Speaker 1: Hey there, Chuck.
Speaker 2: Here a longtime listener coming at you from the class
of nineteen eighty six. Welcoming you to the Shirley You
Can't Be Serious Podcast. So brace yourselves as Dean Jason
are about to drop some knowledge, blow your mind, and
maybe even spike the football.
Speaker 1: Wow. Now, Jason, it says here, by the time the
average American is fifty, it's got five pounds of undigested
red meat in his bowels.
Speaker 3: Why are you telling me this? What makes you think
I have any interest in that at all?
Speaker 1: Oh? Have you a lot of red meat? Welcome back
to the Shirley You Can Be Serious Podcast? Everybody? What
season are we in?
Speaker 3: You will not believe it? We are starting our fifth season. No,
I am serious because we are doing our fifth season.
Speaker 1: Cannot believe it. People listen to the show after five years,
I can't believe it.
Speaker 3: Today we are talking about the biggest movie of nineteen
eighty four, the biggest, the biggest, and one of the
biggest movies of nineteen eighty seven, and we're comparing them
against themselves. But they're basically garbon copies of each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those episodes, like we typically
we hold off our judgment until the very end. Is
kind of a little teaser for our audience, right, we
want people to want to know which movie we're going
to pick in this one. I'm not going to be
able to keep my opinion to myself during this process.
But as I was watching the second one, the William
Goldman quote kept popping into my head of all sequels
are whores.
Speaker 3: So you may love part love Part two.
Speaker 1: You may hate Part two. I don't know, you know,
but it will be fun to discuss these two very
similar but also very distinct movies.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we're talking about Beverly Hills Cop versus Beverly
Hills Cop Part two. Yeah, we're gonna be doing the
freaking Neutron dance. We're gonna be doing shakedown. It's gonna
be awesome.
Speaker 1: Yep, I got my keyboard here. I'm ready to pound
out some Max l F on that note. By the way,
next few episodes after this, we're going to be comparing
the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack to the Miami Vice soundtrack,
So be sure and hit follow on your podcast app
so that you will catch those episodes. And then we
also need to give a shout out to our executive
producer of this show, Miss Carrie Ahearn. Carrie, thank you
so much. Carrie signed up on our Patreon page to
be one of our patreons. If you would like to
sign up on our Patreon page, you just go to
patreon dot com Surely Podcast and for as little as
five bucks a month, you get access to all of
our one hit wonders and you helped to support the
podcast that Jason and I spend hours and hours on
and we have a lot of fun, but we we
love the appreciation and we love the family that is
our Patreon family.
Speaker 3: We create some one hit wonder episodes over there that
we really think are some of our best work.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And we also want to give a shout out
to a listener who contacted us by email, mister Chuck Bryan. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was talking to Chuck and we were emailing back
and forth a little bit and just kind of asked
him how he found us, and it was really fun
to interact with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a big fan of the run DMC
versus Beastie Boys episode. Shout out to our co host
on those episodes, def Dave, but he said he loved
the way that we give the whole treatment. Like, he
didn't have run DMC in his rotation on his playlist,
but after our episode, it became a part of what
he listened to.
Speaker 3: That's really cool. We love when we get feedback like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, love it all. Right, let's jump into Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2: Cop.
Speaker 1: Do you want to be the limon twaste? Yeah? Sure,
if it's no bother now, Okay, So, if you have
been a listener of our podcast, you have heard the
story of Don Simpson and Jerry Brookheimer when we did
our Top Gun episode, and you have also heard the
story of Tony Scott when we did our Top Gun episodes.
If you have not listened to those episodes yet, please
go back and listen to them. I mean, it involves
a dead naked doctor in a pool house owned by
Don Simpson as just one of the many stories that
are involved in the making of that movie. And we've
also told the story of Eddie Murphy because we covered
in our very first season, we covered Trading Places versus
coming to America, and so we talked about Eddie and
his journey to become who he was. Trading Places was
one of his first movies with forty eight hours, and
then this one was quick on the heels, right.
Speaker 3: I don't want to interrupt your flow here, but Eddie
Murphy's nineteen eighties was amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now his nineteen nineties is a different story, but just
listen to his eighties. Okay, forty eight hours, Trading Places,
Beverly Hills Cop, The Golden Child, Beverly Hills Cop Part two,
Raw Coming to America, and Harlem Knights.
Speaker 1: It's not too bad.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's smoking right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's the you know when he's in the
hotel and he's talking about the article that he's going
to write, Michael Jackson sitting on Top of the World. Yeah, yeah,
Well Playboy had done an article on Eddie Murphy in
nineteen eighty three called Eddie Murphy on Top of the World.
I'm guessing that that's where he got the idea for
the title, and I'm also guessing that he probably improved
most of that scene. But we'll get to that in
a little bit. Okay, you can go and hear the
stories of Don Simpson, Jerry Brookheimer, Tony Scott, Eddie Murphy
on our past episodes of Top Gun at Trading places
and coming to America. So who have I not told you.
