Speaker 1: This is Chris. Do what I and my family do.
Pile into the family truckster and listen to d and
Jason discuss classic eighties and nineties movies and music on
the Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcast. All right, Jason,
ready to do the podcast? I guess so, Jason Son
but podcasting, Lacarode but podcasting, Yes, okay, podcasting no, okay,
podcasting guests so sooner or later, squished.
Speaker 2: Like grape man, let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirly You Can't
Be Serious Podcast.
Speaker 2: We are here.
Speaker 1: Today to compare nineteen eighty four to nineteen eighty five
La to New York, Karate to Karate, both with Italian leads.
Yeah won Italian American and one Italian African American, and
it is all eighties gold.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be so much fun to talk about these
movies because it is the glow and sweep, the leg
and wax on, wax off and stuff that we have
had running around our brain for forty years.
Speaker 1: Now. I've literally got the glow right now. Ladies and gentlemen,
If you're listening to this podcast for the first time
or the one hundredth time or whatever. You are one
of those folks that wants to escape your everyday life
and go back to the days when you thought you
could cure somebody's muscle illness by slapping your hands together
and coming together, or that if you tried hard enough,
you could catch a bullet in your teeth. I wish
you could see my face, if you could glow. Then
we are the podcast for you. Just to tell you, guys,
we are an independent podcast. It's me and Jason and
that is also if you guys want to support independent
businesses out there, we would encourage you to go to
our Patreon page. It's patreon dot com Surely Podcast, where
for as little as five bucks a month, you get
access to all of our one Hit Wonder episodes, which
are some of our most fun to do, and we
have the best Patreon family around. You would be joining
an incredible group of folks.
Speaker 2: Check us out on Patreon. Before you say one Hit Wonder,
I think we need to change into like lightning at
a bottle.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, you got some hate on that facebooks.
Speaker 2: Give me a break.
Speaker 1: There is some There are some die hard Beach Boys fans.
They're about to draw and quarter you for suggesting they
might be a one hit wonder. Yes, it's not all
one hit wonders. We do have some people that we
would just say these are songs outside of their realm
or special in some way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we've even covered carry unfortunately, but but you
should still check out that episode because there's still some
gold there. There is no dolphin noises at all. Okay,
so we got to jump in now. People have come
to listen to the Karate Kid versus the Last Dragon,
which is what we're here to talk about today. Have
the Sun versus.
Speaker 2: Bruce Leroy Blues.
Speaker 1: Yes, so I'm gonna take you back though, I'm not
going back to eighty five. I'm not going back to
eighty four, going back to ninety three. No, not nineteen
ninety three, No, not eighteen ninety three. I'm going back
to seventeen ninety three on the birth of Ryu Ryuko,
who is the guy who invented the choreographed pattern of
kung fu, a repeated pattern wax on wax off that
teaches you the moves. Okay, teach me the moves the
all right, So in about eighteen seventy, several years later,
a guy named Higa. She say this right, A guy
named Higa shi Ona Kanrio went from Okinawa to China.
He did not get drunk and fall asleep in a
fishing boat, okay. But he did travel to China on
the pretext of becoming a translator, and he ended up
being the servant of Ryu Ryuko for years. He begged
Rayu Ryuko to teach him, but Ryu Ryoko said no,
I'm not teaching anybody. And then there was a flood
and Canrio saved Ryu Ryuko's dotter from drownding, and Ryu
Raiko said, okay, I will teach you my kung fu.
The name of that kung fu is the white Crane method.
Speaker 2: Stop are you kidding?
Speaker 1: That's number one? All right? So he works with him
for many years, and then he takes this Chinese form
of martial arts and brings it back to Okinawa, where
he's from, and he becomes a sinse and he calls
this martial art Naha te name of the region plus tay,
which means hand right. Learn that from mister Miyagi. Right, yeah,
he means hand right right, okay. So he teaches there
and he gets a fourteen year old that comes in
who is the son of a wealthy shop owner, and
this shopowner's son then trains with can Rio for the
next fifteen years until Canrio's death okay, And then in
honor of his master's death, this shopowner's son goes to
China to visit his master's grave. But while he's there,
he he learns this new type of martial art called
roki shoe, and it's a hand exercise which emphasizes the
rotation of the wrist. He uses that in combination with
the nahat that he'd been learning for fifteen years now,
and he brings that back to Okinawa and he starts
teaching it himself, this shopowner's son, and he calls it
ok nawan goju Riyu is a hard soft style. One
of his students then brings this hard soft style to
New York City. Yeah, a seventeen year old kid shows
up one day. Now, this student of the shopowner's son
doesn't really speak very good English. But the seventeen year
old kid says, listen, I got beat up by a
bunch of bullies. This is nineteen sixty four. Got beat
up by a bunch of bullies. I went to this
other karate school, and all the guy wanted to teach
me was how to be mean and how to get revenge.
And that's not really what I want. And so this
seventeen year old kid then starts taking lessons in the
hardsoft style. Okay, but the guy who teaches him doesn't
speak English very well. Right, But what he does get
from him is the name of his teacher, the name
of the shopowner's son. Okay, the name of the shopowner's
son is Kojin Miagi. Now that seventeen year old kid
goes on to get his degree and he writes a
story marshally based on his experience. The seventeen year old kid.
His name is Robert Mark Kaman, and the story he
writes is called The Karate Kid.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so good, well done, well done.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm done for the day. I'm gonna sit back and
let you do the rest.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, right, okay. So here's what I know about
Robert Mark Cayman. Okay, so you're right. He writes The
Karate Kid based on his own life experiences where he
got beat up at the World's Fair in nineteen sixty
four and he was just this scruddy little kid yeah,
but he goes on. He writes Taps, he writes the Transporter,
he writes the Bandida's movie with Bruce Willis, I think
is in it. He writes the Taken Movies and one
of my least favorite movies of the nineties.
