The Groove Tube

We're waiting. Everybody looks around for out of lead. Oh I forgot it's two buttons to click by. Okay, bye bye baby, say bye when you've got that lead button ready to your phone. I'm saying everybody the awkwardness HP.

I wanted to ask you, since we're gonna be talking once again this evening about Forrest Gump's since we're now no, god, we're not wait no, no, no, no, all seriousness. We're talking about Laus right right. I talked about Gump. We're talking about the Indian version of Forrest Gump, which is so much better. Yeah, it's such a such a grand experience for everyone.

Uh yeah, wait, were you the only one that was on that episode with me? Okay, no, it was. It was the three of us, Okay, I didn't. Mike and Heather were the ones who made the wise choice to not show up for that one. I couldn't.

I couldn't. I couldn't bear to see my Amir Khan like that. I couldn't do it. Well, I almost feel the same way about this movie. I just couldn't help but watch Chevy Chase be and something that's not good.

Oh wait, that's pretty much Chevy Chase's entire career. Oh, I mean, I mean after I you didn't let me finish after like after eighty nine is more what I was getting at. Like chevy Chase in the eighties, it hits a little different than chevy Chase in the nineties, that's all, and chevy Chase in the seventies. But chevy Chase posts like eighty nine. What are we talking about the chevy Chase made post eighty nine that anybody likes community an invisible man.

I mean, okay, father, and I figured you would say that, but that's okay. I will give you that. It's not terrible. But like where I mean. My point is, chevy Chase is known for a certain time and place as a comedian.

Yes, oh yeah he was. He was past his expiration day was up by eighty eight. Yeah right, right, okay. And I love fletched lives and I came out on the nineties, so I got no fucking room to talk period. But hey, it's the Culture Cast.

I'm your host, Chris Stash, and I'm joined by some friends of mine. Let's let's start with Heather Drain from Mondo Heather dot Com and also Noise junkies. Hello, Hello, and I hear a rumor that some of my brothers are with us that he you guys have already heard said spoilers. Sat it's a noise Chanki's takeover tonight. It's true.

Also joining us from Noise Junkies. Your friend and mine. Uh, he's not IBM. He's HP who feeling groovy tonight, Chris, Good to see you. And he's the guy who programmed this month.

Your friend in mine. I've never seen any of the movies this month, but he has your friend in Mine. You've never seen his own, Father Malone, I'm in the driver's seat. I'm in the show. I'm the fucking president.

That's my favorite line, Like, how did you know? Oh my god? And you know what, Father Malone. I'm just gonna say it. I'm glad these aren't Elvis movies.

Oh you just hush? What was it? What was it last year? What was it last year? Boy, isn't that great?

I've no idea. It was probably an actor or something. Oh no, no, no, no, no, how could we all forget? That was the first time I met HP, and that was when we came up with all those funny porn names because they were all those movies about the as they say in those movies, the fags, because there were a lot of college and high school movies that were saying, oh I haven't help us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah it was.

It was a month of prep school movie. It last year. Yeah. The Academy, My Heart, This is up the ass Academy, I believe was one of our porn parody titles. Still, I'm still trying to remember.

We had one that we it's legend, but none of us can remember what I specifically said. It involved something something cold and something something. Yeah, I don't remember what it was either, but uh, you know, we'll get to that when we'll get to it. But on this episode of the Culture Cast, like Father Malone mentioned, he is in the driver's seat, folks, because it is you've never seen September, and we're gonna be talking all about what Father Malone tell us. What we're gonna be talking about a very rare and radiant subset of films, these sketch comedy movies.

This is technically sketch comedy September. There are there are only really a handful of these that are just unrelated sketches in cinematic form that we're released in theaters, and the granddaddy of them all is definitely the one we're talking about tonight, The Groove two. Sure it's not Movie forty three. Shut up? Why I mean, I mean that, I don't know, Like, I feel like that's the one that most people have heard of, if they've heard of any of these sketch comedy movies, only because of the visibility of the people that were in it at the time.

That makes me so incredibly sad to know that. I know, I know, but to your point, this kind of movie does not exist now. I mean, it's it's it's a rarity. It was a rarity. I mean, it's a rarity period during the room down Jesus, Like, I know, yeah, this is this is also antidepressant a month for well, you know.

I actually I have a theory about that, Chris. I actually been thinking about that fact that we don't see any sketch comedy movies anymore like this, And I think part of it is because with social media, with apps like TikTok, everybody, you can just make your own little sketch comedy show on your phone just by stringing together five or six little, you know, sound bite worthy segments. I don't know, maybe that's just my theory, but it feels like, you know, we've kind of people have evolved past that in a way. Yeah, I feel like it would be hard for me to justify going and seeing a movie that's an hour and a half long when you can watch Saturday Night Live like it's and you know, like that's the thing, Like that's that I would say is the pre eminent sketch anything right now and has been for a very long time.

And I know, father Malone, you're a huge fan of SNL as well. Yeah, absolutely, and this movie predates that and as one of their cast members and Chevy Chase, yeah yeah. I mean, looks at it's been kicking around. It'll be fifty years in two years, so, and they're really every once in a while, somebody will throw out a sketch comedy show, you know what. I'm not going to say that there's no point in doing sketch comedy shows because I keep seeing newer and newer ones and I think they're all still really good.

There are always good sketch comedy troops coming up in the world. But as far as getting on the air and going up against it's really hard to compete the Saturday Night Live as far as visibility goes. But you know, like this came out in seventy four, and you know the history of this movie is that Chevy Chase and which Ken Shapiro the writer director in this movie, they were in a like a comedy troop lay I had a theater, like a theater one I think it was called, and they started filming little sketches to play on video monitors when people would come to see it, and then they would gauge which ones people were really responding to, and then they eventually went and refilmed all of the funniest ones and turned it into this movie kind of what Monty Python did with and now for something completely different.

Those were all like tried and true sketches from the show, and then they just refilmed it and they threw it into theaters to make a quick book. Yeah, that's god, you just made my heart happy invoking Monty Python with that. That was that was so good. Now, I find it fascinating to think about why we don't see these kind of films. But the thing is, like it is like I think TV and stage have always taken precedent on that.

Also, like the fuel for a lot of sketch comedy is stuff that's very much of its era, and that's a little harder to translate I think in a film, because film, what's that there somebody you can visit and visit and visit, like, think about we revisited this film that originally was released in nineteen seventy four, Like that's and that's so cool, you know, But there's also going to be things in this film, and a lot of these films like that that for a lot of people are gonna be like, they're not going to get it because it's it's making fun of some thing that was topical at the time. And I'm not talking like politics, I'm sucking like advertising, you know. Yeah, because and I would say, I would say the majority, I mean my experience, this is a movie.

I've been looking forward to seeing this movie for a long long time. I'm a big like father alone and probably the rest of us. I'm a big fan of counterculture humor the sixties and seventies. We talked about you know, National Lampoon, Fire sign theater, groups like that. But so I was really excited to see this.

But to your point, Heather, what you're exactly saying is a lot of this doesn't translate to a modern audience because these sort of sacred cows that they're taking on, it's either been done to death in the decades since this movie came out, or a lot of the targets have just aged themselves out of memory, if you will. You know, like a lot of the commercial parodies, who's heard of a lot of these, like Jarital the jatall really everything? I think he been like sold anymore in drug stores things like that, So I was a little spiritall, but like a very specific ad Jaratall was doing, like the the phone book ad is the very specific ad they're parodying, Like you would have to have been around in seventy three to know what the funk they're talking about.

I think we do because I'm or at least I do because I'm an old man, and you know you guys are old, clear, yes we are. So some of these commercials lingered on, the phrases lingered on and just sort of pop culturally like in the Lexicans, you would so you would kind of know what the joke was. But my god, he shoots specifically at things, and I'm sure he's hitting them really hard, but that's fifty years later. I don't know these things, sir. I First of all, you guys are old.

You'd be old if you were, like, well, Heather, don't you remember this brand of as book that was real popular with the housewives? Like now you guys, you guys are old. Our American pop culture in the last fifty to sixty years has accelerated so much faster because we we've gotten things like you know, you get television, then you get home video, and then you get the Internet and et cetera, et cetera. So everything just moves a lot faster than it did fifty, sixty, seventy, et cetera years ago. Also, do you think part of it this is kind of a more like cynical reason before and I know this is all before were getting in a movie that part of the reason why this kind of like particular sub genre hasn't really transcended is that whenever a lot of the popular sketch shows have made movies, it's usually tapping into one specific character.

And I mean, even if you're better, are better for worse? I mean like with SETV, which for my money. That's that is my my boo, my bay. I love it. I love stenat Live, but Staate Live is patchy because it's been around so long and consistently long too, and its defense but literally like the Simpsons at this point, and I've every single exactly but SETV is my heart, my soul.

I love it. But I mean they did Strange Brew, which is based on specific characters, kids in the Hall. You know, even when they did Brain Candy, it's still kind of set like a traditional film, you know, all the movies. I struggled with Brain Candy as a sketch comedy movie. Could I could I use it this month?

And deemed that I couldn't. That's too much of a narrative that flick. Yeah yeah, But but I mean but I respect, I respect your gumption, I respect your boxie child, But I get those examples are you know, characters that grew out of a particular form of sketch comedy. But when I think of a sketch comedy movie, I'm thinking of, like Father Malone said, like and now for something to the different and episodic kind of like like for lack of a better term, like Twilights in the movie, which is a series of perhaps disconnected, perhaps connected vignettes that comprise a whole, whereas something like Strange Brew is taking that like one specific character set and making it into its own movie. But it's not really episodic in the way that like a Kentucky Fried movie or this is yeah, no, the way I think of it.

No, No, I know that I'm not saying any of those movies or sketch comedies. My point is that I think it's easier for producers to see money being made if you have branded characters attached to a property, because that's the thing, Like we're talking about bigger budget movies. They see things as properties. They don't see it as film, which is gross. And but that's actually going to something you said earlier HP that I love is I do find the whole counterculture era of in general with art and you know, and with comedy too, like very fascinating because you get so many great like subversive like just where you get to see comedy get really truly subversive and just bent and demanded.

It's like Mad Magazine is all of a sudden getting into the angel dust a little bit at times, and it's great and I find I find that I find the really obscure sketch comedy movies from the seventies really fascinating. And we can get into those later. But if I because we've mentioned Strange Brew a couple of times, here's a here's a digression. Steve Dejarnett wrote the initial draft of Strange Brew, and then he took that money and bought back his script Miracle Mile, and made that movie on it. Oh no shit, Oh yeah, that's so Strange Brew.

While I think it's an okay movie, I adore because it gave me Miracle Man. But anyway, sketch comedy, the host, head the Dog, I love hose Hen have you seen Strange Brew, Chress, Oh dude, but I have seen Night at the Roxbury. Chris. You'll appreciate this, having spent the last month talking about Mickey Rourke, the uh, the the whether what, Tabby Brothers, the Bota Brothers, the Botabi brother That sketch was based on the fact of Chris Katan and Will Ferrell being at a club in Hollywood and being a guy basically doing that, bouncing his head like that, and they started making fun of the guy across the way just sort of mimicking him. And then the guy's friend came over and said, hey, we've got a problem here, and it was Mickey roar.

