'80s Movie Montage
Breaking down our favorite decade of flicks. Hosted by Anna Keizer and Derek Dehanke.
'80s Movie Montage
Parenthood
In this episode, Anna and Derek chat about the pros of fewer Buckman kids, if riding the rollercoaster is really all it's cracked up to be, and much more during their discussion of Ron Howard's Parenthood (1989).
Connect with '80s Movie Montage on Facebook, Bluesky or Instagram! It's the same handle for all three... @80smontagepod.
Anna Keizer and Derek Dehanke are the co-hosts of ‘80s Movie Montage. The idea for the podcast came when they realized just how much they talk – a lot – when watching films from their favorite cinematic era. Their wedding theme was “a light nod to the ‘80s,” so there’s that, too. Both hail from the Midwest but have called Los Angeles home for several years now. Anna is a writer who received her B.A. in Film/Video from Columbia College Chicago and M.A. in Film Studies from Chapman University. Her dark comedy short She Had It Coming was an Official Selection of 25 film festivals with several awards won for it among them. Derek is an attorney who also likes movies. It is a point of pride that most of their podcast episodes are longer than the movies they cover.
When you're slamming in the first and you're feeling something first, diarrhea. Diarrhea. When you're slamming in the third and you do the third diarrhea. Diarrhea. When you're slamming in the home and your shirt full of home, diarrhea. Diarrhea. When you're sitting in your Chevy and your shirt feeling heavy, diarrhea. Diarrhea. Kevin, honey, where'd you learn that song? Last summer at camp, huh?
SPEAKER_02:Ah, that was money well spent. Hello and welcome to 80s movie montage. This is Derek.
SPEAKER_01:And this is Anna.
SPEAKER_02:And that was Mary Steenbergen, Steve Martin, and of course, the kid singing All About Diarrhea, Jason Fisher, in 1989's Parenthood.
SPEAKER_01:Nothing but class on this podcast with pulling that clip.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, the movie started and I knew what I had to do.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because that is literally the opening credits.
SPEAKER_01:That was the one thing that I mentioned on the tail end of the last episode that I like remembered about this movie. If I had ever seen it in full, I don't remember if I did or not. But that's all you're not.
SPEAKER_02:Did you did you just like see the very opening and then they're like, nah.
SPEAKER_01:No, I think just as a kid, that's the thing that stuck is that song.
SPEAKER_02:So like I think the diarrhea song is a classic.
SPEAKER_01:I definitely remember being at a friend's house and then singing it. And I yeah. So anyway, Parenthood, 1989. And wow. Uh we had a lot of people to get through on this.
SPEAKER_02:If this movie didn't have this cast, it would be a lifetime movie that you would have never watched.
SPEAKER_01:And we talked about that after watching it. It's an interesting film because well, it spawned two television series. So that to me shows that I think it it plays better as I'm not saying I don't like this movie, but like I think it plays better as a TV show.
SPEAKER_02:You can like do more with these like individual stories. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Because there's so many people in this movie that they're they're all interesting, but and we'll we'll get into some of the like details, but some of them get a little bit short shrift because there's just not enough time to like get into everybody's stories in a meaningful way. Yeah. So anyway, uh so let's start with the writers, the people who who uh did or didn't give short shrift to to the characters. Um so it is a very well-known writing duo, and we have talked about them before. Will we talk about them again? Maybe. Yeah, actually, we probably will. Um, so the first Lowell Gans. So both of these uh gentlemen have story and screenplay credits. Also, I will give a quick shout out to the director because he has a story credit, but in any case.
SPEAKER_02:Um he had the uh story of like, okay, so here's my pitch. There are these people with kids.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's it. My guess is that, like, because Howard, so not to like bury the lead or anything, Ron Howard's the director of this film. We've talked about him a lot.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And he works with these two guys a ton. So my guess is that there was some kind of like, hey, we should do a movie about blah, blah, blah. And then Howard's like, go write the script. So that makes sense. That's that's my interpretation of what happened to make this show business happen. That's show business. So as far as um, wow, yeah, I mean, crazy credit list, just hit after hit. Um, he started in television. I'm trying to see, because I remember that there's like okay, so he has a couple more credits than his partner. So um Mandel, I'll kind of go over more quickly. Sorry, Mandel. But as far as credits go, a fair mix of TV and film, although a lot more TV earlier in his career. He started on The Odd Couple, probably met Ron Howard on Happy Days.
SPEAKER_02:Probably, because I don't see a credit for the Andy Griffith show.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. Nice call out. Uh so now I don't think this was the first time, because like, let's see, how many movies have we covered that they've written? Maybe it was the first time Night Shift might have been the first one that we did.
SPEAKER_02:I can't remember the order of that in Splash.
SPEAKER_01:Splash uh now I'm thinking about Splash is probably first. Okay, so Night Shift, um, more television. We have the new odd couple. Uh so like a couple spin-offs from these original shows. Laverne and Shirley, Joni Los Chachi.
SPEAKER_02:17 episodes total. Was that is that what he wrote, or is that like as long as I don't know how long that show lasted.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think it went more. It could have been its entire first season. I don't know if it even went two seasons.
SPEAKER_02:It's a spin-off of a series that is known for the phrase jumping the shark.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you mentioned it a minute ago. He is one of the credited writers for Splash, which actually got an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.
SPEAKER_02:That's crazy because that movie, it feels like it. I mean, we talked about this in the episode, that it it feels kind of forgotten.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I mean, one thing that like probably if anybody is a consistent listener of this podcast, probably they're getting sick of me bringing up the fact that like that kind of film, I love the fact that it was nominated for best original screenplay. A film like that would never get nominated for best original screenplay nowadays.
SPEAKER_02:No, no.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it and that irks me. It irks me that like that type of fair does not get the same kind of attention that it did 40 years ago. But here we are. Uh Spies Like Us, which maybe we'll do this year, maybe later. I gotta spread that out.
SPEAKER_02:Otherwise, we're definitely going to, but maybe this year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I think I I have it in the queue, but I think I had it sooner than later, but maybe we gotta spread it out a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:Did we do that before or after Modern Problems, that weird fever dream Chevy Chase movie? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:That one will come even later, I guess. Gung Ho, which spawned a TV series. Yeah. Uh City Slicker. So now we're, I think we're getting into the 90s, City Slickers, as well as the sequel, The Legend of Curly's Gold. So the first TV series, Parenthood. So he's credited right on that. A League of Their Own.
SPEAKER_02:Did he so he wrote on that or it was based on uh you know what?
SPEAKER_01:I didn't do a deep dive. It could just say like characters.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So um, but yeah, I feel like at this juncture in his career, probably wasn't writing on a TV show. Possibly. Um, but we have A League of Their Own, Mr. Saturday Night. A League of Their Own spawned. So many of these films spawned television series.
SPEAKER_02:I forgot that there was a series for that, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There was not only one, there was two. So this might be a record for covering writers who have spawned television series of their films that not only spawned one television series, two television series.
SPEAKER_02:That is impressive.
SPEAKER_01:Uh so yes, A League of Their Own, the films Multiplicity, Ed TV, Where the Heart Is. And then more recently, there were re uh reboots. I don't know, but I guess so. Reboots, uh, the new well, it's not new, it's already off the air and it's been off the air, but there was another parenthood TV show, and there was another, this is more recently. This is like what, maybe a couple years ago? Uh, the TV series The League of Their Own.
SPEAKER_02:There's literally no shortage of potential parenthood shows.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a pretty universal experience for a lot of people, not us, but I can't believe he didn't bring up his uh classic.
SPEAKER_02:I think I don't know if he wrote or if it was a story by. You watched about the first five minutes of this film, and then you just had to tap out Cindy Lauper and Jeff Goldblum in Vibes. Sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I didn't write that down.
SPEAKER_02:I I forgot, like I saw that in the theater, and then we were I just like put it on. I'm like, oh, I forgot. This is really almost unwatchably bad.
SPEAKER_01:It's pretty bad. Maybe one day I'll go back to it. Um vibes. Vibes. Okay, so moving on to his writing partner, Babaloo Mandel.
SPEAKER_02:Who?
SPEAKER_01:Babaloo. Isn't that just the best name?
SPEAKER_02:It is a pretty fucking cool name.
SPEAKER_01:Such a great name, Babaloo. Uh now, let me look at this list here just to make sure. So I can't say that everything that I listed for Mandel is the same, or I'm sorry, that I listed for Gans is the same for Mandel, but I'm gonna really quickly because he's short a couple credits.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I can tell you that Vibes is still on there.
SPEAKER_01:Vibes is still on there. Okay, so let's go over the ones that he also shares. Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days, Night Shift, Splash. So he is an Oscar nominated writer. Spies Like Us, Gung Ho. Oh, I see where the the um dip is. Uh yeah, so Gung Ho, Gung Ho the TV series, City Slickers, The Legend of Curly's Gold, Parenthood, the TV series, A League of Their Own, Mr. Saturday Night, um, the TV series, A League of Their Own, Multiplicity. Oh, wait, there is a lot of the same ones. What are the things? There sure is. What did he miss? Ed TV, where the heart is. I'm trying to figure out which ones he didn't have. Parenthood, a league of their own. So which ones are missing here? Oh, it's uh a couple of the spin-offs. So Joni Love Chachi um isn't there, the new odd couple and the odd couple. That's that's what's the that's the shortage of the three between the two of them. Okay. And then as mentioned, Ron Howard. So he's a story by credit. He is far more known, I would say, as a director, and maybe by some people actor, um, than screenwriter.
SPEAKER_02:I think if you if you identify Ron Howard as an actor, that for sure yes, it does. Um isn't it great what that little Ronnie did?
SPEAKER_01:But a couple of his strictly speaking writing credits include the film Grand Theft Auto. Um, he does probably because of this film have two writing credits for each of the parenthood shows, Far and Away. And then actually, very recently the film Eden. Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay, now moving on to Ron Howard as the director. Um we've talked about him a lot. And let's see here. Yeah. There's probably one other film that we might cover with him. Really? Okay. Um at some point, I would say. So he had an amazing 80s. That's why we've brought him up so much. And in a lot of ways, um the great success that he had in the 80s kind of reminds me. Um what were you you know I'm gonna say, Rob Reiner? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They both had a really great 80s. And I think at some point um we'll have to do a tribute episode to Reiner. We've covered so many though of Reiner's 80s.
