Happy Gilmore (1996) — "Harness in the good energy, block out the bad."

Weird Way. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I'm Christashio. So if you have been a listener of this show or a fan of this show for any amount of time, especially in the last year, you've noticed that my ability to put post and time between posts has gotten significantly longer. And that is I wouldn't say it's intentional as the word I would use, but it's definitely one of those things where probably a little bit of explanation is needed given that for the most part, in the last ten years, going on eleven years now, I've posted six hundred and ninety one episodes, which is a lot of episodes.

So the amount of time and effort spent into making this show is a lot. And so as someone who listens to this show, I'm sure you've been wondering why the time between posts has gotten longer, because it's normally a week, and sometimes it's even less than that. Because I tend to be an overachiever when it comes to stuff that I care about, but when life comes at you fast, sometimes it's hard to get out of the way, and in getting out of the way or attempting to get out of the way, things can get out of hand, and you can lose sight of what's important. And for me, podcasting started out as a as an opportunity to verbally what I do in writing all the time, which is talk about the things I care about, share my opinions and thoughts on things, try to make connections between disparate things, sometimes to show pop culture connections and stuff like that.

And I've spent a lifetime doing that. When I worked at the man Eater in Columbia, Missouri, when I was at the University of Missouri as a freshman, i wrote video game reviews and music reviews, and it was something that I really enjoyed because in a lot of ways you get to, I don't know, college newspapers feel a little bit more official than high school newspapers. In the high school that I went to, they didn't exactly put a whole lot of effort into the high school newspaper. And that's I don't know why. The journalism teacher at the school I went to didn't seem to care too terribly much about teaching a let alone teaching journalism, but definitely teaching at all.

I would say watching Indiana Jones has very little to do with journalism. But hey, getting to watch Indiana Jones during school hours is never going to be something I would come plain about explicitly. But as someone who's spent a very long time enjoying movies, but then also realizing that I have watched so many movies, as I know so many of us who sit and do this have that I feel like I can speak rather confidently about film. I feel it was important to be honest with my audience about why things have been the way that they have been, and also to kind of make some kind of I don't know, open and honest statements about things that have been going on in the hopes that openness and honesty are important for growth and movement in positive directions in one's life.

And you can get by for a while by not being honest about what's going on or not telling the people in your life, Hey, this is what's happening, and this is what I'm dealing with and I'm not okay. If you're in close proximity to anybody for any amount of time, especially people that care about you, they will be able to tell if something's wrong now, whether or not you're willing to communicate with them or share with them how you're feeling. That's on you. But I'm sure everybody has friends, family, people they work with who ask how they're doing and want genuinely want to know. They're not asking for some sort of I don't know, m sympathy play.

They're actually asking because they genuinely care. There are people like that in the world, and I happen to have met and surround myself with a fair number of them. And I would like to believe that anyone who listens to my show is listening to it for hopefully the right reasons, which is to be entertained for hour and a half about a movie or subject that you care about. And obviously I'm part of that equation, which as somewhat made me uncomfortable a little bit. But at the same time, I think it's something that myself, as a content creator and other content creators struggle with, which is us being part of the content creation.

Sometimes we lose. Sight of that. And there are people that listen to this show because I am the one who hosts it, I understand, and there are people that don't listen to this show because I'm the one who hosts it. I take the good with the bad, but I can't get out of the way of that fact any longer, and so I'm not going to continue to get out of the way of that fact, but lean into it more so. In the last year, my wife now ex wife, and I separated and then got divorced.

Within the span of about six months, I lost two of the three dogs that I had for over a decade. And then a close working partner of mine who I had fallen out with a little bit, but then we buried the hatchet thankfully before he passed away. He passed away last year, and those four things all happened in the span of July to December. There are people who have nightmares about the things that have happened to me about them, those things happening to them, and those things never happened to them. There are people who go through life having nightmares about their partner walking out on them and that never happens.

But that happened to me. So it's hard to quantify unless it's happened to you how awful it is. And so one of my escapes should have been podcasting. I tried to make it podcasting, but the problem with podcasting is almost intrinsically and directly linked to my ex wife and kind of everything in that part of my life because her and I had a relationship where I was allowed to do the things that I wanted that I pursued, and she supported me through that. And that's the one I don't want to drag anybody because there's no point, not because they don't deserve it.

It's more because there's literally no point. One thing that I did appreciate was being taken care of financially, and we were both supportive of one another financially the best that we could be. And she always supported my creative endeavors and my professional passion which is podcasting, which is something that I tend to think I'm good at and I would like to believe that's reflected in the quality of the content. And so as I sit here a little over a year removed from my wife initially walking out on me, all I can think to myself is how bummed I am that I wasn't able to keep a better wrangle on the podcasting, because, as anyone who's listened to this show knows, the collaborative connections with the people that I work with on this show are the real joy that I get from this.

Look, it would be nice to get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars or just enough money to exist really from doing this, and not to show how the sausage is made. But network is weirding way. Media is something that the Projection Booth podcast, Mike White and I started together, and we make money, which is something that is surprising to some people and not surprising to others. And that's because I don't think people really have a good gauge of how to make money in a digital space with stuff like this, and I'm not sure that the podcasting world does know how to do that yet either. I think that the podcasting world is struggling with that in and of its own right.

But all of that to say, the podcast network makes money. It's self sufficient at this point. But it is my passion to do something like this professionally and to work with the people that I care about and that I genuinely love everybody I've worked with or that's on the network. But it's a collaborative space for people to work together and lift each other up, because in a world of creative endeavors, it's very easy to become vertical and insular and not collaborative, especially once success comes, because once success comes, sometimes it's very easy to just shield yourself away from everybody. And I'm not saying there's no reason not to.