Oh wow, yikes, Oh my god, that's amazing. You didn't punch him in the face. Oh yeah, could have happened here. You can imagine him. What accent would he used?

Would he be playing his character from a Prayer for the Dying? Or do you think you'd be doing something more akin to Johnny Handsome. I just I don't know what Mickey work actually sounds like. Amazing. Yeah, that's the ultimately of many talents, anyway, speaking of a man of many talents.

On this episode of the Culture Cast, we are talking about a film from nineteen seventy four that does feature Chevy Chase. It's called The Groove to get ready for the Biggest fun Party ever, most hilarious, wildest movie is here, The Groove Tube. But don't just take our word for it. The New York Times said, anyone who ever suffered that Chinese strture known as American television owes it to himself to see the Groove Tube. Playboy called The Groove Tube the most stinging assault on television since it was invented.

The San Francisco Chronicle said The Groove Tube is one of the funniest shows ever. The Saturday review in Q magazine called it outrageously funny. See your wildest TV fantasies come true in the Groove Tube. It's really great. I really loved it.

Money, it was funny, it was really good. I thought it was that's crazy about it. Oh, I thought it was definitely. I really lived it a lot. But the biggest, most hilarious, wildest movie is here, The Groove Tube.

So it's written by Ken Shapiro, Lane sarah Son, and Rich Allen. It's directed by Ken Shapiro and its stars Ken Shapiro, along with Richard Belzer, Chevy Chase, Buzzy Linehart, and a bunch of other people, but primarily Ken Shapiro, Richard Belzer, and Chevy Chase. And hey, one of those three. Two of those three ain't bad. So I didn't Maybe bad is not even the word I would use.

Don't you come for my Belzer? No? No, I love Richard Belzer. You guys know that Richard Belzer's cousins with Henry Winkler. No, I didn't know that.

I didn't know that, but that's awesome. Yeah. Also, here's another weird thing. Richard Belzer is the first celebrity I saw when I when I moved to Los Angeles, when I was driving down Sunset Boulevard and he was sitting in the cafe sipping a coffee, and I was like, oh my god, Bilzer. Anyway, sorry, I don't mean even I have a conversation.

That's why I could see Quentin Tarantino and be like, yeah, whatever. If I saw Richard Belzer, I would legit mark out. I'd be like, holy fuck, it's the Bells. Remember when whole cooke and put you in a chokehold? You know, he like used that money, he wanted that lawsuit and like bought like this is st eight, like it's his whole code a stay listen here, brother, I don't like none of that.

Brother. God well, uh you know, father Milone, I'll kick it to you first groove to why why are we watching anything? You kind of already mentioned that, But to tell me a little bit about the first time you saw this movie. What you thought then and you know what you thought now rewatching it for the culture cast, I'm gonna ask all three all the same questions, So Gitch Sills Riddy. Like most movies, I saw this one too young, but I did not see this in the theater.

This was all kind of a late night movie. This is a movie that I've been obsessed with Saturday Night Live since I can think, Like one of my earliest most formative memories is Dan Ackroyd Bleeding all over the Kitchen as Julia Child in it probably a rerun around like seventy eight or seventy nine of that sketch, but I remember being awake and watching that and everyone like uproariously laughing, and it didn't seem scary, although it should have done anyway. So Stay Alive has been in my consciousness forever. So I've always been drawn to sort of sketch comedy and sketch performers and this weird phenomenon of a sketch movie, because there were a few by the time I had seen this one, Like Kentucky Fried movie.

It was pretty much everywhere growing up, thanks to the successive Airplane and the later Zucker Abram Zucker movies, but this was one that nobody talked about, and I kind of caught it late one night and it was almost as if it didn't happen because there's no internet then, and if you didn't know the movie, you didn't know the movie. There was no resource really to like go look it up. And but here was a sketch comedy movie with Chevy Chase from Saturday Night Live, and it was like all scatological And I think this is the first movie I saw a like a penis on screen. I think, full frontal nudity. This is the first experience with that.

I think the movie is of its time, that that early seventies counterculture comedic scene that was going on. So as you said, HP like a you know, a lot of these sacred cows were already been obliterated. So rewatching this movie some forty years on, it's a it's a bit of an odd experience, Like most of the jokes don't land if there are jokes there at all. But I still a couple of scenes and while rewatching it was brought right back to ageing eleven or something when I when I saw the film for the first time, and the relevance of the movie sort of struck back home to me too, that there was nothing like this in seventy four and this movie came out, and you have to remember that, you know, television didn't really sort of come of age until the fifties, and this was the generation that we're actually raised by it.

And here's sort of the first cinematic attack on television. Saturday Night Live Wood specialize and satirizing television and television culture because it was everywhere, but this seemed to do it not only first, but harder and meaner, and so that appealed to young me looking back in it now, Like I said, not a lot of it works, but the intent still shines through either what about you? First of all, I loved all of that mad respect and especially I think we all anybody who grew up watching cable TV, especially, we all have those like memories of when you first see nudity, you're like, oh my god, a boob and then full frontal That must have blown your mind, Like oh yeah, because because when I was at eleven HBO, what are year is this eighty four?

We're talking about the idea of even nudity on television was absurd. It never happened, like you would need to have paid for the Playboy channel or something like it. I mean, we had HBO by them, But you know, it wasn't like it wasn't like you can see, I'm just regular television nowadays. Anyway, I'm sorry, continue please no, no, no, And especially as someone who I grew up watching SNL as well and even like reruns, because I in fact I remember doing impersonations of the two Wild and Crazy guys because I love Steve Martin and I love Danny Ackroyd a lot. They were two of my favorites, and that was really inappropriate.

I had a really good track record as a child of quoting things that I love aicon now that I should not have been doing. But any who, I was so glad to be on this episode because this is a movie I've read about for years, but I'd never got around to watching it. Like I've actually seen some of the more like kind of as I alluded to, deeper cuts like Cracking Up the nineteen seventy seven Sketch film, not the Jerry Lewis film that's a few years older, American Raspberry, the boob Tube, which I do not recommend at all. I do have big box pvhs and that's beautiful. That's it.

That's don't don't see it. Uh, it's definitely seventies. I want to say, I'm just wondering if it predates this movie. And that's why they referred to this movie so the groove Tube and or they were just being groovy. They groove it, and maybe it ran the same time, because my gut is seventy four, seventy five, seventy five, so pretty close, man.

But Tube was attemptingly attempting to capitalize on this movie. Yeah, it has like it even has like like fake commercials and all that, and it's it's not it's not good. It's not good. But and even like there's one cold ss Screw on screen or Screw Magazine did their own sort of variation and it's and that's actually really really good because that's you want to talk about some subversiveness. You got to get people like Al Goldstein, who you know, put his money into his mouth is and definitely like Larry Flint did some jail time and dealt with you know, legal issues for having for fighting for the First Amendment.

And it doesn't get much more countercultural than that. Uh So I was like, oh, the group two, this is the mother, this is the big Daddy, the big cohuna and it was it was, it was, it was, it was. I I don't know, we'll get into it. There are things I really I really enjoyed about it. There are a few things I think are still really funny.

I think it's one of those films I consider it's a it's better. It's almost like a better historical piece and a better experiment than it is as a wholly successful film. Uh but but you know, we can kind of get into the nicks and crannies it is. It is a trip to see baby baby Belzer uh and and baby Chevy Chase. And there's two two classic actresses of Aronica in this film.

So so I'll get into that later. But Jennifer Wells right, Oh, girl, she was, she's beaut Oh. She also like had origins, It's exploitations. She was in Joel Reid's Career Bed, which is a really good depressing movie. She's great in that.

She's also one of the women on the cover of Our Experience It's album. See this movie's historic hpring, bring Us bring Us Home, my friend al right. Well, to echo the previous sort of remembrances, I also grew up with the SNL for me it was. I remember like climbing into my parents' bed late on a Saturday night and like basically falling asleep to SNL. Not not understanding hardly any of the sketches, of course, but but recognizing all the actors and knowing that it was funny because of the reactions of my parents and my oldest brother.

But but this I said earlier, this movie has kind of been on my radar for a long long time. I remember going to the video store back when we had this was before Blockbuster even, and there was the video cassette of the Groove Tube. They actually had it at this one place I used to go to called Tri City Sales, and the picture for me was iconic of like the it's sort of like a gorilla with the with a TV for ahead, you know. And I think at that point I made have already I must have already seen Kentucky Fried movie. So somehow in my mind I knew that there was some relation there.

I mean, it's loose, but I'm sure they're probably just capitalizing on one another's sort of success the iconic gorilla. But but I always wanted to see it, and uh, it was. It was an interesting experience. Like I also, like we've been all saying, it misses the mark more often than it hits it, at least for someone watching it in twenty twenty three, you know, some whatever it is fifty years after it was you know, made. But I also want to echo what everyone else is saying, which is I even though I didn't love, you know, the movie as a whole, I really appreciated the subversive, you know, aspect to it, the fact that they obviously thought, you know, they were making something very sort of subversive and counterculture and attacking all of the sort of norms at the time.

I really dug that I dug the spirit of it more than I dug the comedy of it, if that makes any sense. But but it actually and it got me excited to sort of seek out. I mean, there's a bunch of these types of sketch comedy movies that I have yet to see. There's one called Tunnel Vision, which also features Phil Proctor from The Fire Sign Theater. I think Joe Flaherty is in that, Elaine Boosler.

There's some interesting people in it, and I know there's there's kind of a narrative sort of thread that runs through it, which I guess is a little more sophisticated than than the groove Tube. And I'm sure there's many more that that I've yet to discover. But uh, you know, I was excited to watch it obviously. Uh you know, the experience was was interesting in the modern day. But uh but yeah, no, I'm I'm excited to delve into it a little bit and see what everybody else thought of some of the comedy.

Speaking of some of the comedy, let's let's let's break it down. Uh, so, what's funny is you know, I actually remember downloading this movie a while ago, like long ago. I was scrolling through one of the many websites I go to to watch movies on. This is a this is an audio medium. They can't see that, I win, Uh, Chris Wayne Ladies, Oh oops.

But I remember downloading it because actually for the reason HP said, because it had an interesting cover art, like it's a gorilla with a TV set on its head, which is I like monkeys, I like gorillas, you know, And so it seemed like you know, in the groove Tube, interesting names. So I've had this sitting on my Plex server for apple years. And so when father Malone programmed this month, and that was one of the movies. I was like, Okay, I'll get to finally watch this movie I've literally had sitting on my Plex server for a couple of years. Yeah, I mean it's it's fine.

Yeah. I think the issue is I think we've all kind of already said it, so just to get out in front of it, like the rest of everybody else has. Some of this is so specific it's hard to really comment on it now. Like it was a parody of a commercial from the seventies. If that is, if you don't have a frame of reference for what the commercial is, you have to go and watch the commercial after you watch the movie and then rewatch the movie to understand what they were getting at, which is what I did.

