280: Hal Sparks and the Tales of La La Wood

Hi, this is Lily Tomlin, and I'm moving Meltdown with Brian. Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition, and yawn. And stretch and try to come to life. Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumping, out on. The streets the traffic starts jumping, and folks like me on the job from 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. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown.

I'm Brian and this week we'll be joined by special guest co-host Mr. Hal Sparks. Now, you may know Hal as a stand-up comic, an actor, a musician. Take your pick. Hal is a man of many talents.

Now, I could go on and list off a bunch of his previous credits, but I remember Hal saying when he does his live show, he doesn't really like a big introduction. I get the feeling he just likes to come out and represent himself, and I think that's also the best way to handle this episode. So with that, let's get to know Hal Sparks. Looking back on a track. Going to run my way.

Looking back. Well, I like to get into it early, so I guess let's start with early childhood. What was young Hal like? Were you actually from... Well, you weren't born here, but you were raised here?

I was born in Cincinnati, only because that was the nearest hospital without chickens in it. My grandmother lived there, and I think my mom was visiting her when she went into labor. But it was... My mom had met my dad in Cincinnati. We have a lot of traffic up there, apparently.

And at one point, she... Yeah, I was born in the same room she was born in at Christ Hospital on her birthday. September 25th. Yeah, absolutely. It was pretty impressive.

In room number five. And yes, there was a meteor shower that night and a comet overhead. Clearly a UFO. Some sort of alien walk-in. That's the latest.

Insofar as, at that point, and as soon as we were done, we split. We went back to, you know, we lived in Kentucky. So, lived in West Virginia for like six months or something while my dad worked on an architectural project and then The rest of the time was pretty much Peaks Mill and Louisville. So how was your experience as a kid? I mean, it sounds like it wasn't much of a city area, Peaks Mill.

Oh, it was straight up sticks. I mean, it's funny because in the years since, Peaks Mill has become kind of like this semi-areodite, you know, wealthy mid-suburb of Frankfurt where, you know, like some of the rich people from Frankfurt go to live away from the riffraff. Nobody has a functioning farm, but they got a lot of land cheap early. They've got the money and they feel like working the farm. Exactly.

And it's really just a grass buffer from other human beings. So, but Peaks Mill was straight up just elementary school, general store, Christian church, two lane bridge, one lane bridge at one end. There was a two lane bridge at the other side. So I suspect that many people arrived and then were not allowed to leave or something like that. The bridge only went one way.

Yeah, exactly. You couldn't get out. Yeah, it was an entrance only. It was a Stephen King story, wasn't it? Yeah, totally.

I almost said exit only, but that's Owenton, which is why you never want to go there. No fun whatsoever. But, yeah. I mean, how do you, again, being where you end up now, it's like how are you dealing with that? I guess at the time you were probably... trying to get interested in like movies.

Yeah well i didn't i didn't know it was a possibility you know the when you're when you grow up in peaks mill kentucky the idea that you could be a singer or a actor or comedian is absurd like i didn't even know what a comedian's job was i knew they existed my dad the way i got in a stand-up was because my dad did some fret work on a guy's mandolin i like fixed these two mandolins for this guy and the guy couldn't afford to pay for it. So he gave him part of the money and then in exchange he gave him these two crates of records, LPs. And a full quarter of these albums were comedy. There were like 30 LPs in there from everything from Godfrey Cambridge to Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Steve Martin. Gosh.

There was a collection of like old radio comedy, Groucho Marx and Jack Benny and that kind of stuff that was like a four record set. And the The records were so thick because they had a tin center. They used to dip them in vinyl before they had vinyl that was sound enough to do it. And I would just listen to those things on and on and on. And I loved the idea of doing it.

And I knew that quoting those made everybody in the family laugh, made my friends laugh. But I didn't know what the fuck these guys did for a living. Like, how do you get paid for that? That's still a question. Well, it seems like an absurdity to me.

And when I was a kid, I thought it was like albums of bird song. You know how they go in? you take a mic and they just hold it in the woods and listen to some dude chirp. Nature. And it was just like, oh, this guy just does this. Comedians in their natural habitat.

Right, exactly. And, you know, they would just kind of capture this and these guys would just do this. You know, that's six, seven year old logic, you know. By the time I was 10 or so, I was like, I loved Star Wars and I loved Raiders of the Lost Ark and I wanted to be Han Solo and I wanted to be Indiana Jones and I realized that Harrison Ford, that dude, got to be both. So I was like, I want his job because he gets to be both those things.

That's why he escaped the franchise. Right. Totally. And so in that, I kind of got this idea that I wanted to do what he did in movies. But again, I didn't know that it was...

And it's not a job in Kentucky. It isn't. It wasn't allowed to be for a long time. It still isn't. Right.

And that's important because places like this are meant to... They're entirely... It's to foment anger and dissatisfaction. That's what the whole purpose of states like Kentucky are. It is.

You're supposed to make you mad at your life so you fucking do something, right? I suppose so. Look at all the... I forced myself to do this every week now. There you go.

I was dissatisfied with everything else. There you go. Right. And it makes you do something. Most people don't even do anything.

Most people in this setting don't, unfortunately. But a good portion of them, you know, like the people who've struck out, it's because the environment they were in was so non-conducive to how they wanted to live their life or what they felt like. And I felt like that my whole life. I felt like I was born in the wrong place in many ways. And, you know, and people can take that as an insult to the environment, but it isn't.

It's just... You know, it's almost like being born transgender to some degree or something like that. It's an intrinsic feeling that nobody else gets. I shouldn't be this way. Yeah.

I'm not supposed to be here. And it's biochemical almost. And so I moved up to Chicago to live with my dad. Chicago doesn't, you know, there's a little bit of entertainment is magic in Kentucky and in most of the South. Entertainment is magic.

You get tapped on the shoulder and, hey, we're going to make you a star. which is complete horse shit, but it's great for the mythology of Hollywood. It's what keeps everybody trying for that. It's like winning the lottery to someone. Yeah, except their version of trying is like buying a ticket. It's not bettering your skill, unfortunately.

It's going on American Idol, but not really having anything. To back it up. Any songs. Yeah. Not having the skill to win.

I've got the genetic pipes, but I don't care enough to write songs, which is really what, if you look at what your idols are like musically... they don't just sound good. And in many cases, don't sound good at all. If you go from John Lennon to Bob Dylan to Brian Johnson of ACDC, a lot of them sound, quite frankly, by the American Idol factor, like shit. But they're stars because they bring themselves to it and they sacrifice and they're not afraid to show who they are. There's an element of the American Idol contest aspect that's very popular, this way my mom watches that shit all the time, is that how far can you skate... on just what you were given.

That's the thing. So many of them are so talented technically, but yeah, you, you watch as they start critiquing them. They're like, you, you don't really have the style. You don't have the, you don't carry yourself. You don't have the presence, you know, just cause you haven't done it.

Yeah. You know, and this idea that you can have it without doing it is unfortunately pervasive, uh, in the arts. And, you know, and then that's why there's so many, that's why the failure rate is, you know, 98 to 2%. Yeah. And, It's not because the industry is that harder that there are that few jobs.

Quite frankly, you see so many people doing the same job in so many different movies, you could go, there could be nine people who could play all the roles that... Especially now. Yeah, exactly. But they're not going to get through, not because the industry is against them, not because it's tough, but because they give up too soon. And so I just knew I was going to do it.

That was as simple as that. Succeed or fail, you just knew you wanted to do the job. No fail at all. Never any failure. Failure is never an option.

Won't be. Because the idea is that failure has a clock. Success does not. Even dying trying. is still succeeding. I feel like if you just get to the point of you're making your living that way, you're kind of successful because you're doing what you want to do, as opposed to just giving up is failure, truthfully.

Absolutely. In the abstract, failure is not meeting or exceeding your goals. true dream to some degree, or at least not shooting for it. I think just making a living at it if your dream was higher is failure. As a matter of fact, that's like the American Idol thing. That's like skating on your natural talent.

