Did You Hear About This? | Retro Pop Culture News & Stories
This humorous pop culture podcast features Bill and Scott, two long-time friends who grew up in the 1980s. They discuss the latest retro show business and pop culture news (with some fun industry stories thrown in for good measure).
Laugh with Bill and Scott as they dissect the guts out of some of our favorite pop culture. If you were a kid in the 80s and 90s, you've found your tribe!
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Did You Hear About This? | Retro Pop Culture News & Stories
The Dumb and Dumber (To) Scandal
In this episode, we talk about an example of Hollywood fraud and how sometimes popular movies are impacted. Following our short story, we have several recent news items. Stay tuned and enjoy today's episode.
"Did You Hear About This?" breaks down unusual pop culture topics and news stories that might be new to you. Enjoy learning useless stuff? You have found your tribe. Parental Guidance suggested ;)
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Hey everybody, welcome to the show, to the show.
Speaker 2:We have a big show for you tonight, so we got some Ed Sullivan impersonations right off the bat huh, right off the bat.
Speaker 1:I've been working on it for a week.
Speaker 2:Bullshit, I'm sorry to hear that. I wanted you to be proud of me. I'm sorry to hear you wasted your time so much yeah, so much waste. I'm not so proud. Oh, you have no idea how much I waste my time and the other rabbit holes you went down this week, though, oh yeah, tubi.
Speaker 1:Tubi is, oh yeah, constant content for people like me and you. Nice, I'm not even gonna go into everything I saw, because I just I spent a couple hours, like I told you before, I watched like 15 minutes or something like yeah, I got the gist of it. All. Right, let's move on to Maniac, cop 2. Next, next, next.
Speaker 2:I got involved in a YouTube showing of Samurai Cop yeah. All right, the best, worst movie ever, isn't that great? We talked about it on the show, right, we did. Yeah, I forgot how fantastically terrible it is.
Speaker 1:My favorite is when you see the samurai cop running around with his long hair and then all of a sudden it looks like he's wearing a woman's wig. He is wearing a woman's wig. He's wearing an actual woman's wig. He had to go back for reshoots. He's like I cut my hair. I thought we were done this dumb movie. They're like, well, let me go get a wig and he'd come back with a woman's wig and they throw it on the long-haired martial artist that he looks like he's. You know, he's got normal long hair, like anybody from the grunge days, and then all of a sudden it's lush and beautiful and perm, not not it's not per.
Speaker 2:It was definitely layered. Layered there's. Yeah, it was just such a cliche of every 80s cop movie ever, but also a kung fu movie ever. It was just so, so fucking bad, but so good at being bad that's the beauty of old, retro shit, man.
Speaker 1:It's like you watch it now with fresh eyes, with adult eyes, and you're kind of like how did I ever fall for this back as a kid? How did this actually seem?
Speaker 2:real. First of all, I gotta say I don't think I was watching this as a kid, because talk about a coxswain Joe, the main character. I feel like he has like the most awkward conversation with every female lead in the movie. Next thing you know, they're in bed together, right? I'm like what the hell is going on here. That was the 80s, I know, man, every gratuitous sex scene you can get.
Speaker 1:Well, we got our usual news stories today and I'm looking at the agenda. We don't have any mailbag. We don't have any fuck up reason. We were perfect last week. Glad to hear that. So that means I can lead us right to our story of the week. Oh, we got a story this week. Lead us right to our story of the week. Oh, we got a story this week. So one of the things that I love about this show and just youtube in general, I mean you go to youtube and you start searching around for anything and you'll find it right. Somebody's made a video on every damn thing out there. The things that I love to research are old hollywood stories, and when I think about Hollywood as a kid, I was just mesmerized by it.
Speaker 2:It was like Oz, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And now I find out it was just a bunch of crooks doing shady business A lot of dirty people doing dirty things. And even the stuff that we love sometimes has these crazy backstories that are now just kind of coming out into the mainstream.
Speaker 2:Are you talking like 1920s Hollywood, like the real golden era of Hollywood? Are you talking more 70s, 80s, more recent 70s?
Speaker 1:80s were. Okay, I was alive. To you know, have it be relatable to me? Okay, you remember a movie called and this might be a little obscure for you Dumb and Dumber.
Speaker 2:I do think I recall having seen that film.
Speaker 1:Yes, you are one pathetic loser. Yeah, yeah, you gotta think real hard, don't you.
Speaker 2:No, I love this movie. I can quote it back and forth everybody loves this movie. However, there was a dumb and dumber too are you talking dumb and dumber too, or dumb and dumberer?
Speaker 1:dumb and Dumber 2 or Dumb and Dumberer.
Speaker 2:Dumb and Dumber T-O. Okay, yeah, this was a bad thing. This was a bad thing. This is one I wish I could forget.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure the people who made it also wish they could forget it, because this thing is marred with controversy and scandal. Oh yeah and you know I love the dirt.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that was so juicy of a making of dumb and dumber too well, this, to me, is a perfect example of some of the bullshit that I hear about when I'm researching. You know, hollywood activities and things like that, sure, all right. So I wrote a little piece. Let me read it to you all right? Dumb and dumber was a huge hit in 1994, but for almost 20 years the franchise only saw a hannah barbara cartoon and a prequel focusing on Harry and Lloyd's high school years. Do you remember?
Speaker 2:those two. See, that's the one I thought we were talking about, the one with the, not Jim Carrey, right? So now we're talking about the one with Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey. The actual sequel that came out years later, 20 years after the fact. Yeah, the true sequel. Oh, years later, 20 years after the fact, yeah, the true sequel. Oh, okay, okay, I thought dumb and dumber 2 to was that prequel bullshit thing. That was dumb and dumber.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, all right, all right, I mixed them up and it was a cartoon show like a saturday cartoon short-lived. Yeah, yeah and uh. The farley brothers made dumb and dumber. Yes, right, what, uh, what do you know the farley brothers for?