Speaker 1: So let's hoping it would come up.
Speaker 2: He writes the fifth Elements.
Speaker 1: I know, right, we had just talked about that when
we did our IMDb MVP. I was an episode just
a month or two ago. Go check that one out.
But yes, one of the movies that I really liked
from the nineties that you really hate.
Speaker 2: Gary Oldman, you should have lost right there, you know
what happened there? And then so he presents the script
The Karate Kid, Yeah, to the director of Rocky.
Speaker 1: I know, right. So that guy's name is John g. Avelson, Right,
he was the guy they picked to direct Rocky. Now,
keep in mind, Rocky was never supposed to be a hit, right.
It was an unknown writer, unknown star. And if you
look at John g Avilson's IMDb record, it's a lot
of misses, right, and about half a dozen super fantastic
the here you go, So.
Speaker 2: I've got a list here for you. So Rocky the
Best Picture nineteen seventy six, Sylvester Stallone and all of
a sudden is on the map as a scriptwriter and
an actor. He does the movie Neighbors in nineteen eighty
one with John Belushi and Dan Ackright.
Speaker 1: Not their best movie, Okay, so that's what we're going
to call that a miss. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then he does of course Karate Kid Credit Kid two,
KARTI Kid three awesome, pretty good and okay some people
like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He does the Molly Ringwold movie for Keeps in like
eighty eight, remember that one. Sure he's pregnant. Yeah, he
does Lean on Me with Morgan Freeman. That's a fantastic
that's a great movie. Right, And then actually kind of
an underappreciated movie in the eighties, I think eight Seconds
with Luke Perry.
Speaker 1: Luke Perry, that's right, Yeah he was. I mean, Sylvester
Stallone took over the Rocky franchise for a while, right,
did some really great things, and then John G. Efflson
comes back and does Rocky five. I'm going to say
that is in the miss category.
Speaker 2: Listen before I jump on my shobbox, Deft Dave loves
Rocky five.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that movie is terrible. Yeah, it's got
one Oklahoma's own, isn't it right? Tommy Moorrison, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I went to his. I saw my daughter played a
basketball game in his high school the other day. Yeah,
and I sent you a picture of the bust. I'm like, hey, guys,
look where I am. And everyone's like, who's that?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: No, this?
Speaker 1: What was that? Guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Tommy Moorison.
Speaker 1: So the way that Robert Mark came in gets his
script to John g Avilson is the producer a guy
named Jerry Wintraup. Have you heard of him?
Speaker 2: Briefly?
Speaker 1: Okay, So I, for some unknown reason have read his biography.
It's been a few years ago. But he was just
this kind of incredible producer and I can't I mean,
he's got a ton of stories and they're all great,
but I will just tell you this. He brought Elvis back.
Elvis was Elvis in the fifties and then petered out
in the late sixties and seventies, and Jerry Wintrop is
the guy responsible for bringing him back, bringing him to Vegas,
doing all that, And there's a great story that goes
along with it where he basically calls the colonel and
says I want to do a headline tour with Elvis
as the headliner. And the colonel is I mean, he's
in a game. He's sitting at gambling or something and says,
bring me a check for a million dollars and we'll talk.
So Jerry Wintrup has not that at all, right, but
starts talking to people and literally last second before he
gets on a plane, says, I find an investor that
will give me a million dollars. Is able to walk
up at a craps table and hand a check for
a million dollars to the colonel to get Elvis back? Wow? Yeah,
so this idea. This is the producer of the Karate Kid. Right,
by the way, he was completely against Pat Marida being
mister Miyagi.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, like what a comedian? No, the guy on
Happy Days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we'll get into casting here in a little bit.
Because because there was a different guy that they had
in mind, Oh yes, would have made a completely different movie.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to talk to the alternate universe about
you know, all this.
Speaker 1: Stuff exactly exactly. So what happens is they get together,
they decide, Hey, we're going to We're going to make
this movie. It's not expected to be a big hit,
right right, And we'll talk casting again here in a minute,
but I will just tell you that part of that
process while they were filming the movie is several advocates
for changing the name of the movie. Top amongst them
is Ralph Macchio.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it does when you sit back and look
at it, it does sound like a Saturday Morning Special.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I heard Elizabeth Shoe say she didn't like the title.
I heard Ralph Machio say he didn't like the title.
Speaker 1: You petitioned every day, would say to anybody that would listen,
Let's think of another title. What other title can we
have for this movie? They literally paid DC Comics to
have the rights to that name because DC Comics had
had some sort of you could call him a superhero,
but he really wasn't. He was just a martial artist guy.
But they and it wasn't even a well regarded comic.
But for some reason, I guess Jerry Wintrop thought that
that was a great title.
Speaker 2: And so here's the story with that. Yeah, I heard this.
So for the longest time, Robert Mark Kaman just had
it listed as the Karate Kid Project. Just as a
placeholder every day. They would be like, Okay, listen, we
need a title. He's like, well, you know, I'm still
working on it. It's this karate Kid story. And they
finally were like, if you don't give us a title
in the next ten minutes, we are we're out. So
he's like, okay, the Karate Kid. So that's it, right, Yeah,
And when you step back from it, now that we
are familiar with the movie and we're familiar with the
legacy and the story and all that stuff, it does
sound like a Saturday Morning special. So I do get
why they didn't like the title. By the way, I
meant to mention this to you. Another one of the
movies that Robert mark Kaman wrote is a movie called Gladiator. No,
not the one with Russell Crowe.
