Father Malone's Birthday Roundup - Earth Girls Are Easy, SNL UK (2026)

Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up. I am Father Malone in the flesh. I was a ghost last time. I think I'm the only one who got that joke. Everyone else thought it was just bad chroma key.

So in any event, here I am and in color. Although this is a bit of an effort, so this might be a monthly video podcast Rover on the Patreon channel. I'm already doing two audio shows a week. How can I make that more difficult? Wow?

I know visuals, those of you listening only ignore all of this, But don't you dare ever ignore my co host, my Canine co host, Miss Ripley. Gean. Look, Ripley, I brought you a friend, an old friend. Wait where are you going? All right?

Thank you, Jasper. I've already told you about our new Fallout show that's called Vault of seven zero two. Seven oh two is the area code here in Las Vegas. I am going to be joined by my new co host at Nuka Coda Quantum Our Star trek Fest Away missions are still beaming in over there as well. On the Patreon that is, we just put up a head to head Shatner versus Nimoy Early Cinematic Efforts episode, and later this year, I've enlisted Paul Waller into Starfleet.

He's going to warp on in to talk about star Trek's horror episodes. We are also finally kicking off our Clive Barker Fest this May, starting with an episode featuring the hosts of Doom Generation podcast. I will link Paul and Doom Generation in the show notes. That's also where you can find my new link tree, which will lead you to all of the things I do. Speaking of that, I am finally once again the owner of father Malone dot com, although I very very stupidly bought it through a third party and now I'm trying to rest it away from them, but it is at least mine.

If anyone out there has some domain forwarding from a rascally third party situation knowledge and would like to drop said knowledge on me, please do so. That would be Father. Malone seven to one at gmail dot com, and that's also going to be in the show notes. Speaking of dropping knowledge, dropping science, HP and I are currently engaged in a rewatch and critique of the early two thousands, a little scene but desperately enjoyable ego Trips. The White Wrapper Show hosted by mc search from Third Base.

That's going to be on the Patreon channel as soon as it's ready. We're going to episode by episode on that and if you want to get a lenk up on that whole series, The White Wrapper Show is available on YouTube once again. Show notes. Hey, remember when Henry Cavill was cast as Superman, back when no one knew how goddamn good Henry Cavill was going to be a Superman. There was a minor uproar, A minor uproar.

There's always a fucking minor uproar, thanks Obama. Not over the potential quality of his performance, or his looks or the way he fit that suit. No, it was an anti brit superhero furer. After all, we'd watch brit S Nab Magneto, Professor X Commissioner, Gordon Reid, Richards, odin Heim, Dahal, Quicksilver, Vision, Nebula, Daredevil, a. Spider Man, Batman.

Well, a line needed to be drawn. We reject you tree drinking bastards when it comes to Superman. That would be like an American doctor who. And then it turned out just like every one of those other characters. They were absolutely well served by their performers, including Cavell, and I think Cavill got the short end of the superhero stick.

The most ponderous emo superhero of all time, he would have been Dynamite in the James Gun universe. That guy is. Way more than just chambering up his dukes. Although how was he the first person to ever to do. That on film?

It's weird anyway. Over the past six months here on Roundup, I've gone from praising every aspect of Saturday Night Live to being nearly finally done with it. I think that recent Jack White Jack Black episode was pretty solid and it took some good swings politically, but they've got a long way to go. Meanwhile, the last thing I thought SNL needed was another version in another country. We've had a long history of adapting British show successfully in the US, but not so much in the reverse and SNL is so idiosyncratically not just American but New York.

Not to mention, is the UK really starving for an American sketch comedy show. That island is allowsy with sketch comedy groups and shows and touring acts, so how could it possibly work? Like fucking Gangbusters is the answer. I watch it regularly, which you can do on Peacock the very next day. As they like to point out on the show, the format is exactly the same, cold open monologue, short film, sketch, music update, sketch film, sketch, weirdo or rather music and then a weirdo ten to one sketching.

Good Nights. The pilot was hosted by Tina Fey, who I'm sure was invaluable to the writer's room of the weeks leading up to the premiere, which I gotta say, the pilot was kind of a shaky affair, like they hadn't quite calibrated what era of SNL to evoke, So you got a little bit of flashy character stuff from like Dana Carvey's era and some historical pieces like Franken and Davis used to indulge in, and some slice of life, and it was all very pleasant. It wasn't cringey. It also wasn't very funny in that way. It was really evoking the current era of Saturday Night Live.

