J.T.'s Holiday Special

The following program is a special presentation. That's the spirit you'll be celebrating life day before you know it. 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.

Power, power, power. I've always had a thing for Santa Claus. You're gonna have to provide more. Cooling in the containment. Chambers.

Do your stint, James. We've got to do it. I feel like George Wallace campaigning in Harlem. What's up? Welcome to Movie Meltdown.

I'm Brian. I'm Fred. I'm Lucy. I'm Alan. Happy Life Day!

Happy Life Day! It's the holiday special, and so here we obviously don't want to pick one. holiday so we'll just go with the most movie geek oriented version life day everyone's favorite holiday special mostly lucy. When you were able to ruin two things that i held dear to my heart simultaneously star wars and christmas. Wasn't my fault i blame i can't even blame lucas really because he even didn't have anything to do with that it got like shoved off on some network executive so Let's blame network executives. They're probably guilty of many of the evils of society now.

Look, I still, Harvey Korman was the bomb in that. I don't see how anybody can fault his performance. Or Bea Arthur's. Oh yeah, Bea Arthur was great. Art Carney, though, was phony, man.

Yeah, that was not his best work. Definitely was not. How did it ruin Christmas as a whole? Well, just the concept of holiday, really. Have you seen?

Were you there for that one? I can't remember. No, but I went back and watched it after. Because of the ringing endorsement. I was curious.

It does suck the life out of you a little bit, but I don't know about ruining the entire holiday season. I kind of enjoyed it. You're a sadist. For what it was. I was like, this is just such a weird thing.

I was watching a lot of weird movies at that time. It's a very weird thing. I would say that, yeah. The animated part's awesome. It is kind of delightful just to know that it exists.

To know that it exists, you have to watch it. Now, I posted that one later. Did you see that other one I ran across that was like... I'm trying to think who it was. It was one of those, like, kind of the Donny and Marie special of the moment.

You know, back when they had their show and they'd ice skate and disco dance or whatever they'd do that week. And it was kind of that era. And they were doing a, like, a Star Wars-themed segment that goes on for, like, 20 minutes. And it's got, um... I think the voice of Darth Vader is, what's his name that does Tony the Tiger?

Oh, Thoreau Ravenscroft? Yes. He was the voice of Darth Vader because that's what they could get. I guess. But I'm like, well, I mean, that's a lateral move.

That's amazing. He's equally as awesome as James Earl Jones. And then what was the other? They had so many weird people come in. I'll have to see if I can find it again and repost it because it was like, It was like last Christmas, maybe, but it was the weirdest.

And possibly what the holiday special should have been, because it was kind of awesomely put together. Maybe I'll see if. I can dig it up here. Did any cats die in that one? You're jumping ahead.

I am jumping ahead. We'll get to that later. What about Jefferson Airplane? There was no Jefferson, which maybe, again, might have been a little bit of a boost. Were they Jefferson Airplane, or is that what turned them into Jefferson Starship, was doing that?

I thought they were Starship at that point, because if you watch the special, there's no Grace involved. So it was post-Grace getting out of there. There was no Grace involved. But before she came back. That's an understatement.

So, yeah, I think it might have been the Jefferson Starship era, but not Starship era. This is important. It really is. We need to know that. How do you just know the voice of Tony the Tiger?

Because he's a fascinating person. He is pretty awesome. He did stuff for Elvis. He did a lot of Elvis movie backup singing and a lot of stuff for Disney, like various Disney rides. He was super prolific, but only did awesome stuff.

Only did awesome stuff. And has an awesome name, if that is in fact what it is. Is that, in fact, what it is? Okay, I'm looking it up to make sure. And the sad thing is I was right.

It is a Donnie and Marie sketch off of their show. But the cast alone is amazing. First of all, it involves Paul Lind. Yay. We're already in, like, a whole new territory.

Thoreau Ravenscroft, Donnie, let's see. There's an R2-D2 that comes into play. I'm trying to think what the rest of the cast was. Oh, no, wait, I forgot. Okay.

So the voice of the Force comes in. I guess he's supposed to be Obi-Wan, if I remember, towards the end, which is Red Fox. Ah, great. He is the Force. He is the Force, if you ask me.

Oh, yeah. I'm amazed by this. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... There was an evil force at work to destroy the values by which decent people lived. Values like patriotism, cleanliness, thrift, and good dental hygiene.

Did the evil force win the battle? That's for us to know and you to find out. Princess Leia, our goose is cooked Unless we lift off of the star Luke. I know you're right We just gotta take flight Before they find out where we are God will keep searching. Up and down Till he finds our hiding place Before very long They'll know we're gone Got to get lost in space.

You know, things are changing out here in space. I come from a distant planet called Sanford. My planet has its own moon, its own stars, and its own galaxy. But this year, Sanford has no sun. Thought you'd get away.

Don't you know you'll never escape from the farce? That's the force. I don't buy you grammar at a time like this. Get your big ape hands off me. I'll have to post it again on the old Facebook page so you guys can share because it is on YouTube right there and it's a nightmare.

Why did we not watch this for today's episode? I feel like I would not have spent the morning crying inconsolably. If that had been our choice. Maybe in a different way. If I remember Donnie and Marie, you probably would have.

We'll have something to look forward to next year. So, following that tradition, occasionally we will kick things off with a holiday rant. Does anyone have any specific thing? I mean, in previous years, it's been usually me complaining about some holiday special or possibly ruining Lucy's life in some other fashion, but... If you have any other holiday-related, it doesn't really have to be a rant.

You could have a good memory, too, if you'd like. Any holiday-related items you wanted to attend to? I heard somebody say the other day, sort of funny, one of the guys in government, she said, yeah, so an 11-month streak of no Jingle Bell Rock was just ending. Damn it! I don't know.

I'm on the precipice of a couple of rants, but I think maybe I ought to just pull back from the edge. So I think I'm going to pass. Okay, so with that out of the way, we can also address other important social issues of the day. I will at least give credit where credit is due. Did anybody see the middle this past week?

Can't say we did. It's one of those I didn't expect to like that show. It's actually pretty damn funny. I have to give him credit. It's a random sitcom.

But anyway, one of the running jokes on the Christmas episode this year was the older son and his friends got into a fight, eventually like a physical fight, over King Moon Racer. Are you familiar with the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop-motion animation special of King Moon Racer? No. He has his own special? No, it's Rudolph.

You've never seen the Rudolph special. Yeah, but I don't remember him as a character. I remember Rudolph. It's like a huge part of him. And I remember.

He's the king of the land of. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Island of Misfit Toys. Oh, okay. So that was the question is, is he a toy?

Everything else on the list. the island is a toy. So is he a toy or is he a living creature? And if so, why is he the only one on this island and ruling over a whole group of toys? Didn't he declare himself to be just kind of a benevolent, caretaker of these toys until they could all find a home. Maybe he's just a really good guy.

Just moral authority. Kind of, but then in listening to his little speech he gives Rudolph and them, he specifically says they can't stay on the island because living creatures can't hide on an island. They have to go back into the world. So either he's not a living creature, he is a toy, or he makes the rules but he doesn't have to follow them. Huh.

You've given me something to think about. I think it's something for all of us to think about. There was somebody there who wasn't a misfit. Which character? I overheard somebody arguing about whether somebody was a misfit and whether they belonged there, but I can't remember which character it was.

Was it in the main group? Was it Cornelius the Miner? Is he a misfit? Not really. He's just kind of mining for gold and silver.

Yeah. He's an odd character, I'll give you that. He just kind of goes along with them. I watched this last year with Imogen. Do you remember how much of a dick Santa is?

See, that was going to be one of mine. I'm like, what exactly are we passing on to children? It's really terrible in a lot of ways. I kind of went off on that the other day because somebody was talking about it and they were complaining that it was badly written overall. And this was somebody that was older than I.

Usually we get nostalgic of a certain era. This was somebody even older that had watched it with their kids and then re-watched it this year and was just like, I don't remember it being this bad. And I'm like, I don't know that it was bad as far as the writing, but why is Santa such a jackass? And like, not just a little bit, like the fact that he's like, number one, how dare you have a child that's different? Yeah.

Number two, hide your identity. And if not, everyone will mock you and that's okay. And the worst of all to me is we're going to shun you and treat you like a freak the entire time in your life. Except when we need you. When it's convenient for us to have you.

Oh no, we'll welcome you with open arms. Santa's kind of a jerk. What sticks out to me is the scene where the elf choir is singing and their choir leader is really kind of anxious about impressing Santa. And the whole time they're singing, he's just like looking back. He's got this look of fear on his face.