There are plenty of podcasts out there that have no interest in working with podcasts of weirding way media network size or smaller than ours or bigger than ours, because if you're not in that one of one of one percent, the tenth of one percent, you're not worth dealing with. And in the world of podcasting, this is a hustle that requires daily commitment, and if you're trying to do this professionally, weekly commitment is really the expectation. No one's expecting a daily podcast. Three hundred and sixty five podcast episodes in one year would be a lot. There are things that do it.

There are news talk radio and stuff like that posts every day, but that's because they are creating content and then reposting it every day. But to do a podcast every day would be a lot. And I've thought about it just as like a way to keep myself honest, but at the same time, it just seems like so much so in the expectation of it being a week, I haven't even been able to hold to that. I haven't been able to hold to a once a week post because the overwhelming problem in my life for the last year has been emotional turmoil that feels like being hit by a train. If you've ever had loss or grief of any kind in your life, this is that it sucks, and grief sucks all the way down.

But at the end of the day, it's just unless you've gone through a divorce, it's hard to quantify how it feels, especially because there are kinds of divorces. The best I can tell, there're amicable ones where there's a conversation that's had and people go, all right, I'm leaving and things are bad, and the other person says, okay, I'm leaving because things are bad. And then they're the divorces where one person just jumps in the other person like they're in a gang fight and they get just jumped in out of nowhere and smacked on the side of the head and their ears start ringing and they're disoriented. And that's what happened to me, and I have friends that has happened to where they find out that their significant other is cheating on them, or their significant other serves them divorce papers over breakfast.

I've heard of all the variations of this kind of thing. It's the in my mind, Like again, it's the version that I experience. It's awful, and I'm not trying to make myself feel any better or worse. But when you're sitting dealing with that level of emotional turmoil on a daily basis, sometimes it's even hard to get out of bed. Sometimes it's hard to drag yourself to the computer to do anything.

And I think my friends and collectators like Mike White and Father Malone and Ryan Verel and Richard had him for keeping me honest and for making sure that I showed up even when things were tough. Mark Begley too because we did the Chasing Chevy Chase podcast. Anybody that I worked with in any sort of reoccurring collaborative sense, I think I've already named now. And like without them, I probably would have given up on this completely. I will probably would have walked away from this completely, because at the end of the day, it's very easy once you don't post an episode for one week or two to just start walking away and then running away, especially at a downhill speed.

Given again, given the things that are tied up in this, if it were not intrinsically linked to one another, it probably be a lot easier to go. All right, podcast is compartmentalized away from everything else, and it needs to be its own thing and its own kind of vertical silo, and I can go to the podcast room, podcast walk out of there and redeal with stuff, and it's like it. In the first month after my ex wife walked out on me, I couldn't even sit in my office where I podcasted, And that is the room in the house that I've spent, without a doubt, probably the most time, if not maybe the second most time, behind maybe the kitchen or the bedroom. Those those things can't be unlinked from one another, and so I've been doing everything I can to find a way to unlink them the best that I can without losing sight of what makes this important to me, which is ultimately getting to talk about movies that matter, or movies that are important, or movies that I want to watch that might be important because again watching and this is something that Ryan vel Over at Someone's Favorite Productions always talks about, and this is something that he in tuned within me about why I would always ask him why do people buy Blu rays for movies that they've never seen.

It's because the movie could be good and you get to own something. But if the idea of the movie could be good, there's a possibility that the movie is good and that you'll like it. All of those things, Like you have to be willing to open yourself up to the possibility of things working and being different and not being static. And that's the thing, Like I'm trying to figure out a way to take the podcast that felt very static and turn it into something a little bit more dynamic and change it a little bit, because I don't think I would continue to do this show in this way without changing it, because I don't think I can do it. I think it would be easier for me to start a new show, to do something different, which I've thought about doing.

But I love movies too much. I love watching movies. I watch movies essentially every day. I don't want to lose sight of that. I don't want to lose something of my personality that I care about that was there before all the stuff that happened to me happen.

And that's the tough thing to remove. Certain things from feelings and experiences and memories is hard. There will be things that I will not really be able to watch for a while, if ever, that I will probably always associate with my ex wife, like Little Nicky or Elvira Mistress of the Dark, like those are two movies that have a very special meaning to me now, and I don't know if I could ever sit and talk about them coherently without essentially like feeling like I've been pushed into the deep end of a pool without any sort of way to keep myself afloat, tied to a chair and just drowning and the struggling, and that's not something I want to subject myself to. And being in the world of podcasting right now and sitting in this chair, it feels like that a little bit.

It feels very much like I'm subjecting myself to something that maybe not that I shouldn't do, but by subjecting myself to this, it's the idea of breaking something, especially like when you're working out, Like the muscles when you work out are being broken, the fibers, and then they're reforming, and they're reforming stronger. And that's what I like to believe I'm doing by confronting and forcing myself to work through the things that I've been working through. Is that in the hopes of I can actually get better and move forward and not be stuck in this kind of ment to rut of I can't do something I love, I can't do something that I'm good at, because all it does is remind me of not so much my relationship is just the way I felt and the level of comfort and security that I felt being in that relationship and being with that person and being able to say, Okay, I have someone who cares about me, loves me, it is there for me unconditionally, looks at me like I rope the moon, and all of those things are true, And so those things made the content better because in a world where I'm able to be taken care of and well maintained, the way that I make the content reacts positively, I believe.

But at the same time, I do think now like I have an opportunity to maybe grow as a content creator by being uncomfortable in this situation that makes me uncomfortable because I've never done solo content before, not like this anyway. And what's insane about it is sitting here doing this by myself. It feels natural but unnatural at the same time, because I it's like having a conversation with someone that can't respond, but knowing that part of it is and accepting that part of it is the important part, but also knowing that just because someone can't respond doesn't mean they won't respond to it, and that whatever I say and do and conduct myself on in a solo project, it will resonate with someone maybe differently, because I am essentially having a one on one conversation with you as the listener, as opposed to if I'm sitting here with Mike White or Father Malone, or Mike White and Richard Haddam and I sitting and talking about something.