Skating on your natural talent to a baseline is a dick move. If you believe in that sort of thing, it's like spitting in the face of God. Like, thanks for the great pipes, but fuck you, I'm not going to I'm going to work the lounge. I'm not going to learn to write songs. Right, yeah, I'm going to go, I'm going to be the, like, you know, whatever, two Jacks and a Jill that, you know, crowd, they represent Spinal Tap that plays at the Ramada Inn.

Yeah. Amazing. There's tons of great singers all over this country. You see them, they're like, they can fuck up a song. Like, you have not believed, like, oh my God, this person is great.

But there's nothing original about them because cultivating that is the hard part. Well, I mean, at that point in Chicago, you. knowing now you have all these different areas that you go into what were you drawn to first was it because you had that roots in comedy listening to it but I know musically you you know yeah. None of none of they're all in all of that to me I believe they're all together I think they're all expressions because you it's not the they're like delivery systems you know what I mean you take sugar in your coffee you eat candy occasionally and sometimes you have ice cream they're all delivery systems for sugar You wouldn't go, somebody needs to fucking stop with the variety and sugar and just give us cubes and knock it off.

And that's arguably what I always feel like when people go, what's the one you would do if you couldn't do the others and all that stuff? Which is an abstract based on a puritanical work ethic that's from Philippians. And I have no interest in that behaviorally or intellectually or philosophically at all. And I think it's, especially when it comes to the arts, it's very suffocating. Yeah.

This is so funny because you see this in China versus the U.S. I see this a lot. America is supposed to be the bootstrap. You're an individualist. If you can do something, you have the right to try and do it as hard as you can do it, as much as you want, because this is America and you're free.

China is supposed to be the place where it's communist. They set a roof for you. They pick one job for you, and if you try to do any other job, they'll push you back into it. You're not allowed to do everything else. It's exactly the opposite.

In the United States, if you are an artist and you act, if you try to sing or do something else, everybody looks at you cockeyed or thinks you're just trying to be a dick or you shouldn't be allowed to shine that way. And you should just pick one thing and stick with it so you don't confuse us all. In China and in England too, because this applies to most of Europe and most of Asia, if you can't sing, dance, act, host, do comedy, television, and movies together, You're considered kind of a loser. Well, I think we got to that in the middle there. Like, if you go back, like, vaudeville, that was just what you did.

And then we hit that, like, middle area of, like, again, I think it's when the rest of America started doing that. It's like we hit that in revolution. It's like, okay, everybody else in the country got a job. You pick one. So it's like it's finally now we're starting to see, like, they will allow you.

Like, the big enough celebrities will be like, oh, okay, you can put an album out if you want. Right, exactly. And be in a movie. But, like, it took. Up until, like, it was mid-90s, really, before you could kind of skate by doing that.

It's like, it was so, like, looked down upon. Yeah. All the way up through the 80s and early 90s. The irony is it looks like crash commercialism. Crash commercialism to most people.

And so, which it isn't. You know, I find, and the reason why I do as many things as I do, is because art is about either imparting emotion or understanding. Either a clear picture of an emotion or a clear picture of an alternate circumstance so that other people... can live a life without having to go through the whole bit of it. So you play a farmer so people can watch a movie about a farmer and learn what it's like to be a farmer and understand the farmer when they run into him better rather than have to hang out with farmers all the time because it's not possible because they live in, you know, upstate New York or whatever. It's just a window into some other reality that you don't have.

Yeah, so understanding and emotion. These are your two jobs or whatever. But each of these art forms, you can only portray certain emotions that are germane to the art. Yeah. You can do rage in music.

In my band, I can write songs and I can scream my guts out and veins on my neck can pop out and I can genuinely gin up the emotion of rage and it serves me in projecting a song. On stage doing stand-up, it's not appropriate and it would kill the humor. Real rage would destroy the joke of it. You can do annoyance. Annoyance is tremendously funny, but you can't do annoyance in music because it seems like a parody.

Yeah. Then it's just... Then you're not doing serious music. You're just writing about things that are... Then you become kind of a pop novelty act, which might as well be comedy to begin with.

Then it's just sort of one joke. And then once you've gotten that, you're like. It's over. Yeah. And then with acting, you can do any emotion you want, but you need permission.

It has to be in the script. It has to be at the heralding of the director. It has to be appropriate to the character. So. even though you might feel like I need to rage today, I've got that in me and I've got, and it serves the art or I've got to be overjoyed today. It may not serve what you're actually shooting that day.

It may serve you as the artist, but not the art. No, exactly. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

You know, when I did shows with Doug Stanhope in, uh, in England, we were, you know, we would talk beforehand or whatever, and he was in a great mood, you know, we joke around or whatever. And then you go out and be this kind of, sardonic angry cunty human being that he loves to be and his audience expects and he and and at one point we were kind of just talking about how you know if they i was like if they knew it that you were smiling before a show they'd they'd lynch you you do realize there's something and he went out and he kind of addressed it on stage he's like i can i had a great day today i read a book by myself in a park and all this stuff and then i got to come here and be miserable for you bastards right i And there's an element to it, he plays a character and there are emotions not germane to his character.

And he's not allowed to purvey them and still maintain his character. And in that instance, he might as well be Jim Varney playing Vern or the Hey Vern character or Carrot Top or something at a certain point. Because you've got to, again, you're a delivery system for that sugar. Right. Well, as you get into comedy, you do kind of have to decide how you're going to approach it.

So I guess for you, did you feel like you had to find your voice? Is it a different identity for you? All those classes teach you to find your POV and have a distinct POV. And I remember very distinctly going, tell me what... Richard Pryor's distinct POV is.

Tell me what George Carlin's distinct POV is. I mean, later he became a curmudgeon, but he was a dissector. Observation. Right. That's what they did best.

But he did all of it. He didn't go, you know, he's the fat guy with the fat jokes. He's the bald guy with the bald jokes. He's Italian and he tells Italian jokes. He's Mexican and he does Mexican jokes.

And that's what they mean. That's what they really mean. Yeah, I wasn't even talking. I'm just like view as, I guess as the artist, like, Do you feel you have to find, or at the time, had to find who you needed to be on stage? Because I know with some people.

You kind of click into a different mode when you get on stage. I'm the same person on stage as I am off. I just am slightly louder because of the nature of I don't have as much time. I talk quicker and louder when I'm on stage than I do when I'm off stage, but only just barely. But mainly because if you and I are sitting here, we could yap for three hours.

But I know I have a limited amount of time to make an impact. So in that circumstance, I am the same person that if I had to run into a place and tell people the building was on fire, I'm not the same person I am in conversation when I'm not running in to. Go, this fucking building is on fire. You have to be a different version of yourself. You have to heighten who you are because the message is needed and you've got a limited timescape.

So. There is something to, the more raw and honest you, the better, I think. I think so. That being said, I did have to change my act slightly when I became famous. Because the understood element of what I was talking about in my act, I understood to be at that time, I'm right and no one is listening.

I'm trying to help you people, and no one is listening to me. And as soon as I got on television, the perception is everybody listens to you, whether you deserve it or not. Yeah. Especially in this country. Right.

It came across as false. Yeah. It came across as fake. I don't know. Since then, has it changed, or you've just sort of honed in on this one?

No. No, it kind of has clipped back to that, because I do so much extreme... So many extreme projects. Most of what I'm known for now as an actor, between Queer as Folk and even Lab Rats on Disney, myself and the woman who plays my wife, Angel Parker, we're the first mixed-race, black-white couple in a lead role on a network show. There's been all kinds of secondary, but we're the first ones where this is the main family, we have a mixed-race family, that's that.

It's a big deal. That's not the point of the show. That's a huge step. It's awesome. That is not the gimmick of the show.

No, not at all. It just is, and it's really terrific. It kind of reminds me of what they supposedly said when Sigourney Weaver was, you know, like cast in Alien, essentially. The producers were talking to the screenwriter and they went, you know, we love the script and we love the changes and all this kind of. One question, though, and this is weird.

Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm dumb. Is Ripley a man or a woman? Because it didn't say. Exactly.

And while they were on the phone, they looked at each other, like kind of covered the phone and went, it's a she. She's a woman. She's a woman. Okay. And that was that.

That was what made Ripley an alien woman. That's amazing. That moment. And it should be like that. The character was written ambiguously, and what she infused in it, her fighting emotion, which kept her femininity, but her toughness, which didn't eliminate her femininity, but also created something deeper in the character than some macho dickhead dude. was terrific.

So it made it her character and it made it what you liked about her. Exactly. And so that, you know, playing this role, being on Queer as Folk, like now people are like, Oh yeah, this dude is kind of yelling fire in a crowded theater. Well, is it, I mean, as far as getting into acting, was it something you specifically set out to do or you said you wanted to do? I was just a natural part of it.

Cause at that time, um, I was really into, uh, Billy Crystal, too. Billy Crystal put out a comics line, this special he did, which is almost a one-man show, but it had so many characters in it. It was incredible. And I remember watching this going, this is fantastic. This dude is shoehorning everything he could possibly do short of tap dancing into his stand-up act.

Still manning a mic, no gimmicks, no bullshit, no picking up a guitar, no playing slides. Just him. And within the context of that, he brought it, man. In his day, like, yeah, he delivered on all that stuff. And he was acting at the same time.

He was in, you know, one of my favorite movies at the time was when I had moved to Chicago was Running Scared. It's set in Chicago. And he and Gregory Hines are just fantastic in it. And again, it was, you know, Gregory Hines, one of those guys, accidental crossover. I was always disregarded as an actor.

Because he was a tap dancer first. And we still regarded him as nothing but a dancer. But you look at that career he had. And he chews the scenery with everybody. He made a movie with De Niro.

And De Niro is ice skating uphill to keep up with how natural and comfortable Gregory Hines is in character. Amazing. Amazing. And so wanting to do that just with every fiber of my being was like a light switch going on. There was no gradual to it at all.

It was like, Oh, that. I'm going to do that. Well, you were, I guess, was it right after graduation, moved to LA? Yeah. Packed all my shit in my car and went.

So how do you approach it from that point? Is it like acting lessons or improv? No. All of that? No, I didn't.

No schooling. Yeah. Schooling was sort of the bane of my existence. My high school had a very big performing arts wing. Didn't really have a division, but it was a, New Cherry High School has a, theater the size of the Civic Auditorium, basically, Gaffney Auditorium, which is this giant, we did a two-story set in the first play I was in, in Brighton Beach Memoirs.

Like, huge. That's impressive for high school. And high school then, I mean, now there are some that get tons of money thrown at them. Yeah, but they're mainly art schools. This was not.

But there's like Senators kids that went to this school. It was a very rich neighborhood. It got all the resources it could possibly ever want. And from that, I distinctly had this idea that this is all the schooling I need. And I went to Second City.

I was studying at Second City when I was in high school at the same time. I still feel that's the best acting school in the country because it teaches you all you need to know, which is know your point in the scene, don't have an agenda, and listen. Was it more skit-oriented for you or improv? Oh, sketches, yeah. Straight-up sketches.

Because the idea is you do improv to get the sketches. That's what Second City, that was the difference with, like, Groundlings, which I fucking hate. Just straight improv drives me crazy. But sketches can be amazing. If done right.

Even Groundlings was like, take your crazy character and just set them loose amongst normal people. And to me, there's a hostility to the audience in that. And to your fellow performers. If you can't write to the strengths of the other people in the scene... what Groundlings always did to me was it take great comedic performers and make them sit down and do waiter sketches where the waiter is crazy. And the person sitting at the table is offended and freaked out on their date night or whatever.

And just scene after scene, shame shit. And where, whereas second city was like you improv and everybody brings their a character and it's not competition. Everybody's just trying to like make each other laugh more than anything. And I love that place for it. And so in learning that, like, not having a joke even though I did stand up and I had a place for my joke so I didn't ever have to push it which was great and then I was in bands in high school because I wanted to be in a band in high school.

Fuck you that's the band mentality yeah right. Isn't it and the idea that you know everybody wanted to tell you what to do just like you know really like settle down focus on this and I'm like I am focusing I'm focusing on being an entertainer I'm focusing on being a performer and my performance comes in several different shapes executives and CEOs and middle management people and even people on a factory floor have more than one job. It's the same job. They're still building a car, but they build the car in meetings with their coworkers, in design meetings, sitting at home, looking up stuff on their competitors. There's many different ways you do the job of building a car as a CEO or as a middle management person or on the line, whatever.

And that's what I'm doing. I'm just on the line working. doing the three jobs that do what my job is, which is really understanding. And even stand-up is... I read a book recently that was sort of a postulate on what stand-up is for, what comedy is for in society, in a highly evolved animal, why we come up with jokes, where that comes up. And it's because the more complex social structures become, the more frustrating they can be and damaging to you on a cellular level. so comedians literally our job is to debug the social structure so everybody can realize it's not just them and they can move past it otherwise what we do is we hit these walls of frustration and that's what the school shooters of the world are about or these fucking Clive and Bundy cunts are you know it's just because these people are they've stopped at a point where the world is too confusing for them and they can't negotiate their way out and a comedian's job is to go You can't negotiate your way out of that, so blow that part off.

But you can negotiate your way out of this, and this is how you do it. Next time somebody says something like this, you whip this on them. And that's what we do. Yeah. Well, it is finding those, because that became sort of a cliche in that big boom in the 80s that everybody was kind of drawing from that same material.

But I guess it is you finding the common situations in life. That you can find the comedy in. And that, I guess, diffuses what everybody goes through in their everyday life. Right. And I think what Really what people mean in a distinct POV is you can't hit the same topics everybody else is hitting all the time unless you have the most unique, obtuse version of it.

Which some people do. Yeah. It's amazing when you see somebody that just comes from an angle that nobody else could ever do. Right. I mean, that's arguably what Carlin did with The Greatest Bullshit Story Ever Told or A Place for My Stuff.

A Place for My Stuff is the quintessential... way of dealing with consumer technology and society. Just like the idea of buying and having, you know, as a main purpose in life is fucked up. And a lot of people felt empty after being able to, after the 50s and 60s and being able to buy their way into the middle class, felt an emptiness about having all this stuff, but not what to do with it or what, you know, what it meant to them or any of that stuff. And so he writes this bit that basically wraps it all up. And you feel less attached to your stuff or other people's shit, as.

He would say. And the same thing with, you know, the greatest bullshit story ever told is essential diatribe on religion. You know, the invisible man in the sky who watches you every minute of every day. And if you do something wrong, he'll send you to a place of fire and burning and death and torture forever and ever. But he loves you and he needs money.

That piece wraps it up. You don't need to hit it again. It's like Bill Cosby's bid on dentists. Like, other people have taken a pass at dentists. You can't do that.

Nobody needs to. Yeah. And dentistry hasn't changed that much to where, you know, the next time there's a big update in dentistry where we've all shifted, then there'll need to be a new bit. Well, that was him in the family situation, too. Like, he, that himself special where he just, like, defined it so much that they built a sitcom around it, you know?

Well, that was what they used to try to do. Yeah. But the other thing, too, is... But that was kind of the first one, really. Mm-hmm.

Sort of. The first one that seemed like it was very specific. Jack Benny's stand-up became a radio show, became a lot of vaudeville, became shows or movies. But that seemed like a tailor-made, like, this is the way we sell this. Good evening.

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Sounds better. Hi, I'm Leah Thompson. You're listening to Movie Meltdown. 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. I don't know what they have to say. It makes no difference anyway.

Whatever it is, I'm against it. No matter what it is or who. Commenced it, I'm against it. Your proposition may be good, but let's have one thing understood. Whatever it is, I am against it.