Speaker 2:um, something about mary. Yeah, something about mary was a big one um me myself and irene remember that I think they were.
Speaker 1:I love that that was so good what are you looking at, ringworm?
Speaker 2:didn't they also do the um? Meet the parents and meet the falkers?
Speaker 1:I don't know that they did that. Okay, maybe they did. They're known for being kind of dirty, kind of slapstick, yes, and then they cleaned up a little bit towards the end, like now that you see stuff, it's usually not as filthy as something about Mary.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think, looking back at something about Mary, it really isn't ungodly filthy. The hair gel scene was pretty filthy at the time. Yeah, it definitely pushed boundaries back then.
Speaker 1:I suppose Now you see stuff like that on nickel that's what I'm saying like it's very tame compared to that dan snyder would have done stuff like that off camera. So finally, in 2014, right 20 years later, an official sequel pops out dumb and dumberer 2 to not to that, not T-O-O. That's the joke. T-o, dumb and Dumber 2. Right, okay, but nobody seemed to like this movie. It tanked Just like you said it stunk.
Speaker 2:I think I saw it in the theater.
Speaker 1:I think Jen and I went to go see this A lot of the jokes I remember were reused gags from the first movie and you really really had to love the first movie to think the second movie was funny.
Speaker 2:And we both loved the first movie, and this may have been one of the first films where I'm like it's just a complete remake. It's like nothing but fan service. Yeah right.
Speaker 1:So how did this monstrosity happen After production wrapped on the Three Stooges? So that was one of the movies that the Farley brothers made. That was like John.
Speaker 2:Cryer and benicio del toro. No, what are you thinking of? I thought that that was the usual suspects you're thinking? No, I thought that they redid the uh. It was the uh will sasso. Yeah, I thought it was john cryer no, no, no, it's that guy from.
Speaker 1:He's actually got a uh with Jason Bateman right now. What's his name? He was on that. He was just Jack, just Jack. Remember? Just Jack, just Jack. Oh yeah, sean Hayes, sean Hayes, right. And then the third guy. Nobody knew, I don't even know who the third guy is. I saw him on like Silicon Valley, but the third guy played Mo.
Speaker 2:Ah, shit, yeah Moe, ah shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wonder what you're thinking about. I'm gonna look it up. Keep going, just chat. So after production wrapped on the Three Stooges, director Bobby and Peter Farley announced that their next project would be the long-awaited sequel to Dumb and Dumber. Five years prior, jim Carrey had an epiphany. So he's sitting in a hotel room, he's looking at the channels and he goes oh my God, I think I'll watch them. Dumb and dumber, I haven't seen this in forever. And as he's watching, he's like this is hilarious. We got to do another one. So Jim Carrey calls the Farley brothers and he's like you know what? It's time, it's time to do another. And they went all right, I like money.
Speaker 2:Oh, I, I like money. Yeah, I like money, though.
Speaker 1:So committed to making a sequel that lived up to the original. The Farley brothers spent two years developing the script, two years to write the Dumb and Dumber 2. And this is why I don't feel bad for Hollywood writers it takes two years to write something like this. However, when presented to the higher-ups at New Line and Warner Brothers, the script received a lukewarm response. The studios were concerned that the sequel relied too heavily on callbacks just like I said that the original movie and they doubted whether the audiences would still remember dumb and dumber 20 years later. So the farley brothers, refusing to cut nostalgic references out of the movie, found their project stalled. Jim carrey said well, fuck this, he left for a little while. He, I guess we're done, I'm going to move on to some other things. So Warner Brothers, recognizing that there was a stalemate here, just said alright guys, alright Farley, alright brothers that's how they were referred to. I hear Alright brothers Go shop the film around somewhere else. You're welcome to do that.
Speaker 2:Alright, Now the movie.
Speaker 1:The movie production is running around looking for somebody to put this thing out by June 2013,. The Farley brothers excitedly announced that Red Granite Pictures what the hell is that. You haven't heard of.
Speaker 2:Red Granite Pictures I have not.
Speaker 1:I've heard of Bad Robot, red Granite Pictures and Universal had stepped up to finance and distribute the film. While Universal was a well-established studio, red Granite Pictures was a relative newcomer.
Speaker 2:having backed films like Out of the Furnace, you know that one no.
Speaker 1:How about Horns? No, how about the Wolf of Wall Street? Yes, aha, red Granite did that. Yeah, I had no idea. So one hit out of the whole. You know, batch, that I was able to figure out that they made. The studio quickly gained notoriety for its extravagant events orchestrated by a particular executive. Red Granite Pictures had a launch party at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011,. Right, this was a massive, massive venue and people are walking in going what's this new Red Granite Productions? And they're like what the fuck? It's the billion dollar party of the century. Suddenly, they look up and there's Kanye West. They got Kanye West. Jamie Foxx is on stage singing. Right, where did this company get all this money? I'd love to know.
Speaker 2:That's where we're going. Okay, something illegal, I bet.
Speaker 1:Oh for sure. So, with financial backing secured, production on Dumb and Dumber began in September of 2013, and fans eagerly awaited the return of Harry and Lloyd. However, the excitement was tempered by the release of a trailer that failed to capture the comedic essence of the original. I remember that trailer coming out and me going oh, that sucks, uh-oh, oh shit.
Speaker 1:When the movie was finally released, it was met with a flood of negative reviews from audiences criticizing it for being unfunny, uninspired and a disappointing shadow of its predecessor. Yeah, the sequel, set 20 years after the events of the first film, finds Lloyd in a mental institution, only to reveal that his condition was a prank on Harry Lloyd was all Howard Hughes there in the retirement home.
Speaker 2:He had his long-ass fingernails, a long beard. He was a germaphobe and completely catatonic. Here comes Harry.
Speaker 1:He's like got ya. I remember thinking it was so weird because when the Dumb and Dumber ended and he lost the girl at the end, he went okay, right, that was the gag at the end. And then all of a sudden, the next movie he's.