SPEAKER_02:We've covered Spinal Tap, Princess Bride, uh, Stand By Me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we've cov we covered the the huge hits. I think we can do a fun one with the sure thing. Yeah. So I I think I have that in my cue as well. But uh moving back to Howard, so he directed Grand Theft Auto. So the films that we've already covered with him, it's like boom, boom, boom, Night Shift. Oh, yeah. We've done that one. Uh Splash, probably the most recent one that we've done is Cocoon. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, and actually last season we covered a couple because we also did Willow.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The one that I'm thinking of that's still very much a possibility is Gung Ho. Yeah. So we could do that one at some point. Now we're moving into the 90s. And also, so this is interesting. Maybe this has come up in all the many times we've talked about him. There's definitely a shift to some degree in what he the projects he was choosing to take on, because obviously the ones that we've covered, they're almost entirely uh Cocoon is more serious, but um, a lot of comedies. Willow is a little bit, maybe Willow's a tiny bit of an indicator of where he was going because now we're getting into as far as the 90s go, a lot of action and a lot of adventure films. So we have backdraft, Far and Away, Apollo 13, Ed TV. So that is bringing him back to kind of his comedy roots. Um, how the this is definitely a little bit outside of his normal fair, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
SPEAKER_02:Which was that the Jim Carrey one?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And now we're getting into his like Oscar phase. So he wins, he gets double Oscars. He wins best director and he wins best pitcher for A Beautiful Mind.
SPEAKER_02:That was a good movie.
SPEAKER_01:He routines with uh Oh, with Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe for Cinderella Man.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:And now he gets into his um weird hair phase. Yeah, I well, you're thinking of Tom Hanks, right?
SPEAKER_02:The hair and Da Vinci code. I just assume he made that decision for him.
SPEAKER_01:He made the decision for him.
SPEAKER_02:Isn't that what directors do?
SPEAKER_01:They're like But yeah, possibly. Possibly. Um I'm just laughing because I think well, I shouldn't say I think I know. We've talked about the fact that for whatever reason It's such a soothing movie. It's such a and it's not, but it's like become a weird what a cozy movie. A weird, cozy movie for us.
SPEAKER_02:When the albino just starts like whipping himself until he bleeds.
SPEAKER_01:It's just, you know, it's so weird. It's so weird that we just like like if it's and it I think part is it's on TV all the time. It's on TV a ton.
SPEAKER_02:It is, and like anything that Ian McKellen is in also has like a certain like feel to it, even though he's kind of an asshole in that movie.
SPEAKER_01:No, definitely he is. Um anyway, he directs it in that entire trilogy.
SPEAKER_02:So I've never seen either of the other two movies.
SPEAKER_01:I don't need to.
SPEAKER_02:They got like the they changed the order of like the books in the movies. Yeah, so I just saw the first and that was good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, look, there's a whole different conversation around that movie as far as like historically like uh what uh Dan Brown, I think, is the writer of the books. Um, and just you know, the backlash he got for I I don't actually I have not done a deep enough dive to say with any authority if this is all just total fiction on his part or if he actually thinks there's some belief to the story that he put forth. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:I think he said that he feels they're as accurate as the book it was based off of.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. Oh I just made that up.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry.
SPEAKER_01:Um anyway. The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Inferno. So he returns to Oscar Fair. He gets the same nominations. Unfortunately, he doesn't win, but he does get nominated for best director as well as best pitcher. So he's producing on these films for Frost Nixon.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:He does Rush.
SPEAKER_02:Uh and that might be the one of the only like car racing movies that I have not seen.
SPEAKER_01:Getting into the car racing movies lately. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Saw F1, saw Grant Turismo.
SPEAKER_01:Many of them, I don't care about them at all.
SPEAKER_02:Because the fun you want to talk about, Cozy. If you see one of those movies, you've seen every one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I will say that I can't for some reason I keep seeing because I think it's also on TV a lot. Um, what's the one with Matt Damon and Christian Bale?
SPEAKER_02:Ford versus Ferrari.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Yeah. I keep somehow catching that film when it's at the scene. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Where Ford starts crying.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. For some reason, it's the only part of the movie I've ever seen. Um, but yeah, so he directed Rush and then he reteams with Hemsworth for In the Heart of the Sea. He we talked about this, so he was not the original director of solo a Star Wars story. There was a falling out between the two. I don't remember their names, but it was a duo. They were taken off the project. I think it was very big of him to step in because he's he's a like a list director, and he comes in and I I did not mind the movie. Were those did that come out while the trilogy like the sequel trilogy was still in so I think I might be wrong, and I'm gonna I don't want fucking pitchforks coming after me, but um I think it came out between A Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay, so possibly because I feel like people felt a certain way about solo and then they got the rest of the sequel trilogy, and then they realized how good they had it with solo.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's not a bad film. So he did Hillbilly Elogy, Jim Henson Idea Man, and then I mentioned it a minute ago. I think it's 2000 or um 2024, he did Eden. Okay. Okay. Moving on to have we covered him before? We have, but it's been a minute. Donald McElpine. He is the DP on this film. He's still with us, he's about to turn 92 as of this recording. I think he well, wait, wait a minute. You know what? He was working up until 2023, so he may not be retired, uh which is extremely impressive.
SPEAKER_02:Well done.
SPEAKER_01:So I have all films for him. Uh he's had a really interesting career. I think he's Australian because a couple of his older films, um I think The Angry or The Odd Angry Shot, My Brilliant Career, Don't Cry, It's Only Thunder, which I thought was an interesting title. Moscow on the Hudson.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, with uh Robin Williams.
SPEAKER_01:Correct.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Down and Out in Beverly Hills. We could definitely cover that one at some point. So the one that we've covered with him, which is already a couple seasons ago, is Predator.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Okay. Right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So go check that one out. Uh he did the I always find this really interesting when they bring back the same DP for um franchise film. So he did Patriot Games and then he comes back for Clear and Present Danger. So he shot both those.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:They do have, I mean, you can Oh, they're very they look the same.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Right? Not not in a bad way, but they just have like the same look and feel to them.
SPEAKER_01:100%. Uh he did Mrs. Doubtfire, and then he does a lot of um, he did a couple Boz Lerman films. So he did Romeo plus Juliet, um, going by the the stylization of the title.
SPEAKER_02:The mathematics of it.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. He did Stepmom, and then he actually is an Oscar-nominated cinematographer. He got so another Luhrman film, he got that nomination for Moulin Rouge. Mm. Okay. So he did that. Anger Management, I mean, he's all over the place with like genre and uh he did X-Men's origin, Colin Wolverine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that was that was a movie. That was a movie. I think was that the one that inspired Ryan Reynolds to like take over the Deadpool stuff?
SPEAKER_03:Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Or was he in that? He was in one of those. I can't remember which which um it was it was one of like the Wolverine spin-offs, I thought, where he was like Wolverine with his mouth shown sewn shut, which is like a really interesting thing to do to a character most known for his snarky comments. Anyways.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, interesting. I didn't I didn't know that story. Um he reteems with Harrison Ford for Ender's Game. I remember somebody write so not you would be shocked, I think, to know that I read that book, because I am not sci- like you are the sci-fi person.
SPEAKER_02:I've not read it, but I've seen the movie, and so like I thought about, but yeah, no.
SPEAKER_01:It it was an interesting book. I could guess the ending.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you I could see that.
SPEAKER_01:It it was pretty obvious once it became like. Yeah, I could see the twist coming. Um, but so he shot that, and then the one from 2023 is I do not know this one, but it's called The Portable Door. Okay, uh moving on to we could definitely cover him again. It's kind of shocking in a way that we haven't covered him yet. Randy Newman! Yeah. So he did the music, and for this film, so this film is an Oscar nominated film in two categories. One is Best Original Song, which was his nomination for I Love to See You Smile.
SPEAKER_02:Really? Yeah. Okay, yeah. That yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you got an Oscar nom for that. Um I don't think it's played maybe the instrumental. I don't think that song, I didn't clock it being played during the movie, but it plays over the closing credits.
SPEAKER_02:I think it's maybe the I think it is in there at least one of their somewhere. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so oh my goodness, Randy Newman. This whole Newman family, man, they are crazy talented. Um, I think he's the cousin of David Newman, right? Who we've seen a concert. I think I think so. It's it's the whole family. This whole family is crazy talented. All right. So since we haven't brought him up before, buckle in um because this guy is a prolific uh composer. And I am going to, because look, the the one other film, and I don't think we're gonna do it this year, The Natural. He he worked on the natural, so he will come up again at some point. But I want to take this opportunity to just go over what an amazing career this guy has had. Okay. So here we go. And I try to, because his career is so prolific, to some degree, I try to whittle down. Anything that didn't have Oscar nominations or wins, but here we go. So he gets his first nominations, double nominations for best original score and best original song for ragtime. He then works on the natural for which he also gets a best original score nomination.
SPEAKER_02:It is a good yeah, it's a good score.
SPEAKER_01:He, I mean, he was like boom, boom, boom, because I think these films are consecutive by year. He also gets a best original score for Avalon. He works on Awakenings. He gets so now we're moving into the 90s. He gets a best original song Oscar Nom for the paper. He works on Maverick.
SPEAKER_02:Great movie.
SPEAKER_01:So here is probably he's part of a couple franchises. And actually it's really interesting because he largely moved into more family fair. Uh and and even more strictly speaking, like animation. That's where he's gotten a lot of success. Namely with the Toy Story franchise. Big time. So this is what is fascinating to me. I'm gonna go through all of his nominations and wins for this franchise all in one group. So he gets nominated for best original score and song for the first Toy Story. He gets another best original song nomination for Toy Story 2. He gets his first win, though, for Toy Story 3, Best Original Song for the song We Belong Together. And then he gets another nomination for Best Original Song for Toy Story Four. Wow. So every single one of them that and there's a five on the way, right? I don't I don't know. I think there's a five on the way.
SPEAKER_02:Like I literally did not know that Randy Newman had this filmography that he had been involved in a lot of these movies that I have like seen a ton of times and really loved the music because I've only associated him with that song from parenthood, the Toy Story movies, and I Love LA.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's what a lot of people know him from. And that's not nothing.
SPEAKER_02:But I didn't realize that he's part of so many other things.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's because what's interesting about his work is that he is like he's kind of like uh antithetical to like a guy like Han Zimmer.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, like even John Williams, you kind of recognize a John Williams score. You recognize a Han Zimmer score.
SPEAKER_01:I think though, and here's what I maybe still appreciate about his work, um, or the fact that he's getting recognized, is that like you have people like Zimmer who Zimmer is like what? He's um what's his name? Go-to guy nowadays. Oh, Chris Nolan.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So there is a very elevated, high cinema type of sound.
SPEAKER_02:It's meant to evoke a certain like sense or feeling. Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that's totally fine because I love so many of his scores. My favorite Han Zimmer score is Thin Red Line. Um, but there he does a certain type of music that's very elevated, very cinematic.
SPEAKER_02:Interstellar's good. Interstellar's great. Inception.