And then at the end, all Santa says. Is, it needs work. And then he just leaves and slams the door. And that's it. That is a jerk.

They put that together for him as a gift, and he just. Yeah, I do remember him being a dick. I don't have that vivid a memory of it. I haven't seen it in a while. I mean, he really.

And again, now you can. But the whole Rudolph thing kind of has that. I mean, even the story itself, the song and all of that is based on kind of like We're going to make fun of you. But when it's working out for us, when you can help us, well, then it's okay. Then we love you and we'll sing songs about you.

But only when you get us something. I don't know. It's not really a good message to send along every year. I feel like I saw a movie about that earlier this year, except it was with gay people helping the minors. It was called Pride.

And that's just the parallel I drew. Well, it kind of was when I've watched it recently, though. This whole, like, we want you to hide who you are, Rudolph, that goes on in the whole first part of that. I'm just like, you can make analogies about that now. Like, you were born this way, but we don't like it, so we want you to hide who you are in your entire existence.

And if not, you'll be forced to leave our society. I'm just like, this is kind of heavy if you want to think about it too much, which I usually do. Yeah, because I think the moral is supposed to be that, you know, you can realize that different people are just as good as you. It just comes across... That came out all weird.

But it comes across the other way. Yeah, or something like that. I don't know. I think I. With all these, like, kids' specials, I'm like, it's no wonder our kids, like, flip out and go crazy.

Because that seems like that's what should happen on all these specials. At some point, Rudolph just needs to lose it and go crazy and start taking people out, like that Mad TV sketch. It just really reflects the culture at the time. Yeah, it does. Because it was, like, a really crude, bullying....

Disgusting culture but it's the same thing with charlie brown i'm like at what point is he gonna snap and start taking out some of those kids because they like they push him every holiday. Special they're like how much of a jackass can we be and let's all focus it on this one guy like linus is a weirdo they don't really mess with him they're just like a nice blanket loser but they focus all their ridicule on charlie brown they're. Always were kids yeah everybody that was like the person to pick on and I remember every now and then like there was a gym teacher who did that and he would like call this girl in the class like this made up name and I just thought man when I grow up if I run into you on the street there's going to be a problem there's just something so nasty about a teacher getting into that I don't know and that's always the.

Sick things with the holiday specials is it ends in such a happy note. There's no real revenge. There's no comeuppance for all the people who were horrible to them. It's just kind of like, oh, I saved the day, and now I guess everybody will love me, but they'll probably continue to be horrible people. I don't know.

When your kids are growing up, you remember these movies that you liked when you were a kid, and you watch them with your kids, and there's this gulf between what you remember, and it's like. Oh, wow. I had no idea. Well, I mean, for me, I get that even with recent things because I tried to make my daughter watch Deadwood with me. And like in the first episode, I'm like, oh, I don't know if you want to see.

I forgot about the part where he's trying to push the bullet out of the guy's head. And she's like really squeamish about it. But it's really good if you stay with it. Oh, I forgot about this part, too. Yeah, you're not going to like this.

I'm getting attacked over here. The puppy might need to go out for a bit. Joe, control yourself. I think all podcasts should have like a maniacal puppy attacking people. And it's just this undercurrent.

Well, I mean, it does seem like there's an uphill battle for podcasts. He's in Godzilla mode. Come on, pup. You go that way. Robo-maker.

All right, on that note, we will take our break and be back with this week's... Oh. Cartons of camels are sure to please. Besides, they look so handsome under Christmas trees. So easy to give, so good to get.

Give camels the nation's favorite cigarette. Ho, ho, ho. It's gift-packed, ready to give, with a space for your greetings. Hey, guys, look what I've got. Check out these awesome earbuds I'm using right now.

Look at that. That's wood right there. That's actual wood. Why would you use wood to make technology? Because it's like they're steampunk.

Is steampunk really wood? I thought it was more of a brass thing. Well, you got to work the wood in to hold the brass together. These are the fancy high-end steampunk versions with a mic built in, mind you. But yeah, where would I get these you wonder?

Tweaked audio. Way to pitch. You want to hear more, you say? tweaked audio.com. Hey, they are available in three styles and seven colors and they sound pretty damn good. I kind of forgot cause I hadn't had my old pair in a while and I was using the knockoff crappy ones I bought at the store and I, I got these and put them in.

I was like, Oh shit, that's right. These are actually really good. So they are professional quality earbuds, mind you. And, um, you know, noise reducing compatible with your iPods and Most phones, unless you have a dumb phone, you should really get a smart phone, not a dumb phone. Just keep a bunch on hand for gifts.

When you don't know what the perfect thing is. Around the holidays, I was putting that word out. I was like, you know, go ahead and stock up. They're good for Hanukkah. They're good for Christmas.

Yeah, for a while there, we were thinking at the alley, we'd have a giant stack of iPads and be like, hey, guys, thanks for coming down. I'm sorry you didn't want to see the show, but here, take a free iPad. Yeah. That's a pretty good promo, actually. So anyway, the basic rundown here, if you need yourself some earbuds, tweakedaudio.com.

And if you go there, there's a deal. There's a Meltdown deal. If you go, there's a discount code, and you put in Meltdown, you get 33% off and free shipping. You guys are excited, right? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. As well you should be. tweakedaudio.com. Use the Meltdown code. That's all I'm saying. Christmas is full of holiday cheer.

Hercules! This holiday season, join Hercules on a mission to spread the spirit of Christmas and to save one boy from being added to Santa's permanent naughty list. May that be. Of the gods be upon you. May the hatred of men.

Persecute you until you have paid for the blood of a thief. Fetch the spirit of Christmas and treat yourself to a real adventure in this heartfelt, fun-filled movie special. If you will join me in the conquest of the world... All mankind will recognize me as their queen and adore you as their one and only God. Love me, Hercules, and together we shall reign over men and gods.

Hercules Saves Christmas, coming this holiday season. Want some music for your ears? Doo-Wop Shop makes it easy to rent for any event, business meeting, or special occasion. From PA systems to karaoke machines to just about anything that makes noise, you can rent it from the Doo-Wop Shop. In Louisville, find them either at their Highland store at 1587 Bardstown Road or in the East End at 2915 South Hurstburn Parkway.

And look for them online at DooWopShop.com. Doo-Wop Shop. We're serious about music. Hi, this is Lily Tomlin, and I'm moving meltdown. With Brian.

It's time for Sofa Theater. What you want for Christmas, child? A cat? What? I want me this cat I found.

You reckon I can have him? Please. He's near dead. He needs a home. I don't have me enough trouble.

I got to nurse me a half-dead cat. I swear, I ain't got to send you a phone, but. Anyhow, the only. Animals they allow in this place is rats. Aw, Mama, he's liable to die.

Please. Couldn't I have him? Cat's got nine lives. Losing one won't matter much. Santa Claus.

Goes straight to the ghetto. Heads up your reindeer. Goes straight to the ghetto Santa Claus, go straight to the ghetto. Fill every stocking you find. The kids are going.

To love you so. Leave a toy for Johnny. Leave a doll for Mary. Leave something pretty for Donnie. And don't forget about Gary.

Santa Claus. Go straight to the ghetto. Santa Claus. Go straight to the ghetto Tell. Him James Brown sent you Go straight to the ghetto You know that I know what you will see Cause that was once me.

Alright, so this week's Holiday Sofa Theater Edition. We kind of threw it out in a different direction. Normally we're very feature based as far as films. We've worked in a few made for TV and I'm kind of fine with that. Again, it's still sort of movie based.

I don't mind the made for TV movies as much as some other people out there. But this one's even weird for that because it's part of one of those like playhouse showcase kind of things where they just do different stuff. So out of most of it was just because Fred has discussed this for quite a while now. So do you want to give your history with this one? I just remember seeing it when I was a kid.

It was different from other things on TV. And I just really, it was one of the few things my brother and I agreed on. We both really liked it. But weirdly, there's a scene I remember in it that isn't in it. I don't know.

Do you think you're just losing it? It's possible, but there are other things like that that have happened to me. There was a book my dad read, and he told me the scene out of it. It stayed with me, and eventually I got around to reading the book. Scene, not in there.

He was just messing with you. Well, he knew the guy who wrote the book. It's possible he had seen an earlier draft. I don't know. Maybe you and your brother were hanging out with JT and you saw like a director's cut somewhere.

I might, yeah. I think you got invited to the premiere. So what's the scene you remember? I remembered him sneaking into a hospital to see somebody. But he, you know, he was by himself.