It's a conversation that you're listening to that two other people are having. Right now, I'm more or less directly having a conversation with you, and maybe not You're again you're not able to directly respond, and that doesn't in a lot of ways like that doesn't feel as collaborative. But it feels different, and in a lot of ways that's not a bad thing. It's just it is. It's different in a way that takes some adjusting, especially if like myself or like a lot of the people that I work with.

You're used to having a co host or guest co hosts, or people that show up to the show every week, like with a frequent collaborator, Ryan Verel of someone's favorite productions and The Disconnected on YouTube every Thursday. Those those opportunities to work by yourself feel weird. So that's why he has co hosts. That's why I have co hosts, because it is weird to hear your own voice uninterrupted for a long period of time, especially when you're used to hearing other people interacting with you. And so he and I were talking about because I was asking him, Hey, what are some things to avoid or things to think about?

And it's going to sound weird to hear your own voice. And he told him. I was like, oh, I hope, I'm used to it. And I'm still not used to it because I've been sitting and talking for almost twenty two minutes straight and that is not something It's not something I don't think I can do because I know that I can do it. I would compare this more akin to jazz, less classical music, because I don't have an outline right now, I don't have any sort of specific direction I wanted to go.

I just plinko put the ball in a certain spot that I think I wanted to go, and I'm seeing where it's going as I'm sitting here. Because the thing that I want to get back to with my show is exactly that. Like, I want to focus on getting my show back to something that is more personal to me and dear friend of the Culture Cast, frequent collaborator on the Culture Cast, and just in general in the podcast sphere. Richard HadAM of Richard Haddam's Paranormal Bookshelf, of under Siege, two, Dark Territory, of the Mothman, Prophecies, of a whole lot of things, great human being one again, Like, I consider myself very lucky that I have met some of the nicest, most empathetic, compassionate people in the world, and I get to spend time with them in a collaborative fashion and then with some of them in a personal one on one friendship fashion show.

Richard Adams Paranormal Bookshelf. He uses the framing device of a book and then talks about his relationship to the book and other things surrounding the book that have to do with him in his personal life and him personally, and I don't want to rip that off per se, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And I want to get back to something that is a little bit more important to me personally and something that allows me to engage with my audience. More directly and more personally. And so why not something more akin to talking about a movie and then talking about a memory that I have or how that movie is important to me, or if that movie is important to me, or if that movie is in a chain of things that are similar to it that could be important to me.

Again, with something like what Richard is doing, it's a little bit more curated. And I'm not saying that this won't be but I am willing to talk about a new movie on my own. I am also willing to talk about something a little bit more personal to me on my own. And undoubtedly, if I am talking single man by myself, my personal life will come up more than if I were talking with someone else about a movie, because again, the expectations are different, especially with this kind of content, And so that's a direction I'm taking the show. I'm taking the show in a little bit more of a personal direction.

There will still be episodes with other people. There will probably I'm still maintaining all of my obligations in terms of recordings through the end of the year, and they're not even obligations, but my recording schedule that I have. I'm sticking to it the best that I can because I want to create content with my friends, because some of them, if I didn't create content with them, I'm not sure we would talk as frequently as we do. And that's okay because we're all very busy and the world is what the world is, and I know that, but I don't want to lose that, and so I can maintain that part of it. But I do want to focus on making more solo content and making content.

I just watched this movie, so let me open up the track throw down in fifteen twenty minutes a time time and talk about it, or talk about something else that I watched, or just maybe the state of things in the world of pop culture. But I would like to do a little bit more personal me content because I do have the time and I want to get back into this because this is the thing that I truly love and I care about. I keep coming back to this. I keep looking for other things that I want to do and pretending like this isn't the thing that I want to do, because this is the thing that i want to do, and this is the thing I've always wanted to do, and this is the thing that I am good at. And I could parlay this into other things.

I just don't want to, at least not right now, because this network and this podcast is the most important thing to me. Because I've spent a very long time and worked really hard to not keep at it and keep rolling the dice every day and keep working at making amazing content with amazing people and doing that on a weekly basis. I can do that. It's not that hard, but it is because when life comes at you so fast again, you can't get out of the way. You just have to, you know, you have to go with that.

It is what it is. In a lot of ways, there are things that I cannot change about the last year. I cannot change that. Alan Sachs, someone who I worked with for over to almost two years, passed away and it gutted me. But thankfully I got to talk to him a month and a half before he passed away.

And he and I made amends on some things that happened between the two of us, and I got a producer credit on the podcast that I worked with him on for all those months that came out from iHeartRadio and Ron Howard's production company, Imagine the Peter and the Acid King. A connection that was made, and I was vouched for by Mike White, who I met only because we interacted with each other on Twitter. Life is weird and life life goes down some unexpected paths. I could not have fathomed if you had told me two years ago, because a year ago now, I'd be like a year ago now, we wouldn't have believed you've been divorced. No, a year ago I would have believed it, because a year ago I was already separated, and I think one of my dogs had already passed away at that point.

I don't take for granted any more, or the weirdness of life and the connections of life, and how life makes things happen seemingly for a reason, and sometimes it is for a reason, and sometimes it's. Not for reasons. Sometimes it's a red herring, sometimes it's not a red herring. It's hard to tell it is hard to tell. Sometimes you just have to let the situation play out.

Sometimes you have to let life go. And in letting life go, that means you have to be patient, and being patient is tough. I get that. I say this to people now after everything happened. It's hard for me to not feel broken from all this, like that I am broken and I cannot be repaired, and that I cannot be fixed and no part of me will ever be the same.