SPEAKER_01:Inception's another one of my favorites. Newman is kind of like the every person's composer and is a little bit more grounded in just kind of what I feel is like a more kind of everyday type of music for different films. And I love that he keeps getting recognized for that.
SPEAKER_02:No, I'm I'm I'm impressed when I'm looking at all the titles here because he it seems like he's like really adept at fitting a score to a movie.
SPEAKER_01:1000%. And we're only halfway through everything.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01:So, okay, to keep it going, uh he gets his best, or he gets his next, I should say, best original score nomination for James and the Giant Peach. He gets a b another best original score nom for Pleasantville.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Again, he just goes on this run of nominations. He gets another best original score nomination for A Bug's Life. So he wasn't the composer on Babe Pick in the City, but he did get a best original song Oscar nomination for that film. So just to differentiate. All right. He gets another best original song Oscar nom for Meet the Parents. He also composes on Meet the Falkers. Now we're getting into another franchise, Monsters Inc. So uh he gets his next win. So he got double nominations that year. He got best original score and best original song. He won for best original song for If I didn't have you. He also composed on Monsters University. He uh gosh, there's another franchise coming up. He composes on Seabiscuit.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, I bet I know what one's coming up.
SPEAKER_01:Name it.
SPEAKER_02:Cars.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Good job. So he gets another best original song Oscar nom for the first film. He also works on Cars 3. I double-checked, I did not see him listed for Cars 2.
SPEAKER_02:So Well, everyone needs a vacation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. He gets another best original song nomination for The Princess and the Frog. And then talk about a pivot. His most recent best original score Oscar nomination is for Marriage Story. So he goes from all these kitty films to this like highly dramatic adult marriage story movie.
SPEAKER_02:Was that the one with uh Kylo Wren and Black Widow?
SPEAKER_01:That's it. Okay. Way to go. Way to go. And just to confirm, yes, Randy Newman and David Newman are cousins, and they, as it says on Google, belonging to the renowned Newman Hollywood musical dynasty.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, they're it legitimately is that.
SPEAKER_01:Isn't that crazy? Yeah. It's crazy. Okay. Uh moving on to film editing. We have brought so Howard did not pull in all the same people that he's worked on with on other films, but a lot of them he did. One of them is Daniel P. Hanley. Um, actually, there's two editors. And they were very similar to screenwriters. They worked on a lot together. Uh so Hanley, let's see. Okay. So Hanley has a couple extra credits um in comparison to his partner, but he worked on Laverne and Shirley, so that's probably where he met Ron Howard.
SPEAKER_02:Remember when they moved to LA? Were they like in Milwaukee or something?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:They worked at a beer factory. Yeah. And they moved to Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01:Was it both of them?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_01:Both of them moved to LA?
SPEAKER_02:That's like a feels like a you don't see that in shows much anymore where they're just like, guess what? We're in a new city.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, the closest I can think of is like in Sex in the City, they had a mini arc of Carrie and the girls coming out to LA for something. Sure. So, but could you imagine if like in Sex in the City they all just moved to LA? It would, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I could not imagine that.
SPEAKER_01:All right. So Hanley, like I said, Laverne and Shirley. So here are again some of the films we've already talked about with him. Night Shift, Splash, Cocoon. He also worked on Gung Ho. He did, so he's not exclusive to Howard. He worked on Pet Cemetery, but he did uh collaborate with him again on Willow. He did Problem Child. They collaborate again for a series of films, Backdraft, Far and Away. He is an Oscar-winning editor. He gets his win for Apollo 13. That'll do it. Much deserved. He worked on In N Out at TV. Um, so a pretty consistent collaboration with Howard. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He gets a couple more nominations. He gets a nomination for A Beautiful Mind as well as Cinderella Man. Uh, he works on the Da Vinci Code trilogy with Howard. He gets another Oscar nomination for Frost Nixon. And his last two credits, I think I don't think I missed anything more recent. Rush and in the heart of the sea.
SPEAKER_02:I don't know what was going on in 1984, but in those in that year, he worked on a couple interesting flicks: Summer Fantasy and Obsessive Love.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_02:Those two just like kind of they stand out in contrast. Obsessive Love and Apollo 13.
SPEAKER_01:So his partner for pretty much all these films, Mike Hill. Unfortunately, he's passed away. He passed away in 2023. And I do have anything that Hanley worked on with a couple exceptions I have for Hill. So I don't have Lil Brennan Shirley for him, but he did Night Shift, Splash, Cocoon, Gung Ho, Pet Cemetery, Willow, Problem Child, Backdraft, Far and Away. He also shared in that Oscar win for Apollo 13. Okay. Ed TV, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And he also shared in the same Oscar nominations. So he too got nominated for A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, Frost Nixon. Uh oh, okay. So he only worked on um Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. I didn't have Inferno for him. I don't think I skipped that. Okay. Um Rush and In the Heart of the Sea.
SPEAKER_02:So And I know just because you were curious, he did work on Obsessive Love, but not Summer Fantasy.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so it feels like we've gone through a lot already. So is there a cast in this movie? We are finally at this cast, and we have a dozen different people. It it is the craziest cast. It is stacked.
SPEAKER_02:It is.
SPEAKER_01:Uh there's not a single person I think that people well, maybe the grandma, but um it's fair.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It is wild, all the names in this film. Starting with Steve Martin. And it's been a minute since we've talked about Martin. Um he's still very much working. I mean, I still am a big fan of Only Murders in the Building. I'm not sure how much life that show still has, but um I I'll still watch it, but I'll still watch it.
SPEAKER_02:I I mean, oh, it's it feels like it was a great idea that's just getting like spread as thin as it could possibly could at this point.
SPEAKER_01:Because they're trying to do this thing now where it's like, okay, how many murders could we actually have in the same complex?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But how do we still keep the murder connected to the complex? Yeah. So they're getting a little I'm not gonna say loosey-goosey. I get it. I get what they're trying to do. But in any case, what a career this guy has had, um, largely in the comedy space. Um, but he also, I mean, very talented in other ways. I know he's a writer. In fact, one of the films on here, I think he originated first the novella, I want to say. Uh also, I think a lot of people know he's uh, what, a banjo player? Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Pretty adept banjo player. Yeah. So started out in television. Uh he, you know what's funny is that I did not put this down. I think he does have a credit for Standing Night Live. I guess he wasn't as much of a what do they call them primetime players as I thought he was. But he was part of that two wild and crazy guys.
SPEAKER_02:He was one of the wild and crazy guys, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I thought he was on that show a lot longer than he was, but he did the whole King Tut musical thing. Yeah, that too.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That too. Um, but was that strictly speaking SNL? Or was that just part of his bit?
SPEAKER_02:I think it was on SNL, but I could be wrong.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So uh as far as early TV work, I have the Sunny and Chair comedy hour. I love that one of his very early credits is in the Muppet movie as insolent waiter. I think that's very funny. It kind of reminds me of uh Eugene Levy in Spinal Tap. Isn't he um or is it uh Billy Crystal? Are they both in it? Billy Crystal for sure is one of the waiters at the party. Yeah, I misspoke. I don't think Eugene Levy's in it.
SPEAKER_02:He could be.
SPEAKER_01:He, of course, so now all of a sudden he's headlining all his films. So the jerk. We covered Dead Man, Don't Wear Plaid. We did, yeah. Go that was pretty early. Um, maybe season two. Go check that one out. The Man with Two Brains, All of Me, Three Amigos.
SPEAKER_02:All of me. That one cracks me up. You probably can find the poster for it if you look online, but it has like the entire story is on the poster just to tell you what the fuck this movie's about.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, with uh Lily Tomlin, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We covered him. Uh he played, I mean, I actually really like the fact that he took this role in Little Shop of Horrors. He's this really creepy dentist.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so it's kind of I kind of like that. And then it's funny because then he follows that up with Roxanne. Big nose. Which is, yes. I mean, so it has that like very obvious comedic element to it, but he plays it pretty straight. He does. Like he's kind of the straight guy in it. And then probably most recently we covered him in planes, trains, and automobiles. Yes, for sure. So he still can have kind of the more altered reality or heightened reality role, like dirt dirty rotten scoundrels, but for the most part, he starts like settling in into kind of more grounded roles, even if they're comedic still. Like this movie. Yeah. Uh he does LA Story, Father of the Bride, he comes back for part two, mixed nuts. This brings him back to kind of more slapsticky comedy, Bowfinger. Shop girl was the movie that I was talking about. That I think he wrote a novella of that.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:He takes on the role of Inspector Clouseau for The Pink Panther and its sequel. And then, as mentioned, he returns to television for only murders in the building.
SPEAKER_02:Which I think is like the best thing that I've seen him in a long time. Agreed. You know, like but that's just those are just like my my personal taste is not really get the Pink Panther remakes that he was in. Because just because I like I I kind of like the originals, but even those like haven't aged super well. If if you like watch those, you're like, holy shit.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like what I'm about to say might get a lot of people upset. Pink Panther and its brand of comedy reminds me a lot of like Monty Python. Yeah. And just that kind of like almost absurdist comedy that isn't really my comedy.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's the the one of my favorite parts of it is like, does your dog bite? No, the dog bites him. That is not my dog.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, and good job. Look at that little accent you had going on. But yeah, I agree with you. I really look, even if the plot or stories that they start presenting in Only Murders begin to like fall off from year to year, I'll still watch it just because of his interactions with Martin Short.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, what's her name is Gray Two. But sorry. Gomez. Yes, thank you. Selena Gomez. She's great too. But I have to admit that it's Mart it's Martin Steve, but it's kind of funny that they share a name. Martin Short and Steve Martin. Steve Martin Short. Yeah, Steve Martin Short. That the way they play off each other is just I could watch them all day. And from what I've heard, they're best friends in real life.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, they're like doing fucking credit card commercials.
SPEAKER_01:So it's really fun to watch them. And they just seem like they're having a blast. So, okay. Moving on to Mary Steinbergen, so she plays his wife, Karen Buckman. I mean, their marriage is probably pretty realistic, my guess. When you have three kids and one on the way, they just seem harried and exhausted and pulled thin almost the entire time.
SPEAKER_02:They are, but they also like, doesn't it look like they live like across from like a lake or something?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they're supposed to be in um St. Louis, right?
SPEAKER_02:Is that oh okay. Well, they go to a Cardinals game at the Yeah. So they're boo.
SPEAKER_01:Um but I was thinking about that because I was like, I lived in St. Louis for a couple years, so I was like trying to think of where they could possibly be living where there's like this really nice lake.
SPEAKER_02:But it they were driving for a while, so I don't know how far away from it they could possibly live to go there. But like people in the Midwest will do that. They'll like drive, they'll drive a couple hours to go to a football game or a baseball game.