But there was a family going in and there was like a little kid at the end of the family holding hands with his brother. And he just grabbed the hand of the kid and snuck in. And we were like, yes! It was like the perfect crime. And it's not in the movie.

He doesn't visit any. I was going to say, who would he be going to visit? I don't know. I thought it was like... I remember his grandmother was in it.

And I thought there was some scene where he went to visit somebody. But this was after, you know, like decades of not seeing it. Do you think it was another movie? And do we need to figure out what that movie was? Yeah, I bet there's somebody at home right now screaming at their computers.

Well, I did meet the incredible Inman not long ago. And I tried to grill him on that, but he doesn't know anything. He doesn't know anything. He did know JT. He knew that.

That's better than most people. You know, I asked him the question that has haunted us for years. A friend of my daughter's remembered this movie. What is King Moon Racer? She remembered a movie vividly, and she said, it's a movie where a guy goes into or through a thing or something.

And then, in a garage, something happens, but that was before the other thing. And we tried for years to figure out what this was. We thought it was Drop Dead Fred, but we described that to her. No, it's this other thing. Eventually found it, it's Don't Look Under the Bed.

And it is online, on YouTube. What is the thing they go through or into or around? They just go through or into a thing or something. A guy goes through or into a thing or something. And that was the clue we had.

Eventually we did find it. I'm just proud of that. You don't have to call me incredible. I'm not that kind of guy. I think you'd have to bill yourself as that to be here.

Yeah. I do have a cape, but I usually don't wear it. He was wearing it when I got here. He's actually wearing it right now. All right, so the official rundown for this one is JT, the year is 1969.

The director is Robert M. Young. We'll throw an extra little shout out. The writer is Jane Wagner, which I'm sure we'll also address later. And the plot, according to IMDb, is JT Gamble, a shy, withdrawn Harlem youngster, shows compassion and responsibility when he takes on the care of an old, one-eyed, badly injured alley cat days before Christmas and secretly nurses.

It back to health. Spoilers. Which, actually, there will be one, because the horrible thing that was already alluded to, I kind of didn't see coming. I saw it coming from the first time we saw that cat. And I was like, Fred wouldn't do this to me.

Fred wouldn't do this to me. Fred wouldn't do this to me. I mean, now Fred did it to me. After I saw it, I was like, well, it makes sense. Every other animal movie about animals with kids, they always end like that.

It always goes horrible. And also, the plot was going nowhere. Nothing was happening. Nothing could happen other than the cat dies tragically. But see, I had remembered that the cat went to the hospital.

And the kid snuck in and visited. So it's not your fault. Yeah, not my fault. I really, the whole time I was thinking, like, he just wouldn't do that to me. It's too cruel a thing to do to.

See, this time it's not even my fault, because I hadn't seen JT. This was my first viewing. I mean, bawling. No, I honestly didn't see it coming for some reason. I just kind of imagined at the end of it he'd get to take the cat home.

Yeah. And all would be well somehow. Everything would be okay. Kind of my thinking. It's a pretty benign kind of.

Yeah. I really liked it, though. I was really. The IMDB thinks that he was responsible, but I just... I was really bothered by how he shut the cat in the oven with a radio.

Yeah. I was like, he's not going to just walk away. And then he did. It would be fine, except it was really loud, too. It's like an active cruelty more than anything.

But he keeps locking the cat up in the oven. Why? Yeah, but. And how did the oven door get put up in the first place? By the time, because I originally was like, how the hell did that cat get in there?

But I think if you look at it, that top tray part was gone. So the burners were there, but there was no tray. So he could jump out. Because then that's also why he put the umbrella over there, because snow could fall in. Because that top plate piece was missing.

I just remember the oven with the umbrella on. on it being this great image that stayed. With me and i loved that umbrella yeah. By the way yeah it was cool and i also remember him sharing the sandwich with the cat i just remember as a kid being like wow you can do that i don't. Know And my question was, what was that they were eating? It was some sort of sandwich thing.

I know school lunches are pretty unidentifiable sometimes, but what the hell was that thing? Yeah, I just like that he put ketchup on the fries before he took them to the cat. I like that as he put them in a plastic bag, he put ketchup on them. There are a lot of weird little things like that. It just made it feel more like life than most things that you saw on TV.

Definitely. No, and I think it makes sense, too, that when I looked and saw that the director was primarily a documentary filmmaker, it's all of a sudden that whole verite thing. I loved all the angles, all the cameras, all the setups. I just thought every sort of shot was just beautifully crafted in a way that you don't think a television film would be. Yeah, you just have the feeling watching it that somebody knows.

What they're doing. And is taking some time with it. Yeah, and that guy also really loves Edward James Olmos. Yeah. If you go further into his, as he goes on, almost every non-documentary project stars Edward James.

It's very strange. I'm like, how weird. Because, yeah, they just, I guess, became friends and kept working together. Like how Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin just weirdly worked together. For years and years and years.

That's a very different story, I think. I don't know. Officially, it wasn't. I mean, I don't know. ask her that i was just like how was it kind of working with again i guess to go into our shout out earlier jane wagner wrote this and what i thought was interesting looking at her imdb this is pretty much the only thing she ever did that wasn't related to lily tomlin yeah Everything else she did after that. And it kind of made her name.

It was the first thing she did that got her attention. And then, I guess, at that point, she met Lily. And, like, ever since then, they've worked together. And she's been producer and executive producer and writer and, like, involved and actually directed one of her movies. Like, she's been so involved in all these different parts of the entertainment industry.

But after that, they always tied to Lily. So, yeah, she. Was the friend back in the day of Lily Tomlin. And they would ride to work. together and like yeah i think even she's like we didn't say anything but most people kind of knew you know and because it was only like i think last year they got married like so it was a the first time anything official had been done other than that they've just been together for years and years and years yeah i was reading. A people magazine article where people was sort of talking about how lily tomlin had appeared in people over the years and she was always cited as her best friend jane.

Wagner Well, yeah, I think they, at one point, were describing it as her writing partner. It's always a good professional way to work around it. It's like frog and toad are friends. You know there's something more going on there. Froggy went to Corton's while I was there.

But I think anybody, if you hooked up professionally with Willie Tolman, you would just cling on for life. I mean, if you have sense. Not that Jane's not talented in her own right, but... Regardless, I mean, Lily's pretty damn impressive. Yeah, she's awesome.

She is pretty impressive. I also like when he explained to the cat that this was the best radio station in New York. Like he needed to, like the cat didn't know right off the bat. I was thinking that's like a magical transistor radio that only plays awesome shit. Was it awesome?

It was so awesome. Because I felt like it was really generic. And then as I listened to it, I was like, it's probably really generic so they don't have to pay anybody for the licensing. Because these had a pretty minimal budget. My grandmother had a radio in her kitchen that only played news that had no effect on anyone and Rocky Top. that was the one song that would come on.

Well i liked it because this is like and you get a lot of that in like i guess starting that far back and then definitely all through the 80s you get this like stories about kids and they have pretty much entire lives of their own like you see him leave the house and then all this other stuff goes on that his mom has no idea about like he's he's running from other kids, and gonna, they're gonna beat him up, or like, he's stealing stuff, or like, he's hiding in an abandoned building that could possibly fall on him at any moment, like, there's all these horrible things from a parental point of view, they're like, oh my god, this poor kid, but like, it's just a day for him, like, it's just normal adventures, and I, I like that, because I do like, you know, kids kind of do, like, we always just sort of see this family unit, and all you see, it's like sitcom mode, all you see is what takes place in the living room, but I like when everyone goes their separate ways.

They really, especially kids, have this own existence that nobody else really understands. Yeah, but I felt like I had it. The mom said a line that kind of defined for me the entirety of her character. She said, it's. Almost as if that boy's been getting worse since his daddy died.

Or went away. Wonderful explanation. He just skipped out. And the keyword was, it's almost as if. Like, clearly that's what's going on.

But she's clearly not paying attention. Oh, good catch. I don't even know that it wasn't paying attention. I think. I.

Mean, she's paying attention enough to know, but she's just not connecting the dots. It was really uncomfortable. I think it's also a pretty good portrait of that place and time and a single parent trying to raise this rambunctious kid in the middle of Harlem where she's also working probably how many hours a week? She was gone most of the day, so I'm just like... don't know like to me there's a lot of that that's just like I don't know sometimes you don't have time for that stuff in life you're just like I'm trying to take care of my kid but at the same time I gotta be at work 60 hours this week so I'm trying to keep him through the roof over his head I'm trying to pay the grocery down the street so it's like I think it was kind of an interesting little window into that life too that you're also watching the single mother trying to raise this kid and the kids you know probably it was pretty easy when he was younger and he wasn't running the streets but now he's He, again, has a life of his own and has become this terror in her eyes.