That's good. Cool. Don't wear them out. 25. It's going to be like an hour before I'm even on stage, for fuck's sake.

Yeah, so the goal is what people mean when they say find your POV. They don't know anything. They use that phraseology. What they think they mean is some sort of, like, you know, find your take on the world. They don't mean that.

What they mean is narrowcast your jokes to an easily digestible format. His show's starting in the background. So, I mean, there's a lot of room for a lot of different voices out there, and everybody does need to handle it. And you've got, you know, the Mitch Hedberg, Stephen Wright world, where you're just... fucking with language. That's all you're doing.

You're just inverting words. And this is what Groucho Marx did. He just inverted words. And Carlin had bits like that, too. Carlin dissects words.

Oh, yeah. Better than anybody. Yeah, breaks down the central structure of how we use them and the falsity of them. All they do is flip them. Yeah.

Ant farm. Those fuckers didn't grow shit. It's just a use of... It's not... Yeah.

You know... And there's room to do that with a lot of things. I have a bit about cake and how it's the most overused word in the world. That kind of stuff. Because we use it for cheesecake, which isn't a cake.

It's a pie. But nobody would eat cheese pie because it's disgusting. And you never put fucking icing and candles on cheesecake. Just stop. It's cheese pie.

Just call it cheese pie. And secondly, urinal cake. You just tack cake on stuff to make it seem better. Even yellow cake. We do it so much that when Iraq was accused of handling nuclear materials, people said yellow cake, and you're like, I like that.

That's the lemon kind, right? Usually with vanilla frosting. It's the best version we can come up with, yeah. Yellow cake. So anyways, most overused were in attachment form.

So, I mean, there's always room for those because they either haven't been attacked yet and dealt with, and we do hitch them. What happens is psychologically human beings bump against those all the time, all day long. You bump against these things, and they hit you, And you don't know why it's weird. And you have a cross articulation where your brain goes, but that means, um, and you'd skip past it because you got other shit to do. But what it does is it's, it's like a brick that gets laid on this wall of stress in front of you.

And so as a comedian, what you do is you come in and you knock the wall down and you go, this brick is not important. This brick is also not important. This brick is very important and you've been missing it. And that's the, well, it gets. All the stuff that you're, walled behind there and gets some of it out of the way and defuses to the floor.

Exactly. Like, this isn't important. Get on with your shit. Yeah, you can move past this whole wall. Just hang on to this brick.

It's important. Yeah, exactly. Use this brick to hit someone. The next time you see them, some dickhead is waving this brick around. I want you to pick it up and hit him in the head with it.

Metaphorically. We're not endorsing bricking people. Hitting people with a brick. Bricking people, yeah. Bricking people.

Yeah. Well, we end up doing a lot of talk on movies. Like, how many you've already referenced in this. Yeah. I just like to get people's taste in movies.

What is your, just as a viewer, what is it that you've been drawn to over the years? I like, I mean, I watch certain movies over and over again. So I like having movies that are layered. Blade Runner's my favorite movie. Oh, yeah.

Although, I have seen Fletch probably, It has to be well over a thousand times. As comedies go, that's pretty damn good. Yeah. It's hard to beat. And the more you watch it, the more you realize that Andrew McDonald, who wrote the script, I hope I'm not forgetting his name, but yeah, snuck in all these secondary phrases to tie the character together.

So he's such a well-constructed character while going on very little dialogue. And even Chevy Chase throws in these little repeat beats. Like, no, never, never. That kind of thing. Like, he says that in two distinct points, just as his way of like, oh, this is what this guy will do.

That's why I think that one works so well. It's like, it's not like, like so many movies now. Again, the comedies get worse and worse, it feels like. But they'll do this little offshoot thing, and it doesn't even feel like it's part of the movie. It's a side skit or this different character.

He's doing different characters, but they all feel like they are that guy. They are Fletch. This is how he deals with situations. Right. Same thing with Beverly Hills Cop.

Oh, yeah. It's an organic transition into character that he does. When he steps up at the guy and goes, can you tell Ramon that he met about a week? Like, this is this guy coming up with the, okay, what will make this asshole really uncomfortable and get me past it? It's not him doing it because he's in Beverly Hills.

He does that in Chicago. This is his job. This is how he operates. Exactly. And he tailors the character he's talking to to that person as a part of a flim flam.

He's scamming the guy. And he's used that as a tool before. And they establish that in the later movies as well. That, to me, is how you do it. You don't just go, I'm going to act wacky to make people uncomfortable.

And there's value to that. I mean, you look at high anxiety, for example. Mel Brooks has– even there's a point where they're trying to sneak past airport security, and he goes, you've got to be loud and obnoxious because psychologically people won't see you. So they act like two old Jews and don't understand why they're being yelled at. And it's great.

And it's both– makes the rule and breaks the rule at the same time. Like he just does it because that's his old shtick. There's no particular reason why that character would pick that guy. except that Mel Brooks is an old Jew and that works. But it applies once he puts it in the plot. Yeah, exactly.

It's playing to your strengths. It's finding a way to do it. I like layered movies, like I said. I don't believe in guilty pleasures because I don't give a shit about your opinion about the movies I like. That is such a novel concept to most people.

So many people, like, the movies. That I will be drawn to, sometimes they would describe as, I'm like, I just find things about them, like, they may not have been successful, but, like, there's so many fascinating aspects to these other weird little movies that, like, there's nothing guilty about it. It's impressive on some level, even if you don't like it. Right. Well, I just don't dictate my taste on what other people like.

If I know somebody and I take their opinion very seriously and they recommend something, I'll go. Yeah. But I also am not horrified at, you know, at the lack of box office on some of your and clearly near as neither is the rest of the world because Citizen Kane was a flop. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's you look at, especially now that we have ways to preserve these movies that you see the ones that are that, you know, stand the test of time.

And most of them were, you know, Vertigo made no money up until like. The 2000s when they went, oh, this is genius. Like we remastered it and we realized the thing that we, you know, we kind of threw down as one of. His other movies. Right.

It's no rear window. And now all of a sudden it's ranked as the number one movie in history. Right, right. So, yeah, it really, you see as time goes on what holds up and what stands the test of time. Well, I think Oscars should be given out six years after movies come out.

Well, because you go back and you'll look through those lists and you'll be like, really? That won Best Picture that year? Yeah, totally. It's absurd. How did that win Best Picture?

You want to really fuck with your attitude towards movie popularity. Go read books that are the accumulative reviews, like the Siskel and Ebert books or whatever. Michael Medved or one of these assholes who comes up and you look at what they gave stars at the time. And you realize that they gave The Shining two stars and they gave Zapped two stars. You know what I mean?

Seriously, we all know Zapped is amazing. Yeah, right. Zapped deserved those two stars. It didn't deserve one. It may not have earned three in that regard, but it was a solid two, no problem.

But The Shining, the fact that The Shining now shares that forever, that there is such a contextual... bullshit. Level that's what I was always like it's rare that reviewers will do that but I think Eberg specifically would go back occasionally and he'd be like you know what I was wrong and he'd rewrite a review 15-20 years later and be like you know what I missed the point of this movie when it came out rarely would you have somebody be like oh guess what I'm not perfect all the time I'm just a guy watching movies where so many of them take themselves so seriously that yeah it's like because they think they're the arbiter I laid down the law this movie sucks and you're like maybe you were just kind of an idiot that day.

Well, like, one of my favorite movies is L.A. Story. And it is, you know, it's a Steve Martin movie. It got a total pass by people or whatever. But you can watch it 30 times and still each time find something really fantastic.

Like, Mary Lou Henner in it is just fucking bulletproof. She's so goddamn funny and mean and awful. And it's one of the few that, like, it changes. It is one of those that changes styles. Like, you get the silly, like, freeway shooting scene that seems like it's not even in that.

Like, and then it's him seriously, like, having this. It's got an Enya soundtrack. Yeah, and having, like, having this existential conversation with a sign. You know? It has the ending, the ending is the same as The Tempest.

