Striptease (The One Where Demi Moore Was Paid a Lot of Money)

This week on The Worst Movie Podcast, Ade and Aaron slide into the sun-bleached, Florida-fried madness of Striptease (1996) — the political-strip-club crime caper that paid Demi Moore a record-breaking salary to anchor a movie that can’t decide if it’s political satire or a sexy crime thriller. Featuring Burt Reynolds caked in Vaseline, and Ving Rhames wielding a cordless drill, it’s a film that turns Hiaasen’s dark comedy into pure, neon-tinted chaos.

Grab your lint trap, queue up some Annie Lennox, and join Ade and Aaron as they sift through off-screen plot twists, Florida Man side quests, and memorable one-liners. Because if Striptease taught us anything, it’s that in Florida, the line between comedy and corruption is as slippery as Burt Reynolds’ boots.

Watch the trailer for Striptease.

Transcript

Ade (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Worst Movie Podcast. I'm Ade

Aaron (00:03)
And I'm Aaron and this is a podcast where we watch the worst movies ever made in hopes of finding a hidden gem.

Ade (00:10)
Enjoy.

So what'd you think of Running Man? We got to see it in the theaters together.

Aaron (00:34)
I liked it. Did you like it?

Ade (00:35)
Yeah,

I thought it was pretty good. I didn't think it was great. I'm glad I saw it in theaters. A lot of fun action and some good laughs and yeah, was a good popcorn movie, I think.

Aaron (00:48)
You got to see some of Glenn Powell's neck, so to speak.

Ade (00:52)
I don't think they showed neck, but it was pretty close. had to cover Kelly's eyes during that scene.

Aaron (00:55)
It was damn near.

⁓

Yeah, yeah, I liked it. I thought it was a specially relevant commentary for these times we find ourselves in.

Ade (01:08)
I felt like it said a lot of things without saying anything. You could watch it and say, yeah, the media sucks or yeah. Kim Kardashian sucks or yeah. Corporations like everybody's going to look at it and say yeah, that's right. The, other side is.

is terrible and I don't know I almost said like too many things in that it didn't end up saying much at all.

Aaron (01:31)
it offended you in some way.

Ade (01:33)
Hey look, I want people to run to their deaths. ⁓

Aaron (01:33)
You

Yeah, I don't know. It was definitely they were all easy targets for sure, there's also some level of irony of watching the movie funded by billionaires shitting on the executives and the rich.

Ade (01:51)
anything else you've watched recently that you liked?

Aaron (01:56)
I've been watching a bunch of Bond movies, old Bond movies, because they're I guess they're all on Prime because Amazon bought the rights for distributing, I think. I don't remember, but yeah, they're all on on.

Ade (02:01)
really?

Yeah. I think they

own them outright.

Aaron (02:16)
That could be. Yeah. So I've been watching a bunch. I've watched most of the Connery ones, a few Brosnan's, Timothy Dalton and at least one Roger Moore over the last like two weeks. I watched a lot of. Yeah.

Ade (02:17)
when they bought MGM.

sudden.

Holy shit. That's a lot.

I definitely need to rewatch the canon. Did you start chronologically or it sounds like you kind of bounced around all?

Aaron (02:42)
So at one time in my life, I did watch them all in order chronologically, including the. The ones that Connery did where he was, it was not like the official Bond movies, but this time I'm just jumping around. I just like the older ones

Ade (02:57)
Yeah.

than the recent ones?

Aaron (03:01)
Better than

Whatever was it? Tomorrow Never Dies is the second Pierce Brosnan one, I think, through Casino So I guess the end of the Brosnan era. then I also there I didn't love Spectre.

Ade (03:17)
Yeah. I think the very last Bond film didn't get as great reviews, but I loved it. I thought it was, yeah, I loved the whole thing. That's, yeah, I mean, I think they're gonna reboot it, so to speak, but that scene in No Time to Die where he's in the car and.

Aaron (03:25)
No time to die. Do you think, do think he's really dead?

Ahem.

Ade (03:40)
all the villains are around shooting him and he's just like stone-faced because he thought, yeah, because he thought that she ratted him out and she's just like pleading with him. I remember vividly watching it in the theaters and I was just like, holy shit, dude. And like.

Aaron (03:43)
Super calm.

Yeah.

That's where they're like

shooting point blank into the window right next to him.

Ade (03:59)
Yeah, and he's just not moving at all. I could watch that scene every day for the rest of my life, I think.

Aaron (04:00)
Yeah, it's

Yeah, I did like that one. so do you think that James Bond or 007 is just a title and not a person? Or is James Bond a real person that?

is ageless and timeless and now dead.

Ade (04:17)
Amen.

that's getting kind of deep. mean, I don't, I don't think he's a real person. ⁓

Aaron (04:26)
I mean in the world

of Bond movies.

Ade (04:29)
I think I prefer him to be a real person, I didn't like in the movie how it was starting to be like they were calling, I forget her name, but the other agent 007 instead of Bond. Like I want Bond to be James Bond, and like James Bond to be 007. I don't.

Aaron (04:49)
Wait, what are you talking about?

They called who what?

Ade (04:52)
in No Time to Die, there's a bit where somebody is referencing to somebody as 007 and it's Leshawna Lynch, Nomi, the agent. It's a different agent that James Bond meets and she has the title of 007.

Aaron (05:08)
don't remember that.

Ade (05:09)
Yeah, I think in Canon, the double O status is just, it gets recycled. Yeah, it's like your Jersey number or whatever. don't want to see the next Bond movie be 007 and it's like somebody completely different. I want it to be James Bond. I want to see James Bond stories. I mean,

Aaron (05:15)
Passed around. Yeah.

so you don't want a black man or a woman. Let's get this

on record.

