"What's Up, Doc?"

We're so Adam. You know, this movie doesn't fit in with any sort of programming this year. But I'm always interested when when I kind of make a new acquaintance or a friend. Now I would consider you obviously, given that we've done this a couple of times. Now, I'm always interested what is something or the movies that motivate you or drive you are, or something that like when you say I want to talk about a movie, or Hey, what do you want to talk about?

Sometimes people are like, yeah, whatever, But I always appreciate when someone's like, this is what I want to talk about, because again, the passion behind things needs to be apparent when you're entertaining people, because people resonate with someone who's passionate. And just like the last movie we talked about the other this is a movie that you were like, let's do this. Have you ever seen this? I believe and you'll tell me you have a poster of this in your house, do you not? I do a style B one sheet with all the caricatures of the cast of the film.

There's several posters of this one, but the one that I prefer is the one that has all the caricatures on it. So yeah, yeah, Well it's funny you asked that question about what gets me fired up from you know, when it comes to comedies. I mean, everybody has a certain sense of humor is subjective, obviously, and everybody has their own sense of humor. But I'm always curious about the things that make me laugh, and I always like to see if the things that make me laugh make other people laugh. And What's Up Doc is one of those films that you know, has consistently made me laugh for decades and decades, and I'm always curious to see if it does the trick for others.

So well, you'll be getting your answer here pretty quickly. On this episode of the Culture Cast, I'm still your host, Chris Dash. I'm joined by my good friend. He is the home video correspondent for Movie Geeks United. He shows up there once a month to talk all the DVDs, DVDs they don't release those anymore, blue rays and other effemera that get released throughout the month.

Your friend and mine all the way from another corner of the Internet, my friend Adam Long, Hello, Hello again, good to be back. And on this episode, if you've clicked on it, you know we're gonna be talking about, But we are talking about the nineteen seventy two mad Cap, mad Dash screwball comedy directed by Peter Bugdanovich. What's Up? Doc? Barbara Splicehounds Done, Ryan on Hill, Give her Biggas See Barbara Splice and see Ryan on Hill, See Ryan on Eil, See Babara sprakeshand get out, No, wait a minute, See Papara light lions fire.

I've got to tell you. See Lion light his own fire. See the CIA, See the Spy, See the Spy and the CIA, See the c Get busted, See everyone get busted. Smash my life, sins? See What's up?

Dot and see What's up? Yeah? What top Doctor Braydon gene So Like I mentioned, It is directed by Peter Bogdanovitch, based on a story by Peter Bogdanovitch, with a screenplay by Buck Henry, David Newman and Robert Benton. And it stars Well Starrys, Barba streisand and Ryan O'Neill, along with Kenneth mars and Austin Pendleton and Madeline Kahn in her first film role. Even and the film is well, it's It's a live action cartoon in a way that only Peter Bogdanovitch could do.

And it's all about Ryan O'Neill, who plays a well, he plays doctor Howard Banister, a musicologist from Iowa who comes to San Francisco to try and get a grant from Austin Pendleton's Frederick Larabee. And along the way, the case that he's bringing with him that has his rocks in it gets swapped with not one, not two, but three other cases, one with some top secret documents, one with jewels, and one with literally just clothing. Along the way he meets Barbra Streisand and a whole most of other wacky characters in a movie that I could only explain as like I've already mentioned a live action cartoon. So Adam, I'm going to kick it to you first, wax poetically about what's up, doc, because that's why you're here.

Brother man. Well, I'm always curious about and of course this is obviously your first time seeing this film, but I'm I'm always interested about other you know, the first time that people saw saw the film, and I like to talk about the time that I saw it first. And that's what's so funny, because when I was in tenth grade. I had a really close friend and he was we had I quickly ascertained that we had a similar sensibility in films. And this is in the mid eighties and I was still learning about movies, trying to delve into film film history, and he just recommended to me that I see What's Up, Doc.

He said, it's probably the funniest movie I've ever I've ever seen, but I don't know that whether you'll like it or not, I can't say, but you know, I think you should see it. I think it's the funniest film I've ever seen. So I said, okay, sure, why not. So it turned up on one of the cable channels. This, like I said, is probably around nineteen eighty six, and I sat down and I thought it was funny.

I laughed a lot. But it was only on subsequent viewings I think that it really started to catch on. And the more I saw it, the funnier it got, the better it got, and it has just to me reached a point where I think it's it's a yardstick by which I measure people's sense of humor that I spend time with. I mean, if I'm hanging, especially if i'm dating somebody. I always use this as one of those litmus tests.

Let's watch What's Up, doc, and see what this person thinks of it, because it doesn't make them a bad person or a good person. It just may make them a person that is not a good match for me, because if they're sitting there stone faced and they're not laughing at this film, there's it's probably not going to get any better from that point on. Yeah, I love that. By the way, you're the audience kids see me laughing because I'm holding it in. But I totally get it.

I totally get its as like, as crazy as it may sound, I get that sentiment one and I think it's funny because I don't think enough people like yourself and myself admit these kinds of things out loud. But thank you for saying something like that, because you're totally right, something that matters to you, that you resonate with as much as this it is, it is a kind of litmus test in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's true. It's true. It really is.

And there's nothing more uncomfortable than being with somebody that your potential romantic partner and you're watching something and one of you is laughing hysterically, and the other is not. That is a very uncomfortable moment that you don't want to experience if you can avoid it, so I can. This is a yeah. But but going back to my friends, he's gone now. Unfortunately.

He was unfortunately killed in an accident about ten years ago. But every time I see this film, I think about this friend of mine from tenth grade who recommended this movie and turned me on too it because it will stay with me as long as I'm around. Will it never fails to make me laugh, never fails to just put a smile on my face put me in a better mood. Even though I've seen it many times and know the gags and when the gags are coming, and the lines and the film, it's just the performances are so wildly over the top, but they have to be for a film like this. And it was supposedly Peter Bogdanovitch's tribute to screwball comedies, and he was a big fan of Howard Hawks and people of that nature, those types of films like Bringing Up Baby is one of the ones that's cited as an inspiration for this film.

And here's the dirty Little secret. I think this film is funnier than a lot of the films he's actually paying homage to because I've seen it. Now. That's not to say Bringing Up Baby is not a movie. It is a good movie.

This just happens to be, for me, a funnier one. So I have to make a confession. I have not seen a single Peter bug Donovits show. Okay, this is a good entry point, I think, so all right, well then, yeah, we can talk a little bit about where his career was at this point, because he was talk about hot. His career was on fire, my friend, when this year came out.

And you know, I really only know him, and again, this is an entry point for me, and this will kind of age and date me. But I know him as doctor Melfi's psychiatrist in The Sopranos, because he is I think he's in that show all the way through the end at least, because I mean, Bogdanovitch only passed away what last year, yeah, January of last year. Yeah, So I mean he was on that show through the entire run. And he's fantastic playing her kind. He's playing the kind of areadite therapist that everybody assumes exists out in the world.

But all that aside, the other thing is never seen a Barber stris In movie before either, so this is a first for me in a lot of ways. I've also never seen the movie that and I think you would agree with me. There is this movie builds up to one gag. There's one joke that this movie wants to tell so bad, and they wait until the end of the movie to tell it. And I loved that they tell that joke, and I know that I get the reference, and I love that I don't have to see the movie to get the reference, because that's the other thing.