Speaker 2:He's just completely torn up over losing the girl yeah, no, he, I don't think it was that girl he was torn up over, wasn't he turned up over? Uh, frida felcher. And frida felcher was the one that harry stole away from him in high school. Oh yeah, there was something. It wasn't about losing mary swanson because she was married, and then, like the oh well thing at the end of dumb and dumber was just like, oh, we could have gone on tour with the fucking hawaiian tropic bikini team, right? Oh well, something else will come up, just keep our eyes open. But now I think, the beginning of of this part two, he was torn up about this frida felcher. That was like his girlfriend back in high school that cheated on him with Harry.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was a terrible mistake, sir. Please, oh, believe me, I would never do anything to offend a man of your size. Yeah, I got here. The plot revolves around Harry's need for a kidney and the discovery that he may have fathered a daughter with a character named Frida Felcher. Love it. Lloyd's motivations are less noble driven Cain's motivations are less noble driven by his infatuation with Harry's supposed daughter. The film rehashes jokes from the original.
Speaker 1:as I stated earlier, kick his ass, sea bass Kick his ass sea bass but with less charm and more crassness, leaving audiences feeling disconnected from the once beloved characters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the funny thing about part one is like the jokes weren't any dirtier, but the characters seemed more wholesome. The jokes felt like they were coming out of a more innocent, goofy, dumb, just completely incoherent place, like it wasn't like a crass joke for the sake of being crass. These guys were just fucking buffoons. It was so well written and dumb and dumber was the perfect name. And then, pulling a 30-year prank on for a 20-year prank on, it seemed like it was really coming from a mean place. So like I don't think the jokes were any crasser, it just seemed they were more mean spirited.
Speaker 1:Hmm, yeah, I mean, this is making my brain hurt remembering both of these movies, so I'll tell you a word for it. Okay, I just remember going. All right, we're just dirty for the sake of being dirty. Oh oh, that pisses me off. That pisses me off, not that the first one wasn't, but yeah, there was something to the first one that made people like it. There was something missing on the second one that made people hate it. Yeah, all right. So back to the drama. So, less than a year after the film was released, the Wall Street Journal published an article exposing a money laundering scandal involving Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. The Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Speaker 2:How about it? Didn't they try to kill him in Zoolander?
Speaker 1:Derek Zoolander just tried to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Is that who they tried? Maybe it was based on this? So you're telling me there's a chance? So Najib Razak, who allegedly funneled approximately 700 million of stolen funds into his personal account right, this is the guy we're talking about. In Malaysia, the money was diverted then from a sovereign wealth fund called One Malaysia Development Bernard. It's 1MDB is the nickname of the company which was established to promote economic development in Malaysia. So this money is being laundered from what's supposed to be a really good thing helping Malaysia. This money is being laundered from what's supposed to be a really good thing helping Malaysia. The scandal implicated Razak's stepson, reza Aziz, co-founder of Red Granite Pictures, which financed Dumb and Dumber 2. We know where the money came from, but it keeps going. However, the mastermind behind the scandal wasn't Reza. It was this guy, joe Lowe, j-h-o Lowe, joe Lowe, he was a friend of Aziz's from their university days.
Speaker 2:I hear he's getting divorced from.
Speaker 1:Ben Affleck, joe, again, again. So Lowe was accused of diverting over 4.5 billion from 1MDB into shell companies and offshore accounts, using the stolen fund to finance a lavish lifestyle that included luxury real estate, yachts and hobnobbing with hollywood celebrities. Now we understand how this giant party happened, wow and here comes kanye like this guy evidently is on record loving paris hilton.
Speaker 1:This is in the days when paris hilton was a big deal, like just I love paris hilton. I love paris hilton so like he just blew tons of money to have Paris Hilton hang out at one of his parties and there's videos on YouTube of him just standing next to Paris Hilton.
Speaker 2:He basically bought her to hang out all day. This sounds like what happened if Borat had money and wanted to get Pamela Anderson Right. Yolves just want to have fun.
Speaker 1:They say he had a birthday bash, at one point featuring performances by Ludacris Busta Rhymes, and he paid $100,000 to have Britney Spears jump out of a cake. Holy shit, yeah, I mean, this guy just had stolen money to burn, wow, and he was just fearless. These guys are amazing to me. They're just fearless. They think they'll never get caught.
Speaker 2:It like the guy oh, I'm blanking on his name, the guy. There's a documentary on netflix about him. He's the dude who came up with n-sync and backstreet boys. Oh, like the creator of all the boy bands, like the architect of all that shit. Yeah, I don't, he was the same as this guy.
Speaker 1:He was pulling money out of nowhere, forging fake documents, making it look like he had cash, getting other people to go hey, you got cash, I'll invest with you but then only taking that cash to have a lavish lifestyle. And it caught up to him and he had to leave.
Speaker 2:And you know he ran out of the country. I was gonna say with those two bands, wouldn't it be possible that he actually was able to keep the fucking charade going?
Speaker 1:somehow. No, it's a fantastic documentary and I'm forgetting the name, but look it up, it's actually relatively does that say charade? I meant charade I would have fixed that in post, I wouldn't let it ride.
Speaker 1:Eventually, red granite pictures, which appeared to rise rapidly in hollywood, was revealed to have been bankrolled by low stolen money. Over 50 million of these illicit funds were linked directly to the production of dumb and dumber 2. The company's co-founder, reza aziz, and joey mcfarland who's that guy faced legal repercussions, including asset forfeiture and fines. However, j-ho it's fun to say J-Ho Lowe, the central figure in the scandal, has been on the run since 2016 and remains at large. Well, fuck.