Speaker 1: The one with cep It getting Junior and the other
dude from a Few Good.
Speaker 2: Men Yeah and Brian Denahey, yeah. And it's like a
it's like a karate boxing type of movie. Brian Denn
he's like Tommy Boy's dad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or you know, or the guy from First Blood whatever,
you know, the sheriff right right, right. So one of
the people that I don't think belongs in casting. He
belongs in the pre production. When they got the cast together,
none of them knew any martial arts. Ralph Moncio didn't
know martial arts, williams Avoca didn't know any Crease Martin
Cove didn't know it. And so they said, who do
we know that can come and train these guys?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And he had this very specific way of training them
where he separated some of them off and put some
of them together. But that guy's the guy who trained
him was the stunt coordinator. His name was Pat E. Johnson,
Not Patty, but Pat E Johnson, right, right, right? So
Pat Johnson would train all of the Cobra Kai guys together,
and he trained them specifically in that kind of hardcore
way that they would have been trained by Crease. He
trained Ralph Mancio and Pat Marita together, and he used
a softer hand with them, and he basically said they
would both be in pain and they would commensurate in
their pain together. And I let that be, okay because
he I mean, but he was a guy who had
been doing at this point in martial arts for ten years. Okay, right,
do you know what movie he got his start in? No.
Ten years earlier. No, No, a little movie that will
segue right into our next topic called Enter the Dragon. Ooh,
that's Pat Johnson's very first movie as a stunt coordinator.
He works with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, Kareem
Abdul Jabbar, Yes, and Chuck Norris. He ends up working
later on with Brandon Lee. I mean he if you
look at his IMDb, he is the guy you go
to for martial arts.
Speaker 2: And he plays the referee at the end of the movie.
Speaker 1: Is the mustached referee? Yeah? Call in the fight? Yeah?
Speaker 2: How about that? That's incredible.
Speaker 1: So good friends with Bruce Lee, which brings us to
our next story. Enter the Dragon. Yes, Any of the
Dragon came out in nineteen seventy three. It was widely
accepted that this was going to be the movie that
may or broke Bruce Lee. Right surely, It's like, this
is gonna make him or it's gonna kill him, and
all of Hong Kong, where Bruce Lee was from, like
revered this guy as a hero, expected this to be
the big breakout role changed the way that people from
China are depicted in movies. That Chinese man becomes the
hero and so there's a lot of build up for
this movie Enter the Dragon. Well in July of nineteen
seventy three, just a few months before the movie is
to be released, Bruce Lee goes with his business partner
and his probably girlfriend married at the time, probably had
this mistress, right, okay, And they're in an apartment and
they're talking about what will be the sequel to Enter
the Dragon called Game of Death. This becomes ironic a
few hours later because Bruce Lee comes down with a headache.
He gets this pain reliever from his girlfriend. He goes
and lays down. His business partner leaves to go get
some dinner. A little while later, he calls back to
the apartment and is talking to the girl friend and
she'd goes to wake up Bruce Lee, but Bruce Lee
won't wake up, and so she calls her personal doctor.
As the business manager comes back, he gets there, they
can't get a hold of her personal doctor, so they
start calling his personal doctor. It ends up I don't
know why they are not calling the ambulance, but it's
an hour and fifteen minutes before Bruce Lee is ever
actually taken to the hospital. He had been looked at
by a doctor, had no breathing, no heart rate. By
the time they get him to the hospital, they pronounce
him dead from what the cause of death listed at
that time was a reaction to the aspirin in painkiller. Now,
as it turns out, I mean this was nineteen seventy three.
As it turns out years later, there was another chemical
in the painkiller that was used that they determined later
on had some adverse reactions, including brain swelling, and so
they discontinued the use of that other chemical. Fifty years later,
when Bruce Lee's brother is hiring a private investigator to
look at the files and their god going through all this,
ultimately they determined, because there was a valid concern that
he was killed, that he was murdered. Sure, what they
ultimately decide is it was another chemical, not the aspirin,
but this other chemical in the painkiller that he had
gotten that caused his brain to swell and that ultimately
led to his death. Still an accident, just a different cause.
Wow yeah wow. Pat Johnson said that Bruce Lee said
something very important to him at one point. He said,
the usefulness of the cup is in its emptiness. That
is to say, if you have an empty cup, you
can use it for what you need it for. You
can fill it with what you need to quench whatever
thirst you have. But if the cup is already full,
then you're stuck with whatever it's already full with. So
if you're working with someone who's already been trained in
a certain way, they're already full. Your most useful student
is the one who is in an empty cup. He's
used that little saying throughout his career, teaching all of
his students and actors in all of the movies that
he's done. He just passed away in November, by the way,
Pat Johnson just passed away.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 1: So nineteen seventy three, Enter the Dragon comes out, Bruce Lee,
even though he's dead, becomes a international, worldwide superstar, and
Enter the Dragon is his most famous movie. Fast forward
ten years later. Okay, it's nineteen eighty three. An actor,
and I say an actor. He's been in one movie.
Ok But he was one of the principal dancers in
the movie Fame. Okay, his name is Lewis Venosta. Yes.
He goes to a tenth anniversary screening of Entered the
Dragon with his girlfriend and when he walks in, it's
mass chaos like he's he's amazed. He's never been to
something like this before. People are dressed up in costume,
people are saying the lines of the movie along with it.
