148: F the Police... Academy

Movie meltdown movie oh man get out the dvd player this is michael winslow from police academy one through infinity. And space posit now brooks movie meltdown. The following program is a proud member of the Palover family of podcasts. Check out all the shows over at palover.com. That's P-A-L-A-V-E-R dot com.

It's showtime. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power. We have to provide more cooling in the containment chamber.

Through your syndromes, we have a movie meltdown. Are you the police? No, ma'am. We're musicians. Way down among Brazilians, coffee beans grow by the billions.

So they've got to find those extra. Cups to fill. They got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian.

I'm Marlena. I'm Fred. And we are back for another edition of The Caffeinated Movie Geek. Cappuccino on my butt. I still drink coffee.

The last fucking thing you need is another cup of coffee. It's time for The Caffeinated Movie Geek. We're coming to you live via digital recording from Nancy's Bagel Grounds, where we, as usual, get together, drink coffee, talk movies, and truthfully try to unlock the mysteries of the universe. through really deep films like Police Academy. All right, anyway. So, with that, Marlena, I ask you, what blend of coffee are we drinking this week?

Fishers and Fallers. Ryan's got out the gourmet stuff. I would have been happy with some, like, Instant or something. Freeze-dried shit. Well, I guess with that, we can head into this week's geek activities.

I was trying to think that we've moved back into the, like, new fall seasons, so... I know most of the time we end up going on about movies, but I have actually watched a little bit of TV. I don't watch a ton of shows regularly, but the few that I bother to, I have been somewhat lately. So I did get and was eagerly looking forward to the new season of Dexter starting. So I'm pretty thrilled with that every week.

It's just so enjoyable for me. Maybe I'm just a sick bastard, but I don't know. There's just something really fun. about it and and it's well put together as well it is it is one of those they and now they have sort of this challenge of you know as any show that once you get past the first couple of seasons especially a show like this which is where very like story arc geared it's like it's not a sitcom it's not in and out in one episode it's like everything sort of carries over and builds up to the end of the season so they almost have to one-up themselves now or they have to bring in new and more interesting guest stars. So they've got an interesting group that they've thrown together this time.

They've got sort of a two-villain setup, more or less. But yeah, they've done some pretty interesting stuff. Worked in some crazy religious themes, which has been kind of interesting. I've actually really liked the way that they've worked that in. It's someone who basically had no faith and his only system was killing people who kind of deserve it. having him go through this struggle of trying to figure out what faith is and what he's supposed to take from it and what he wants to pass on to his child now that he's a father.

So it throws some interesting themes in there. And then I was going to say, again, they brought in a couple of different guest stars, but the one, not even the big villain, the one that's been most impressive for me, they brought in Mos Def. Most Def is awesome. I'm sorry. Like, that guy needs to be in everything.

Like, he is so good in this. And plays such a different character than I've seen him play before. He's just... He's so good. I wish he was in more stuff.

Any Most Def fans? I wouldn't say I go either way, personally. I don't know. I think the name says it all. Yeah.

It's funny if that... almost at one point, like in the beginning, I was like, I would almost think that would be a hindering on his career. I would think if he wanted to be taken seriously as an actor, he would have to like have a regular name or, or, you know, you know, everybody starts off with their big fun, you know, like the rock. Granted his was for legal reasons, but after a while, You sort of got to get away from that and start going by your real name. I mean, even a lot of the rappers started off doing that, and then they started, oh, well, I want to be taken seriously. Ricky Schroeder has to be Rick Schroeder.

Yeah, everybody has to find a way to be taken seriously as an actor. Why was this for The Rock? I'm confused. Oh, The Rock, the title, The Rock, is owned by Vince, what's his face, the guy that runs the wrestling company. It was the same thing with Hogan.

Like, for a while there, he couldn't be Hulk Hogan because he didn't own that name. The whole outfit, the name, everything belonged to the wrestling dude. So, yeah, it's funny when they have to sort of reinvent themselves for legal reasons. So, yeah. I think that's what happened with Prince, too, is they owned his name and he was just like, fuck you.

He, I think his, if I remember, he just didn't. he actually did want to, I think everything hit at the same time. He did want to change his name and be a weird symbol, but at the same time he didn't want, and that's the thing. He owned like the rights in like the, you know, actors guild or whatever they do for music. That's the same thing. He also had rights to it.

And after he switched and went to the hieroglyphic symbol, squiggle doodle, it's sort of, it sort of opened it up again. And then there was like some weird, um, like, Canadian sax player that wanted to claim Prince and start using it and that was half the reason he was like alright fine I'm Prince again but at that same time he really was like being screwed over in his mind he was not thrilled that's at the point when he was writing Slave across his face because his recording company yeah I guess the record company wouldn't let him out of his contract and like basically made him knock out like three more albums for him or whatever had originally been done and he's just like I don't even want to work with you anymore but They wouldn't let him out.

So I think that all hit at that same time. Too bad he didn't have some sort of connection with underworld figures that could have straightened that out for him. Isn't that usually how that stuff gets taken care of? I would think so. That's how I would do it.

It's Minneapolis. Come on, there's got to be some thugs there somewhere. So. Yeah, most def. I would expect him to have done that, too.

But, yeah, he's seemed to have done pretty well with having a rapper name, if you will. Yeah, he's definitely gone pretty far as an actor. And I don't know if I've seen him do something bad. Like, everything I've seen has been impressive and very different than what I expected going in with him. So, yeah, most def.

Pretty awesome. Also, Walking Dead started, which I guess most geeks have been watching. So, yeah. Again, I'm enjoying watching it every week. The first episode, that initial kickoff episode, was pretty impressive, again, much like last time.

They had this whole, you know, the whole highway scene was amazing. The herd of zombies that comes along was pretty cool. So that was a really clever setup that they did. They have their big cliffhanger ending, and then it sort of takes a lull. That next episode was really kind of slow, and even this next one had its moments It had an interesting wrap-up on that third one out, but yeah, once they get past this little thing with both, there's like, both the people with kids have some sort of weird thing going on right now, so once they get past the kid problems, I'll kind of be interested to see where they go with, like, grown-ups again, and when they kind of get the rest of this.

Everything's been put on hold for like three episodes at least now, because they're trying to figure out these other problems, so it'll be interesting to see what they do when they actually start going somewhere again. So those are both sort of a little unconventional as far as shows. I mean, nothing network, really the only thing network I've picked up and kind of been trying to watch this season, uh, prime suspect. I'd seen enough of the ads that I was like, okay, this, and again, they were really pushing the lead on it. And I was just like, I wasn't even sure who this chick was, but she looked kind of cool.

So I wanted to see, you know, what, what they were doing with her. That's pretty much what sells it. I have to say it's a Maria Bello is the lead. And, She's amazing. Like, she really does a good job.

And it's almost sad because the TV show itself isn't all that unconventional. To me, it feels a lot like most cop shows. It feels like you could be watching Blue Bloods or any of those other ones. that's on another night of the week, so I kind of wish the show itself was as good as she is as a lead, because yeah, they give her good scenes, and she's got some decent character development, but it's just the plots themselves just sort of feel very run-of-the-mill network television cop show, so... I don't know. I would kind of hope they would break out of that and do something a little...

Especially the way they sold that beforehand. They really were trying to push it like this was a very different type of show, a very different style. And I know you, Fred, were a big fan of Homicide. I was kind of hoping they were going with that early days of Homicide feel, which is what it felt like from the promos, but it's a little more like the later days of Homicide. Which, again, I liked.

Okay, they weren't bad, but It became a little more conventional NBC cop show. You could feel the executives getting involved. And you could feel the... Who was that that did that? Levinson, I think, started off doing the first couple of seasons, maybe, and I think backed away or was forced out.

I never did hear the full story on it. But it wound up being hugely successful as a franchise, although it lost all the charm of its original. And, and like most of those shows, they just kind of kept going through characters, you know, it's just like, nobody was left from the original run. I mean, they had some, was he even original? He might've been original.

Yeah. And he was good. And they rolled him over to another show now. Yeah. Andre Bauer is what sold that.

Like I could watch him and he's another one that like, it's a shame he's not in more stuff because he was amazing on that show. Like, Andre Brown was phenomenal. Like, those scenes of just him in the room, you know, when he would just sit in there with whoever they had that week that they had to try to get a confession out of or try to find out what was going on, those scenes were, like, amazing. So, yeah, if everything was like that, I would watch more television. But, yeah, those three are about all I've been watching so far. pretty much lately um the only movie i'd seen i did watch x-men first class which was again i'd heard really good things it did well mediocre at the box office actually but it got really good reviews and um they they kind of lived up to them it was better you know a lot of people have said of of a summer full of superhero movies this was kind of the best one out there it It actually does have a really good story.

They do bother to, I mean, you've got your two main lead characters that they do kind of develop, and at the same time still keep that arc going. It is funny how much they have to work. And I just read today that they're doing a, they've already sort of greenlit the Part 2 prequel, the X-Men First Class 2. But it's funny, I mean, already on this first class, they were working so hard to keep the arc going to the right place. Because, I mean, you already get, like, they introduce characters in this one that are on opposite sides of where they end up once the other movies come out.

And they're still sort of... I wasn't sure if they were going to reboot and totally, like, pretend like those didn't exist. But, no, they're still... I mean, it's the same studio that owns it all, so they're still kind of keeping it all going. But it's funny how hard they almost had to try and go, no, wait, we've got to be at this end point somewhere 30 years from now.

So it's like, we've got to make sure our characters... do this, even though it kind of feels forced every once in a while. I'm like, I almost wish they could just pretend like those didn't exist and do this story, because usually this story, especially, I mean, after the third X-Men that everybody hates, Wolverine, it's like, you could almost just write that off. Granted, the first two, the second one in particular, are good, but yeah, this is almost right up there with those. I think it's well put together. And A good performance from, if I have my way, future guest on the show, Jennifer Lawrence.

She sort of steps in and is one of the main roles in it and does a good job. So I was kind of pleased with that, too. I was worried that she does this super little indie movie and gets huge acclaim and it goes up for Oscars. And then the next thing she ends up in is like a giant franchise superhero movie. Yeah.

I was afraid, yeah, then she's going to get thrown into a lot of really bad movies. But it's good to see this first one in one of the bigger projects is actually well made. So that was good. So, yeah, if you haven't watched it already, yeah, First Class is definitely worth watching, especially if you like the X-Men series. It's pretty well done.

But that is pretty much all I've seen lately. I didn't really watch much of anything that I hadn't watched before. I caught bits and pieces of Halloween 4 this week. this last week. And you were like, this doesn't follow where 3 left off at all. Yeah, exactly.

And I was just really confused about the ending. And I didn't bother to watch Halloween 5, which I hope might clear it up a little bit, but whatever. They enter in, I can't remember which one it is. It might be 5, where they bring in this whole other, was there a weird character that shows up at some point that's like supposedly coming into town? And they do this whole setup.