Well, but it's like she expects him to just be totally unaffected by the sudden upheavals in his life and just her complete disregard of that. I think that, too. That's probably pretty accurate of the culture. At the time. Well, again, how old do we think he was?

Like 11, maybe? 69. 69. Well, I mean, in the story. So, I mean, he was basically raising himself.

Like, you go down to the bus station and pick up your grandma, and I'm just like, they probably wouldn't let me off the street at that age, you know, even a few years later. So, yeah. It's funny how much each generation kind of gets more and more protective of their kids. And, like, now we're to the point of helicopter parents. So, it's like, it goes too far the other way sometimes.

But, I don't know, it is that period in time, too, where you just latchkey kids did whatever the hell they wanted, and, like, nobody really thought about it, period. Yeah, I mean, that's what people did. Kids just ran the streets and did stuff. And I guess there is, you know, it's cool to go out and have adventures, but at the same time, no, I did the helicopter thing. And yours actually turned out pretty.

I was cool with it, yeah. But, yeah, I'm not parenting that. One of the things I enjoy about Mad Men so much is they remind you of that stuff you just forget. That it wasn't that long ago that stuff was so... My favorite scene ever in Mad Men is when they go on a picnic.

And at the end of the picnic, Don throws his beer can into the woods. And I remember that gesture. I saw that all the time, just throwing the beer can. Then Betty gets up and picks up their little... cloth for the picnic shakes all the trash out on the ground and they get in the car. And somewhere an indian whipped.

It's just so true oh man yeah but uh uh jt for me it still feels the same as when i first saw it it it holds up i just i really liked it then and i really like it now well. Of those like things that Again, until you see this, you, I guess, knew that it existed, but you forget. The fact that how many people in that building shared a bathroom, I'm like, that's a nightmare. Sharing a bathroom with people in your own family is one thing, but everybody on that floor probably had to share that bathroom, and he gets hassled by that cranky old lady down the hall. Oh, she was great.

That's too much to think about, especially for a little kid. Or a little... sarcastic rant at him about his radio. Oh, we've all just been enjoying your. Oh, and the other thing I really loved was, and I had forgotten this, the thing about the batteries were going to transistorize his brain. I like that.

One day your brain's going to turn into a battery or something. Every time she passed him, she gave him one of those lines. I just like that that actress was apparently, she's like the Harry Dean Stanton of black women. She was never... Young.

She was always an old lady. And always played that sassy old black lady that had some sort of hassling for whoever our main character was. there were a good handful of those women that just kind of they turned up on well i feel. Like 20 years before 227 i. Feel like the mom was kind of that like she played the most mom mom you're ever gonna get not like his mom but her the grandma that's my mama grandma she yeah i'm like she's that's my mama for whatever you want to cast her in like she would be that woman in probably every role like and she was kind of amazing at it like i'm like i want her to be my grandma yeah can i get some wisdom before bed like that's i'll go pick her up at the bus station i got i'll get a car i'll ride her home she'll have to walk and deal with Whatever the rude people on the street, she was kind of going off there for a minute.

I wanted to hear the end of the story about the coffee. Because she's like, oh yeah, the coffee came out, but no cup. But I got my quarter back, and I'm like, okay, here's an idea. Use that to put more. You put the cup, put your quarter back in.

I just, come on. Worst case scenario, you get two cups. Then you don't burn your hand. Although I think technically. It was grape soda.

So way to reinforce stereotypes, JT. Because you were trying to take away the racial stereotype. Yeah, maybe. Or it didn't even register to me. Yeah, you don't see racial stereotypes anymore.

Or I don't think I've ever seen one of those that wasn't a coffee. Like, again, they'd all probably broken by the time. Because I do remember the coffee ones dropping down with the cup, but I really don't remember a soda one. I think I've seen, like, them, again, in movies and stuff. But in the real world, I think the only one I've seen where it drops the cup down were coffee ones.

Yeah. I guess based on my experience, that's what I'm thinking. Fair enough. And you might just want some coffee right now. Yeah.

Yeah, it all... The way that it's put together, I don't have anything to compare it to, but I remember at some point I read the opening couple of paragraphs of Alice in Wonderland, and it was when my kids were little, and so I saw a couple of versions, movie versions of Alice in Wonderland, and it just takes the movies forever to establish the things that are just thrown out in the first paragraph. And it's just so effortless, you aren't even aware there's any exposition. But then you see a movie treatment trying to get it all in, and it's just so ponderous and lumbering. There's a real talent for editing things so that they just happen naturally, and they lead you into the story without you going, yeah, what's the deal?

Oh, I guess they're going to answer that. I don't know. I mean, that is a skill to be able to take that and not only make it make sense on screen, but make it make sense in a succinct manner that you're not like making one of the three hour movies that you're like, well, why is this so damn long? Which I do remember thinking that at the end, I was like, it feels like we got a lot of this slice of life for like under an hour. Like it, it seems like there's a whole lot of stuff going on in his life.

And then all the time we spend with the cat and like, Somehow it packs it all into this pretty short amount of time for, I don't know, it feels like it's more than a complete picture than you would get even out of some movies that sort of piece together these bad relationships. I guess that's what I was trying to say about it. It does a lot really fast. Would you like to have a midnight snack with me? I made some boiled custard.

I know how bad you're hurting, honey. That cat? He was something real special to you. I know. You.

You're something special, too. You are. Why did it have to happen? Why? Why?

Oh, child, I wish I could give you the answer. But I don't know. Seemed like life got a whole lot more questions than answers to it. You start out young asking questions. You end up old asking questions.

And the puzzlement is, they're mostly the same questions. There's just a very few years in between where you think you got the answers to match up with the questions. Why did it have to happen? Why? Death is a mean way to have to learn about life.

But that's the way of it sometimes. That's just the way of it. Sure made me love that cat. Yeah, that was. It was a great cat, too.

That cat should have been like the Harry Dean statue of cats in movies. Maybe it was that we didn't recognize the cat because it was so effective. In its other roles. He disappears into the role. He also played the other cat, the kitten.

He is that good. You didn't even. Recognize him. Again, because maybe it was just a time period and they were grab whatever cat but it seems like now it would be super cute the whole way through and i'm like he looks rough when he first gets there i was like damn he does look like a cat living in an abandoned building like he looked like he needed somebody to love and i was like damn it jt stepped up. They knew he was going to die.

I just assumed the whole time that they were going to knock down the building. Like, that was one of the buildings that they were going to take down, and they were taking down the building over the cat. And then we'd just see, like, a cat. Tail coming out of a rubble. When they set up the windows thing, yeah.

I was like, God, no. I thought at least he was going to be in there with the cat and was going to be trying to save the cat while the building was getting demolished. See, while the teacher was taking so long, and he was like, I got to go, I got to go. I was like, oh, no, they're tearing that building down right now. But no, it was worse.

Oh, that would have been so much better, though. Just story-wise. I gave it too much credit. I gave Fred too much credit. It didn't even occur to me.

No, no, this, I mean, this movie is awesome. If for no other reason than we get to see a cat with an eye patch. Yeah, that was a good moment. That may be the funniest thing I've ever seen. And you could tell that the actor cat didn't want the eye patch either.

Like, there was clearly going to be more with. The eye patch, and then there was some continuity stuff there with it, too, because it was like that cat was having none of it. Any animal that you're going to do that to is going to immediately be like, get the hell off me, and just start trying to, yeah, so. That was kind of my favorite. You see him over there.

And I kind of was. I'm like, what? It's much like Grandma. I'm like, what is he doing over there? Like, little did I know.

Cat eye patch. That's pretty hilarious. But yeah, like, again, it all seems very real. Like, it seems like something a kid would do. Like, I'm sure I would have done that.

The only time I thought he was reaching a little bit was, like, when he was doing his doctor patter. It was like, really? Really? I just went over your charts this morning. I thought it started.

It maybe went on a little long, but I thought the beginning was pretty funny. I was like, kids say some crazy stuff sometimes. But then you had to have it for later when he's like longingly looking at the stethoscope. Oh, God, it killed me. Yeah, it's really affecting.

It is. Suck me in. I didn't feel anything. Really? But you're dead inside.

I literally, like, I was so excited. I got my laptop, like, this morning. I woke up, and I was like, I'll watch this in bed. Yay, JT! And I was, like, not even just, like, you know, sometimes I get teary at movies, but, like, I was uncontrollably weeping.