Ade (05:32)
I don't mind some diversification of who James Bond is. And if you can write a story where James Bond is a black man or a woman, like Idris Elba, that whole rumor, like when it was like Idris might be James Bond. I was like, that'd be awesome. But he would still be James Bond. I think it wouldn't be like, let's have a series of movies of 007 and it's, know, Jim Brown or whatever. ⁓

Aaron (05:44)
Yeah.

the blackest name you could think of.

Ade (06:02)
Actually,

I have a friend named Jim Brown, so shout out Jim. ⁓ No, he's not.

Aaron (06:07)
Jim Black. alright.

Fuck me then.

Ade (06:12)
yeah.

maybe we should talk about the movie of the episode.

strip tease from 1996, part of this naughty November theme. you think this episode is, is okay for moms to listen to?

Aaron (06:27)
Probably, yeah. Yeah, mean, spoiler alert, this is not nearly as naughty as Showgirls was. I didn't need to leave myself so much ⁓ my naughty scale. I don't think anything's gonna top it.

Ade (06:28)
Yeah, it's probably a little safer than the other two.

Since you brought it up, was going to ask towards the end, but what would you give this on the naughty scale? What kind of rating?

Aaron (06:49)
I'd give it like a three or a four. ⁓ Yeah. Well, this movie, other than seeing Demi Moore topless there wasn't really anything that raunchy or scandalous in it.

Ade (06:52)
Three? Your scale is all over the place. You gave Showgirls an eight and this a three.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't raunchy. I don't think there was even a single sex scene, there?

Aaron (07:09)
Buh.

I don't think so. and her character is not like an overtly sexual character either. Like she's begrudgingly dancing. So other than seeing her topless, there were no scenes in it that I was like, you close your eyes or whatever. Like it was fine.

Ade (07:28)
Yeah, mean, three just feels pretty tame. guess. I guess I'd give it a six. There you see multiple women topless and several scenes that are just like a focused shot of a stripper doing her act.

Aaron (07:31)
I thought it was tame.

Early on, feel like you see more and then at once they get that out of the way, I feel like even when she's around all of the other dancers late in the in the movie, they all have their tops on like their bikinis or whatever.

Ade (07:59)
Yeah,

yeah, the movie does shift. We'll get into that a little bit in terms of background, but I think there's some tension in terms of how much, sexy this movie was supposed to be. We're talking about strip tease released in 1996 starring Demi Moore, Burt Reynolds and Ving Rhames directed by Andrew Bergman.

and based on a novel by Carl Hiaasen do you know anything about Carl Hiaasen or his works?

Aaron (08:25)
Nope, I didn't know this movie was actually based on a book until after I watched it, so yeah, I had no idea.

Ade (08:32)
Yeah,

I've read a couple of his novels, Bad Monkey and the sequel to Bad Monkey, which was called...

Razor Girl and Bad Monkey was made into a TV show recently starring Vince Vaughn on Apple TV. And yeah, so this was based on one of Carl Hiaasen's novels, 11 % on Rotten Tomatoes. It had a $50 million budget and made $113 million at the box office. So not quite a bomb, but

Reports were that it needed 150 million to break even. So it fell short of expectations. did you know much about this movie? You probably again were a little too young to remember this coming out.

Aaron (09:20)
Yeah, it was definitely another one of those movies I was too young for. I knew about it, but I knew that Demi Moore was topless in it, but that's about all I knew.

Ade (09:29)
Yeah, well, there's probably a reason why that's that's what stuck out for you because from what I could understand from the background that seemed to be the cornerstone of the studios marketing ⁓ strategy for this movie. They paid a then record salary of twelve and a half million dollars for Demi Moore. That was the most that any actress had been paid at that point.

Aaron (09:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you see what the director slash screenwriter said about Moore?

Ade (09:59)
What did he say?

Aaron (10:01)
He said is Demi the funniest person in the world? No. Would the movie have been made without her? Probably not. No other major star was willing to take her clothes off and I was not going to do a TNT version of strip tease with people running around in swimsuits. So basically it was like she was the biggest star we could get to take her top off.

Ade (10:16)
Ha

Yeah. Yeah. So that.

Aaron (10:23)
And it took a lot

of money. think in contrast, Burt Reynolds was only paid like 300 something thousand for this movie, which was, I one of the rates he's earned on a movie in his career.

Ade (10:38)
I mean, to Moore's credit, it sounded like she put a lot of work into this and she spent a million dollars of her own salary on personal trainers, choreographers, and stuff like that for this movie. she really put a lot of work into it.

Aaron (10:41)
Yeah, you can tell.

Ade (10:53)
It seems like there's a lot of tension between what the studio wanted and what the source material was and what the director and writer wanted. So the source material seems like it was definitely a comedy, a dark comedy, crime, caper, kind of a silly farce. He writes a lot of like crazy characters that obviously came through in the movie.

Aaron (11:12)
Yeah.

Ade (11:19)
But then it seemed like the studio wanted this like sexy, you know, thriller drama that would command a big box office. And what they ended up with was kind of a little bit of both, but not in a way that mixed well.

Aaron (11:33)
Yeah, I would agree with that. Like from what I read about his books is that there's a lot of freaks and crazy characters and it's typically set with a backdrop of some sort of social issue annoys the author at the time. for the book that this was based on, it was the way that the sugar refining industry mistreats their

employees and workers. And I feel like a lot of that was lost in the movie, which is a huge part of the story in the book from what I understand.

Ade (11:56)
which seemed.

Yeah.

