I

do this is a I'm gonna call this a triple P trademark personal pet peeve I fucking hate when a person leaves a car in a movie and they leave the lights on or they leave the door open because you know what I have never done purposefully in the Decades of me driving gotten out to the grocery store left the lights on and left the door open right So it's just I hate it. It makes me crazy. They do it all the time. Luckily. There's a reason here that they do it

Matt Loehrer (35:21)
Yeah,

but can I do you one better on that as far as personal pet peeves involving cars and movies? The scene where somebody gets into a car and there are no keys and they flip down the visor and there are keys up there. Do you leave your keys there? Have you ever left your keys there? Has anybody in the history of cars ever left their keys there? Stupid.

Tug McTighe (35:26)
Of course.

Yeah. Visor. Yeah. Yeah. No, I do not. No, I have not. No, they have not. That's

All right, so now they left the car door open, which we all know is annoying. And now Perry is trailing a purple haired girl, Mr. Frying Pan from the party is trailing Perry, Harmony is trailing Mr. Frying Pan, and Harry, Robert Downey Jr. is asleep in the car.

Cause he's all popped up on Demra from the finger being cut off. she grabs a gun. She trips and falls. She's chasing everybody. She trips and falls and shoots the car, a car that's just on the road. It veers off. Carrie jumps out of the way. Mr. Fine pin jumps out of the way. The pink hair girl jumps out of the way.

And then it crashes and then the food like a food truck guy just opens fire from his food truck window and just murders Mr. Frying Pan with like six shots. And he's like, I don't teach you sons of bitches to come around here. Right. He's all mad. So crazy scene. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (36:34)
Right?

That was unexpected.

I'm glad you went through that because I had forgotten what happened. So much happened in the space of about 45 seconds.

Tug McTighe (36:48)
Yeah, yeah, she

trips falls boom bang boom and then you're cut cut cut Yeah, so then now what happens is pink hair girl escapes all this commotion What does she see but an open car door? with the car running so she jumped she jumps in the car Harry's passed out in the back from the pain and the drugs and Takes him home to her house where he he wakes up essentially an hour later or whatever and goes in the house

And at this point he's in the house looking to clean up his hand, right? And he hears the woman, pink haired woman He quickly gets under the bed and you hear Mr. Fire. Mr. Frying pan was killed by the food cart operator. Mr. Fire, his partner is now in the same room as this pink haired girl and he's hiding under the bed and you hear.

two silencer shots, boop boop, and then she falls down and Harry can see her and she dies there in front of him. So yeah, she was still alive and he made her, yeah, he sort of helped her be quiet. So he's killed her. Harry, at this point, Mr. Fire leaves the room and Harry climbs out and sees the gun laying on the bed, picks up the gun as just as Mr. Fire, he's gonna like bag up the body.

Matt Loehrer (37:49)
That was hard because she was still alive for part of that.

Tug McTighe (38:08)
And he goes, I see you got a gun. Like he's all cool. And he's like, what are you going to shoot me? And he just goes, yeah. Like he just, he pops him a couple of times. Yeah. yeah. And this is kind of when you see Harry changing his character. He's starting to get a little bit better at this noir world he's in. He cleans off, he cleans cell, he cleans off the fingerprints. He puts it in the dead girl's hand. He says he's sorry. He's very sweet. here he is.

Matt Loehrer (38:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, Mr. Fire was surprised. He didn't see that come.

Yeah. Or at least the self-preservation part of it, yeah.

Tug McTighe (38:36)
actually throughout the movie. yeah. So then he, his, the guy would grab this, he was fighting and Mr. Frank, he goes, just, they just put that finger back on. And so he's trying to fight. He puts it in a bowl of ice and he's trying to get his hand cleaned up. Everybody's dead. And then what happens? He looks down the ice is bowl is empty and the dog has the finger in its mouth. It's like, buddy.

Matt Loehrer (38:36)
Mm-hmm. He is a likable guy.

So it's

like Triumph the insult comic dog. It's sticking out of his mouth like a cigar.