I've never seen Love Story. I have seen nothing with Ryan O'Neill in it either, so this is a first for me in a lot of ways. All that aside, this movie is so much fun. I'm really disappointed that I never took Cullen's advice and watched this movie because Cullen Gallagher frequent guest on this show. This is one of his favorite movies.

He like yourself, has a poster of it hanging in his living room at his house, And now that I've seen it, I totally under stand because not only is this a movie that totally plays in twenty twenty three, it would play to a crowd of people now much younger than me, much younger than I think, I mean young enough where I think a gen zer might actually think this movie is somewhat entertaining in a lot of ways. But what's funny is I have not seen a movie that is a live action cartoon done right until I saw this movie. That's a good that's a good analogy. Uh, And that's that's essentially what it is. Yeah, my kids, and they're not kids now, of course, they're well into their twenties, but it's a favorite for them as well because they were raised on this movie and it helped to form their sense of humor, and they still enjoy it quite a bit.

So, you know, younger generations can find a lot of humor in this film, I think. And uh, like I said, I was, I was, I was barely driving when I saw this film. Originally I had I had very you know, it just recently gotten my license around the time that I got this saw this film for them, And that's hard for me to fathom that I've been a fan of it that long and it has been a part of my life that long. But yes, it's uh, yeah, it's I think you're right that it would, that it would appeal to younger generations as much as older folks who have seen it like myself. Well, and I think a lot of that goes to just how goddamn charming Barbara Streisand is and how perfectly harried Ryan O'Neill is in I dare to say this, but Barbara Streisand and Ryan O'Neill are like the greatest comedy duo that never that never went and toured together.

He's the perfect straight man for her brand of bullshit in this movie in a way that is in a way that pays off. It pays off in every scene and it never gets old because you would expect in a movie like this, where it really is Barbarstreisen and Ryan O'Neil surrounded by the insanity of everything else, you would figure by the end of the movie it's like, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of the jokes that these two are doing together, or the gags or whatever they're going for. But by the end of the movie, it leaves you wanting more. Even though they've been at the center of the movie.

The entire time. They're perfect in every scene, and you would think that it would get a little wrote by the end of the movie, but it keeps switching it up and doing interesting things. And then it ends on a meta joke which ends up working just as well as all of the non meta slapstick humor in the movie. Because I'm not saying that the movie is not smartly written, but the movie is not written in a meta way. I mean, there are some meta moments and you know, subtexts or meta expectational moments that are kind of played with, But the final joke in the movie it leads me to believe and I think you would agree the people who are writing this movie understood how hard this was going to be, and they get away with the meta textual joke of all time at the end of the movie because of how good everything else is.

The joke at the end of the movie shouldn't have worked, but because everything else works so well and because everything else is so tight, the movie is just again like, the joke at the end of the movie is what it is, but because it's Ryan O'Neill and Barber streisand throughout the entire movie together, that payoff at the end totally works because of how good they are together. Absolutely, Yeah, that's that is. That is an excellent, excellent assessment. Yeah, and you do you know the obviously the final joke is going to be lost on a lot of people who are removed from Love Story and don't know about its place in popular American culture. And it was a big part talking point at that time because it basically saved Paramount Pictures.

They were in some really bad financial trouble after a couple of big flops I think one of which was Paint Your Wagon with Clint Eastwood, which was their ill advised musical adaptation starting with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin Is in a musical that's I don't know what they were expecting, but that that completely bombed in sixty nine. It's one of the funniest jokes in The Simpsons that they it feels like they're making it up in the Simpsons, but it totally was exactly what they say it was. It's like it is, it's Paint Your Wagon is wow. Yeah. And another bomb that they had on their hands was ironically a Barbara Streisan film.

On a clear day, you can see forever which was another musical that just went absolutely nowhere. I think Eves Monton was the co star in that one. Now I've never seen on clear Day you can see Forever, but I'm well aware of its reputation. And Darling Lily, I think was the third flop they had. That was a Blake Edwards film with Julie Andrews, which I have seen and it does not work.

I have to admit it's it's totally it's all over the place. Um, it's a drama, it's a musical, it's it's none of it works, unfortunately, although it has a wonderful score. One of my favorite songs of all time is the Whistling Away the Dark, which is by Julie Andrews in that film and composed by Henry Man Seeing. I think that's one of the most beautiful songs ever in the history of movies. So it does have one redeeming thing, but it did not.

It was a I think it was an eight million or ten million production at the time, which was a lot for nineteen seventy and I don't even think it made a million dollars. I think it was. It was just so you had these huge, these three big musical failures that were just you know, had almost some paramount pictures, and then along comes Love Story, which basically saves them. And so that's why it was such a big tall And of course we had The Godfather about oh a little over a year later, which was another risk when they were making it, of course, and then it proved to be another feather in their cap shall we say so? But yeah, that's that's why Love Story was such a big that's my shaggy dog story getting to the point of well, I love Story.

It was such a big deal, but it Ryan O'Neill. At the time of Love Story, they basically Robert Evans had to beg him to be in the film, and he was basically known for his work on Peyton Place. I think the television series Peyton Place is the only thing he was known for at that point, but it catapulted him to the leading man status and so that was And I don't think he had made another film between Love Story and What's Up Doc. I think that's the only thing that he had done. So there may be something in there that I'm forgetting, but I don't believe so wild rovers wile that's right, that's another Blake Edwards film.

That's too funny. I'd totally forgotten about that, but yeah, that was another Blake Edwards film that completely tanked. It was recut by the studio. I think that was an MGM production. I believe it was recut by James Aubrey, who was the head of MGM at the time.

They fought famously over the length of that film, and I think the Blake Edwards original version has been reissued on Blu Ray at this point, I think you can see it. I've seen it. It's it's okay, um, you know, but it's interesting to see Ryan O'Neill and William Holden teamed up in a film that's not something you see every day. So you know that's that's actually have seen a Ryan O'Neill movie. I misspoke earlier.

I watch Barry Linden, Yes, of course, the Kubrick film. It's okay, yep. I think it gets better as it goes on. I think i'm as My take on Barry Lindon is it's it starts out very slowly, but if you hang in there, it's it offers a major payoffs and it's a beautifully shot film. So yeah, I'm a fan of Barry Lyndon.

It just takes a little patience, and I try to tell people that just just be patient, you'll get there. You'll get there. I mean it's what like one hundred and eighty seven minutes or something. It's a yeah, I mean, yeah, I got that. That feels like a lifetime ago.

But that was like early that was early days of the show. But man, yeah, yeah, you know again, I don't even remember it. I don't that's you know, And that's I don't know. What's interesting is like Ryan O'Neill, I just I know him as the actor from Love Story. I've never seen Love Story, but I've seen the scene at the end of the movie with him, of course and Ali McGraw, and you know, love means never having to say you're sorry.

But is this his thing? Is playing this kind of character, like just kind of the straight man and everything. Well, that's I think that's pretty much what he was known for. So he was cutting loose a little bit with What's Up Doctor. That was not something that he would that was not his norm.

So he was stepping out of his normal what people knew him for. Okay, we say, but he does play the straight man in this movie in a lot of ways, like to everything that's going on with Barbara streisand's insanity of a character. Yeah, he does, and you have to have somebody who's somewhat grounded as he is in the film to carry it off because she's she's obviously the wild card to his straight ace, and she's just you know again, I obviously you know, say what you will about Barbara streisand to the person who I think is you know, she is what she is. I mean, she sounds like a diva, but that's okay. When you're successful and as mainstream and well known as she is, you're kind of allowed to be.