It's in there in the movie a little bit and it just felt really out of place and I was just watching it. was like, why do we get this like three minute interlude all of sudden about the plight of sugar workers? ⁓

Aaron (12:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, I like that

the the sugar bosses had a yacht and it was literally called Big Sugar was the name of the yacht.

Ade (12:24)
Yeah.

What would your, yeah, be called?

Aaron (12:29)
Jeez, I don't know. Serenity now.

Ade (12:32)
Yeah, one other thing about the background

this slowed dramatically Moore's career, since she got paid so much on this and it was a disappointment. It kind of seemed like, you know, she'd had a good run up up till now of, of leading big movies she led GI Jane, which came out the year after this.

that bombed too and then basically she didn't star in a movie until The Substance a year ago.

Aaron (12:59)
Yeah.

Quite the slump there. Speaking of slumps, Burt Reynolds was coming out of a massive slump at this time when this movie came out. Yeah, basically since the early 80s, he'd been in nothing notable. He had just declared bankruptcy. He had just gone through a very messy public divorce.

Ade (13:09)
yeah?

Aaron (13:24)
where he kind of in the media and whatnot. And he was basically doing TV work at the time. And this movie came out in 96 and then 97 was Boogie Nights.

this movie kind of was the precursor to his career renaissance.

Ade (13:45)
Yeah, I didn't realize that back story. So what did you think about his performance here?

Aaron (13:50)
I loved it. Like at first I was like, this is too cartoonish. But then I kind of got the vibe of the film a little bit better. And I was like, he fits in with this weird cast of characters. Because like Ving Rhymes also plays a quirky, weird character. And so I'm like, OK, there's several of these weirdos in this He's the southern.

Ade (13:52)
Yeah.

Aaron (14:15)
Florida politician, a congressman that loves naked women.

Ade (14:21)
I

mean, the first, I think the first thing we hear him say in the movie is he steps. Yeah, he steps out of a limo going to a strip club. Poon Tang, the night is young and full of promise, my boy.

Aaron (14:26)
Poontang

Yeah.

Ade (14:36)
I

think all my quotes for the most part that I loved were from him.

Aaron (14:41)
yeah, same. He was definitely a very memorable and interesting character. I liked him a lot. He seems like the kind of person that would have fit into the Demi Moore I didn't feel like was very interesting or zany like some of the other characters.

Ade (14:51)
Right.

She was really the only straight character in the movie. I didn't look to see what that character was like in the book, yeah, everybody around her were playing these characters like cartoons. They were at an 11 ⁓ and how they played it.

Aaron (15:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I think from a review that I read at the time that this so it was a review of the movie, but they were talking about the book. Basically, they said the book was well received among his novels at the time because he'd always written about kind of zany characters and freaks and weirdos. But in this book, he put like a real actual person in the in middle of it all that you could relate to. So.

I think it was kind of supposed to be a straight character, but she wasn't funny. If she was supposed to be funny, I didn't I didn't really laugh at her jokes.

Ade (15:44)
Yeah.

There was

one funny line that I laughed at, was towards the end when she meets the congressman's the yeah, he introduces himself as the congressman's right-hand man and she says, must be pretty busy then. And it took me a second to really understand that, but yeah, she was.

Aaron (16:00)
fixer.

Yeah, I did like that.

I thought there was

a lot of great dialogue in this movie. ⁓ I don't know if that came from the screenwriter or from the book, but there were several times I thought it was really witty.

Ade (16:15)
Yeah.

I assume.

I assume a bit of both.

before we get too much farther, why don't you give us a overview of the story so we can add some context to all this.

Aaron (16:35)
Okay, Demi Moore plays Grant who at the beginning of the movie, she's losing a custody battle to her shithead ex-husband because he, she lost her job because he got arrested for something.

but he decided to flip and be an informant for the FBI. And so his record got expunged and she was out of work. And so when they went to court, it was like, well, we're going to give the daughter to the dad who's working instead of to the jobless mother.

Ade (17:05)
Which, by the way, that's one of my notes. That whole premise seemed like it didn't make any sense. Yeah, is that how custody battles work?

Aaron (17:10)
I hated that.

Well, in the book, it's different. And in the book, she loses her job when he gets arrested. They're still together. And then he's working as an informant and she's already dancing at this point when she goes through the custody battle. And so the judge against her because she's a dancer and decides to give it to the working dad because his record's been expunged and

Ade (17:16)
Okay.

Aaron (17:41)
he thinks he's just a normal citizen, which works in my mind way better than what happened in the movie where the judge was just like, he's the finest high school tailback I ever seen. Like, that's why you're that's why you're giving him custody. Yeah, so she loses the custody battle and then.

Ade (17:46)
Yeah.

Yeah. That's... That makes him a good father.

Aaron (18:02)
to make money to appeal the decision, she decides to start dancing at a club where Burt Reynolds' character, Congressman Dilbeck, causes a scene and attacks a man, is recognized during the events, and this kind of kicks off a of...

Ade (18:13)
Yes.

Aaron (18:21)
Blackmails kidnappings, murders, a lot of political weirdness that she gets sucked into because she she was the dancer on stage when this all happened and Dilbeck the congressman is obsessed with her.

Ade (18:27)
Yeah.

Aaron (18:37)
what burning questions did you have about this movie?

Ade (18:41)
I had a lot of burning questions. Some of these are pretty minor. Why is there only one bouncer at the eager beaver? Which is Ving Rhames.

Aaron (18:49)
I was thinking about that. Yeah, because

he has to leave several times to go with Demi Moore's character, Erin, like to private dances. And I'm like, who's bouncing at the club?