People are pretend fighting in the aisles. He said, it's
like going to a rocky horror picture show. It's the
most amazing theater reaction that he's ever seen before. And
he thinks to himself, I got to write a story
about this. He writes that story, Yeah, and that story
is called The Last Dragon. So, Jason, if you were
going to be writing a movie from the nineteen eighties
without telling me you were writing a movie from the
nineteen eighties, how would you write it?
Speaker 3: All? Right?
Speaker 2: So here's what I would do. I would take a
wholesome kung fu protege who has a Chinese accent for
no apparent reason, who also eats popcorn with chopsticks, who
rescues a beautiful MTV v J from a power hungry
video arcade mogul with a girlfriend who looks like Cyndi
Lauper and another guy who looks like the black version
of Mad Max, set in Harlem, all set to the
song Rhythm of the Night by Debarch Into.
Speaker 1: The Street, We're all of em is right there, and
you'll be well, I love away.
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 1: I think that's a perfect nineteen eighties karate movie.
Speaker 2: Doesn't that sound like an eighties karate movie?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 1: In nineteen we have this movie that comes out. Now
it's interesting, this isn't This movie isn't just called The
Last Dragon. It's called Barry Gordy's Last Dragon. Now we
know that Barry Gordon didn't write it. How is Barry
Gordy's The Last Dragon?
Speaker 2: So Barry Gordy, for those of you who don't know,
is the founder of Motown Records. Yes, you're talking Smokey Robinson,
the Supremes, the Jackson Five, the Temptations, that guy.
Speaker 1: Yes, Diana Ross, Diana Ross.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe he had a love affair with Diana Ross.
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you have a love affair with Michael Jackson?
Speaker 1: Well, we won't get into that. So we've we've been
talking for a while about Barry Gordy, not necessarily because
of this movie, but because we're planning on doing a
Patreon on the Rockwell song Somebody's watching me right? Rockwell?
Is Barry Gordy's son one of many children that he has, right,
And I started looking up his family tree and I
was like, what the what. Jimmy Carter's mother, her last
name is Gordy, her maiden name was Gordy, right. Her
grandfather had a slave, yes, who he got pregnant back
in the slave days, and that was the grandfather of
Barry Gordy. It was Barry Gordy the first uh huh,
and Barry Gordy that started Motown is Barry Gordy the third. Yeah,
that is to say, President Jimmy Carter and Barry Gordy
Motown hero share common answers. Oh my god. They're like, yeah,
it's like half sibling. I don't even know where It's
too complicated to get to, but.
Speaker 2: Wow, right, wow, how about that? Follow us on Patreon
for the rest of that story. Rockwell is his son
and comes out with a great one hit wonder song.
Somebody's watching it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this movie comes out March twenty second, nineteen eighty five.
Now you ask, how did Barry Gordy get involved in this.
I've got some theories, but basically Motown and the Jackson
Five and the Supremes had kind of run its course
a little bit, and he created a movie in nineteen
seventy two, which was a movie about Billie Holliday, which
starred Diana Ross, the Wiz Whiz Michael Jackson and Quincy
Jones and Diana Ross.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I told you that.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of this comes from It's like
a concoction. It's like a Frankenstein Monster of the leftover
parts of Purple Rain with motown and MTV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you put MTV in, and you also put in
the magic formula that gave us breaking in nineteen eighty
four and Breaking to Electric Boogaloo in nineteen eighty four,
both of them. Yeah, you got dance sequences, You've got karate,
You've got a strong Harlem showing. But it's they really
do a great job of being completely color blind to this.
I mean you just look at you look at show
Nuff's entourage, and he's got a black guy and a
black girl, and a white guy and a white girl,
and a Chinese guy and a Chinese girl. I mean,
it's just it's a rainbow type of a movie. I
got to tell you, I didn't think about that in
nineteen eighty five. All I thought was it's a good movie.
But today, with the way the world is, we look
at it and go, oh wow, how forward thinking of him.
So he gets this story, yes, and he's got to
find a director.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Michael Schultz has got a kind of an
interesting directing repertoire here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He did some Rockford Files. Yeah, he did Sergeant Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Speaker 1: Yeah. By the way, Rockford Files, wasn't that one of
your top TV theme songs? It was from the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was awesome. He did Bust and Loose with
Richard Pryor. He did carbon Copy with Denzel Washington, Denzel
Washington's debut movie, put a pin in that name. Yeah,
he does Crush Groove Hello, def Dave Right. He does
Disorderlies with the Fat Boys in eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Again def Dave's favorite movie, right of eighty seven.
Speaker 2: And then when I looked at his catalog, he really
becomes involved in the Young Indiana Jones chronicles.
Speaker 1: Is that crazy?
Speaker 2: It's just a weird hodgepodge of movies.
Speaker 1: Do you know what his first directed movie was? Though, No,
you're gonna love this. What it is? A movie called
car Wash? That's the god you throw this back to
our episode from a couple of years ago on Batman
Versus The Dark Knight. Yeah, that's the movie that after
Woody Allen discovered Joel Schumacher as a window dresser at
a caes Or wherever it was, that was Joel Schumacher's
first movie to write, was called car Wash and it
was directed by Michael Schultz, his friend direct.
Speaker 2: Wow. How about that.
Speaker 1: So they've got a movie that involves dancing, that involves
the Harlem music scene, that involves karate and they say,
let's get Michael Schultz to come in and direct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, we didn't mention this, but Louis
Venosa he also wrote Bird on a Wire o Mel
Gibson and Goldie Han, and then he later becomes involved
in Grey's Anatomy fantastic.
Speaker 1: So they've got their story, they've got their producer, they've
got their director. Now all they need is a cast.