SPEAKER_01:It's true.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's true because there's nothing else around them. I mean, we'll do that here. It's just those two hours cover about five miles.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to think of where they possibly could live out there. Um, because they, yeah, they had a very nice house. But I mean, it was look, that whole part where is it, I think it's later on. I don't think it's in the same conversation where she tells him he's she's pregnant, but where, you know, the grandma introjects herself and tells the story about going on a roller coaster.
SPEAKER_02:I almost put that at the uh, you know the beginning. So it was either that or diarrhea. And I I went with the diarrhea.
SPEAKER_01:Like, I get it, you know. Uh Steve Burgeon's character is like, I like the roller coaster. I'm like, sure, but if your husband doesn't want a totally chaotic life, I don't think that that's an entirely bad thing.
SPEAKER_02:You got three kids.
SPEAKER_01:I mean Yeah, you already have three kids. Although, you know what I'll say.
SPEAKER_02:So is the grandma saying, you just have three kids, you're on a merry-go-round.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, yeah, exactly. Like, I I get it, I get it. Like, and and I don't know. There are things I loved about this film, like, for instance, when she does tell him that she's expecting, you know, she immediately is like, Oh, you want me to have an abortion. And even though he's not in a great frame of mind when he's having this conversation, he's not exactly thrilled to hear the news. He says to her, that is a choice that you have to make. And does not like I actually thought for 1989 that was pretty progressive for the husband. Like he said it with a kind of a tone, but he did say, Yeah, that's your choice to make. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna influence you.
SPEAKER_02:Which is uh yes.
SPEAKER_01:And then the fact that that was said in a movie is maybe the way I should put it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And then she said, What are you running for Congress?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, which I thought was hilarious because it was like, no fucking way was anybody for Congress saying that kind of shit in 1989. No fucking way. So I thought that was a little disingenuous. But um, so you but you had something like that which struck me as fairly progressive, but then the end of the movie is just everybody's popping out babies. Oh, yeah. Baby, baby, baby, baby. And I was just like, okay. Like, I get it. It's called parenthood. But um This movie is for people with babies by people with babies. Yeah, I just felt like there's other ways to show family other than just like every fucking person with a uterus having a baby. Anyway. Um, so Mary Stephen Bergen, she's had an incredible career. I did not realize she was an Oscar-winning actress. I didn't either. Really early in her career. She got best supporting actress. Uh, she got the win for Melvin and Howard. And she's not the only person who's in that film. I'll get back to it in a minute.
SPEAKER_02:It'd be wild if she was the only person in that film.
SPEAKER_01:I actually have, because like I don't know when we're gonna cover her again. So I just wanted to give a little bit of time to her. And so I have uh close to 30 credits. She's been a prolific uh actress.
SPEAKER_02:We missed her by one year in 1979's Time After Time.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I didn't even have that one. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I mean it's I think Ragd Ragtime might be 1980, but I don't I don't know if we're gonna Oh, Dead of Winter actually might be one we could do at some point. So those are a couple of her early credits. Uh she does play Doc Brown's Love Interest in Back to the Future part three. Yep. So she's in that. The Butcher's Wife. She does do the TV series Back to the Future. I don't know anything about that. Is that animated? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So she just did voice work. I'm only aware of the animated. I don't think they had a live-action series for that.
SPEAKER_01:Um, great film. She's in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Okay. Philadelphia, Powder. I have I think it leans more into film, but some TV.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh Nixon, she does a TV series called Inc. Did you ever see the movie Life as a House?
SPEAKER_02:With Kevin Klein and uh Anakin Skywalker. It's a really good movie.
SPEAKER_01:It's such a good movie, but I I don't know if I can watch it again because I was just bawling at the end. It is, it is a it is such an underrated film. It is so fucking good.
SPEAKER_02:But I never hear anyone talk about that movie.
SPEAKER_01:Get right. Yeah. Exactly. It is so, so, so good. But get a fucking box of tissues if you're gonna watch that movie.
SPEAKER_02:What we're gonna have to do is when we finally wrap up the 80s, uh-huh, we're gonna have to keep a list of all the movies that we've brought up while talking about 80s movies that we couldn't feature because they weren't from the 80s, and that'll be the next uh series.
SPEAKER_01:But it'll just be like any movie from any other decade.
SPEAKER_02:Well, the name of the podcast will be movies that weren't in the 80s, but we thought of them while talking about other related projects from the 80s.
SPEAKER_01:That's the that really rules off the tongue.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:She's in I Am Sam.
unknown:Eh.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if that's aged that great. But I think a lot of people love her from ELF.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:She's James Conn's wife in Elf.
SPEAKER_02:I I don't know if that's like really like her singing at the end.
SPEAKER_01:I think that is her, but I think she's probably a better singer than I think. I think so, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh she was on the TV show Joan of Arcadia, a different Christmas movie for Christmases.
SPEAKER_02:Is that the one with like uh with Vince Vaughan and yeah, it's too much.
SPEAKER_01:I'm nodding my head, yes.
SPEAKER_02:It's too much.
SPEAKER_01:She but probably another generation of people really love her from Step Brothers. Oh, yeah, yeah. She's in the proposal. It's an okay movie. Uh, The Help. She so now she does a a couple different series. She was on the show Justified. So she has a credit for Orange is a New Black. I don't remember her at all from that. I watched that entire series, so I don't remember she had a huge role or not, but The Last Man on Earth. Um, more recently, she was in the film book club, and I mean, such a, I gotta say, a very uh appropriate sequel title, the next chapter.
unknown:Damn.
SPEAKER_01:For book club, isn't it? Yeah. Pretty perfect.
SPEAKER_02:It's pretty well done.
SPEAKER_01:The happiest or I'm sorry, happiest season. She also, so she this is a little bit of a flip, at least the way it was listed chronologically. She was on the TV show Zoe's Extraordinary Playlist, and then there was a film, Zoe's Extraordinary Christmas, which I thought was interesting. All right. Uh Nightmare Alley, and then we just watched her on Man on the Inside with her husband, Ted Dancing. It's a fun show. It is a fun show. Yeah. It's a cozy show. It's cozy kind of like.
SPEAKER_02:Is it cozy like uh like the Da Vinci code?
SPEAKER_01:Different kind of cozy, but it's cozy. Okay, moving on to we are barely a fourth of the way through. Diane Weist. I'm sorry, I don't know what to do. There's so many amazing actors in this film. I don't know what to tell you. Can't skip over them. Uh so she plays wait, what's uh Steve Martin's name? Gil. She's Gil's sister, the older of the two sisters in the in the Buckman family. She's Helen Buckman. She is the other Oscar nomination in this film. So she got best supporting actress. Or she the nomination, she didn't win. And what a career she has had. Um, and actually, it's really fun because I did not really think about the fact that they just reteamed recently. But she is an Oscar-winning actress a couple times over. Um, I have mostly films for her. I always love when I get the chance to bring up I'm dancing as fast as I can. That film.
SPEAKER_02:We're never gonna watch that.
SPEAKER_01:No. She, I just brought this up, I think, in the last episode. She's in the 1983 Independence Day. No relation.
SPEAKER_02:Not even close.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, to the Alien Invasion Independence Day. I adore her in Footloose. Yeah. She's so for a role that could largely be forgotten, she brings to it so much dignity and just nuance. She's fantastic. And we did cover that film. Go check it out with Fossan.
SPEAKER_02:It's our most listened to episode. I think so.
SPEAKER_01:Stand by me is beginning to give it a run for its money.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:But it is a very popular episode.
SPEAKER_02:Footloose has legs. Oh man. Moving on.
SPEAKER_01:Moving on. So she has done a number of films with uh Woody Allen. It's actually where she got both of her Oscar wins. She does Purple Rosa Cairo. She gets her first Oscar win. Um, both of her wins are in the best supporting actress category for Hannah and her sisters. She does radio days. We also covered her for The Lost Boys. She plays a mom a lot, but she sure does. She, this I think shows what an amazing actress she is because it could, again, be a total throwaway role, but she always brings so much to what she does. She is a fully fleshed-out character in Lost Boys. It's true. And that's Lost Boys. Like she's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02:She is kind of Helen Buckman in The Lost Boys.
SPEAKER_01:She is in a vampire town. Yes. She's of Hel Helen Buckman's. Like, we're leaving St. Louis and we're going to uh what is Santa? Santa Yeah, Santa something.
SPEAKER_02:That's for yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Santa Clara? Santa Clara? I mean it's not Santa Clarita. It's like a made-up town.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's it's like a made up.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's Santa Clara, maybe.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think it is. I can't remember what it is. But it's not that.
SPEAKER_01:You know, okay. Hold on. Hold on. Just because Santa, okay, the Lost Boys. Um let's see. Let's see where it's supposed to be set. Let's take a look. We're gonna give do sorry an already long episode.
SPEAKER_02:Hey Siri, what fictional city does The Lost Boys take place in?
SPEAKER_01:Um Santa Carla. That's what I said, right?
SPEAKER_02:You said Santa Clara.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I I switched up the L.
SPEAKER_02:You're super.
SPEAKER_01:I switched up the L. I'm gonna I'm gonna give it to myself. Okay. So she does radio days. Uh oh wait, I'm backtracking too much. Lost Boys, Bright Lights, Big City. She's also, again, a mother, but she plays the most amazing character in Edward Scissorhands. She's fantastic in that film. She gets her, as of right now, her uh last Oscar nomination and win for Bullets Over Broadway. She's in The Bird Cage, Practical Magic, which I heard that they're doing a sequel for that, but I haven't heard anything about when it's gonna get released. With uh Sandra Bullock and I think all four of the women came back. Wow. I think. All right. So I I wanna say it's her, Stocker Channing, Nicole Kidman, and Sandra Bullock. I think they all agreed to come back. I think she's also an I am Sam. She, so here's where she does a pretty long turn of television. She was on Law and Order for a while. Oh, okay. Dan in real life. Uh, I'm okay. I gotta focus on saying this right. Senecty, New York. That's as close as I'm gonna get. Um, and then most recently, all television in treatment, life in pieces, Mare Kingston, and she was on this last season of Only Murders in the Building. Yep. I think of anything I've seen her in, she had the least amount to do in the in that season of the show. I think that's right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But a little bit more towards the end.