Ade (19:00)
And just random errands like going to get new snakes and the whole central plot point of the congressman having to go in and protect Erin wouldn't have happened if Ving Rhames wasn't just in the back chillin talking to the other girls and the owner. So.

Aaron (19:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Speaking of snakes, that was one of my burning questions is there's a performer at the club who does an act with a boa constrictor and it dies and so they need to get a new snake and the club manager or owner tells Ving Rhames to go get a new snake and he's like, where am I going to find a 10 foot boa constrictor at 10 at night?

Ade (19:30)
Yeah.

Aaron (19:44)
So the manager says, there's an all night snake farm on route 27, ask for jungle Juan. And I'm like, why does this guy have a snake connect open at 10 at night?

Ade (19:52)
Ha

Well...

I didn't question that for a second. Here's why. We, we, don't think we've mentioned this whole movie is set in Florida. And from my knowledge of Florida, I'm just like, sure. Yeah. Snake guy. That's open up late. Yeah. Which by the way, Robert Patrick plays Darryl husband, ex-husband. Is he, is he the most Florida man you've ever seen in a movie?

Aaron (20:06)
Yeah.

It has big Florida man energy. Yeah

I loved him.

He

was a very Florida man in this. I thought he was great in this movie. It's not like some of his other roles for sure.

Ade (20:34)
which is especially mind blowing because this came out, was it one year or two years after Terminator 2, which was kind of his big movie. Yeah. if I would have watched this at the time, I probably wouldn't have thought it was the same person. It's so opposite.

Aaron (20:44)
That's what I first knew him from.

I know.

Yeah, it was he was great in this. thought.

This movie has Siobhan Fallon in it who's this character actress that's been around forever. She was in Seinfeld She's in Men in Black. She's in Forrest Gump Yeah, I love her too

Ade (21:05)
Is she the sister? ⁓

Yeah, I meant to look her up. So one of my burning questions was actually, what in the world is she doing with the wolves? there was just all sorts of, it was never explained. She's just doing batshit stuff in the background a lot.

Aaron (21:16)
I don't know.

Yeah, this is this is the ex-husband's sister. So Robert Patrick's sister. she's like raising a pack of wolves or something.

Ade (21:29)
Right.

when we first

see her, she has like an umpire uniform chest plate thing on.

Aaron (21:40)
Yeah. And there's like howling or something outside. She's like, the goddamn wolves. And she gets up and runs out Yeah, she was hilarious. I thought she was really funny. And then There was a scene where that she and Robert Patrick were in together at the end where she was fixing him up because he broke his arm. And she was like, what would mama say if she could see you now driving around a stolen car?

Ade (21:59)
you

Aaron (22:02)
She'd probably say, ride. But she like slaps him up the side of head. They were just really funny together.

Ade (22:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, she also gives him some wolf morphine, I guess, and he just downs the whole bottle. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good example of just how crazy and zany the side characters are in this. Can we talk about Ving Rhames a little bit? have some some burning questions about him. For for one scene, at least maybe a couple of scenes, he's walking around with a with a drill.

Aaron (22:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, with alcohol.

Yo. Yeah.

No,

he doesn't carry a weapon. carries drill.

Ade (22:37)
and threatening people with it?

And everyone's like afraid of it. What? I don't understand. He like threatens to drill into the lawyer's wall. His wood paneling.

Aaron (22:44)
I

Yeah, yeah,

I didn't understand that threat I didn't know what he was gonna do ⁓

Ade (22:53)
I mean the guy seemed really scared of it like no don't don't drill into the wood paneling

sometimes I felt like he was playing it exactly like his character in Pulp Fiction. And then other times it was just somebody else entirely. don't know. It was, I liked his performance, but it was kind of all over the place.

Aaron (23:12)
Yeah, it was a little over the top. I loved that the first time we see him, he just walks into the room and says, yo, and a monkey jumps on his shoulder. And then later in the movie, he says, yo, yo, and the monkey jumps off his shoulder.

Ade (23:21)
Ha ha.

So what was the deal in the 90s with people having pet monkeys? Because yeah, Ace Ventura, Aladdin, you want to count, Jinx.

Aaron (23:32)
I don't know, like Friends had it, Ace Ventura, Aladdin. ⁓ This is

a conspiracy. Big Monkey probably.

Ade (23:44)
Yeah, it was, it was a big thing for a while. I guess, a more serious burning question. I didn't really understand what the problem was with the Congressman. Like, why was he in trouble? The whole movie kind of revolves around the idea that if people realized that he was at the strip club, he would lose the election or was it about

him defending Erin from the drunk bachelors that got on stage.

Aaron (24:12)
So I think the conflict was he was recognized causing a scene at the strip club assaulting somebody. He was in the middle of a reelection campaign he's been protecting the Big Sugar interests in politics for like 30 years. And so they were like

Ade (24:21)
Yeah.

Aaron (24:32)
you need to get reelected, which means you need to keep your nose clean and not get involved in all this stuff at the strip club. And so really, the pressure was coming from the big sugar in the background, but they were leveraging the congressmen against Erin to like shut her up in case she knew anything or like make sure she wasn't going to rat them out.

Ade (24:40)
Yeah.

Aaron (24:58)
Because then he wouldn't get re-elected and it would ultimately hurt their interests

Ade (25:02)
definitely not the politician you would hinge your commercial interests on.

Aaron (25:04)
You

Well, we see him mostly at his worst, but there are times where he really, you know, cleans up good and goes out and speaks out of the other side of his mouth about family values and Christianity.

Ade (25:21)
I mean,

it seems like he's at his worst 90 % of the time and then can miraculously like clean himself up for a 10 minute speech.