But before we get there, let's jump back to The
Karate Kid and talk about the cast for The Karate Kid.
Speaker 3: Wax on, right hand, wax off, left hand, wax on,
wax off, breed in through nose, out the mouth.
Speaker 2: All right, do you remember when we talked about the
out Yes, not this time last year. Basically everybody in
The Outsiders and Rumblefish was considered for the role of
the Karate Kid. Okay, when they were casting for Daniel
originally called Daniel Webster, not Daniel LaRusso okay because he
wasn't Italian yet. Because he wasn't Italian yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was just an author of a dictionary. Apparently
right by.
Speaker 2: The way, they liked the name Daniel because it was
Daniel in The Lion's Den.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I can tell you this. I listened to
the commentary on the Karate Kid number one. Those guys
are just talking like they're a bunch of friends together,
and so there was very little useful information there.
Speaker 2: Talked of each other.
Speaker 1: I just did it was not it was not helpful,
hardly at all. But I did note. Robert came and said,
I guess I like the name Daniel because apparently in
every script that I write, there's a character that's named
Daniel or Danny. Oh really, yeah, I can't tell you
that the Daniels and Danny's another. But he specifically pointed
out the other useful piece of information that I got
from this. This is really great like the director was
talking about that was it forty seven Ford Coop, the
yellow one? You know that Danielsen gets as his birthday present? Right?
That could have easily been in our best Cars of
the eighties movies, right, sure choose. Yeah. John Afflison's talking
to the commentary. He's like, man, that was such a
great car. I wonder whatever happened to that?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And Ralph Manci was like, do you really know it?
And he's like, no, man, that's such a great car.
Did it get destroyed or what happened? And Ralph Mont's
like you really don't know. He's like no, and Ralph
Moont's like, I have it. Yeah, he said after the
movie was over, he offered to buy the car. He said,
I want to buy that car. Cos talk to the
maybe the casting director or maybe the one of the
stage directors or something like that, and he says, I
want to buy that car, and then it just shows
up gift. So Ralph Mancio has owned that nineteen forty
seven yellow Ford Coop since nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: That's really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So they're looking for Daniel, So Robert Cayman says
he's got to be a whimp, but he's got to
be a whimp with the chip on his shoulder. Yeah,
this is who they looked at. Sean Penn, Tom Cruise,
Emiliu Estavez, Charlie Sheen, Nick Cage, see Thomas.
Speaker 1: How waiting for a whamp here?
Speaker 2: Right, So all these guys are too too tough. I mean,
these guys are tough guys, right.
Speaker 1: I saw an interview with these guys from just a
few years ago, and John Appleson said, you know who
one of the people to try out was, and it
was Robert Downey Junior. Right, And he said everybody was like, oh,
you like imagining Robert Downey Junior. You know nineteen eighty
four Robert Downey Jr. As the Karate Kid. And he said,
you know why I didn't cast him? And somebody the
audience goes drugs. He goes, no, not drugs. It's a
good guest, but no, he goes, I didn't cast him
because he's iron Man. Daniels Son cannot be iron Man.
He can't be a superhero, right, he has to be
someone with extreme vulnerability. And the guy that was that
guy was Ralph Manchio.
Speaker 3: Yeah it was you too much by surf, not too good,
not by myself.
Speaker 2: It was you to.
Speaker 3: Make honey young bee, need young flower.
Speaker 1: Not.
Speaker 2: But the really interesting one I thought was when they
hired for mister Miyagi. So the guy they wanted was
to Shiro Mfuni.
Speaker 1: If you don't know who that is, you need to
go check out some of curacare with Sawa movies right
seven Samurai Raschaman, Hidden Fortress.
Speaker 2: This guy's tough.
Speaker 1: It would have been an entirely different Miyagi. It would
have been a Miyagi that was more like crease.
Speaker 2: Yes, here's the thing to Shira. Mafuni does not speak English.
So they bring in Pat Marita.
Speaker 1: The comedian.
Speaker 2: The comedian right now, people forget he was in Happy Days,
So I forgot.
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about this. Like his name wasn't Al
in Happy Days? Obviously the awl was Al, Al was Al.
They were like, you're Al. He's like, no, my name
is Takei Shmosho or something like that, and he's like,
but the neon to change the sign was too expensive,
and I am out.
Speaker 2: He was a comedian, funny guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so do you know his whole story? Tell me? Okay,
So there's incredible scene in the Karate Kid where mister
Miyagi shows his vulnerability for the first time. He is
weeping at the anniversary of the death of his wife
an unborn child. Right, the circumstances that you find out
later is there was no doctor because they were in
an internment camp. Now, Pat Marita was not old enough
at that point to have actually had a wife and
child at the time of the World War two interment camps.
But let me tell you this. When Pat Marita was
just two years old, he was diagnosed with a condition
called spinal tuberculosis, and it literally left him bedridden, hospitalized
for years. He was basically in a body cast, was
told he would never walk. I mean, he had a
very unpleasant life from the time that he was two
until the time he was eleven, so nine years of this. Right,
then they give him an operation, and the operation is
successful and they are able to teach him to walk.
They are able to teach him to move around and stand,
and suddenly he is able to have a noise, normal
life again. So he gets released to the hospital and
is immediately taken to join his family in an internment
camp in World War two. Really, yes, so he gets
released in nineteen forty two, which is the same year
that all of the interment camps started. Reaction to the
Pearl Harbor bombing. A lot of Japanese citizens were basically
given a week's notice, Hey, put your life in business
affairs in order, you're going to have to come over
to this camp because this is what we're doing. And
in the nineteen eighties they said this was wrong, we
shouldn't have done it, and they're set up a fund
for reparations and all of that, But that doesn't change
the fact that as soon as he breaks free from
the prison of the hospital, he is immediately put with
his own family in what are essentially military barracks, interna camp.