But then they just kept scoring man. SNL has never had the most consistent of show schedules. Sometimes you get two in a row and a week off. Sometimes they'll go all the way to four before they break. That's the case here.

So far, Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, Riz Ahmed, and Jack Whitehall episodes have all come out week after week, and this Saturday they're back with Dairy Girls and Nicola Coughlin. First off, their song parodies are way above the American version. They're not at the Lonely Island level, but these songs tower above everything SNL has been putting out since they left the show. I think they have too many cast members, which is a hilarious thing to say, considering they only have nine in the current roster of SNL on New York as fourteen. Nevertheless, there's too many faces going completely unnoticed and just stuck into group sketches.

But of the cast, I want to mention Annabel Marlowe. She seems to be the show's secret weapon, so secret they haven't quite figured out how to use her yet, so keep an eye on her. I know, I am yes. She's also very pretty. Even in the first episode Weekend Update was a huge winner just joke after winning joke, and that has definitely continued.

The anchors here are Anya Magliano, who is every bit the ry, snarky, cocky persona that we have come to expect behind the desk. Far less so is her co anchor Patty Young. His approach to the news seems like an apology. It's very disarming, and like I said, so far afield from anything we've gotten on Update. It's update if they let Will Forta's Bill Calhoun character take over the news.

Oh and I laugh during every episode a lot, you know, like a comedy is meant to do. Admittedly, I am often adrift when it comes to British pop culture or politics, but then everyone who doesn't live in New York City proper feels exactly the same way every time John Mullaney hosts and does a super specific Big Apple musical. Number other cast members who stand out George four Acres, very fluid, utility guy, two words, bastard seagull, I'll say no more, actually I will, great big crab man. They are equal in quality. That one is equal in quality to the hot dog car sketch that Tim Robinson did on I think you should leave.

I know that's not SNL, but he was a writer performer, so it counts. And now this is. A super specific joke but if any of you have ever seen Jules Hollands TV specials in the UK, or if you're a fan of Jules Hollins in general and you hate daylight savings time, go right now to YouTube and type in night time incident. You're welcome. I couldn't be happier with the show.

They are not dodging political responsibility for a bunch of absurdist sketches. They're doing both and very well. Here. I'll continue to be obtuse and say falling down a Hill with Helen Birch watch that one too. It's also on YouTube.

They're off to a great start. They have four episodes left on the current series. I don't know how they do renewals at Sky TV, so I'll let you know if they get a chance to continue. Fingers crossed. No, no, no, no, we are not cure to get out of here.

Stop dancing. Listen. We are not doing rips picks this week. That was very presumptuous of you all. This isn't a weekly round up.

It is a. Birthday round up. That's right, fuckers. If you're listening or watching day of this is my birthday. I am a tourist with a Sangittarius moon and a motherfucking tourist rising and my true sign it's tourists.

Could I be more stubborn? Why? Yes, Let's ask our Chinese friends who designated my birth ear that of the ox. If there are zodiac equivalents in an alien culture on some distant planet. My sign is still a bowl.

I'm askewing the latest in theaters and on the tube this week, I'll die calling TV the tube LCDs be damned. This week for the anniversary of my trip around the Sun, I have chosen an absolutely fucking favorite of mine. Here is the trailer. I'm gonna say something that's going to totally change your life completely forever. She's a brunette from southern California and he's not.

I need romance, I need surprises. Are you a foe landed in my pool? They captured me. I met them hotchwarts, But you've got to cut their hair? Did you say they may be from outer space?

So like it's stubby day, I think we could just miss him. Look more sort of human. Take him on. Everybody, we're doing a makeover, but underneath they're more than human. Oh they're incredible.

I can fix you. Up some dacious just like that. I can't believe you're friending an alien and from. All these people. I'm going home with him?

Are we limp and hard to manage? Wait? Matte, are you like coming on to me for boyfriend's or doctor? I've never ever been unfaithful to you, whose treatment is totally alienating. Here coming doctor Lowe and for new loves an alien who's more than accommodating.

You on your own Homer. Des Brandon, Geina Davis, Julie Brown, and Jeff Goldblum in a film directed by Julian Temple and produced by Tony Garnett. Just so much of a thinkers girls are easy, Those girls are easy. Ah Earth girls are easy. A once provocative title, nowadays it wouldn't be out of place on a toddler's shirt.