I think that's the fifth one. Yeah, I think Because they bring in, and you've got Daniel Harris as the little kid, and that story arc sort of continues through four and five. That's pretty much its own little mini-movie is those two. But towards the end of it, they bring in this other character that's like the big game hunter or something. He's like the big serial killer hunter.

It's this weird, mysterious subplot going on, and they just sort of show him showing up every once in a while, and they never really reveal who he is, and There's just sort of this thing like he's coming into town to take care of the problem or something, and there's some higher-ups working this system, bringing him in, and I guess at that point, much like many times in this franchise, it changed hands, and they handed it over to somebody else, and they just totally threw that out. So you spend the entire movie building up this new character and this weird subplot and how everything's going to tie into this, and then the next movie comes along, and they're like, nah, never mind. I mean, as a continuance, I think The whole Halloween franchise really needs some work.

I'm really just a fan of the first one. Yeah. Like, four and five are fun. I mean, the rest of them just start to become slashers. Like, the rest of them just sort of feel like it's fun the same way watching Jason sequels are fun.

You know, it's just like it's fun in a turn-your-brain-off kind of way. But the first one is not like that. The first one is amazing. The second one's all right. Yeah.

Everything else definitely takes a big step down. What I've realized I really hate about movies like that, it's that he's not human, clearly, but he's not supernatural. It's really frustrating. I feel like they need to pick one or the other. Even in Friday the 13th, Jason kind of becomes supernatural, and they admit to that.

Definitely. But they never really admit to Michael Myers being supernatural, and it's just super annoying. It's just like, he would be dead. You might as well say he's like this demon something, or god whatever explanation you have. Stop trying to pretend he's just this really hard-to-kill human.

I remember somebody compared him to Reagan once. You can't take him out. Yeah, it's like over in the Soviet Union, a guy gets a cold, next week he's dead. Our guy, you know, you shoot him. You shoot him, he's fine.

He gets cancer, he's fine. You couldn't take him out for a good number of years there. Well, I think, again, I think that's why the first one works so well, is they hadn't built that up yet. So the first one, he's just got that, and they're really selling that boogeyman angle. So he's got that, he appears and disappears, and he sort of, He's very, you know, there's weird mystical elements there, but it's not supernatural.

Yeah. Until the very end, you get that moment of, oh, whoa, what just happened? But even then, it's just sort of. That was well done. Yeah.

But in all the other movies, it's just like, okay, you shot him, you blew him up with a rocket, he's still alive. Like, you need to explain that or something. You know? It was still grounded, pretty much, in that first one. And he did just seem like a superhuman kind of weird, creepy guy.

Yeah. There was that element, again, I think that's what made it creepy, is there was that boogeyman element to it that maybe he was something else, but just creepy enough that, you know, it bled into that, like, urban myth kind of thing. You know, the babysitter killer stories, and it sort of fed all that, and I think the gray area is what made it cool, is that you didn't really know what it was yet. And I think when it gets later, and it is more of a ridiculous, over-the-top, undead, mythological, supernatural creature... Yeah, it kind of takes the fun out of it, or at least makes it a little lesser as a movie in my mind.

Honestly, I think that's probably all I watched, other than a bunch of other things that I re-watched and I've already talked about on the show, so I don't really want to talk about those. I did have a weird dream that is somewhat movie-related. I had a dream that I was best friends with Miranda July, and I had this big warehouse that was full of. And craft supplies, and she would come over, and we'd play dress-up and do crafts. It was kind of like.

Oh, you had that drink. It was kind of awesome, really. I wish it. Would happen in real life. Well, I mean, we can try to get a hold of her, see if we can have a special crafting episode with you two.

It was just weird, because, like, I mean, I don't... dislike her, but it's not like I'm a huge fan, or I don't even really know that much about her, but I think I must have seen, like, a commercial or something like that. That commercial for Miranda July being your best friend who comes over to your. Warehouse and does crafts. Place your order now. Yeah, I saw that.

Yeah, that's what it was. Actual Miranda July Mayberry. Just some random person shows up on your... Hi, are you ready to do crafts? Miranda May.

Miranda August. My name's Miranda, too. Can you fix my hair? Oh, Lord. Lord.

It's a guy with a donkey. This is totally what you ordered, man. Come on. I've got your receipt right here. I'm going to think of more things that I watched or interesting things to talk about.

That's okay. You can interrupt. But I think that's all for now. All right, Fred. Yeah.

Well, I watched a couple of things. Just last night, my wife brought home Tree of Life. Uh-oh. And we started watching that. And, man, I do not know.

I just don't know. That's sort of the joke I was making when I was thinking, unlock the mysteries of the universe. I mean, that's the go-to movie for super high-end arty nerds. How do you put an hour-long Nature Channel special into the first fucking 15 minutes of a movie? And she was like, we don't have to watch this.

It's like, oh, no, I'm taking this ride. Now, I've got to see where this is. I'm taking the hit. I can do it. That was crazy.

And then, you know, later in the movie, there are all these sort of growing up story things, and they were very nicely done. It was kind of a short story, but it was some decent little filmmaking wrapped in an enigma. Yeah. Just slathered with pretentious bullshit. Yeah, purposely wrapped in an enigma.

Yeah, God, that was crazy. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. I didn't even know. And at some point, and it's one of those movies where, like, the actors are just the actors. You know, like Sean Penn shows up.

Oh, there's Sean Penn. Hey, Sean. And at some point he says, he died. And at that point in the movie, I'm thinking, was he crushed by a ton of Hallmark cards that somebody was trying to make into a fucking movie? Because that's all I've got to go on now.

I don't know. Did a dinosaur step on him? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Well, that's the thing.

He did do some sort of comment to the press after it premiered that even he wasn't really thrilled with it. Like, even he was like, I kind of wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing a little more or something to that effect. But it was funny that even the star of the movie, like, he sort of gave him his respect. He was like, he's a great filmmaker. You know, what he did is important.

But I kind of wish he would have, like, led me down the road. I mean, you're the director. You're kind of supposed to give me a little more direction. And, yeah, he seemed like he didn't like that. the process of making the movie but he was still like you know it's it's a good film and everybody should go see it but yeah i don't know about my part. In it there's some little good bits of film in it it's nowhere near i i think anything i could ever call a good film yeah it's just a monstrosity.

Well and i mean to balance it out and i haven't watched it yet and i'm not sure how soon i want to but Yeah, I know a guy who saw it that week that it opened and still kind of raves about it. And knowing him, it doesn't surprise me. I would have bet money that he thought it was great. Again, you can almost tell who's going to like it, who's going to hate it. But yeah, there's a lot of people I've heard that from that just think it's one of the best films ever made kind of thing.

And it's deep and profound. And then there's other people that are like, what the fuck is this? Yeah. So there can't be much middle ground on that movie. I would think it's going to be a love it or hate it kind of thing.

I thought the growing up stuff with the brothers, that was all very nicely done. You cut off all the pretentious junk. Because it really is. It's just junk. I know people think it.

People may feel it has an intellectual reason to be there, but that's not enough reason. That's not a good enough reason. You can talk about that after a movie. That's my feeling. The parts that were good were good.

They were kind of like that movie A Boy's Life. Yeah. I think it was Tobias Wolfe. It was his memoir, and they made it into a movie with De Niro was the, Is. That the one set in, like, Brooklyn or wherever?

I think it was, like, out in the Northwest. Was it? Okay, is that the one with Leonardo when he was young? Okay, I'm thinking of, yeah. I was trying to remember which one I was thinking of, but yeah.

But it was kind of an abusive jerk of a dad. Yeah, that's the one with Leonardo when he was still pretty young. They don't make him into a monster, but he's pretty, you know, if you don't have trouble hating people, you can manage it. Oh, then I'll be fine. Yeah.

So there's that, and before that, I was just looking around on Netflix, and I saw this movie, and in the little description it said, $ 100 budget. And so that got me interested. It's sold. Literally, I can buy this movie. I'm just, all right.

Yeah, it's like already there's dramatic tension. It's like, I want to see what happens with this. So the movie's called Friction, and I get around to watching it, and. It's one of those movies, like a lot of people are doing this now, it's kind of the, oh, like that other movie I saw, Catfish, or like the Banksy movie, it's like, is this documentary, is this real? So the director is a guy named Colin Poback, and the story, the setup is that there's a summer arts camp for kids.

And it needs a new director because of some financial problems it had under the old director. So the guy who had been the music director is promoted to be the director of the summer camp. He doesn't do a good job with the advertising and promotion, so it drops enrollment from last year 80-some to like 7 or 8 this year. But he refuses to cancel it. And he's a little bit of a gung-ho, determined sort of guy.

And the guy who's set up to teach film at the summer is our director, Colin Hoback, and he agrees he'll do it anyway, even with the low enrollment, if he can make a film about the summer camp. And that's the setup. And I don't know, I guess you're supposed to buy these things. some level, but to me it just seems like, well, okay, that's a graceful enough setup. I don't know. The whole question with this movie and a lot of movies like it that people keep asking is.

Like, how much is real and how much is fiction? How much am I supposed to care? I'm not really sure. I just want to see a movie. That's not what it leaves me wondering, like, is that real?

So in the course of the film, it's not the most fun you can have watching a movie because they have scenes where they're rehearsing the scenes that they're going to film, and they're doing a. Pretty good version of bad acting. I don't know what to do with this. Yeah, they're trying to find conflict, but it's really petty. So everything is like that sort of amateur bickery.

You know, when people are really in conflict, they don't really necessarily operate at. The level of bickering. Sometimes they can say things that are supposed to sound kind of pleasant and well-mannered. They've just got that edge to them. You know, so it's very pedestrian.

It's like watching student acting a lot of the time, and they're filming these setups, and then they have, like, some sort of natural feeling comments about it. And there's this one kid who shows up to the camp, and The music director and his wife, she sort of becomes friendly with this one young kid who has been in and out of foster homes and so on. And then as the movie progresses, you find out some things that we were given to understand are not true. I don't want to do spoilers. It is worth watching.

But what I'll say about it. Is, like, you get to the last, say, 20 minutes of it, and it's like, yeah, this is a movie. This is really a movie, you know? It's kind of like you're watching it. There are some nice little things.

Should they have changed things before that? Like, is there a way that it could have been like that the whole way through, or does it need to go through that process? I think in this particular movie, it kind of needed that. It kind of needed. Something that's a little bit uncomfortable and not a whole lot of fun to watch.

But there's enough that it's interesting, that you can stay with it. But then by the end, it's like... oh, wow, this feels like something happened. This is like a movie that, you know, by the end, you feel like, wow, okay, there's something there. This was an event. And you can, yeah, I think it's a respectable little movie.

I don't know about the $ 100 budget or anything. That's what, listening to you describe it, I was like, you're already past $ 100. Yeah. If you have a camp, you're already past $ 100. Yeah, you've got a camp and.

So it seems like a pretty nice premise that he doesn't have to have a lot of people involved. He's set it up so that supposedly people are just agreeing to do it. Even in, just expenses have to be more. Yeah, and I think the title Friction is trying to play on fiction. Yeah.