SPEAKER_01:A little bit more towards the end. Okay, moving on to the other Buckman sister, um, because she married out of the family, Susan Huffner, even though she's a Buckman originally, played by Harley Jane Kozak. Um shorter uh filmography than the people we've covered thus far, but still very much working. The reason why I did um is because I was like thinking about her character. I mean, I would say Gil and Helen are the two Buckman adult children who get the most to do and have the most fully fleshed out characters.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I don't mind this character, but I don't know how much her storyline gave me.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, even her storyline was more about Rick Moranis.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. Exactly. So, yeah, she's married to Rick, and I'll get to him in a second, but like her story, you know. So Gil's story is just that he's in this like crazy household with three kids, one on the way, he's like not super happy at his job, thinking he's gonna get a promotion. He doesn't.
SPEAKER_02:Um But then he gets like a raise in a better office, anyways.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I was just like thrown in there, like what he implausible, like Deus ex machina at the end of that.
SPEAKER_02:Big time.
SPEAKER_01:Um Helen's story is the most compelling, to be honest.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Her husband leaves her for another woman, gets married, has other. I think I think the other woman already had kids. I don't think they had kids together. I don't know for sure. But it leaves her being a single mother to Martha Plumpton and Joaquin Phoenix. In this film, he's um credited as Lee Phoenix before he changed his name, but we'll just call him Joaquin Phoenix. So she has a really compelling story, and also she's heartbroken because, like, honestly, you could see, and I'm sorry, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but you could you could very much see the kind of actor that Joaquin Phoenix was going to be in that phone call he has. Yeah. He is I don't know if they played anyone off of him, maybe not, but even as a child actor, the emotion he brought to calling his dad, asking if he could live with him, being told no, and seeing how that broke him was pretty incredible, actually, to watch. Yeah. And so she's the mother in that story. So I'll just say, in comparison, Susan, you know, she's married to this like really stuffed shirt Rick Moranis, who kind of an interesting character for him to take on. And I don't know. I don't know how much I was like that invested in in their their spot line.
SPEAKER_02:She just it's all about the roller coaster because like Rick her and Rick Moranis at first were on the merry-go-round, but then she wanted to get a fucking ticket for the roller coaster. She did. And he's like, No, I'm I'm like more of a merry-go-round person, and I want our kid to be like an only kid so that she could be a little genius. You know, and she was like, Well, then I'm I'm out. And then he like went into the middle of one of her classes and sang to her, so that fixed it, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and then kind of the little bow on that story did not totally ring authentic to me, but then they did have like another kid at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_02:Then they had another kid, so yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so her filmography, we have a mix of tele it's probably like mostly everybody here, a mix of television and film, The House on Sororti Row. Um, so she okay, I don't know the TV show Texas, but she's done a couple like primetime and daytime. Are these both daytime? Actually, these are both daytime soap operas. Guiding Guiding Light in Santa Barbara. Oh, okay. Um, both off the air as of this recording for quite a while at this point. I don't think there's too many soap operas anymore. They still make them. I know Days of Our Lives is still around. I think All My Children is still around. I don't know what else is around. Uh I did recognize her from When Harry Met Sally.
SPEAKER_02:I recognize her from Arachnophobia.
SPEAKER_01:I think arachnophobia. Is that 89 or 90?
SPEAKER_02:I think it's 90. Oh. I don't think it's in the 80s, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, we did cover when Harry Met Sally. We probably didn't talk about her uh in that film, but go check out that episode. That was with um Sonal, I think. That was ages ago.
SPEAKER_02:Make a mental note. We're adding uh arachnophobia to that other podcast I mentioned.
SPEAKER_01:Necessary Roughness. She was on the TV show Hearts of the West, the film Dark Planet, the TV show You Wish. I love the title of this film. I spit on your grave, colon vengeance is mine. Amazing. An addiction of hope. So that's her filmography.
SPEAKER_02:She was in uh two episodes of The Righteous Gemstones. She was? She was BJ's mom.
SPEAKER_01:Who is BJ?
unknown:I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Isn't it wasn't it the um the sister's husband?
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02:Wasn't that him?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I think so, but I don't remember him his mom being on the show. Oh, wow! Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you for calling that out. Yeah, no worries. Okay, so moving on to Rick Moranis. Moranis? Moranis? Rick Moranis. Moranis. Yeah. Said it wrong both ways. Uh it's like I've said his name a million times, but then in the moment I've always just heard Rick Moranis. No, you're you're 1000% correct. Uh so he plays Nathan Huffner. So Susan is I'm forgetting all their names. Susan's husband. There's a lot of a lot of names in this. And you're right, for this being like a Buckman family film, the focus is, I think, much more on him than her.
SPEAKER_02:Because it's like he has to change. Not change, he doesn't have to change, but he has to be more willing to accept that she doesn't want to have the exact same type of life that he does.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it just so happens that the type of life that she would rather have is the fucking roller coaster.
SPEAKER_01:She did say at some point, right, to Karen. She does have Susan has a conversation with Karen. All these women with N ending last or names, Karen, Helen, Susan. Anyway. So she talks to Gil's wife about how he used to be more wild, right? Yes. So he has changed since having a kid. Yeah. So I guess she has a point in that, like, you're not the person I married.
SPEAKER_02:And like when uh they want to plan a trip and Oh, and he wants to bring the kid. He wants to bring the kid.
SPEAKER_01:But you know what? That's me and like we're bringing Winston. Bringing Winston with us everywhere.
SPEAKER_02:But that just like that was the moment in the film that like broke her. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. That's interesting that that's the moment that broke her.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Where she was like, I don't want my kid with me.
SPEAKER_02:I want a second kid so bad that I definitely want to trip without any kids.
SPEAKER_01:That's a really good point. That's such a good point. Okay. So oh, and you know what? Now that I'm fucking thinking about it. Yeah, at the end of that movie, so she's pregnant. So Karen's had a baby. Yeah. Martha Plimpton's had a baby. Yeah. She's pregnant. And then fucking Helen, who I'm sorry, that's a stretch that she's still having kids. Martha Plimpton is like 20 years old at the end of that film.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I'm not saying it can't happen.
SPEAKER_02:I'm pretty sure that grandma was pregnant in this movie.
SPEAKER_01:But that's what I'm saying is like, did we need to have Helen having a baby? Come on. Like, couldn't we have just had a moment with Helen and her new husband and the kids all enjoying themselves together?
SPEAKER_02:Look, this is not negotiable. They're all having kids.
SPEAKER_01:They're literally across the board. Every single fucking part of that family. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Because the name of this movie is Parenthood. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So Marinus. Am I still saying it wrong? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Why are you saying a Marinas?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know.
unknown:Moranus.
SPEAKER_02:Like I ran. I I'm Iranus.
SPEAKER_01:Once it gets stuck in my head, you know, it's like the brain, the brain won't let it go. Okay. So he we have talked about him actually, well, it feels like not that long ago. Um, definitely a lot of opportunities to bring him up again, I think. Yes. Um, he took a little bit of time away from entertainment. He still was working, but he Like doing some voice stuff, maybe.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:He was doing more because he had, you know, he lost his wife. He wanted to be there for his kids. Um but he has largely very much stayed in the comedy space, just like Steve Martin. So early in his career, SCTV, the TV series, as well as SC TV Network. So he is um Canadian. That's kind of like the Canadian version of SNL. We covered him most recently for Strange Brew. So that was last season. Go check that out. We also covered him when we did the first Ghostbusters. Maybe at some point we'll do Ghostbusters too. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. It is so interesting though that he does a role like Louis Tully and Ghostbusters. And then again, he's this very buttoned-down. It's I think it's interesting casting. I'm not sure if it worked for me. Because it's just hard to see him in such a straight role. Like when you see him in things like Strange Brew and Ghostbusters, it's just he's so good at just being absurd.
SPEAKER_02:He's closer to the Ghostbusters character than uh true. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Louis Tully is very buttoned up in a lot of ways. Yeah. He's in Brewster's Millions. Uh, we also covered him because he also was in Little Shop of Horrors. Yes. We can definitely cover him. Right? Yeah. Yeah. We can definitely cover him for Space Balls. I don't know if that will be this season, but we can also cover him. This is again Under the Gun, 1989, for Honey I Shrunk the Kids. He comes back for the sequel, Honey I Blew Up the Kid. That's it. Which could be very misconstrued.
SPEAKER_02:Sounds incredibly violent.
SPEAKER_01:He does My Blue Heaven, uh also with uh Steve Martin, right? Right, yeah. Yeah. The Flintstones, Little Giants, and then a couple years ago, I think, he did the TV movie Bob and Doug Mackenzie's 2-4 anniversary. Nice. Nice. Okay, you really, really hated this character. He's such a piece of shit. Larry Buckman.
SPEAKER_02:God damn it, Larry. Larry was awful. Larry was the worst.
SPEAKER_01:He was okay, so played by Tom Holse.
SPEAKER_02:So we're like cartoonishly bad to just like Thank you for using that word.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for saying cartoonishly. Because my biggest gripe with this movie is that he is a completely one-note character. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It would have been a much more interesting film if they had given him some nuance.
SPEAKER_02:There is no depth to this character.
SPEAKER_01:There is zero depth to this character. And I think what would have made it a far more interesting movie is have it's the save the cat, have something redeeming about him. Have him be a terrible gambler and a total flake on his family, but have him be an amazing dad. Or have him, even if he's not an amazing dad, show a scene where he is being a kid with his kid and he's making his kid laugh and he's just having a great time with his kids.
SPEAKER_02:They give him no redeeming moments.
SPEAKER_01:They give him nothing. Yeah. I'm actually kind of shocked. Like I feel bad for Holtz because I was like, you know, like to take this role, you got nothing. Nothing. He does a great job. I mean, that's I think that's why you hated him so much, because he's good.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. No, he's very convincing in that role.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I but I was just really bothered by the fact that he is, and that's what I was saying at the top of the episode, where it's like there's so many fucking characters in this film, you can't give them all enough. And they don't even try. And they don't even try with this character, which is strange to me because he is one of the four Buckman kids.
SPEAKER_02:The only character that you get less less from would be his kid.
SPEAKER_01:Correct.
SPEAKER_02:Cool. Like, not only did the dad forget about him, the people who made this movie forgot about it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and so you know, it's over and done with. This sounds like 40 years in the can. But um it's too late to fit.
SPEAKER_02:We cannot fix this.
SPEAKER_01:Can't fix it. But I was just like, I I mean, the movie's already over two hours. I think there are other ways they could have trimmed it down, but I wish they could just show me one scene. One scene of him being a great dad. Yeah. You know, like just something.
SPEAKER_02:Here, I'll I'll throw, I'll throw something out. Just have him show up to one of the Little League games. Which stuff just show him participating in something.
SPEAKER_01:Show him, yeah, because like look, his whole thing is that he takes no responsibility, he's a flake. That leans perfectly into him having childish behavior. So show him being a kid with kids.