It is a slice of nineteen eighty eight cinematic camp with a snarl behind that sweetness. It is the story of val This takes place in the Valley, y'all, and the crisis that her life becomes when she's forced to choose between her philandering physician fiance or a furry blue alien. In a codpiece starring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayam's, Jim Carrey, Michael McKean, Charles Rockett, with an appearance by La Patron, Saint Angeline, and as Candy Miss Julie Brown. There is no discussion of Earth Girls Are Easy without a discussion about Miss Brown. In fact, there is no Earth Girls Are Easy without Miss Brown.

I still find it odd that at one point MTV and its Prime had about fifteen vjys and two of them were named to Julie Brown. Incidentally, you remember the other Julie Brown Downtown. Julie Brown did that dance show. Her weirdo catchphrase was wubba wobble whobba okay. So at the time she was on the air, there was one of those interstitial ads that they would play as bumpers before and after commercials.

It was usually animated. Remember there was one where a woman picks up a chainsaw with a glowing blade and she slices off the front of a television, revealing the MTV logo beneath. Well, there was a really simple one white. It had white text on a black background with a narrator. Here it is MTV now plays more videos in our more videos in a row than ever.

Before Doodle Doodle de Wubba Wobbo who Ba. So the rumor is that Julie Brown is wrapping up a show and is reading her lines from the monitor, and the segment immediately following the show is the ad which is named Wubba wubble Whobba, and she reads that accidentally, and then she just keeps saying it bullshit or not anyway, Julie Brown, the real Julie Brown is in fact a one died in the wool, not in the hair valley. Girl. You know I dig that red hair man. She grew up in the seventies in Van nys.

She had industry parents working at NBC Hell. She had industry great grandparents. Her great granddad, Frank O'Connor, was an actor. He appeared in King Kong and Reefer Madness and The Citizen Kane. As if a sil coal existence weren't enough of the California experience, she then attended the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she formed a comedy duo act with longtime partner Charlie Coffee called Brown in Coffee.

Part of that act included comedic songs which Brown favored way above stand up or sketch. They'd eventually bring that act to LA where Brown guests starred on Everything on TV, Happy Days, The Jeffersons, New Heart, Laverne and Shirley, and a smattering of tiny rolls in The Incredible, Shrinking Woman and Bloody Birthday. Oh man, have you seen Bloody Birthday? She's ill treated in it, but it is one hell of a flick. A group of kids are all born during a lunaric clips and then ten years later they go on a kitty killing scree.

Okay, so ms Brown figures her songs are her strength. So she goes along with Coffee and then husband Terence McNally, and they whip up her first EP, Goddess in Progress, which they sold out of their house after college DJs and Doctor Demento began playing the albums A Breakout, The Homecoming, Queen's Got a Gun. They sold all twenty thousand copies and were able to make a deal with Rhino Records, all of which led to a meeting between Brown and Amy Pascal at Warner Brothers, where Brown pitches her song earth Girls Are Easy as a feature. It's a send up of tabloid rags like The Inquirer, or more specifically the Weekly World News, where headlines were constantly screaming about alien abduction and bat children.

I think it was a boy. They purchased The Pitch in the Room and Brown has an agreement to star as the lead Valerie, which studios being studios, they were able to clause her out after a screen test that they deemed unacceptable, which we all know is bullshit. She could have and really should have carried that film, at which point Kenny Bow's gay hairdresser best friend becomes Candy, which apparently the studio had zero problems with Brown playing. I love studio logic. It's the same kind of brain trust pontificating that had them signed Julian Temple as the director, who at the time was directing Absolute Beginners and was as white hot as an up and comer could be, and then to sign after that film's failure that they no longer want to make They no longer want to make Earth Girls Areasy at all.

So the early nineteen eighty six shoot gets postponed until late nineteen eighty seven, when Dilarentis Entertainment Group agrees to distribution. We've talked a little bit about Julian Temple here on the round Up, more specifically his super fucking talented daughter Juno. I happen to think that everything he did after Earth Girls Areasy is a mixed bag, and some of his work is downright awful. That Mickey Rourke, Tupac shakurabomination bullet, Jesus, don't bring a classic cop film into your sordid little vanity project. But long before I ever saw Earth Girls Are Easy, I was a big fan of Temples.

We all were. Temple cut his teeth in the punk scene in the late nineteen seventies. If you have ever seen any footage of the sex Pistols, then there's more than a high degree of possibility. It's because Julian Temple was behind the lens. All of his band footage and skits and animated nonsense all got folded into his first feature, the nineteen eighty flick of the Great Rock and Roll Swindle.