But she's so effortlessly charming in this movie, like you, every every time she's on screen, even though she's really putting Ryan O'Neill in a bad way, constantly just putting him in these like insane positions that he has no seemingly no way out of, you can't help but cheer for her every time because it doesn't matter that she's just kind of this again, like you said, like a wild card, a force of nature. Really she is. That's that's for sure. And it's funny because everything that she does, which on the surface looks like she's making a disaster out of his life, it ends up working in his favor as the film goes on over and over and over again, which I really I like. I like that style of storytelling where it just it seems like the snowball is rolling down the hill out of control, but there's but it's really not.

And again that's and that's and I think that's kind of one of the more fun things about this movie is like we kind of mentioned that the plot, the plot is almost incidental to what's going on. It's you know, it's a mad cap dash for four bags that keep getting switched around, which you know, I mean again that I mean, that's the plot of the movie. In as many words, like that's about as deep as the movie needs to go, because again, it's a slapstick comedy. So you're not here for the plot. You're here for all the crazy kind of chase scenes at the end of the movie, all of the really well written, hilarious I mean, like every line in this movie is almost a joke.

They don't skimp on telling jokes through dialogue, which I am so like. Wordplay is something that I'm a huge fan of you. You know this as someone who is an equal fan of Naked Gun and za Z films. This is like that done better. Like I was watching this movie going why didn't why didn't these three work on something else that was similar to Naked Gun?

Because they totally could have. They totally could have, because the word play and the dialogue humor in this film is is it's again, it's it's amazing, And that's the only word I could use. It's amazing, right, right right, I totally agree. And you know the script, we can credit some of that to the script which is written co written by Buck Henry of course, who had done the Graduate several years later and later on would do heaven Kin Waite and UM To Die For with Nicole Kidman and anybody from nineteen ninety five. That's another Buck Henry screenwriting credit.

So he was a great writer of you know, um comedies, whether they be dart comedies or screwball comedies. So he had just a really good comedic touch that Buck Henry, I was a huge fan. And the co writers of course on this or David Newman and Robert Benton, who of course Robert Benton would go on to do Kramer Versus Kramer later on, and he directed that and then did Nobody's Fool with um Paul Newman later on as well, so he you know, David Newman would all ironically go on to work on the script for Superman the Movie a couple of years later. So, uh in Leslie Newman David and that was his partner, Leslie Newman. They would work on Superman the Movie, which supposedly they had There was a lot of comedy in their script for Superman the Movie that Tom Mankowicks supposedly took out of there, and sure that makes sense having seen this movie, that totally makes sense.

Yeah, to the point where they had a cameo by Kojack. I think in one scene in the original script for Superman the Movie where he's he just the camera just swoops down. There's Kojack in the in this big swath of people, and he takes out a lollipop and says, who who loves your baby? Or right way over the top. Yeah, but then they brought in Tom Mackowicks, and he brought in you know, he kind of paired that stuff down.

But but anyway, uh, yeah, they had an interesting sensibility. They had also worked on Robert Benton and David David Newman had previously worked on Bonnie and Clyde before this, so they had, you know, they they worked well together, and I think they're they were hitting on all cylinders with this, uh script. And it's supposedly loosely based on a novel called A Glimpse of Tiger, which was written by Herman Rauscher, who pinned Summer forty two the year before this, which was obviously a huge, huge hit, and we all knew. I'm a big fan of that, and that was an organic mention of it too. Is organic?

Is uvenly possible? But it's true Herman Roucher was his novel that has been credited as being a partial source for the story for this film. I've not read a Glimpse of Tiger, although I do on a copy of it. I guess I should, being such a huge fan of What's Up, Doc. But but you were talking about the performances.

I think one of the things that sells this movie is the casting of these terrific character actors and act and just people that we've seen in so many other things. Uh, you know, just for example, Mabel Albertson, who was Darren's mother, Darren Stephen's mother on Bewitched. She shows up as the lady with the jewels here. Yeah, I was like, there are several very familiar faces from Blazing Saddles, Liam Dunn, John Hillerman, some some we were talking before we recorded some Fletch alumni with Kenneth Mars and m em At Walsh as well. I mean, you know, like and and then I think, my I think my favorite casting choice in the entire movie is a baby faced Randy Quaid.

Oh with that crazy with the crazy hair, with the crazy young Randy Quaid hair, like well, oh my god. They had a good working relationship, he and Peter Bogdanovitch because Bogdanovitch gave him his first break there this year for Last Picture Show and he actually gets to skinny dip in the pool with Sybil Shepherd. So that's that was where he That was the I think it was an open casting, open casting call in Texas, and Randy Quaid showed up, I believe, if memory serves me, and they continue to work together, and then they worked together in the next film, which was which in my opinion, is as good as What's Up Doc? Paper Moon, which you know, that's I would highly recommend anybody who saw What's Up Doc and liked it to go to Paper Moon, because that's the next logical place you should go, because that's another hysterical homage to thirties comedies.

And it also reteams Ryan O'Neill with Peter Bogdanovitch and they have a terrific and Madeline Cohan as well, she reappears, and John Hillerman, Randy Quaid. They all returned from What's Up Doc and Paper Moon and terrifically, So I would say, so that's another great, great film that I would recommend. Yeah, Randy Quaid, he turns up as a as a hillbilly that Rhin O'Neill is basically a con man who's being pursued by the law, and there's a it's a very paper Moon has a lot of different vignettes, I guess you would say, and one of the vignettes is that he's being he sells. He steals a bunch of alcohol during the prohibition era, steals it from a bootlegger's property and then resells it to the bootlegger, basically not knowing that the bootleggers brother twin brother is also a sheriff.

Well John Hillerman plays both parts. He plays the sheriff and the bootlegger. And so he's in pursuit of Rhin O'Neill and Rhin O'Neill has to get ditch his vehicle. And so in order to ditch his vehicle, he pulls up to the property off the side of the road and there's this old truck sitting in the front yard and it's owned by Randy Quaid's family. So he has to arm wrestle.

He has to wrestle, not arm wrestle, he has to wrestle Randy Quaid in order to get the switch out vehicles, which is kind of interesting. So yeah, I love I mean you mentioned it. Like the casting in this movie is it really is fantastic, because even even the smallest roles are well cast, Like the Kenneth Mars character that he's playing is I think anybody else might have overdone it, but I think it's just the right amount of bizarre but still kind of staying within the boundaries because again he's kind of doing a he's doing a pastiche I guess of like a whole bunch of possibly French, possibly Italian, possibly neither, and just full of shit. Like again, I can't The fact that I can't tell, I think lends credence to how good of an actor Kenneth Mars is or then you need mentioned the same breath.

Austin Pendleton just kind of doing the Austin Pendleton thing he always does. I don't know how else to describe what he does as an actor, but he just does his thing right, like yeah, And of course Kenneth Mars, I am Hugh. He's so fun. You know, I've only seen him in a handful of things. He shows up in a twilight Zone nineteen eighty five episode and again he in Fletch.

He's kind of just playing a bit part where he's what is he? He's Barbara Stanwick's dad, the guy who owns the boyd Aviation. So it's the you know what kind of a name is poon? That's the that's I believe that's that's Kenneth Mars right. Yeah, I really I really appreciate everybody in this movie just being on the same page, because again, like this is not an easy this movie is not an easy ask.