Speaker 3: A story about Marty Brest? Martin Brest that is correct. Well,
actually we did talk about him just a touch when.
Speaker 1: We did War Games, yes, and that is definitely a
big part of his whole story. But this is a
guy that we haven't really dived deeply into. I haven't
dived dove dove divt. We haven't gone down the Martin
breast hole yet. And this episode will be the one
I'll check that. Yeah. So Marty Brest was raised in
New York, grew up watching The Honeymooners on TV, which
comes into play a little bit later on. Ultimately he
goes to film school and in nineteen seventy two he
does his student film which is called hot Dogs for
Go GOM. All right, yeah, do you know this. I'm
more familiar with Hot Dog of the movie, but keep going. Okay, yes,
I know a little different. So this movie involves this
photographer who is going to blow up the head of
the Statue of Liberty so that he can catch it
on film and become famous. Okay, And it's the loosely
based on the Hindenburg disaster. Right yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3: The actor that is playing the part of the photographer
in this movie is an unknown Danny DeVito. What now,
here's the other part. The only three actors in the
movie are Danny DeVito, Martin Brest, who's playing a part
in his own movie, and a young woman named Rea Pearlman.
Stop nineteen seventy two. Danny DeVito and Rea Pearlman didn't
get married to nineteen eighty two. This is probably where
they met is on Marty Brest student film when he
was at the AFI Conservatory. All right, for those of
you don't realize who Rea Pearlman is, she plays Carla
on Cheers. Yes, and was married to Danny DeVito for
a really long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah really, I think they separated in maybe twenty seventeen,
not too long ago. Yeah. He does another film, just
another kind of low budget student type film called Hot
Tomorrows in nineteen seventy seven, right after he graduates with
his MFA from the AFI Conservatory. And interestingly, that same year,
Michael Eisner hits up this writer named Danillo Bach about
doing this movie that he's had an idea for. Now
there's a little bit of you know, where did the
story really come from? Right? So don Simpson says the
Beverly Hills cop story idea originated from when I was
driving my old Beater car in Beverly Hills and I
got pulled over by the Beverly Hills p D and
they kind of hassled me, And I thought, well, what
if a cop came in here and he just happened
to be in a beat up car. So that's part
one of maybe the origin story. And then the other
one is Michael Eisner, and he actually was living in
Beverly Hills at that point and was a big wig
in Paramount and he his home had gotten broke into.
He and his wife had a home invasion, and the
Beverly Hills PD were like, on, like, We're in the
door within like three minutes. Like it was ridiculous how
fast they got there. Right, So a little bit of
apprehension at outsiders and a really really dedicated team to
its citizens. Right.
Speaker 3: So here's the thing I heard this story as well.
I don't believe Don Simpson for one second, right, Don Simpson,
because I heard him also say that he and Bruckheimer
went into Eisner's office and they were reading upside down
the scripts on top of the desk.
Speaker 1: It's the same story with it was Jeffrey Katzenberg instead
of okay, okay, yeah, yeah, Katsburg and yes they saw it.
But what he said, what his statement was, Hey, that's
my story, that's our script. We should be the ones
that are producing that. And Katzenberg was like, well, okay,
go do it, yeah, take it right. So hey, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: One more thing I wanted to mention to you before
we got off With Marty Brest. He actually appears in
Beverly Hills cop Okay. He is the hotel clerk at
the very end when Axel Folly is got his arm
in as sling and he's like, excuse me, sir, do
you sell those Beverly Hills robes? I guess are? Those
are ninety five dollars each. He's a money is no object.
I'll take this one was for you, Billy. That's Marty Brest.
Speaker 1: Well perfect And if you okay now that you know that,
when you guys, when our audience when they go back
and watch the film, look at that guy, and then
go back and look at the statue in the art
gallery when actual Foley first comes in, there's this weird
table where these heads are spinning around on a table. Yeah,
may Or d is like standing up and he's got
a chain around his neck. Yes, he also looks exactly
like Marty. So anyway, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer have
got this script there trying to get it done. They
actually see Eddie Murphy at some point on the studio
a lot and they talk to him about this and
he's like, I would love to do that movie. Now.
Of course, this is the movie comes out in eighty four,
so this had to be happening around eighty one eighty two.
I mean, Eddie Murphy is still doing Saturday Night Live. Sure,
maybe he's gotten started doing forty eight Hours or Trading
Places or something like that, but he's still pretty much
a new actor on the scene, right. But they love
the idea of Eddie Murphy being this out of town
who comes to Beverly Hills.
Speaker 3: So here's the thing. Dan Boch, when he wrote the
script originally he had in his mind guys like Al Pacino,
James Kahn, Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean started writing it in seventy seven, so
at that point those were the guys who would you
would pick for something like that.
Speaker 3: Well, and then get this name, Richard Pryor.
Speaker 1: Now that one's that's a little different.
Speaker 3: That's interesting, right, right.