But that's okay for no part of me to ever be the same, because clearly something was not working. Clearly something was not okay, Clearly something was not good, and in things not being good, things had to change. And sometimes things have to change against your will. And I don't know how more against your will having your partner of almost fourteen or thirteen years walk. Out on you out of nowhere.

I don't know how. Much more that could be that, but it is. Hey. That's the thing, ultimately is. I spent a lot of time in the last year watching movies.

I just didn't spend any time talking about them. I spent a lot of time watching TV shows and YouTube and all kinds of stuff I haven't talked about any of it. There's a lot of stuff that I would like to talk about that I haven't gotten a chance to talk about because I have spent the last year in a shell or a bubble, trying to keep myself from drowning. And it's not very e Look, if you struggle for mental health, it's already tough. And then layer on top of that the person that was your singular comfort in the world walking out on you.

And then layer on top of that friends, friends becoming the people you rely on emotionally, which is not fair to them. But I'm thankful I have friends that love me and care about me that much to be there for me. And then friends passing away, and then animals a way, which were huge, immense. Levels of comfort through a lot of what was going on. It's a lot, and it's a lot for one person to deal with, and each of those things is a lot on their own, and then placing them like back to back is a lot.

And so I found a lot of solace and comfort in pop culture. And I want to get back to talking about the things that I care about, talking about the things that matter, and talking about the things that are important to me. And that's movies and pop culture and entertainment and the things that people use to escape into from a world that is growing exceedingly dark all the time. And I didn't know how much I was going to talk about movies on this episode, but I wanted to talk about something that I think is indicative. Of the times.

A movie that I really liked when I was a kid was Happy Gilmourt Already. It me happy more. He was a hockey player. Now he's going from the rink through the links. He's got the swif, he's got the drive.

This guy sucks, he's got the call. All right, let's go. Adam Sandberg is Happy Gilmour Ready. PG. Thirteen starts Friday at theaters everywhere.

Came out in nineteen ninety six, directed by Dennis Dugan, who was in way too many episodes of Colombo. God knows why he is. I don't get it. I don't get the appeal. But that's fine.

I'm not sure that there is appeal. But he directed it, and then he also starred in it. For whatever reason. He plays the head of the pro golf tour in the made up world that seems very small. In the original Happy Gilmour and then in the second movie, it's all of a sudden, like this wacky world.

I wanted to talk about Happy Gilmour because it's a film that I saw as a kid on a very specific format, which was dives, and DiveX is something that I have a very fond level of memories for it. It's not something that a lot of people have heard of. It existed for a little over a year, from June eighth of ninety eight to June sixteenth of ninety nine, but and it was. It was created in part by Circuit City, which if that gives you any ideas to the level of notoriety surrounding it, because Circuit City got Circuit City barely made it out of the two thousands, I guess Circuit City didn't even make it out of the two thousand. Circuit City was gone in twenty twelve.

Their website was all that existed from nine to twenty twelve, So Circuit City not exactly the arbiter of quality long lasting things. DiveX was a DVD with DRM built in that when you purchased it, the initial price of the first purchase, the initial price of the purchase was one watch of the movie for as many times as you wanted in a twenty four hour period, and then afterwards it was like thirteen dollars is what you would pay, and you can watch the movie as much as you want it. And so it's like DRM with video games now where you sit down and go, okay, I can't play Assassin's Creed Odyssey unless I'm connected to the internet, because if I'm not connected to the Internet, it doesn't recognize that I've paid for the game, which does suck and it doesn't feel great.

And look, I understand that's probably in huge part why this technology was not successful. Look, the reason it also wasn't successful was it was immensely wasteful. Think about the idea of taking DVDs, using them once and then throwing them away. That's literally what was being asked to do, and that's befo're gonna. If we're gonna get rid of and move away from styrofoam containers served at McDonald's to serve quarter pounders with cheese inside of, then what in God's name are we doing with plastic paper and CD technology that is essentially made to be thrown away?

Reminds me of the timin erics get with bowel like it's perfect for throwing away like Devex's were made to be thrown. In the garbage. And if you are not open to pornography, you're not going to be a platform or media format that is long lasting. While we joke about it, pornography really is. I think in a lot of ways it is an arbiter of where things are going because people watch porn all the time.

And look, now everything's essentially on streaming. If you buy a pornographic DVD in twenty twenty five, what in God's name, you might have heads. In your freezer. By god, I don't know who's buying pornographic blu rays in twenty twenty five, but I'm sure there are people buying. But in this day and age, everything's gone to streaming with stuff like that, but nobody owns anything on streaming.

It's essentially DRM masquerading as well. Well, we're keeping the prices low and you have access to all the stuff. It's but you actually have access to all of it only in as much as you can connect to the internet unless you download stuff like on Netflix. But a lot of the streaming platforms don't have the ability to download things to be watching them offline, and so DRM is still here, it's just masquerading in a different way. We're essentially okay with it now because the price has been brought down significantly.

But the movies that came out on dives for that year are a list of movies that I will probably be coming back to throughout the run of the future run of this show, and I might hit it harder in some spots to take a break longer with others, depending on the content that's coming in with all the other things I work on. But a lot of these movies are movies that have made a distinct impression on me to the point of me loving them and considering them some of my favorite movies, or movies that, like I quote rather frequently or I think about fairly often, or movies that I didn't see at the time but coincidentally are now movies that are like deeply important to me or have made a significant impact on my life.