Tug McTighe (39:01)
Yeah, come on buddy. And

then he's calling Perry. He's like, well, got it. Perry's like, you got to get out of there. He was like, got to get my finger to the dog has it. And then he goes, oh no. And you see the dog just eating it and swallowing it. So I thought that was funny. Yeah, I think that, and then he's visibly heard about the violence he's just performed. And he talks to Perry a little bit about it. And then he hugs the dog, like get a little love from the dog.

Matt Loehrer (39:12)
Right. He says, I think that problem solved itself.

So Harry meets Harmony and Perry at his hotel and Perry tells him that he doesn't think the case is over because there's too many questions about Jenna and Harlan and Veronica. He pays her back the money because she was the one that hired him, right? Under the name Ames.

Tug McTighe (39:40)
Jenna was,

yes Jenna used Harmony's credit card to have Perry follow Veronica.

Matt Loehrer (39:47)
So he pays her back and says she should back off because this is getting serious and before she gets somebody else killed. Meanwhile, Harry and Harmony are connecting, which is nice because he still pines for her. They come clean about how they both led a failed life. It didn't turn out the way they hoped, but Harry's still glad they reconnected because she was his dream girl. Yep, they get drunk together and then it's he's missing a finger, but it doesn't seem to matter.

Tug McTighe (39:56)
Yep. Yep.

And he just says it, right? He says it to her.

Doesn't seem to bother anybody, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (40:13)
Movies are funny.

It's like the person that gets shot and five minutes later, they're fine. Harry remembers that Veronica, the body they found, wasn't wearing underwear. And there was a scene where her lower body was revealed and he kind of covered her. So there's a kind of save the cat moment, right? Very nice. So he thought that was odd because Perry said she was a born again Christian and

Tug McTighe (40:17)
They're fine, yeah.

He

He pulled her dress down to cover her up, That's the in-the-cat moment, that's right.

Right.

So you just thought it just didn't sit right with him.

Matt Loehrer (40:40)
That was unexpected.

Yeah. So they're about to get together when she admits that she slept with Harry's best friend in high school who was the one person. So that was the whole running bit is that she slept with everybody. But there was one person, but Harry. So he was in the friend zone for years, but there was one person he said, just don't sleep with my best friend, Mitch or whatever. And she's like, I got to, I need to, I need to make a

Tug McTighe (40:55)
But Harry. Yeah, right. Right.

best friend. Yeah, and she finally comes clean as she does.

Matt Loehrer (41:08)
Confession, I slept with Mitch and then the next scene she's out in the hallway. Yeah, so he kicks her out and she's upset.

Tug McTighe (41:11)
He's so mad, yeah. Yeah, he's so mad, right? So yeah,

Harry's got a little bit of that sort of like the Dungeons and Dragons. He's like chaotic good or neutral. He has his own moral compass. So that's a character alignment, Like, right, there's lawful good, neutral good, chaotic good. I think he's neutral good, where he's like, he's generally a good person, but he doesn't really follow the law. He follows his own path and does he wants.

But there are several moments where he he covers up the woman and he doesn't let, right? Remember he didn't let Harmony get assaulted. He does some nice things.

Matt Loehrer (41:48)
Right.

He's a good person. If you ever wondered, by the way, if Dungeons and Dragons was going to come up in this podcast, if it's that kind of podcast, the answer is yes. And it just did. This is always going to happen. Harmony reveals that she told Jenna, her sister, that Harlan was a real father to get her out of town. Yes, that. you had asked, kind of did this happen? There was a scene showing her in bed as a kid, like she and her sister shared a bed and she's

Tug McTighe (41:57)
The answer is yes, unequivocally.

to leave. Right.

Matt Loehrer (42:16)
close to the camera and facing the camera and away. The dad comes in and takes the daughter and leads her away. So I don't think she explains it, but as she's kind of talked voiceover that scene, you see what's happening in context kind of gives it to

Tug McTighe (42:18)
I remember. And the dad comes in and picks up the daughter. Okay. Okay. Okay.

You're getting

that story, that backstory.

All right, so Harmony asks if Veronica was raped, which Harry says no, they did the forensics and they said no, there's no sexual assault. And then he tells Perry that she wasn't wearing underpants. And he goes, okay, wait a minute, that's super weird. So Perry kind of freaks out. He's like, he knows something. hearing, so a lot of shit is happening, so I'm just gonna keep going. Then they get a call that says Harmony's disappeared, no one knows where Harmony is.