Speaker 1: Well, ultimately by this time they get the script to
another guy because they're thinking, hey, we want to add
some comedy to this thing. The one that Bach had
written was a very straight piece. They've got Eddie Murphy
that they think is going to be a part of this,
so they think, well, we've got to put some humor
in this. So they get another guy named Daniel Petrie.
He hadn't done much at that point, but he was
a guy who's a little bit better at comedy writing,
and he later would do several of these kind of movies.
Did Turner and Hoots later on too? Yeah? Yeah, okay.
So during this time also Marty Brest is trying to
get work as a director, right, actually directs Saturday Night
Live episode in nineteen eighty he, as I said, did
the Hot Tomorrow's. But in seventy nine he did this
movie called Going in Style. Have you seen this thing? No? Okay,
So it's got George Burns, it's got Lee Strasburg, who
we talked about, remember, talked about both in our Godfather
to episode and more recently when we did our our
Five Minutes of Fire episodes. He was the teacher of
Jim James Dean. Yeah, Marlon Brando disowned him, but James
Dean said, yes, Strasburg was my teacher, right. So it's
got George Burns, it's got Lee Strasburg, and it's got
Ed Norton from The Honeymooners, And it's about these old
guys who sit around in the park and suddenly decide,
I'm tired of just sitting here listening to these crappy kids.
I want to go do something adventurous. And they decide
to go rob a bank. I'm pretty sure I've seen
this movie. I think I saw it when I was
a little kid. I was a big George Burns fan.
But their plan is to put on the Groucho Marx
glasses and that's going to be their disguise. Okay, yeah,
And George Burns puts it on at something at some point,
and Lee Strasburg's just like, Roy, what are you doing?
He's like, dang, so you can recognize me. So anyway,
he's done this and then he gets his big break.
He gets tapped to direct Matthew Broderick's big new movie
that they've been working hard on called Wargames right right,
damn it, I pissed on his park plug. If I
thought it's doing it good, let the boy in there.
Speaker 3: Major.
Speaker 1: Well, he gets going on that. He spends a couple
of years developing this thing, right, and then while they're
in the midst of shooting, like he's shot multiple scenes
and weeks with Matthew Broderick and with Ali Sheety and
we kind of talked about this in the Wargames episode,
all of a sudden he gets fired, right, just kind
of out of the blue, kind of out of the blue,
like he was having disagreements with one of the producers
and he got fired. He had to take the kids
aside and say, listen, guys, I'm afraid I don't think
I'm gonna be your director anymore. And like they were
in tears. They didn't know how to react when John
Batham came in, but we didn't really delve into what
happened there. So he had gotten fired, which of listening
to him talk, he's upset about, like he's like, this
doesn't happen in Hollywood. I've had my first big movie
opportunity and I got fired, And what that means is
I'm probably never going to direct another movie again, and
so I've just spent the last ten years of my
life preparing for something that I'm not going to be
able to do. It was so bad. He would be
walking along the sidewalk. He would see somebody he knew
walking the other direction toward him, thinking that he hadn't
seen them, and get on the other side of the
street so they didn't have to talk to him. OU
really bad shape, right, right, And so he's down to
five hundred dollars oh his rent is four hundred and
fifty dollars oh Man and Jerry Bruckheimer is calling him
up saying I want you to direct this movie. And
so of course he says no, right what No? He
said no?
Speaker 3: He said no, like multiple times he said no.
Speaker 1: And over They're like, we love your work, we want
you to come do this. He's like, this is not
the kind of director. I don't do action movies. I
don't know how to do action movies. I'm not the
right guy for you. Like his focus is character development, right,
he is like a channeling and actor through the actor. Right.
He is a guy who is focused on character, not
on action. And so he thought he was ill equipped
for it, and so literally he's he doesn't know what
he's going to do. After he pays his rent and
is down to fifty bucks and they're calling him again
and he's saying no, no, and they're on the phone pressuring.
He's like, I'm not gonna get Jerry's like, I'm not
getting off the phone with you until you say yes,
and he's like, hold on. And Jerry has no idea
what he's doing. You know, he's doing flipping a coin.
He flipped a coin. He said to himself, heads, I
do it, tails, I don't do it. Flip the coin.
It was heads, uh huh. He said, okay, I'll do it.
I don't even know how you, as a director who
realizes that your career is probably over, can say no
to Eddie Murphy, Jerry Brookhimer, and Donald Simpson in this time.
Speaker 3: How could you?
Speaker 1: It's a paramount movie.
Speaker 3: How could you turn down anything? At that point, Hey,
Cinemax wants you to make an after dark movie. Whatever, dude,
sounds good, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Now a couple of other players come in
at this point. We've got Mickey Rourke and we've got
Sylvester Stallone, Right, what do you can tell me?
Speaker 3: Well, so here's the deal. So they were worried about
whether Eddie Murphy could carry a lead role in a movie, right,
and they were looking for somebody who could play that
sort of Detroit guy. Again. At this time, they're still
deciding is this an straight action movie, is this a comedy?