And just looking at the list, there's a lot of bangers on the list. There's a lot of movies that aren't great. There are a lot of movies that I will probably, if given the opportunity, probably will not revisit them and may just skip them or re release the episode that I've already done on them when I want to address that with a new intro outro. But there are some classics on the list. If you're a fan of South Park basketball came out on the format, if you're a fan of Star Trek, First Contact, and Generations, which I know everybody has mixed opinions on Generations, stuff like Missus Doubtfire.

So there were classic movies, at least classic to the early nineties. Invasions of the Bodies, Invasion of the Body Snatchers from seventy eight is on there as well. There's older movies, but primarily it's a lot of movies from the ninety and so that's also a very interesting framing device as well, because the nineties has a lot of great movies. And you know that Nathan Rabin book called the Best Movie Year Ever that talks about nineteen ninety nine, like, nineteen ninety nine is a great year. Don't get me wrong.

The Mummy came out that year. That's one of my absolute favorite movies. Of all time. I can hear Father Malone rolling his eyes and saying the Mummy is not a scary movie, and I wanted to be scary. And I hear you, and I agree, that's a movie that came out in nineteen ninety nine.

But there are a lot of movies that came out pre nineteen ninety nine, but post nineteen ninety that are worth talking about and worth checking out, and they show up on this list. They show up on this format, and this format was short lived at the end of the day. Their eight track was short lived, vinyl was short lived, and technically DVD was short lived. And I'm not short in terms of the length of time, but they're no longer around, and by anybody who was born, essentially Jesus probably in the tens, doesn't even think about DVDs being a thing that you would be buying new. Those are things that you would be buying used if you buy them at all.

That's just not a thing. And I know Ryan Veral was sitting and screaming and shaking and wanting to cut. Physical media is important, and physical media is important, and I don't blame people for banging the drum for physical media because physical media is something that I've come around on because of the DRM of it all, and so it's ironic that with something like VIVEX, I want to talk about a format that was essentially planned obso lessons like it's meant to be thrown away, and so I like the idea of talking about this form and talking about the movies that were on this format, and using that as the framing device for the solo stuff that I'm doing, at least for a little while. Like I said, I'll.

Probably depending on the new movies I see, because there are new things that are coming out that I do want to watch, I may do something like this more frequently, or if I just watch something, I may just click the record button and do a little chitty chat for half an hour and see what shakes loose. Back to the Happy Gilmore of it all. Happy Gilmore is one of the movies that was on Devics. Happy Gilmore, I think, is a movie that is fondly remembered by a large portion of people. I think Adam, it may be one of Adam Sandler's best movies, if not his best movie, probably in terms of his comedies.

It's a rather tightly written film. The conceit of it is fun. Adam Sandler, I think in a lot of ways is not as at least not I don't perceive him this way, but there are a large portion of people, similarly with Jim Carrey, that perceive his shtick quote to be annoying, and I get it. I'm not saying it's not, but I'm more speaking to the he reins it in, especially from the movie that came out before this one, Billy Madison, which I think his character in Billy Madison is if you like Adam Sandler's stick from the nineties SNL like, boy, that's the stick right there. Billy Madison really leans into it.

Happy Gilmore, it's not as much that's the other aspect of his personality is being pig headed. But he's pig headed like in a in a charming way. I think is like every man, blue collar kind of way, which makes it I guess a little bit. I'm not saying it's not acceptable, but more acceptable per kind of the mainstream audience. But Happy Gilmore is a movie that I saw a lot.

We had family friends growing up that lived on a golf course. I remember the first time we watched this movie was at their house, and then subsequent times was watched on dives or DVD. Because This is one of the movies we owned on divek and it's a movie that I have a lot of fond memories for. And then a sequel comes out twenty nine years later, and somehow as a legacy ce equal coming out nearly thirty years past. When the original came out, I didn't find it to be as much of an affront as maybe others.

My name is Happy Gilmore. Thirty years ago I decided to give golf a try. But even when you're at the top of your game, you can always shank one. Happy Gilmour sucks. How are you gonna put Vienna to ballet school?

It's seventy five thousand dollars a year. That's four years. That's three hundred and thirty three grand. That's terrible math, Johnny, it's three hundred grand. I wouldn't even know where to start.

Let them see the Happy I Fell in Love play. Well, you gotta do it debt. All right, let's go. We'll go to debt. I know how to do it there.

Let's go see what the hell is happening. Happy Gilmore's breaking in. Get another taddy. All right, We're gonna go see. But you bring those those always coming.

All right, that's it. They gotta strap you. Want to use this Happy Gilmore didn't have things flowing on the first though. Check out the name tag Grandson. You're in my.

World now they got too little something there find. Everyone is talking about it. Come back here, Happy Gilmore watching. Claim mister Gilmore, so inspiring. I that loved you, man.

I am so shocky. I got some gorilla glue. Remember the happy place I went to? You go to yours? Oh?

Oh my god, Roy Down, who's Jack Gaspingle? Yay? You stole my life from me? Why would I want to steal the life of somebody who eats pieces of shit for breakfast? Who?

I will say, there's one part of the movie that feels a little okay, we get it, and I think that's the cameos like every two seconds. Adam Sandler is, without a doubt, one of the most well connected comedians in Hollywood, if not the most well connected comedian in Hollywood, at least in terms of mainstream connections. Dan Patrick, Travis Kelcey, All the Golfers, Bad Bunny God Benny Saftie plays the villain in the movie. I don't know it's even have especially if you're a fan of wrestling. MJF is in the movie and a rather I would say larger role.

A lot of the Adam Sandler like kids are not his actual kids, but there are two female characters in the film that are played by Adam Sandler's real daughters. And for me, I didn't I don't know. I didn't find it as much of an affront as others, only because the character of Happy Gomore, I feel, is my favorite Adam other than Little Nikki, which will never get a sequel and is reviled by so many people as again, not only a lesser Adam Sandler film, but a film that is not most people would say like not even worth talking about because of how obnoxious is my name's Nicky, like the whole face and the voice. I get it. I'm not saying it's not obnoxious, but I again, like, I find that movie to be very funny because it's just a strange concept.