But he goes on from that. His family starts a business.
After that, they do a Chop Suey restaurant, No kidding, Wow.
Then tragically his father gets killed in a hit and
run accident. His mother and he keep the restaurant going
for a few more years, but then he's like, I've
got a wife and a kid. I've got to go
get a real job. He becomes a data processor, starts
at the DMV and works HILF up to Lockheed Martin
as a data processor, which is pretty impressive. But he
gets burned out and he's like, I'm done with this life.
I want to go to la and be a stand
up comedian. What what he you know? Who he learned
the most from? Who he learned at the feet of
Red Fox?
Speaker 2: There you go?
Speaker 1: Yes, Sanford and Son, which was on my list of
best songs from the composed by Quincy Jones, by the way.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's it.
Speaker 1: And he would be he would be on that show.
He would have guest appearances on that show as the
you know, the Chinese guy there, yeah, or the Japanese
guy or whatever it was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dane.
Speaker 1: Kardati here, Katia.
Speaker 3: Never here.
Speaker 2: Okay, so here's William Zapka. Oh yeah, he plays John
and Lawrence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the side enough, man, what is wrong? But
Johnny enemy.
Speaker 2: Deserves no mercy? Right right right, perfectly cast perfectly. Here's
who they looked at for him, Crispin Glover, George McFly.
Speaker 1: Well he did karate kick David Letterman's face.
Speaker 2: Could that have been a disaster.
Speaker 1: Would have completely been a disaster. I don't I mean,
I don't even understand how he's on the list. I
think he's only on the list because people went really him. No,
they had to because they had to be looking at
all of those you know, Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen
and Emilio Estevez and all those other guys too for Johnny, right,
they would have all been great Johnny's I.
Speaker 2: Would think so, Yes, Tom Cruse would have been a
great Johnny. But Crispin Glover was the guy that they
had originally talked about. That's nice, That makes no sense.
Speaker 1: Before we move on, do you want to talk about
William Zappka's audition for the part?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: I mean he had done he had done pepsi commercials
at this point, right, he had done nothing right. But
he reads this character. He reads the script and he's like,
I'm this guy, which is a weird thing to say
when you know that you're the villain. But what he
does is he reads it and he looks at it
from that guy's perspective, and then he gets to the
end where you know, you're not so bad LaRusso and
hands him the trophy and all that, and he's like, okay,
so he's not a bad guy. He just had a
bad teacher. But in the interview I saw him, he
was he was like, I was a very young actor
that time. I don't really know a lot about, you know,
doing a backstory or anything like that. I really just
tried to play the moment in the moment, and that
was the way I proceeded. But in his audition he
went a little further than that.
Speaker 2: He grabbed the director by the shirt collar and told you.
Speaker 1: Watch your mouth, threw him in the chair and stormed
out the director. The director, Yeah, you don't, you just
you just never ever do that. You will you will
never get cast in anything again. I think this is
his one saving grace, though, is that he walked out
of the room and then he walked back in the
room and he's like, I'm so sorry, I am that
was that was Ny. That is not who I am.
That was Johnny. That's not Billy. Okay, that was hilarious.
Speaker 2: I mean, listen to this run that Billy Zavka has
in the eighties actually is pretty incredible. So he does
the credit kid, he does just one of the guys. Ye,
he does European Vacation. He plays Audrey's boyfriend Jack in European.
Speaker 1: Vacation eighties gold so far.
Speaker 2: He plays Chaz and back to School.
Speaker 1: Again one of the but it's the same guy basically
in every single one. Yeah, he's always Johnny a jerk,
you know, Yeah, always Johnny.
Speaker 2: By the way, at the end, when they were doing
the final fight, even in between takes, the crowd got
so into it they would boo John Lawrence.
Speaker 1: Right. His mom was in there.
Speaker 2: His mom was in the crowd and she's like, he's
really a nice boy.
Speaker 1: She's crying. I was like, why are you moving? It's
not that the cameras aren't even rolling.
Speaker 2: And then of course he goes on to do Hot
Tub time Machine and then.
Speaker 1: That and that is that is a little bit of
gold right there. Now, before he does hot Tub time Machine,
he did a he did a music.
Speaker 2: Video yes called Sweep the Leg.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sweep the Leg by a band called No More
Kings of course, song about the karate kid.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Williams Zabka directs in it, stars in it. You've got
you've got references to Raising Arizona, You've got references to
the cars and Heartbeat City videos. You get to see
William Zabka in a banana hammock skating down the road
with a boombox over his shoulder.
Speaker 2: It's wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great video. Go check it out on YouTube.
It is really just called Sweep the Leg, but it is.
It's brilliant. No more Kings. Check that one out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good.
Speaker 1: So he does hot Tub Time Machine. Those guys then say, hey,
we saw this YouTube video that basically says that Johnny
was the good guy and that Danielson was the bully.
And he goes through it and he's like, guys, I've
kind of always had this theory in my head and
that's the way that I played it. And they're like,
what if we do a series where it's Johnny's perspective
and he's he's in his ruined state of life thirty
years later and he has to address all these issues
and then he runs into none other than Danielson. Again,
he's like, I'm in to do it.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Now you've seen Cobra Kai.
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 1: I've seen three seasons of Cobra Kai. I can't I don't
remember how many of there are at this point, but
I know that I've seen it. I think I've seen
all of the seasons up until the new one's about
to come out in just a little while. And I
will tell you that my fourteen year old son, who's
been watching these for the last several years, is hardcore.