It looks easy, but this honestly, like the fact that this movie works as well as it does, near flawlessly. Like, tell me another one of these movies that's come out in the last forty fifty sixty years that even comes close to the amount of jokes that work that don't feel forced that this movie has. Yeah, that's a that's a good point. That's an excellent point. Yeah.

And and to speak here earlier mention of Kenneth Mars, Yeah, he turns up. You know, he had a working relationship also with mel Brooks, obviously because he's in Young Frankenstein and the Producers, and then later on he appears memorably late in his career in Citizen Ruth, which was the first film for Alexander Payne with m Laura Dern. It's the satire on abortion, if there is such a thing. Uh. I have never heard of that movie, but I would be interested to watch it.

Oh my god. Alexander Payne is a he's a Nebraska boy from from from way back, from literally when he was born. Yes, that's true. If you have not seen his first film, it's It's it's a knockout. It's great, and Kenneth Mars is in it.

I think he plays an abortion doctor from my but it's it's basically two sides. Uh, Like there's there's pro abortion people and anti abortion people, and they're paying off Laura dern One will pay. She's going to take whoever gives her the most money to either keep the baby or abort the baby. So they're basically taking I would mind too much about it. You have this holy how is nobody else honest?

To god? Dude? Whenever you and I do a show together, you mentioned movies that I'm like, I'm gonna watch this, and I don't know how nobody else has mentioned this too. Yeah, Citizen Ruth is a must see. It's really good and Kenneth Marris turns up and it was made I think.

And I want to say that I was like ninety eight something like that, ninety seven, ninety eight, somewhere in that range. But it's it's a it's a really good film debut for Alexander Payne. You can see why he went on to great films like Election and Sideways and so on and so forth, because it's very well done. I don't think I've seen any of his movies. Yeah, I would recommend them.

He's he's very good. I tremendous fan personally of Sideways and just election have seen I have seen Sideways. Okay, I have seen Sideways, which I liked. Sideways is good. Yeah, if you get on its wavelength, which I did, it really appealed to me a lot.

So yeah. But uh, but Citizen Ruth is, like I said, features an interesting later career turn from from Kenneth mars In there. So yeah, he turned up. I guess the point I was trying to make is that he would turn up for pretty pretty regularly for close to fifty years before his unfortunate passing. But yeah, but Austin Penden still with us, thankfully, and every now and then we see him everything.

But yeah, he kind of does the same thing, like you said, enough just about all of his what to call it, Like I don't know what, I don't know what you would call it, but like, he he's just there's something about him. There's something about who he is and the energy that he has that every role that he does, it's like, yeah, I understand why you're playing that role. It makes it makes perfect sense because it's just like he's he just seems like a really nice human being. I don't know, it like it's just it's he Look, he's he's obviously a guy who works a lot on Broadway and on stage a lot. And I don't know, like a lot of stage actors kind of have the sensibility to them that they just they turn in good performances, and I think it's just like for someone like him is just second nature.

I don't know. I think you're right. I think you're right. That's that's a good point. And yeah, I think we should mention, you know, while we're on it, that this film was ranked number sixty one on the list of the one hundred Greatest American Comedies published by the AFI.

When they were doing those things in the late nineties early two thousands, they used to have those lists, and so it um, you know, and it turned up a number sixty eight on the AFI's list of one hundred Greatest Love Stories in American Cinema. Sou which I think is that more? Is is that surprising? I don't know if it's surprising, maybe a little, I don't know. I mean, it is a romantic comedy, right, but the romance feels incidental, it's not the focus of the movie is not the romance between Barbara Streisend and Ryan O'Neill.

It just happens naturally throughout the hour and a half runtime of the movie. But I mean they share one romantic scene together, Yeah that's true. Yeah, the one with the piano. Yeah yeah, but which is like maybe the one part of the movie that could be excised. But I get why it's in there, Like you got Barbara Streisand in your movie like that, come like, come on, like you got Barbara Streisand in your movie, like you're gonna have to find a way to get her to sing.

So I can't I get it. Well, I have a lot of problems with getting people to see this because she's in it, because people have this, uh, this idea about Barbara Streisand and they're I don't watch Barbara Streisand movies. And I try to tell people it's not really a barber Streisand film. I mean, she's in it, and she does a good job in the film, but it's not really a Barbara Streisand film. It's more of a film of its director, and it is a Barber Streisand film.

She just happens to be one of the participating actors. In the in the film. So so let me ask you something, what does that? What does your perception of that mean a Barber Streisand movie When someone says I'm not going to watch a Barber Streisand movie because I'm curious, because I kind of have my answer. But as someone who's probably seen more Barbara Streisand movies than I have, what does that?

What does that mean to you? At least? Well, I think people have this idea of just musicals, you know, because she's so well known for Funny Girl and Gental and a Star is Born and as we mentioned, on a clear day you can see forever, and there's so many of those musicals in her on her resume that I think people have this idea that it's that it's all musicals and musical comedy, and they don't realize that she's really an adept uh comedic actress when given the opportunity, and that, you know, they just have this pre preconceived notion I guess of what she does and this is not that is what I try to tell people. This is not that you you'll see and you'll also see a lot of character actors in here that will make you feel instantly comfortable.

As we just talked about another one Sorell book from from the Dukes of Hazard Boss Hog. He's one of the one of the people who were who's out there steal the Duffel bags. So so you know, where else are you going to see a film with Barbara Streisand and so Arell book, let's put it that way. Well, and and that's and and I think you know, that's it's an interesting point. Like it again, I guess my interpretation and that statement is the same.

It's like, oh, it's just gonna be a bunch of bullshit singing and it's gonna be kind of a I guess I don't like, are they assuming that the movies are also up their own asses? Like is that also the other thing? Because I guess Streisand is considered such a diva that that that must go, Like I don't, I don't get it, because like again, I have not seen a single barber Streisand movie other than this one. And this one's pretty good. But again to your point, like, it's not really a Barbera Streisand movie, and she's good in this movie, but if it was just her being a great performance and nothing else this movie wouldn't work.

Everything else has to work just as well. She's a part of this movie because this movie is in a lot of ways similar to Naked Gun and other comedies. This movie feels in a lot of ways, not necessarily like a movie, but like you're watching someone putting together a machine in front of you that starts to work it all in tandem the longer it goes, and you have to see them place these pieces, and as they're placing the pieces, they don't place them incorrectly. At any point in this movie, there's not really a joke that doesn't land. There's I get.

Like I said, there's a moment in the movie that doesn't work for me, and that's the moment where the movies pace grinds to a literal halt so that Barba streisand can sing a song. But like everything else in the movie, all the jokes land. And I can't even remember a movie where all the jokes land, Like that's not a thing, right. Even Naked Gun one has jokes that don't land. Even Airplane has jokes that don't land.

And it's not that they didn't land then and they don't land now. There's just some jokes and airplane that don't land. I think every joke in this movie actually hits the mark, which is shocking in a way because it's that's almost an impossibility. Well, yeah, that's a good point, and I think that, you know, it's interesting to mention the genesis of the script for this film because we're talking about it earlier who it was written by. But the whole project I actually started.

I think when John Calley, who was the head of Warner Brothers, he called Peter Bogdanovitch into his office, and Bogdanovitch at that point had only I think he may have finished shooting a last picture show, but it wasn't out yet, but he was looking for his next project. And this is like early nineteen seventy one, and he's he asked him if he was going to put Barbara Streiss In in a film, what kind of film would it be, And he said, well, a screwball comedy would be my choice. And so that's kind of how the ball got rolled. But she had a limited window of time where they could get this done, and so they basically the information I'm getting that when my research was that they had to start shooting in August of nineteen seventy one, and this was like May, and they didn't even have a script.