I essentially had to go and watch all the ads that they were paroding, and then I rewatched the movie so I could understand why they were doing this and what the parody was, which I think is important because again, it puts it in the context of when this came out. So yes, in terms of the success that this had in seventy four, I under stand why this was so well regarded. Why why fucking Jean Siskel gave it three out of four stars and said it was funny, and he enjoyed the directions that it went and the subject material of the movie. He appreciated it. But in twenty twenty three, now, I mean some of it is funny because some of it doesn't rely on specific references to specific things.

But in the same way that like, you know, I coincidentally enough, but I watched Scary Movie three over the weekend, which is my favorite of the scary movies. It has Charlie Sheen in it doing the hot like like your father Malone, you're attempting to agree with me, Starry, I was muted. Yeah, I totally agree with you. That's my favorite as well. I love that one.

That's that's the one with the eight mile parody Simon Simon Rex dirt nasty. Oh my god. There's there's one bit in that the yachtzy bit where he keeps hitting his head on the shelf above him, like we were playing a fun game, and then yeah, I see and then he twice great, great, and that's and that's the thing, like, but there are jokes in that movie that that don't work now because there are specific references to specific things from mid two thousands whenever Scary Movie three, King, can I can I say something thinking about that the jokes in that movie and there's in Kentucky Fried Movies. It's another movie we're gonna be talking about. There's a specific parody of a commercial in that movie.

Uh, as well. The thing is context is fine, but it's not going to make it funny. Ultimately, the joke has to be funny. And you'll see what I'm saying in Kentucky Fried Movie where the joke fucking hits makes me laugh every fucking time. Doesn't matter that it's a very specific commercial they're parodying.

It could or could not be a commercial does It doesn't matter. The joke is the joke, and these jokes ultimately aren't that funny in this movie. And that's and that's the problem. I mean again, you know, Scary Movie three has a couple moments where it's specific things like oh I'm Michael Jackson joke, but like the joke is still funny because the joke is funny, And that's the problem, and that is you're right, that is the problem here. This movie is just not funny in a lot of ways, Like it is funny, but it's more clever than it is funny.

I think the things that they poke fun at and the ways that they do it are interesting and clever, but like laugh out loud funny, like I laughed, I maybe laughed a couple times. And the question then becomes is that the measure of a successful comedy is how many times I laugh out loud? I don't think so. It's like how many times am I scared when watching a horror movie? And is that the bar by which I measured?

No? Not really, it's whether or not I enjoyed the experience, at least for me of sitting down and watching the movie and what I do it again. I think the problem with Grootube is there's too many segments that don't land. It's like, I mean, this is like a microcosm of Tales from the Crypt. I can't endorse someone go back and watch Tales from the Cry because it's a sketch horror show in a lot of ways, like it's an anthology, so every episode is different.

And with Groove too. There are some segments you could watch out of this that are fine, but do you need to sit and watch the whole thing? That's the problem. Well, as a city, the answer is always yes, like right right C. As a document of a time and place, it is worth your time on if you're looking to laugh even once, maybe I don't.

I don't know. If you haven't seen this movie and have no reference for that time and place or love of that time and place, that you're going to get one laugh. And that's exactly that's a great point fall them alone, where you know, as a curio, I think it has great value because it really is a time capsule of a very specific place and time. But but part of my problem with the humor is, and maybe this is just because we've had fifty years to become jaded about comedy and we've seen these essentially the same type of humor come again and again over this time is a lot of a lot of the jokes, a lot of the humor. It just seems like I get the point of the joke, but then that segment goes on for another like it Sometimes it feels interminable, but you know it's I get it.

It's it's a parody of a cooking show and this person is making a mockery of the kitchen and just making a mess and it's all nonsense. Well that I get it, but I don't need, you know, seven minutes of that. Like I got the point of it in the first two minutes. You know, You's like that MTV has rided your brain. Is the soul of wit brow Shakespeare said it, miss, it's the truth.

Like the we already mentioned the dan Ackroyd Julia Child thing. That's a better send up of cooking shows than this is in this movie, like period, and that's a specific person that they're referencing. And I think it does a better job of encapsulating a certain kind of cooking show from a certain time and place than the Cramp TV Kitchen does. Because to your point, HB, just like the Dealers in wasted segment in this why does it need to be fifteen minutes long? The joke wasn't funny in the first minute.

It's not going to magically get better in the next six Yeah, it felt longer. Yeah, I mean this movie is not even eighty minutes. This is a show. It's barely over an hour seventy two minutes. Yeah, it's a short feature, but it directs and and the thing is like the most important thing about comedy is too Comedy is timing, and when your timing is wonky, there's gonna be an issue.

I will say I did the opening where they keep looping nature sounds and various nature shots during their whole two thousand and one thing. That shit kind of made me laugh. Repetition is a little funny to me sometimes if on Matt, I'm with you on Matt. Yeah, it's like when Mister Show did their parody of Jesus Christ Superstar with jeepers creepers and they keep looping that segment with tapid Cross or it's like barn it like goes on like it's not too like, that's just hilarious. Mr Shows another great sketch comedy show.

But I wish they had made a movie they did ron Ronnie Run, ron Ronny ron Baby the Heather. Oh my god, a sketch comedy movie. Oh agreed, agreed, Yeah, Ronnie Run gives us Jack Black singing his little Chimney sweep song. Was it like kick a count? But yeah, Run Ronnie Run.

Oh god, such a great movie. Oh my god, that's I remember if it's if it's in the show or the movie where he talks about having intent elatis. It's like us up from a lattis. But I'm sorry, I digress, But but no, that's the thing. There aren't things attempted in this movie even that I really liked.

I mean, there's like a very experimental film flavor kind of throughout that I that I don't think you really see in the other sketch comedy movies, even even the morp Skier ones. Like the especially like the animation and like with the you know, with the titles kind of intro build up after you get the two thousand and one, it's like got chroma key and superimpositions, and there's like that whole sort of dream sequence that's animated in the middle of the Dealers and I actually looked up because I was so struck by the animation. Is Pat O'Neill and Linda Taylor, and Pat O'Neil has more of a filmography, but Linda's I'm more interesting because her other two credits she did animation for Cracking Up in Tunnel Vision.

So I figured with the with the theme of this month, I thought that was very cool. Is part of that entire segment totally. I love the animation during the Dealers it was awesome. That segment is like it and it's the one where, like when I watched the movie for the first time, I had the most promise because I was like, it's Richard Belzer and Ken Shapiro on screen, like here we go. And then it's just like it's fucking me.

And to say it's meandering would be an understatement. It's just the worst part of this entire movie. I think, as far as I'm concerned, every beat in it should have been cut by half. I think, like, yeah, I agree, but one of the things I kind of one of the things I agree with you there. But one of the things I kind of liked about it is in a funny way, it reminded me of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers in the way that it was just kind of this dingy sort of look at these like low level dealers and like everything.

I mean, just watching that segment, I felt like I had to take a shower because it was so you know, the apartment was so gross looking and dirty and uh, but yeah, it's it's my favorite part of the of the entire film. Actually, Like I think, Chris, what you're saying is Chris, what you're saying is true. It does not need to be fifteen minutes. It should have been seven minutes or six minutes, and we still could have gotten all of the beats that they're that we we get. It's just it's the jokes are delivered quickly and then interminably.

Unfortunately, because I like all of that. I like how dingy it is, and I like how ramshack the meandering lifestyle of dealers and the bullshit that they have to deal with. One of the moments that actually makes me laugh in that movie is when they're driving and the guy says ken Spiro says, hey, this is funny cops following us, and Richard Bells is like, that's not funny, like's not funny at all, Like what are you talking about? Like that was really good, and it has the animation thing, and it has that ending where it just turns into this like a church public service drug film, which a lot of those, if you watched a lot of those, which we did as kids, like they just sort of end that way. So I like the Dealers overall, but like, it is way too long.

I didn't need to see more than a few minutes of those guys doing it unless they were being more pointed and more narrative driven. Chris. Is the look on Chris's face when you said that botheram alone? That was funnier. The dealer said that a christ like Chritsi's eyes went like, oh god, yeah, I'm popping out of him.

I mean, I appreciate the Henry portrait of a serial killer nature of where they live as much as the next guy, but I think I think, yeah, like it slows the movie to a molasses crawl. And look, you know the it's sandwich between a an ad for butts but beer and the and the bell the bell walking fingers ad campaign thing, which I mean, look, that for me felt like, as we like to say on midnight viewing, that feels like a blackout sketch. It really, it really like any of the commercials all, like at least any of the commercials that have that like fifteen seconds, they all just feel like a blackout sketch from any of these other like you know things that we've talked about anthology wise, and and those are fun and fine, but it's when they kind of try to do a little bit more where they start to stumble.

Because Handel one Evening News. Why do we sit on Ken Shapiro for like five minutes? Why? I just fucking I mean, I get the Eric Andre, anti comedy, anti climax nature of it, Like I as much as I loved him and Eric and Eric Andre and those kinds of shows, I get it and appreciate it. But that that's not what they're trying to do here.

That's just the one time that they're doing it, and it don't work when they do it the one time. Well, that's the problem is that. I mean, I hate to I'm not trying to speak ill of him. Ken Shapiro is the least funny of like the cast that we see in my opinion, like we have Chevy Chase is funnier. Richard Richard Bells is funnier.

Kin Shapiro is not bad. I'm not dogging on him per se, But I'm just saying we get a lot of him, and I don't think I mean Eric Andre that's a great comparison. Eric Andre's charismatic Erico. Yeah, it's like he's also fully committed in like almost a way where it's like, you know, is this a work or is this a shoe? You know, I don't know it puts don't sleep on Ken Shapiro.

He directed The Modern Problems featuring Chevy Chase, which might be the single most unfunny movie I think I've ever seen in my life. It's just say the only thing I know about that movie is Chevy Chase has Modern Problems. The story Dabney Goldman. Yeah, that was great, Chris. The Tubes have a song on that soundtrack the theater damn nice Christmas Day.

Also, do you know the Tubes, which are obviously one of my favorite rock bands ever as HP in Father Malone, No, now you know, Chris, they were in Cracking Up Like There's even like phee Waybill plays a character in it. The band comes out at one point, White punks on dope and Mondo Bondage are used in different sketches. So for Youtubes fans to say in but it all comes back to the Tubes. I love the Tubes. It's I can't.

I can't in it. At least it applies because I'm bad about bringing stuff in in my own way that makes sense only to me. Here. I'll bring it back because you mentioned that Ken Shapiro is the least funny on screen and I'm going to I'm going to disagree with you because I think he is. He has to carry everything whether or not, like a sketch is gonna work.

Like he there has to be the straight man to somebody. So so I don't think he's being funny a lot of the time. But I think when he is being funny, he's in character Coco the clown, regardless of he's a funny, fucking sketch and he's really that one. And I said The Dealers is my favorite sort of sketch overall, but my actual favorite moment is the closing sketch, the just you just Me dance sequence where it's just him with a cameraman like singing to passers by in New York and you know, just dancing lively and like like that whole sequence is amazing. That's all Ken Shapiro, that's all improv it's actual joyousness at the end of the movie.