And, like, it started with the cat dying, but then it just, like, crescendoed with, like, him being so affected by it. Like, seeing his sad little face, it destroyed me. I've had a weird alteration in the way I experience movies emotionally. Like, anything involving... small children getting hurt I just used to be able to not like stand even even the scene in the butterfly effect where the baby gets blown up by it's a stupid scene but it kind of pissed me off um and. Then you had a kid and now you're like what up.

No I don't know like I saw think of these kids. I saw the homesman earlier this week the Tommy Lee Jones. Movie oh no spoilers for this because I'm really excited. About seeing this movie this isn't a spoiler and don't be excited oh I've. Heard mixed things spoiler for your expectations.

I guess like ha ha ha well that was a spoiler ha ha ha don't be excited this isn't a spoiler don't be excited. Like a baby gets thrown into an outhouse and that's not. A spoiler that's just kind of gross. And I was like that was really poorly shot meanwhile the theory of everything made me. Tear up in weird ways and i.

Was totally unaffected by that movie totally unaffected you're both dead inside i don't know i thought it was i thought it was interesting it was a good performance but i just didn't i didn't feel anything so. We're having a contest of who's dead who's deader should i recuse myself i mean we. All assume you win but we're trying to find the next level down I feel like so much of this still felt pretty real, though. Him building the extra special house. I'm like, I think I did that kind of stuff, actually.

I'm just stacking crap up and calling it something. That's what kids do. If I go through a neighborhood to this day, I still look at it in terms of opportunities for play. And just houses and yards, they had this magic fascination for me. But at the same time, like I have the adult side of my brain that knows that nothing really very interesting is happening there.

And the two things, I don't know, they just, they all perpetually make me want to take a photograph of everything. Just because it's like, well, look, you can see how, no, I don't know. Probably not. If you had time, you would stop and play everywhere. Yeah.

Yeah. No wonder you don't want to work. You're missing play opportunities. I know. I've got things to do.

I've got clubhouses to build, damn it. I don't have time for this job. Go work. Like, I don't have stuff to do. I don't know, man.

It's ridiculous. You go to work and there's a manager and he's like, can you pick that up? I don't know. Can you pick it up? Can you manage to pick it up?

I'm going to go build a clubhouse. You pick that up. I heard some comedian do that somewhere or something. You get a job, they want you to show up all the time. I was like, yeah, I know.

What's that about? So, of the other things that are lost to the ages, just go into a store and get in credit. Yeah. Just put it on my account. I'm just like, yeah, that's not going to happen now.

You can go in debt with a credit card real easy, but they don't just trust you to come back next week or two months later and pay your bill. Like, that's a lost era right there. I got me some red curtains on credit. I don't know if you remember that. It's the line from Monster's Ball.

To me, that's the signature line of the entire movie. On that note, we haven't really addressed the shop owner, which ends up being a pretty key character in all this. Yeah, I guess looking back on it, before I watched it again, I felt like It's going to seem kind of clumsy, kind of like, you know, it's a little PC. Yeah. But PC didn't exist back then.

People didn't even know what that was. They didn't have a PC on their desk, and they didn't have the term PC. It was back, you know, around the time when All in the Family was on TV, and I guess Norman Lear was doing, like, social issues thing on stuff on television. But, yeah, I mean, he was definitely, I was a little worried for his business plan at points, you know. So was his wife.

Yeah, I mean, like you would be. Ugh, women. Always trying to put a scarf on you. Putting scarves on you and shit. What's that about?

That was the most, like, what line? I was like, really? Like, we've just come to a, like, oh, look at this wonderful old man. Wait, what was that? Is that a random sexist remark you just made?

But he's an old guy. I guess you can pull that stuff off when you're an old guy. Just like, that's a weird moment to throw that in. It's like you could almost even pull it off back at the shop in the middle when we didn't really care about him that much. And he was sort of a stereotype anyway.

But like, yeah, by the end I was just like, but we just liked you now. That was an odd moment. Yeah, and then it has the little echo when she put, Oh, wait, before you go. And puts the scarf around his neck. Women always put scarves.

Or the George Carlin joke was, if you fall asleep on a couch in a house, and there's a woman in that house, when you wake up, there will be a cover on you. Well, the mom proved that. I mean, she comes over and covers up the. Yeah. Which, at one point, is it just me, or did Grandma refer to herself as the aunt? i don't know i swear i thought at one point when she's in there talking to jt after he's upset she's like listen to your aunt or something like that and i was like but.

She really didn't look that much. Yeah but like they always like even in all the stuff i've read like they always say her mother like it's always referred to as his grandmother but i was like i'm pretty sure that line's in and then i was just like well actually i know of quite a few people especially of that era where like the mom dies and the oldest kid steps up and becomes the new parent because dad works 65 hours a week back then. And like, so yeah, it's, I know one in my family that did that. And I know another one that like, she refers to somebody as mom and another somebody as mom and neither are birth mother. And like, it, it gets kind of confusing and weird.

I know a few people. Yeah. I think Jack Nicholson's, uh, mother, told him all his childhood that she was his sister. And he didn't find out until he. Was, like, in his 20s or something.

Didn't she raise him as a girl, too? Maybe. I might have just made that up. I think you're thinking of a couple of horror movies. Or Ernest Hemingway.

It happens. Forgive it. I'm thinking of a couple right now. We were raising the puppy as a girl for a few weeks. I know.

I noticed that. Yeah, it was a weird thing. No wonder he wears that sweater. Yeah. He's having issues, right?

It is funny. I thought that was interesting, what affects you in movies and concern about kids. Because I remember talking to somebody when I was watching The Sopranos. He said, oh, I think this episode last night, he was taping it for me because I didn't get HBO. No.

He said, I don't know. And he gives me the tape. He says, be careful. I think they maybe went too far in this one. I don't know.

See what you think. It comes with a warning. And so the opening shot is, what's his name's kid? Ralphie. Ralphie's kids are in the backyard playing Lord of the Rings.

And one of them has a bow, an actual bow and arrow. And the other one has a cardboard box he's running around with with a Target painted on it. And I'm like, God, no. No, don't do this. And Ralphie's in the fucking bathtub.

And I'm like, get out of there. Stop this. And sure enough, the kid gets shot in the neck. And he's in the hospital. And then I think later in the episode, Tony kills Ralphie and cuts him up in a bathtub.

But I didn't care about that. It was like, it's already over. But the impressive part was when he was in the hospital, JT went to visit him, and he snuck in. Snuck in. The perfect crime.

Hold him in the hand. And we've just answered your own question. Yeah, and so he watched that, and he gave me that, but then he told me he was watching Mayberry, and Opie got a job working at the store, and Andy was all proud of him, and he thought he'd stop by and see him at the store. And so he stops in and he says, so how much is that cologne up there on that shelf? And Opie gets on a ladder and gets it down and says, it's $ 70.

And he says, I think I'll just wait on that. And he leaves and Opie goes to put it back up and he drops it and it smashes on the floor and there's like cologne everywhere. And I said, so what happened? And he said, I don't know. I couldn't watch it anymore after that.

It's just too much for me. I knew it would be okay and they'd work it out, but I just couldn't sit through it. Couldn't wait the 12 minutes for the resolution. Well, and I'm like, well, it was probably mislabeled. It couldn't have been $ 70.

So he'll worry about it a lot. It'll turn out it's okay. And it was $ 7. He'll do the right thing. Yeah.

Yeah, but now we'll never know. We'll never know what happened to Opie. But that was the thing he couldn't watch. We both got through the bow and arrow and like the Ralphie scene. I remember like the raid.

He sprayed Tony's face with rain. That was so funny. But yeah, you got to draw the line somewhere, I guess. I actually had to turn off the movie the other night because I'd been wanting for a while to watch Definitely Maybe because it's about kind of a divorced father with his daughter kind of thing. So I thought this will be cathartic.

In a way. And I got through the title sequence, which was very romantic comedy-ish. And then the very first scene after that was he went to school and there's just utter chaos because they're teaching the kids sex ed. And the kids are just going crazy and the parents are going crazy. And he's like, aren't they a little old for this?

And then they leave. And I had to turn it off because I decided I just really wasn't going to agree with the filmmaker's views on the world. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes that's the case.

I took my four-year-old to the science center and pointed out the reproductive stuff because my sister is pregnant. So now she knows where a baby grows and how it comes out and everything. She's only four and. She's cool with that. That's the way I was with my kids.

It's like anything they want to know, I'm not like the guardian of information. Alan, will you explain it to me later? Okay. Y'all need to go take a field trip to the science museum. Yeah.