Is this a mixture? Well, after they see Diner, they
are introduced to Mickey Rourke.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The story is is that Don Simpson cut his picture
out of like a newspaper and holds it up and says,
isn't this guy great? Like Mickey Rourke's face?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Of course, this is way before he injects it with
a billion things of botox.
Speaker 1: And whatever hgh will change the face.
Speaker 3: But I mean, so Mickey Rourke was we talked about
him in Rubblefish, right, Yeah, so this is right after
rum Fish.
Speaker 1: My sister in law taught him how to drive a motor.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, And so they they sign him
to a like a hold contract. So they're like, hey,
Mickey Rourke, we want you for this movie. It's not
quite ready for you, we're not ready to shoot yet,
but we want to pay you.
Speaker 1: Four hundred thousand dollars bucks to hold. Just don't make
a movie.
Speaker 3: Right, just sit there and pay. We're gonna pay you
to sit on your butt. Well, time goes on and
that contract expires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Daniel Petrie was reworking in the script at this point.
They were expecting him to be done, and he didn't
get done.
Speaker 3: So here's the interesting thing to me when I think
about Mickey Rourke being in this picture, or the guy
we're going to talk about next, When you look at
the actor that they cast to be Michael Tandino, I
don't buy him an Axel Foley as childhood bros.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Are they both good actors and talented people, Of course
they are, But I see that guy who played Michael
Tandino and Mickey Rourke a lot better together.
Speaker 1: They look like they could be brothers. Right.
Speaker 3: So so anyway, there are some leftover pieces from the
casting process, which we'll talk about in a minute. So
Mickey Rourke's contract expires, he leaves. Okay, now they're going
to go full court press after Eddie Murphy right well
behind Simpson and Bruckheimer's back. The studio offered the picture
to Sylvester Stallone, and they thought, there's no way he's
going to do this. Comedy's not his.
Speaker 1: Thing, right, So he says, yes, he wants to change
the name from Axel Foley to Axel Colbretti.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we actually get Cobretty a couple of years later,
known as the movie Cobra.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what Sylvester Stallone did was he takes the
script and he's like, let me work with this. He
wasn't really into the comedy part of things, and he
tried to rework the Axual dialogue to sound more like
he talked, and he injected it full of action sequences
because that's his bread and butter, right, sure, And so
what their initial budget for the movie was was fourteen
million dollars. By the time they got Sylvester Stallone script back,
it's a twenty million dollar or more script. And keep
in mind, Simpson and Bruckheimer don't want him anyway, right,
they want Eddie Murphy. Right.
Speaker 3: So here's the interesting thing. One of the final climax
sequences is Stallone as Axual Cobretti in a Lamborghini going
head to head with a locomotive like a like a train,
some sort of train sequence. Okay, and they're like a
Lamborghini and a train. We can't afford this? What right,
we can't afford the Lamborghini right right?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's paramount. They could have afforded it
if they wanted to. But Simpson and Bruckheimer are like, guys,
you don't want to risk this much money right on
an unknown concept. Here, go back to the fourteen million
save yourself. All you have to do is go to
Stallone and say, I'm sorry, we're only going to give
you fourteen million dollars to make this movie. And he'll bail.
And they're like, we don't want him to bail. And
they're like, well do it. And so Barry Diller, one
of the producers, he goes, He looks at the windows.
He's like, tell Stallone that we're not gonna do it
with him, and they and Stallone is out. Now.
Speaker 3: I did hear that there was a kind of a
behind the scenes story where there wasn't any orange juice
in Stallone's dressing room.
Speaker 1: I heard that too.
Speaker 3: And he lost his mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I get the impression that Stallone may
be a bit of a prima donna.
Speaker 3: Well hold that thought, because Eddie Murphy goes full blown
Prima Donna in part two.
Speaker 1: So right, right, So ultimately Stallone is out, Eddie Murphy
is in. And basically what they did with Stallone is
they said, whatever elements that you put into the script
that you have, you obviously can keep those, We're not
going to use those. And so that's how we get
the movie Cobra.
Speaker 3: Cobra starring Semester Stallone and Bridget Nielsen. Yes, good disease
on the Cure, which I mean she shows her face
here in just a little bit.
Speaker 1: So Eddie Murphy's back in. They've got a comedy script
and they've got a director. Now they just have to
cast the rest of the.
Speaker 3: Movie, right, Okay, so let's talk about the cast. Okay, Yes,
For people who didn't grow up in the eighties, I
don't think it's really possible to explain how big of
a superstar Eddie Murphy was at this moment in time.
Speaker 1: Trading Places had come out in eighty three, summer of
eighty three. Sure, forty eight Hours had come out eighty two,
so he had had two successful movies back.
Speaker 3: To back, well plus Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1: Right obviously that, yes, he's in a better position than
Bruce Willis was when he signed up for Diehard. No
doubt he's he's looking pretty at this point, twenty.