I don't know. But anyway, I respected it as an effort, and it's interesting. If you're like me and you want to see what can somebody. Do in terms of making a movie. Out of next to nothing, it's kind of like storytelling.

Not the movie, storytelling. The act of storytelling. Yeah. What was that? That was a good movie, too.

Storytelling. I've seen that. Did you ever see that? I don't think I've seen that. Storytelling.

That was a movie that had, like, two sections. One was, like, fiction, I think. And the other was, like... No, one was documentary and one was fiction. And the fiction was.

Like, in a creative writing class in college. And, uh. and there's a kid in it with cerebral palsy, and his girlfriend is this super cute little blonde, and it's just so sick and so wrong and so funny, I can't even begin to describe it. It's a great movie. And then the second part is like documentary, and it's about this kid who is doing terrible in school. John Goodman is the dad.

He's doing terrible in school. He doesn't want to go to college. He's like a senior. He doesn't want to go to college. He wants to be like Conan O'Brien.

He wants to be like, he thinks he could be a talk show, maybe not the host, but like the sidekick. Andy Richter. And at some point, the documentary maker, who is sort of a kind of pathetic guy in the film, but he says, well, you know, Conan O'Brien went to college. He did. He did like a decade of writing.

Oops. Anyway, it made me think of that movie, which is worth mentioning. That's, uh, the creative writing class and then the documentary about the mixed up high school kid with John Goodman as the dad. It's just, um, it's just so messed up. Um, But I was going to say, like, the movie Friction was, it worked as storytelling.

And it kind of reminds me, when I was in college, there was people, it was before the fall of the Soviet Union, and one of the plays that was sort of smuggled out of the Soviet Union was called Nets and Traps. And it was just a one-person show, and it's a woman telling a story of her life. It's really good. And the reason they did it is because, you know, they had no theaters. They had no support.

So what they were writing and what they were doing was just like they would get together at somebody's house and somebody would tell a story. And that was like the cutting-edge theater in the Soviet Union. And somewhere I have a copy of it. Now you can get it anywhere. But back then, it was like this thing.

And it was really good. Yeah, and I think in Poland, I'm not an expert on this, but my wife was interested in some of these plays they wrote because they couldn't produce anything. They wrote plays that just had magic crap happen. Things like floating heads. It would say in the play, then a head floats into the room and starts saying this.

Is this the Adventures of Baron Munchausen? They can't produce any of it, so screw it, you know. And I think there was some sort of horrible porn scene involving Santa Claus. Wait, I think I've seen this one. Hold on.

Oh, no, wait, that was on the Internet. Never mind. Yeah, so that was what I saw, the two main things. I haven't really caught up on TV. My kids are starting to watch this.

Thing called Pretty Little Liars, but I haven't really got. Involved in it. Yeah. It looked horrible to me. Then I looked up and read a little bit about it, and there's people out there who say.

Yeah, I know, it looks awful, it's horrible, but stick with it a while. So I don't know. I'll see what they think about it. I'm trying to remember what it is. The name sounds familiar, but I don't even know if I remember what it is.

Well, I was watching it with them. I started watching the first episode, and I'm like, and it's about teenagers having this... drama they have a dead friend something i'm like so this is where desperate housewives come from and on the wiki page it said it was pitched as desperate housewives. For kids for teenagers yeah yep that's that's all you need to do is find your hook find something else that already worked and then change it a little Yeah, well, that's what this is going to be, too. Is it still on? Yeah, I think this is the final season.

It might be almost over, but, like, it's jumped the shark, like, five or six times. They, like, went in the future, and then it's, like, worse than Lost. It's, like, Lost kind of. Deals with supernatural concepts and stuff like that, so I can understand the backtracking and the confusion there. But, like, Desperate Housewives, they've jumped, like, in the future.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it was almost they got too popular too fast because they built that. And I haven't even watched an episode ever. But I remember the hype for that. That first season was so much that by the time the second season started, people were already burned out on it.

Like it already took this big hit in the ratings the second season because they built it up so much and did so much press and just oversold it. And everybody loved it to death that first year. And then after that, they were just like, ugh, that again? It's like... They almost, like, killed people with a little too much push on it, so...

Thank God I haven't watched it. I watched Lost for a little while, but I just felt like I was being jerked around. Yeah, I think everybody. I just felt like. You know, it's like, okay, that's kind of fun.

It's kind of... Come on. You know, it's just one too many little things. Yeah. And.

And I did the calculations that there was no way they were going to be able. And I only watched like four or five episodes. It's like, no, there's no way they're going to be able to solve this. It can't be done. It's like a Rubik's Cube that won't get put together.

They've just thrown in too many random things just for fun. And I don't know. People may disagree, but I don't think they came up with a solution that explained the polar bear wandering by or whatever was going on there. I think even they lost their way midway in from what I heard. Even the writers were just like, yeah, we were just kind of filling for a while.

I think the beginning and the end sort of they kind of maybe had in mind, but I think they don't, some of these guys don't have a plan for when they get that successful. And maybe that's the same thing with something like Desperate Housewives. It's like you expect to get picked up for a pilot and then it's not going to get it. Or especially now it's like everything gets canceled so quick. It's like, there's no point in working past the first season right off because odds are you're not going to get there.

So when you're on season three or four and you're massively successful, all of a sudden you're like, what the hell do we do now? So I don't know. There's some forgivable things like, you know, Richie Cunningham's older. Brother, you know, you just forget. It's like, okay, but there's a, there's a little short story called, uh, order of the Sphinx by Borges.

And what he tries to do in the story is, It's like set up sort of a mystery, so you try to guess what the story's about. What is this thing that is handed down from... And then you guess it. You figure it out, and you go, oh, I know what he's talking about. He's talking about sex.

What does that have to do with gum Arabic? Because there are these little things he. Put in there that in the end, you're sure you know what it is, but then there's stuff left over that doesn't make any sense. So you ignore it. That's what you do.

You just say, eh. And then I remember liking that story because I remember, like, there were stories I'd read when I was a kid that functioned that way without meaning to. They sort of set you up. There's a story about a kid who grew, like, enormously tall and couldn't fit through the doorway, and in the end it turned out his pose had just shrunk. He didn't fit.

Through the fucking doorway. He just told me this. I was watching season one of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia yesterday, and we watched the episode Charlie Got Molested, and he says something about his sister. He's like... Yeah, my favorite part of the evening was when my sister yelled that I touched her vagina.

And I was like, Charlie doesn't have a sister. That's so weird. As I was thinking, I was kind of like, the. Older brother I had these days. He really liked the family dog.

It's funny how they just kind of, most shows, have a little piece that they kind of gloss over a character that kind of goes away and they just don't mention anymore. They have somebody, I think, who, like, keeps up with the book. Is supposed to, yeah. Yeah. The best they can.

What usually is, is those kind of things happen in the first season or two, and then later they get successful, and they start, you know, bringing new writers, they start sort of changing the story, and they're like, what about earlier when we said this? And they're like, whatever, too bad, you know. Yeah. They just sort of, you know, what they set up in the beginning ends up not being what they want it to be anymore, so they just sort of change the rules, and, eh, what are you going to do? Yeah.

Well, I guess if that rounds out the Geek Week, we'll take a break and come back with this week's big interview. We'll be right back. Hmm, looks like there's been a slight disagreement between friends. Well, here's a surefire way to patch things up. Just take two big juicy all-meat wieners, wrap them in oven-fresh buns, Add ketchup, mustard, relish, and let's see.

Here's one happy fella, and here's another. Yes, sir, everybody agrees that the hot dogs you find at our refreshment center are the best. Buy one for everybody. You'll agree they're delicious. Hey, look.

Those two cops are climbing down the side of that five-story building and getting a drop on that whole gang of crooks. They're making a million-dollar drug bust in broad daylight. That's amazing. Did you see that? The same two cops just dove headfirst off the back of a speeding bus.

They're sneaking up on six of the mob's most dangerous hitmen and taking away their guns. That's incredible. Wow, now they're hiding in garbage cans, leaping from rooftops, smashing through windows, and crashing through walls. That's impossible. Who do they think they are?

Batman and Robin? That's right. The real-life cops they call Batman and Robin. The Super Cops. Their tactics are outrageous.

Their record is unbelievable. Their story is amazing, incredible, impossible, and true. The Super Cops. Rated R. Under 17.

Not admitted without parents. What's happening? My name is Jimmy and. Yeah, yeah. That's right, my name is, uh, yeah, Jimmy.

What's happening? It's just a loose jam, you know, if you want to, we're just jamming, so, you know, it's. Just a loose jam. What's happening, bro? I'm gonna dedicate this song to Bob Dylan, um, simply because, uh, I don't understand him.

Yeah, uh, let's see, yeah, I got it, yeah, okay. Yeah. We need to leave! I don't know why. Excuse me while.

I eat the sky. All right, we are back. So this week, yeah, we talked to Michael Winslow. And this interview goes much like you would expect talking to Michael Winslow. It's all over the place.

He's a very interesting guy. And he will go into, quote unquote, his thing. like throwing a switch. Like he will go into what he is known for. He will go into his, his crazy behavior, his crazy voices, his crazy sound effects. And like, he will just snap into him like that.

And then right back out and be back in the middle of answering a question or talking about normal things. And yeah, it's, it's sort of amazing to watch and unnerving just sitting there in the room with them. It's like, yeah, you, you never quite know what's going to come next when you're, when you're sitting there talking to him. It's, It's interesting. So this is actually in the green room right before he's about to go on.

He has always been. He started off doing stand-up and still is doing it today. So you'll actually hear another voice in the background. I believe that's the comic that was opening for him, but I was never really introduced, so I don't know. But, yeah, when you hear some other guy talking and randomly laughing at Michael being crazy, yeah, I'm assuming the other comic that was working that night, but...

All right, so now we will go with the very special interview with Michael Winslow. All right, we're here with Michael Winslow. As your career has gone.... Listen to the crowd. They loved Around the World.

So you're obviously known very well for the noises and voices. I guess how early on did you realize you could do that? That's when. Was it from birth i'm afraid so um was it something you you did start doing early like as a kid were you getting yourself in trouble doing that kind of stuff. Well the trouble was already there i was just there i was just there to make things interesting i guess always yeah always okay.

I mean i know you went into acting at that point i guess there was no training for that sort of thing is it uh is it something. None that i'm aware of yeah i'm trying to think of something that was uh charlie callous no no no it's not the same thing uh you know watching red skeleton and watching and watching uh jack benny be cheap and not spend a dime on anything in rochester tell him how cheap what a. Cheap bastard he is stuff like that's what gets it for me man Watching the Shadow, watching the Flip Wilson show. Rowan and Martin's laughing. Rowan and Martin's laughing.

When he, when he, Flip Wilson, when he played Geraldine. Oh yeah, that was, that's when. Here come the judge and bring my chime 47 times. Rowan and Martin's laughing. Goldie Hawn's first gig.