So they put together a script with two different sets of writers. There was first the Robert Benton and David Newman that had done Bonnie and Clyde as we just mentioned, and then Buck Henry came in and did his Polish or whatever, his second version, and so they went through three drafts, both of them, and so there was a lot of work getting the scripts in shape between May and August of nineteen seventy one, and so then they started filming in August and the film was actually released in March of the following year, seventy two, which is pretty amazing the turnaround for all of this elaborate stuff. And we can get into the big chase sequence through San Francisco that supposedly that accounted for about a quarter of the film's total budget.

What a surprise, said no one, I know what it's look. I have never seen the movie that inspired it. I have not seen Bullet and I feel like a ding dong for that because that's one of those San Francisco movies. And as someone who was born across the Bay from San Francisco in Walnut creates someone whose mom grew up in San Francisco, someone who likes to think that they are at least keeping in mind the history of their family and stuff like that. I've never seen the one of these San Francisco movies, but it kind of doesn't matter, because the chase scene is so good on its own that it might be a spoof of chase scenes, but it's it's it's almost more impressive than anything else someone could do with a car.

Yeah yeah, yeah, you know, like it's like there there are cars in this chase scene, but they're in a fucking rickshaw, like or not even a rickshaw, it's like a it's like a delivery bicycle. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, it's um, it's you know, and I just don't know how they pulled it off. And it was four it was a four million dollar budget. So with a four million dollar budget and you're talking a quarter of that, it's about a million dollars just for that sequence alone that we were talking about, the sequence where they the whole chase sequence in total, it's about you know, like I said, roughly a million dollars.

If you're talking a quarter of the film's budget. So yeah, it's um, but I can't imagine how they pulled some of that off. And there's a it's unsubstantiated, but supposedly they all wind up in the bay of course when the volkswagon is still floating. Of course that was a joke. You know that volkswagons would float, so they get that in there.

Um. But there was an unsubstantiated story that I found that said that Sorell book almost drowned when they were in the bay floating at the end of the film, So I don't know how true that is, but I could see that there's a lot going on there. And you know, I what I really like about the chase at the end of the movie because obviously, again by the by the point we reach the chase scene, I think we're kind of at this like fever pitch in the movie and oh yeah, you know you mentioned there's this the big chase kind of is the end more or less the end of the movie. But the scene before that I think is so interesting in informing you how crazy the movie is about to get. Because once kind of all the main players in the chase get to Austin Pendleton's house, it's like all hell breaks loose.

Oh yeah. But then but then you know, you think, okay, because again having never seen this before, I'm like, all right, you know this is going to be contained to this room and they're gonna something will happen. But I don't think. I mean, who knows where it can go from here. The moment they go outside and get on that bike, it's just like, holy shit, like this it's going there.

Here we go. And the moment you realize that the bike is going to be the focal point of the chase scene is it's just again like it's it's totally cartoonish, but because they avail themselves to do something so cartoony, it ends up being so much more technically impressive. But I really liked the scene beforehand too, because you get all the players that are going to be kind of crucial to the chase scene. In that scene. You get Randy Quaid beating people up, you get Austin Bendleton beating people up, you get Kenneth Mars taking whip cream pies to the face over and over again.

I mean, and it's it's again like that scene is a really great kind of interpretation of slapstick comedy done and cartoon cartoon comedy done in real life, because you've got people getting knocked over by things and Pratt falling. Essentially, it's it's it's again like it's nobody else is doing this, and it's it's because it's not easy. No, No, I can't imagine all the planning that had to go and the choreography that had to go into shooting this. I just logistically, I can't imagine what all was required. When you see it, it's it's a I call it a slapstick ballet, is what I would call it, because it pretty much is.

It's the way it's so perfectly timed, and it's just it's just I don't know, I'm in all of it. Every time I see it. From a technical standpoint, I mean, the movie's funny, but technically you look at how they're pulling this stuff off and it's it's quite quite impressive. Well, and I think we'd be remiss if we don't mention the pane of glass. Oh yeah, of course.

It's like again, so as we all kind of expect when you have a chase scene, you're going to have a pane of glass show up somewhere that someone's going to drive through or run through or possibly try to avoid, and we see every derivation of it in this movie in one scene, because the movie tricks you into thinking, okay, you're going to see somebody go through it, and they don't. But then the movie does the smartest thing possible and the bicycle can't go up an incline, so they have to turn around and go right back through the same intersection. And it's just the logical conclusion of the guy on the banner flying into the pane of glass. It's that is pushing the joke to its furthest limit and knowing the exact perfect moment when to cash in, when to walk away from the table.

That's that is again just another indicator of the level of competency with which the script was written. And you're just making me remember gigs that I just love, Like the guy who gets out is the Volkswagen of minibus, I guess you would say, after it's been crashed into about four times and it just it falls over, I eat falls completely over. Or Or the fact that we get Ryan O'Neill and Barberstrice and going through because again it's it's San Francisco, so they have to go through Chinatown. They get a giant Chinese dragon head on the front of the bicycle. Towards the end of the chase.

They understand and kind of if you're in San Francisco, a very iconic city with trolleys and a large against Chinese and Asian population, so much that Chinatown. I think when we think of Chinatown in this country, you think of San Francisco's Chinatown, or maybe New York's, but I always think of San Francisco's Chinatown when I think of Chinatown. Like, you have all of these things to play with because you're in this city, and on top of everything else, you have the natural hills to necessitate. Again, I don't I don't know what the topography is like where you live, but they couldn't do a chase like this here. It's way too fucking flat.

But in San Francisco they have the hills. They have you know, supposedly they destroy it and apparently the scuff marks are still there. The Alta Plaza Park got damaged during the chase scene. Yeah, yeah, but like you have, I mean, you have a moment where they go they have the crossing trolleys and they go in between them like they know what they were doing and they know the exact kind of gimmicks that being in San Francisco can yield, and they do all of them. The only thing I was surprised is they didn't do the They didn't do the Windy Street.

Yeah, yeah, I'm surprised to. I mean, they do have the one sequence where all the cars are going around the Kurby Street. There is that, but that's about here. Yeah, probably because it was a little bit more technically hard to do. But I mean, again, Jesus Christ, everything else that they've done in that chase scene is such a technical masterpiece anyways, you know, it's could be gilding the lily at that point maybe, But anytime, anytime you have a chase scene without with with a like non motor vehicle and motor vehicles and you can actually pull it off, it's just it's it's impressive.

Yeah, it's technically impressive, and it's really funny. All the gags land and they're for the most part gags I haven't seen anyone else do. Yeah. Yeah, that's uh, that's that's a good point. And not really before or since, like I said, there's a lot of these films that Bogdanovitch is paying treating too, but even they didn't pull off some of the stuff that he pulls off in this film.

This is totally a different, different kind of animal, even though it's paying tribute to some of these early earlier films. But yeah, well, it's interesting to note where his career was at that point because he had done Targets obviously for Roger Corman, which had gotten him some casher. It was a controversial film about a guy who just starts randomly shooting people, you know, for no reason at all. That was the first film. Yeah, and uh yeah, it's Boris Karloff's second to last film.