SPEAKER_02:It seems unrealistic that that someone like this character would have been the one left with the kid.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, that's the other thing, too. I'm like, who's giving you a kid?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You know, you tell me there's someone worse than him?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Like not buying it.
SPEAKER_01:So that's my biggest, biggest gripe with this movie. But as far as his career, I mean, hmm. We did bring him up actually not that long ago. Uh, he got his, as of right now, one and only Oscar nomination for Best Actor in Amadeus. He lost out to his uh co-star, F. Marie Abraham.
SPEAKER_02:Sweet irony.
SPEAKER_01:Right? That's amazing. And I'm sure that's been said quite a few times. But it's a shame because I do think he's a really great actor, but not a huge filmography. So some of the more notable ones. So a lot of people might know him very early in his career from National Lampoon's Animal House. He's one of the uh what he's a freshman, so he's trying to get into whatever the name of their fraternity is. Okay. He does Amadeus. Uh, I have, yeah, all films for him. Fearless, Frankenstein, the um I need to revisit that movie.
SPEAKER_02:The 1994 version.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the Kenneth Branow.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, really? Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I wanted to do this last fall, never got around to it. I desperately want to do a double feature of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Frankenstein. Okay. Yeah. He voices uh oh my gosh, what's the character's name? In what? Hunchback from Notre Dame. Quasimodo. Thank you. He's that. Uh Stranger Than Fiction and Jumper. Okay. Okay, sorry. We gotta keep this moving. So moving on to the patriarch of the Buckman family, Frank Buckman, played by Jason Robarts.
SPEAKER_02:Who is just like he's Larry, or Larry is him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's probably why. I mean, that's the other thing.
SPEAKER_02:That's why the movie the movie starts with like we're at a baseball game, but it's not the game that that Gil and his family, it's Gil daydreaming as a kid with his dad, who's just like doing side bets and stuff and leaves him with one of the ushers at the stadium, and then then you realize, like, well, that's what Larry just turned into. Correct.
SPEAKER_01:Which is really interesting. Like, he's the baby of the family, so maybe he got off easy. They often say that about the younger children. So yeah, he just becomes Frank. Uh, Robards, for his part, he has been passed for a while, already over 25 years ago. He passed in 2000. He had an amazing career. Also, uh Oscar winning actor. So a lot of early TV work, uh, I thought this was an Interesting. He did a couple really high profile TV movies. One of them was The Iceman Cometh.
SPEAKER_02:Oh.
SPEAKER_01:He did that pretty early on. He so a bunch of films I'm about to bring up.
SPEAKER_02:We are probably going to cover him at least once more.
SPEAKER_01:Ooh, I'm interested in what you Oh, I think I know.
SPEAKER_02:You probably know.
SPEAKER_01:I think I know. Yeah. Okay. Because there's another film where like we are definitely not doing that movie.
SPEAKER_02:Oh.
SPEAKER_01:Uh he does Tenderest of the Night, Long Day's Journey into Night. Okay. Divorce American style. Once Upon a Time in the West. All these movies. Once Upon a Time in Blah blah blah. Tora Torah Tora.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah. That's a that's a big movie.
SPEAKER_01:It is. A lot of these are. Judd, Murders in the Rue Morgue.
SPEAKER_02:So he gets his Waiters in that's the Edgar Allan Poe, right? Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:He gets his Oscar win, Best Supporting Actor for All the President's Men.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:He oh, actually, he might also be one where he just, I think three years in a row, he was nominated and won off the first one. He gets all his noms were in the best supporting actor category. He gets another win. So he gets back-to-back wins for all the president's men and Julia. Wow. He also was in the film for which Steam Burgeon won her Oscar. He gets a nomination, so it's the one that he didn't win for Melvin and Howard.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I think the film you're thinking of is Max Dugan Returns.
SPEAKER_02:That's the movie that you think we're gonna.
SPEAKER_01:Am I wrong? Is that even an 80s film? I feel like you've brought that up.
SPEAKER_02:It is, but it's not. Oh, are you thinking? It is an 80s movie, but it's not the one that I was thinking of.
SPEAKER_01:You're thinking something wicked this way comes.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah, I'd like to do that. The film where I was like, no, we're not doing that is Square Dance. I've brought that film off up before. I what is what is that? I do not like it. I I saw it very young, so maybe I would have a different opinion of it, but I don't think so. So it's him.
SPEAKER_02:A 13-year-old girl exchanges a pleasant life in the countryside for a troubled life in the city. That sounds like a bad exchange.
SPEAKER_01:It's the one with Pinot Ryder, right? And uh Rob Low.
SPEAKER_02:Uh I don't know if Rob was in it, but Winona Ryder is, so it's gotta be that one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So Square Dance, right? It's the one. Go find Rob Low in it.
SPEAKER_02:No time, no time.
SPEAKER_01:No, there's time. Now I because if it's the film I'm thinking of. Uh Winona Rider. Yeah. It is the film I'm thinking of.
SPEAKER_02:So just wanted to be sure that this is the movie you hate.
SPEAKER_01:It's I just want to be sure. It's super bizarre. Winona Ryder, like you said, she moves. And the thing that I my takeaway from my memories of this film is that so Roblo plays someone with cognitive challenges. Kind of akin to uh Leonardo DiCaprio in Gilbert Grape. Kind of along those lines.
SPEAKER_02:Was he just like, I literally have No, he was not at all.
SPEAKER_01:But so first of all, there's that going on. I get it that that was very much the norm for that time. I mean, and Gilbert Grape even comes afterwards.
SPEAKER_02:But every time a movie like that comes up, it's impossible for me not think of Tropic Thunder.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Well, the thing that okay, I don't think I'm misremembering this, but there's like weird vibes between Winona Ryder and Roblo, and it was just like really uncomfortable to watch. I don't I don't want to watch that film.
SPEAKER_02:Are you sure?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, because uh you're talking about your brain.
SPEAKER_01:So uh he's in that. So he does another high-profile TV movie, Inherit the Wind. I thought it was funny that he's in Dream a Little Dream with the two quarries. He's also in Philadelphia, he's also in the paper, uh, and that was a Howard film, right? Uh Beloved, and then his final feature credit was the film Magnolia.
SPEAKER_02:The movie that he is in that I will never watch again because I think it gave me and a lot of kids that grew up in the 80s like just nightmares, like PTSD, The Day After, which was that TV movie about like nuclear war in like the nuclear the like the fallout of a nuclear war between the US and and Soviet.
SPEAKER_01:Great.
SPEAKER_02:Soviet Russia.
SPEAKER_01:And I I don't know why I even thought that Howard, since we just covered him, he did not do the paper. I wonder, is there a connection between him and the paper? I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway, I think for the listeners, they should know that we just have like a board, a board, and we're just like connecting like threats to all the different names.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Just because I didn't want to overlook her, I felt like that'd be rude. But his wife in this film, she doesn't have a lot to do. Character named Marilyn Buckman, played by Eileen Ryan. She too has passed, she passed more recently in 2022.
SPEAKER_02:Her whole direction was like, just look as haggard as you possibly can.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, she doesn't she gets barely anything to do in this film. Like it's really that again.
SPEAKER_02:She gets to ask Larry, this isn't another get rich quick scheme, is it?
SPEAKER_01:Just cut down on one fucking kid. If you just got rid of like Susan, sorry, but if you got rid of Susan in that whole storyline, you could have way more to do with the rest of the characters. Or have Frank be a widower.
SPEAKER_02:It's funny that you say that they just needed one fewer kid for this movie to like work a little bit better because that was Jason Robart. That was Frank's whole thing at the end, like I should never had the fourth kid.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. So as far as her work, again, uh same as Robart's, a lot of early TV work. And everything else I have is film. At Close Range, Winter People.
SPEAKER_02:Winter People.
SPEAKER_01:Benny and June, Anywhere But Here. She also was in Magnolia. The Pledge. She also was in I Am Sam.
SPEAKER_02:She was in a lot of people in I Am Sam.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of people in I am Sam. I remember seeing that, and I was one and done with that film, so I don't remember. Uh, she was in the 2006 version of All the King's Men. Her final credit was rules don't apply.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, she was also uh an eight-legged freaks from 2002.
SPEAKER_01:No, I remember seeing that. I didn't put it down. Real quick, before we get to the kids in this film, let's talk about grandma. First of all, okay, so played by Helen Shaw. I just assumed because we had recently done Christmas Vacation and the the matriar, not matriarch, because I don't think she had kids, but the eldest member of that family had this like crazy storied career mostly as Betty Boop. Yeah. And olive oil. So I thought, oh, probably the same for this woman. No. No. She just got like, I mean, at like what the age of like 90 got pulled into movies.
SPEAKER_02:She was great in this. She was great. Yeah. She she nailed exactly what they wanted that character to be.
SPEAKER_01:And I think I don't know. I must have seen this film at some point because I was like, yeah, she looks super familiar to me. And I just thought she looked super familiar because of other things. I was like, there's not that many other things.
SPEAKER_02:We've seen her.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we have seen her.
SPEAKER_02:In Twilight Zone, the movie.
SPEAKER_01:So she had eight total credits. She first of all, Helen Shaw, born in 1897. What now? 1897. Shit. She lived to be a hundred years old. She passed away in 1997.
SPEAKER_02:That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. I think she might have the record for the oldest person we have covered on this podcast.
SPEAKER_02:Do you know how she did it? She avoided microplastics.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because there weren't any.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. So some of her her first credit, like I said, her first credit was in 1980. Yeah. She was already 83 years old. And it was for, I mean, the title is what it is.
SPEAKER_02:It's a rough title.
SPEAKER_01:Rough title, Rape and Marriage, Colonel The Write Out Case. It was a TV movie.
SPEAKER_02:Classic. You know what, everyone, TV movies, that's just how they were.
SPEAKER_01:The what we have seen her in and we have covered.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You want to say it?
SPEAKER_02:Twilight's on the movie in the kick the can.
SPEAKER_01:Which was the Spielberg one.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. Yeah. It's all the kids that get a chance to go back to being kids and the elderly people. All the kids that go back to being kids. That didn't make any sense. Yes. All the old people and the old I think we're getting a little loopy because we've covered so many people. It is. We have not had the ACM in this room. It is sweltering. So yes, all the old people in the old people home turned into kids, and then they had to turn back.
SPEAKER_01:So she's in that. Yes. And then another credit to have for her is just a film called Wicked Stepmother. Okay, let's move on to the kids. And that's all I have, right? Yes. I just have the children left. Okay. Starting with Martha Plumpton. She plays Julie. So Helen Buckman's married name was Lampkin, because that's Julie's last name. Oh wait, did she Yeah, because she doesn't take Todd's name.
SPEAKER_02:Plumpton Lampkin.