Yeah, it's like... It changes the weather with his heart. It shouldn't work, but it does, because it was so well put together. Yeah, it's, and, and by the way, that's Steve Martin trying to be Woody Allen. Steve Martin has always been chasing Woody Allen his entire career.

And when he, when he tries, he can do it. It's funny that, like, sometimes he just seems like, well, I need a paycheck, and, like, Some of the other movies, they kind of work on their own level. He just never directed. He just never went to, he went to perform, he stayed with performing, he never directed. Banjo took over his life.

Yeah, well, interesting, Banjo took over his life by not doing it. It's like the same situation where, I've always said that super rich people and super poor people both love money more than anybody in the world. People in the middle don't necessarily, but really poor people and really rich people both think money will solve all their problems. Or, you know, And certainly being poor, it will solve more problems than it will if you're rich. Yeah.

But it's, you know, by hiding from the banjo, it took more of his life than just embracing it. Yeah. And he literally had to, he had it in the corner of his house, like staring at it like it was haunting him for decades. Well, and it's funny, he's just so in love with that and like, Everything I read about him is like he doesn't really want to talk about comedy. I wrote a book about comedy.

That's it. I'm done with it. But I'll talk. Banjo all day long. But he's also funny now.

I saw him when he first started playing banjo again. He wouldn't talk at all during songs. Now he's got jokes the whole. He's doing a bit. It's a shtick.

I mean, he started doing that in the 70s. That was his thing. Right. I brought it on stage with him because, you know, that was that made him different on one hand. But at the same time, he kind of just loved it.

It was also the same thing he did at Knott's Berry Farm. He just took his act and carried it into clubs and things weren't as cut and dry stand up wise back then as they are now. And I'm I will make no qualms about the fact that as a stand up, I'm a purist. I have my buddy Chris Bono who normally opens for me. He's a guitar comic.

I have no problem with what he does or whatever. But for me, it's not stand up unless it's just you and a microphone. Yeah. You create– and maybe it's because I fell in love with bits like Black Ben the Blacksmith, which is a Richard Pryor bit, and Hank's Place, which he also did, which are all these character pieces and the like, and Robin Williams and Steve Martin, to some degree, just like the wording of the jokes that he did. And almost the ironic part of Steve going, I can make any sound effect or whatever, and he would just make this stupid sound effect.

Oh, look at this one, an edible coin effect. And then I walk outside and I start up the car. Then the atom bomb went off. Thank you. I can make any sound.

He was messing with guys who actually could do that. So, I mean, I don't know. Would you, the people that do kind of get into a weird character when they're on stage, like that is a separate character? I mean, is that? Nope.

It's okay for them, but you just don't want anything to do with it. Well, I loved when Bobcat, like I was a huge Bobcat Goldplay fan. When he ran from the character, I was pissed at him. But it's one of those, I don't even know that he, it seems like he fell into it. Because even at the time, there were times when it felt like he hated doing it, but it was the only thing that.

People wanted from him. He didn't hate it. He was embarrassed by it. It's not the same thing. It definitely is.

Yeah. He doesn't want. Anything to do with it now, but people still chase him down with that, and that's what they want from him. I do a sick Bobcat impersonation and always have. And I used to embarrass the family doing it, you know.

And, you know, I'd have grandparents come over and go, hi, thank you very much. Come in, Grandma. I have a story to tell you. You know, like that. That's amazing.

Yeah, I love that. Shit, man. That Meat Bob album is phenomenal. Oh, amazing. Share the Warmth is an amazing special.

When he goes out in the audience and he sits down and goes, you suck! I wanted to see this shit. I would have went to the Greyhound station. Like, that's so fucking funny. See, that's the thing.

It felt like he had the material and he didn't really have to force it into that character. But it worked. But in a way, it's like you could see, like, there's such solid jokes. Police Academy killed his character, not the things. And it was a paycheck.

And he was, like, and he was embarrassed by the paycheck he took to do that. And, you know, it's like, at a certain point, again, I live a relatively guilt-free life. Because I don't give a fuck. Yeah. And doing what you want to do.

Right. That makes it easy. He gives a fuck. Yeah. There are things that by his metric I should be embarrassed of in my past, in my work, but I'm not.

And I find being embarrassed by your past embarrassing. Yeah. I feel like, and so I love certain movies that people somehow have decided they're going to hate whether they watch them or not. Like Joe vs. the Volcano. Yeah.

I love Joe versus the volcano. That's finally coming back around. Like I hear people now that are like, Oh, I love that movie. But like it took 20 years before people started like giving it a chance. I bought it on VHS as soon as it was available.

I love that frigging movie. I, I recommend it to everybody. Um, it's, you know, and in it sort of it and LA story and defending your life and a couple others are in my like top five spiritual movies of all time, you know, including, uh, mind walk, which is, you know, Sam Watterson and John Hurt. And I forget the woman's name in it because she's a French actress. But so it's a poet, an astrophysicist and a politician walking around Mont Saint-Michel in France, having a conversation about systems thinking.

I love that one for the list. Yeah. Mind walk. Great, great movie. Great movie.

And these are movies that either got passed over, didn't get noticed, or the people decide, like Ishtar or something, they just decided they hated because other people hated it, which is the worst reason to hate something. Officially, the worst reason to hate something is because you're supposed to, because other people don't like it. That's the dumbest fucking thing you can possibly do in your art choice in the world. That's one of the few things I've always tried to do with this, is like, it's so easy, everybody gets, especially in this. Little internet world that we all live in now, that like.

As soon as something gets, like, people start trashing on the internet, it just becomes the thing to do. And it's like, I'll make fun of it after I see it. If it warrants it, It's the new Catholic Church. At a certain point, the Catholic Church said, that's heresy. We all agree that that sucks.

You're not allowed to like that. And the new heresy is something the internet doesn't approve of. And I don't belong to that church or any other. Most of yours, it seemed like, were that run in the middle there. What are your thoughts on the movies as of now?

I guess all of them. You know, I think there are a lot of gems that come out that are, I mean, I thought the new Lego movie, for example, is one of the most subversive movies I have ever fucking seen. Like, I loved Idiocracy. It got totally hidden. Yeah.

But Legoland played everywhere. And that whole thing going, but, you know, but Octane Corporation makes all kinds of things. All history books, voting machines. Hey, wait a second. You know.

Food, dairy products, ice cream, popular music, voting machines, all history books. Hey, wait a sec. Like that's fucking genius. What was I thinking about? I don't even remember.

Did he say put to sleep? I don't remember. Let's watch. Hey, where are my pants? Like that.

It's that Pixar mentality. It's just like we're making this for kids, but we're not really making. This for kids. Well, that's because those guys grew up on Warner Brothers cartoons and the old like transvestite trickster that was Bugs Bunny. Well, that's what I always loved about the Warner Brothers.

I mean, those cartoons, like, again, if you go back and watch them, they're not made for kids. Like, the references, like, even kids at the time would not have gotten the, like, they throw in weird Hollywood jokes. They throw in political jokes. Like, there's stuff that there's no way a kid would have gotten then. Racism.

And now you really don't get it. Right. Yeah, no, I... And that's because they know who's got to bring them. Yeah.

They know that you've got to drive them there. It's the same reason they make Scooby-Doo movies after it's all over. Because. Nobody's watched fucking Scooby-Doo in decades, but you want the parents to remember it. And so they're like, hey, I'll bring you this because it's kind of like you'll remember whatever.

That's one of the ones I'm surprised. I do keep seeing kids that find that. And I don't know what it is about it. It's some weird stoned mentality that all kids are picking up on. And they don't seem to like the newer ones as much.

It is that weird late 60s, early 70s run. Yeah, there's this idea that somehow. that all technology advancement betters something. And that's not the case, clearly. And it's not that... I'm not a vinyl purist in that regard, which some people are.

They get hitched up on. But there is something to be said for... We got it right the first time. Yeah. This is all this needs to be.