Speaker 2:yeah, he got money, he can go anywhere he wants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I wrote. Here am I saying Dumb, and Dumber 2 was made with stolen, laundered money from Malaysia.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:The end. That's the end of the story. That's it. Check please. But that's the kind of thing Like. That is exactly the kind of nonsense I read about all the time with these productions that we just thought were on the up and up. We thought it was brilliant people with lots of money making brilliant art. And it's not. It's nonsense like this behind the scenes a lot of times and rarely is it ever on a movie that big. Usually it's kind of the crap that we see on Tubi.
Speaker 2:You know, I was just going to bring it full circle and say the difference between, like we say, dumb and Dumber 2 was a bad movie, but it wasn't a bad movie. When you compare it to Sam cop like I talked with the top of the show here like that was a bad movie. That was a guy that didn't have 700 million dollars worth of stolen money in a bank account. You know, like that was a guy that probably had eight thousand dollars to make a full movie. So this is what you can do for a bad movie when you have actual good funding, like the Room and fucking Wiseau, right.
Speaker 1:Have you ever actually watched the Room I have? Yes, it's hard, it's hard to get through.
Speaker 2:It's hard and I only watched it after I watched the documentary movie. I guess it was like a documentary like the one with yeah, you're talking about franco. Uh, frank, franco no, I'm talking about what's that guy's first name, james?
Speaker 2:frank james franco yeah, he was in that movie. Was it called the room? It's called the disaster artist, the disaster artist. I saw that first, okay, and I was like they're clearly making fun of this guy. And then I actually saw the room and I was like they're not making fun of him. This is a fucking shot for shot remake.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, nobody knows where that guy, whoever is, wiseau, wiseau. Nobody knows where he got his money. I know To this day we still don't know where he got all that money to make the movie. J-ho, it could have been. Let's put it out there.
Speaker 2:Well, now that we know the way Hollywood can work, the possibilities of where that money came from are literally endless.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think about the stories in Hollywood. When I hear stories like Scarlett Johansson's dispute with Disney over Black Widow, it's like there's only so much money to go around and everybody's holding so tightly to it. But now I kind of get like if you're yelling at Disney, hey, you're kind of screwing me over. It's probably because in the history of Hollywood everybody gets screwed over all the time. So part of what you got to do to survive in Hollywood is make sure you're paid right, because you can't trust any of these businesses that you're working for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm starting to think that maybe the studios aren't the ones that actually hold all the money. It's really these producers that the studios attract. The producers are the ones that are throwing money around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they just invest. They throw money into Men in Black 3 just like they were investing in a stock.
Speaker 2:Yeah, craziness, I don't know A life I don't know, yeah well, hopefully you like that short little story. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make the movie any better, not at all.
Speaker 1:Well, pardon, me, Mr Perfect.
Speaker 2:And for the amount of money they had to play with it. It really doesn't explain why the movie was as bad as what it was. It was just probably a Heart wasn't truly in it, cash grab that the script wasn't great. The acting wasn't great. The acting wasn't terrible. The acting was probably one of the least parts about it was just a disjointed story. Always comes back to the story, like I tell you every week.
Speaker 2:Always comes back to the story well, the real takeaway here is don't go see dumb and dumber 2, go see the three stooges uh, I don't know what the fuck I was talking about, but I can tell you there was a movie that came out in the year 2000, in the year 2000.
Speaker 1:I tried to do the harmony there. I did the low part.
Speaker 2:Michael Chiklis as Curly Howard what's that? I don't know the three stooges, probably a TV movie.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I want to see the guy from the Shield play Curly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck. The only thing I can think of I was thinking is like, did I think John Cryer? Because it was Sean Hayes, just John, and there was like two sitcom guys, I don't know. Benicio Del Toro did nothing on his IMDb, that would have been the Three Stooges.
Speaker 1:Are you saying all white guys look alike? That's exactly what I'm saying. My wife does it all the time with Nick Nolte and Gary Busey. She can't tell the difference between those two guys.
Speaker 2:That's not a difference between two white guys. That's a difference between two fucking nutjobs with great mugshots.
Speaker 1:Yeah they do. That's probably why she can't tell it's the mug shots. It's that Kazam issue with.
Speaker 2:Sinbad and Shaquille O'Neal.
Speaker 1:Right, right. Oh, that's funny. You want to do some news? Yeah, what do we got? Well, this first story from MovieWeb is probably the most exciting, the most anticipated movie franchise to ever return. I'm talking about anaconda I do like anaconda.
Speaker 2:I saw the first anaconda in the movie theater and I was like, oh shit, ice cube connect. Yeah, was that his first movie. I don't know. He did get real big after that he did. I don't know if that's where it all went down, though J-Lo was in it.
Speaker 1:J-Lo was in there Before she did the scandal with Dumb and Dumber 2.
Speaker 2:There was this period, right around the time Anaconda came out, where it was like Anaconda and Lake Placid and it was like big reptiles eating people. Right, it was like a Jaws revival, but they were like, ah, we've seen all the sharks, let's get something else. Let's get a snake, let's get an alligator, let's get a crocodile.
Speaker 1:That's true, that did sort of happen. Yeah, was that inspired by Jurassic Park, you think?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. It was around the same time. Right, it was.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure I remember lake placid because I was a real big fan of, uh, bridget fonda.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was in it the greatest thing about lake placid was betty white. I don't remember her in it the whole alligator was her pet, like she was feeding it. She fed her husband to it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good, it was so good well, cult, classic 90s horror movie set for Jack Black and Paul Rudd. Reimagining Jack Black and Paul Rudd starring in the remake of Anaconda. Yep, that seems to be what's happening. The cheesy, cult classic horror movie Anaconda is getting a new, very different installment courtesy of Columbia Pictures. A new outing in the beloved is it really beloved? Creature feature franchise is now in the works. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, Black and Rudd are reportedly in early talks to lead the project, which is described as a reimagining of the original 1997 adventure horror flick starring J-Lo Ice Cube. John Voight, Remember him? Oh yeah, John Voight. That follows a documentary film crew who heads off into the Amazon rainforest and quickly finds themselves being hunted by a giant anaconda.
