The OTHER On Cinema at the Cinema Podcast
The OTHER On Cinema at the Cinema Podcast covers Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington's On Cinema at the Cinema. The show hosts Ramsey, an On Cinema superfan, and Caleb, who has never seen it before, watch through the show and discuss. And sometimes they talk about other things too. This podcast has it all! It has action, drama, comedy, suspense and dance.
The OTHER On Cinema at the Cinema Podcast
Episode 1 - The Podcast
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Hey guys! In the first episode of The Other On Cinema at the Cinema Podcast, Ramsey and Caleb introduce themselves, talk about their history with Tim and Greg, and discuss the original On Cinema podcast. The first episode will be a on the shorter side, but episode lengths will run longer going forward.
Hello, hello. This is the first episode of the Other on Cinema Podcast. Um, we're called the Other On Cinema Podcast because, as to my knowledge, there is only one other podcast dedicated to all things on cinema at the cinema, which is on the funny. Which shout out to those guys, big fan, kind of an inspiration for making this podcast. Um, so just a quick intro. My name is Ramsey, and I have my co-host here, Caleb, who I will introduce in a second, but just to give a quick um explanation on to what this podcast is, I wanted to start this because, you know, I wanted to talk more about OnCinema, but I don't really have a lot of people to talk to about it with, which I know is a common, you know, plight with on cinema fans. Um, but I didn't want to do a carbon copy of On the Funny. So this is gonna be a little bit different. So I've watched pretty much everything on cinema related. I've been a big fan of it for a very long time. My friend here, Caleb, um, has not really watched it at all, and I kind of wanted to replicate the experience of getting into the show. Um, common sentiment I hear from a lot of on cinema fans is that this show is impossible to recommend to people because you have to absorb a considerable amount of the show before it starts to make sense. Um, and there's hundreds of hours of content to absorb. Um, however, I I I don't mean to speak for you, Caleb, but I feel like we have pretty similar sensibilities in comedy, so I think this is something you'll eventually enjoy. Um, but we'll see. Yeah. Anyway, um, so yeah, Caleb, do you just want to introduce yourself and maybe give a quick overview of just kind of your history with Tim Heideker and Greg Turkington's comedy?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. Uh I'm Caleb. Um yeah, I mean, I was always a fan of Tim and Eric. Great job. Um, I think I've seen every single episode of that show. Um, and then w I remember my first uh interaction with On Cinema and Greg Turkington uh was when uh Tim started doing the on cinema like YouTube uh videos that he was uploading. This was back when YouTube comedian like a bunch of comics and comedy actors were doing bash and buh and jazz in like 2012. And so I just assumed, oh yeah, like this is gonna show up, much like all the other projects that were going on at that time. Like I just assumed, oh yeah, they're gonna do like a few episodes of this, and then it's gonna be over. And so I watched a few episodes of it as it was coming out in the very beginning, um, and then petered off. Uh, and then, you know, 10 years, 15 years later, come back to it, and it is this insane uh sideshow with live events and deep lore. And uh I think Ramsey and I have one other friend who is deep into on cinema at the cinema. Um, you know, they're telling me all these stories, and I just have no context for uh getting into it genuinely, other than to, you know, uh try to dive in and consume, I don't know, hours and hours of content that has been produced over the past uh 15 plus years, and uh doing so with a podcast, I think is gonna be a lot easier, especially because uh I have someone to talk about it with. Um whereas if I was to just I mean, a lot of comedy properties, if I'm just to try to like experience them alone in my apartment, you know, with headphones on, uh, it feels weird. So I think um I think I think this is gonna be a lot easier uh to go through actually like on a podcast with a friend to go through it with uh who already appreciates it as well. Um I mean, outside of Tim and Eric and bedtime stories and all that, uh Greg Turkington, I am aware that he plays uh Baskin Robbins manager in uh Ant-Man. That is the extent of my knowledge with uh Greg Turkington.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, not to give too many spoilers, but that will actually come up later. Heck yeah. Um it's funny you mentioned Jash. Did you ever watch uh Tim's Cooking Tips?