Aaron (25:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, which

wouldn't surprise me if that's how most politicians are.

Ade (25:36)
Yeah, maybe. Probably the funniest scene in the movie for me is the moment in the hotel room where the aid goes in and is like...

Aaron (25:43)
that he's covered in Vaseline.

Ade (25:45)
Do you want to describe that at all?

Aaron (25:48)
⁓ you go ahead. You take this one.

Ade (25:51)
aid is trying to find him for a speech and the aid walks into the hotel room and is like, pray he's not naked or something. Burt Reynolds has cowboy boots on, boxers. And does he have a hat? think he has a, yeah. And then he's just super shiny.

Aaron (26:00)
Yeah.

He has a leather vest and a cowboy hat.

Yeah.

Ade (26:13)
And the aides

like, are you shiny? And he says, I don't know that I wrote it down, but he basically says he's covered in Vaseline.

Aaron (26:20)
Vaseline, I'm covered

in it. You ever put Vaseline on? Not unless I have third degree burns.

Ade (26:27)
Have you ever covered yourself in Vaseline?

Aaron (26:29)
No, but he's talking about how he could feel it all over. It's in his boots. I can feel it squishing between my toes.

Ade (26:36)
Did it make you want to cover yourself in Vaseline?

Aaron (26:38)
No, it grossed me out just thinking about having Vaseline in your shoes.

Ade (26:44)
Yeah.

Aaron (26:44)
It was super

funny though. And he was just standing there sideways looking at him the whole time. But it was really funny.

Ade (26:49)
Yeah.

the context was in the previous scene, he had made the aid go out and get Erin's lint from her dryer and was sniffing the lint before while he was covered in Vaseline, I guess. So.

Aaron (27:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And as we find out later, he made love to that ball of lint.

You

Ade (27:14)
much would you have to be paid to be that congressman's aid?

Aaron (27:18)
I don't, I would quit. I don't think I could do it. Just the thought of being an aide in general doesn't seem like something I would want to do, but this must have been the worst job in the world. Having to keep this horny old man in check all the time.

Ade (27:30)
Yeah.

Aaron (27:35)
He quits at the end,

Ade (27:37)
Yeah, he does quit. think he quits after the Vaseline scene, during the Vaseline scene.

Aaron (27:42)
That would probably be when I'd throw the towel in too.

Ade (27:45)
Other than congressmen, what other characters do you want to talk about?

Aaron (27:49)
So there was this detective that is helping Erin with her issues with the congressman and with her ex-husband. He's played by Armand Assanti who I don't... I've seen him before. I think he's been in a lot of things, but he seems to be a really well regarded actor. He was great in this, I thought. And he plays this detective Garcia who...

Ade (27:55)
Yeah.

Aaron (28:11)
is on vacation in Montana or somewhere out of state from what I understand at the beginning of the movie.

Ade (28:17)
No, I think it was it was in Florida. was a rural county or something like that.

Aaron (28:21)
OK, well,

in the book, he's on vacation in Montana, which seems highly illogical because of what happens next. He finds a body in a river, a dead body floating in the river that just so happens to be someone that was murdered by the big sugar people to cover up the congressman's misdeeds in Florida.

Ade (28:39)
which

his kid actually finds the floater first and his kid says he's still got his glasses on, which made me feel like this 12 year old has seen other floaters. Yeah.

Aaron (28:49)
It's not his first floater.

Well, I think he said another floater too, didn't he?

Ade (28:55)
I don't remember that part.

Aaron (28:57)
yeah, when he came up to tell his dad, I think he said there's another floater. but yeah, he finds a floater that's linked to a case in Miami where he's a detective, but he's, he's definitely not in Miami when he finds this body. So they just happened to dump this body in an area where a Miami detective happened to be. Like, can you believe that luck of finding your own case while you're

Ade (29:22)
Yeah, I thought it was a little bit weird. I kept asking myself throughout the movie, why is he on this case? Because I don't think that's how it works that like you find the body, you work the case. And there's so many scenes of where he's just going to the strip club for a random like bit of conversation with Erin. And I'm like, this cop is, is, is really coming here for the strip club. He's, he's not really trying to work this case.

Aaron (29:34)
You get to keep it.

Yeah.

There were several times throughout the movie that I was going to be a plot twist and he was the bad guy because he did seem to just be shady. were other quotes from him So, for instance, she went and stole her daughter back, basically snatched her daughter back from her ex-husband before he got re-arrested for another crime that he committed.

Ade (29:56)
Yeah.

Aaron (30:11)
And she's talking to the detective about her case with her daughter. And she was like, I need to get out of town. Like, shit's going crazy here. And the detective tells her there's absolutely nothing you can do from a legal standpoint here. Nothing. I'm like, he's a detective, not a lawyer. Like she needs to be talking to a lawyer.

Ade (30:31)
Right.

Aaron (30:33)
there's a point later in the movie where he gives her some other advice That's like professional advice and I'm like she should be actually talking to someone else other than him And so I thought he was giving her bad advice to try to like get her to stick around I was like this guy's gonna be working for the sugar cartel, but no, he was just a very concerned detective

Ade (30:40)
Yeah.

Aaron (30:51)
thought he was great though.

I thought the actor was really good.

Ade (30:54)
Yeah, I thought he was fine. He played it straight to, or he was another straight character. And I guess I didn't, I was ambivalent towards him because he wasn't funny and zany. And then it also didn't feel like he really did much. We'll, we'll get to the ending later because I want to talk a lot about the ending, but, he didn't really move the plot along. the whole movie could have happened without that character.