SPEAKER_01:So what a career. I I love Martha Plumpton. You really do. I really do. And she's had such a fun career. She's really leaned into TV lately. Uh, but the one time we've covered her, possibly we could cover her again, but I doubt we would do this movie anytime soon. Um we did cover her for the Goonies.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:That was all the way back in season one when we were just babies ourselves.
SPEAKER_02:That may have been the first episode where I figured out how where I tried to figure out a way to record a little bit to intro the episode.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, you might be right.
SPEAKER_02:Might be the first one.
SPEAKER_01:So of course she's in that as Steph. She's amazing. Love that movie. The one I was talking about is Mosquito Coast. But I don't I don't know if we're gonna get that.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, if we're hankering for another Harrison Ford movie.
SPEAKER_01:So I mentioned to you, like, look, I don't want to do too much of a deep dive into people's personal lives, but Mosquito Coast, of course, also stars River Phoenix, Joachim Phoenix's brother, who passed. I believe they started dating off that film. So it's really interesting to me because the connections between these three kid actors that are in this film because she was dating River Phoenix and Kana Reeves starred with River. They I mean, I think they more than one. They were in my own private Idaho.
SPEAKER_02:It's a small world.
SPEAKER_01:They were very good friends, and then obviously Joachim Phoenix's brother, and so they all have this like shared grief, you know, over his loss. So, and I know that when Joaquin Phoenix won the Oscar, I think they cut to Kanner Reeves, who was like clapping and was very happy for him. So, anyway, getting back to Plumpton. So she was in Running on Empty. I shot Andy Warhol. I actually love her and Beautiful Girls. Okay. Another huge ensemble cast. Thank God it's on an 80s movie.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, huge, like on the same level, too, of just name after name after name of like high-profile actors. But she's in that. And what's hilarious about that is that her love interest in Beautiful Girls is Michael Rappaport. And then the next film she's in is I'm not Rappaport.
SPEAKER_02:That guy is literally a psychopath on the traitors.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. He just, I I said when we were talking about he just took up too much air in this in that room with everybody.
SPEAKER_02:Like he, I don't know if he If it was all an act, okay. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:All right. I don't know. I've heard, I mean, you know, I'm sure a lot of people have. He's he's a lot. It was a lot. So she was in Pecker. I also love her and 200 cigarettes.
SPEAKER_02:Good luck finding that movie. Like we we own it. We own it. We own a copy, but like but like unless you want to borrow it from us, good luck.
SPEAKER_01:There should be I've said this, there should be no reason why you can't find any fucking movie you want to find today.
SPEAKER_02:Well, if you can't, if you can't find a way to purchase it or rent it, there are ways.
SPEAKER_01:You could sail the hot seven seas.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, as they say. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So now she pivots.
SPEAKER_02:Pivot.
SPEAKER_01:Pivot and does a ton of TV work. So she's on The Good Wi. I remember I watched the show Raising Hope. The Real O'Neills. I that got canceled really early. I don't remember why. Generation Sprung, a town called Malice, and more recently, a TV show called Task.
SPEAKER_02:One episode of Fringe, which was a really cool X-Files-like kind of show. I might rewatch that show.
SPEAKER_01:She's very busy, I'll to say. Yeah. Very much working. I mean, everybody who I've left are. Thank goodness. Kenna Reeves. So she or she. He plays the boyfriend Todd Higgins, who marries and has a baby with Julie.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, Kenna Reeves, man.
SPEAKER_02:Um, it has We spent how long that tells you a little something about the cast of this movie. We're an hour and 20 minutes in.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And we get to Keanu.
SPEAKER_01:Finally get to Keanu, and this guy's career has just been incredible.
SPEAKER_02:Uh we have talked about him before.
SPEAKER_01:He has one TV series. Yes, we have. But he is he is very solidly known as a movie star. Very solidly known. Yeah. And his early career, so I think he was um he never got even, I think, to the minors, but he did play hockey, so he was in the film Youngblood, because I think he could just skate.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah. So was Rob low in that? Yep. We yeah, I had to yeah. Well one time when I was working for home entertainment stuff, there was like a um like maybe an anniversary release of that. Yeah, and I didn't review a bunch of stuff for that.
SPEAKER_01:Deep cut.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I was reviewing uh director's commentary for like some new version of that release. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. Yeah, I was. I wonder who directed it. Um I don't know if I'm gonna we're we're gonna do this movie anytime soon. It is a downer of a film, River's Edge. Oh yeah. Dangerous liaisons. I mean, it is hilarious to me when he's in period pieces because Whoa. He just yeah. I don't know if he's really a period piece kind of guy, and we'll get to the more famous one in a second. Uh, you know, his huge breakthrough, I would say, is Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. There's been a couple more films off that. On its heels was Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. And then what, like two years ago, they did Bill and Ted Face the Music.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, I think that was the last one that came out. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So he does that. He solidifies himself uh in early 90s as like a full-on star and like kind of action star in point break. Yeah. Does that?
SPEAKER_02:He's had like, it seems like he's had like three or four or more breakout types of you know, everybody's but he's just in a lot of blockbuster type movies.
SPEAKER_01:Everybody fucking bags on him for like his acting abilities. He's a movie star, okay? There's there's kind of a difference there, and I love him as a movie star. I'm not gonna go down the path of like the quality of his acting. He is fun to watch, he's entertaining, he's a performer. Yeah. I like watching him. Uh, as mentioned, he does my own private Idaho. I will always call up Ram Stoker's Dracula, even though officially, as of right now, it's just called Dracula. Bullshit. Bullshit on IMDB. He is hilarious in that film. Terribly miscast. It is. It's but I love him. Fantastic miscasting. It's fine. It's all good. He's actually really good in Much Ado About Nothing. I love that film, and he's a fun villain in that. Of course, everybody knows him from Speed.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:As far as like what else we could do of his.
SPEAKER_02:It was in the uh Matrix prequel Johnny Mnemonic.
SPEAKER_01:I don't even have that one down. He's been in a ton, he's been extremely busy.
SPEAKER_02:Like Johnny Mnemonic, he literally gets like memories plugged into his head.
SPEAKER_01:Crazy. Like, yeah, that is the prequel. Yeah. He does a walk in the clouds, Feeling Minnesota, so a couple like kind of romantic movies. The Devil's Advocate.
SPEAKER_02:He's good in that. Like, I'm a lawyer.
SPEAKER_01:Is that the one? Okay, so you're always like, I don't love that movie. Because I'm always like, you love that movie. And you're like, no, I don't.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I don't. And yes, you do say that and no.
SPEAKER_01:But you do love Constantine. Yes. Okay, that's the one I'm and they're like the same.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_01:Aren't they both about the devil?
SPEAKER_02:The devil's advocate is just like Al Pacino is like the devil working for like a law firm and and like. But Constantine is also about Constantine is about like this uh guy who has like some kind of like power. It's it's like a comic that was turned into a movie.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, what is the one with uh I don't know their his name. There's like the guy what's the one with Rachel Weiss?
SPEAKER_02:That's Constantine.
SPEAKER_01:Yes! That's it's a devil movie!
SPEAKER_02:That's Constantine, yeah. Yes, it's not the devil's advocate, though.
SPEAKER_01:So it's not totally crazy that I'm mixing them up. They're both about the devil.
SPEAKER_02:Fair enough.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. I just needed to hear that because you're making me sound like I'm crazy for mixing them up.
SPEAKER_02:They're very different movies, but they both have the devil.
SPEAKER_01:So they're not that different in movies?
SPEAKER_02:Uh they're still pretty different.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, moving on. So he does uh you mentioned a second ago, he does the entire Matrix franchise. The first one's you know, watch the first one. If you it'd be crazy if you haven't seen the Matrix yet.
SPEAKER_02:The second one, you can get through it. By the time you get to the third one, you're like, what the fuck is happening?
SPEAKER_01:Not every film needs to be a trilogy, is all I'm gonna say.
SPEAKER_02:Even fewer need that fourth movie.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. But he does all of them. The replacements, something's gotta give, Constantine. He reteens with Sandra Bullock for The Lake House. His even bigger franchise, I think, at this point. John Wick.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, big time.
SPEAKER_01:So he does John Wick, chapter two, chapter three.
SPEAKER_02:Love that movie.
SPEAKER_01:You should love that franchise because I'm not fucking watching that franchise. A dog dies.
SPEAKER_02:But this like, what if that that happens, but then you get four movies of him just like wasting people like annihilating people because of it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So chapter three is called it's funny, chapter three is the only one that has like a subtitle, Parabellum, and then chapter four. So he has done TV. I don't know this show. I don't even know if it's an American show. It's called Swedish Dicks, but he's on it. Uh he rete so he's done a couple re-teemings with some of his leading ladies. He, like I mentioned, had reteamed with Sandra Bullock for the Lake House. He also reteams with Lenona Ryder for Destination Wedding, and according to lore, they are married according to religious law, because in Dracula they had a real, I think Greek Orthodox. I I don't think they're officially married because everything that I've heard about the Orthodox Church, of which I have some some familiarity with, is that you have to be Orthodox to be officially married within the Orthodox Church. Yeah. I don't think either of them are.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think so, but I don't I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:But they claim that they were married by like a real priest, so they call each other like hubby and wife, which is kind of cute. He's in Always Be My Maybe. He's actually hilarious in that. He plays himself, a heightened version of himself, and Ballerina, which is a John Wick spin-off.
SPEAKER_02:I didn't realize this, but he does the um there's like an animated lumen administrative building voice in the series Severance. So he's in one episode of Severance to voice that, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So interesting when they do that. Lastly, finally, the 12th person on our list today, Joaquin Phoenix. Crazy that he is the last person that we are bringing up.
SPEAKER_02:That's crazy.
SPEAKER_01:So he's the youngest of the kids as far as um like look, I'm sorry, we're not covering Gil's kids. Um, you mentioned one of them at the top of the episode.
SPEAKER_02:That's why I gave him the credit for the diarrhea song. Because it's like we're not gonna talk about the diarrhea kid anymore.
SPEAKER_01:We're not gonna talk about diarrhea kid, but we are gonna talk about Gary Lampkin. Uh, and as mentioned, so Joaquin earlier in his younger life for a period of time referred to himself as Leaf. So he's credited as Leaf Phoenix. What a career this guy has had. Um, he has had an incredible career. So very much started as a child actor. Uh, besides this film, he does space camp. I am kind of speeding up a little bit to young adulthood. He's really good into Die For. I think that's probably when people started taking him seriously.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:He's in that inventing the Abbots, U-turn. He gets his first Oscar nomination, best supporting. I think he could have gotten lead, honestly, for Gladiator. He's in a ton of that movie, so it's like interesting that it was supporting.