Watching everybody else dress up. The first iteration of the Cosby show. Yeah. When he was Mr. Kincaid.

Nice. Chester Kincaid. See, that's a trivia question. That's the kind of stuff that affected me. That and Monty Python and Benny Hill.

Where they kept slapping that old guy on the head. What happened to that old guy? They're all probably gone. I think the. Last time we saw him was on Waterworld.

The old guy inside the tanker. Yes, sir. Take care of your body. Four feet, three inches of black stuff. Oh, thank you, sir.

Don't they light him on fire by the end of that movie? Yes, yes, they do. And when the fire came, oh, thank God. Sadly, I know my water world. That was water max, man.

Oh, nice. That was max on the water. That was water max. It was. Water max.

And the postman was when the water dried up. Unfortunately for dried up Kevin's career. It's okay, it got the oil machine. The baseball movie. Oh, yeah.

You actually got. Oil Field of Dreams. I'm sorry, your question was? You got to do the gong show. What was that process like?

Very strange. I would imagine. I ended up having to audition at a country western bar. Oh, God. You know the country western bar in the Blues Brothers?

Yeah. With the chicken wire... In fact, the first thing the band said when they came in was, chicken wire. That's the kind of places. The Palomino Club in North Hollywood had to play that place.

Had to play country restaurant bar. Man, I won the hundred bucks for the talent contest, but I was kind of like a fresh steak. You know what it's like to be steak of the month? You don't want to set the mistake of the month. If all else fails, you're all out of theme.

They had the Palomino Riders. That was the band. That was Chuck Berry's group playing on the stage was the Palomino Riders. That was his opening band. That was his band that used to open for Chuck Berry, he told me.

So I ended up doing that and not getting killed or eaten. And I ended up being invited to a gong show audition because one of his people was there. Nice. Because the band told him about it. So that's how I got the gong show.

And you won. $ 516. 32, which I went and bought a car. So I turned from homeless to mobile homeless. That's a step up. It is if you've got four wheels.

Do you still have the gongs? Yeah, and my mom's got it. I gave it to my mom. That's a good product. In the middle there, before you kind of found Police Academy, you were doing some other roles.

Was it something you were trying to do more straight acting? Were you just looking to get in as an actor? I was looking to get a job. In fact, my first job was a drama. And I was not ready for it.

So I actually wasn't that good. Funny how comedy, after a while, comedy helps create the best dramatic performer. Yeah. And then let's say you ended up in a couple of Cheech and Chong's. How did you get involved?

Again, an accident. I think I placed fourth in the big lap office in San Francisco. I think I was fourth. Hey, politics, what can I say? It was fifth.

It was me. A. Whitney Brown, Dana Carvey, Marsha Warfield, and Mike Davis. A bunch of nobodies. Davis went on to Sugar Babies.

Marsha Warfield had her own series. Dana Carvey went to SNL, and A. Whitney Brown went to SNL. As you got into the Police Academy movie, was. That written for you?

Did they troll that character to you? It didn't exist originally. I wasn't even in the first script iteration from Neil Israel and Pat Proff. Hugh Wilson wrote it in. How did they find out?

I mean, did they just see you performing? Yeah, they came to a jazz concert with me and Count Basie and his orchestra. I was the opening act for Count Basie. Wow. That's pretty nice.

And then after, I mean, that sort of took off in a ridiculous way. How did things change for you? I mean, it had to be a 180 at that point. They're still evolving. It's still evolving.

I still have people telling me that what I'm doing is annoying. I still get people complaining about it. I still get, yeah, I get that a lot. It is an evolving story we learn by doing. Yeah.

Is it, I guess, something that's worked out? I mean, you still enjoy the process, I suppose. It has its moments. It has its great moments. Things continue to evolve.

Definitely. Just a couple of, again, the movie tie-ins. I mean, how did you get involved with Groom Ones? I was trying to get a job again. One of those things where they offered a pay rate of a couple of days' pay if you come and do this thing.

By the way, you have to sign here. And sign here. And here. What am I signing? Non-disclosure agreements.

And here. And here. What the hell is this? Nine disclosures with liquidated damages. You cannot talk about this movie until it comes out.

You cannot tell what you've seen. You cannot say... In fact, every page that you read, you will sign for. And Joe Dante owns your soul. Well, hey, you know what?

Dante's Inferno. There's worse people. I mean, Joe's a good guy. Yeah. It ended up doing really well.

I mean, so I got strife out of it. Yeah, yeah. So what kind of direction did they give you as a criminal? All you had to do was look at the movie. Yeah.

All you had to do was look at these things and go, oh, my God. kids aren't going to want to look under the beds after this. It's funny how much. Yeah, they presented it like it was a family movie. It was not a family movie. It's horror.

It was a horror picture. It's total horror. But it was still so marketed PG at that point. And Academy gets an R rating the first time. Yeah.

They're going to figure that one out. Well, if the Gremlins had breasts, they would have gotten an. R, too. You've got to wait for Gremlins 2 for that. Even still, they didn't put no breasts on it.

Yeah. Yeah, he had lipstick. That part I saw. Courtney the Bug's bunny wigs and a lipstick. That's all you need to be a girl, man.

I'll tell you what, Yosemite Sam was so stupid. He buys it every time. Yosemite Sam loses every time. He's going to lose. It's a New York rabbit.

The rabbit's from Brooklyn. What do you expect? You don't mess with Brooklyn rabbits. Brooklyn rabbit. You don't mess with no.

You don't... We don't Brooklyn rabbits. You don't... We don't Brooklyn rabbits, Doc. You can use the bad words of York.

His head should have exploded. His head should have blown up right then. Oh, then you also have a really memorable role in Spaceballs. Yes, I was the left ball. It was fun.

How was that? I mean, working with Mel Brooks. I still don't understand what the hell just happened. I'd like to try that again. I still don't know what the hell happened.

I had a couple of days working. I was there two and a half weeks. I still don't know what the hell happened. How did I get this? Two weeks work stretched into two and a half weeks.

I saw Stallone riding on his custom Chevy Suburban with the lowered wheels. Meanwhile, his head was only coming up the top. You know, the little hands, like the old lady when they drive. I want to see the hands. And the hair.

I said, damn. I said, nice truck. Knuckles are higher than the hair. By the way, I did enjoy that thing in the Expendables. I did.

I pass on this. It wants to be president. I caught that. I caught it. We know it's true.

By the way, why. Did they put. In Demolition Man, how come they gave Sandra Bullock half a size too small to wear? What up with that? We'll explain it to you later.

How come? It's the same thing with Gwen Stefani. What is going on with you? How come these producers get a half size too small? Never mind.

Never mind. It was only in high school. Never mind. Never mind. Oh.

Never mind. So, I mean, you started getting more movie projects. Did you ever actually put comedy on hold, or is it just something you. It continues. It evolves.

It depends on what we're doing. The French Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland was great. Just came back from that. The world's largest comedy festival and it was odd. Oddly entertaining.

It was oddly delicious, man. French. It really was. It's the world's largest festival. It's bigger than Montreal.

It was huge. I saw a lot of different styles of comedy. including the American and the Canadian stuff, you know, Tom Green's great. He's, he's, he's lost his mind. I think he keeps it in a box by the stage. I don't know if he ever had his, I think he keeps it in a box, even.

A box in the freezer. Um, but genius, crazy. Um, uh, Margaret Cho is great. Uh, The dancers in this, I mean, it wasn't just comedy. It was music.

It was theater. It was one-person performances. Even average white band had their own venues. I mean, it was a bunch of stuff going on. It was the world's largest, and now the.

Film festival is coming back. So it's going to be twice the size. So with the exchange rate, is the average white band more than average over there? Pound Sterling? Yep.

As a matter of fact. As long as you don't involve the euro. It's $ 1. 59, man. It's $ 1.

59 to buy one British pound. And $ 1. 60 for one Scottish pound. Don't bring Greece into it now. Scottish.

Do you feel stand-up... If this is Scottish, it's crap! Do you feel stand-up is more at home? Is that still kind of your first home? I don't know.

For me, stand-up is... It doesn't matter what country I'm in. I try to relate to wherever I am. Yeah. We are where we are.

We are where we are. But even versus like movies and other types of it. I like movies because, well, the problem with movies is it's fun to work and then go home. But you're taking a calculated risk. The joke you told six months ago when you shot the picture you hope is going to be just as effective a year from now.

Yeah. It changes. Sure it does. And then we kind of discussed a lot of movies. You seem like you're kind of immersed in pop culture and always have been.

What type of movies and stuff do you like? I try to watch everything. I haven't had time to really go to the movies lately. Haven't seen Thor yet. I heard it's okay.

I have not seen The Green Lantern. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, Ryan. Power down.

Sorry, Ryan. Sorry about that, man. But that's cool, man. You and everybody else. Nobody else.

All right. I think Sombra liked it. Not necessarily. Or even like older stuff, just kind of classic stuff that you. Van Wilder, baby.

That's the Reynolds I like. Is that a classic? That's the guy I like. That's what we're talking about. Two guys at a pizza place.

Van Wilder, too. He did pretty good. Actually, I enjoyed them. They were funny. Because I miss the Animal House type of comedy.

I miss that. You know, with the food fight with John Belushi and Wright Land. Now, I missed that, man, because we don't got that. In fact, I'll tell you what I missed. I missed National Lampoon Magazine.

Yeah. Remember, if you don't buy this magazine, we're going to shoot this dog. Remember that? People wrote in and complained to the ASPCA because they thought it was a real dog. But National Lampoon knew how to push the envelope until they messed with Liza Minnelli.

Yeah. Well, even then, I mean, the early. Oh, God, they went crazy. The early National Lampoon movies were good, too, but they. Got worse as time went on.

So I think it's just the less... People seem to care less. When you had John Landis making one, it was, yeah. Do an animal house and stuff like that. God, I miss that.

God, I miss that. The timing. It was the timing. They're almost using it as a stepping stone for something better. Yeah.

Those are the classics. And you see that registers now I mean there's so much of that that's ingrained in pop culture that I don't even know if kids know where it comes from and what did Dean Wormer say son drunk fat and stupid there's no way to go through life son I can't. Believe I threw up in front of Dean Wormer face it you threw up on Dean Wormer that's funny I. Miss old school comedy man and I'm hoping that we're going to see more of that in the future. It's kind of coming back.

The last five or six years, there's new projects. It's kind of finding some of the improv groups, it seems like, are starting to. Get more movie work now. Good. Yeah.

Well, you've got new projects going on. I was just going to let you tell people what all you've got going now. Academy 8 is coming. Okay. I'm going to estimate January, February.

So we'll see. That's coming on... a children's program with Bill Cosby. He's the co-producer. And I hope I am able to get that thing done as soon as possible. I'm going to actually spend the next few weeks working on trying to get that finished before the end of the year.

Cool. I've got to make a bunch of changes to it. It's in post. Yeah. And some green screen stuff because I might mess up people's.