Personal note, I bought that CD at Tower Records on Newberry Street in Boston around nineteen eighty nine. With current midnight viewing co host HP I got the soundtrack to Escape from New York at the same time. It's in the years following that, Temple made us all his fans because that network that ended up taking on Miss Brown with her exceedingly underrated show Just Say. Julie had just hit the scene in the early nineteen eighties and was hungry for content Temple was prepared. He directed Rock This Town and Stray Cats Strutch for The Stray Cats Boys and Arrow for ABC.

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? For Culture Club? Come On, Eileen Dexy's Midnight Runners, You've got another thing coming, Judas Priest, Come Dancing the Ginks, under Cover of the Night, The Rolling Stones in and In nineteen eighty four, he directed the long form video Jazzing for Blue Jeen by David Bowie. That's one of my favorite Bowie videos, if not my favorite Bowie video. It's no doubt what led.

To the following year's collaboration Temple's first narrative feature, Absolute Beginners. That film was a critical darling in the US, but did no box office, eventually losing three million pounds. I don't know what the exchange was to play. Valerie Gale born and raised in the San Fernando Valley with a taste for kitsch and horrible taste in doctors Temple chose Gena Davis, the statuesque brunette who all but screams East Coast with every expression. She is great.

Don't get me wrong, Nothing but love for Gina Davis. But let's just say this is the graduate situation. Ben Braddock in that book looks like Robert Redford, not Dustin Hoffman. She was a package deal, bringing along her fiance, her fiance then husband to Jeff Goldblum. They married during production.

This would be their third film together, after Transylvania six five thousand and The Fly Where My Transylvania six five thousand Homies at. He played Mac, the leader of a trio of tiny aliens who have crash landed in Valerie swimming pool. The other aliens were cast with two relative unknown stand up comics who haunted the La comedy scene for the better part of a decade at this point, and by the time they were cast as Zebo and Whiplock, Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey had already tons of on screen experience, with Wayan's having appeared in Beverly Hills comp Hollywood Shuffle, Roxanne and Colors, and Carrie having starred in his own vehicle Once Bitten? Have I covered Once Bitten? The memory is so eroded by the THHC midnight viewers.

He was also excellent in Francis Ford Coppola's time travel fantasy Peggy Sue Got Married not long ago, No, it's just Peggy Sue got married. They bring an energy to the film that it really needs. But we will get to the film's problems or problem we've already mentioned it. But anyway, as the scumbag yuppie doctor boyfriend fiance ted, they got the idealized version in former and I mean early former SNL cast member Charles Rocket, he famously as the character j R. Ewing, When asked about his shooting, responded, I'd like to know who the fuck did it on live TV in nineteen eighty one.

I know everyone knows him from Dumb and Dumber, but check out the pilot from Max Headroom. He plays the head of Network twenty three and he's a great in it. And then there's Michael McKean. Have I waxed rapsodic enough about the man? I just love everything he does and he's so fucking believable in every fucking role.

He's a burnout surfer guy in this, and I totally fucking buy it, just like I buy him as the head of a law firm and the lead singer of a metal band and an idiotic greaser. The man can do no wrong and evidently was cast in the Charles Rocket role and vice versa, and then they swapped right before filming began. Today I mentioned this as a music starting a tradition that would be carried on by Tim Burton and Sweeney Todd. Temple promptly cast two non singers as leads. I guess he actually began that particular tradition with absolute beginners, which isn't a problem for Goldblum because Mac doesn't sing, though they do showcase Goldblum's piano skills.

Valerie, on the other hand, has what should be a showstopper, as with the Ground that You Walk On, but she's lip syncing that all the movie's best songs ended up in the voice of Candy. Hmm, what a coincidence, which is for the best, and Julie Brown singing is what made the whole fucking thing happen. She gets three out of the four numbers or two of the three numbers. Okay, the original script had the film as a traditional musical with about seven or eight songs. They windowed those down to four.

First of all, they didn't even use Julie Brown's Earth Girls Are Easy. They had Nile Rodgers compose a whole new track that only uses the chorus line. Then they took the scene in which Valerie and the aliens are on the way to the club, and they made a car full of girls who sing Kazama Blonde, and they swapped that number with the one val was supposed to sing later in a fantasy sequence. That's the I Like Him Big and Stupid number, which was actually the first single that Julie Brown ever released. And I once saw Sharon Needle's lip sync that song dressed as Peggy Bundy.

So now Candy and val and the aliens are on the way to the club and Candy sings the song, and Kazama Blonde gets cut entirely, and then they cut the whole Big and Stupid sequence, And then they had Julie Brown come back after filming six months later and film the Holy New Beach Party version of Kazama Blonde, where I guess Candy has now gone blonde. It's symptomatic of problems behind and eventually in front of the camera, all due to the designated film. Brown and Coffee and McNally were all producers as well as screenwriters on the film, but it became evident early on that Temple wanted in put from neither of those positions. Within a few weeks of pre production, the trio found themselves banned from the except on days when Brown was filming.