Daniel was the villain. Daniel was a villain. He was
the jerk. Johnny's in the right the whole time, Like
I'm not even kidding. Halloween, Yeah, twenty twenty three Halloween.
My fourteen year old dressed up in a skeleton costume,
nice painted his face, did the whole thing because he
is a Cobra Kai devote. Before we get off casting,
I've got my a whole ometer sheet.
Speaker 2: I made a little spreadsheet the number of times that
somebody was in a hole. The I rated it one
through ten on the level of a wholeness. Okay, okay,
and so we'll talk about that here.
Speaker 1: We should have done this for the police episode back.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So you've got Ron Thomas who plays Bobby.
Speaker 1: Yes, he goes on to be a motivational speaker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a pastor.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I think he's I think he's just a
motivational speaker. But what happens is later on they do
an episode where they bring back all of the original
well not all but the core Cobra Kai guys and
Johnny and them all hang out together. And I'll give
you the reason in a second. But in that episode
he plays a pastor. Yes, and you'll remember he's the
guy who's He's the guy he's had enough, Johnny. He's
the guy who's always trying to ease it back. He's
the guy who's the most reasonable of the Cobra Kai guys. So, yes,
enough Johnny alone.
Speaker 3: Man, he's had enough. Shut up, Mommy, look at it.
You can't even stand up, go.
Speaker 2: On hand onmie squat Johnny.
Speaker 1: Leave him alone.
Speaker 2: Man, he's had not on the side, but he's had enough.
Speaker 1: Man, what is wrong, Johnny.
Speaker 2: Enemy deserves no mercy, right.
Speaker 1: Right, right right. But he's also the guy that's that
he's like, take him out. He's like, I can beat
this guy. And he's like, I'm sorry, Danny, I'm sorry, Ma,
you do it. So that's a great character.
Speaker 2: That that he's not just this evil Darth Vader. You know,
all these guys have shades of humanity. I mean, they're jerks,
but what high school boy revved up on testosterone is
not done.
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff that they did. Absolutely, yeah, Okay,
so keep keep going. You got you got Ron Thomas.
Who else you got?
Speaker 2: We got Chad McQueen. He plays Dutch.
Speaker 1: Steve McQueen's son. Right. You will remember him because he's
the guy who looks like his hair and eyebrows were
dyed blonde because they were right, which I thought.
Speaker 2: Made him a little bit more menacing. It is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he when he has his fight in the
tournament at the end against Daniel, I mean he is intimidating.
His his stare is intense. And in just a little
while earlier, he was the guy who tried to pick
a fight with Daniel in the locker room as he's
just trying to get dressed. Which matter, Your mommy not
here to put your clothes on.
Speaker 2: For you, Yeah, mommy not here to address you.
Speaker 1: He was he was full on jerk jerk.
Speaker 2: Oh, and he was great. And he said as points
and no points, you're dead meat. Scared me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: And then you've got Rob Garrison. He plays Tommy. He's
the one who's like, yeah, get him the body bag.
Speaker 1: He has got some of the most memorable lines from
this movie and doesn't seem to appear anywhere else and
sadly He's the reason that they have to come back.
I don't they have to come back, but they do. So.
Billy Zapka said that these guys became his core group
of friends after this movie. He said, this was basically
like being in a fraternity together, and these guys hung
out all of.
Speaker 2: The tilly right. Cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so April of twenty nineteen, season two of
Cobra Kai comes out. They get in the band back together,
all of the old guys, you know, all of the
old crew gets back together. And the reason that they
get together is because Tommy has cancer. They got to
have basically a one last hurrah, and it's great. They
get in a bar fight together, they drive real motorcycles
around together. It is really a Glory Days style of
a show. It's super well done. And then tragically at
the end, they discover Tommy's body in the tent. You know,
they've been out camping together and he's passed away from
the cancer that he's been dealing with. Oh man, well
this came out April of twenty nineteen. He really did
have cancer. Five months later, the actor actually passed away
from cancer. Tragic. That is really too bad, But what
an incredible legacy. You know, if you're if you're one
of those guys, if you don't have the acting career
that something like that, Ralph Mancio had sure that you
can at least still come back because everybody knows those lines.
Everybody knows the body bag lines, and I think he's
gonna cry. They're great lines. So the ability to celebrate
this guy's life just a little bit at the end,
it's a nice send away. I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, love it. By the way, there's one more Cobra Kai.
I want to mention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I go, Larry B. Scott. Does that ring a
bell to you? I feel like it was kind of
a nerd You talk about Jerry, I'm.
Speaker 2: Talking about Jerry who that's Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wait, do you see Lamar's throw?
Speaker 3: How come?
Speaker 1: Wims is a master arrow dynamics and he designed the
javelin to go along with Lamar's limp wristed throwing style.
He's the first He's the first guy that Daniel has
to be right from Cobra Kai. Pretty sure, that's right.
He was the first fight. And he's also the one
that when they're sparring, when Daniel first comes into the
dojo to the Cobra kai dojo. That just gets laid out,
what are you doing? Finish him?
Speaker 2: Okay, now then let's talk about Ali.
Speaker 1: For a second. Hey, you got a name, Hallie and I.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Shoe in her film debut.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she'd done what burger King commercials?
Speaker 2: At burger King commercials with Lea Thompson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who was also about to hit it big in
eighty five. Right, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: So they wanted Helen Hunt she was did you see that?