Well, especially in special effects and animation. I think that's a huge thing. You watch the old hand-drawn cell animation stuff. Like Warner Brothers. Heavy Metals, one of my favorite movies.

Hanna-Barbera was the lowest end of that. They were pretty cheap. Well, that's what I mean. Hanna-Barbera stuff doesn't as much as the ones that were hand-drawn because there's some heart in it, I think, that escapes the... But like Heavy Metal, the movie, they just put that back on Netflix or whatever.

And it's good because I can without having to buy the DVD off of Amazon and wait for it and send it to somebody else. Like, you know, I can introduce it to, you know, like the kids on my show or whatever and go, you got to see this. I forget. I mean, I had such a crush on the, you know, the Valkyrie woman at the end of that thing when I was a kid. Which do you have a favorite segment?

That's one of those that really did sort of break it up. I really like the plane, like the World War II. Oh, yeah. That's the gruesome. It's short, but that's a great creepy segment.

Yeah. I mean, I love the one that John Candy voices as... That seems so weird. I think just because I know it's John Candy. He so doesn't fit that in my head, so it's very strange watching that.

I'm not going to walk around with my dork hanging out, that whole business. And then I think, honestly, if I really had to boil it down... It is hard to do. The last one is so kind of magical, the last scene of it. It sort of puts a cap on all of it.

Morgan Stern, the guy who's on trial or whatever, he'd never do anything immoral. Unless you count all the times he sold dope disguised as a nun. Or anything illegal. Unless you count the preschooler's prostitute ring. You know?

So great. I was so pushing the envelope at that point. Oh, my God. To get away with it. All my friends would, like, that was our quotable point was, like, he'd never do anything illegal unless you count all the times, you know, like, oh, God, we would just voice.

And then violence and nudity in an animated, you know, in Japan, nobody cared. But in America, like, we didn't know how to deal with that. In Japan, they don't have a choice. Yeah, yeah. In Japan, because of the, you know, unconditional surrender.

There were all kinds of rules against pornography, and they were written in such a way that would make one believe that MacArthur was actually an angry, closeted homosexual, which is entirely possible. At that period, it's almost understandable that he would hate the world and hate everybody in it who was having a good time, and he wasn't allowed to. Or he was simply a hyper-puritanical dickhead. But he put language in, apparently, about consensual sex. That consensual was the wrong part of it.

And that they could have all the rape they wanted. So if you'll notice, Japanese cartoons and Japanese pornography is full of rape because it's the only legally allowed... It's so wrong. It's so wrong. And like warping an entire generation upon generation of this country.

Yeah. And you wonder why their libido has taken a dive. Because their porn's creepy? Yeah. Because maybe... once in a while they'd like to believe that both parties are in on it that'd be nice yeah go figure so uh um i for me like like and even like and i'm not you know fritz the cat's a good example i'm not into that one like i of the of the you'd think oh there's nudity in it and it's kind of a you know hip and it's like an adult cartoon that would catch you didn't work for me.

As much i i heard about that one for so long i was more amazed that because yeah i was expecting it to be like a it wanted to be like a bad porn movie, but. Like, I was amazed how serious it was. Like, it gets very like, again, by the end, it has almost like a commentary on society. Well, it could not at the time, at the period of time it was going through. Right.

It gets so serious that I'm like, I was more impressed with that. I was like, I expected this to be stupid sex and like, you know, here's a dumb animated cat, but like, it was smarter than I expected. Yeah. Well, it's not, the best, but I gave it more credit. It's almost like it turned a corner while they were making it because it took up so long.

Because it starts with all that nudity and stuff and then midway in it's just super serious. Yeah, it gets dark quick. And that's because, that's arguably if you look philosophically at the time, that's what would happen. Things are going along fairly swimmingly post-World War II and then all we tried to do was be a little too free and the hammer came down. And that's really what the problem is in Fritz the Cat.

All you try to be is a little too free, and the hammer comes down, which is arguably what everybody's afraid of now, which is bullshit because we don't have any of the same problems. It's just silly. The idea of what we think is the lack of freedom is just fucking stupid. We literally have people like Bill O'Reilly who think that being criticized is a violation of their First Amendment rights, as opposed to, No, that's just socially what happens in the world if everybody thinks you're an asshole. That's the world.

You're not being put in a stockade. You're not being put under the jail because you said something the government didn't like. You're allowed to say anything. This is the best part of freedom is we can also think you're an asshole. Yeah, exactly.

We're actually instigating our First Amendment rights in calling you a dickhead. Except we can't call you a dickhead on the air because that's a violation of the laws of the airwaves, which is funny to me. It's not the hate, it's the words again. And that's why it kind of doesn't, Why will always as comedians be navigating all this stuff? Well, as far as working in some of the...

I mean, at this point, the superhero movie has taken over. You're in arguably one of the best ones. Yeah, Spider-Man 2 was great. I'm assuming that scene is what gets all the acclaim and popularity. It's all you're seeing.

Yes, right. Well, Sam Raimi said it was his favorite scene in the movie. And all my adult life, I've wanted to work for Sam Raimi. He's my favorite director, hands down. Were you an Evil Dead fan, I'm assuming?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and Army of Darkness and Bruce Campbell. That's my question. Which of those three, or even just the first two, what is your take? The first one or the second one as far as...

Oh, the remake and the Evil Dead. Well, I'm just like of Evil Dead 1 and Evil Dead 2, both the Raimi ones. Are you drawing more to the first one or. Evil Dead 2? Evil Dead 2, clearly.

See, I like the first one. I like the seriousness of the first one. I feel like it's a good. creepy movie I do too as a movie but as far as Sam Raimi's voice yeah I feel like it is more genuine Raimi when you get to the giant creature when they let themselves do what they wanted to do and that's what if you had a mixture of both it would be kind of perfect right but yeah I like the you know you can get like I like Cabin in the Woods to some degree had some of the sameness of that serious Evil Dead 1 a bit you know even though I feel like the set up in that is so I mean, they're supposed to be badly put together. They're making fun of that. But they're again for something written by Joss Whedon.

I was expecting better dialogue, even more clever dialogue that. You know, making fun of how badly most of those movies are knowing and knowing how the movie making process works. uh, I don't fault any screenwriter for any single piece of dialogue that actually makes it in the movie. And I, I, my. Theory is, I think he was at that point, he was also working on Avengers. I think you watch the Avengers.

That's where all his dialogue was going. That's where the good dialogue went. Right. So I think he turned over most of cabin in the woods. I think the concept is brilliant.

And I think that's probably what he had a lot. To do with. And then that dialogue was, you work on that. I got to go right. Iron man saying something snarky.

Yeah. Right. Which, yeah. So you watch that. That's, kind of brilliant.

Yeah, the sneaking in of yoga, bongo drums, big bag of weed. And they shoot it off camera in case they had to lose it later. That's fascinating. The Legolas reference. Oh, yeah, it's great.

Yeah, clench up Legolas. And then even Captain America's best line in all of the Captain America movies. There's only one God, ma'am, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that. is the perfect Captain America line. It is. Well, that's one of those, again, I was not big on him in the comics, but they kind of found such a good voice for him between all three of those movies.

It's like that first one is really interesting because it's a period piece and we get to see him in his element. And then Avengers, you just get to see him trying to play catch up and figure out what the hell's going on. Yeah. But this last one, it's like you really do get to see him immersed in this, he's this Boy Scout character in the middle of a country that has. Now completely turned its back on, yeah.

He's Marvel's Superman. He's got these ideals that nobody else in Marvel really has. And curiously enough, breaks them every time. In the same way that Superman in the original, the best version, The only real incarnation of Superman. Yeah, the Christopher Reeve version where he says to Lois, I never lie.

And you believe it, even though he lies every day. His entire existence with her is a lie. It's a constant lie. So to me, there's a beauty to that that's extraordinary that he was able to pull off. I don't necessarily think it's. fully actualized with Evans quite yet.