Aaron (31:08)
Right.

Yeah, probably.

I can't think of anything that he affected ultimately.

Ade (31:23)
Yeah, we don't have to talk about every character in the movie, but I do want to share some of the quotes from some of the crazy characters.

I probably the best out of context quote in this movie is, I'm not putting these in corn. No way.

Aaron (31:40)
Yeah.

Ade (31:42)
from one of the strippers.

Aaron (31:44)
He's trying to get him to corn wrestle.

Ade (31:47)
Yeah, and cream corn. I did write down this quote from the detective when they find the floater and he says, and all the lakes and all the counties and all the worlds, you've got to float into mine. Nice little Casablanca reference in the middle of this movie. I was like, what? That, that threw me off quite a bit.

Aaron (31:48)
Yeah.

I bet he loved

giving that line, giving his own a movie line.

Ade (32:08)
Yeah.

but probably my all time favorite quote slash interaction was with the strip club owner manager and Ving Rhames Do you know which quote I'm going to reference?

Aaron (32:24)
No, lay it on me.

Ade (32:27)
I haven't had a hard on since I started running this place. The closest I got was Sea World. Purpose got me hot.

Aaron (32:35)
Why are you telling me this shit?

Ade (32:37)
What the fuck you telling me this for?

Aaron (32:42)
Yeah, I did like that. Like there was a lot of moments in this movie that those lines are so good. I don't know if they're from the book or not, but whoever the dialogue in this deserves credit.

Ade (32:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, Ving Rhames especially just so many moments where he's playing the tough guy, but at a comedic way where he walks into the video store and he's like free willian yet.

Aaron (33:00)
Yeah.

No, it was still out. He's like, God damn it, people just sit on it like they own it.

Ade (33:10)
Back to the

good old days of blockbusters and movie rentals.

Aaron (33:17)
Yeah.

Ade (33:18)
and then probably to wrap up my list of quotes was from the Congressman towards the end. And he says, well, then get out and leave us alone. I'm about to mount this beauty. And then she, she cocks her gun at him. Maybe not.

Aaron (33:29)
Hahaha

Maybe not. Yeah.

He also said, that's why I voted against gun control, because weapons could end up in the wrong hands. Like, I think you you voted the wrong way. ⁓ He also stalks her back to her house and is watching her from his car and they're telling him he needs to leave it all alone and go back to campaigning. And he said, I won't campaign until I can possess her actual velvet self.

Ade (33:40)
you

Yeah.

Aaron (34:01)
He's so creepy.

Ade (34:03)
He must have

had a lot of fun playing that role.

Aaron (34:07)
Yeah. Yeah, I bet he did.

Ade (34:10)
Yeah, this was a crazy movie. The ending though was chaos, I thought. what was Erin's plan exactly?

She, kidnaps the congressman, takes him to the sugar factory. I'm not sure why. And she calls all the, all these media people pretending that there's a news conference and they're just like, yeah, midnight in the middle of a sugar factory news conference. Sure. We'll show up with the cameras.

Aaron (34:30)
Yeah.

Yep.

And they all show up right on time to catch the congressman with literally with his pants down, admitting to crimes.

Ade (34:42)
Yeah.

It kind of devolved

into a cartoon where they dumped a load of sugar on the henchmen.

Aaron (34:51)
Yeah, I. My my last two notes are the climax feels like it's taking a turn for the absurd. There's a there's a final dance on the boat that she went to. Then she's at gunpoint abducting the congressman using their driver as a as like a co-conspirator. The driver gets knocked out by the congressman with a rock.

Ade (34:59)
Yeah.

Aaron (35:15)
bad guys are beaten by sugar falling on them. And then there's dancers playing jump rope with or seven year old daughter at the sugar factory at midnight.

Ade (35:24)
Why

did the cop bring the daughter along? And the henchman, Ving Rhames, comes out of the shadows unarmed and the henchman with guns pointed at him. Just like shaking their boots at his sight. Like they've never... Yeah. It's so weird.

Aaron (35:27)
I don't know.

Don't do anything.

They let him walk all the way up to them.

Ade (35:47)
⁓ disappointing that it ended this way.

Aaron (35:50)
Yeah, my last note is this movie absolutely fell apart. I loved this movie until I didn't. ⁓ It was a lot of plates in the air, so to speak, and I was like, how are they going to bring this all home? And then everything fell apart at the end. And I'm like, fuck.

Ade (35:57)
Yeah.

They're like,

let's let's improv the end.

Aaron (36:10)
Yeah, so I read that they originally shot a different ending in the book and what they originally shot. The kidnapping of the congressman goes bad and he tries to rape her in the factory and the FBI shows up, not the news channels, which makes a lot more fucking sense

then her ex-husband who's all hopped up on morphine tries to escape, runs out into the sugar fields and passes out he gets churned up with the sugar cane in the morning. And the FBI shows up,

Ade (36:32)
Yeah.

Gross

Aaron (36:48)
In the book, Erin is like, I won't press charges if you resign in disgrace basically. And so that's what he does and he resigns and that's how it's resolved. In this one, it turned into a circus at the end and it was a little crazy and I didn't like it.

Ade (36:55)
Yeah.

And it didn't even really resolve Erin didn't necessarily get her daughter back legitimately based on anything she was doing or anything that could have happened in that scenario. it ends with her and the driver you mentioned that she had just met that night, by the way. and all, all the heroes, I guess, driving away in the Congressman's limo. Like they just get to keep his limo now that he's been disgraced.

Aaron (37:08)
Yeah.