So they decide they're gonna go to a mental hospital that's owned by Harlan, Corbin Merson, and they discover Veronica was locked in there by him to be replaced by Pink Hair Girl to end the inheritance feud that he was having with his daughter, Veronica. Harry unintentionally kills a murderess orderly, and then they are captured by Harlan. So again, that was me saying something in 30 seconds. A lot of story. There's a Harlan is the bad guy we think now. He stashed his daughter away in the...

the mental institution had a replacement that signed the paperwork, to get his dead wife's inheritance. All this noir stuff happens.

Matt Loehrer (43:35)
Yeah,

but I'll give Shane Black credit for this, like I always do when directors and writers are thoughtful and purposeful. At the very beginning, at that party, way at the beginning, they showed Harlan and his daughter, that's his daughter, Veronica. Yeah, they're really close and they were getting along great, which is weird because up to a month ago, he hated him and they were totally estranged, but now everything's fine. that her mother is dead, they've reconnected.

Tug McTighe (43:53)
They've been a strange forever,

Matt Loehrer (44:00)
then a whole movie and then this scene where you're like, that's right, I forgot about that. That's what was happening.

Tug McTighe (44:02)
Right, right. that's how that, right.

Okay, so a lot of stuff happens here. So they get kidnapped, right, at the mental hospital. There's a guy named Emilio who has some wires attached to Harry's genitalia and he is shocking him. And Perry is tied up and he accuses the guy being a homophobe.

Matt Loehrer (44:16)
Mm-hmm.

Tug McTighe (44:28)
He's like, he, no, he accuses him being gay. He's like, you're gay. I'm pretty sure you're gay. I saw you looking at me. He goes like, I'm not gay. I'm not this, I'm not that. And he's ginning him up and he's ginning him up. And then you see Perry shoots him with this little Dillinger right in his crotch and shoots him dead. And he goes, they showed you the little gun earlier in the car. And Perry goes, homophobes never look there. It's a great place to stack your gun. So yeah. Derringer, did I say Dillinger? Yeah, so.

Matt Loehrer (44:43)
It's a...

I think it's a derringer, not a Dillinger, but they both work. said, yeah, John Dillinger

probably carried a derringer.

Tug McTighe (44:59)
There you go. So anyway Perry facilitates their freedom by accusing the guy being gay Harry contacts Harmony who comes to rescue them She steals the body The corpse she grabs the van that the corpse is in and drives it away. It's in a casket our heroes escape. There's a chase Harmony wrecks the van the casket flies off a bridge it like

Matt Loehrer (45:01)
That was funny.

Tug McTighe (45:24)
You know, like a football flying in the air, flies off a bridge. She jumps over the edge and falls down. Harry and Perry are shot by the same bullet. Perry jumps in front of Harry to protect him. They're shot by the same bullet. Perry dies, I thought. Harmony calls his phone and repeats the line she used during the... Perry dies, he's passed out. You think he's dead, he comes back. His phone rings, Robert Downey, and it's Harmony underneath a bridge where she's hurt. She says, you know, come...

She uses the line that she used when they were kids and he was doing the siren half trick And that makes him heat that gets Harry back on his feet Harlan Corbin Berntson tries to run him down Harry jumps out. Okay, Harry jumps out of the way over the bridge He lands on top of the casket that got stuck on a highway sign Then he grabs onto the corpses wrist that had fallen out of the casket He shoots Harlan and Harlan goes captain fucking magic and then he dies

Matt Loehrer (46:07)
Right.

Tug McTighe (46:15)
He shoots the thugs, he's shooting everybody, then he falls with like a lot of moving parts.

Matt Loehrer (46:19)
And a lot that you have to just at this point say I'll buy it like when he flies over the side of the bridge and grabs the dangling arm of the corpse that probably grabs him back so he can hold on to it and it doesn't like rip off or rip out of her arm socket or pull her out of the anyway. And then he does an amazing bit of shooting where he you know just shoot these guys through the car. Yeah. Yeah, now he's.