And I don't know if it's his fault or just the way it's written, captured. It's a tough one. It will be interesting to see if they, because they've already got that third one scheduled that's just his movie. I'll tell you, they went a little boyish in his look and who he is. And Captain America wasn't that at all.

He was much more square jawed. Hard World War II. Which again, I think is more of them trying to bring him into this new age, it's much harder to deal with that World War II persona in the middle of what we've got going on now, especially trying to sell it. Right. I think I wasn't a fan of the third Iron Man, although I like the character and where it does.

I think it was like the Ewoks moment in Star Wars. They just kind of like, let's have him have a little kid because all these little kids love Iron Man and they all want to be Iron Man's best friend. Yeah. I feel like it almost worked because of Robert Downey Jr. If anybody else would have been handed that, it would.

Have been terrible. I could do it. I could do it. Well, yeah, sure. You and Robert Downey Jr.

I could do it. But most people, I feel like that would have gone so wrong. That's the problem, though. Sometimes they hang it on the shoulders of somebody and they're able to chalk up a movie with all kinds of bullshit. Which they wouldn't have been able to do if the guy couldn't carry it.

The development people would have gone, this just seems weird if it wasn't for the fact that he's going to be awesome. That felt more like two to me. Two just felt like we've got so much stuff. I've got to go see where they are in my set eventually because we will talk about this all night. We can come back to this after the show.

I have no problem with that whatsoever. Son of a bitch. Yeah, no, I, I, I will keep talking about this all night. Oh, that's, that's, see, that's awesome. Yeah.

That's kind of what I love finding is, is cause I feel like everybody has that in them. It's like, you know, they, that love of movies and like anybody who can tap into that, that's, I just love finding that. So, yeah, I mean, I, there's a lot of Chinese movies I love that don't get any play over here. Um, one of the most recent ones is Flashpoint Donnie Yen, uh, movie. And, uh, I like it, the original Mandarin.

I don't like the translations. I speak Mandarin. So I like to actually, hear the real dialogue because it's a much more colloquial and smart in that format. The timing of it, the beats of it, they borrowed so much from American cinema and then they gave us so much back. It was like a filter of.

Again, that's sort of that beauty of movie making. It does find that voice from people around the world and you find what you love and you latch onto that and then you give... other pieces of what you're creating to other countries and other people in your country. Yeah. It really, yeah, it is this weird, like, love of movie making. Let the Right One In wouldn't be possible were it not for Dracula back in the day and those kind of...

So you're a big Let the Right One In fan? Yeah, I love that one, actually. I'm a big fan of the pacing of it. I liked, of the Lars von Trier movies, I liked Antichrist just because it was so fucking harsh. And the opening of it, you can't...

It's using, right now because we're such a savvy audience, you can see everything coming. That instead of playing to that, it's the exact opposite. He's just, I'm going to drag it the fuck out since you know it's going to happen. And arguably in Melancholia, he does the exact, that he shows the planet hit the earth in the very beginning. Yeah, you know it's coming.

And then debates the entire time whether or not you saw what you think you saw. Yeah. Whether he's telling you it's going to happen or whether that's just on everybody's mind or whatever. It's just a miserable work of doom. And his ideas about women are just horrifying.

And quite frankly, I think to some degree in Nymphomaniac, he hacks it up a bit because he has a kid falling out the window thing again. To the point where I'm like, is this supposed to be a prequel in part? Because here she is hanging out with Willem Dafoe again and they're playing different roles and stuff. Or is he just obsessed with the same sick, weird things? We know he's obsessed with sick.

Weird things. Yeah. But at least have some original sick, weird things after a while. But I did, like, I loved Martyrs. Oh, yeah.

Fuck, man. Dark. Fuck, that was a rough one. But what a great turn. What a great, like, and I don't, most people probably hearing this might not have seen it, so I'm not going to, But it literally shifts movies.

What it does is, I talk about like Cabin in the Woods, it fucks with genre in that, oh, I get it. I know what's happening here. She's a ghost and she's talking to that. Oh, no, no. She's alive.

She's talking to a ghost. Oh, wait. Neither one of them are ghosts. They're both in this guy's mind. Like that kind of stuff.

Like it goes... Yeah. Which became a little cliche, but that one was doing it in such a way that nobody saw it coming and nobody knew that. And then in the end, you end up rooting for the evil. Yeah.

At this point, you've gotten to where so many do that. You're waiting for the twist so much. So it is interesting to see a movie that starts playing on this concept. Jacking with you. Yeah.

They're just like, well, you know that. So what if we don't do that? What if there is no twist? What if we're straightforward? Right.

It's going to catch off guard. Yeah. So to me, there's a... I like those kind of movies. That's why I love The Shining a lot.

I love the fact that Stephen King hated it and that Kubrick fucks with him by crashing the original red VW. He gets it squashed by a semi-truck as they drive past it. As Scatman Crothers drives past, he kills Scatman Crothers' character, which doesn't happen in the book. Takes out that stupid fucking hedge mage animal. Yeah.

Scare people again. I mean it's like it's just a different story like it to me I love the way Kubrick does it and it's like I guess you could do it the Stephen King way he did he still stands by his weird miniseries thing but I'm just like Kubrick was making a different movie he took that idea but he's making. A different movie than what you are and he's doing it on purpose like he's yeah He's like, I see the. Essence of something here that I want to do. You know, who cares what your book's about?

Right. Which is, again, that's why he was an artist. Like, that's why he wasn't just cashing a check. Oh, in the way. Never.

I mean, you see him put a decade of research into making a movie. Well, and Strange Love in and of itself is perfection in the essence of the best version of somebody playing multiple characters in a movie. And by the way, I love it when actors do that, when they do it well. I'm not, you know. I'm not a fan of Big Mama's House and that kind of stuff necessarily.

Not that it's bad. It's just kind of pedestrian to me. But I did think that the Nutty Professor stuff that Eddie did... That's what I was going to say. That's one of the few times that kind of is impressive.

It's fucking gnarly impressive. And the idea that he would somehow be passed over for an Oscar... Because it's comedy. Or not. Because it's comedy.

Only because it's comedy. And then they give him a nomination for the one time he tries to do a drama. Right. Well, it's like Kevin Kline getting, you know, it gets the one comedy Oscar as a man, basically. And it's essentially because he does Shakespeare the rest of the time, so we know he's legit.

And that was a genius performance. It was. It really was. It's amazing. Yeah.

But it's also, the only unconvincing performance in that movie, I find, is Jamie Lee Curtis. Yeah. Because, but since she's, her character's full of shit, it's hard to tell. Because the hardest role for an actor to play is a bad liar. Yeah.

Because there's levels upon levels there. Because they look like they're doing, yeah. I've got to show you that I'm not being genuine. So am I a bad actor or am I a really good actor? Good actor playing a bad liar.

And so playing a bad liar is the hardest acting role you can possibly do. That's it. And she's playing a bad liar in that most of the time. Yeah. Um.

And Palin is just bulletproof. Of the Pythons, I'm a Cleese and Palin fan. I love them all, but Palin especially. Just like this nerve of funniness to him. He seems like there's no ego to him either.

None. Please is just like, I need to be the star. Look at how silly I'm going to be. But like Palin is just shameless and doesn't expect anything from it. He's just like, I'm giving you everything I have.

Because I love doing this. It's just the love of the game kind of idea. And it's the same reason why I love Martin Short and stuff. If you look at like the big picture, which is a relatively, it came out the same time as The Player, which got all the news and the big picture was this like was actually Christopher Guest I think first sort of forgotten Christopher Guest yeah yeah and what was her name crap the girl who's in it yeah anyways it's gonna drive us crazy never mind don't worry about it don't get fixated on it it'll funky black hair in the movie. She plays the weird friend of his who gets him to do the music video for the band, which gets his career back.

It's a great movie. Martin short plays his agent in it. And he's got like, it looks like his character had surgery to make his eyes look Asian or something on purpose. Like it's that fucked up a character that he just makes up. He has no problem hamming it up.