Heads a little bit. I can't imagine that. Talking animals, scratching records. Yeah, man. I'm going to do it.

Nice. And then you have your own iPod apps? Yes. There's one called Let's Kung Fu. which deals with the specific art of Kung Fu. First you shake the phone, and that's what you get.

Kung Fu fighting technique. Nice. That's what it's called. That's Kung Fu. That's one.

And there's more to come. So go look for the iPhone app. And go to MichaelWinslow.net if you really want to know. So go download the app. Yeah, there's information on there on MichaelWinslow.net, and it'll also connect you to the Michael Winslow TV channel on YouTube.

Nice. Very strange. Oh, I am a match. All right. Any more noises you.

Want to throw in? Not on camera. Well, I mean, we can shut this. Otherwise, I think that was it. Thanks, man.

All right. Thanks for talking to us. You're welcome. All right. So once again, thank you to Michael for sharing his whole career there and then how he got involved with still what he is best known for, the Bullies Academy series.

So he is amazing to see in action. So go to michaelwinslow.net and check out his upcoming projects and his schedule, and you can go see him do that sort of thing live and in person. And you too can experience that. Yeah, he's a lot to deal with. It's amazing.

All right, so with that, we will take a break here, and we will be back with this week's movie. Rock and roll heaven, but rock and roll can never die, because we always rock alive. Mercy, mercy, mercy. Welcome to rock and. Roll heaven, baby.

This is the Wolfman. We got a special rock and roll presentation. Tonight from the group Led Zeppelin. Featuring Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. The first hit song ever written by Robert Plant was the Immigrant Song.

Yes, my friends, the Immigrant Song was an accidental creation. And Robert and Jimmy wrote that song the day he slammed his car under on his hand. Ow! Ow! Ow!

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Just go to tweakedaudio.com, and when you check out, enter the discount code MELTDOWN. Then you'll get 33% off and free shipping. Tweaked Audio. Sounds better. Welcome to a night of total terror.

That's Mickey Mouse's penis. They don't look to be afraid. They look to be shocked. Here's Vagina! Did you see Miley Cyrus' globulous breasts?

Night of the Living Podcast. I found more syrup on my pants. Bizarre adventure in fear. There was, however, a guy using. An experience in shock.

More shattering than your strangest nightmare. Dreaded Vagina! Night of the living podcast. Ass to mouth is fantastic. Yeah.

Holy shit. That just happened. What's that bad man doing to my donkey? A night of total terror. Can't maintain this level of ridiculousness.

Maybe it's soft. Night. Of the Living Podcast. My mom wants to do a. Show!

You're listening. Are you listening to Movie Meltdown? I'm Amanda Burse. I hope so. Love and marriage.

Love and marriage. It's time for Sofa Theater. Why can't you stay out of trouble? I mean, what's wrong with you? Last week, disturbing the peace.

Week before that, destroying private property. And I'm getting tired of saving your butt. I only do it because of your father. He was a good friend. Yeah, I know.

Mahoney, I've made a decision. I ain't gonna help you this time. You're going to the county lockup. Lockup? Why?

I didn't do anything really major. Then I'll make a deal with you. Anything. I want you to go to the police academy. The police academy?

Even if you never graduate, the training will be good for you. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Reed. I've seen the commercials on TV. The academy's taking all kinds today.

Even you. No deal. That's nuts. Well, it's either that or the lockup. Police academy or jail.

Will I get my own squad car? You'll get 14 weeks of academy training and discipline. Starting Monday morning. 14 weeks. Oh, they can throw you out.

But you can't quit. You quit and you're back in jail. And that's the deal. Fuck the police. Coming straight from the underground.

A young nigga got it bad cause I'm brown. And not the other color so police think they have the authority to kill a minority. Fuck that shit cause I ain't the one. For a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun to be beaten on. And thrown in jail we can go to.

All right, welcome back to Movie Meltdown Silver Theater. This week's Sofa Theater feature is Police Academy. The year is 1984. Director Hugh Wilson. The plot, according to IMDb, a group of good-hearted but incompetent misfits enter the police academy, but the instructors there are not going to put up with their pranks.

That makes it sound even dumber. Spoiler alert, if you, I don't know, have sense and are busy watching Tree of Life and Deep, dinosaur movies or stuff like that, and you haven't seen Police Academy, we don't want to ruin it for you. So, spoiler alert, run out and see Police Academy. I'm sure it'll balance out your life. Other than that, where would you guys like to begin with Police Academy?

Well, I've never seen it. I just saw it yesterday for the first time. I saw the first one for the first time. It kind of It's sad to say it goes downhill from there. They get progressively dumber and more dumbed down and kiddified as it goes on.

I can't even imagine that being possible. Funny story though, once my mom found a big box of DVDs like in a storage shed or something like that that was like being auctioned off. And she got the box home and every single, every single case was empty. You know, like someone had taken them out and putting them into a binder, except for every police Academy movie ever. So they didn't bother to take those out.

Okay. When I called wild and rolling to see if they had police Academy, I called him and I said, do you have police Academy? And he said, yeah. Oh, um, The rental comes with the first four of them. It's a box set.

There's this tone of apology. I'm sorry, you have to watch four. For the same price as renting one movie, we're going to have to give you all four of them. I'm really sorry about that. Yeah, that was his tone.

So that was my setup. Yeah, so I start watching it, and immediately. Here's my feeling about it. It's a kind of comedy that's, like, nicer than suits my character. It's really, it's a comedy that's accepting of everyone.

And so the jokes seem kind of obvious. Yeah. Kind of obvious, but they're inclusive. They include all those people who have no fucking sense of humor. They'll like it, too.

And it's nice, and that's kind of what it's about, you know? It's like. We're no longer excluding people who are not fit to be cops. Come on. Come on, join the force.

And it's nice. You don't have good movie taste? We're including you too. Come on in and watch Sully's Academy. So basically, I'm kind of like grudgingly like. okay, I don't like it, but I can see how it has virtues that I personally do not possess.

I am not that accepting. I hate a lot of people. So, you know, but that's kind of what it's like, you know. It's got, like, misfits and stuff, and. People who don't at all seem to be suited for what they're trying to do.

And so, in a way, it's, like, really nice. It's just, I'm not. Well, we knew that, but. But I would compare it, you know, in a way it's kind of like that movie Accepted. Have you seen that?

It's like these kids who don't get accepted in the colleges they apply. Oh, I've seen it. So they make up their own college. It's like one of Jonas Hill's first movies. Yeah, and I watched that movie a lot.

I remember the trailer for it. Yeah, I watched it. Much like this. That's what I was thinking. As I watched this, I was like, the key moments, the big jokes, I'm just like, that's in the trailer.

That's in the trailer. And I'd seen the trailer not too long ago. I was just like, you can wrap this movie up more or less in the amount of time it takes to put together a trailer. And, and I guess I don't mean that to sound as bad as it does, because I mean, there's, it is one of those. And, and this kind of goes back to like the, a couple of weeks ago when we watched the incredible shrinking woman, it's like, this is one of those that I watched on cable a lot as a kid.

And I guess it goes to show, because at the time I remember thinking it was a pretty funny comedy and, have not watched it since then, haven't really made an effort to. Again, I always thought Michael Winslow was pretty funny over the years, so I've sort of kept up with him. But most of the rest of the cast, most of them, the ones that made anything sort of of their names, sort of, well, they've come and gone at this point, but they didn't have anything to do with it by the second one almost. So it sort of took on a life of its own as the series progressed. But I don't remember seeing past the first couple, and I just sort of forgot about it for the most part.

So I haven't seen it in years and years. So going back and watching it, I guess it kind of... I was sitting there and we were just watching it today. And I'm sitting there with you, Marlena, and neither of us were really laughing. And I was just like, I guess it shows that I've had a little growth.

You wouldn't think so, but I guess I've cultivated my movie taste a little bit since I was a little kid because... Yeah, there's very little in this I found funny. There were some things that were amusing. There were a few things that I still liked, but did I ever have a laugh? Like a full-on mini-a-good comedy that I like these days?

Laugh? Not really at all. I didn't laugh, but I got some really cute pictures of your dog. Did you see this? That's what you were doing while I was sort of watching the movie.

I didn't laugh. They are adorable, by the way. But I did get good pictures of your dogs. They're adorable. I'm sure our listeners are really enjoying that.

Here, I'll email it to. Okay. Yeah, we can have that as our... Again, we're working in the new... These special extra benefits for the upper tiers of the Secret Circle.

So, yeah, this week that can be our special photo. What's your email address? Actually, I just sent it to the show. So, as I was watching it, It was driving me crazy, all the familiar faces, trying to place them where else they'd been at. At that point, yeah.

Everybody in that... Again, it's such an 80s movie. I mean, you realize that half the people in it either were already on something really popular at that time, or were just about to break and were going to be huge in the next 10 years, and then probably disappear off the face of the earth. Steve Gutmer. So.

Yeah. Well, see, before I saw this movie... All I knew about it, it's like there was the Simpsons reference from the Simpsons show that was sort of based on, like, the Freemasons. Yeah. And so I think there were the Stonecutters.

In the Simpsons. Yeah, I do remember that. And they were meeting together. And they had this song like, Who keeps back the electric car? Who made Steve Guttenberg a star?

These are the mysterious things that the Masons sort of say. No. It all puts it into context doesn't it do you. Ever read about the police academy curse no supposedly there's like a curse on all the actors that were ever in. That but they say that about most movies out there at this point.

It was funny to see like baby kim cattrall. Yeah she was actually almost tolerable. That's the thing early on you know i. Kind of like her i mean i know she was on Whatever that was. By the time she got to that, I hated her.

She was gross. Oh, yeah. Well, she is, but the thing I admire about her, and I'm not sure I remember what movie I decided this in, is she just does not care what she looks like on film. She's got more of that personality of like a comedic. Actress that she will do anything.

I saw her in some movie. I think it may have been called Live Nude Girls. Yeah, yeah. And there's a scene where she's. Like, trying to get her ex back, and so she's dressed up in this desperate outfit that...

You know those things like negliges or teddies or whatever they are that were designed? My theory is not to be sexy, but... to pretend to be trying to be so that TV sensors could allow. Yeah. To get the idea across that you're trying to be sexy without being naked, which is what you really want, but you can't always show that. So she's wearing something like that.

And then she starts crying. She's got her mascara running down her face and she's like crawling on the floor. And she just, it's like, God, she's got the nerve, um, to do what it takes. You know, she would commit to the part. So I kind of like her for that.

And, it was fun to see her in a different kind of role. It's funny, I didn't pay that much attention to not liking her early on, and then as her career went on, I got to more and more roles of like, man, I don't really like her anymore. And by the time she hit Sex and the City, I really did not like her anymore. But I go back and look at some of those now, and it's like those first couple, like this early on, she's almost tolerable, she's even almost cute in this role, which is, I cannot say that in later years, but She, she's almost likable in this and she doesn't really have a whole lot to do, but then around like not much later, I remember when we went back and watched, um, I think it's split second, the one with Rutger Hauer.