Tug McTighe (46:21)
very-

Right, now.

Like a whoa like a marksman guys never shot a gun before before today. also

Don't forget this only this is happening over like 72 hours This is all like one two three days, right? so

Matt Loehrer (46:48)
Danny Oakley here.

Yeah, exactly. So. Yeah, so at this point you're just

like I guess he can. I guess I'll buy it. That's fine.

Tug McTighe (46:58)
Well,

you push pause on prime and you're like, well, there's only 22 minutes left. we got to, he's like Shane Black. Shane Black's like, man, we got to, Hey guys, we got to, we got to keep moving here. We got to wrap this up. So, um, Harry reconciles with harmony under the bridge. He shows her the Gani Johnny Gossamer book that he had in his pocket. Kind of stopped the bullet, but not really. He still got shot. Um, I thought that was kind of funny. Um, again, a lot of unexpected stuff.

Matt Loehrer (47:02)
Gotta wrap it up somehow.

Hahaha.

Yeah, that's that trope where we saw it in.

We saw it in Hot Fuzz where, you know, had the notebook in his pocket. And then when Nick Frost stabbed him, there was a notebook there. That's a trope that you always have. Like, there was a badge there that stopped a bullet and that's why you didn't die. Right. But in this one, it didn't at all. was, hey, it saved me. wait, it didn't.

Tug McTighe (47:31)
Yes.

That stopped, right. Yeah.

Right, right, right. Or it was the flask. The guy was a drunk and it was the flask that ended up saving him, right.

No,

it did not. he wakes up in the hospital where she's watching him. And then you see Perry come in in a wheelchair. So Perry didn't in fact die. And there's a great bit here where he goes, the dancer goes, well, what'd thought? He goes, you thought there were stakes? You thought someone was going to die? Why don't we just bring everybody back? And then everybody that got murdered in the movie comes back in the hospital room, including Abraham Lincoln. Is there? Yeah. Yeah. They're all very meta. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (47:57)
Yeah.

And they had like balloons and stuff like when he's like, get out of here. They all turn

around and leave. That was funny.

Tug McTighe (48:17)
all very meta.

And this is again where you mentioned it before, Matt, where this is he's telling a story. He's narrating this, It's a story. and it was it was he that was one of the digs at the studio. He goes, right. Studio wanted a happy ending so he couldn't kill anybody. So then again, another like we got to get moving says Shane Black in the hospital, the trio learned Jenna committed suicide after witnessing Harlan.

Matt Loehrer (48:25)
can put that in if he wants to, love that.

Right.

Tug McTighe (48:43)
having sex with Veronica's replacement pink haired girl, believing her new father was also incestuous. So again, there's a lot there. Then they go to Jenna's funeral back in Indiana, her bedridden, father, Harmony's father's there, and Perry slaps him and says, you should have done better. And then we cut to sort of...

later they're better you see that you reveal that Robert Downey Jr. Perry is working for Perry now as a private detective out in LA and he said something about there was a midwestern joke about saying fuck too much hey stop stop stop saying the f-word so much the people in the midwest won't like it so i thought that was kind of

Matt Loehrer (49:19)
To the people in the Midwest. I'm sorry.

That was funny. it ends with Robert Downey Jr. kind of doing a video diary type thing. So yeah, so that was that was the end.

Tug McTighe (49:29)
That's exactly right. So again, all's well that ends well.

Again, I...

Matt Loehrer (49:32)
Wait,

there was one last bit where where gay Perry says stick around for the credits. The best boys somebody's nephew. So again, you know fourth wall he's talking to us that was cool.

Tug McTighe (49:39)
That best boy is somebody's nephew, that's right. So another fourth wall.

So, okay, so we burned through that, okay?

because there's a lot of shit that happens that ends up and I'm gonna quote unquote connecting. There's a lot of tropes that just come back, come back, come back, come back. She's the double crosser, he triple cross the double cross. There's a lot of that. So much so that when I read a bunch of reviews, people are like, hey man, it's really interesting stylistic movie, but.