Speaker 2:And you know what this recap of the storyline reminds me of. Congo also came out. Congo was written by Michael Crichton, who got famous because of Jurassic Park that came out in 94. So in a roundabout way, yes, all this was because of michael crichton's fame with jurassic park, congo, and there were shark movies. Fucking, samuel jackson got eaten by a shark in deep blue sea. They ate me. A fucking shark ate me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hate when hollywood does that. It's like they get their eye on something and every studio makes a copy of it. Yeah, like there was a volcano movie and then there was dante's peak. Right there's armageddon and deep impact.
Speaker 2:It's like they all rip each other off yeah, and I guess it's been going on for years and years.
Speaker 1:I wonder if studios go yo, I just heard columbia's making this. We should come out with our own version. I mean because it looks like that's what they're doing.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this Anaconda and the franchise aside, I'm kind of interested in seeing Paul Rudd and Jack Black do something together.
Speaker 1:I just watched Ghostbusters. Frozen Empire just hit Netflix.
Speaker 2:No, I don't want that, paul Rudd.
Speaker 1:I know. But I love Paul Rudd and he was great in that movie. But it's just like even Paul Rudd can't make a bad movie look good and a bad movie will sometimes make Paul Rudd look bad, even though he's good. Yeah, I agree. So I don't know this, doesn't it seems a little bit like? Really, is this kind? Of what you want to do.
Speaker 2:Paul, is there anything in that story about Kyle Gass coming and being a part of it? I hear it's just he's getting back together. He plays the anaconda. I'm a snake, I'm a slippery snake man.
Speaker 1:that's like one of the first internet memes.
Speaker 2:I'm so slithery and sneaky because I'm a snake, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I always make fun of writers in Hollywood. They want more money. They go on strike, but this is the best they come up with. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm going to be watching the jack black character from jumanji running through the jungle away from a snake I'm over jack black.
Speaker 1:He's the same at everything he was good in high fidelity.
Speaker 2:That was like a hundred years ago I know, but he was good in it. You can't take that away. He was good in School of Rock. He was great in Saving Silberman, he was.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God, you remember it.
Speaker 2:He was really good in Gulliver's Travels too. It wasn't a great movie, but it was funny.
Speaker 1:I remember that. I don't know. I like him. I love Tenacious D, I love School of Rock, fantastic movie, but I think I've worn out on my appreciation for Jack Black.
Speaker 2:I was going to say, wait, there's something else that's coming out too, but you're the Segway master, so you do it. What was it? Say it, speaking of franchises, that the world can't get enough of? Anaconda's? Got to share that spotlight With my Anaconda? Don't want none, unless you got Jurassic Park on. Oh, you want to go to that story. Hold on.
Speaker 1:That wasn't where I was going, but yeah. So an announcement of an official teaser of Jurassic World Reborn.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is in my stories here, but we talked about it before we did, I don't think we had this official name name and we sure as hell didn't have photographic trailer evidence. Brother dan sent this over to us and I was like, yeah, I bet you the dinosaurs get loose.
Speaker 1:yeah, I saw you right back I mean, what the hell could the story be about now?
Speaker 2:I don't know the hubris of these companies. Think of it. Oh, you know what? I'm gonna build a park and I'm gonna put dinosaurs in it. But this how, this time they're somehow not gonna get free. Well, fuck you, buddy, they're gonna. Yeah, because if there's not, there's no movie, right?
Speaker 1:right, it's a whole fucking premise gonna take two years to write this thing. What I didn't remember until I saw the little teaser with scarlett johansson's in it, and to me that's fascinating. She's really interesting to me. She started out as an indie darling right. She was in all sorts of amazing things and then suddenly she did iron man 2 and everyone was like what is she doing?
Speaker 2:there. That was her first appearance as black widow. She like pretending to be.
Speaker 1:I guess she did work as a secretary, but just to get close to iron man and t Stark for the SHIELD initiative, right, yep, but it was weird seeing her in it, because you're so used to seeing her in these indie productions and now she's in a blockbuster. Now she can't stop doing the blockbusters.
Speaker 2:You know what happens. Fucking AI gets your voice and you just kind of go off the rails. You don't much care. Your husband buys a fucking $2 million Staten Island ferry with fucking, uh, pete davidson. You gotta pay the bills.
Speaker 1:Man, that does make me happy that she's with uh jost, colin jost.
Speaker 2:She's not with the rocker vin diesel, or she what she used to be married to ryan reynolds?
Speaker 1:I'll see I hate that. I want a nerd like us to get her. I just can't get excited about any more jur Park.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a hard time getting into this last one with the girl who I'm going to say the wrong one, like it's probably Bryce Dallas Howard, but it was probably Jessica Chastain.
Speaker 1:No, it was the other way around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really couldn't get into that one, me neither. Chris Pratt didn't make me care.
Speaker 1:I don't like him in anything but Star-Lord, and even Star-Lord doesn't have a whole lot of personality. He just has some funny quips here and there.
Speaker 2:Best thing he ever did for me, emmett from the Lego movie Everything is awesome, because I didn't have to see his face.
Speaker 1:I liked him in Parks and Rec, but I don't know, he's just not a great actor. He doesn't do anything special.
Speaker 2:True confession I never watched Parks and Rec special. True confession I never watched parks and rec pretty good show. I hear that I have a lot of tv to watch before I get to parks and rec. Bump it ahead, ahead of breaking bad because I never watched that either. Push it down.
Speaker 1:Okay, breaking bad is extraordinary. Well, you took us to jurassic park, but I was going to talk about the other amazing 90s franchise. It's not even a franchise because they only made one movie. As a franchise, it's a bunch of movies, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a weird thing, I guess. If there's only one movie, is it just a brand? Yeah, I don't know. Or were there other multimedia things aside from movies like toy lines, cartoons, comic books. That would make it a franchise.