It's very high concept. I like anything that has to do with angels and demons and devils, and Harvey Kaitel as the devil and then Rodney Dangerfield is Satan is just I don't know, it's fucking weird and then they stick a pineapple up Satan's ass or yeah, it's just yeah, there's a lot going on in Little Nicky, and I understand it's probably that's that moment where Adam Sandler's too much. It's like saturated. He saturated the market with his kind of like shtick too much, and so I get it in that regard, But Happy Gilmore was not that. Happy Gilmore was a movie that was widely considered to be, at least at the time, like one that people really resonated with.

And obviously it's become very popular in the golf community. And I'm not saying there aren't a lot of golf movies, but golf movies of a certain ilk like Happy Gilmore are few and far between, especially ones that are like consistently funny and quotable, especially if you're a fan of the movie, because there are some pretty great movie quotes that you could attribute to Adam Sandler. But I think specifically, when I think of quotes from Adam Sandler from specific movies, Happy Gilmore comes to mind is like the you know, the one that I quote probably the most. If I'm quoting any of the Adam Sandler movies, it's probably either that or little Nicky, but Happy Gilmore just has I don't know. Happy Gilmore has some of the funnier Adam Sandler lines, and his interactions with Carl Weathers is pretty great, his interactions with Bob Barker really Happy Gilmore, I think in a lot of ways.

As good as Adam Sandler is in the movie, I think for me, the best part of the movie is Christopher McDonald to Shootter McGavin. He steals the show in the second movie. Honestly, I think the second movie. The best thing about the second movie is just getting to see more Christopher McDonald in the role that like in a lot of ways. A movie that I'll probably talk about at some point, and I've already talked about it is Dirty Work, which he was also in as the villain, and that movie came out two years after Happy Gilmour, So you got to wonder if his turn in Happy Gilmour had anything to do with him being in Dirty Work.

I have to assume it does, given that there is overlap, especially Norm MacDonald being on SNL, Adam Sandler being on SNL, and obviously Adam Sandler is well connected. So again I'm just making assumptions here, but those assumptions I can't wager are. Too far off of bait. But Adam he's relatable in a way that a lot of comedians struggle with, and he feels more like in Everyman than a lot of his kind of contemporaries, especially like a Norm McDonald. Nor McDonald doesn't feel like an everyman.

And that's the thing about Dirty Work, Like Christopher McDonald and Dirty Work versus Norm McDonald and Dirty Work, it really highlights the disparity between what Adam Sandler does in Happy Gilmore versus what Norm MacDonald does in Dirty Work, which is be relatable. Norm MacDonald is prickly in Dirty Work because he's playing himself and that's not going to resonate with everybody, but Happy Gilmore Adam Sandler resonates with most people, especially like mainstream film going. Audiences anyways, That's you know what I'm alluding to. Like, Christopher McDonald is the perfect villain in both movies, but he reveals, I feel like in one the disparity of Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore is his own character and you could almost root for him in his own movie because Happy Gilmore comes off as a borish moron, but you can't help but love Happy Gilmore.

And so if you're in how B Gilmore's movie, Christopher McDonald's characters is like Dickhead Professional, But there's a version of that movie you could make where it's Christopher McDonald's character as the main character, and Happy Gilmore Too tries to thread that needle a little bit by giving us the two parallel stories that then converge together towards the end. And that was the thing I liked about Happy Gilmore Too the most is getting to see Happy Gilmore and Shooter McGavin together. And that's primarily because again getting to see Adam Sandler and Christopher MacDonald just be in the same space, you know that there's going to be some comedy from it because they're both they're old hands at this point, like both of them have been doing this for at least twenty nine years, and the quality of their comedic chops has not lessened.

I get that Adam Sandler is probably crutching it up more by the cameos and all that. And look, I don't know if I had all those famous friends, if I'd be able to stop myself from putting them all into my movie that in a lot of ways, like you can get away with it in this movie because you have to have golfers and then you can have like real world stuff associated with golf or other like sports interweaved into it. But like some of the cameos are unnecessary, Like Travis Kelce is in the movie, I don't understand it bad Bunny is funny as didn't mean to rhyme as his caddie, But I would have preferred Alan Covert from the original film, Like where was Alan Covert and all this? I didn't even see him. That's the thing.

Like with a lot of the Adam Sandler movies, especially in the nineties and early two thousands, you would see his like friends show up, and now it's gone from a small group of friends like Rob Schneider Alan Covert to like every single actor in this movie. There are no extras in this movie, is what it feels like, Almost like the only extras are literally like the people on the golf course. But in terms of like extraneous characters, almost every single role in this movie is played by a notable person, either a Chris Farley's brother at one point or just you know, Ben Stiller coming back or again, his daughter being played by his real daughter, or Reggie Bush and Becky Lynch, or Bolban Mironovitch playing Richard Keel's son from the first like Richard Kiel's character son from the first movie.

Not all of those things had to be cast with like well known people, but they are because it's an Adam Sandler thing. And that's what it feels like now with Adam Sandlers. He has a lot of famous friends and they are going to show up a lot in his movies. When I think of movies that don't work very well that have a lot of cameos in him, I think of grown Ups and grown Ups too even more because Grown Ups two is just talk about a movie with no plot and just a bunch of cameos. When you put Eminem in your movie and you have him wearing a ridiculous wig, I don't know what to say.