Yeah

In the movie, she also tapes his confession. I don't know if that's in the book, but she put a tape in to play music, but she also was recording their conversation where he admitted. I mean, he was kind of a patsy. He was just an idiot in like go between between the sugar cartel and the crimes.

Ade (37:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Aaron (37:51)
But he was just admitting like, yeah, I told them to do whatever they want to do and they did it all. They did all the murders and. Yeah.

Ade (37:57)
Yeah.

Any other burning questions or hot takes? ⁓

Aaron (38:04)
I like the soundtrack. Yeah, the movie starts with, me some lovin' for the opening song. And I was like, that's a nice choice. Also, I laughed a lot at the... ⁓ This is maybe not a burning question, but I laughed a lot at the first time we see Senator Dilbeck, Congressman Dilbeck, and he's supposed to be undercover at the strip club and he's wearing...

Ade (38:06)
Yeah.

Yeah

Aaron (38:33)
like an aqua and orange dolphins hat, big dark sunglasses at night and like a blue blazer and white pants. Like this, this is the most conspicuous man. was not dressed like any of the other customers at the strip club either.

Ade (38:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Speaking of other customers of the script club, was that Michael Jordan making a cameo in there? Did you notice that?

Aaron (38:57)
I know. So I heard one of the dancers say Michael Jordan's at table, whatever,

Ade (39:03)
she says that, and then the next shot, Erin is walking by and in the background there's, somebody that looks very much like Michael Jordan.

This is the picture I took on my phone.

Aaron (39:12)
⁓

Ade (39:14)
And then I spent a lot of time on the internet trying to figure out if that was actually Michael Jordan making a cameo or a look alike. And I couldn't find any information about it. So.

Aaron (39:25)
IMDB

trivia says it is Michael Jordan.

Ade (39:29)
Really? Okay, you found it in five seconds and I spent like, like 30 minutes.

Aaron (39:31)
So so

Under the cameo section for strip tease It says Michael Jordan appears as himself as a patron in the strip club in the scene where Erin Grant eats Lieutenant Al Garcia after one of the dancers says Michael Jordan is at table The name in this line was changed and Jordan's name was uncredited

Ade (39:49)
Yeah.

Aaron (39:54)
She definitely said Michael Jordan. It wasn't changed. Yeah, interesting.

Ade (39:56)
She said Michael Jordan in the one that I watched as well.

So, okay, mystery solved. They said Larry King as well. I didn't see him. And then as I was researching this, I started with Michael Jordan because I care more about him than Larry King, I guess. And once the internet failed to give me definitive information about MJ, I gave up on Larry King.

Aaron (40:04)
Yeah. Didn't they say there was somebody else too?

Yeah.

Yeah.

AI tells me that Larry King was not in the movie strip tease.

Ade (40:28)
Yeah, I asked AI about Michael Jordan too and it failed me.

My hot take is this movie would make a perfect Always Sunny episode with Frank. Frank is the congressman. Mac playing Ving Rhames as character. Maybe Charlie. Yeah, Charlie as the ex-husband. Maybe Dee as a stripper. mean, and,

Aaron (40:38)
⁓

The muscle.

Yeah.

Ade (40:57)
like Rickety Cricket is the strip club owner. Maybe Dennis can be the henchman sugar guy.

Aaron (41:04)
Yeah, I could I could easily see that. What about Artemis as the stripper?

Ade (41:06)
I feel like.

Yeah, I mean, she definitely would be, I would see her as the one with the snake, but yeah, she could, she could be the, she could play Erin. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if this movie was better done, it definitely has the right bones for an always sunny episode because it has the crazy characters. They're all depraved and

Aaron (41:17)
Bleached my asshole. He was going to find out anyway.

Yeah.

Ade (41:34)
doing their own wacky schemes and just weird shit happening in the background. Like that's the vibe I got from this movie.

Aaron (41:38)
Yeah.

It has all the bones for a really good movie too, like just a regular movie, but this one kind of fell apart. I wouldn't mind seeing this get remade.

Ade (41:48)
Yeah.

What's your verdict since we're on the topic?

Aaron (41:54)
Thank

Yeah, honestly, I didn't hate it. I liked it a lot until the very end.

I like the soundtrack. thought there was several Annie Lennox songs in it that I liked. I liked the characters. There was a lot of talent in this movie. And I think that the writing wasn't that bad. think just the plot fell apart. But yeah, a lot of the characters were really good characters, some of my favorite characters that I've seen recently. Ving Rhames was great.

Really, think Ving Rhames and Armand Asani, who played the detective, they were just like stealing scenes every time they were in it. And Siobhan too, like I felt like every scene she was in, she was all I could look at. ⁓ Demi Moore was OK.

Ade (42:36)
Yeah.

Aaron (42:38)
But yeah, I just think it didn't come together at the end the way I wanted to. And I think that based on the book, the book would have been better. And I know that's cliche to say, but it makes me want to read the book. But yeah, I'd give it two and a half stars. It was okay.

Ade (42:48)
Hahaha

I liked half this movie. The problem was the other half was woven in with the half I liked. there were scenes where I'd laugh out loud, but then not enjoy because it was just kind of muddled. I think some of this may have been my bias going in like knowing

Aaron (42:55)
Yeah.

Ade (43:09)
what the source material was like, was that like I could squint and see the source material and enjoy that in the scene, even though it wasn't well implemented in that way.

Aaron (43:12)
Yeah.

Ade (43:21)
I think some of that was the direction or the way that it was cut was in a way that didn't feel like a comedy. So until I realized like this is supposed to be a comedy. was pretty bad and then I guess totally the movie switched a bunch in the middle so we would get a comedic scene and then it would try to be the like sexy thriller and then.