Speaker 1:Well, in this case, the movie I'm talking about was just a summer hit. I'm talking about Cliffhanger. Are you excited to see the return?
Speaker 2:of Cliffhanger. Do we get John Lithgow as the bad guy?
Speaker 1:I know we get a really old Sylvester Stallone. That's not going to get me into the theater. I know we get a really old Sylvester Stallone. That's not going to get me into the theater. Sylvester Stallone, 78, is set to return for a sequel to his 1993 action thriller Cliffhanger. It's reported that Cliffhanger 2 has received a major fund from the Austrian Film Commission and will be starting production in September October.
Speaker 2:That money was intended for low-income people in Malaysia.
Speaker 1:That's right, this is going to be a future story on the show about a scandal. Wow, who wants to see this? Not I. The original's Rennie Harlan has been replaced by Jean-Francois Richette from Meserine you know that movie right? Oh yeah, my favorite, meserine Never heard of it. And a script by Marc Bianculli. I, ezrin, never heard of it and a script by Mark Bianculli I suck at names From a movie or show called Hunters. I don't know any of this. Stallone will reprise his role as Ranger Gabriel Gabe Walker. Are they named him Gabe? I don't remember his name being Gabe. I don't either. The original was pure escapism fare, nothing more and nothing less. John Lithgow stole the show as the villainous Eric Quallin. You said Voight, did you mean Lithgow?
Speaker 2:I said Lithgow. I said do we get John Lithgow as the return?
Speaker 1:I just did a Nick Nolte yeah.
Speaker 2:You talk about John Voight earlier in the show. We're talking about Anaconda. But I said, do we get a John Lithgow? Well, in my head they're the same person. No way, he's no way.
Speaker 1:he's harry, oh, from harry and the henderson's with gal. Yeah, okay, third rock from the sun. Yeah, we also have plot details coming in for cliffhanger 2. Gabe is now living in the dolomites dolomites where he runs an exclusive mountain lodge. When he and a high-profile client are taken hostage during an adventurous weekend trip, his daughter has to use all of her climbing skills to outwit the kidnappers, triggering a battle of life and death. So that's how this is gonna play out. He ain't gonna be climbing shit. He's too fucking old. He can barely walk. I don't know if you've seen him lately, but he's gonna have a daughter do it all.
Speaker 2:So this is a combination of cliffhanger meets million dollar baby meets karate kid karate kid three or the one, the one with the girl swank hillary swank. Yeah, was that four yeah, it was four.
Speaker 1:That was four, I guess. But like, come on hollywood, nobody wants to see cliffhanger, nobody cares. Oh my god, who the hell?
Speaker 2:cares and when people don't care about movies, bill, and I know because not too long ago, I think, if you go back to our show one week ago, we were talking about another fantastic returning franchise from 94 coming to movie theaters and we said who the fuck wants to see this? And the answer was nobody. Nobody. And the box office backed us up. That's right.
Speaker 1:We're talking about the crow the crow, the crow bombed.
Speaker 2:Worse than borderlands which was predicted to be the biggest bomb of the year. Yeah, yeah, unbelievable. It took them $60 million to make the Crow and it got back 4.6.
Speaker 1:How long does it take? For? I mean, obviously this is based on every studio's you know actual earnings for all the things that they do, but at some point every studio is going to run out of funds if they keep having bombs.
Speaker 2:Can you write it off as a loss? I guess there's got to be some kind of tax loophole or something that gets money back in their pocket.
Speaker 1:Sure, you can get, you know, tax credits, but you still lose money at the end of the day. It's like there's a great Seinfeld bit where they're all like I'll just write it off. I'll just write it off, and then finally what? Does that mean?
Speaker 2:I don't know. Writing something off still means you lost cash, it's true, it's true. But think back to the classic Broadway show the Producers. I never saw that. It's a fantastic show and also a fantastic movie, starring Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane and Will Ferrell, who really stole the show as the Nazi. Really it's a great movie. Talks about guys that put on a Broadway show with the full intent to bomb so they can write it off.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's like the Fantastic Four movie from the early 80s.
Speaker 2:It is exactly like the Fantastic Four movie done by Richard Belzer Carnes. What the fuck was his name, the guy that just died?
Speaker 1:Richard Carnes? Wasn't that the guy from Tool Time? I don't think so, Tim. Oh, what's his name? Who made that? Yeah, Roger Corbin, Roger Corbin not Richard.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, roger, so funny, not Richard Karnes, different flannel, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, here's a story. Did you know that Deadpool made his MCU debut before Deadpool and Wolverine and we all missed it? Where do you think this happened?
Speaker 2:I'd almost have to guess it was when one of these giant mega battles where they bring in every character ever, and he was just in the background.
Speaker 1:Not really. No, Actually not at all. Oh, that would have been my guess. Have you ever used the Apple Vision Pro? Do you know what that is?
Speaker 2:Is that like an eye goggle thing?
Speaker 1:like the meta. Yep, it's a VR thing that Apple put out, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I've seen people using this on trains and airplanes and shit. Well, this one was super expensive and nobody bought it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it trains and airplanes and shit. Well, this one was super expensive and nobody bought it. Yeah, it was like a couple thousand dollars. There's a game called what if and you I watched somebody put it online. I literally watched the entire game being played by some kid waving his hands, and you know, I watched the youtube version of it, so you just see a hand stick in, but you can watch the entire game and it's a what if? Episode and you kind of battle through these different multiverses and all of a sudden at the end of it, a multiverse scene shows through one of those sling ring circles. I think, uh, that you see, uh, dr, strange use, and it's footage from deadpool, it's just footage from deadpool. And then he kind of goes oops, I wasn't supposed to show you that or something like that.
Speaker 2:So so it was like a leak, but I can't consider this. What if Apple game to be canon? Is that part of the MCU? Technically, I think so. That seems like a horseshit way to look at it.