Speaker 3: Four years old.
Speaker 1: When he does Beverly Hills Cop twenty four, that would
be so crazy. You know, this is the cleanest and
nicest police car I've ever been in my life.
Speaker 3: This things nice to my parder. And so we'll talk
about the results of this movie here in a little bit.
But basically, once Beverly Hills Cop is released, Eddie Murphy's
probably the second most famous person in the world.
Speaker 1: On top of the world.
Speaker 3: Michael Jackson's probably number one at this moment, right, So
Eddie Murphy goes super sonic after this movie. Yeah, So
let's talk about through the cast here. So Lisa Albacher
plays Janette Yep.
Speaker 1: Is this your car?
Speaker 2: Oh No? In Beverly Hills, we just take whichever cars clubs.
Speaker 3: I know her as seeger or Cigar from Officer and
a Gentleman.
Speaker 1: Never seen the movie.
Speaker 3: She so, yeah, she plays one of the cadets in Gentlemen.
She's great. I think she looks wonderful in this movie.
She's not a standard beauty.
Speaker 1: She said. They spent two days doing and redoing her
hair to get the right hair, and you go back
and look at that and you're like, oh, that's the
style of ladies.
Speaker 3: Frosted fluffy.
Speaker 1: Look. She was actually hired to be Stallone's love interests. Yeah, yeah,
because Stallone had changed that part. It was initially supposed
to be a platonic relationship and then Stallone changed it
to be a love interest. Yes.
Speaker 3: You also have in this movie have Stephen Berkhoff as
Victor Maitland.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My advice to you is crawl back to your little
stone in Detroit before you get squashed.
Speaker 3: Okay, this guy played a awesome bad guy in the eighties.
Speaker 1: He's like, he's like the precursor to Hans Kruber, Right,
he really is. Yeah, he's got that cold European disdain
that you just loathe him. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: It is so Listen to this run that he has
in the eighties. Okay, he does Octopusy in eighty three,
he does Beverly Hills cop in eighty four, he does
Rambo in eighty five, he does Under the Cherry Moon
in eighty six.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he.
Speaker 3: Becomes Prince's bad guy. Okay, now then when they're hiring,
they need they need Rosewood and they need Taggarts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're more likely to believe an important local businessman
than a foul mouth jerk from out of town. Foul mouth,
you man.
Speaker 3: They audition a bunch of different guys and they're looking
for that right combination.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now keep in mind Marty Breast is in this,
and Marty Brest grew up on the Honeymooners. Right. He said,
I also loved Laurel and Hardy, Like you've got this
combination that they antagonize each other, right, John Aston said
he had. It was his fifth callback. Like he was like,
they keep calling me back and with a different actor,
and with a different actor, and with a different actor.
On the fifth callback, I come in and they put
me with this kid, Judge Reinhold. Right now. By the way,
Judge Reinhold came from Amy Heckerling. Marty Brest and Amy
Heckerling were friends, and he called her up and is like,
I'm looking for a very straight laced guy who could
still do comedy. And she's like, I've got the perfect
guy for you, because she had just done Fast Times
at Richemont High with Reinhold, right, and So when John
aston gets paired up with Judge Reinhold, they're standing in
the hall, they're talking. They're like, do we do improv
some stuff? Do we stick to the script? What do
we do? And Jude Reinhold is like, do you know
what the movie's about? And John Asten's like, no, I've
only ever gotten this scene. This is the only scene
that I know, right, And so then Jedge Reinhold is like,
oh my gosh, you've got to know, and he tells it.
He goes through the whole plot line of the movie
with him, and John Asks' is like, okay, well let's
just get in there and let's just let's improv of
each other knowing this and see what we can do.
And that's what got them both apart.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: You know it says here that by the time the
average American is fifty, he's got five pounds of undigested
red meat in his bowels. Why are you telling me this?
What makes you think I have any interest in that
at all? Well, you eat a lot of red meat.
I love it.
Speaker 3: Then you have Ronnie Cox, who plays Lieutenant Andrew Bogomil
one last.
Speaker 1: Time, what are you doing? I'm on vacation, vacation. Ronnie
Cox just turned the page on what he was going
to get cast as, because he had come from Deliverance
where he's the victim, you know, with the dislocated arm
over his shoulder and Deliverance, and then he comes in
as the hard and knows chief of police right by
the book, by the book, Yeah, fantastic job. And then
and then of course he goes on to be more
villainous characters as time goes on after this, right.
Speaker 3: I having total recall RoboCop. Yeah, he has a nice
little run himself, you know. Okay, I want to talk
about Paul Riser as Jeffrey Yep, kind of before he
blows up. Sure, yeah, right before Aliens yep, where he
plays Burke on Nelly You're right to the wall Burke
and then Matt about you. I mean, Paul Ryser does
a bunch of stuff in The Lady.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and he's a great actor. His his comedy
in this this is Not My Lot.