If it didn't have that scene, I don't know that I would recommend the movie even as a curio. But that scene is actually worth seeing. Oh no, no, I didn't say. I'm not dogging on him. For the record, he that is a charming and I think that's his best like on screen thing in my opinion is that in sequence?

But is it funny? I don't think it's that funny. It's cute. It's cute. Cocoa of the Clown I did not like.

And now for the obvious reasons, like I don't mind some creepy ass clowns. Like one of my favorite Doctor Tavetto's songs is cain'to the Clown by Odd Ganetzel, and that ship's unsettling and funny. Odd Ganetzel is great. Whoever played the creepy clown on Coded on Brian that one season where he had like this girl that looked like the little girl from the Ring playing like like a harmonium, that dude was great. I just didn't like it.

It's Cocade the Clown. I also didn't like his ensemble that was, but I give him points for the ensemble because that was the shittiest clown costume. Those colors, it was all like rusty browns and old blood red and you know green. There's like this shitty moss screen it was. It was a total abortion of a clown costume, which I can respect.

I can respect, but one of my single favorite moments was in that Coco of the Clown sketch where he's he's reading the erotica to these kids, and then when he realizes he's got to go back on, you know, become Coco again, he like takes one last drag off of a cigarette that he's been sort of surreptitiously smoking, like one last puff, and then he's back to being Coco again. I don't know, I just thought it was a really funny transition. Uh that. Actually, that was maybe my one chuckle during the whole movie. I was like, that's really funny.

I don't know, I think I think Father Malone agrees. He's chuckling himself. Oh my god. Yeah, it's so well observed, just the I look, I'm gonna I'm gonna defend him again. I'm gonna cry poverty for him.

For the outfit. This movie was made for two hundred thousand dollars. Well no, I'm saying them outfit works for this sketch. Oh okay, right, but uh yeah, when he's portraying the clown television host, he's really going for it to a manic degree and then settles into this laconic he's not even a creepiece. Like I think he's really just doing good.

He's like, he's like Steve, He's like Steve Allen, basically that's what he's doing. Kind of yeah, like and you know he really knows the kids, and kids know him and they want to hear. Page forty seven from Fanny Hill by John Cleveland. Okay, I knew when the sketch started. I had a feeling it was going to be a play on the famous like soupy sales thing where he give me the money he had.

He told the kids to go to their parents' wallets and send him all the pictures of the presidents they found in the wallet. So I knew that it was going to be subversive, but I don't know that I was expecting him to read, you know, literary erotica to these children. But and to father Millen's point, like his demeanor, the way it changes when he's reading it was it's it's very peculiar. I was not prepared for for the dichotomy between Coco and this other sort of weird character. But uh, I you know, I liked I probably liked it, you know, better than I expected to like it.

I don't I think it went on a little too long again. I think a little brevity might have helped. But uh, but it was funny. I mean I got a few laughs out of it. I guess I got no laughs.

I got none zero. I agree. I agree with you, And they're about Ken Shapiro. Uh. The only segment I liked him in was the Coco segment because I mean, I will agree reading erotica is funny.

That's it reading erotica. I mean, we could do a whole podcast where we just read erotica and we can all short all along. That would be funny. Okay, So you're saying just the his reading of the erotica, Yeah, it's what they do with Ken Shabiro, Like you know, I think. I mean, that's just reading.

For me, hearing someone talk about engorged pallaces will never not be funny because people saying it out loud is funny. That's also the our new podcast, Chris and I are starting and gorged Fallaces. What makes me laugh about that sketch is that these children are writing him letters that you know, this is a that's how it's happening. I like the idea that maybe they aren't and he's just reading it to them anyways, He's just like, I'm going to read children erotica. I think that's only work if these kids have been watching so long that they have favorite passages from the from the like the thinking back to it, Oh, what was it?

Page forty seven? Like I was hoping that we would get to hear what the what what he was reading from the Marquis de Sade. But Marquis is a little bit more my speed less Fanny Hill more. What's what's an old French term for a prolam uh? Now to HP HP though I do love so much that you brought up supy Sales because I do love supy sales and if that Suppy Sales had a dance that refriends Steven sent me a video of and it was amazing.

I think everybody listens goes to go check out soupy sales. Just because something's old doesn't mean it's not funny, because there's plenty of the Mark's Brothers holds up. God, those guys started vaudeville. And that's the thing about this movie. It's like, you run the risk of alienating people in the future by being too specific.

And Charlie chap around that too, But the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, I mean, even you know, someone like Jackie chan like, there is a timelessness to what they're doing because it's physical comedy, and physical comedy doesn't need a pop culture reference point. Yeah, I mean, look, they let your fingers do a thing is funny with or without the knowing the ad campaign because it's two fingers humping done rather well. But I mean I wonder, like, you know, it's like the well, let's take the Jarreton girl thing, for example, is that funny without knowing the jarital ad that it's based on. Yes, boobs well and Chevy and Chevy Chase making that face at the end, unable to keep on with the audio is budding.

Yeah, I will random boobs aren't funny. But Jennifer Wells is so cute in this and so the way she shakes her chas and she takes I thought was just so cute, like she was she was having fun with it. But it's funny. It's funny, but in a different sense than I think they originally intended. I think if in its time and place, when the jaratal ads were prominent, I think it chickled you for a different reason.

Now, it's just more about the outrageousness of seeing a woman, you know, doing what she's doing and Chevy Chase being sort of mugging. But it's not funny in the sense of being a parody of Jarretall. That's that's my opinion. But it is. And here's the thing.

It is a very pointed ad because the tagline on the Neil Jarretall ad was my wife I think called keeper and it was your wife is an actual ad campaign, right oh yeah right, not not great now, actually real bad jar Jarretall. Yeah, fuck you Jarretall. The fuck I just it's it sounds it sounds like a drug that old people take. I've plegit thought it was for like constabation Jerryatric It's not. I mean, Jarrod, what is here?

Is his wife in continent? Is she is? She backed up? It's just a supplement, that's it. Supplement?

Yeah, oh for iron pour tired blood. That's what it was a fix for. You know what this you can still buy it. You can still buy it. Let's go get it some bottles of Jarrettall, folks and take a ride to sex down.

You know what a great uh pop culture reference. Add that even though the product and the advertisement, people won't remember because honestly, I this was a little bit before my time. I'm slightly but do you guys remember from the seventies air SNL where they had the bottled water with the waters of the lake. Erie said to Carly Simon's anticipation, and it's like this just nasty sludge. That shit's still funny.

And I've ever seen there's a little kid laughing. And I didn't get I didn't get the actual reference, but I mean it was done funny, like it was so funny just the way it was done. I was so out of the box. And you know, I just I don't know. I mean, hold me, the clown's funnier to Coco.

I'm sorry, I can't get past this, Like I love helping to come up. You know, here's the thing. It doesn't even have to be it doesn't have to be advertising this. So the airplane has a moment that's a parody of from Here to Eternity. I defy anyone who's coming to airplane for the first time now to have seen that film and know the reference.

Well, they reference to a coffee. Add an airplane that like doesn't work if you don't know the coffee, right, that's right? Yeah, never, he doesn't take yeah yeah, and like what and like that that joke We talked about it on the Police Squad episode or the Police Squad show that we did Mark Begley and Mike White and I earlier this year we talked about that where it's like this doesn't land anymore, Like you have to know this joke. That's those guys demonstrating both times, right, Like you can do a topical joke, but if the joke is funny, it's good. And the other one is just a joke about the line that they've been hearing in ads, right, which the jarital thing is.

I mean they literally just quote the it's basically the family Guy of comedy. Hey, here's a reference. You recognize this thing, So that's funny. Remember when X did why the family Guy equation? I mean, you know, speaking of X as in the band Now I can't I can't connect the punk rock band X to this, but I do want to forget.

The music has this film, and I think this is one of my favorite things that've it. It has that main song by Curtis Mayfield. Yes, I was fantastic. I was. I was so shocked because, well, I don't know, I maybe this isn't the time before filmmakers had to pay through the nose to have songs like that in their movies.

But that when I heard that startup during the sort of the Hitchhiker scene, I was like, Oh, this might be really kind of cool. I love this song. I love Curtis Mayfield, but again, it was kind of a little bit of a bait and switch because it doesn't really it doesn't really have any real bearing I think on that particular vignette, and it just got me unreasonably excited for the movie and the expectations couldn't possibly be mad at that point, but it was. But it was I agree, that was really cool to hear that, is that the Hitchhiker synquence, so that that's where it first comes out. Yeah, yeah, yeah right.

I also liked perfectly Place sta Ahead. It's perfectly placed because it defined your expectations, just like that Hitchhiker. That song made you the hitchhiker. You were like, Oh, this is gonna be great, and then oh, there's cops there you go. I also liked that the hitchhiker looked like Jade Gum from Silence of the Lambs, and I don't know.

I was expecting him to do like the Tuck dance or something, but the Buzzy Heart, who was a soundtrack guy, but he just looked like Jimmy Gum to me. I don't know, but yeah, he really did. And then pants come off and he's just cock flapping in the wind. I do appreciate the nudity in this movie. I appreciate a good dick in the wind, folks, who doesn't all we are dicks and the wind and the wind.

The demo, I really got to change the wording here, guys, because I don't think they'll let us play dicks in the Wind on the radio. Man. It's it's the jam g I've my heart, my adult I in my original notes, I had guy guy guy with burgeoning skullet. So you did a lot better, VHP. I looked at the term scullet.

That's great. It's it's like, it's so perfect, and it's so rare the person that can rock the skullet. So far, I've only come up with the Richard Bryan Bru and then and then there's like that guy who worked on special effects for I think I'm around Elm Street three or four. He rocks a pretty good skullet because he shows up. He shows up in the documentary Never Sleep Again, and he's got a skullet like that guy John Carl Buckler.

No, not the guy Vin. Oh yeah, I think this car not the carnissaur guy Biler is the carnissaur guy, right harness. Yeah, and you're directed Friday the thirteenth part. Uh you know where he where he fights carry you know Jason versus the second Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah that I'll have to look up the skullet. Yeah.

Reggie Banister from Phantasm has an awesome skullet. Oh and uh the guitarist, one of the guitars from the band Saxon. Now that's that's how far that's my skullet. Like Rock Saxon. You have a you have a spreadsheet with all the skullets listed.

Head, I think, but no, but Buzzy is it Linharder Line Heart? I think I think it's Line. It's probably Linehart he I know he passed away in twenty twenty. I did look that up. He wrote the song friends, but here that became like you got to have friends.

I okay, I can't say like Bed Millard, but yeah, but that's huge right there. That song's massive. Yah. Yeah. And he worked with Jimmy Hendricks and also worked with people like Harry Nielsen, Buffy Saint Marie, John Sebastian.