Speaker 1:And it was only clips from the Sony movie. It wasn't from the new movie, because that hadn't been filmed yet.
Speaker 2:You know what? I saw the headline for this article and I thought, oh, they're probably talking about the weapon x wolverine, not even thinking that that was fucking fox and not mcu. So I didn't even click on. I was like, well, yeah, no shit, if I would have clicked on it and read this, I'd have been very angry.
Speaker 1:Well, I like what if? So I was like oh, there's like a what if? Episode that I've never seen. It's in a game, but I'll give it a watch. It was terrible, just awful.
Speaker 2:I just don't like considering that to be. That's like considering like we were talking about doomcock last week, let's say, talking about fucking lego star wars being canon of star wars, like no it's not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but these days the games really are canon. I mean that new? Oh, I can't. I want to play that star wars game that outlaws. Yeah, I hear great things me too, and I think's canon. I think everything they've put out is canon within the last 10, 15 years. I like that I like that video games can add to the canon.
Speaker 2:I do know that, the one with Cal Kestis, the Jedi games. He had two of them out Survivor or something. I forget. I played both of them. They were good. Yeah, I guess he is a canon character well, this outlaws is a open map game.
Speaker 1:It's like a grand theft auto type game. You can do anything you want, wherever you want to do it yeah, that's pretty neat a lot of bounty hunting and stuff like that how the fuck did we get here talking about the uh?
Speaker 2:apple vision pro oh yes, the apple vision pro. Wow, what a leap and a bound. Um, yeah, I just don't. I get if they call that canon. Okay, cool, but it wasn't like a a different appearance, it was a sneak peek, if anything well, it was mostly a clickbait article and I fell for and you fell for it okay now I'm making y'all now you will suffer you.
Speaker 1:I wasted time watching all this and reading that article. Gonna make y'all pay for it now I waste your time, your time so, since we're talking about video game consoles because in a way that is a console, right, it's a you put this console on your head. You don't put an xbox on your head, you put this on your head.
Speaker 2:This is like the uh nintendo vr boy, virtual boy.
Speaker 1:Yeah so did you know that there's a new console coming out from a little-known company called Atari? What yeah, I went down this rabbit hole. I didn't even know. Atari revealed a new console, the 7800+. This is a new version of the 1987 console that got stuffed out by Nintendo, right? So if you remember the history of Atari, you had the 2600. Everybody loved it, everybody adored it, and then they said, hey, let's boost this thing into a 7800. But at the same time, nintendo launched their system.
Speaker 2:Yes, and Atari died. Atari also had some hardware issues that didn't help it along, but it couldn't compete with Nintendo.
Speaker 1:So you can literally go to Amazon. You can buy this console for like $120. I went and looked. They have a 2600 Plus too. You can go buy that console now. It's reissued.
Speaker 2:Is this kind of like how Nintendo relaunched the Nintendo Mini and it came preloaded with like 30 games?
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know if this is preloaded. Maybe I doubt you're getting cartridges for it. Yeah, now that you say that I don't know if this is preloaded, maybe I doubt you're getting cartridges for it. Yeah, now that you say that I hadn't thought of that, I don't remember seeing that in the article. Okay, but this is like a retro gaming thing. That is evidently a popular little group of people out there that love retro gaming enough so that Atari thought they could make some money selling this hardware. Oh, I can't wait to play Haunted House, I know, would you ever go back to it?
Speaker 2:For a day maybe, but I'm not spending a lot of time playing retro games. Combat.
Speaker 1:Jungle Hunt. You mean Pitfall.
Speaker 2:Was Jungle Hunt on the Atari Jungle Hunt was on the Atari as well.
Speaker 1:Jungle Hunt Congo Bongo Dragster Adventure Congo Bongo Dragster.
Speaker 2:Adventure Pac-Man.
Speaker 1:That Pac-Man on the Atari was great. I played a lot of that. It wasn't a good port, but it was still a great game.
Speaker 2:I like how they couldn't make him a circle, so he was like two pyramids on top of each other.
Speaker 1:Pretty much. I remember the sound effects of that game as well as I remember the sound effects of the arcade. Oh it was. It was torture to the ears. It wasn't like the arcade version, which was much more attractive the best one, though missile command.
Speaker 2:Missile command yeah yeah, yeah, didn't that have a special controller, or was that?
Speaker 1:just the arcade version breakout had Missile Command. Yeah, that's good. Boo yeah, boo yeah. Didn't that have a special controller?
Speaker 2:No, or was that just the arcade version Breakout had the special controller.
Speaker 1:Breakout, goddamn Cops and Robbers.
Speaker 2:Bomber, bomber man, or was one where the Mad Bomber? I didn't have that one, I don't know. Yeah, that was. I didn't have that one, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a paddle game. I know there was a racing game I used to play a lot. It was terrible but it had the paddle, yeah. And there were a bunch of sports games. Oh, there was ET Bowling, raiders of the Lost Ark, I used to play that. Yeah, I think we named them all.
Speaker 2:No, there was so many. We used to feed dog, chuckwagon dog food and I actually got a chuckwagon themed atari video game when I was a kid and you had to like race the chuckwagon around and feed dogs. I had another one from kool-aid. You were a kool-aid man. You had to like fly to the top of straws and suck up the kool-aid wow, I didn't know about any of these.
Speaker 2:I guess it was just just so cheap to make Atari video games that companies would just use it as straight-up publicity, and you've got to figure. The only other time we saw that was when CD-ROMs came out, and you can get a CD-ROM in a box of cereal and you can get an AOL internet membership for free for 10 hours every day for your entire teen years.
Speaker 1:Yes, Did you do that too? You go to the supermarket line and you see a million of them there and they're like take one, it's free. I'll take a lot and I'll have about 100 different usernames because I have to make all new AOL accounts every time. Well, I don't know. I don't see myself buying any of these old ataris, but if you're a retro gamer you're in luck. Yeah, you're about all the drama with the megalopolis trailer coming out?