SPEAKER_01I did watch see, that's the thing. I watched Tim's Cooking Tips, and that was only like what, like six episodes or something.
SPEAKER_00So when that ended, I thought Yeah, and it came out around the same time as On Cinema started. Yeah. For anyone who hasn't watched Tim's cooking tips, it's it's really fucking stupid, but it's hilarious.
SPEAKER_01It is hilarious. I mean, I don't re it was 15 years ago, so I don't remember exactly what happened, but I do remember I enjoyed Tim's cooking tips more than on cinema. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Cool, cool. Uh yeah, just to give a little bit of my background with it, yeah, similar thing. I watched uh Tim and Eric Awesome show in high school. Um, I liked Tim and Eric Awesome Show, but like I wasn't super duper into it. Like I appreciated it, and there was certain stuff of it that I liked. Um and then a friend of mine who was like a big, you know, Tim and Eric fan was like, Hey, have you checked out on cinema? And that would have been around like season two or three. So I've been watching the show and following it pretty much since the beginning. Um I did drop off of it actually around 2020 when they switched over to the high network because I was like, I don't want to pay five bucks to watch this show. Um, and then two years ago, I was very unemployed and got back into it and was like, oh my god, this got so much better. And I got like real deep back into it. And since then I've been obsessed. And yeah, I've just been wanting to talk about it. And my partner who is very supportive of my on cinema obsession, um, I think is getting a little sick of me um talking about it to them. Um, but yeah, let's uh let's get into it. So we we started with the podcast, and I wasn't really sure if we should have started with the podcast, because I don't think it's really necessary to appreciate the show, and I think there's an argument to be said that it's much better to revisit it after you've consumed a certain amount of the show, which is what I did. I I I didn't even know there was a podcast until about I don't know, like season 10 of the show, and I went back and revisited it and I thought it was really funny, but I I knew as someone who was like going into it dry, it maybe not be the best place to start, but I thought, you know, we should just be thorough. Um, so yeah, first things first, Caleb, just like general thoughts about the podcast.
SPEAKER_01I mean, this kind of there's some overlap here between my general thoughts and the notes that I have written. The first few episodes. Uh the first episode starts with not the best audio quality. Um, they're clearly recording inside a vehicle. Um and then I'm like, okay, well, obviously the show gets better in audio quality. Um, but right off the bat, it gets worse and worse in audio quality. Um, it starts off obviously recorded in a vehicle on an iPhone, and then recorded in an echoey hallway on an iPhone, and then recorded in a busy restaurant or bar uh where Tim is having to yell at the top of his lungs, and then it is clipping so badly you can barely make out anything he's saying. Um, so my early my thoughts of the podcast are clearly this is them uh getting their footing both comedically and um I guess uh technically, like literally the the tech that they are using to record the podcast. Um and again, this is back at least 2011, maybe even a little earlier than that. So um, you know, uh I hate to say this guy's name, but Joe Rogan, I feel uh, you know, I feel like the Joe Roganification of podcasts had not like fully happened even at that point. And so people were still people that were doing podcasts were still figuring out how to do a podcast, and similarly, um Tim and Greg were still figuring out how to do a podcast um as the podcast was going on. Um but yeah, I mean there's a lot of a lot of the early like okay, how do we how do we step on each other's toes as comedically effectively as possible is clearly going on. You can see that. Um also how can we talk about movies with doing the least amount of research possible and having the most surface level observations, even incorrect surface level observations as possible. Um, yeah, I mean I can I can see the gears churning, I'd say. And then um also towards the end of the podcast, the political uh ideations of Tim Heidecker, the character, um, start to pop through. Um I'm sure after doing three hours of of of meandering uh comment uh meandering surface level commentary on film, uh, they had to think like, okay, what sort of deeper comedy can we uh pull off here? Um yeah, so at least that's that is my impression is that the four hour four plus hours of the initial podcast were essentially uh Tim and Greg uh essentially like ironing out like what it was going to be uh going forward.