Speaker 3: You have Jonathan Banks who plays like the second Battie.
He's the man who recks the buffet at the Harrow Club.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's he's fantastic. He's fantastic as a bad guy,
and he was one of my favorite characters in Breaking Back.
He's Mike and breaking bad and he is phenomenal. Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 3: Now, let's talk about Bronson Pinchot for a second.
Speaker 2: Summers that mister Ahman Folly is here, just ax ach
Well Axel Folly is here to see her is older Quints.
Speaker 1: So Bronson Pinchot had been in nothing except risky business
as one of Tom Cruise's buddy high school buddies Joel's friends.
Starts the brothel with him, right right, But Marty Brest
knows him somehow. They're talking like in the living room,
you know, of one of their houses or whatever, and
Bronson Pinchot is like, I don't want to play this part,
and and Marty Brest is like, okay, he's good, but
if I did, if I did play this part, right,
He's like, you know how when you walk into like
the retail stores, like there are these guys who just
have this accent and you have no idea what I mean?
Is he French? Is he ISRAELI? Is he rocking? What is?
And he says it and he goes into the accent
of surgeon. Yeah, Marty Brest says, he just falls on
the floor in hysterics at this accent that he's doing,
like he's he can't control his laughter, and then gets
on his knees and says, please, please, you have to
be in my movie as this part and Bronson Pincho's like,
I have a Hollywood director on his knees begging me.
I have to say yes, right right right yeah. And
of course then he takes that accent and makes it
his character in Perfect Strangers.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 3: So he doesn't come back in part two, does come
back in part three?
Speaker 1: I have not seen Part three.
Speaker 3: Part three is horrible. He's actually like an arms dealer
in Part three, it's the most stupidest crap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's bad.
Speaker 3: Now, I do know that he shows up again in
part four. I saw him in the trailer. Okay, so
we do have surge coming in part four.
Speaker 1: I'm excited. Okay. I like Bronson Pincho's. I watch every
episode of Perfect Strangers.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, okay, good, all right. I want to talk
about briefly. Damon Waynes shows up as Banana man.
Speaker 1: You go and take dam Banana. I can remember seeing
Damon Wayne's on talk show like David Letterman or something
about that, talking about that being his very first part
and how the part was just supposed to be a throwaway,
but he decided to give him the effeminate touch and
that nailed to gut him.
Speaker 3: The part Damon Wayns with hair I don't remember. I
think that's the only time I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Him with her. Yeah, it was receding, but it was
on its way out. And if you don't know who
Damon Wayns is. He goes on with his brothers to
produce Living Color the series. Yeah, yes, of course put
the end in there. Don't let me get it, don't
don't be okay. So yeah, they do in Living Color
together and he becomes a blank man and major pain
and all this other He's hilarious.
Speaker 3: My Wife and Kids is such a funny show. Yeah, okay,
But I do want to talk to you about Gilbert R.
Speaker 1: Hill. It blew me away when I learned this guy's story.
Speaker 3: This is the guy who plays Inspector Todd.
Speaker 1: As I was watching part two and he was I'm like,
that guy is so freaking good. I can't believe he's
not in more stuff. Like he's such a good gripy
angry police chief. He's the guy that sets the stage
for all other hateful police.
Speaker 3: Chiefs, right, not Effanfolian here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he was an actual cop, yeah, homicide. He joined
the Detroit Police Department in nineteen fifty nine. By the
eighties he was head of homicide. By nineteen ninety seven
he was the president of the city council. He ran
for mayor. Yeah, in two thousand and one. He lost.
But this guy is like a cop and politician in Detroit.
Speaker 1: Well, And the way he got his part was Marty
Brest was in Detroit scouting out places to shoot, right,
and he's like, of course, we have to go to
the police station to see what a Detroit police station
looks like. And Gilbert Hill is there and he starts
talking to him about his life as a homicide detective.
And as they're talking, he's like, I just love the
way that this guy sounds and speaks. And he says,
would you be interested in reading for the part? And
Gilbert Hill is like, sure, why not?
Speaker 3: I heard him talk about the only major difference between
him his actual self, and Inspector Todd Yeah, is that
he said, I'm not a foul mouthed as Inspector Todd
is he likes to drop the f bom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so freaking good and yeah you as you mentioned,
he has a lot of political success later on, and
he says, I owed it all to that movie. I
wowed all to getting cast in Beverly Hills Cop.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I did want to mention this little nugget. When
Judge Reinhold first met Don Simpson. Yeah, when he like
they're shaking hands, dom Sinson starts to show him all
the semi automatic weapons he's got in his trunk of his.
Speaker 1: Car, trunk of his car, which of course comes up
in I've Heard Ze Cop too.
Speaker 3: That's right, by the way. One other thing on Judge Reinhold, Yeah,
I didn't realize this, but he and Bill Paxton were buddies.
They met on the set of The Lord's of Discipline,
which is an eighty three movie. It's a really good movie.