So yeah, I mean, dude, dude was legit and we saw his hero and Ken, I don't think it's the one he talks about. He's like, I almost almost the one you don't want to leave off the list. Frankly, yeah, what would you break about being like, hey, I have an album credit on a Jimmy Hendricks record, or I showed my wang in the groove too, like I was in the movie who directed Modern Problems. That's it right there, Mike drop God, Well, you know, here's the thing about that. This movie costs two hundred thousand dollars and I made twenty million dollars.

I know, And look that's Andy. That is the thing I think about this movie when you look at it as a whole, I think the thing that is successful about it is that it does ultimately feel like you're turning the TV on for an hour and a half and then turning the TV off at the end, And that is a success that you can't take away from this, even though some of the segments don't succeed. Again, I come back to Tales from the Crypt. Most of the segments in that show don't work. Most of the episodes of that show are fucking middling two towards the end of that show just a nightmare that I don't want to relive.

But you could say the same thing about any of these kinds of things. Law of averages would denote there's gonna be some that are good, not a lot that are great, and not a lot that are really terrible. But most things sit in the middle. And I think that, you know, the groove tube is that for the most part. I think the things that aren't great go on for way too long.

Is ultimately the problem. I could use more ads about Brown twenty five is what I'm saying, Just a lot more shit I wanted. Honestly. The thing I did want that they didn't do is something reoccurrent throughout, like the same ad a couple of times, the same company, but for different things, Like they didn't do that which I was with the company Urane is right, But I was expecting it like I was expecting it like a lot more like I was really expecting then, then Father Malone. Prior to your point, it would have discredited this as something to watch, because then there might have been a through lie.

No, that would have been five because the Amazon Women on the Moon, which we end the month, is the perfected version of this movie will It will make you feel like you're just watching television with somebody and they have control of the remote control. And that does have callbacks to earlier, earlier stuff, but it is sketchy as you can get. Oh my god, I love that movie. Someone. Yeah, that really is You're You're right for them alone.

That that really is like the most highly evolved sort of sketch comedy movie I think, because it's hard for me to think of anything that came after that that approached that kind of you know, being so streamlined and funny. As I was saying, it's hard to think of anything that came after that, it had that same level. It has huge Jackman in it. Guys, how could it be that bad? Well, that's and you know what, that's the thing I would I would contend this is a funnier movie than Movie forty three is leaps and bounds funny.

Well, that's saying something a low bar. I haven't seen this movie, but I'm good. Just doesn't move what you gets. A movie that I feel like a lot of the people that are in it hope and wish that they could leave it. They would probably collectively leave it off of their credits.

It's kind of that notoriously bad. That's the thing, like, I don't think anybody's leaving this off of their credits, because you know, we mentioned Chevy Chase a couple of times, and I think we could go around the room asking our feelings on mister Chase. Uh, I think he's good in this. These sparing amount that he's in here, I mean to say Chevy Chase is in this is really to say he's in two segments. Two yeah, three, those are his fingers, Oh in the finger thing with the homebook.

Okay, he's that's three. That's three parts. I mean the sex, the finger sex is pretty convincing. The way the legs move on the one that's being fucked is pretty good. I'm not joking, I'm being dead serious.

That's one thing he knows, fucking, fucking up other people's Oh man, why do we have to go that you just buried the man? Damn, this is like his grows stall over again. Uh you know? Okay, So I mentioned Ken Spirow had had a theater's Channel one theater, and he didn't chevy Chase was part of that. So like all of the original films that they made for the theater were like all of the bells Are parts were chevy Chase part and he left, obviously to go make Saturday Night Live.

And Belzer took his place in that theater. So that's why Belzer is all over the movie. Let's talk about belts Are for a minute, shall we, because we're talking about chevy Chase. But yeah, he probably doesn't deserve any more time than we gave. He's in it for two scenes and three three with his fingers.

But Belzer, you know, Bellzer made an entire career basically playing Belzer, which is great because I love him, But you know, Detective John Mudge is just Richard Belzer. Uh. But seeing the range of characters he was cycling through here like made me sad that he didn't do more character work, you know, where he actually portrayed a character because I found him very compelling in each of each of the guys is here maybe not maybe not the African American hooker that was regretable. Yeah, HP, that was regrettable. It was yeah, yes, And the affectation in the PATOI was what a complete fucking nightmare.

Yeah, it's one thing to be in black face, but it's another to do a patoise. Well, I love I love HP. You are like the diplomatic heart of our of of everything. But it doesn't it doesn't take you know, a diplomat to look at that and go well, on the face of it, it's just unfunny anyway. Like it's again, it's a joke that could have been told in fifteen seconds that goes on for three minutes.

But I mean, you know, it's it's what are you gonna do? It's black face terrible and it's and it's done. But again, I'm not blind to the fact that it was. When this was made, it wasn't as big of a deal. But it's I can't really separate my attitude from what I'm seeing on the screen.

I mean, that's maybe that's my failing, but uh, but no, it was not that was not good. That excluding that, though I do agree with Father alone that you know, it was good to see so much I wasn't expecting. You know. It's almost like like a two hander with the Belzer and Ken Shapiro. I mean, they're all over this thing for obvious reasons.

But but Belzer is great in there. Oh he's yeah, he's it's great. I mean. Also, even though it's a small part a movie where you can see him do something that you don't think of him classically with this. He's in Cafe Flesh and he does a little like a little section in there, and I had it confirmed that it was him, So it's obviously his name's not in the credits because it's technically X rated.

Though he's non sex there's there Richard Bell's in Nudity Storry to disappoint, but the closest I think we're ever going to get her him in those hot pants and the sex at the racist sex workers scene. That well, I mean, and he's in one of Father Malone's favorite films that I enjoy as well. He's in the he plays one of the Greek gangsters at the beginning of letch Lips So Good put one hundred dollars on Hall of It. I think it's something that there's scut or something. It's Richard Belzer just doing it like a Greek, you know, greasy Greek man in the in the in the eighties nineties.

I guess, I don't know. You want to see badass bells. Check out Night Shift, the Ron Howard film about the Accidental Pimps with his cousin Henry Winkler. He plays like a mob enforced her in that movie. He's fucking great in it.

I mentioned that he was the first celebrity I saw in Los Angeles. I also got to meet him a few times because he was in a remake of a Roger Corman movie called Not of This Earth that my friend Elizabeth was starring in, so she I begged her to go meet him and ended up having a very nice conversation with him. Ended up taping uh that week's episode of homicide Life on the Street because he didn't have a VCR while he was in LA so I got to He wanted to see the episode, so I got to tape that far. There there's my Belzer digression. He was also a big conspiracy theory guy.

He's written like several books on different conspiracy theory about the JFK assassination and UFOs and all this kind of stuff. A lot people don't know that about Belzer. He was very staunch in his belief around beliefs around conspiracy theories. That's interesting. That was the first thing I saw of him was the UFOs JFK and Elvis.

I had that book. Oh you read that book. I don't know if I ever read it, but I had it, which was probably the you know, I had it and I maybe perused it at one point, but I don't know why I wouldn't have read it, but I remember having it. I mean, I remember him on the X Files. I mean, isn't he also?

Is he not the character that ties all that stuff into that weird like thing that what the hell was the show where it was like all in a dream sequence and because he was in it and everything else, like he connects all the dots? Stay what else? And what the funk I'm talking about? Are I just encanting here in some sort of weird ritual? Nobody knows about it.

I'm so rusty on the X Files, so I but it's he plays the same character in the X Files that he plays in homicide. John Munch is in like dozens of shows he appears. Yeah, if there's an actual multiverse, John Munch is at the center of it. He appeared on like three or four different Law and Orders. If any crossover shows happened during that, I think at the but a CSI John Munch appeared on that are you getting in particularly John munchcrossover that that I'm not mentioning Tommy Westfall thing.

What's the show Saint Elsewhere? Oh, there is something about Belzer connected to that show. That then means any show that he's been on is therefore in that fucking Saint Elsewhere. Kid's mind. That's what it is, and I forget, but it is.

It's Belzer is the kind of entire connection. Oh, did like one of those characters from Saint Elsewhere up here in an episode with John Munch and some other show and they were like, this is that character? So then that means that Saint Elsewhere is also connected to John Munch. That's is that one of the things is that, Yes, because he's in all these things, that those are there for tangentially within the Tommy Westfall Brain universe. Because yeah, the entire what that entire show takes place in a child's mind.

So yeah, that's what I think of when I think of Belzer, is that weird like X files connects into all these others. He he's good here, I mean, you know what, kind of wasted unfortunately, because I wish he was the main focus. I mean, as much as he kind of is, I kind of wish that it was anytime it was Ken Shapiro was just Richard Belzer. I think I think the Belzer could have made the Coco show thing a little funnier. My sorry, guys, and no offense to my brothers, my noise junkie brothers, I love you.

It wasn't funny, I can't. But Kink of the Clown is hilarious, kin, have you never heard? That's all? Like Chris, let's just send it to here. It's a Doctor Demanto classic.

But no, I am So are you saying that could there have been across ever possibly Richard Belzer and just even Toura. Well that's the thing you mentioned that you and you you mentioned Richard Belzer and kind of like being a conspiracy guy, Like that's who I think of when I think of what contemporary people is the body. The body, that's what I think of. I mean, that is what I think of when I think of people like that. But I mean he's in that same weird vein of like I mean, a personality.

I don't know, Belzer's a Belzer's a weird, a weird guy because he had a lot of interests and things that you don't see a lot of other celebrities coming out and talking about, like conspiracy theories. So it's fighting the good fight for the rest of us who were just you know, interested in it, but couldn't you know, be as kind of open about it writing books and stuff. So never ever see his wife, Harley McBride, Belzer's wife. Oh god, I forgot he was married to her. She was a young It was a young Lady too, young Lady Chatterally and the young Lady Chatterally too, which speaking of like forbidden food video types, I as a young pervy child clean well yeah, not child, but let's just say of an age I video tape young Lady Chatterley too off of Cinemax Skinnamax, and and then, not being the brightest of children, actually wrote on the label now believes too.

And then one came home to my mother with a videotape, like you want to talk about this? Oh man, that's rough anyway, I hardly McBride. She's beautiful and talented and you know, married to the bells, bells to the bells. I tried watching two as a kid, not just for the obvious reasons, but Oliver Read. I believes in it and I was already like super in love with Oliver Read because of burnt offerings in Tommy Sorry, this is probably his cycle?

Does he show his does he show his special tattoo in that movie? No? What a shame? Why did you get to see all of it? But I've I've read about it.

I was like, this movie, is it laws that they think he had an ad tad? I know it's not a nad taddy and a dip taddy. I thought it was. It's on his balls, it's on his penis, it's on the head of his dick. I feel like that most sensitive.

Yes, Yeah, Oliver Reid was a fucking Allen's plural. Yeah, he had two talents on the head of his dick and Jill Oliver Reid that much more now I love him. You know what this discussion to Night is funnier than the entirety of the roof. I mean, you know that is that is kind of a sad thing I think for me about something like this is like I see where they were going, but I just I see where they were going. But again, like I said, like, I can't fault this movie for being more or less successful with some parts that don't work because like I mean, talk about SNL and it's entirety like how much of that show still works anymore?