I do want some visual aids. That's all I got to say. Oh, Christmas. You can't get aids that way. Sorry.

It brings to mind that I watched The Meaning of Life this year for the first time ever in the scene where John Cleese is instructing his class on intercourse. Oh, yeah. I remember that. And just brings his wife in and denunciates and he keeps having to yell. At them because they're like, look out.

Now this is for you in the back. Pay attention. That was in The Meaning of Life? Yeah. No wait yes yes.

Okay some of them that like the scenes like that get mixed up in the different python movies for me as they got more segmented was that the one that had like uh every sperm is sacred song. Yeah the universe song and oh. The universe song is a great song I've always meant to learn that song, but I can't remember the lyrics. It's on YouTube, just the song itself. Yeah.

I just love the whole visual of the thing. Everything about that scene is... Yeah. Great. Yeah, I always wanted to learn, too, like the Grinch lyrics, the Grinch song.

But I can never remember them all. They're pretty awesome. Sung by Thoreau Ravenscroft. That's an extra tie-in there. Oh, my God.

Uh-huh. Did you just piece that together? He's everywhere. He's in everything. That's awesome.

Now you'll never forget his name either. Thoreau Ravencroft? No, that's a. Is it Ravencroft or Ravenscroft? Oh, I don't know.

Actually, now that I'm saying it. Is it Keith Richard or Keith Richards? You told me he changed it. He did. Early on, they thought it was cooler if it was Richard, and then he changed it.

Really? Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's Ravenscroft, but I could be wrong. Ravenscroft. That's better.

That sounds like that would be like an alternate school at Hogwarts. You might get sorted into Ravenscroft. Right. Every kid just has a really deep voice. I don't know how you ended up in this one.

Me either. That's pretty funny. Ravens with an S, Croft. For those of you playing the home game. Ravenscroft.

Croft is just like. As in Laura Croft. Well, no, actually, the funniest thing in my hometown, and I like visit it every time I'm in my hometown, is along Scottsville Road, there's these little apartments called Scottscroft Manor Apartments. And it just cracks me up because I know. That's not a real word.

Yeah, real estate person was just like, well, what are we going to call it? We want it to sound classy. It's like Scottsville Road apartment sounds like what it is, like dumpy little apartments. I know. Scottscroft.

I can't keep a straight face every time I see it. It's just such blatant bullshittery. Is there not a meaning for the suffix croft? Is there? I don't know.

I'm going to let you know in a second. The family of Laura. That's what it says. If there is, I think then you could add a croft onto croft to class it up. Croft, croft?

Yes. That's a weird tangent. Well, okay, croft is, as one definition, is an area of land with a crofter's dwelling used for crofting, which is small. How many times can we work croft into this sentence? Which is small-scale food production.

Croft, croft, croft, croft, croft. That sounds like English people crafting, doesn't it? Oh, I do some crofting. You've also got Crofton Town, which is a place. A made-up place.

Yeah, ton means town, so that's... So, as far as land, yeah, it's an area of land where a small-scale food producer lives. Just throwing off our whole plan of them being full of shit. So, Scott's Croft. No, I think it's still full of shit.

It's still them reaching for more class than they actually have. Unless there's a small-scale food producer living in those apartments. There might be. There could be. But it would only be, I think, the land that he owns or she owns.

Oh, yeah. And they're not landowners. They're land renters. So it's not. Well, sucks to be them.

And that reminds me. This, JT, and one other movie kind of have this connection in my mind, although they have no real connection. They may. They may have a connection that I don't know about. But the movie Tomorrow, you've probably heard me talk about.

Which one? It's early Robert Duvall. It's based on a Faulkner story. I do kind of remember you, yeah. And he plays this guy who is a sharecropper and he lives on this little patch of land and works the land for somebody.

And they tell him, oh, we can build you a house here if you're going to stay here and work. But for now, there's this barn he's staying in, and he doesn't care. But this pregnant woman shows up, whose family has abandoned her, and she's not doing well, and he takes care of her. You know, he gets involved in taking care of her. Does he keep her in an oven?

Yeah, he keeps her in an oven with a plastic umbrella on. All right, well, then he is taken care of. And he's so good in that role. It's like if you've ever run into, like. Actual mountain guys who are kind of like really shy and they have like this, this, this kind of stilted way of talking.

Like they're a little shy and they're a lot like the guys in, uh, Tucker and Dale. Yeah. You know, they're like, they're kind of shy. They're not really outgoing. And he has this awkward way of talking that sounds almost a little speech impediment.

But, uh, he says things like, I'm going to save you. Yeah. Seems like it would work really well with Robert Duvall. Yeah. And then, uh, and then this guy comes by to see him and he's like, and he gets like standoffish cause he's got that woman there and he's, and the guy's like, I didn't come by to spy on you.

I came by to see if you want to go fishing. And then he's like, then he wants the house now. So he marches off the, where he wants the house built. And it's just, it's, It's a great little movie with a lot of the same kinds of themes. And it's one that not many people have seen, but I keep trying to...

I think it got an Oscar one year. It was a while back. At any point, does some random hoodlum come pick up the pregnant woman and throw her into traffic? Yeah, that happens. The really disturbing thing is, on the way over here, there's a black cat sitting at the edge of the road, like past the parked cars.

It's only kind of a lane and a half-ish to work with anyway, and he's sitting right at the edge there. And I'm like, damn it, if you run out in front of me, I'm like, if this all comes true just for the sake of this crazy movie, I do not want any of this. I'm like, I'm going to slow down. Yeah, this street up here is like a street of cats. You really have to watch it.

Good to know. There's like a, a guy there who sort of takes care of a lot of the stray cats, and so they know that and they congregate there. Speaking of things that are completely different based on era and the reason why you can never remake this film now is that nobody would actually stop their car and nobody would actually gather or care. Yeah, there wouldn't be a whole bunch of people around going, what happened? They'd barely do that if a person got hit, let alone a cat.

So, yeah. Again, I mean, there are. Moments that are very, like, it does seem like a TV special. Like, even the way, like, it's structured, but I kind of don't care because I kind of like the way it wraps up so well. Like, is it very, like, does it feel very written by Jane Wagner that not only does he return the radio that he steals at the beginning of the movie, but he then immediately decides to get his act together and go get a job at 11 years old.

He like, he so turns his entire life around in the span of this one scene. And I'm like, I kind of don't care because I want good things for this kid. So it's like, I don't care how cliche or made for TV wrap up it is because it's what I wanted to see happen outside of that middle part with the cat. But even then we kind of like, well, there's a replacement cat. Sorry about that part.

But everything sort of wraps up in the most TV way, but I kind of don't care. Well, you say he's turning his life around. He was never really as bad a kid as they all thought he was. So I don't think he turned his life around. Now that everybody kind of saw that he can, in fact, be responsible, he felt more comfortable being a word about.

That, I guess. Yeah, I think that's true. I think you sort of follow the way people see you a little bit. Well, I think he did, but it was that this is what we could show on TV in 1969. So I think it's also like a 69, for all practical purposes, a slightly simpler time.

The evils and horrible things going on are equally as rampant, but I feel like we can't show him doing crack yet. We can't show, like, the prostitutes on the corner. That was probably all going on right then, too. It wasn't crack yet. But still, like, I'm sure all these horrible things were there, but they're not going to show.

I mean, it actually was made for Saturday morning programming. Yeah. And it got such good reviews, they re-ran it the next week in primetime. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah.

I mean, again, that probably wouldn't happen now either. Networks would be like, tough luck, here's your spot. But in one week, it got such good praise that they felt like they need to share it with grown-ups too, which I think is pretty impressive. I do think it transcends those sort of clunky moments that you expect as a happy ending because... I mean, if you just compare it to other things that have those same moments, it's just...

It seems like it earns them, I think. Yeah. I think because he's such a real kid, too. He does not feel like a Hollywood kid. Yeah, he's not like that perpetual cute black kid that you had to have on TV.

And I looked him up now, and thank God he grew into those teeth. He just had the most messed up kid teeth And I'm just like that's just because he's a kid He had kind of a Jerry Seinfeld Yeah I was like I'm assuming So later he became a very handsome man He. Still has that same goofy smile He grew into. Him or he got caps I don't know which Either way good for you man he grew into it But yeah I think so much of that is like He's just a really genuine kid This was his first acting job So he probably wasn't acting Very much Can you imagine. Putting that on your resume when you were a kid?

Remember that movie? I don't know. Maybe in some ways it's easier for me. I really love Kevengene Wallace in Beasts of the Southern Wild, and it felt like you just put a six-year-old in there and just kind of let her run around with fireworks, and she's going to get an Oscar nomination. And now she's acting for Annie, and I haven't seen it yet, of course, but you watch the trailer, it just kind of looks.