⁓ would kind of break the comedic timing or the comic essence of the movie. so, yeah, it kept just switching back and forth. almost every, this isn't to say anything against her or her dancing, but I feel like every time that Demi Moore got up and there was a scene of her stripping, I was just kind of like, fast forward, like this is like, why do I want to see this? Like, let's get back to Ving Rhames' character or the strip club owner or something like that.

Aaron (44:00)
Yeah.

it had a lot of...

I had a lot of potential, but there wasn't like a ton of meat on the bones. And I do think you're right. I put down that I can't tell if it's the editing that was bad or the directing in this, but I felt like in this movie, there was a lot that happened off screen. ⁓ Like you would go from one scene to the other and be like, what the fuck did I so there's a scene where, the detective is telling Erin that

Ade (44:26)
Yeah.

Aaron (44:36)
It's going to be six months before you can

appeal your custody case? And the next scene is her kidnapping her daughter, like in the middle of kidnapping her daughter. And I'm like, how do we get here? we didn't even see her process the news and be like, I need to come up with a plan to snatch my daughter back. It was like, we just had to suss it out in the jump.

where are we being dropped into the story now and what has happened off screen? And I felt like there was a lot of times that that happened in this movie where I'm sure it's because the source material is so rich with plot that you can't put everything in and you have to cut stuff. But yeah, I think the editor or something failed this.

Ade (44:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And they, I felt like the plot jumped around a lot, probably for the same reasons that you mentioned, like they introduced around that time that the judge from the first scene died. And it was like, well, why, why does that matter? It was almost like if they could have like taken certain things out to make it a lot, you know, crisper and more streamlined or added stuff in, but the instead they took this middle route.

Aaron (45:28)
Yeah.

Ade (45:42)
where they just wanted to mention everything. Like, let's mention the plight of the sugar cane workers, even though it didn't really make any sense in the context of the story we were seeing on screen.

Aaron (45:52)
The only thing that it explained was the driver helping her because, you know, they both hated their bosses and got treated like shit.

Ade (46:01)
Yeah.

But even that was like, she didn't need a driver to help drive them to the sugar cane factory. Just have her drive a car, you know, like why introduce this character at the very last second and try to make up this weird backstory for why he would help her the first time he sees her. So.

Aaron (46:06)
Yeah

Yeah,

and I think because they did it this way, you either have to like suss it out for yourself and figure out what happened off screen or they insert this like really ham handed exposition into certain scenes. ⁓ There was this scene where Moldowski, think is the name of the like political fixer, the right hand man of Bellback. He's like

Ade (46:34)
Yeah.

Aaron (46:44)
Basically putting the squeeze on Erin's character to figure out what she knows and if she's a rat or if she's just a dumb stripper that they can sweep under the rug and she is obviously not just a dumb stripper and they have this like kind of repartee back and forth with the two of them and then when he leaves he like sinisterly turns back to the camera and he's like she's not

Ade (46:56)
Yeah.

Aaron (47:12)
dumb enough. And I'm like, come on, we all know that you didn't have to like, say it out loud. Let's just like really ham handed exposition at times.

Ade (47:13)
Yeah.

And it didn't even matter because I don't know what he did differently because he realized. Yeah.

Aaron (47:25)
I know.

In the book, he gets beaten to death by the ex-husband, which I think was a much more fitting end for him than getting sugar dropped on him. That didn't look anything like sugar. It was a horrible prop

Ade (47:34)
Yeah. ⁓

Which by the way, the whole thing happened because the ex-husband was so high that he thought he was operating a coffee machine and the sugar comes down and he says, said no sugar.

Aaron (47:43)
I hated this.

Yeah,

accidentally drops a thousand pounds of sugar on top of some people who are fine, by the way. They're just buried.

Ade (47:56)
Yeah, it's

such a cartoon.

So what would be your alternate pick for this movie?

Aaron (48:04)
I picked Boogie Nights. It came out a year after this, also starring Burt Reynolds and another great performance by him. Very different characters, but both kind of sleazy ⁓ and certainly think both of these movies touch on taboo topics. yeah, I picked Boogie Nights. I think it's a really good movie.

Ade (48:16)
Yeah.

I picked the substance. I didn't love the movie. I liked it. I thought there were some flaws, but

I think it's an interesting movie to pair with, given that strip tease kind of ended that chapter of her career and the substance seems to have reignited a new chapter for her. And also just the juxtaposition of her stripping in this movie and

her being paid to be in this movie and then the substance is a lot about body issues and how women are paid to show their bodies in Hollywood and all that stuff. I don't know it's just an interesting comparison I think, meta commentary.

Aaron (49:04)
Yeah,

I watched the substance after I watched the strip tease actually, because I don't know that much about Demi Moore and we talked about this a little bit, but yeah, I watched it after strip tease and it was a surprisingly good movie. It's it's basically about like the specifically women pay to stay young and attractive and.

The pressure that society puts on them and it's it's a horror movie. It's a body horror movie Which I didn't know that term but I had to look it basically teeth falling out and fingernails coming off and things, you know, grotesque things like that and it's It's not particularly horrifying. I don't think but it is bloody and it is really good movie, I think

much more obvious satire than something like Showgirls.

Ade (49:52)
Yeah, yeah, certainly. Well, I think that's about all that we have to say about strip tease. if you liked this episode, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify. Send us an email at the worst movie podcast at gmail.com. Anything else to add?

Aaron (50:08)
Nope.

Ade (50:09)
All right.

Well done. I'm Ade.

Aaron (50:12)
I'm

Aaron thanks for watching the Worst Movie Podcast.

Ade (50:15)
or listening to it.