She's terrible in that. And it's, I mean, it's not like, it's one of those, she's painful to watch sometimes in her acting. Cause that's the thing. I'm a huge fan. big Trouble in Little China fan, but if there is an Achilles heel to that movie, it's Kim Cattrall. And you work around it, I've gotten to where I'm okay with the fact that she's in there now, but I mean, it's so, I mean, the way she delivers lines, I mean, you've got Kurt Russell delivering these really hammy, over-the-top lines and selling it, and then all she's got to do is be a normal person, and she's screwing that up, and I'm just like, yeah, so I mean, you watch her and stuff as time goes on, and you realize she's just not really a great actress.

Like at one point they worked her into the last Star Trek movie. Really? You've got her in full. I think she's a, I think she's a Vulcan. Yeah.

Some sort of weird alien. So you've got her in all the makeup and she's supposed to be doing this very like subdued, controlled alien character. And she still sounds like Kim Cattrall. She's still delivering these big forced lines like Kim Cattrall does. So yeah, she's, She's turned into a lot of bad performances, in my opinion.

I'm sure there are plenty of fans out there of her, but i'm not one of them so this was probably one of her more tolerable roles i suppose you know mahoney i'd like to spend the next month breaking you into little pieces. But i won't because you're. Bad you're bad for morale mahoney Oh, you look like the sweet little boy from next door. But you don't fool me, oh no. Oh, you're the devil.

And you're rotten to the core. And you're ruining my chances of training some men who might make pretty good cops. I agree, sir. I've been saying that all along. You make me sick!

Thank you, sir. I make everybody sick. But yeah, the Steve Guttenberg thing, it's funny, yeah, I was going to say, this puts it into context, doesn't it? Because this was the... pretty much the breakthrough role for him like he really i don't know that he had a big signature role before this came along and then later he got a ton of you know your three minute of babies and stuff like that that became huge but i never saw those yeah those are terrible too. I did see him on an episode of uh party down which again in his house and he starts doing like a reading of the one guy's script and i'm You know, I like that show.

In his later years, he's actually turned in some better, because that's the thing. He's also got that same kind of role on Veronica Mars, which it's the same producer. It's the same guy who put that party down together. So no surprise that he shows up on it. But that's the thing.

He can do that stuff. Do you remember the Steve Gutenberg conspiracy I talked about a. Long time ago? Yeah, you sent me the link and everything. You were thoroughly convinced that dude was dead.

Yeah, no. My friend had seen it on TV, and then he looked into it, and there was, like, this conspiracy that he died a long time ago and was replaced by his, like, twin brother. And then it was just, like, this really. John Gutenberg. Yeah.

George Gutenberg. It was, like, this crazy conspiracy thing. But, you know, no, I saw... I actually saw the... News clip that he, like, died, and now you can't find it anymore.

Yeah, you sent me the page. It was him, like, climbing a mountain in what country? It was off in another country. He was climbing a mountain, and he fell and died. And they, like, yeah, you forwarded me the link.

It was a full, not that they can't make shit up on the Internet, but, I mean, they put a lot of time into it. Like, it looked like a legitimate news source. It had photos of the place where he was climbing. Like, it really was, like, they put a lot of time into this. fake news story. I don't see I don't know that it was a I don't know if it.

Was like a fake news story or if it's like a it could be a Steve Guttenberg living or dying conspiracy thing you know not a. Modern yeah because he's so hounded with fans he has to pretend to be dead well he's so when you think you know the big ones it's Elvis Jim Morrison Steve Guttenberg. Exactly That's the trinity. Or what better. To make yourself famous again than to fake your own death?

It didn't work. The writer, the McSweeney's guy, heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Dave Eggers. Okay. And now he's like writing a movie or co-writing movies.

I think he worked on Where the Wild Things Are and then that movie with Meyer Rudolph and Jim Halpert. Are we there yet? Yeah. Okay, he worked on that. Anyway, I had some reason for bringing him up.

Oh, he founded a magazine when he was out of college called Might, and they did a prank thing where they ran a story about the kid on eight is enough. Dying adam richard. I think so it's sad that i know adam rich. The guy that they decided of all celebrities that would be the one that it would be funny they're like to do a prank about and then it went like horribly wrong and they felt awful and it's like wow we didn't know this was going to be such an awful thing we thought it was funny. You know sorry adam yeah.

Oh, man. Maybe somebody did that with Steve Guttenberg. Because he would appeal to you as somebody that's just like, yeah, you can knock him off and write a story about him. It'd be fun. It would be one of those, you know, just out of reach enough that you believe it.

Like, it's not like you're seeing him every week on TV. So you'd be like, no, he's not. But at the same time, he's a recognizable name. People still know who he is. Yes, he occupies that space. area.

That's a good candidate for that. And I was thinking about this as I was watching this. Is Ed Begley Jr. dead or alive? I can't remember. I never know.

Again, he's in Party Down. As far as I know, he's still up and running in the last few years. Based on his marriage. Because his wife is not really into the whole environmental conscious thing. He's always working.

He has a little show where... I remember the show, but Oh, and he was on Party Day. That's what I was going to say, yeah. He's on the old person show, yeah. Porn scene.

Yeah. Well, I couldn't remember if he died in real life or if it was like an episode of Veronica Mars, but for some reason I was thinking he was dead. No, they killed him on Veronica Mars. Oh, yeah, I know that, but... I was thinking that he was dead, and then I couldn't remember, and my phone was running out of batteries, so I didn't feel like looking it up.

I'll double-check. I always feel bad when you hear somebody's dead, and you thought they were already. That was Andy Reid. Like Elizabeth Taylor. I was thoroughly convinced.

But, I mean, I'd seen stuff on the news. I thought he died, like, a month ago. He was tired of it. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe he knew he was going to die, but I was like, didn't he die last month?

When Elizabeth Taylor died, I thought she'd been dead for years. Yeah. I seriously did. I was like, she's been dead for a really long time. No, no she hadn't.

I thought she was. I would have bet my life on. The fact that she was dead. You too would be dead then. I know.

According to our friends at IMDb, Ed Begley Jr. is still alive, so you can sleep tonight. It's okay. Yeah. It's just so weird. I'm still not sure.

What does it really mean to be alive? Well, of the rest of the cast, I mean, there's not a whole lot of notable. The one guy was really bugging me, and then I looked him up, and he played the rabbi on Seinfeld. Oh, yeah, the little accident-prone nerdy guy. Yeah, the little guy with the roundish glasses.

Again, he's funny on that. Where do I know that face? You know that rabbis are allowed to date. Yeah. That guy.

He's actually really funny. And I mean, that's the thing. A lot of these people are really funny in different situations, but it's, it's, yeah, it's something about that. And I think, again, I think it's just me at this point because I was also sitting there not really laughing, but I was also thinking of a lot of people I know personally in my everyday life who would turn this on, be it on cable, like get brand nonstop and just sit there and think it's the funniest thing. And I'm like, there definitely is a market for it.

I think I've just moved out of it now. I don't know. It's, it's, I mean, if there was anything I, I, uh, specifically a character and then a lot of the gags that went around them that I did end up liking as much as I kind of remembered it. Hightower is awesome. Uh, Bubba Smith.

I mean, it's a shame once again, if we have lost somebody, we just like two months ago, I guess, lost him. But, um, Yeah, it's a shame because he is so good at that. He's good at playing Bubba Smith. It's not like he had to act. All he has to do is show up and be huge and kind of the straight man.

Everybody else acts goofy, and he just looks at him like, what is wrong with you? We're kind of thinking the same thing. So his scenes all kind of work. I was trying to think what the good... Oh, like the brick wall.

Watching him just shove over the brick wall instead of climbing... Okay, that was amusing. Same thing with, like, we can just rip the front seats out and sit in the back. He probably had to do that in real life, because, damn, that guy is huge. So, I mean, some of his were probably...

How. Old is he, actually? I don't know. Do you want me to find out? I don't know.

No, just like watching him stand there next to everybody else who are like normal-sized human beings. I mean, he's like a foot and a half taller than a lot of them. He's just towering over everyone. So, I mean, the sight gag on him works probably as one of the more effective things in the whole movie. Game over.

I still think, I mean, that's the thing. It's funny that that's sort of what's carried over from this is the, the Michael Winslow thing. Like he, and watching it again this time, in my mind, he was like a huge part of the movie. He's, he's not even that big. I mean, he's got his scenes, but I mean, he's just there for that gimmick almost.

I mean, he's, They found his thing that he does, and they were just like, okay, we can work this in, and they wrote him this role. But within this first movie, anyway, it's like he doesn't even have a really big role. He starts off kind of being like the sidekick to Steve Guttenberg, and then he's sort of not even that. He disappears, yeah. He's just sort of one of the crew as it goes on, and he's sort of like every scene, he's sort of with a different character doing different stuff.

So it's not even like he's the second man. It's like, I don't know. He's just a guy. Kind of wish they gave him more to do because the thing is he's really funny and again he's really funny in like other it's weird that like the places he's turned up over the years and you know like stuff he was talking about in the interview I mean he's He's got all these weird roles that get, like, shoved in. And most of them have stemmed off of the same character and the same ability to do sounds and voices and stuff that he does.

But, yeah, watching this, it's weird how much he's not in this one, which I guess he makes up for as being the carryover. Like, it's funny that that's... When you mention Police Academy to people, that's probably the first thing that they think of. And maybe it's because he followed it so long. Like, he...

As I was looking through, like, there's, you know, a couple of them that carry over through the whole series, but he is pretty much the only one. There were three, the Tackleberry and then the Commander Lessard guy, the old guy. Yeah. Or the Commandeer, yeah, whatever they called him. Those three, I think, were in all the movies.

But Michael Winslow also followed it to be a regular on the Police Academy The Series on TV. So, I mean, he's stuck with his role. I mean, he realized what, you know, what I guess it was for his career and how much, you know, people identified him with this role in this series. I mean, he sort of followed it through to his death and is now they're trying to resurrect it and bring it back. So I think he's, it's funny that he became the connect for everybody.

I think even people who don't know that movie that well or don't know the series at all still like associate him and his gimmick of the sound effects, that's what has sort of stuck with pop culture for this movie. It's like nobody really remembers that it's kind of a mediocre comedy, but they remember him being funny, and he does the crazy sound effects, and it's carried over into the pop culture of at least at that point in time. I don't know if it's starting to fade off now. I'm sure kids now don't know who the hell he is. Well, I think probably the reason he wasn't more featured is The movie isn't really about the characters being, really having anything particular going for them.

No. It's about them being flawed, misfits. So that's why you get Steve Guttenberg, is because he seems kind of. He's the most generic of the bunch, you know? Yeah, he's like.

A generic Stanton, but he's not distinctive in... in the way that he seems to have like a, I don't know, a quality to his personality. He just seems like a reasonably likable doofus in the beginning. And then the other guy doing the sound effects, that's almost like a minor superhero doofus. Yeah. Because he's sort of a. a clowning around guy, but he has like unique abilities.