But they're all dinking around in England because they're bit players,
and so they end up starring in Pat Benattar's video
for Shadows of the Night.
Speaker 1: We're running with the shine on night, so fake my
hand be all right?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: Just because they're on and off day, they don't have
anything else better to do. You go back and watch
that video. Boom, there's Bill Paxton. Boom, there's Judge rying Hold.
Before anybody had any idea who they were like, oh
that's crazy.
Speaker 1: So wow, that's a good story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go. Okay, I don't know if you
realize this or not, but Marty Brest ends up using
John Ashton in Midnight Run. Oh yeah as the bounty hunter.
We I mean, Midnight Run is a great, I think
underappreciated movie.
Speaker 1: I have not seen the movie. I wanted I try.
I want to try to see it before we got
to the episode, but I did not get a chance
to see it. But I'm so good love it. I
love it. Yeah, and that's another great you know, switch
of the cast because he decides, hey, you remember at
the beginning he was thinking, I can't do this. It
is an action comedy and that's I'm not an action guy.
Well he totally It's like, well I guess I am.
And he does Midnight Run and then he's like a comedy,
who do I get? And Robert de Niro's like, can
I be in your comedy? He's like raging bull taxi driver?
You want to go do comedy. Come on, buddy, let's
do it.
Speaker 3: It is so good.
Speaker 1: Oh that's fan. I love it. Okay. So while they're
making the movie, as I mentioned before, Marty Breast is
very much about character, like, you know, not the action guy,
but the character guy. Sure, and so he the way
he does it, and I love this, you know, because
you have some directors that are like shot after shot,
shot after shot after shot, trying to get it perfect,
and then you've got like Clint Eastwood directors that are like, Okay,
I think we got it on that first one. Let's
move on, and the actors are like, well, cold, you
don't want to do it again? Why you want to
waste everybody's time? Right, So Marty Breast is kind of,
to me like the perfect mixture of that. He will
shoot on script for the first two or three takes
and then he's like okay, now improfit, you know, and
he will take the move it around. And so a lot,
a whole lot of this movie is improved lines which
you would expect from Eddie Murphy, right, I mean, of course,
but also with John Aston and Judge Reinhold, they were
improv and a ton of their stuff, those lines that
we quoted at the beginning of the episode about you know,
red meat and why would I want to hear this? Well? Eat?
A lot of that was the scene in the script
was they wait in car right like that was it,
you know, and so he's like give them something, and
so their scenes by themselves, they would improv. Well, a
lot of what we got was their improv work, including
the I can't climb over the wall scene where they're
on the shoulders. So good, but then when Eddie Murphy
comes in and does scenes with them, their job is
just to react to his improv, right, he They're just
there to riff off of whatever he does. Now, you've
got Ronnie Coxon there, who is I mean, he's the
professional of them, all right, He's been in plenty of
stuff and he's a guy who's used to doing things
on script. But he said it was not even though
Eddie Murphy would riff and go off script and do
all this other stuff, he said he was brilliant about
it because he would do it in such a way
that by the time he was finished with his improv line,
it was a perfect setup for whatever Bogomil's next line
was going to be sure and so he could still
say his scripted line, and he says, so, then I
have this wonderful opportunity. It's like they say, acting is reacting.
I get to just be there and react to this
craziness and then just throw my line in when it's time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know the scene the super Cops speech that
Eddie Murphy gives. Yeah, before I knew it, these boys
had foiled the crime. They're not cops, they're super cops.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: When you watch that scene, John Ashton is like rubbing
his eyes, trying dying to laugh, and he had already
said that we had ruined many a take. And Eddie's
trying to do this and trying to be funny, and
we're trying not to laugh. But he's doing like this.
I mean, it was like Harvey Korman in Carol Burnett Show.
He was just busting up trying not to laugh him Conway, Yes,
you know, so funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in that scene they would do the improv
stuff and then Marty Bress would be like, do it again.
By the way, they also wasted film when Marty Brest
was sitting next to the camera because he would start
laughing so that the camera would shake and they would
have to reshoot the scene again because of him. But
that super Cup scene, like they had been shooting for
a long time in that scene, and Eddie Murphy had
this purity oath that he had taken where he wasn't
going to consume alcohol, wasn't going to consume drugs, wasn't
going to do anything to mess with the purity of
his body while he's shooting this movie right right, Well
that included caffeine. But they'd been shooting this scene for
so long and it was there was so much dead
air that Eddie Murphy was kind of winding down, like
he was worn out. And so they're like, you could
have some coffee, right, and he's like, okay, I'll make
an exception for coffee, but that's it, just coffee. And
he said he just took a couple of little SIPs
of the coffee, but since he had had nothing for
so long, it was like jolt. It was like bang
like that, and that's where you get that scene. So
when you see them and you see Aston like holding
his laugh, holding his nose to keep from laughing out loud,
Judge Reinhold, you can watch him. His hands are in
his pockets, he knows what's coming, like they've done it,
they're retaking it for the fourth time. He is pinching
himself on the leg to keep from laughing, like he's like,
I had bruises on my leg. I was pinching myself
so hard to not laugh in that scene.