It looks pretty good. Standard, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. There's something about that.

If you can get people to be natural on camera and have the material that makes you care about what they're doing, that's probably true. It's hard to do, but I think it's easier with kids because kids don't have that barrier yet. They don't know that they shouldn't be doing that, so I think it works better if you kind of get those most honest performances out of the kids, their first performance. It's really hard with inarticulate mountain men. Unless they're Robert Duvall.

Unless they're like... production of All the King's Men. Odd thing was, before that movie, Robert Duvall actually was an inarticulate mountain man. And after that, he found his calling and turned his life around, too. Well, he said... And this ties back into the show, and Angel wanted me to make this point.

She brings this up a lot. Duvall doesn't like to watch other actors. He likes watching old newsreel stuff and just seeing... like documentary stuff, because he thinks you see more real stuff in that. He seems like an odd character, but he makes it work. He's so good on screen that whenever weird stuff he wants to do off screen, more power to you, buddy.

I always get annoyed at him because of his politics. I don't know why he can't just be a liberal douchebag like every other actor. Wasn't that... I don't know. I thought there was a rule about that.

I try not to pay attention to any of their politics. Or regular people's bodies. It does seem weird that, like, you would look to somebody who, you know, has an artistic ability for, like, guidance on other stuff. I mean, how does that make sense? You're really good at pretending to be other people.

Perhaps you could. Tell me about how to govern countries. Could one of your fake personalities tell me what I should think in the real world? Yeah, but, I mean, I guess they do that with everybody because, like, Jesus could walk on water and then they ask him about religion. I'd be asking him about physics.

I mean. I'd be asking him to promote my new Diet Coke. You know he'd be getting sponsorships now, so it was obviously another era there, too. Jesus, for Diet Coke. You know, when I've walked across the lake, it's a hot day.

Kick back with a Diet Coke. You're really good at making up commercials off the top of your head. That Tom Waits commercial. I wonder how many have seeped in over the years is the problem. Yeah, that Tom Waits Pringles commercial, that was just.

Yeah, that one, I probably couldn't have come up with it if I thought too much. It just happened. That was last year's holiday extravaganza. Well, have we done JT? Is there more to the story?

I think that was most of it. I mean, I don't know. Do you take anything from it other than what it presents on the screen? Because, I mean, it throws out a lot of big questions, like mostly Grandma. I mean, Grandma has all the big lines of...

I mean, the one I actually kind of liked is You know, they're going through The Cats Have Nine Lives, and she's like, you've only got one life to live. What are you going to do with it? And I'm like, that's a pretty damn good question, actually. It's like, TV movie of the week or not, that's a pretty damn good question. Yeah.

Especially for a little kid at that point. I liked the thing when he got a job. I think I was about the age when I got a job, and I'm a big supporter of child labor. Child labor. That's what happened.

I really am. Just because people do it. Wrong and ruin it doesn't mean that it's not a good thing. That coal's not going to mine itself, damn it. Yeah, no.

Little hands are so effective. Who needs canaries when you got little kids? Anyway. I did feel like he was wasting himself in retail, though. I felt like veterinary medicine was clearly where he was headed.

Well, he's working his way up. You did get the feeling that he, like, was projecting, like, being a doctor or taking care of animals in some way. I mean, it seemed like it just really hit the spot for him. Can we talk about what a terrible teacher she was? There is nothing about that scene that would not suggest that he can't read or write.

Like, nothing about that scene. Except he could. Like, later we saw that he could. But I'm like, he must have... Well, I mean, he wrote Welcome.

I assume she knew his work. Well, for her, he just drew a cat, which to me would suggest this child. He really likes cats oh i love the scene in the bathroom with the kid who could draw could you draw that i. Thought that was i thought that was going somewhere actually because i like that kid and i was like i hope we get more with this kid because he's kind of weird but i'm totally sold on him yeah. And that scene went nowhere i was actually wondering if that kid had like won a contest like if it was like a saturday morning like you could be on a saturday Because it didn't go anywhere.

It really didn't go anywhere, but it was really memorable and vivid, and it just seemed like that. No, and he rocked those glasses. Yeah, he made glasses cool. Yeah, and that had nothing to do with anything. Oh, maybe there was like an optical sponsor or something.

There you go. Yeah, looks like you need glasses. That kid's obviously going to be an optometrist. This art thing is a waste of time. And they're going to be like buddies for the rest of their life.

There's going to be an optometrist shop, a veterinary shop next door. They'll go have lunch together and play chess. Well, that kid will doodle on the napkin. It'll be really good, but he's not going to do anything with that. He's got glasses to paint.

Go to dance parties. The clothes. I want to talk about the clothes mostly. Maybe exclusively. All right.

You were shopping is what you're saying? throughout if you don't know lucy likes her some vintage clothes. Yeah i was thinking of etsy keywords to type in following the film. Just putting jt and everything cast of jt where are they now can i have your wardrobe i did. Notice which i really loved and i thought was a fun detail and i assume it was purposeful because how could it not be like how friggin swank the mom was i mean she was dressed to the nines constantly like not just dressed but like you know, had like accessories and things that a person on a budget would not have. So you can only assume that she owned those things in her previous life and she was still trying to sort of project this image of this working person.

And I just felt like there was the whole subplot there that was just based on that one cue. Again, there was a lot, I felt like, in between the lines with the mom situation and how much had happened and ever since your dad left and I got to work all day. And like, and it's just these few lines here and there. And like, How guilty she feels towards the end when she's just like, I should have been paying attention. I should have been, you know, nurturing him more.

I should have noticed he was the sweetest kid ever. Yeah, I was just like, I should have realized I was not paying attention to the details. And again, I was like, that's just kind of parenting when you got way too much stuff to do. But I do feel like there was, what little time we spend with her, I think she does such a good performance with it. I sure don't feel like doing no Christmas decorating this year.

JT won't even know the difference. Ain't no Christmas. Tree gonna jolt him out of his misery. Been unfair to him, Mama. Put all my frustrations on that boy.

I lost how to reach him. And I had to look up that actor because she was. Yeah. Ridiculously pretty. I was just like, what else was she on?

On Good Times? All right, I need to go watch some Good Times. Was she on Good Times? She was not. I think she was the friend.

Because the mom had that friend that turned up, but I think only for a while. On those shows back then, there was always a hot friend. There was always a hot friend that wandered in from across the hall. Uh-huh. Wow.

I would have thought I was watching that. Cue sounds of panting. I was going to let the dog party finish and then we'll continue on. Hot lady and then there's a panting sound effect. That's no sound effect.

Yeah, just keep that clip. And we'll have that every time a hot lady is mentioned. Lucy likes her some hot dudes. I was just panting over the clothes. So which were your favorites?

Were there specific terms that you were going to type in? I really dug his corduroy jacket with the little faux fur collar. I liked that one a lot. I liked really everything she wore. I liked the jackets most of all.

Oh, at the very beginning, there's like a little girl skipping rope, and she's wearing a dynamite jacket. All the extras were very well-attached. Like Jimmy J.J. Walker dynamite? Yeah, do you apply like vintage terms to vintage clothes?

That jacket is dynamite at some point you're like what are you talking about jt you gotta work in all your 70s and 80s catchphrases some. Kid uh was auditioning for an indie movie uh Kid from here in town. I think it was John Chorey's son by one of his ex-wives. It was. And he was supposed to play a 70s pothead, and he was grilling me about the slang.

He was saying, did they. What is he saying about you? He said, did people say things were cool back then? I'm like, yeah, that's been around for a while. There were some others, too.

And I was like, yeah. But then... I do remember vividly, like, groups of potheads, maybe it was just us, would spawn their own language. I think most friends, if they have any sense about them, which potheads probably is arguable, but, you know, I mean, some of the horrible things that we've spun off just in our little group on this show that now we will reference as a term that, like, only we get. I would think most groups of friends.

Yeah, I wonder if you ever got that part. Oh, yeah. Burlesque. Burlesque. Still my favorite.

Old school fans have to remember that. If not, you'll have to delve through the archives. So, I guess to wrap up, what does Christmas mean to you? In bad teacher form. What does Christmas.

Yeah, no, I was like, she's... Well, she said or more. She's the. It just had to be at least. But still, 25 words.

He's not like a four-year-old. Like, why 25 words? Like, they're old enough to write a real theme. Even Ralphie wrote more than that. Is she gonna post to the...

On Twitter? Really? What are they? Keep it under 140 characters, kids. Tweet what Christmas means to you.