And essentially what happened was Bogdanovitch was obviously a film critic before, and he really wanted to venture out into making films, and so he had gotten to know Roger Korman to a certain degree, and Roger Corman said, listen, I've got Boris Karloff owes me a couple of days of shooting, and I've got some Carloff footage that we never used for I think it was Dementia thirteen. I want to say, was the film and any way, Um, he said, um, you know, he owes me some some some work, and so you can get him for about two days and you can come up with a script with bors Car where you can use Boris Carloff well. And so it came up with a script idea that Borscarloff is a returning as a retiring horror film.

Basically, he's playing himself obviously, but he's he's retiring from the horror movie business because he says that the real life horrors cannot compete with the horrors that he does on screen, or he can't compete with the real life horrors. The horrors that he's doing in the movies can't compete with what's really going on. And then this guy suddenly just starts leaves his home one day and goes on top of a tower and starts shooting people. I was wondering if it was a Charles Whitman thing. It's very sim I figured it was.

But guy who just goes and starts shooting people's like, is this Charles Whitman thing? Like this is I mean again, I grew up in North Texas, so like that's you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, and so this was had to And of course their characters converge at the end of the film. I don't want to say too much about it, but the bors Karloff character and the assassin converge at the end of the film in a pretty pretty memorable way, I would say. And you just have to see it to pick that's coming out on Criterion, by the way. They're putting that out in a blue ray in about four months, I think.

So it's coming soon for the first time they were on blue ray. I'm that again. God damn it, Adam, stop adding movies to my voice. I'm even joking, man, Like everything you mentioned is like, I gotta watch this. Yeah, Targets is pretty effective.

It really really is. And Bogdanovich has a pretty substantial role in the film too. He's in it as well. I think he plays Karloff's agent or he's somebody connected to the Karloff character. But yeah, it's it's so the Targets had the bad luck or bad timing of being released around the same time that the Robber If Kennedy assassination took place, and so it was kind of unceremoniously buried.

They were just they didn't want to get behind it too much, you know, because of what was going on in the culture at the time. So Targets was critically well received, but just didn't quite make the career for Bob Benevitch that he had hoped. And so he was, you know, still looking for that thing that would kind of put him over the top, and of course he found the just the story goes that he was in a supermarket and saw the paperback the Last Picture Show, and he picked it up and started thumbing through it, took it home and read it and he said, well, this is actually he just liked the title, and it turned out he really liked the book, and so he reached out talking about more Texas man fucking Larry mccountry like he did.

Yeah, and so they shot that I think in all I want to say, it was fall of nineteen seventy and they put that together. Of course, there was a whole controversy that went off when they were making Last Picture Show. Of course, he was married to the production designer Polly Platt, and then he wound up having an affair with Sybil Shephard while they were making the film. There's a whole story there, and it's there's a terrific one hour documentary on the Criterion Blu ray of Last Picture Show that recounts all of the drama that was going on when it was being made, and it's really a lot. It's almost as interesting as the film itself.

And so the film came out in the fall of seventy one to really widely was wide praise just about everywhere, and of course it became a multiple Oscar nominee. So he was shooting What's Up Doc around the same time that Last Picture Show was getting released. So he's out promoting Last Picture Show and shooting What's Up Doc at the same time. I don't know how he kept up that schedule, and not to mention his marriage breaking up and just all that going on at once, that's a lot on somebody's plate. And so the Oscars were in early seventy two, and he was of course Last Pictures showed one a couple of awards there, and so around the same time What's Up Doc was in theaters, his film was racking up the awards at the Oscars.

So that's that's what I meant by saying that his career was really on fire around that time, and it would continue to do so. The following year with paper Moon was just about as big as a hit as the other two as the other last two films, Last Picture Show and Once Up Doctor, paper Moon continued, but after a paper Moon things got pretty bad for him for a while, and there's always been a rumor that Polly plaid his ex wife, who continued to work with him after they split up. She left she just couldn't work with She said, you know, I can't work with you anymore, and she just basically stopped their professional relationship after paper Moon, and the films really went down in quality in terms of I think some of them are not bad.

None of them are total disasters. But the critical reception for those films that he released after paper Moon, up until the late seventies they were there was some really things went really bad for him really quickly. There was a musical that he did with Sybil Shepherd and Burt Reynold's That Long Last Love, which completely tanked and ironically is one of the most valuable blue rays out there now. If you have a copy of it, it's going for a couple hundred bucks on eBay. But does Burt Reynolds singing that movie he does he does no yeah in his tuxedo and all that.

I've seen Pierce Brisen singing and Mom and me enough to know that that's not gonna work. Yeah, it's the same kind of thing. But yeah, he does these cold Porter songs. I think it's Cold Porter songs, I think, and he's got a thing for Cold Porter. I don't know if you noticed in What's Up Doc in the mid elevator singing Yeah.

Well, over the beginning credits, there's um, You're the Top, which Barbara Streisen sings solo, and then over the end credits you get Ryan O'Neill and Barbara Streisen singing to get and that's from the musical Anything Goes. And then, as you mentioned, the music coming out of the elevator is music versions of Cold Porter songs as well, So there's a lot of a lot of Cold Porter going on there. And then later on he would do the use the Cold Porter in a Long Last Love, and then he made one more attempt at a I don't know what kind of a movie set in the thirties, and it's called Nickelodeon in nineteen seventy six, which I thought was it's semi successful. I'm a fan of W. D.

Richters. What a W. D. Richters I movies? I'm a being bad.

I'm a big fan Old Buckaroo bonzaye that sure, sure, I saw that. I was going to ask you, is Bogdanovitch's perception? What is it? What? Is he a comedy director?

Like I can't I don't under like looking at his filmography again, having seen literally nothing else, I don't understand. His body of work doesn't seem to have a singular genre to it. It doesn't, it doesn't. It's kind of all over the matter. I guess the only thing two film things that he never did.

I don't think he ever did Western and he never did a horror film, but I'm aware of. But everything else is there. Yeah, even even the uh you know Mask was a big hit for him with Share and uh you know the Story of Rocky Dennis with um uh Eric Harris Stoles. Yeah, I saw that in the theater when it came out. I saw that opening, Uh the Monk the Week had opened and uh, really really completely moving film for me then and now, and so you know, that was kind of a after many years in the wilderness and of course everybody knows the story about his romance with Dorothy Stratton in the around nineteen eighty when he was making um uh they all laugh with his good friend John Ritter, and so they he made that.

Of course, she was murdered before the film could even be, before they even finished editing the film, and so he had to go back after her death and look at the dailies and the footage and put it together. This person that he had fallen in love with, he had to deal with that every single day, go back and look at this footage of her actor. Her husband had murdered her. I don't know how he did it. He wrote a book about that, of course, called The Killing of the Unicorn, which is interesting in case you don't know that story.

I like the look on my face might be given that away. Yeah that's uh. Yeah. They were, Yeah, they were. They fell in love and it was a very deep passionate love.

And when they were making they all laughed. And then she she went back to break it off officially with her husband, and he kind of knew that's what she was there to do, and so he made sure that didn't happen. He killed them, both killed her and then himself, and it was horribly tragic into her. She was just in the beginning of her career. So it's, uh, yeah, Bogdanovic had a really sad life in a lot of ways because he was He started out the decade of the seventies with these big, big hits and then not only did his career suffer, but then he had this personal turmoil.

But I just can't imagine. I just I thought about that many times. How do you go and edit a film with the person that you were romantically involved with after they've been murdered brutally? I just and have to sit there, and you know, because you can't just you got to move on. The show must go on, as the saying goes.