None. And it's all love of the game. And I love Martin short for that because he's not afraid of what other people's limits are. Yeah. And that's really what you're fighting as a comedian most of the time is other people's social limitation.

There are times I feel like he pushes it too far and he goes too far with it. But I'm like, I have to admire that because that's just bravery. Just be like, I'm going to put this out there and it'll work or I'm going to fall on my face. Jiminy Glick and Lala Wood is a great movie. I stand by that statement.

And he is so funny in that fucking movie. And the conversation about sex with his kids and his wife is, you know, and she's just farting during the whole. You're just going to break windows. I'm trying to just explain this to the boys. I was 16 and totally unaware.

Things would happen to me in the downtown area, and I would check myself into emergency. I would say, have I been stung by a bee? And people would laugh at me. I would say, I don't want that to happen to you. Just so good.

And immerses himself in character. Yeah, it just does it. And again, the purity of not giving a fuck. Yeah. And the joy of it is contagious in that regard.

And anybody who's turned off by it, I know not to hang around. Yeah. Because they are so into themselves or so tense inside that in a clutch, they're never going to have a good time. Yeah. Or they have to be drunk to do it or that kind of shit.

And then they're going to be miserable. Escaping your own brain at that point. Exactly, right. And so, anyways, he plays the agent. And there's a scene, they're having lunch.

And he's like, you're not just going to get an agent from me. You're going to get three things. And he holds up his four fingers. An agent, a lawyer, a manager, a mother, a father, a shoulder to cry on. He just goes through the six things.

And if anybody ever tries to fuck with you, I will squeeze them by the balls until they're dead. And then at one point he interrupts his conversation and he leans over and sees someone and he goes, ha ha ha. I'm not talking to you. Call me. It's so great.

And those are his little throw-ins. Well, it's building that character that's bigger than what's on the page. You feel like there's a life outside of what he's saying to the camera. And you could watch a whole movie of just that guy. And that's the way I think those characters need to live.

And Martin Short does them spectacularly. So I would stand by Jiminy Glick and Lala Wood as genius. And it's really well crafted as a film. It's shot well. It's edited well.

The soundtrack is tight. The scenes are terrific. It follows a classic story structure so it doesn't get lost. And it's got enough room for his jokes, you know, where he walks up and, Jesus, and no knife. They always make you finger everything.

Just so fucking great. I was waiting for that. Yeah, I was going to say, you're going to have to get down there. Yeah, I've got to go do a show. Well, I do want to definitely thank you for hanging out and talking movies.

That's, again, the best thing about this is finding people who appreciate them on that level. Oh. When are they going to put History of the World Part 1 on DVD or even on iTunes? It's not on iTunes. What the hell is that about?

The world is falling apart. Just do yourself a favor. Go watch a Gregory Hines movie, specifically him in Deal of the Century. Give you a little touch-up. Or Running Scared, the original.

Billy Crystal, don't get distracted with that bullshit uh, Sean William Scott movie that they did and stole the name, which would have been fine, but don't take the same name. White nights. White nights is serious. Oh yeah. White nights is watching two dancers.

That was almost like stunt casting. And yet they're both really good. They're amazing. Yeah. Mikhail Brechnikov wants to come to America where he can be free to dance however he wants.

And because Gregory Hines is black, he feels that he'd be freer in, in Russia. Uh, amazing commentary, and at the height of the Cold War, essentially, when this movie is made. It is interesting watching, yeah, that Baryshnikov, the plane going down in Russia, and like him freaking out, and that was a real thing, you know, now it's a different world, but like, that was the end for him, yeah. Yeah. It's a great, it's, again, one of those forgotten movies.

Oh, incredible. The, and then, yeah, you need to see Doctor Strange Love, and you need to watch The Shining, and you need to watch Joe vs. Volcano, Defending Your Life, L.A. Story, Fletch, Fletch Lives is even a good time, I will tell you that. It's not as good.

It always seemed weaker, but I haven't watched it in a long time. But it's more in the lines of Seems Like Old Times, the Goldie Hawn comedies. I love that. Foul Play. I love Foul Play.

Foul Play's amazing. Oh, Heavenly Dog, even, which is... It's been a long time on that one, too. I had the book when I was a kid. I used to get those.

They make the shitty Bantam book version of them. I would never buy regular books. I know nothing about literature, but I had every bad making, like every. Back to the Future, the book, and Howard the Duck, the book. Yes, I had that.

It's like every book. Hey, that movie was great just because Leah Thompson was in her underwear. Ugh. We've had Leah Thompson on. I'm still, I'm still kind of a little, yeah.

I know Leah very well. I consider her a dear friend and she's beautiful and wonderful. And I'm still shocked by the fact that I know her. And the nicest person in the world. Just sitting there talking to her.

I was like, I kind of can't, if the 12 year old version of me flashed here now, I would drop dead. Cause I still can't believe I sat there. Yeah. Yeah. She's amazing.

Um, and we could go into a series of like Leah Thompson related movies from red Dawn to, um, some kind of wonderful, um, where, where, uh, you know, Mary Stewart Masterson, is that her? Yeah. Who was arguably just as beautiful. Oh, yeah. And she's the underground chick because she had short hair.

She's the tomboy. So she can't be the cool. It's back to 80s casting where even the pretty girl, the ugly girl had to be pretty. Yeah. Which later became a network called The CW.

Where everyone is pretty. Exactly. Yeah. I just want to, I feel like everybody needs, I mean, from, you know, the classics, everybody's got stripes and Caddyshack and The original Ghostbusters and even second Ghostbusters. Peter Nichols in Ghostbusters 2.

He kind of like above and beyond the whole rest of that movie. No pictures, please. Slides are available in the gift shop. Like, yeah, I always ask you to lunch. You always say, no, do I have a bad breath or something?

Like, he's so, best line in the whole movie. Hey, Johnny, where are you from? Anyways, the upper vest side. Like, ah, so tough. I think you have to go.

So tell people where to find you. At HalSparks on Twitter, the HalSparks Fang page on Facebook, F-A-N-G. And, of course, HalSparks.com. I've got all that shit. You can follow me on Instagram.

I've got all that stuff flying. And my band, Zero One, we're on ReverbNation.com slash zero, the word zero, and the number one. All right. Very good. Yeah, we're a metal band, if you like that kind of thing.

Everybody go find you. Check out your stuff. Say hi. I insist. I'm going to go do a show.

I feel like I've already done one, but this will be nice. I'm all warmed up now. Yeah, we've got you ready to go. Love it. Thank you for coming here and sitting here with us.

My pleasure. Very cool. Thanks for joining in. Alright, that about does it for this episode, but I will say I did stick around and watch Hal stand up back that night, and he was terrific. Hilarious and completely engaging.

He is an amazing storyteller, and He knows how to find humor in any situation, so it would seem. So again, go to HowSparks.com and look for his upcoming live shows. All right, well, that about does it. Otherwise, we will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed.

Thanks for listening. Simple places, children's faces, an ordinary day. I never knew that a sky so blue could take me so far away. But you were there without a care, my one and only. Summertime on the county line.

The beginning of the end. When we lifted the photograph, there was nothing left to stand in the open. All angels get together. I can't take the pain but I cannot take it slow. I remember it was last night December.

And the walls were closing in You were pretending that this life's never ending But the line was wearing thin Everyone was. Trying but I knew you were dying At the end of the day, I felt you slip away, but. I could not say goodbye. When we looked in the photograph, there was nothing left. To stare.

And take the pain but I cannot take it slow. When we lived in the fold of ground There was nothing now I can't take the pain but I cannot. Clear out that weird buzz as soon as I got here oh yeah that's helpful we'll get a room tone at the end of it I thought it was a refrigerator it's behind that wall no it's just some sort of transformer yeah that I believe yeah that's pretty much they run the whole complex off some weird cancer causing Frankenstein machine 1946 it's alive. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown produced and edited by The Oddity Studios with opening music performed by The Empires For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!