SPEAKER_00So do you do you know anything about like the history of like why they started the podcast?
SPEAKER_01I don't know anything. I can assume the the one thing that I can assume, I can assume a few things, which is that um I mean I don't know how Tim and Greg met each other, but clearly Tim loves Greg. Um Tim, Tim, the real life human being, not the character, loves the real-life human being, Greg Turkington. Um uh at least comedically, like he loves how dry Greg can be and how well he sticks to uh character and refuses to break. Um and I feel like Tim clearly wanted to have fun in that realm, um, as opposed to kind of the Tim and Eric world that he had been in, which is a lot kind of bigger and broader. Um and then uh also at the time I know podcasts were like becoming more of a thing, and I'm sure after listening to a lot of meandering podcasts, he found humor in that and wanted to uh, you know, make fun of that. Also, as someone who has gone back and watched like Roger and Ebert, um, Roger and Ebert are very similar to uh Tim and Greg in this show in terms of their kind of petty disagreements, um, their surface level observations of uh what they think makes a movie great or uh poor, um, and sort of missing the point of movies. Um so I'm assuming that that, at least, you know, on like a thematic level, was informing the decisions, but I do no, I do not have any actual information about how this all started.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, the the the history of how they started this was um so Tim and Greg were filming a movie together, I want to say back around 2010, called The Comedy. Um, I don't know if you've seen that. And they were they they basically started recording this podcast on their phone um in between takes when they were bored. And it the the idea was they were aping really inane movie guy podcasts um back around when podcasts were exploding and there was a bunch of just stupid podcasts. I mean, it it it's funny that they were making fun of it then because it's even worse now. Um, and I just a quick question uh off the top of my dome. Have you ever watched the very, very dry parody of the Joe Rogan experience Tim Heideker did on his actual podcast a couple of years ago?
SPEAKER_01Uh, you know, similar to this podcast, I made it halfway through that.
SPEAKER_00It's no, it's hard to watch because it's really, really dry. I think it's maybe one of the funniest things Tim has ever done. And if you can make it through to the end of it, it it it it's howlingly funny. But anyway, but yeah, that that's the history of it. They never really had like plans to do anything with this, um, but I guess they decided to just keep doing it and taking it a little bit more seriously. Um, but yeah, uh, do you want to maybe just jump into some highlights for you?
SPEAKER_01Um I just want to say too, uh, the uh the two guys opposite Tim Heidecker in that Joe Rogan skit, they do show up in the Fallout TV show. Oh, they ran so like clearly someone was a fan of that uh bit and just were like, yeah, let's just hire them.
SPEAKER_00Those guy I I'm blinking on their names. Uh those guys are really funny though. They a lot of their stuff is making fun of sort of like semi-right wing intellectual sort of stuff. They they're they have this bit um where it's they're parodying like one of those videos of like uh Jordan Peterson destroys this college student, but they're like arguing over like a child's like picture book, and it's it's very funny.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, no, they're they're very funny guys. So I yeah, no, uh I'm ready to get into this.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, so the this was fun re-listening to this. It's it's been a while since I have. Um I kind of wasn't expecting to enjoy it, but I forgot how funny some of the stuff was. Um, the first thing that made me like really laugh out loud was one of the early episodes where they're reviewing the China syndrome, and Greg says it's field of dreams meets nuclear disaster.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I do have a lot of notes if you want me to go into it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, go into it.
SPEAKER_01So one of the if you are a one of the quotes that I have, if you are a film buff, you can date a movie by the cars you see in action. Uh, which that's from Greg. I didn't go through every single location they went through and were recording in. One of the locations I didn't mention, they were hoofing it down the streets of San Francisco, yelling into a cell phone while cars passed by, buses stopped to pick people up, and both Tim and Greg were short of breath. Like the first two episodes. They're clearly yes, like you're saying, like they were just recording it to pass time uh between between filming on uh the comedy. I have I think I've seen the beginning of that movie. I haven't watched it all the way through.