But to be faced with that on a daily basis, I can't imagine. I can't imagine. That's insane. And that's the thing, Like I again, like I feel like, for whatever reason, Bogdanovitch as a director is just a blind spot and I don't know why. Again, that's why I ask, like, you know, is what is his perception in the industry, because again, like, wow, best I can tell most of his movies they're just they seem to be their own thing.

Yeah, they are well. You know, he had a fondness for the directors of his childhood, as as most of us knew. That's kind of the way it goes, you know. We we love the people we grew up with, and he was no exception. He loved Orson Welles and john Ford and all those guys and Howard Hawks, and he he became friendly with them, you know, to the point where Orson Welles was basically homeless at one point, and so he let him come and live with him, basically gave him a bedroom in his sou because Worth and Wills.

You know, no secret that he was financially struggling a lot of the time because he was taking all of his money and trying to finish these little odd films that he was making on the side, and he would take the work from television commercials or whatever he could get, you know, So there was all that going on, and he just didn't have a lot of money. I heard that man like his champagne. Yeah, just a little bit. Yeah, it's a little bit. It's crazy.

That's interesting. Like again, like I just you know, this movie was not at all what I was expecting when someone says, Peter Bugdanovitch movie, it's not this like mad Cap Dash across San Francisco. But yet having seen only this now like this is such a distinct and unique starting place for again, like you said, Last Picture Show is his first movie, like a second movie, and this is his third movie. Like I just like those movies sound wildly different from this, like you know, but like, but then you these other movies that you're kind of mentioning, they sound kind of more comedy leaning more so than those last two did. So I wonder if this is kind of an kind of the beginning of where he's going to, you know, start moving into comedies, and again he does.

I mean, I was, you know, looking at all of his other movies and they're all like half of them are comedies or at least classified as comedies, which is interesting because again I hadn't heard people being, oh, he's a funny director. It's like I'd never heard anybody say that. Well. He um Like, as I mentioned at long Last Love was a serious misstep because Simbil Shephard, he was obviously romantically linked with her. They had lived together for quite a while after they met on the set of Last Picture Show, and I think she had done an album, and he had this idea that she could she could sing, and that she was going to be a um somehow or another, make it as a recording star.

So he just decided to do this musical. And I think that was the point when they there was the thing that was building up with the public, you know, they were they were kind of getting tired of them parading around as a couple, and when that happened, I think that was like the breaking point. But before that, he had done Daisy Miller, which was an adaptation of a Henry James novel. And now Quentin Tarantino was a big defender of that one. I've heard him on his podcast defending Daisy Miller.

He's a huge, huge fan, and I've seen it. It's okay, but I think there's something to be said for some of the choices he makes in that film that he didn't make in his previous films. As I said his production designer PAULI Platt, I think she would kind of whisper in his ear things about, you know, like maybe you shouldn't do this, maybe you should do that. She was also kind of an uncredited creative consultant, and so without her guiding hand, he was, you know, things just didn't didn't didn't go so well for him for so long, starting with Daisy Miller, and that was part of I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but there was a company that Francis Ford Cope and William Freakin and Brogdanovitch signed on together.

There was a company called the Director's Company, and the three of them had had a contract with Paramount where they would do so many films, the three of them together, and it was a it was a big deal at the time. I think it was announced in seventy three or something that they were all teaming up, these big three big under kind directors and they were going to join forces and they were in this new company called the Director's Company. And I think the only film from the Director's Company that actually came to light maybe it was Paper Moon. You'll see when it during the opening credits if you watch it, it says the Director's Company presents I don't think any of the director freaking did any films for the Director's Company.

And I'm thinking Coppola, I want to say, maybe the conversation was part of the director's company, thank you, right, Yeah, I think so. But that was kind of a disaster as well, So it didn't didn't go so well. So there are a lot of missteps there following Paper Moon. So um, well, so it sounds like, yeah, it sounds like bug Danevis just had at a career of stops and starts. Yeah, I mean, you know, not every director has a career with as many ups and downs as as as it sounds like he had, you know which I mean again, you know, better to have had ups and downs than no ups at all, that's true.

But when in the early days when he was good, he was good. I mean, you can't deny those three, those first four films, like I said, Targets and Last Picture, Show, What's Up Dot, Paper Moon. Though it's hard to argue with the quality of those films. I mean they are really really top notch films, all four of them, and it's hard to you know, it's hard to quibble. Well, and I'll tell you it's it's hard to quibble with this movie because this this movie is a lot of fun and it's it's definitely I mean, it's a movie that I'm going to definitely suggest to more people that I know that definitely I know either haven't seen it or maybe haven't seen it in a while, because it does have a wide, you know, I think, a wide appeal.

And again, if you can quote, get over the fact that it has Barber Streisand in it, which again as someone who had that in their mind before this, but was willing to watch the movie because it's just a movie. It's not like I'm going to watch it and at the end of it, I'm gonna be dead and murdered by media. It's just a movie. Just sit down and watch it if you give the movie the opportunity. And again, like you said, just know that it's quote not actually a Barber Streisand movie, whatever the hell that actually means.

The movie rewards a viewer who is engaged, and I think the movie keeps you engaged throughout and these kind of movies, these kinds of comedies. The reason Naked Gun got canceled is because you forced you to quote actually watch the show. This is one of those movies where and you kind of mentioned it at the top. It rewards repeat viewings because you should and will, and I already have since I've watched it twice, find different things and notice certain things, and pick up on different things that you maybe didn't pick up on the first time you watched it. Yeah, I think that's it.

That's that's that's all true. Yeah, But I would I would recommend those who haven't seen it or aren't familiar with it, or just write it off as one of those barber strikes in films, to give it a shot. It's certainly worth the investigating. And i'd i'd be I'd find it very shocking if you didn't find something to laugh at. I mean, there's so many, so many great gags in there, and a variety of gags too.

It's not just one kind of gag. It's not just slapstick comedy. It's not just dialogue humor. It's not just meta textual jokes like it's it's everything. And I mean again, like it's not always funny, but I think this movie is, for the most part, always funny.

And I think that again, when you have funny people who know how to be funny, it helps when you're trying to have a funny movie. It's the other thing. No, I don't think anybody in this movie doesn't know how to be funny either. I mean a lot of these actors are comedic actors, but a lot of them aren't necessarily considered comedic actors, like strikes it, like Ryan O'Neill. This is all true, This is very very true.

Yeah. So yeah, it's um Like I said, just never never fails to put a smile on my face. And if you're dating somebody and you think it's funny, use it as a litmus test like I do. It's always good for that. That's fair.

That's fair. Yeah, no, no, uh, thank thank you for bringing this one to my attention. Again, I had had it mentioned to me before, but definitely had just not gotten around to watching it. And hey, any movie that ends with bugs, Bunny and Porky Pig on screen because it knows it's a cartoon and it transitions into a cartoon at the end, I'm always a fan of I mean, we didn't even mention that, but that moment is one hundred percent earned and it totally it totally works. It's it totally works, and it's super I think it's it's again, it's it's it's the second most meta moment of the movie, behind the Kind of Love.

Story reference. That's it's true. Um, you just just for some reason, I was just thinking of the gag where Madeline Khan is where they send her to the wrong address, Barbara Streisan sends her to the wrong address on what are you doing with Howard Rock? Those are those are his rocks? Oh my god.