So if they feature him too big, it just becomes that. But they're wanting to have this ensemble of misfits. Well, and it's not even like super, I mean, his is actually the most creative. And I think that's why is because it wasn't part of the script. I mean, like he said, he got worked in.

It was his thing that he did. And they worked what he was already doing into the movie. But if you look at the rest of the cast, it's like, It's the most run-of-the-mill... I mean, it could be any Group of Misfits movie. I mean, you go through and it's already, like, right off the bat, you've got our main screw-up, but then you've got, like, You know, the accident-prone guy, and you've got the Latin lover, and the rich girl who wants to prove herself.

The fake Latin lover. The gung-ho gun guy. I mean, it's like the two kiss-asses, and the mousy girl. I mean, everybody is like their thing, you know? They've all got their little gimmick that sells them as to whoever they are in the crew, and that's all they are.

It's like they never really become anything more than that. They're just there to represent... that misfit you know they're like you're the overweight guy and you do you're kind of silly and you got a funny dog and that's your gimmick and does he ever do anything else no not really they just always use him as the weak link and they sort of continue the plot like that but again with all of them it's like nobody ever gets to do anything else really it's just they're there to be that gimmick. Yeah but i think the what makes the series probably why it succeeded is for being inclusive. I mean, you can see that little kids can get the jokes in it. And if they're tolerable enough for adults, I don't know.

I think that's the idea. You know, they start out. It was after they elected a woman mayor. She opens the floodgates. That's extra funny because I remember when I saw this that first time as a kid. we, the state we're sitting in right now, was one of two in the country that had first elected a female mayor.

We were one of the only ones. I'm like, these jokes are about us. It's nothing but jokes about putting a woman in charge of your state. Look what happens. We were sitting in one that was being run by a woman.

I was just like, oh, good. We're already the butt of your jokes. Thanks. I think probably the idea there is to show they take that And they sort of, you know, they quail up. They become, I remember somebody predicting, you know, when Dan Quayle was first on the team, he's like, well, he doesn't seem like anything, but maybe he.

Will quail up and rise to become. The occasion. Yeah. Or not. Yeah.

But, you know, in the end, very unbelievably, I mean, like the criminal thing, what the hell was his plan? Which one? None. He had no plan. He just had a couple of guns.

Oh, the main guy in the riots? He was just like a smart man. He was a crazy person, yeah. And so Hightower is like, I want to see you off those two cuffs. It's like, oh yeah, I could have done that in the last 10, 15 minutes at any time, but yeah, whatever.

That was a good time. Yeah. It was so thin. But I guess, you know, It succeeded. It worked.

So all I can figure is, well, they must have kind of calculated for the general audience. They definitely did. But here's my thing, and you were saying it's sort of inclusive, but at the same time, and a lot of this comes from the time period, it is mid-' 80s, and mid-' 80s, there weren't a lot of rules yet. I mean, a lot of the stuff that became PC the next decade and definitely today weren't in play yet so to me there's also a lot of other stuff going on that was just sort of okay like i mean the fact that right off the bat they're making sort of the sexist joke of woman mayor there's a few of those you know the whole they all had johnson's joke and i mean there there's a little bit of sexism at work there's very obviously casual racism And in a way, it's like they're trying to make it, okay, this is a bad character.

We don't like this kiss-ass guy anyway, so let's also make him a racist. But at the same time, it almost feels like it's also playing to that part of the audience, the part of the audience that is probably also thinking the kind of things this guy's saying. It's like it's not really damning him totally. He sort of gets it in the end. But really, at the same time, it seems like they're working both sides of that.

Like they're almost... It's just so casual, the way they throw it out there, that it's kind of the way that racist people are, that it doesn't mean anything to them. They say it because they say it all the time, and that's sort of how the movie played it. It's the same way. It's like, oh, it's okay to just throw these around here, and it really doesn't have any weight.

Hightower will kick your ass, but good, because he needs to. The casual way that they play it in there a couple of times really seems.... But it's weird. It's like, I don't want to totally condemn the movie for that, because they also have these, like... You know, Hightower's a great character, and you get Potts is the other, the woman, the mousy girl.

And she... I mean, she ends up... What little we see of her is a good character. Like, she becomes friends with Kim Cattrall, and you see her, like, you know, going to console Hightower when he gets fired. I mean, there's moments when it's like, okay, you're not totally sending it down that road.

It's like, okay, it's this... weird racist movie, but at the same time, it's like they don't care. Like, they're not really taking a stand one way or the other. They're just like, well, we're going to write these good characters, and at the same time, we're going to call them names, and, you know, we're going to. I don't know. It just felt a little too casual, the way they threw that out there.

I think, like you said, they just wanted the movie to appeal to everybody. Yeah, and I think that's what it was. And you sense there's a little hypocrisy in that. Yeah. I mean, it's like, we're going to...

We're going to throw this out there, so we're going to please the racist bastards that are sitting at home laughing at that because it was funny. But then, okay, we'll let Hightower flip the car over, and that makes it okay. No, not really. You know, it's just like it, I don't know, it's like they were trying to play both sides of that. And I think that always bothered me.

Like, I remembered that being in there, even, you know, having seen it years ago, that part stuck with me as I got older and older. I did want to go back and watch it for that reason because I remembered that bothering me even as a kid. There's a little bit of that, but I think if you watch other comedies from, like, that period of time. It was going on, yeah. There are things that are so striking.

I thought, you know, sometimes if you're my age and you have kids, and you want your kids to see some of the movies that were around, the ratings thing was different. Very different. It was different, and you'll get a comedy... And it will have, like, some things like, I don't know, voyeurism. Or, like, I think it was, what, Revenge of the Nerds?

That's a total R. Yeah, and you think, okay, now that's not really okay. You shouldn't do that, kids. We have Bush. We have Bush.

Yeah. That's for kids, right? I mean, all kids should put in a spy camera and watch. Let's see, yeah, because that's so much more accessible to kids. Yeah, that's true.

You know? I mean, that's the links they had to go to in the 80s to see that, where now you just log in. Yeah. You log on. You're done.

That's all you have to do. It is a different world, basically. Well, I mean, think in, like, the 50s, if a kid wanted to see a naked lady, he had to draw a picture of one. So, I mean, there you go. I do think a lot of, like, the feminine mystique is just, it's gone.

Yeah. It's gone because it's like that was part of the whole peekaboo of. I mean, you really didn't see... You didn't see anything. Yeah, but now anybody can see anything they fucking want.

Yeah. I think that's why people don't get married as often. Guys are just like. Seen it. Bye-bye the cow.

Yeah. Oh, but no, I mean, like you were saying, in the 80s, I'm not just strictly blaming this movie for doing that. I mean, it was acceptable, and it did turn up in a lot of other movies. But, I mean, there are ones that sort of knew how to play it. I mean, you watched... blazing saddles.

I mean, there's a hell of a lot of quote unquote racist things said there, but it's all done responsibly in my mind. I mean, it's, it's once again, you've got people, I mean, it's written by a black guy and a Jew. So, I mean, it's like they, they sort of felt like they had license to throw out whatever they wanted and they did. And it, but in a way it never feels like they're abusing it. You know, it's like they're doing what was, you know, quote-unquote right for the time period, and they're doing their jokes that were funny in the modern day, and they found a way to sort of mash it into this and make it its own sense of humor, and it works on that level, where this just seems like it's almost abusing it.

And again, not just this, but a lot of movies in the 80s just sort of made use of it because it was still okay to do it, if you wanted. It's funny, it just took the overly PC world to sort of take that out of play, and now you don't really get that stuff thrown around anymore. lightly anymore so on that note the other one that i i wanted to see what you guys felt on the same thing is the the um the homosexuality in this it's not portrayed as badly but again it's put in such a weird light like it once again it almost goes back and forth it's like you've got them you know making fun of the dog because it's queer and And the jackass calling him Mahoney Mahomo, which actually that sounds about right.

But once again, it's like grade school mentality. It's like that's the kind of jokes you get in fourth grade, probably earlier these days. But, I mean, it's that level of humor, you know? That's how I felt this whole movie was. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. It's definitely not trying to keep the kids at home. No. No. But it's funny.

Kids are a huge audience. People talk about Hollywood as a business, and people think business is run by the bottom line, but they're really just run by the people who run them. And if Hollywood was trying to make movies just to make money, they'd make mostly G-rated movies, but they'd make mostly R-rated movies. Which is what this is. That's the thing.

I mean, this. We keep coming back to the fact that it feels like it's for kids. Most of the comedy is so lowbrow and so slapstick and even just sort of offensively dumb sometimes that you think, well, in a kid's movie you'd write it off as, oh, well, it's a kid's movie. But not only is this not a kid's movie, it's rated R. It's loaded with other weird inappropriate humor and nudity and all this other stuff that I'm just like, this shouldn't even be geared towards kids in any way.

So what does that say about the people who did see it? I don't think it's geared towards kids so much as just really stupid people with bad senses of humor and bad taste in movies. But, you know, there really are a lot of people who have very, very weak senses of humor. It's amazing if you think about it because, you know, you tend to gravitate towards people who, like, will laugh when you laugh. Yeah.

So you wind up hanging up. But then if you're thrown together with other people, just randomly, there are people who you could not sell a good joke to. I remember one time, a long time ago, a friend of mine told me this joke. It was shortly after Mother Teresa's airplane skidded into a crowd of people who had come out to see her. And he told me, and this was in the news, and he said...

But afterward, they asked her how she explained it. How could that have happened? And she said she thought it was the fuel line. And I kind of like that joke, and I told it to this guy. Yeah, that's one that it's all or nothing.

You either get it or you're like, what are you telling me? It's like, that must be some new kind of humor I haven't heard of. I don't know what. And I could see him trying to work it out, and it was like, obviously it's not the fuel line. It would have to be like something with the wheels.

I don't know what she thinks could happen with the fuel line that would make a plane skid. But he just didn't get the joke at all. And that made it like, I kind of liked the joke, but after he didn't get it, I really loved it. It made it ten times funnier. Yes, it made it.

Watching him try to figure it out made it ten times funnier. Yeah, and so that's the only reason I'd even remember that joke, is this guy trying to, like, get it, and he just couldn't make it happen. I think, like, every time we get. Together, we've been, like, bringing up these, what was it, Lucy told the story of the guy who did the. Film of Fat Albert without the people in it.

And then there's, like, the peanut strip without the people. And then there's the Garfield without Garfield. And so it's just John sitting around at home saying things. Like, Am. I pathetic?

And then there's an empty frame. And then there's another empty frame. And then there's a shot of Odie drooling, and that's it. That would be really sad. But it's so much funnier because those cartoons existed because...

They were comforting to people who didn't have, like, a very highly developed. Sense of humor. And so now, like, it's possible to mess with them a little and make them funnier than they ever were. Funnier for a different crowd, yeah. Yes.