Little hard to follow in the end and I agreed fully little hard little hard to follow by the end. And what this I liked it. I liked the style of it. I liked the vibe of it. I liked the characters, the acting, the writing. I wish it held together a little tighter like I think that the nice guys did in the end. And this led me to a realization, not really a realization, but it it reminded me of some things in my own life and my own consumption of pop culture where

It's a hundred percent how feel about this movie. So I can often like the idea of a thing More than I actually like the thing okay, so People hate me for this I like the idea of Led Zeppelin a lot more than I actually like Led Zeppelin I like the idea of baseball a lot more than I actually like what sitting down watching a baseball game on TV so

Matt Loehrer (51:04)
Right.

Tug McTighe (51:13)
I like the idea of this movie a little bit more than I actually liked the movie. And I didn't dislike the movie. Again, I also, as I think about this, I think I also like the idea of film noir and pulp fiction-y, but I think I like the idea of that stuff more than I actually like it. Cause I never sat down and watched the Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. I don't care. I'm not gonna go watch it. And I never will. So again, like this.

Matt Loehrer (51:33)
And you never will.

Tug McTighe (51:36)
Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, like get Shorty, you get Shorty that movie. Rum Punch, Elmore Leonard's written a bunch of these kind of novels. They're okay. But I think I like the idea this better than the movie.

Matt Loehrer (51:48)
Yeah, no, that's funny. I'd forgotten about get shorty, which I liked. That probably deserves a rewatch, but I'm with you. I 100 % get it. There's an experiential quality to things. You mentioned baseball, which I thought was really interesting. I I don't check the box scores. I've never been a sports fan, which is not a surprise to anybody, but I could go to the baseball game and enjoy it. The weather.

The relaxing vibes being with people that that's a neat setting for stuff like that Even if I don't care who wins or loses or what scores Yeah

Tug McTighe (52:16)
That's right, all of that is cool. Yeah, it's

sort of like, how about this? I like the stuff around this movie more than I like the movie itself.

Matt Loehrer (52:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, I can also appreciate efforts that people make, even if they don't always pay off. And I can appreciate style, even if the execution isn't perfect, like it was here. So I think having seen terrible movies, when I see a movie that's pretty good, I can be like, hey, I appreciate that. That was pretty good.

Tug McTighe (52:30)
Me too.

Haha!

100 % yeah,

that's why it's for me. It's a mile. It's a mild sin to hit I'm glad I saw it. I liked it I liked what Shane Black was trying to do and again, like you said at the beginning of the pod Eleven years later. He makes nice guys, which I really liked similar similar vibe

Matt Loehrer (52:59)
Mm-hmm.

Cine hit for me, I don't know if I would enjoy an actual 50s noir movie like the Maltese Falcon, like you said, as much as I would enjoy a neo-noir movie. But I enjoyed this one, it was nice to see

a that was packaged this way where it's got some humor to it, but it's not a comedy per se.

Tug McTighe (53:22)
Right, right.

Part comedy, part drama, just like life.

Matt Loehrer (53:26)
Yeah, I hear you. So one other last question I have is about gay Perry, which it took me a second. I'm like, gay, Perry, gay Perry, who was an awesome character and in a lot of ways kind of the heroic. Yeah. OK, but could this movie be made today and would it be made today with this character in the world we live in, with the generation that we have?

Tug McTighe (53:27)
Hahaha!

Okay? Gay in Paris, yeah.

not played for laughs, not played because he's gay, right?

If you.

Matt Loehrer (53:53)
with a climate of everything, would it be done?

Tug McTighe (53:56)
probably not. You get a lot of blowback. And again, it's not, they're not making fun of him at all. He's never the butt of any joke and neither is the fact that he's gay, the butt of any joke. But yeah, if you, if you put this movie out today, you'd get some blowback. You'd get some think pieces about it.

Matt Loehrer (54:02)
Right.

Yeah, you would, but it's so you get a lot of from certain sectors, segments of society. You know, blazing saddles could never be made today. And I'm like, no, they couldn't because the N word's toxic as it should be. And you just wouldn't you wouldn't do it. And it's things that you could do in the 1970s and say you can't do now. And I think we're better for it. I think the difference here is that.

Tug McTighe (54:26)
That's right. Right.