And Eminem, to quote Matthew Lillard, is no Joe Flherdi and he's he is no Joe Flaherty at all. And Eminem's fine, But like that's stunt casting, and that is just whatever, It's fine, It's just it's a distraction. And that's the problem with Happy Gilmour two in a lot of ways is that it is just a distraction and like the cameo are just distracting from the plot, and the plot's not terrible, Like I actually found the plot of the movie to be I couldn't say good, but a little surprising the kind of circular it rhymes nature of the movie where they come back to Happy Gilmore's dad died because of an errand slapshot. Happy Gilmore kills his wife because of a drive that he shanks to the left. Like I like the circularity to it, but I wish they had done more with that story and less of the he's going to be drinking out of every comical item that he pulls out of his pocket.

And also look at all of his famous friends. I'm less interested in that. And that's the problem with Happy Gilmore two for me, is the cameos get in the way of a good movie becoming a great movie. Because I think Happy Gilmore two is a good movie. It's better than it has any right to be, given that it's twenty nine years I would say twenty six years past when we needed a sequel.

If this, if Happy Gilmore really should have gotten a sequel. It should have gotten a sequel in the early two thousands. And I don't know why Adam Sandler didn't do sequels. He didn't do sequels for the longest time, and then he couldn't stop making Hotel Transylvania movies. But Adam Sandler wasn't interested in doing sequels, and I don't know why.

I've got to assume that's intentional, given how many of his films have been successful that he hasn't had sequels to But for me, there's eras of Sandler, and Adam Sandler's best I think time as a comedian is probably ninety five to two thousand and five, because that's when he's I think, operating at his peak, and he doesn't oversaturate the market until towards the tail end of that kind of five. Maybe even a little less than that, because The Longest Yard is probably the last thing that I can think of where I'm like, okay, people were like excited for that, Like beyond that, I don't remember people being particularly excited or I'm going to see the a new Adam Sandler movie. I just don't remember that as much.

But there was some of that around things like The Longest Yard or fifty First Dates the movies I saw in theater beyond that, like, I didn't see any of those movies in theaters. Like I just didn't have any interests, especially with something like The Cobbler, which I was disappointed to learn was not about a sentient piece of blueberry cobbler, but about a man who makes shoes for a living, a repair shoes for a living, and in repairing people's shoes for a living, if he puts their shoes on, he becomes them, which leads to hilarity, including method Man. Yeah. I feel like with a lot of these kind of comedic actors, they have a moment where they drop off and they stop being as relevant and there's not a lot of sustain And Jim Carrey had that too.

There was a time where Jim Carrey. Stopped doing the things that he was known for and started doing some things that were just out there. And I'm not saying you can't be out there, but in being out there sometimes you take risks that don't pay off. So I don't think we'll get a happy Gilmore three. Could we get a happy gill More three?

Sure? If Netflix wants to back up a brink struck full of money to Adam Sandler's house to make another movie with all of his friends. Cool if not, I totally understand why he wouldn't have any interest, because I'm not sure that there's an even left to say about the movie. The movie is about. Should have been about grief and loss and about him killing his wife and suffering with that and dealing with that, and you can make a dramedy out of it.

Adam Sandler could have leaned into the Benny Safty of it all and made it a little bit more of a serious film. And it felt, for whatever reason, they maybe didn't trust the audience that much. And there are moments in the movie where I'm like, oh, they could have gone in a really interesting direction, and they don't. And the original Happy Gilmore it's not the most creative movie. It's about a hockey player who's washed up, who has a never been who learns that because he can hit the puck really hard, he can hit the golf ball really far.

And it's very straightforward, not a whole lot going on, But in this day and age, people expect more from their comedies, especially if you're gonna be a sequel, and I would have liked more of kind of the character study of it all. And I'm not saying that like I want the movie to be different than it was. I want the movie to do more of the things that it was successful at doing and less the things that were just no, not as successful because there's all the cameos. It's just take all the cameos out of the movie, or take cut half of the scenes in half, or take all the scenes and cut them in half because a lot of the scenes just go on for way too long because it look, did you see all the cameos? I don't care about all these golf players, like I'm sure somebody does, but I don't think the overwhelming amount of audiences are like, oh, look at all these hockey or these golf players that I recognize.

I just don't. I don't think that's happening. And that's the thing with Happy Gilmore and Happy Gilmore too, is I think they leaned too far in one direction with the sequel that the original movie did so well, which was, oh, We've got Bob Barker and that's it and that's really it. And I don't I think there was like Lee Trevino, as well Mark Lai and like Vernon Lundquist, but again like those aren't as big a people as like Bob Barker. That's the thing most people remember is Bob Barker from Happy Gilmore, and so maybe because that's the overwhelming remembrance point of that movie is, oh, the cameo of Bob Barker.

We are given heart Blanche to just throw every cameo at the wall and see what sticks. If that's what they were thinking, cool, I get it. I just think it's a little unnecessary. It's a little it's a little sign of the times. Like it's almost look at all the shiny things that I have, but don't look at them too long because they're made out of illumin I'm not actually, I don't stainless steel or silver or anything.

It's just and that's the thing like Happy Gilmore Too could have had more substance to it, and it didn't. And that's why I say it's a good movie, not a great movie. And there are parts of it that I'm not even sure it is a good movie. But I enjoyed it because I wanted to see the story of Happy Gilmore and where they took it. It goes into the realm of the absurd towards the end, and it feels almost like a completely different franchise because the original Happy Gilmour is grounded in reality, and by the end of the second one, we have like golfers who are having their ligaments cuts so they can hit.

The ball further. And it's just wait, what, what the f it's like when they introduced cloned genetic children to Jurassic Park as a franchise, What the flying fuck are we doing it to do with anything at least not like at least not on the surface, And it's it just doesn't tonally mesh well with the rest of the movie. And again, like Happy Gilmore wasn't Flights of Fancy like Little Nicky, Like Little Nicky is the Flights of Fancy movie, Like we're in a supernatural fantasy world where demons and angels exist. Happy Gilmore ostensibly is a real world other than the shot of the alligator at Abraham Lincoln and Chubbs waving. It's said in the real world and Hapy Gilmore too just wants to have its cake and eat it too, And so that's just it's a little sign of the times, like nobody wants to commit to the bit this movie should have committed to the bit of being more of a character study, more about happy Gilmore because the movies.