SPEAKER_00I'm not gonna lie, I'm I don't think that movie's very good. Okay, good enough. That being said, that same director did another movie with Greg Turkington after that, where he is playing. Are you familiar with Neil Hamburger? I am familiar with Neil Hamburger. So uh the movie's called Entertainment, and it's gr basically Greg Turkington going on a really sad comedy tour doing the Neil Hamburger character, but it shows him not in character off of it. And um I I used to do stand-up a long time ago, and it really shows like the very depressing side of having to do really stupid like and bad like stand-up gigs. Um Michael Sarah randomly shows up in the movie and has this very chilling, disturbing cameo in it. It's very interesting, it's not funny at all. It's it it's a it's a drama. Um, but I would recommend it. It's not like perfect. I like it's like a three out of five, but I think it's very, very interesting. I think it's more interesting than the comedy. I I think the comedy is meandering and kind of pointless, and I feel like what it was trying to say at the time is even less relevant now. Um, but right.
SPEAKER_01It's uh my understanding, you know, again, I've well I sound like Greg Turkington, but you know, I did only watch the beginning and I kind of tuned out because it seemed like it was like deliberately like it it right, it's covering a character, and this person is like essentially like an apathetic hipster, like concentrated, right? Like fully saturated to the point where they're just like literally showing up, like what I remember is them showing up to like a bunch of like day laborers, like Hispanic dudes were like working on like a house, and he just like starts working on it with them just cuz, just cause he's bored, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean the whole thing is it it it's just like a bio not a biopic, but a character portrait of a extremely like irony pilled, yes, you know, privileged dude in New York, which I I felt you know had that movie came out in like 2006, maybe it would have made sense, but I don't I don't know. I wasn't super into it.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, um yeah, but the actual podcast right uh Greg is often in the distance, while Tim is clearly much closer to the recording device, which I can only assume is his personal cell phone. Uh again, those are the early episodes, and then uh their promos and stingers are the only part of the podcast with solid audio quality. They seem to actually be recorded in a soundproof room with decent recording equipment, which is misleading. Uh also Tim says they have different guests on each week, but clearly he only has eyes for Greg. Greg is his only guest. Even the one phone guest they have is still named Greg. Oh, I didn't I didn't even pick up on that. I don't do do you think that was intentional? I 50-50 on that. He might have literally just not have been able to come up with a name other than Greg to call this phone guest. It was clear, I think it was a different person. I don't think it was Greg Turkington. It's not like just a normal dude.
SPEAKER_00No, it was a different person because uh Tim said they had some like contest where you had to submit an essay on Facebook. Yeah, no, it it it's interesting. Yeah, like I said, I wasn't sure if I really wanted to do an episode on the podcast because there's not like too much to say about it. Towards the end of it, around like our you know, about three hours in, that's when Tim starts to take his weird uh right wing bent, um, which will be not to give too many spoilers, will be a very prevalent thing in the actual show. Um, and when him and Greg like start to actually argue about stuff, I think is when the the the show gets the the podcast gets particularly funny.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, I'd say the more that Tim and Greg uh passive aggressively fight, uh the better the show is. It does kind of remind me of because I've been going back through the Simpsons. I've been going back through The Simpsons because I I didn't watch it when it was coming out because I wasn't allowed to because my parents were very conservative. Oh, you k you never watched it growing up? I mean, I saw like an episode or two. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00So you you hadn't seen the early seasons of it.