Matt Loehrer (54:37)
him being gay is now such not a big deal in the way that 20 years ago, I think it would have been a bigger deal. I think you'd get a so what. he's gay, so what? Who cares? I feel like 2021 Jump Street, did you see that?

Tug McTighe (54:41)
Correct. Would have, just a bigger deal. Just 20 years have got behind us, right?

Big deal.

I've seen, I think I've seen some of it.

Matt Loehrer (54:58)
it had a funny take where Channing Tatum goes back to high school with Jonah Hill and thinks he's going to be the kind of bully like he was. And everybody's like no bullies or jerks and you suck. We'd like the other guy was way more Jonah Hill was way more popular than Channing Tatum. Yeah, they're like, what are you? What? Yeah, I am gay. Are you making fun of me for that?

Tug McTighe (55:10)
Right, right, right, because he's just a big jerk.

Matt Loehrer (55:19)
And everybody's like, you suck, man. So I just think it's interesting. I think it's a different world.

Tug McTighe (55:20)
You're a jerk, yeah

For sure. Christmas movie, yeah, your name.

Matt Loehrer (55:28)
Yes, it

Tug McTighe (55:29)
Yeah, I mean,

the whole thing has Christmas carols all throughout it. She spends the middle third of the movie in a hot Santa outfit because she was working that party. It had a Santa hat on. Right.

Matt Loehrer (55:38)
That's true. Shane,

Shane Black had an interesting comment about why he likes Christmas and integrates that into so many of his movies. He was somewhere and eating at a taco truck or something like a food truck. And they had Christmas lights and one of them was broken. And inside of the so you could see like the filament inside, there was the little Virgin Mary inside of the light that you would never see if it hadn't been broken, right?

but it was built into it. he said that was really magical to him that you can have these amazing things that you wouldn't, you don't necessarily see until you look deeper. But anyway, that's, he had a reason for kind of liking to use Chris, Mrs. Backdrop. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (56:19)
setting a lot of them, right? Right? I like, yeah,

and I love Christmas. So it makes me, it's funny to see LA at Christmas time, right? Cause it's the anti snow sleigh, all that. It's just LA. Okay. So you can barely watch this anywhere. We both had to rent it on Amazon prime for four bucks. I was going to watch it twice, but I didn't want to spend four more dollars.

Matt Loehrer (56:24)
Who doesn't?

Right.

I was going to get it at the library and all seven copies were rented. apparently it's very. Yeah, yeah.

Tug McTighe (56:42)
seven copies of this at the library. I love it.

So, all right. Well, that was fun. So listen, again, if you like what we're doing here, please email us ideas, feedback, cetera, cinemassagemail.com. Please subscribe on Spotify or Apple podcasts, and please give us a review and tell someone else about the show. That's really how we get friends and family members and new fans. It helps us grow ourselves. And we want a suggestion. All suggestions are welcome. We may not do anything with it, but we want to hear what you have to say.

Matt Loehrer (57:12)
Yeah, definitely. Hello friend. If you like it, tell somebody else. Hey, you should listen to this.

Tug McTighe (57:12)
and please yeah

all right so here's a little news this was our 10th episode matt so we are calling season one of cinemases complete so we are going to take a little break to play in season two now that we know what the f we're doing because we really didn't on see on episode one we pushed record and talked

And then we're like, there's surely a better way to do this. And there are better ways and we have learned a lot of them. So what we're going to do is we're going to plan out next season, plan out the 10 movies we're going to cover so we can do a little bit better job planning, a little bit better job researching, a little bit better job knowing what the hell we're talking about. So we will be back on May 21st. That's three, couple of weeks, four weeks with episode one, season two of Sinemuses. That would be S2E1.

abbreviated map. So that's what we're gonna do.

Matt Loehrer (58:07)
Nice.

If anybody has ideas between now and then this is the time to get it in. I cannot guarantee that we will take them, but send it and who knows?

Tug McTighe (58:15)
Send

it and we'll go from there. All right, I appreciate all of you. Matt, I appreciate you the most.

Matt Loehrer (58:21)
Hey, I appreciate you too. I am Matt.

Tug McTighe (58:23)
I'm

Matt Loehrer (58:24)
We'll see you next time on Cinemisses.