The original movie is about him, and the sequel should have been more about him and his kind of what that looks like for him as a character having killed his wife, as opposed to let's just be silly and goofy and show all these cameos that don't amount to anything. There cameos in the movie that do work, like Eric Andre and Margaret Qualley are great, but they're or so many cameos in the movie that are just complete throwaway and they just take up time. And I can. See why other people who watch the movie didn't resonate with it, because if they're if you're watching a movie that's almost two hours long, and a lot of that time is spent seeing cameos of people that you don't even know who they are, and someone has to elbow you and be like, oh, that's Bryce and d Chambeau or Rory McElroy, Like the movie has to tell you who those people are.

That's not a cameo, that's just the movie showing you that like Adam Sandler knows these people, or that these people like Happy Gilmore, the original film is probably more what it is, And again, like that brings me back to it an interesting stopping point, which is resonating with something so much that you feel the need to be involved with it in a substantive way. Not everyone can sit and do the podcast thing. There's plenty of space for everybody, but not everybody wants to sit in front of a microphone and talk into it. Not everybody wants to sit and prep and do all the work necessary to make a high quality audio productions. The theater of the mind is fun.

Would say, there's no guarantee that those are things that you can do or want to do, and there are plenty of people that have. No interest in doing things like that. And if you do want to do it, there's plenty of space out there in the sphere of podcasting to do it. But you're ultimately probably going to do it about something you care about. And I have spent the last decade talking about movies because I care about movies, because movies are a source of comfort for me.

They're a source of escape. They're a thing that when I was growing up. I used them to escape from the things that I was dealing with and the things that I didn't like about my life. I would watch Ghostbusters, or I would watch rush Hour, or I would watch The Mummy. So watch them until I wore the fucking VHS out.

And if you love something so much, you and you probably at some point want to get involved with it in a substantive way, if that's the kind of person that you are. Some people who love things want to be want to love from afar. Some people who love things want to love things up close and in person. And if you sit and talk about movies, you're wanting to love them up close and in person, especially if you're recording it and putting it out, because you feel like what you have to say about the movies may resonate with other people. And that's my hope with this is that by retooling the podcast, refocusing it in a substantive positive way, to bring light to mental health struggles, to bring light to just being honest with not making deadlines and not meeting expectations and not being okay, especially if you're dealing with stuff like I want to be a better arbiter for positive mental health in the space of the podcasting world, especially movie podcasting.

But I also want to be able to make content that matters to me, and that is the kind of content that I would like to listen to, which is someone knowledgeable talking about film or pop culture confidently. And that's what I would like to try and bring back to the space and back to this kind of sphere of the movie podcasting world, because that's what I love, is movie podcasting. I could go do something else, but I would if I always the compass would probably always point back north towards movies. And I don't want to run away from something because it makes me uncomfortable. If anything, I want to run directly at it if it makes me uncomfortable, because there's a distinct possibility that by running at it it will stop being uncomfortable at some point, I've got to assume.

So that is the new version of the show. I will in the next episode probably spend more time talking about movies and less time talking about why things are the way that they are, because that had to be gotten out of the way at some point. But on the next. Episode of the show, I'll probably talk about another DiveX movie. I will watch it, I will take notes, and then I'll just riff and talk about it for a little while and talk about how it makes me feel, what my thoughts are, what it reminds me of, and some information about the movie maybe you didn't know, but talk about just talk about the movie, because at the end of the day, if you can't have a conversation with the people in your life about movies, maybe you can listen to me having a conversation with you about movies, or maybe you can listen to me having a conversation with my friends about movies and feel like you're part of it.

Parasocial relationships are real. If you listen to any sort of content or watch any sort of content, you feel like the people that you watch are your friends. I know that feeling. I met one of my favorite content creators on a cruise earlier this year, and when I met him, I couldn't I still can't believe it, and I don't get starstruck very often, but I was beyond starstruck because it was someone who his content helped me get through a really hard time. And that is one of the intrinsic values of something like this is you don't know what people are going to use it for.

And there will be undoubtedly people that use it to help them get through tough times or help them get, you know, something done that would be monotonous otherwise, but they can listen to you or watch what you're doing, and it helps them get through something that otherwise would feel mundane. And you know what, We're part of people's lives in a way that we could have never anticipated. And thank you for making me a part of your life. Thank you for making me a part of your day, weekly, or monthly routine, whatever it is. And thank you for coming back as a listener.

Because I trust that my audience understands that life happens. And while you don't necessarily need to hear me explain what happened, I think you, as a listener, deserve an explanation, because if you've invested time in me as a listener, I deserve to give you an explanation as to why my time to invest in you has been lessened from where it used to be. So thank you for coming back, Thank you for listening. Please like, rate, and review the show on iTunes. Nowhere else matters as much as iTunes.

Over thirty percent of all podcasts or listen to on iTunes, and there's not really anywhere else to give a review, especially not on Spotify. Thanks Spotify, so please rate and review the show on iTunes. Come on back for the next episode, where we'll probably be talking about some Devek's movie that I just pick off this list, or maybe I even throw it into a random number generator and I just have that pick it for me, or maybe it'll be a co hosted podcast. Who knows. I'm leaving the door open and leaving the world open to new directions because I need to do a better job, and doing a better job starts with making a change.

So thank you so much for being a listener and a loyal listener to the Culture Cast, and I will catch you on the next episode.