Tweet me your assignment this week. That's about how bad she was, actually. Like, the fact that he would just come and go from school, which, again, probably could happen very easily back then, but still, like, he would just leave and disappear and she wouldn't see him all day. The fact that he never really seemed to be doing work in school... Or at home.

And then he gave no indication that he could read or write. Well, and then he wrote welcome, damn it. But she didn't know that. Well, I'm saying he could. She just didn't know that because she's a terrible person.

But yeah, the fact that she like also like, how long did that go on? Like, are you not teaching them anything else the whole rest of the week? Like, how long was this period she gave them to do 25 words and like, She's still checking back days and days later. I'm like, are you not doing anything else in the classroom between then? What is this teaching going on?

Because it's a sorry excuse for her. I guess that's the thing about the whole movie that I really love is that it's so efficient when it's going somewhere that it has time. to have this other stuff that doesn't go anywhere. And that stuff is really great because I remember, like in most plays, if you mention someone's coming to visit and they're coming on the next train, they always walk in right then because they took an earlier train. You announce it, it happens. It's like a clockwork and it's predictable and it's depressing.

And it's just lovely. To have something that, like, there's no reason for that. But it's really well done. And it's part of the art of acting and showing people existing. And, like, the mom having, like, this evidence of this life that we're not going to go into.

Yeah. But you see glimpses of it reflected in the choices. And I guess the comparison I'd make to it is, last night I was trying to watch a movie called Bad Meat. which I've been planning to watch for maybe 10 years and never got around to it. It's a long-range plan you've got. And it was the editor of The Onion back in their early days, Scott Dickers, and he tried to go into movies.

And this was his movie that he co-wrote with somebody. And I thought I ought to watch that. And it's just so terrible. It's just amazingly terrible. And I think part of the reason is, is like, The idea for the movie is there.

There's a story. There's a plot. There's stuff happening. But there's not any fun stuff for anybody else in the movie to do except the guy who's having the idea for the movie and sort of writing it or co-writing it. There's not really any acting that I couldn't do.

And that sets a really low bar. And it's just so depressingly... It would be better if you just heard him tell you the movie. It would be a better thing. It would be more entertaining if you just sat down and he said, okay, I have this movie where these guys do this and that.

Okay, all right. That's all I need. It doesn't have that extra stuff that just really enjoys what you can do. with making a movie. I think that's the key to these things that we latch on to and we come back to time and time again is those movies that feel lived in. That it really does feel like that's a real place.

Those are real people and that maybe, and this I think JT definitely feels like that, like that place could still be going on. Like, you know, it's like that felt like it was all the stuff that was going on there was going on before we started watching and continued on after we watched. And like, You don't always feel like that. Sometimes it is a very like stage play performance and it's like, okay, and go. People sat down and watching this.

Now we start acting, you know, but it's like, if to me, if it's a really good performance and a really good like piece that this, you know, director or writer or whoever is put together, it feels like a real thing that goes on and has been going on before you ever came into it. I think, I think JT has that even in its more clunkier moment. I think everything else is so well pieced together. Yeah, it still feels like that lady is going to be sarcastic in the hallway. Tomorrow.

Yeah. The teacher's going to continue to be a bad teacher. It's not like the minor characters in, it always bothered me, like the minor characters in Moulin Rouge, their lives just revolve around the stars like they know they're the stars of the movie. Who told them that they're in a movie? Yeah.

It's like, we don't care what's happening for us. These are the main characters. We'll go stand in the back and be quiet when they talk. Shh, dialogue. Anything else that Christmas means to you that we need to pass along before we wrap this up?

Oh, that's a broad question. Has anybody seen the I Am Santa Claus documentary? I saw someone post it earlier today, I think. I've heard pretty good things from everybody on there that had mentioned it. I've been watching a lot of documentaries.

I heard a couple of good ones on that little feed. The most fun thing in the movie I was watching last night was a promo for a documentary called Confessions of a Superhero. Have you seen that? No. It seemed like they were celebrity lookalikes, like there was a guy who looks like Christopher Reed.

I do remember this trailer. I haven't seen it, but I do remember the trailer. I'm going to have to. Check that out. It's weird when you're like halfway, or God, I hope halfway through a movie, and you're thinking, that's an interesting.

You're still thinking about the trailer of another movie that's probably better than this one. It looked pretty funny. The guy kind of does look like Christopher Reed, but just, you know, off a little. I was at the tap room last night with some people, and there was a guy who looked, the way the people described it is, it was like somebody told him he looked like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he just ran with it. And he really does, like, imagine what Joseph Gordon-Levitt looks like, and that's exactly what this guy looked like.

It was amazing. Sometimes it's best to not tell people they look like celebrities. I think it just goes horribly wrong. I don't know what his deal was because I didn't know him. But yeah, it was weird.

I ended up being able to just observe him for about an hour because he happened to go all the places I was. He just grabbed this drunk woman and told her that she needed to stop being so drunk. He'd been stumbling around all night himself. Sounds like drunk activity to me. This is why I don't go places.

I keep meaning to go there, because they do that open mic, and I know some people who play there. And you made me think of my Christmas thing. Okay, what is your Christmas theory? Well, about the time, like, I was remembering JT, and I remember I liked it, and I was going to watch it again, and it held up to watching again, but somewhere in that time, I re-heard the Velvet Underground song, Rock and Roll. and it just came back to me how much i fucking love that song and i had completely forgotten about it i had just forgotten it was even a thing but i heard it and i'm like because i'm not really always a big fan of lou reed's voice or anything um. I i have respect for what he was doing but yeah i'm kind of hit and miss sometimes on the song it.

Just sounds like he has bad breath or something. You know That's a very good ear you have. Yeah. Well, I've described his voice in a positive way as sounding like he keeps looking for the note even after he's hit it, like a guy looking for his car keys while he's holding them in his hand. He's still patting his pockets.

And that's cool, but I think it works sometimes, and it really works in that song. And if you don't know the song, it's about a five-year-old named Jenny who's experiencing ennui. There's just nothing going on. There's nothing on the radio. Every time she turns on the radio, there's nothing happening.

And then she turns on, one day she turns on this New York station, which I believe is the same station that JT was listening to and telling the cat about. And then all of a sudden she discovers rock and roll and it saves her life is what the next line says. Nice. Her life is saved by rock and roll. I was trying to decide what we need to go out on.

I think, you know, as the tie-in, J.T. listening to this station. Yeah. Your Christmas miracle right there. And the thing it does, and it's sort of in J.T., But that song captures that moment in life that can happen any time to anyone, no matter how old you are, where you just go, fuck it, I love what I love. Yeah.

You know? And I want to share it with my cat. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, and that's a great, to me, that's a Christmas thought.

Yeah. And I think that's how we should get out of here. Merry Christmas, everyone. Merry Christmas. Happy Life Day.

And, yeah. I mean, I'm rolling them all into one. This is going up probably around Hanukkah too, so have yourself a happy whatever you're into. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next time.

Same geek feed. Thanks for listening. Jenny said when she was just five years old, there was nothing happening at all. Every time she puts on the radio, there was nothing going down at all. Not at all.

Then one fine morning, she puts on a New York station. You know, she don't believe what she heard at all. She started shaking to that fine, fine music. You know her life was saved by rock and roll. Despite all the.

Amputations, you know you could just go out and dance to the rock and roll station. It was alright. It was alright. Hey baby, you know it was alright. It was alright.

Ginny said when she's just about five years old, you know my pants are going to be the death of us all. Two TV sets and. Two Cadillac cars, well, you know, ain't going to help me at all. Nah, just a tiny bit. And one fine morning, she turns on a New York station.

She doesn't believe. What she hears at all. She started dancing to that fine, fine music You know life is saved by rock and roll Yeah, rock and roll Despite all the computation She could just dance to that rock and roll station And baby, it was all right Yeah, all right Hey, it was all right Hey, here she comes now Like Ginny said when she was just about five years old Hey, you know, there's nothing happening at all Not at all Every time I put on the radio You know there's nothing going down at all. One fine morning she is. A new york station she doesn't believe.

What you heard at all hey not at all she's told to dance to that music you know her life is saved by rock and roll yes rock and roll oh despite all the computation you know you. Could just dance to a rock and roll station. All right. All right. And it was all right.

Oh, you listen to me now. And it was all right. Come on now. Hey. Hey, come on.

Lucy, stop starting dog fights. It was really cute for a second. It was. It was cute and then it was terrifying. Yeah.

Angel's just so loud. That's her only real character flaw. She's the character art. 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!