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely right? Yeah, how about Demi Moore? Yeah, but
I'm glad they picked Elizabeth Shoe me too, Oh my god.
And that was the other funny thing about the commentary
is that every time she came on the screen, like
all of the guys, now you got an age range
of probably forty years, yes, and every single one, I
was like, oh man, she's so adorable, she's so cute.
Speaker 2: They called her a strawberry shortcake, and they called Ralph
the Cannoli.
Speaker 1: Strawberry Shortcake and the Canoli. Oh and I got this.
Here's the one other tidbit that I got from the commentary.
Do you know who she's dressed up as in the
costume party when when Danielsen comes up dressed as a shower.
Speaker 2: I would never have known that if I hadn't listened
to commentary. Princess Leah.
Speaker 1: What Princess Leah?
Speaker 2: No way, she doesn't look anything like that. She has
no buns, she's carrying around her Wand I was.
Speaker 1: Very happy about the white gown, Like, yes, great choice
for Elizabeth Shoe. I'm all for it. But if she's
supposed to be Leah, we need to we need to
do something different with her hair. But that's okay. Maybe
they were afraid of running into copyright issues. I don't know. Yeah, okay.
So one last guy to talk about in the casting
of Karate Kid, John Crease. Here on the street in competition,
A magnfronts you. He's the enemy. An enemy deserves no mercy.
Speaker 2: The problem is the Lauren. Yeah, he's played by Martin Cove.
Speaker 1: Yeah so Martin Marty as his NIT friends call him.
He was in like a kind of standard role in
like kateen Atley back then.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I guess so I didn't watch the show.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so he was doing that show. They liked him,
I mean, he was a he was a very like
he was a leading man guy. He had a good look,
a good face. He was he's an older guy, right, yep.
And they really wanted him for the part and had
essentially told him, Hey, we really want you for this part,
sent him the script said get ready, we're coming, and
then they made him wait and they made him wait
and they made him wait, and then like literally called
him last minute and said hey, we need you to
be here at nine o'clock in the morning. And he's like, what, right, what?
And so he was furious. He was He was like,
I've you know, turned down parts, I have you know,
been over backwards for this, and you guys are screwing
me around. And he was talking to his wife about
his frustration and she was like, you should you because
if this guy's supposed to be the villain that he is,
it'll be great for you to use your anger at
the situation. And so that's exactly what he did.
Speaker 2: He does an amazing job in this. I'm intimidated by him,
but yet he's good at teaching what he believes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard him. I heard him in an interview
talking about his perspective on this character and how to
make this character real. And he said to himself, this
is a guy who is growing up. He won his
entire life, Like in school, he was always the biggest,
the best looking, the strongest, the most athletic. He won
the sporting events, he was top of the team. He
did all of this stuff. And then he goes to Vietnam.
And when he goes to Vietnam, he can't win. He
loses his friends, he loses his identity, and he says
to himself at that moment, I will never lose again.
If I get back to the US, I will never
lose again. And that's what motivates his entire character from
that moment on.
Speaker 2: Eh, that's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it makes him real. And they totally
use that in Cobra Kai, right he I mean, I've
you've only seen a couple episodes, but I've seen like
three seasons worth, and he is a guy who you
still You're still like he's the villain. But then you're like,
but I see how he got there, right, I see
how he became the villain, and I you know, but
for the grace of God, I could have been the
same guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know. He shows back up in a
movie that you have not seen hold on your seats,
because I hope we can cover this next summer.
Speaker 1: Okay, he has a pretty big part in Rambo. Oh
right right right? Yeah? No, I yeah, yes, surprise for
all our listeners. I have not seen Rambo or First
Blood or any.
Speaker 2: Of the other I can't believe that.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, Okay, I was young.
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to cover that next summer hopefully. I'm
thinking Rambo versus Commando for sure. Still owner Schwarzenegger at
their eighties prime yep, Okay, I got one more for you. Okay,
So Randy Hyler plays his mom, Lucille. She plays Lucille
LaRusso they looked at Valerie Harper.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, yeah, Valerie from Valerie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Valerie from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so Redo RDA right, yeah yeah, Roda.
Speaker 2: Here's another thing I wanted to mention real quick on
the filming of the Karate Kid. I thought I found
this fascinating. They filmed this from October thirty one of
nineteen eighty three, Yeah to December sixteenth of eighty three. Okay,
so they not only shot this in like sequence, but
it also fit perfectly like in the timeline of the movie.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, because it starts off in New
Jersey September yep and ends in the fight, which is
in December.
Speaker 2: The karate tournament's December nineteenth.
Speaker 1: Perfect. Okay, I go before we leave the cast, I
got one. I got one lady that I got to
ask you if you noticed. Oh, okay, okay. Remember when
they first get to the apartments and they walk in
and there's the lady with the dog and she's like,
you guys are from Jersey, right. He's like, how'd you know?
He's like, I could smell my kind and she gives
him the directions and he's confused. Do you recognize her?
You know she is? No, it's the grandma off of
Happy Gilmore, the one who's losing her house that he
has to go win the golf tournament to save her house.
That's her. That's Francis Bay. She's in a billion things
as the kind of funny little old lady and this
was you know, this was one of those shows. She's
the funny little old lady with the dog and karate
kid too. Wow. Wow. Francis Bay born nineteen nineteen died
twenty eleven at the Tender age of ninety two years old. Okay,
we've gone on way too long here, guys. Come back
for part two, where we are going to talk about production,
we're going to talk about some of the incredible songs
from this, and we're going to give you our final
judgment on which is the better karate movie of the eighties,
Karate Kid or The Last Tracon.
Speaker 2: Thank guys,