Speaker 2:no, I mean, how much money is francis ford coppola stated to lose? Is this, like kevin costner, money here, or what? This is a totally different story.
Speaker 1:So this is. They put out the trailer and it had reviews like best movie. I've ever seen all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:It was all fake reviews yeah, it's not new, though, that people have done that before and got caught but did you read the reviews?
Speaker 1:no, people think they came from ai. All right, let me read this to you. The spot included a quote from critic paul Kael, as writing the Godfather was diminished by its artsiness when her actual review was decidedly positive. So what am I talking about here? They basically whoever came up with these quotes for this ad went back and said let me make some fake quotes, just as placeholders. So I guess AI helped them create these mock placeholders. Okay, so they're terrible things about his old movies. Ai helped them create these mock placeholders. Okay, so they're terrible things about his old movies, and they never took them out. Here's one. It's from Rex Reed. It says an epic piece of trash just right there in the trailer. Here's one from Roger Ebert Dug him up. I guess they believe that this one was actually written to insult uh dracula, remember they did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah a triumph of style over substance, so all of it was like trashing the.
Speaker 2:You know this director and that's what they used to promote this new movie.
Speaker 1:They took it down right away, as soon as it went up the studio pulled it down and said whoa, who approved that? We didn't get the right quotes in. You put the dummy quotes in and not only were they like not good quotes, they were damaging quotes. They were saying this thing is a piece of shit you know it's so funny.
Speaker 2:This is the exact opposite of what canon films did. Canon films had fantastic quotes from movies that didn't exist. This is francis ford coppola having a movie that exists, with no quotes except for these made up ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's funny yeah, there's actually a third story going around. We talked about it um, before on the show we did a new story where he was in trouble for just running around kissing women, right? So then, remember, he was like I didn't do that, I didn't do that. Well, now he's like oh yeah, I did that, but they were all women I knew and they liked it, but I liked it, he liked it, but he's like I didn't do it, I didn't do it. Now he's like all right, I did it. Like, dude, you're caught with your pants down like everything is going wrong with this guy. Good lord, this movie's gonna. I've seen the trailer. I still don't know what the fuck it's about I'm fascinated by it.
Speaker 2:I want to see what it. That's why it reminded me of the canon films preview, like we were showing on that one, where you, you were giving me movies, movie trailers, and I was supposed to guess, was this a real canon movie or not? And it was impossible to tell, and I couldn't tell you what any of those movies were about either. Think this is going to be his last movie.
Speaker 1:It's got to be. He's up there in age.
Speaker 2:I think his last movie should have been his last movie.
Speaker 1:What was his?
Speaker 2:last movie, bram Stoker. He had to do something, since Bram Stoker right.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I've never been a fan. I've got to admit I'm one of the few off. I've never seen apocalypse.
Speaker 2:Now really, I don't like war stuff. That's true. You did say that before. Well, let's see. He is known. I'll read off some of his movies.
Speaker 1:You tell me if you saw him or not I hope there's movies in there like big top peewee, like total wacky shit that you'd never think he would make it. It's all going to be serious shit.
Speaker 2:There's some weird shit in here, so let's just start with the Godfather trilogy. You've seen Godfather 1. No, no, that's what I haven't seen. I've seen 2. You saw 2. Yeah, have you seen 3? No, you should watch Part 1. Yeah, everyone says that you should. We'll start with Bram Stoker's Dracula, since you brought that up, that was 92. Right, have you seen it? I have seen that. Okay, how about Jack in 1996 starring Robin Williams? That was him. He directed that.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering if that's his only comedy. I'm wondering if Jack was even funny.
Speaker 2:It was not. No. How about the Rainmaker? It was a courtroom movie, lawyers.
Speaker 1:Oh, I kind of remember that. No, I didn't see that. Wasn't Matt Damon in that?
Speaker 2:This was Matt Damon and Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito, he was in there. He was one of the lawyers. The last thing he did before Megalopolis was a thing called Distant Vision in 2015. It is pulling down 5.3 out of 10 stars on IMDb and it starred no one you ever heard of.
Speaker 1:Well, he's like I can't go out with this thing. Distant vision I better make Megalopolis and throw all my money away.
Speaker 2:The city of New Rome is the main conflict between Caesar Catalina, a brilliant artist in favor of a utopian future, and the greedy mayor, Franklin Cicero. Between them is Julia Cicero, her loyalty divided between her father and her beloved. Starring Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Natalie Emanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf and Jon Voight, who keeps giving that fucker work.
Speaker 1:Laurence.
Speaker 2:Fishburne and Jason Schwartzman, Chloe Fineman. So we have a DB Sweeney, DB Sweeney.
Speaker 1:In there, bringing him back from the dead.
Speaker 2:Balthazar Getty, balthazar Getty, it's a mouthful.
Speaker 1:Who is Balthazar Getty?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but might I recommend an alias?
Speaker 1:Brad Pitt is a good name.
Speaker 2:Go with that. So yeah, man, I don, I don't, I'm not excited for megalopolis at all. Well, I like utopian stuff.
Speaker 1:I like that, I like that, but I don't know if I'm gonna like this I guess utopian is better than dystopian.
Speaker 2:Dystopian's been so overdone. Oh, I like dystopian, you like dystopian as well?
Speaker 1:I like both I like you, like the topians I love. I'm a big fan of topians. All right, well, we gave him enough air time. He's gonna have to owe us money for the advertising that we just did for him at least they're real quotes yeah, we didn't make him up. We didn't use ai for this script. Well, that was it. That's all. I don't even know. Was it a short show? It could have been a short show I don't know what time it is. Time to get some dinner.
Speaker 2:I like it Alright. Well, thanks everybody for listening and keep telling friends and we'll see you next time. Well, see you later. According to the map, we've only gone about four inches. You know, I don't think we have enough gas money.