Reworking it for people with a different type of sense of humor. And I think one of the innovators in that was the guy who used to be, like, the editor of The Onion, like, way back, James Dickers. Yeah. And he did a comic called Jim's Life. And it was, there was no joke to it.

It was just. It was Jim's Life. It was just. A guy sitting at home watching TV. And then maybe later he goes out and gets food.

And people hated it. This is apartment 3G? Wait a minute. Well, I mean, it kind of sounds like... Rex Morgan and Dee.

No, no. Harvey... Picard. Oh, yeah. That's pretty much the kind of stuff he was doing, yeah.

It's just like, this is. What I'm doing. It's kind of boring and kind of sad. Now animate it. Yeah, that's kind of brilliant.

Draw me. You know? Oh, man. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess that's the divide on this movie and a lot of movies at that point.

I mean, it is weird to go back and look at them, but, I mean, this, like... Within the first few minutes, you've got a little childish name-calling, you've got a car stunt, and you've got ridiculous physical humor. If that's right up your alley, like, if all that is already making you laugh, you're good for the next hour and a half. You know, it's like that's, you know, plenty of it coming your way. I didn't get it.

Yeah. I mean, you start watching it, and it's. Like, oh, my. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, more than I remembered, too. It's kind of sad, actually. I didn't remember it going down that road. I don't know. It's a huge success.

I mean, yeah, we're seven movies, a TV series. They did an animated series. I can't remember if that's separate. I think that's a whole career. Yeah.

And it really, I mean, that's the thing you were saying, like, Geared for Kids. It's funny how much it went down that road. Like, it really, it starts off rated R. I think the next couple probably, I mean, right around this time is when they introduced PG-13. So I'm sure there were PG-13 in that middle area there.

By the end, they might have been PG, but I know the last one, Part 7, was made for TV. So obviously it's completely PG'd up. And then they go to an animated kid series down the line. So I mean, like, it really... Like, I guess they realized...

And they started taking that stuff away as they went. It's like, this one's got nudity and all this a little more racy stuff in it that they took out by the middle and started dumbing it down and making it even more kid-friendly. And by the end, it's an animated cartoon series. They realized what they were dealing with. It's funny that it took them seven movies to come to this conclusion, but watching the first one, I was just kind of like, yeah, that's what we've got here.

It's really kind of It is just comedies almost geared for kids or people that still sort of, and again, I think I'm pretty damn juvenile, but I don't know. I've at least developed my comedic sense a little bit since then because I didn't get it this time. I don't know. Yeah, I didn't really get it. I'm not going to lie.

I mean, not like it was like, it was just one of those things that's just so below my sense of humor that I didn't get it. It's got, I mean, again, it's got moments here and there and it's almost like just enjoyable moments. Not even like funny. Like I said, I never thought things were like laugh out loud funny, but just like Steve Gutenberg getting hot crayons to do his test. That was amusing.

You know, it was like, I was like, Oh, look at that. That's funny. He's got crayons or just, um, when, when, when hooks is driving the car around and singing to herself and just, Yay! She's just having a good time. And I'm just like, that's enjoyable.

I liked her character at that point. And I'm like, I wish there was more going on. Because I want to like everything else about it. I like this moment for a second. And then it goes back to being dumb again.

Then we get a horse's ass joke. And I'm just like, really? Yeah, so I... I don't know. It's a very frustrating movie to watch this time around.

Yeah, I guess for me, my feeling was it's just not. It's just nicer than I am. Yeah, and again, maybe that's that broad appeal. But it's so weird, again, that it's going for this broad appeal and almost like it's open to everybody, but there's this weird undercurrent of racism and making fun of gay people and making fun of, you know, let's make fun of the fat guy because he's fat. And I'm just like, it's inclusive, but at the same time it's sort of, i don't know it's very mean spirited when it feels like it can get away with it i don't know i.

Would say it is mean spirit i don't know about very it seems like it's kind of like soft you know it's. But the fact that it's like it it sucker punches you though you know it's so nice and and you know dumb down kids comedy here and then it just comes out with something mean and you're just whoa what the hell was that where did that come from and I don't know. It's weird. And again, I think it is that product of the times. I think you could, you could do that in the eighties and it was still acceptable.

And I guess that's why, I don't know. Especially I think the gay thing has changed massively. That's the thing. And that's, that's probably the least, well, no, there's those weird comments, but like the bar in a way is not really portrayed negatively. Like it's these weird homophobic characters that come off looking bad in those things.

So it's funny that that's, probably the funniest running joke is the fact that they work that bar and you guys have only seen the first one that bar is a running joke throughout the series there's always somebody trying to escape something and they duck in a door and it's that bar again and they're back in the blue oyster club or whatever the hell it is and it's like it's funny because i mean it's it you know they're they're the tough guys you know it's like so they can't get out of it but at the same time you know, they're slow dancing. Like that, those scenes, again, were kind of the more amusing. And I didn't feel like they were really like in those scenes. I don't feel like they were being like anti-gay, but then there's other comments in there.

It's like, doesn't he throw out like sleepiness for fags or something? Like, I was just like, did he really just say that? Again, it's 84. You can get away with that. But I was just like, So you're presenting, again, it's so unbalanced.

This scene over here, which just seems kind of funny and isn't really damning of anybody other than these weird characters that get stuck in there, but we don't like them anyway. So that scene could have been all right by itself. And then they throw out, you know, I don't like a queer dog. And I don't know. It's just so unbalanced.

But that's, I mean, yeah, that bar turns up at least in the first four movies out of the series. Yeah. As a continuing running. Yeah, good for you. Yeah.

And that's, yeah, they continually get less and less funny if that's possible. So I. Don't know. I don't know. I like little, little tiny pieces out of it.

I still like Michael Winslow. I think his character is funny and it is funny that he sort of crossed over into pop culture while the rest of this sort of disappeared off into oblivion. But, um, he's fun. Bubba Smith is fun. Um, Yeah, I mean, there's moments here and there that are okay, but most of the rest of it, I'm surprised how much it doesn't hold up for me.

Yeah, I also really watched a lot of anything in those years. I mean, when it came out. But, yeah, it's dated. Definitely. It's a very...

It's a different world, and it's funny that... I mean... It is one of those. Like, I almost want to blame the sense of humor on the time period, but that's not realistic. I mean, there's plenty of good stuff made at that time, made well before this time, that were legitimately funny and had an entirely different sense of humor.

So it's out there. It's like this was just playing on that lowest common denominator level of comedy that, I don't know, just doesn't hold up for me now. But what are you going to do? Yeah. So, I guess that rounds out Police Academy.

Okay, and we're going to come back and do Police Academy 2. And 3 and 4 and Mission to Moscow. I think I would just have to put in my resignation. Well, that's kind of why I started with the first one. I figured we probably weren't going to get to the rest of the series.

I had best hopes for the first one as a nice little tie-in for Michael Winslow, but I don't know. It didn't really work out. Again, still like Michael. He's, you know, about the most enjoyable thing in the movie. It's a shame he's got such a small part in this one, because.

Oh well. What are you going to do? Don't be shy. We'd like to hear from you. So give us a call at 502-365-5565.

Or you can email us at geeks at movie meltdown.com. And just stop by the website for our frequent updates. That's movie meltdown.com. It's part of your problem, you know. You haven't seen enough movies.

All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. And now, on with the show. Okay, kids, get out your decoder pins. I don't know how to make a pin. I'm going to have to work this out.

I don't even know what a decoder pin is, really. Sorry. You're supposed to be in the club. You're in charge of the club. Come on.

I could tell that tonight's message was really important. It is time for the Movie Outdown Secret Circle reveal of the next exciting episode. And it actually is for some of us. I don't think it's either of you guys. But next up, we will be going on another road trip to another crazy convention.

Although this one's kind of huge. I'm not specifically plugging it so far since they're not really working with us. So I'm tired of them. But we'll still go because we want to go hang out with Randy. And last time we met a couple other people that we've met through the show.

So we're definitely going to go there. And I'm working on a nice little tie-in for one of the actors. So we'll get to that. I'm not sure where the movie will come along. I don't know if it will be in the...

I'm sure there will be at least a couple of episodes that come out of this road trip. So I don't know if it will be in the first one. But somewhere in the next couple of upcoming episodes... Our next Sofa Theater feature, we'll be discussing the film Somewhere in Time, the 1980 Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour movie. It should be very interesting, and there may, there just may be a very special guest involved in that one.

You'll just have to tune in and find out. Is it going to be Jane Seymour? It might be if she's at this horror convention that we're going to. Wouldn't that be awesome? She still looks good.

Yeah, I'm not going to argue that. And she looks very good in that movie, by the way. She looks exactly the same. It's weird how much she's held up and doesn't look badly surgery either. She looks like she's just held up amazingly well.

Sleeps in Tupperware like in that episode of Eerie in New York. Oh, man. So, yep. That should be interesting. Somewhere in time.

Next up. And as far as music, again, if there's anything that carries through and is the representation of the Police Academy franchise, it's that song. That same song kicks in every time they go in the bar. So, looking into it, that song is called El Bimbo. The one that's in the movie is actually a cover of it done by some sort of orchestra that does it, but it is called El Bimbo.

It is a tango that is from 1974 from a group called Bimbo Jet. That's awesome. So, and yeah, I mean, it's El Bimbo. It's a tango. You would think this is some sort of.

You would think a bimbo.... In American slang, it's a woman who is like a tart or a hussy. But actually, in Italian, a bimbo is, the O is a masculine ending. So a woman would be a bimba. And a bimbo is what was termed on Seinfeld, the minbo.

That one did make sense on there. Yeah. I'm going to look up what bimbo actually means, because there's a brand of food that you can buy at Walmart in the Mexican food aisle that's called bimbo. Oh, yeah, it might be something there. It says, the use of this term began in the United States as early as 1919, where it was used as a slang term for an unintelligent or brutish male.

Interesting that it's gone an entirely different direction as the years went on, because it's rare that people use it in referring to a man. Okay, the word derives itself from the Italian bimbo, derived from bambino, a masculine gender term that means male, baby, or very young, child. Interesting. Very weird how that has been bastardized over the years. But then this is El Bimbo, and it's a tango, so you would think it was some sort of Latin-oriented thing.

Then looking into the band, Bimbo Jet is a French Euro disco group. Figure all of that out. I don't get any of it, but the song is kind of fun. So we will go out with El Bimbo. Otherwise, that about does it.

We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. Let's dance the bingo. Bingo, bingo, bingo.

Bingo, bingo, bingo. Let's dance to the beat Slowly, slowly Over here, over here, over here Over there. Over there, over. There Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Bingo!

Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! Oh, you know, you told your dream.

I had this dream the other night. I had a series of dreams. I woke up feeling horrible. I haven't had a nightmare since I was like four or five years old. But I had this dream where I was just an asshole.

Wait a minute. This wasn't a dream. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown. Produced and edited by the Oddity Studios. With opening music performed by the Empire. for more on how to