Speaker 3: You know, with the scene where they pull up to
the Harrow Club and Marty Breast is like, hey, Eddie,
we got some dead air here. Can you give me something?
And he's like, sure, backs up, pulls up for it.
He's like, hey, can you put this in a good spot.
All this scrap happened the last time I was here.
It's a great line, it's so funny. Gets a laugh. Yeah,
and Eddie just whipped it out of his back pocket.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. Hey. You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things I forgot to mention when we're
talking about the production when it was still bouncing back
and forth between is an action film as a stallone
film as it a comedy. We're not sure is Eddie
Murphy involved? What about Mickey Rouric. This script was offered
to Martin Scorsese to direct this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right, yeah, can you imagine?
Speaker 3: And he's like, what what what? Do you guys talk
about this is not me? Yeah, so they go to
David Cronenberg. Yeah, how violent a movie could this have been?
I know, like somebody would have eaten their own fingers
or something. But here's the funny thing. Martin Scorsese looked
at the script. He said, this is Coogan's bluff. Oh yeah,
the Clint Eastwood movie, right, like just a cowboy cop
comes into a big city and it's a fish.
Speaker 1: Out of watertail. Yeah. He's like, this has already been done. Yeah,
well sort of, yeah, not exactly.
Speaker 3: By the way, when Eddie Murphy was hired to do
Beverly Hills Cop, he turned down another movie from nineteen
eighty four. Do you remember the movie?
Speaker 1: I absolutely do, because when we came across that nugget
when we did our episode on Ghostbusters, I found out
that Dan Ackroyd had written the Winston part with Eddie
Murphy in mind right, and all of a sudden, all
of the Winston lines are coming to me in Eddie
Murphy's voice, in Eddie Murphy's delivery. I was like, how
I like. My comment was, this movie is on a
top notch level, but it would have moved up if
that of course I don't know, because it was a
Bill Murray vehicle, right, And so what do you do
if you've got both of those guys?
Speaker 3: I don't know, Man, in the alternate universe where I
can go and rent these alternate movies, I do want
to see the Ghostbusters version with Eddie Murphy as Winston. However,
I would not trade the current Beverly Hills cop for
that Ghostbusters movie.
Speaker 1: So he's like, he's got the opportunity to do a
bigger part, more money. He takes that instead of doing Ghostbusters, right,
and turns out it's a success. So Marty Brest's career
is saved in this action right, and the movie opens
up at number one. Yes, the first Eddie Murphy movie
to open it at number one in the box office.
And he would do it six more times after this.
Ooh in a row.
Speaker 3: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: What I'm run man?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this was released December first, nineteen eighty four.
It's actually considered the biggest movie of nineteen eighty four,
even though I made the majority of its money in
eighty five. And that's saying something because Ghostbusters was a
megaton bomba So I want to throw this at you
just listen to this real quick.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Here's the list of the top ten movies of nineteen
eighty four. Okay, okay, this is a fun little ride here. Okay,
Beverly Hills Cop number one.
Speaker 1: This is by box office return.
Speaker 3: This is by this is domestic, this is the United States.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: So you've got Beverly Hills Cop number one, you got
Ghostbusters two, you got Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, three, Gremlins,
The Karate Kid, Police Academy, Footloose, Romancing in the Stone
Star Trek three Splash, and then you get Purple Rate
at eleven. Okay, wow, all of those lots of fun. Yeah,
and if I can just jump to nineteen eighty seven
for a second, and by comparison, talking about Beverly Hills
Cop two, yeah, a whole lot less fun at the
box office was had nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Okay, they still did very well.
Speaker 3: Sure, so in nineteen eighty seven, your top movie three
minute a baby Wow, Yeah, wah wah, Number two Fatal Attraction.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's I mean, it is big. Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 3: Then you have Beverly Hills Cop Part two, Good Morning Vietnam,
great movie, Moonstruck, The in Touchables, great movie, Secret of
My Success.
Speaker 1: I loved it, but I was a huge Michael J.
Speaker 3: Fox stake out.
Speaker 1: You loved it. I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Leath the Weapon we both love absolutely, which is
of east Wick. Yeh, dirty Dancing and Predator.
Speaker 1: Well, not bad.
Speaker 3: It's not bad.
Speaker 1: There's if you compare it to the top ten movies
of twenty twenty three, that's true. Guarantee, it's going to
be nine movies better.
Speaker 3: I'll take eighty seven one.
Speaker 1: So we've were to eighty seven, so that that means
that we're moving on to Beverly Hills Cop Part two.
So that brings us to Beverly Hills Cop to which
we will take up on our next episode.
Speaker 3: We will see you back here next week. No bananas
in thentail.
Speaker 1: Night like, you know what I mean? You know what
banda is in my tailpie
Speaker 3: You're not falling for the ban Tailbi