Oh God, yeahs an L And I mean, and it's entirety very little. You know, We've we've been fed a diet of best of SNLS for the past fifty years, and so like the best of Twilight zones like the best of Night Gallery or Tales from the Crypt, Like, there's a lot of chaff in that wed. If you go back and watch Early Saturday Night Live first second Thursday, there are sketches that are like seventeen minutes long and it's just character pieces. There are no jokes specifically, they go on and on and on. So, uh, you know, I can't blame this movie for not being funnier.

Like maybe Haddie had a few more writers involved. It could have been, but right, and that's well, that's the other thing. It seems this movie, as much as it is written by three people, it definitely feels like one person's specific voice, Ken Shapiro's voice, which I think to your point, Heather, I would err on the side of my comedy expectations, don't necessarily see eye to eye with Ken Shapiro, and that's okay. But I think the problem is it's so much Ken Shapiro and him him him, that if there were another voice or two in there to maybe, you know, like with Tarantino, where he has an editor who can trim his stuff down, it would help if there were other people to diffuse Ken Shapiro's stuff just a little bit so that it's not just so overwhelmingly his comedic sensibilities, which I don't necessarily vibe with a whole lot.

Yeah, agreed, Oh it hits me. I never got to mention the second like like erotic film actress, I feel like very saucy. It's a very saucy episodes. And I because Rebecca brook is the actress in the sex Olympics section, which wasn't good, but she's in Bradley Metzker is the image and Riley Mesker is an all tour down down boots. Nobody can see this listening this, but I have a small black white picture behind me underneath my Badass Dark Shadows poster, and it's Radley Musker.

Radley Musker is a brilliant filmmaker and I highly encourage it. She was amazing in the image. Great actress. It may be sad because she was in one of the worst segments. That one went on way too long.

It wasn't funny. She's a great actress that so props to Rebecca Brook aka Merrimentum. I mean the joke, it's like they do the same joke four times. Yeah, It's like, yeah, how many times do you have to do the same joke? I get it, Like, you know, there is something to be said for repetition, right, you know, repeated four times and on the fifth time it's funny, or three times in the fourth time it's funny.

But not always, no, not always. It has to be a joke in there that is more than just Hey, remember that commercial you just heard on the radio for the third fourth time? There, see you've seen this ad, well, we've seen that ad. I do like a little bit of physical comedy with the I'm looking over a four leaf clover. That may be my favorite segment in the entire movie.

It's pretty great. Yeah, I mean it's it's got chivy Chase doing nothing, just sitting singing, and then the other guy playing on his head. So yeah, that's Chase getting smacked around. Who doesn't Yeah, which is funny. I mean, I mean yeah, Like, I mean again, not to drag the guy, but it sounds like he does a pretty good job dragging himself on his own.

Oh, I mean, like, I don't know. Like the problem with someone like chevy Chase is like he's in one of my favorite movies of all time. He's fucking fletch. I mean, John Hamm is fletched, but for me, chevy Chase is fletch. Fletch is a character that was a very important character for me at a formative part of my life.

So it's hard for me to overlook the fact that I love Chevy Chase, but he is not a person that sounds like he does a lot to make people like him, and that's hard to grapple with when he plays such kind of charismatic characters and comes off as a guy who you would like to be around, but then you hear the story about him and Bill Murray trying to kill each other, and it's like, you know, I know, Bill Murray ain't exactly a pip either, but I don't know, like chevy Chases doesn't do a lot, in my opinion, to help the case that he's perceived as someone that people might not want to work with. Okay, let me address that. That situation was chevy Chase had become the big star of Center and a Live and left the show, and then he was coming back to host it, and bel Lucy could not stand that fact.

So he was stoking fires between chevy Chase and Bill Murray alway, which culminated in Bill Murray saying to chevy Chase, why don't you go back home and fuck your wife? I hear she needs it, yep, which is funny. But the thing I like best about that story, though, is when they were begetting pulled apart, Bill Murray's insult to chevy Chase was calling him a medium talent. Well, for somebody of chevy Chase's considerable ego has got to be it's got a hurt. What a great line.

I call people that all the time now, medium talent. It's the worst insult you could ever level at a performer. You're fucking mid bro. Yeah that's yeah, I mean that is just what I mean. Huts, Yeah, that's I mean, that's why people are getting all bent out of shape.

When that guy on Twitter was like Margot Robbie's mid bro, It's like, are you fuck? Are you fucking fucking right now? Like Chevy Chase, I don't think is a medium talent, but yeah, his boy, you know that burned his ass. He still thinks about that. You know what?

Does he forgot? Immediately go fuck your wife. You can't satisfy her. That was that went in one ear. Am I the auto medium talent.

He's still beat when he wakes up in the morning. Medium talent. I wasn't in Ghostbusters Afterlife. I'm a fucking medium talent. As Bill Murray cashes his fucking chicks.

No, I have a I have a hard time really coming to terms with Chevy Chase the human being and Chevy Chase the artiste or the comedian, because I don't know, comedy is such a intrinsically linked to who the person is thing versus like horror or action movies, like who cares what Arnold Schwarzenegger's like, he can portray a charismatic guy on screen and so we kind of don't care what he does. It's nice that he's kind of seemingly for the most part, well put together, but like being a comedian, it's like kind of intrinsically tied to who you are. So that's why it's hard for me to like Chevy Chase just I don't know. He's a real problematic and not problematic, but he's regrettable in a lot of ways. As HP would say, I love it's regretable decisions.

You mentioned Community, Heather. He got thrown off that show because he was being an asshole. Yeah, and that was that was like what a lifeline that show was to him. He hadn't he had he was nowhere and they gave him like it's probably at this point it's like a third or fourth lifeline in his career. And he again, what he does is his ego can't can't allow other people to take credit for these successes, and he's just such a such an asshole that he just can't let it lie.

And there he goes he burned it. He's no bridges left with with vy Chase, He's burned them all, you know. And and and it's a shame because I grew up really, I mean, you know, seeing him in Caddyshack and movies like foul Play. He was he was fantastic, He had it all and he just fucked it all up. Classic case.

He was going to be our Carry Grant, and then he decided that he was Cary Grant, and then he was better than Gary Grant and everyone should shut the fuck as. He invented comedy, right. And now he's in the very excellent Mister Dundee, a Crocodile Dundee movie that I didn't know existed. Well, wait, is Paul Hogan in that? Yeah, it's a It came out in twenty twenty, and it's uh.

Paul Hogan is reluctantly thrust back into the spotlight. Is he desperately attempts to restore his sullied reputation on the eve of being knighted? I thought this was a Crocodile Dundee movie. Apparently it's not. Is Paul Hogan?

And quite your tongue? How can you have a Crocodile Dundee movie with no Paul Hogan. Paul Hogan playing a character named Paul. I gotta say, I gotta break in for a minute. This is it says nothing to do with anything.

This just triggered a memory of Father Malone and Ice. He probably don't remember this. We were standing in line waiting to see the very first Batman movie. Do you remember this, Father Malone? Remember the guy in the guy in front of us was just some guy in Revere or whatever, Massachusetts.

But he had like a file Dundee type hat on his head. And the whole time we're shuffling through this line, Father Malone is throwing like backhand. He's saying, that's not a knife. That's like he's all these quotes, these Crocodile Dundee quotes, mocking this guy mercilessly as we're waiting in line. Oh my god, it was so fucking funny.

Do you remember that? Yeah, that was like something you would do, even if you didn't remember doing it. That is on brand. I love it. That is hilarious.

Years old, sixteen, you scamp, Yeah you can, you can actually dank that moment. We're like Mary Lou Henner here. Uh, you know, you can you can look what it whatever. The opening day of Batman was was the day that I was mercilessly mocking some poor man is what he thought was a cool fashion choice. It's making me laugh all these years later, just the memory of it, because you were just so fucking funny.

It just just mercilessly getting on this guy's case. It was hilarious. Anyway, Apparently this is a movie though, and it sounds great. It's got Paul Hogan, it's got Chevy Chase playing a person named Chevy. It's got John Cleese playing character named John.

It's got Olivia Newton John and her final screen role playing in a character. Yeah, boy. And that's when it got depressing. Yeah. The last thing Chevy Chase was in that was like a big note was when he played Clark Griswold again in Vacation in twenty fifteen.

And you know what, I rewatched that movie recently, and I actually think that movie is really funny because it's really mean in a way that like the mid aughts comedies are kind of mercilessly mean to the main characters in a way that the original Vacation kind of was just mean to the main characters. It goes way further and I kind of can't fault it and ed Helm. Ed Helms plays a really funny version of a character that is effectively just what chevy Chase was doing. But ed Helms is actually like a likable person, seemingly unlike chevy Chase, which is the problem. Michael Hall, come on, it should have been Anthony Michael Hall, sure, or it should or it should have been Johnny Galecki.

I mean, you know what I mean, like it could have been any of that. You could have made the case it should have been any of them. But my point is like that's the last thing chevy Chase did have, no, and that was well eight years ago. So you know though, I mean, you guys talking about chevy Chase and that whole like separating art from artists. How do you think I feel when Randy Quaid was my favorite?

Okay, because that she's off the cracker, he could still be your favorite? Yeah? Like that talk about on brand, that's just cousin in. Oh it's tall No, no, no, that's Elijah s scugs No, No, I wish I mean, look, isn't good? Dame turn in a corner, like I saw him with Alex Winters signing autographs at something like are you saying, I guess yes, I think Randy Quaid has turned a corner.

I mean, like that would make me so happy, because I I love Randy Quaid. I think he's a fucking awesome actor and he can do dramatic and comedic, he can do everything like he's so underrated, and so I I that would make be happy because you know, middle illness is real and you can't help that. And I hope, like, I hope he's in a better place. Randy Quaid Quaid with me on Twitter, So it's good. We're good.

Oh boy, your fiddle, your fiddle, your fiddle, yeah, fiddle, and we're fiddling all right. Let's get the funk out of town with Randy Quaid. Your fiddle, the fiddle, fiddle. That was so good. Christ I mean, hey, I hope Randy Quaid's turned the corner, because yes, Chevy Chase like I to be like he Even when he was likable, he was still kind of playing characters that were kind of assholes a little bit.

Yeah, I mean yeah, Fletch, I mean that's Fletch is like a distillation of chevy Chase for me, Like, that's not, that's not the character in the book. That's chevy Chase. Like that's when I read the books finally I realized, like it's not, that's not the character in the book. That's just chevy Chase being chevy Chase. And then Fletch Lives is just him being chevy Chase, simlore, like I think.

I mean, it's like Will Ferrell, Like there are other comedians that came from SNL that were such big personalities. It's like I want to cast a movie because of who you are, not like I mean, yeah, Will Ferrell's funny, and chevy Chase is funny, but it's like who they are brings more through the door than a specific character that they're going to do. Jim Carrey right, Like yeah, I can say that. I mean ace Ventura, right, Yeah, I mean every time you watch a movie with Jim Carrey, you know what you're gonna get because it's always Jim Carrey kind of doing the Jim Carrey thing, at least in the nineties, and chevy Chase is the same thing. Like you knew what, like you said, father Moan, you knew what you were going to get because he's kind of just playing himself.