They'd been frustrated from the get go given his casting choices. Again, all difference to Miss Davis, but she is the furthest thing from a valley girl and doesn't even attempt it. And that continued with his juggling of scenes and characters and songs. And the fact remains that none of these changes would have been necessary had they simply gone with Plan A and had Brown play Valerie herself. But I'd argue that for all his incredible visual style, Temple drops the ball overall.

He's so used to filming in three minute clips that he has no understanding of pace or feature length rhythm. Scenes just kind of bang into one another, and thanks to its schizophrenic, almost fearful approach to the music, none of it feels organic. We're watching a romantic comedy about aliens, and then suddenly Geena Davis is singing while destroying her house. It was never going to have musical numbers that propelled the plot. They were always supposed to be character moments.

But again they've shifted them around and cut them and recontextualized them. That what is is it saying about any of these characters at any time? Temple, to his credit, does bring a kitschy esthetic throughout the film that really sings. I mentioned Tim Burton carrying on his tradition of casting non singers, but let's compare Temple and Burton in one other facet. Put Earth Girls Are Easy against Peee's big adventure as far as California esthetic.

Now, obviously Burton is a better visual stylist than most, but the overall genial vibe with a glossy sheen that sits all over Peewee just stands in glaring opposition to Temple's detached, clinical view of all the camp nonsense. I'm no fan of AI, but I wouldn't mind a version of Earth Girls Are Easy as originally intended. That's probably never going to happen. I mean, if it did, you know links are in the show notes Father Malone seventy one at gmail dot com. But neither that fantasy of what could have been, nor the drama behind the scenes should detract one iota of your enjoyment of this flick.

It certainly hasn't curtailed mine. I watch it at least once a year, and I've been watching since jump. I was an usher at the Showcase Cinemas in Woburn, Massachusetts when this movie was playing, and. I watched it a lot. Turns out I was the only one on a budget of ten million.

Earth Girls Are Easy would pull in a staggering four million dollars if only I hadn't watched so many times for free. What can you do with a film that was dropped last minute by a studio, delayed a year. Filmed in nineteen eighty seven, reshot six months later, premieres in September of eighty eight at the Toronto Film Festival, and then came out in May of the following year. It basically sat around for two whole years. You know what you're supposed to do in that situation, right, No, not straight to video a midnight campaign.

In fact, those six months later reshoots should have focused on making the movie Crazier into the midnight movie. It had been dying to be all along, but it was not to be. It failed at the box office, but thanks to the eighties boom of video stores, there was a second chance, and it didn't do well there either. But then Fox had their cable channel and they had Fox Night at the Movies, and it turned out that whenever they showed Earth Girls Are Easy, their numbers were huge. So they showed it more and more people watched it.

So is this a case of a film becoming a cult because of repeated television showings like A Christmas Story or It's a Wonderful Life or The Wizard of Oz, which is what the film most resembles. These three broken characters stumbling around for answers in a bizarre landscape, led by a beautiful girl. It is a bona fide cult film these days, and well deserved. There have been unsuccessful attempts to turn the film into a stage musical, a stage jukebox musical with hits of the eighties subbing in for anything new, though the film's original tunes do remain. Brown would follow up with her show Just Say Julie and then The Edge, a sketch comedy show on Fox, as well her hilarious end up of Madonna Medusa dare to be truthful though I'm sure an entire generation only knows her as the coach and clueless, and I, for one just want to take a moment to thank her for everything she's done over an exemplary career.

Music comedians tend to get overlooked, and of course we know how female comedians have been treated since time immemorial, so the fact that she held in and just kept making her brand of comedy all. These years is nothing less than inspiring. You know what, it's my birthday, Julie Brown. I love you. There I said it, and you know what, I'm gonna go enjoy the rest of my birthday.

Now. That ends this a roundup. Please tune in this coming Monday for another Hammer House of Horror. It's The Visitor from the Grave. Meanwhile, over on the Patreon channel, there should be the first episode of a brand new fest that's Von Doomfest, where HP and I are counting down the Marvel Cinematic Universes.

Offerings as we get close to Doomsday. Links are in the notes. The plug is Ripley. I'm father alone. Thank you all so much for listening.

And you know what, just enjoy the daylight, don't try, have a good time.