SPEAKER_01I had not seen the early seasons. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00Let's talk about that. I love uh yeah, I mean, might as well. I I love the early seasons of The Simpsons.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I've been watching episodes the seasons like three through whatever. I think I've I'm into season like five or six now. And it's my understanding is that you know, at that point the writers had been riding The Simpsons for, you know, years and had been kind of like, okay, we've done all the like kind of conventional stories that we can do, and they start doing weird shit and getting more outlandish, at least, you know, compared to what animated TV shows had done to that point and sitcoms had done to that point. And I feel a similar way with dropping Tim the character, uh, dropping Tim the character's uh political takes uh into the show, having a little more combative of a relationship between him and Greg. Um I feel like that is what is happening in the third hour of um of On Cinema at the cinema, where it's like, okay, we've kind of done all of the like groundwork of uh figuring out what the show is gonna be, and now it's time to like figure out where we can take it from there. Um yeah, that was that was sort of my parallel there.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, yeah, I get I I get what you're saying. Something I will say about the show is we're we're 16 seasons into it now. Um yeah, yeah. And the show they continue to do surprising things with it. Heck yeah. Um, it just gets weirder and wider. I'm all in. I'll ask you this question. How do you feel just listening to the podcast? I I will give you one reveal, knowing that this culminates into a very realistically portrayed manslaughter trial.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that happens in the show.
SPEAKER_01I know uh Mark Prox shows up in that, right?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mark's Mark's a central figure in the show. Oh, I'm looking forward to it, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um at least yeah.
SPEAKER_00Another thing kind of later later in the podcast that I thought was interesting, just because this is a little bit relevant now to recent news is uh the the Tim character in the podcast like specifically references InfoWars and starts making gold ads in the show. And for listeners who aren't aware, uh The Onion recently took over InfoWars. It it's legally complicated. I've I'm not gonna go into it, but Tim Heideker, the real person, may or may not actually be in charge of InfoWars going forward. They've put out one little silly video, but I just I thought that was very interesting.
SPEAKER_01Especially because they're making references to InfoWars two years, two or three years before Sandy Hook even, which I know that was this is a terrible sounding, but I know that was one of Alex Jones's huge claims to fame. Uh was him and his downbringing.
SPEAKER_00And his yes. That that's a big reason why the onion is in control of InfoWars now.
SPEAKER_01You know, the same volatile brazen nature of Alex Jones, which made Alex Jones uh as as huge as he was, is the exact same outlandish brazen nature, which continues to bring him down further into the depths. Um which is responsible for Tim Heidecker potentially replacing him as the host of InfoWars, which is crazy, but yeah, kind of kind of prophetic to have Tim Heidecker referencing InfoWars in 2011, you know, 15 years before he kind of is taking over it, and way before Sandy Hook, way before uh Donald Trump and Alex Jones's sort of um I guess larger participation in uh mainstream politics. So yeah, I mean clearly, clearly Tim Heidecker, the real-life human being, uh, was going down some uh rabbit holes to find out everything he could about these uh right-wing grifters and was and and his own personal comedic sensibilities, which were guiding him through these rabbit holes, were also, you know, uh what there were probably like seven people listening to the On Cinema podcast at this point. So he had felt he felt zero uh reservation on letting that bleed into the podcast, and uh clearly he let that become a central part of his character in the podcast. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just to kind of speak on that, and I'm sure this is something we're gonna talk about uh more going forward, but yeah, especially in the earlier seasons, Tim does a lot of uh commentary on kind of disaffected right-wing conservative men, and he's always a couple of years ahead of the ball before it becomes like mainstream knowledge with some of the stuff he he brings up. But his commentary I think is very good because it's both biting, but at the same time, I think it's coming from a place of trying to be somewhat empathetic and like actually understand these people, which makes it funnier. And you know, because it's not just trying to be like, oh, you're so dumb, you know, sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, agreed. I mean, there they're definitely I feel they're definitely at least so far, there is an element. I mean, he's not outright saying like, oh, you're so dumb or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean that I yeah, I mean that's it that that that's in the the the thought of it, but you're you know, there's a way to do it which isn't just being like mocking.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think there's um I forget who said it. I know it from Norm McDonald, but I know that he was quoting someone else where he's talking about people that were doing Trump impressions um you know back in like 2016, and he was talking about how um people that were doing those impressions, they weren't I think he was talking about Alec Baldwin in particular. So much in this podcast I'm gonna sound like Greg Turkington. Um and he he was talking about how how if you want to do an effective good impression, how you can't just dislike the person, how you have to like them and understand where they're coming from on some level. And I feel like Tim is good at doing that, um, despite the fact that you can clearly tell that Tim, the real life human being, um, is not a fan, but you can tell that he is actually trying to figure out where this person is coming from uh on a quote unquote deeper level. And I think yeah, it makes the it makes the comedy a lot funnier because it can go a lot deeper and on a lot more sort of I guess uh horizontal directions as well. It can fill, you know, he can fill the details of whatever care the whatever right wing sort of character he's playing, he can fill the details of like where all their like insecurities are and uh where those are coming from, and it does make it funnier while also being you know less outright adversarial, less thin uh than a lot of other impressions that I've seen um of right wing like pundits and whatnot.