And when he stopped playing and when people stopped resonating with him playing himself, it's when everybody stopped caring, which was pretty much the nineties, and that's when every studio was excited because they didn't have to be in the Chevy Chase business anymore. They didn't have to make nothing but Trouble Baby. That movie. That is the movie where I realized, even Chevy Chase can't save something like this. It's a good movie.

I know you like it. It's it's it's it's it's a one time trip inside of the mind of dan Ak Roight O the same everybody in that movie. All I have not heard that. See, I felt the same way Chris when I when I saw Modern Problems. That's I mean, all the way back then, I knew that there was nothing going to save that movie, that the least of which was Chevy Chase.

And it's just you know, I I guess my the the U. I came to that realization much much earlier. I mean, because he made some real do real bad. Oh heavenly dog. I mean, this is I'm saying dog shit because I was going to segue into Oh Heavenly Dog.

I didn't want to say dog fight I have. I have yet to see that movie. I wanted to see it for the longest time. To yourself a favor, Run, don't walk. Oh Heavenly Dog.

Yeah, God, have you seen it Under the Rainbow? I actually like Under the Rainbow. I do too. I'm recommending it right now. I have not, but I know what it's about.

It's got little Billy Barty in it. It doesn't carry Fisher as well. It's uh, it's a rump. I mean, it's probably terrible. I haven't seen it in forty years, so I'm sure it's but I remember it being very very good.

Yeah, Dune coming to the weirding Way Media Network, the Chef Cast, All Chevy all the time. Boy, I feel like we'd get one listener in the town wherever Chevy chases. I mean, it's I mean, but the problem is he makes himself an easy target. Let's see. I feel like Segal.

I don't know, it's like Chevy Chase at least hasn't been accused of like sexually harassing women to my knowledge, saying that that's fair, or being abusive like he's he's Is he egotistical obviously? Undoubtedly? Is he an asshole? Sure? I feel like saying etistical asshole.

You could throw a stone in Hollywood and you're gonna hit one of them. You know, the differences it's like when you stop making that much money, yeah or you Yeah. I mean the industry made that monster and he didn't help obviously. But you know, I don't know, because they're artists I love who have who have done slightly criminal things like so I'm just like I'm a little more lenient, I guess with with Chevy. I think it's like, don't don't date them, don't hang out with them, right, it's want to be is frow Like, I mean, the thing about Chevy Chases, uh, you know, is his reputation is probably well won and the fact that it's an extension of the character that we all like is kind of funny to me that, like, you know, we love this asshole, Like it turns out he's an asshole though, like right, yeah.

The other thing about Chevy Chase is a lot of the of what is actually important about him in the comedy world. We don't see him helping with the structure of Saturday Night Live is very very important his sensibility and he was the head writer on that joke for that first year, so you know, uh, and and what you saw is what we got. And and before SNL, like you know, he was on you know, he was in Lemmings, the Stained Show, the National Lampoon Show, and he was on the radio show a lot. He's amazing in that amazing Lemmings. He's incredible in Lemmings.

So, uh, there's all jokes in SNL history. I'm chevy Chase and you're not. I mean that that, I mean, that's that loan like that that says it all right, Well certainly for him, right, I mean, Weekend Update exists because of Chevy Chase in a lot of ways, Like it isn't often someone can sum themselves up in one phrase, right, But I'm Chevy Chase and you're not pretty much, does it right? And and that's and and in so many ways in every way. And what's weird is like he's such a small part of this mood, right, it is kind of strange.

Ultimately we get to see him in that period when he was actually vital and important more so than his appearances in the nineteen eighties and whatever. Comedy he was just sort of, you know, making better because he is a very talented and funny human being. Yeah, the vehicles that he would, Yeah, I have utmost respect for Chevy Chase as comedian. It's just the human being and the and the actor, everything, everything except for his talent is reprehensible. But he it's hard to and I'm only half being facetious there, but to follow Malone's point, I mean, he he was an important part of what made those early years of SNL go.

He's a phenomenally talented guy. He was good looking. This was a unique package. I mean. Unfortunately, in his later years he kind of became like the new version of Milton Burrel, this guy who thought that he was God's gift of comedy, who you know, invented comedy as we know it and so on and so forth.

And the fact is he he really didn't. And it's sad, but but no, none of this is to take anything away from his his comedic contributions, especially in the seventies and eighties. Well, we all really know what Milton was. Shut the fuck up, Chris, I'm sorry. HP was being so eloquent and it even hard to walk right anywhere though, and all I could see, well well was speaking of walking into it was well, our my, my noise.

Junkie's brother here is being eloquent. Chris is like making like Dick Dick hanjesters as soon as you Mittion Milton Burrell, me and him, I've talked about this, Uncle Miltow, but everyone knows Uncle Milty was was packing. I mean, that's that's that's just like Uncle Milty was packing. Put that one on his shirt, folks. I mean, you know, there's a lot of interesting quirks and legends around the Hollywood.

Who's the Marlowe Thomas is Danny Thomas. There's a lot of interesting rumors about his proclivities. We won't go into those here. But the coffee table a glass shop, Oh gross, he's glass and when when pressed apparently his I don't know if it's his lawyer or the executives the state. When asked about that, he responded by saying the man built hospitals, which to denial, he say, it's true.

No, Milton Burl was in a rat video. He didn't build out hospitals. I just don't want to think about Milton Burrel having a sloon period much less a big old hog leg like that milty Garl grows the same when he got older, he could use like a cane. Oh nasty, nasty, Chris, I don't like. Wasn't that one of the only episodes of SNL that they don't repeat because he guest hosted in the seventies and he was such a terrible host and terrible host he insisted on singing a song which they didn't and handed up everything.

I wish they would reair it because it involves one of my favorite moments ever, which is Bill Murray had figured out what this old vibevillion was doing in every sketch, and uh noticed Burrow going like to the back of the stage, so that when he was introduced, he would walk up like all the way from back of the camera to the foregrounds. Your attention would beyond him the entire time. So Bill Murray would constantly move his body in front of him in the camera so that you didn't set him at all. Oh gently, really like angered Milton Burrow in the scene. I love that.

You know, Bill, at some point, you'd probably feel milk coming from at least a foot away. That's the disgusting. Chris, I would rather hear about Danny Thomas's glass bottom boat. What is it I have I've never heard this rumor. Is it talking about something shitting on a table?

Yeah? Yeah, yeah man alleged Allegedly, Sylvester Salon's also into that, allegedly. You know what if if normal people are into it, which normal people are, that means that there's got to be people in the industry that are well known that are into it. I just think I imagine that's just like being jaded, Like you know, it's like that that aquitine where Carls Carls watching Internet Porter, he goes, I am so jaded. I mean, it's gotta be completely but the I can't you know what they know what they were doing.

They gave Chevy Chase his own late night talk show in the mid nineties. You guys, it was so good. I watched it when it was on. It was it was so unfunny. You know, when your show is good, when it can be something the run can be summed up in how many weeks it was on.

I forgot about that. I actually knew a or on that show when I was living in Los Angeles. Who told me Chevy's entire idea for a joke is I'm wearing a microphone and then someone calls me out of the room and I forget the micason and then you listen to me pe for a really long time. You watch that Get Gun one too many times? God like to to to Chevy, like to the writers like that was the that was the pinnacle of Chase humor on Wow.

You know he sounds like Vincent Kennedy McMahon. I love learing people Paris. I mean when when when the fuck happened at Chevy Chase in those thirty years or twenty years where he was on SNL to become that Well, that wasn't that long because he was in the talk show was what like ninety two three? Yeah, so seventeen years. What happened in those seventeen years the movie career ended?

Basically, that's fair. And hey, originally that show was supposed to be hosted by Dolly Parton anyways, so you know, it's not like they gave Chevy Chase a show. They gave him the show Dolly Parton passed on. So interesting. Yeah, that's yeah.

Which, speaking of television, the movie Groove two which is a parody of television of a specific time and place. Is that is that the ultimate problem with this movie is it's not timeless enough to be important. It's not funny enough to be But that's shy. I know, that's fine. I mean that's either be overly negative Heather, folks, I like this version of Heather.

I mean, that's there's paying. Heather's paying the universe back for how mean Jess was on bar Fly. You can feel that reverberating through the audio sphere for anybody listening. And you got mad listening to the bar Flight. I love bar Flight and make he works amazing in it.

Yeah, but AnyWho, yeah huh seconded, thank you? Yeah. I mean I think The Groove two does have strengths to it. I think it's an interesting film. But the thing is, like with comedy especial for people, for it to have that beloved place, it has to have a rewatchability factor.

It has to be really funny. I mean, like the jokes have to land. I don't. I'm not saying it's a I've seen way worse movies and I've seen way worse comedies, that is for sure. But you know, I think I think this is something I think you might have said earlier for the one like it's a great curio.

Ultimately it curios have their place, like So that's not I don't mean it's later. It's just it's not it's less funny than it is funny. And that's a problem with comedy. Kentsuche Fried movie still talked about this day because it's still funny. It's just a funny movie in my opinion.

Obviously comedy is subjective. But but does Kentucky Fried movie have a talking cock? You know? But I you know, that's a thing. I saw an adult film that did that earlier, and they put googly eyes on that dick googly eyes, and honestly, it just it reminded me of It reminded me of some of the segments in Jackass.

I was expecting a scorpion to come in from off screen and starts stinging the penis. It was a Shapiro's Was that Shapiro's nads, I'm sure it was. I don't know who's They never they didn't say, you know what, I can guarantee you whose it wasn't Chevy Chase, probably not, or or Milton Burl if it was Milton Burrow that it wouldn't need a body, it would just it would have a body, it would have a face, it would a feat Milton Burl. As a time his name gets brought up, it's like we're in We're closer and closer to invoking him back to life. Every bake of Kitty Fan Milty, Milty, Milty, and then you hear him.

He knocks on the door before he even gets to it. Oh my christ, hb, I'm gonna kick it to you. First final thoughts on the groove, dude, So just kind of piggyback on what you were saying earlier. I yes, it wasn't It wasn't especially funny, especially to a modern viewer. But but what makes me happy is that I'm happy that it's it's preserved, like I'm happy that I got a chance to see it, that it still exists as a as a thing as we've used this word several times already, as a curio of that time and place.

So I'm I'm happy that it's there for me to see. I don't know that I'll revisit it anytime soon, if at all, But no, it's not the funniest thing i've ever seen, or not even close, but it was. It was a good experience to see it and kind of feel the spirit of what they were trying to accomplish, even if they missed the mark more than they hit the mark. But but I was happy to have the opportunity to finally see it after wondering about the movie for you know, decades. So yeah, either, what about you?

I mean, thank you? Probably now I think I agree with everything I should be said. I add, there's not really much I can add to that. I do think. I do think it's I think all films should be preserved.

I think it definitely has an important historic place comedic cinema and in culture. I I'm good as far as we'visiting it. It's but it is neat to see the genesis of anything. And it's uh, it's great to see Belzer. You know, the bells come on.