SPEAKER_02:He is, but I guess I could, yeah. It's it's really Crows movie.
SPEAKER_01:It is, it is, but he's he does not hold back on being just a terrible, terrible person in that movie. Fucking suffocates his dad, wants to sleep with his sister, wants to murder his nephew. It's pretty messed up. It's it's like so messed up.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um and he's greating it.
SPEAKER_02:Speaking of messed up movies, I see that you skipped over eight millimeter.
SPEAKER_01:I did. But he's also in quills. That's kind of a messed up movie. Yes. I've watched that. Yeah. And he actually plays the straight guy in that. He is not, he is not uh Jeffrey Rush. Okay. But he He does that. He is phenomenal in signs. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Swing away.
SPEAKER_01:He's so and I was listening, I was listening to a podcast that was talking about that movie. Apparently, he guess who was supposed to play that role? Uh Burt Reynolds. Somebody realistic. I I don't know. Um according to what this podcast said, it was supposed to be Mark Ruffalo.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I could see that.
SPEAKER_01:And then I don't remember he got pulled out or he he pulled out for some reason. And so Phoenix uh took his spot and he's pitch perfect in that film. So he's in that. The village, Hotel Rwanda. He gets his na I I totally misremembered. I thought he won for this, but I should have realized that he didn't win until Joker. He gets his next Oscar nomination for Walk the Line. Yeah. Then he goes into Oh no, he that's a little bit later. He does I'm Still Here. He gets his next Oscar nomination for the Master.
SPEAKER_02:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:He does her. Then he gets into his weird phase where he does You Were Never Really Here, where it's like himself, I think. But okay. Then he finally wins. He gets best actor for Joker. It's a really interesting uh I don't usually say go listen to the acceptance speech.
SPEAKER_02:He is you just find it, find it on YouTube.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you can easily find it. It's clear that like he is not comfortable. Like he is an actor, but he's not necessarily comfortable being in front of a live audience.
SPEAKER_02:He's yeah, on a on a set doing his thing is different than being in front of like a crowd of everyone. Very.
SPEAKER_01:And so you could tell that there's like some social anxiety going on when he's accepting. Um and he but he is passionate about several different causes. So he talks a lot about things that he is passionate about, but then the part that's like heartbreaking is it's very clear that like his brother is just always on his mind. And he brings up, I think, like a part of poetry or something that that um River Phoenix wrote when he was like 17. Because he wasn't even that old when he passed away. He was like what early, very early 20s. Yeah, I think so. So he he like gives that line, and you could tell he's like, I need to walk off the stage right now because he's like so emotional. And it's just it's I I think everybody's kind of wondering if he was gonna bring up his brother, and I think he did it in a very eloquent, meaningful way.
SPEAKER_02:I can't imagine a scenario where him winning wouldn't involve him talking about his brother.
SPEAKER_01:Because the thing is is that like he's had an incredible career and he is legitimately an amazing actor. I think to this day, everybody who has any knowledge of Ruber Phoenix at some point has said what what could have happened with his career if he had lived.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because if you look like we like you said, we've covered Standby Me. If you look at that fucking performance, it's incredible. It's incredible. Yeah. Incredible what that actor did as a child. So yeah. He follows it up with a film that did not fare too well, Joker Falia Doo.
SPEAKER_02:I I can't pronounce it. I haven't seen it, but I've heard that the ending suggests that he was never, in fact, the real Joker.
SPEAKER_01:Oh.
SPEAKER_02:I I'm not yeah, I I can't connect all the dots there.
SPEAKER_01:I I feel like that's gonna be a film. Like, I think it got universally panned, but you know, these things happen in cycles. In ten years, people are gonna say, Oh, it's this like masterpiece that nobody understood.
SPEAKER_02:I'll I'll watch it and I'll be like, I don't really understand why people were as upset as they were.
SPEAKER_01:Like it's a musical, so it's you know Well, they got Lady Gaga.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So as Harley Quinn, right? Yeah. So that'll work.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She actually is very good casting for Harley Quinn. He does um it's what's his name, right? Uh Bo is Afraid. I believe that that is horror. And it's um hereditary guy.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay. Well believe so. Yeah. Thank you for giving me that warning of who it's from.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Uh he does. This was really Scott, right? Napoleon. That was his film.
SPEAKER_02:I think so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then more recently, Eddington.
SPEAKER_02:All right. All right. Join us after this quick break when we get to the rest of the cast.
SPEAKER_01:Film synopsis. Four Buckman siblings.
SPEAKER_03:Some people have kids.
SPEAKER_01:Some people have children. Four Buckman siblings attempt to raise their children, each in their own different style, and deal with the joys and sorrows that the process brings. Sure. Sure.
SPEAKER_02:Works for me.
SPEAKER_01:I don't have anything to say because we've already.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, in many ways, it's like, what if we just took a sitcom and made it into like a two-hour feature film?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's that's what this kind of like felt like.
SPEAKER_01:Because the truth is fine. Is that like, you know, I don't know if any of the arcs are particularly strong. We're just watching a little section of their life.
SPEAKER_02:It's a slice of life movie.
SPEAKER_01:It's a slice of life movie. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's fine. I appreciate that at the time they were willing to make movies like that. Now again, everything gets so segmented into what it can or can't be.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, it's fine. I mean, as far as like watching it again.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I I probably wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again, but not because like I I've seen it a couple times. I remember seeing it in the theater, I think, when it first came out, probably because Steve Martin.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, it's a it's a fun movie. It's like dated in some ways. I think you mentioned it's like one of the whitest movies that we've that we've covered.
SPEAKER_01:Oh god, is it white? Holy shit, white and straight.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Uh that's that's also very 80s.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. That would have been interesting. Let's make Susan gay. Like, let's like, can we just have something that's just not entirely white and straight and pumping out babies?
SPEAKER_02:But that those are the stories that we're getting made into like crap. It's it's the whitest movie, not just because everyone's white, but because it's like everyone's white and financially pretty well off, and they all just have like a bunch of kids, and this is this is their life.
SPEAKER_01:Even Helen as a single mom, like I know, okay, so once upon a time, kids, being a banker actually was like a very highly sought after and respected career where you can do really well. So I'm pretty sure that Helen was a banker, which maybe explains the way why she was able to support two kids totally on her own. Yeah. But like normally, maybe when you think about single mom, you would think of somebody who has more financial struggle struggles. That wasn't her problem at all. They had a really fucking nice house.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no one, no one in this movie really had financial struggles except for that piece of shit, Larry. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So yeah, that also makes it harder when they're all just like And the deal.
SPEAKER_02:I'm so sorry. I forgot to bring up the deal that Jason Robards gives Larry.
SPEAKER_01:A very generous deal. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Here, you're gonna work with me at this store. We'll transition to where you're gonna like take it over when I retire. Yep. We'll just keep paying them. And his his like response was to just like peace out and abandon his kid.
SPEAKER_01:No, he is a piece of shit.
SPEAKER_02:I'm sorry, I just came. I wanted to I wanted to get that last dig in.
SPEAKER_01:I think that would have been actually because like the thing is is that once it gets to that point, nobody's surprised that he's like, I'm gonna peace out.
SPEAKER_02:Like the kid asked the grandpa, like, my dad's not coming back, is he? Nope.
SPEAKER_01:And the thing is, so two things about that. That was pretty cold.
SPEAKER_02:Nope.
SPEAKER_01:Two things about that. One, again, I'm gonna like double down on what I said earlier. If you had shown a scene where his kid loved being with him, yeah, and he actually was really good at being with his kid, that would have made that moment where he's like, I'm gonna piece out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, more heartbreaking. More heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_01:So, first of all, there's that, but then also I don't actually believe that they're never gonna see him again because you know what? He's gonna come back the next time he needs money.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you're probably right. So it's like is the TV show um following the same characters or totally different characters?
SPEAKER_01:That's a really good question.
SPEAKER_02:Does Larry come back in a TV show?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. I don't know about the first uh version of the TV show. I a tiny bit watched the second one. It had um Craig T. Nelson.
SPEAKER_03:Oh.
SPEAKER_01:He was the patriarch. Uh I don't even remember who the kids were. I see one of them in my head, but I can't remember her name. Okay. Um anyway, so I don't know how strictly they followed the characters that were set up in this film. Got it. But okay. Uh call the action. I mean, as far as like, okay, well, sorry, I'm backtracking. I enjoy the film. I don't need to see it again super soon. Yeah. And that's so call the action. I mean, I am curious. First of all, I never saw the first TV show. So I'd like to know what that's about, how closely they stuck to the film. And also, what are your thoughts about even just a film like this getting made? The fact that, like, again, I I think we're in agreement that they would not be making a film like this today, they would immediately say this goes to television.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I just want to know if you can make a balloon animal, uh, reach out to us and just say yes. And if if you can't, if you can't, just respond with no. And we'll we'll compile all those results.
SPEAKER_01:His his churn is um, I don't remember what his cowboy name was, but that was fun. That was, yeah. It's fun. If you want to reach out, we'd love to hear from you. You can do so through Facebook, Instagram, or Blue Sky. It's the same handle at all three. It is at 80smontagepod, and 80s is 80 S. Sneak peek.
SPEAKER_02:What do we got?
SPEAKER_01:Well, first of all, in between this episode and the next episode, we are actually hitting our six-year anniversary. Wow. Fun, huh? Happy anniversary. So this next film, okay, so it's gonna be dropping a few days after Valentine's Day, but I wanted to do something romantic.
SPEAKER_02:Is it Valentine's Day, the horror movie?
SPEAKER_01:No, we already did that. My bloody Valentine's Day. That's right, yeah. We did that one.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So this is like legit, this is like pure romance.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:We haven't done a film like this, I don't know if ever. Pure romance.
SPEAKER_02:Is that the name? No. Oh, okay. Um, I'm trying to.
SPEAKER_01:What's a clue? What's a clue? Uh what I think it's set on like Mackinac Island.
SPEAKER_02:Whoa. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:A hotel.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Picture of an actress.
SPEAKER_02:Picture of an actress at a hotel on Mackinac Island.
SPEAKER_01:Time travel.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my god. If you if you had said like Superman, I would have gotten it. But somewhere in time.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I've never seen it. Yeah, neither have I. It sounds like I've read what it's about. It sounds interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I'm I'm very curious to watch him in a non-Superman role.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It will be, I think, the first time we're covering Christopher. Well, and and every almost everybody involved.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but yeah, somewhere in time. So doing a little bit of romantic fare for Valentine's Day. And in the meantime, just thank you to everyone out there for following along with us. We really appreciate it. We know you have lots of podcast options. So thank you for following along and listening, and we will talk to you again in two weeks' time.