SPEAKER_00Right on, right on. Um yeah, I don't have too much more to say that about the podcast. I mean, I actually do because there's a lot of Easter eggs. Uh well, they're not Easter eggs, but um, there's a lot of stuff that's gonna come out later in the series that I don't want to spoil for Caleb. That again, this is why I didn't necessarily want to do the podcast first, because I think it is a lot more interesting to go back and talk about if you've already, you know, consumed a good chunk of the show. But you know, that's where we're at. So um, I don't really have too much more to say about it, do you? I have more notes. What are your notes?
SPEAKER_01Okay, okay, okay. I'll just go into them now. So even after they get actual audio gear, Greg is still kept slightly quieter and more echoey in the mix, making him still feel like he's far away, shouting to Tim from behind, trying to get his attention and make his point heard.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, that's uh that is something that will never end in the show.
SPEAKER_01And then this is a little more a little more fundamental to not just the podcast, but on cinema, the cinema as a whole. Being a film buff used to mean something, particularly when people had to actually go to theaters to watch movies. Uh, but ever since the advent of the VHS, all it means is that you have successfully sat on your ass for a few hours here and there. I have some quotes from episodes um Block Bluster, uh Gone with the Wind with commercials is about five hours. Um, regarding Bad News Bears, and in the end, they win it all. No, they don't they don't. I think they famously lose at the end. That is what Bad News Bears is most known for, I'm pretty sure, is that they do not. Regarding saving Private Ryan, Tim asks, Have you seen this movie? Greg says, I did not watch it all the way through. Uh it's Oscar's Week, and Tim says, We are celebrating Oscar.
SPEAKER_00That's that's also gonna be a re reoccurring thing.
SPEAKER_01I forget which movie it is, but Tim uh oh no, Greg at some point gives a movie a 10 out of the 10. And in regards to a sequel on Netflix, it is I think it's Greg who calls it a neckwol. What does that mean? You know, it's a sequel on Netflix, a neck wall. Neckwell. I didn't catch the Nequil. Yeah, that's those are my notes. Again, I I feel like they're ironing out. It's so crazy that they kept up with it. Like you're saying, it's a casual project that they were just doing on the side to kill time, basically, uh, when they were bored between between takes with the hindsight that we have now, knowing that they go on to continue doing it for 15 years and probably will continue doing it for 15 more years. They were at least inadvertently laying out the groundwork for what the show and lore and canon would be going forward. Yes, that's uh that is my observation.
SPEAKER_00Right on. Well, yeah, I don't really have uh much else to say, so we should probably just cap it off there. Um yeah, we're gonna keep doing this. Next episode, we're gonna go through season one of On Cinema at the Cinema on video on YouTube. It's on YouTube. Anyway, um, yeah, I don't know what cadence we're going to be releasing episodes. Uh Caleb and I are both pretty busy people. I would hope to get an episode out once a week, but we'll see. But anyway, thanks for listening. Thanks, everyone.