I mean, I love Chase, but Richard Belzer's just me just one of the coolest ever r ip So this are my friend. I'll give my final thoughts and then Father Malone, I'll let you take us home since it is since it is your months, are you know again, I think I agree I'm probably gonna agree with whatever you're gonna say, Father Malone, obviously, but HP and Heather echo both of y'all as well. I think in a lot of ways, it's it is important to have historical context for things that again I mean, the the good night and have a pleasant tomorrow. That's that ends up being a weekend update thing in SNL, and it's it's here. So even if it's just that, like you, like we've already mentioned, SNL is coming up on its fiftieth year, this is an important part of the a story and if that story is something that you're interested in, which I mean you should, because SNL is the pre eminent sketch TV show ever I think, I mean, again, Heather, to your point, there are other things, but when we talk sketch comedy, SNL comes to mind because it's been around for so long, and even if it's not as hard hitting as it used to be, I mean, even something that I'm obsessed with in a lot of ways.

Similarly to you, Father Malone, the Simpsons for me is that in a lot of ways, I grew up with it. I watched it a lot as a kid. It was on when my parents were holding me when I was a child, like that same evening I was born, Like the Simpsons is intrinsically linked with me, the same way SNL I think is linked with at least some of y'all. So I understand the diminishing returns thing. But similarly to watching stuff from the Tracy Ollman Show, to see those early Simpsons sketches, to see this in a similar way like you mentioned, Heather, to see the genesis of SNL and part of the big comedic talent that would be Chevy Chase is important.

Do all the jokes land No, But you know, again, we're not talking about this movie in a wider audience because they because they don't. So that's that's the reality. It's it's an interesting curio. But yeah, for me, that's kind of that's not all of it, but it's not much more than that. So Father Malone, I'll let you bring us home.

I think with anything as niche as this film is, I can't outright recommend it to anyone but completests and uh, you know, historians, basically, if you're interested in this time and place, if you're interested in this group of people and their place in history and comedy history, American comedy history. You can't help, but not at least see this once. If I were to recommend this to literally anyone else, I would say, actually, don't watch the movie. Here's the thing. There are eighteen sketches in that movie, and I think six of them work.

That's one third, which is about the average for any anthology show or comedy show in general. I don't think they work. Laugh out loud, funny, and like I said, to a modern person who had no knowledge of any of these people or any of the setup or why it would be historically beneficial for them to view it, I could not. I would not tell them to waste their time. I would tell them to watch the just You Just Me sequence on YouTube, because I do think that is joyous and wonderful and it actually makes me smile.

Like not anything makes me laugh out loud of this movie and the rewatch, but that still makes me smile. So I would recommend it on that regard. I think all of the charms what I found intriguing about it as a as a lad, are all gone. All of those cows, those sacred cows, have been slaughtered by now, and not much of it works but still recommending it for the freakazoid film fans out there who don't know about it or want want to see where a lot of our future comedy came from. Yeah.

So on that note, we'll take a break. We'll play a preview for next week's episode. Award winning motion picture producer Samuel L. Bronkowitz, I have spent a lifetime in the motion picture industry. Now, after fifty years in Hollywood, I have finally produced what I feel is the finest motion picture I ever made.

I have called it the Kentucky Fried Movie. The Kentucky Fried Movie, Harold's the retrain to traditional values. I'm not wearing any pants film at eleven. It is a film of heartfeld passion, a great love story, Oh take me to the Drive, and proven. It explores the subtle nuances of interpersonal relationships.

Of course, there are occasional moments of comic relief. The Kentucky Fried Movie is a film that demands the greatest performances from the finest actors of the cinema. He looked why WHOA I tell you this building is unsafe and flames. The National Body's bowl is to deal with a situation governor, what are we going to do? And I anticipated ten percent price hike across the boarder petroleum price.

I invite every man, woman and child to share with me the joy and warmth of the Kentucky Fried movie. It will knock your socks off, That's right. Our next week's episode, we're gonna be talking about a movie that I have never seen, just like this one. It's Kentucky Fried movie, which I feel like I should have seen at some point. I'm glad I haven't.

It's a watch you did you did a podcast about the fucking suckers, didn't you? I sure did, but that was not part of it. Man. We did a top secret instead, which I had also never seen, a good one. So yeah, So we'll be doing a Kentucky Fried movie on the next episode.

So until then, where can people find you? HP? Oh, you can find me. I am proud to be on the Weirdingway Network. You can hear me and fatherm Alone on the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast.

You can also, We've already this has come up several times. Myself have their drain and fatherom Alone have a podcast called Noise Junkies, which I would also encourage everybody. If you're a music fan, please check it out. And hey, you can also check out I have a bandcamp if you care to hear some of my other musical nonsense as hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. Please feel free to check it out.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. What about you have rain, Well, you can find me at my linked tree which link tree dot com, slash Monto Heather and there you'll find my website Mottoheather dot com. At Patreon Noise Junkie episodes and in fact, we have one coming up that will be recording very soon that it will be just a time for the spooky season. It's very excited about that and all my their little sundry activities. Also, I also highly encourage people check out HP's band camp.

He made our amazing theme song for the pwidcast and he is super talented and support and even if you don't like music, listen to our podcast because we are we are amazing and we will never lead you guys astray. When you organically brought up the career of Joe Pescia, eat out okay, and the fact that HB brought that up without knowing that that was a thing. Is the best part of that of that episode. Getting to hear you guys react to that made me happy. Oh my god, that was amazing.

Yeah, that was one of us. Gouba Gabba gabba googling your way into everybody while them alone? Where can people find you? And you're assorted? Works your body of works your CB well.

For the rest of the month. Once a week you can hear me here I guess on the Culture Cast, helping to curate this month of sketch comedy movies. If you go to Weirdingwaymedia dot com, though, you can hear all the shows mentioned Noise Junkies and Night Mister Walters or I also have a half hour radio drama called Dark Destinations that I write and produce, and you can hear Chris and I and our Man in Detroit, Mike White from the Projection Booth over on Midnight viewing the Night Gallery podcast, which is a lot of fun. Check all of those out. It's the show where Mike lets his hair down, which if you know Mike, I mean it's impossible, but he does it.

I'll choke for the blows out there. I don't know Mike White and if you don't know Mike White, shame on they do. I just don't mean, I mean personally, they don't know hair. That's fair. Ready, we're gonna shame you if for not personally, person what's wrong with you?

Speaking of Mike White, you could check out a show that I do with Mike White called The col Check Tapes, which we're done with over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. And if you want to listen to things that are still ongoing but not any more recent in the subject material, you can listen to the Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller, a show about Barney Miller, or The Shabby Detective about Colombo. You know, we were backed the Blue, at least the fictional Blue, not the real ones, you know, because apparently we like doing cop shows from the seventies on this network, so I have no idea why. But you can find all those shows over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. As for this show, culturecast dot com, Patreon dot com, slash Culturecast, five, twenty and fifty are the levels you can get in at if that's a thing you're into.

Cool if not, just like rate and review the show wherever you get it. Father Malone, Heather HP, thank all three of you for joining me, and also to Fatherlonan for starting off the month strong well in conversation. If not subject matter, yeah, but that's but that's ultimately all that matters all because we're not sitting here watching the movie, folks, we're talking about it. If you're here to hear us were out the movie, we're not yucketty yuck mcfus on the internet making up shit. I don't know.

If you're here for a book report, you've come to the wrong place. Compadre as they would say, that is what they say. And as always, Father Malone, I gotta ask you first, what is the porno title for this movie? You've thought every time you think we're not going to do it, I'm just gonna do it. So HB, you've wandered into the wrong part of town.

You're here for a little thing we like to call what we do every time the three of us are on the show, which is I asked them the porn parody title for the movie we just watched, which, to Heather's point, I think Heather is still in the if there was a point tally being taken, Heather's colon subcolon one. I think still stands out that we haven't remembered another one, so Father Malone, I'll kick it to you. First porn parody title for the Groove Too. I guess it would be the groove Lube. That's a good one.

It sounds cool, rose right groove, something a dirty beat Nick would use. The groove is like some sort of like mineral oil that they would use in the seventies. It comes in flavors like green apple containers. Bell Bottom shipped. Yeah, the flavors are.

The flavors are cigarette and pachuli. Disgusting but delicious. Since HP is a newbie to this, I'll heather, I'll kick it to you. Porn parody title for the Groove tooth. Okay, I have I have a healthy amount of self loathing organically, and I'm just gonna add to that tonight.

The cous Tube, Hey, you fucking couz. Damn, what fucking movie were we watching where they used to go? Pope a Greenwich village calls Darryl Hannot, I act like such a couse and that she punches him right in the face. It was great, which is the appropriate response to anybody that says that. Yeah, so HP, your time has come in more ways than one.

To dain us with a porn parody title for The Groove Too. I was the first thing I thought it was the was the Groove Loube. But I can't use that. I would say, maybe the spooge tube. Oh wow, even worse, the most disgusting of all so far.

Oh well, well, y'all, y'all know me, and you know, I don't know if this is one of those things where it's like I call myself a feminist, but you're not actually a feminist. I you know, I consider myself a feminist. So I'm going to go in a different direction here the Gruel too? Do you know what? Man?

Nobody, no, only your new father alone. I don't get that. What is it yourself? I'm out, y'all, what is it? Explain those explain yourself?

Woman? Come? Who calls it gruel? That's an online? That's an online?

So is it from like four chan? Is it like a bunch of from like Urban Dictionary? I think I mean it's bullshit. That's like some bench Shapiro ship where it's just right Ben Shapiro doesn't even acknowledge and acknowledge that that can happen. No, no, no, But like him referring to like female wetness when he talked about wrap, I don't think I think.

I don't think gruel was created as a derogatory term. But I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree with It's like calling like, hey, you've got some mildew. You know, it's like nasty.

Gruel is nasty, a big old ball and gruel for breakfast that is awful. I've heard horrible gruel is like gruel is like an old term for like nasty sup porridge. Yeah, they sailed g R. You'll love how it's spelled to g r u u L. I would rather.

I'd rather have a makeout session with Coco, the clown from Coco's room than this bullshit. I hate this. I see I took us. I took us a way for they're disappointed. I'm disappointed in myself.

But that's that's the note. I want to leave it. This is coming. I'll bring us back up. Here's what you said about chevy Chase a real loan note.

The only time chevy Chase has a funny bone in his body is when I fuck him in the ass, and that was Bellzer. Oh yeah, oh, I love him. I love Richard Belzer. That's uh, oh my god. Even even He also said, I've known Chevy Chase so long.

I knew him when he was funny. Oh that's so good. That's good. Also, well, you know that part the cruel too. I wish I didn't know that, Chris.

That's the one and only time I could use it, because this title is just way too close. I don't I didn't make the ur I know, but I'm like horrified. It's awful, man, But it's rob with the youth of today, a lot of things. Listen, if you if that's what you referred to as women's lubrication, that you don't deserve to perceive any just saying I'm quote. I could quote a prince lyric right now, but I won't.

And I think I think we I think I think we'll lead the airboats. On that note, we'll chat to on the next episode.