Yeah, we barely even mentioned Madeline Khan. But she, you know, she it's not that she's not given a lot to do, but she is kind of playing a specific kind of character in this movie. But she I think she's really good. I like Madeline conn a lot, you know, obviously she's such a big part of Blazing Saddles, and I love what she's doing in this movie, kind of playing the you know, the harried girlfriend who who gets a happy ending in the end. But I think, I don't know, she's always just so charming.

Well, you must see her, my friend in the next film, paper Moon, that they made together, because she was Oscar nominated for that one and deservedly so. She is absolutely hysterical in that film. You've got to see it. She plays a as I said, Ryan O'Neill is a con man and he and the film is, like I said, a series of vignettes take place during the depression, and he's traveling across the country doing what he does as a con man with a little girl who may or may not be his daughter in tow. That's essentially the plot of the film.

And one of the places that he stops along the way is at a county fair and Madelene Khan is a belly dancer there, and so he's extremely attracted to her and invites her to join them for a little while. And so there's a whole vignette where she joins Tatum O'Neill and Ryan O'Neill and they and they wind up going to a hotel and staying together, and he's really got his eye on her, so to speak, and it's just it is just terrific. The actress who plays Madelon Kan's assistant in the film, her name is p J. Johnson, and I interviewed her for the I guess it was the forty fifth anniversary of this film. I think it was.

I interviewed her for Movie Each United and out there you can see it on YouTube or whatever our website, and uh, she had a lot of good things to say about bog Danovich and making the film and working with Madeline Khan, but she just the two of them together, what a team in that film. Uh, I just I mean, I mean, I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that Madeline Kahn, who was also probably a good person as well, because she's just she's just so effortlessly charming and any anytime she's on screen, she just she I don't know, I mean, in this movie, she's playing again very atypical of what I had seen her as you know, the character and Blazing Saddles, which is in and of itself such a I don't know, it's such a fucking great character in such an already great movie.

But like here she has to play a very specific role and it works, like I wouldn't think such a big personality actress would be able to play kind of such a small character in this movie. And I don't know, she's just so good. She plays that like just exhausted girlfriend so well, especially when she comes into the kind of the banquet hall they dragging her away, and she's just a house of fire coming in there and they're having to drag her out. It's just my god, she's so good in this movie. Oh yeah, Yeah, Yeah, she absolutely is.

She she nails it. Yeah, we always laugh about the scene where they drag her out in her and her heels or leaving marks on the floor. Yeah, it's again when they when they when they know in this movie to really go after some like like physical comedy bits and the slapstick it. I don't know, it's just yeah, like you said, it's uh, there are not a lot of movies like this in the movies that maybe this is inspired by this. I've got to I believe you one hundred percent that this is better and oft and oftentimes when you have the opportunity to see the other things and distill it down and kind of condense it down into like it's like purest form.

I don't know. I don't know if I would ever need to see another live action cartoon if I watch this movie like it even now, it checks enough boxes that I don't think like I need to see an updated version or or anything like that. It's it's such a of a time and of a play, but it all just feels I don't know, it all just works, and its God, the fact that it works, I think is the most impressive thing evolved. Frankly, so final thoughts on what's up, Doc Adam, Well, I think it really holds up beautifully fifty years on. I'm so glad that that it does and that people are continuing to discover it.

Like I said, as long as I'm drawing a breath, It'll always be one of my favorites and one of my go toos. I'm always going to have a copy of it in the best physical format available, whatever that is at the time. Right now, it's blue ray currently, and I'm hoping that there may be a four K issue of it at some point in time. But it does have a nice blue ray that really looks pretty spectacular for what it is, and I think there's a feature head on there, but nothing more than that. But yeah, it's just a film that, like I said, really puts me in a good mood anytime that I watch it, even though I've seen it so many times and I've owned it in so many formats.

I've had BHS, I've had a laser disc, I've had DVD and now. Oh and there is a commentary on the DV. On the blue ray too, there's a two commentaries, I believe. I think there's a scene specific commentary with Streisan and Bryan O'Neill, I want to say. And then there's the actual directors commentary with Bogdanovitch.

So if you want to get more into the nuts and bolts of the film and what it meant to them and what it was like to be there making it, you can you can get that physical release and listen to those commentaries. I would I would like to hear the bug Den if it's commentary on the movie, Yeah, pretty good, pretty good, very very informative, and uh, it's it's worth your time if you can pick it up, you know. And and it's on the DVD two. So if you don't want to spring for the extra bucks for the blue ray, you just get the DVD for probably less than ten bucks and you still get in the commentaries. Penny's on the dollar at this point on the dollar.

Yeah. D DVDs where where? Where did you? Where? You do just want even buy a DVD anymore?

Like God, I'm still shocked, not the Digress, but I'm still shocked at the largest percentage of physical media that's being sold today is still Davy Dames. I know, it's wild. Here are people buying them. I don't know, but apparently people are buying them in mass still. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm with you one hundred percent.

You know, again, I had had this movie mentioned to me and before, and I was kind of apprehensive because again, it is a movie that has Barber Streisand in it, but it is not a Barber Streisand movie. And you know, shame on me for making assumptions. But also, you know, here I am having watched it, and I'm totally with you. I will probably watch it again before the end of next week, and I'll probably have watched it two or three more times before the end of the year at least. You know, it's it's a lot of fun.

It's a movie that definitely rewards future viewings, and it rewards people that are engaged. And I think the movie does a good job of keeping you engaged. And this kind of movie, again, it seems easy, but that's because everybody who's working on the movie is operating at literally peak performance this movie. Making this look easy means it's immensely harder than you would even imagine, and it could be. And this movie sings along and it's just again, it's damn near perfect movie.

There's nobody miscast. There's really only one scene for me that I have a quibble with, but again it makes sense why it's there, because again it has Barba Strisand in it, and I would have I would have put that scene in my movie Toot in seventy two with Barbara Streisand, and you would have, and anybody with half of a brain would have. But all of that aside, I'm so glad that I have now seen this movie, and I'm glad that I was able to talk about it with someone like yourself, who is, as you know, again, as passionate about it as you are, because you're totally right. It's a movie that if I were to watch it on a bad day, would probably put me in a good mood as well, because by the end of the movie, when they land the love story joke and then they have porky pigs singing you out, you know, out out to your car or leaving or turning the screen off, it's totally earned and it puts you in a good mood because it's a really well done comedy and hey man, that's not that's not easy, especially now, it's not easy.

But even then it wasn't easy. So true, it is true. So until the next time you and I do an episode together, Adam. Where could people find you on the internet if they were looking for you? Oh, you can go to Focus newspaper dot com.

I have a weekly column that recounts all of the latest theatrical releases and home video releases. And then we do our podcast where we do we jabber on for about an hour or so about all the latest physical media releases. On movie Geeks United dot com. You can find that it's posted about once a month. Jamie Duvall and I we've been doing it for almost ten years now, and um you can find us so on all the regular places you know, Stitcher and Apple podcasts and all those wonderful places where you go Spotify all that.

Yeah, as to say, it's it's always about Apple, That's where it is. That's so it's like, I think the number is like seventy five percent at this point. It's about right, yeaheah. So as for this show, you can find this show over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com and culturecast dot com and all the places that you've been hearing me mentioned for the last damn near almost a decade here as well, so yeah, I get it. But yeah, that's where you can find me.

That's where you can find this show. Patreon, as always, is a thing if you want to help out financially, but like rate and review wherever you get the show, which is more than likely iTunes. Adam, thank you so much for joining me. Man, this was fun as always. Oh yeah, totally enjoyed it, totally totally a black and as always, will catch you on the next episode.