Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely Can't Be Serious podcast,
discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten of eighties
and nineties pop culture with your co hosts James D.
Graves and Jason Colban.
Speaker 2: All right, let's do this, don't you. Let's do it? Okay, Okay,
here we are.
Speaker 3: We are here for our Eddie Murphy, John Landis duo,
the Trading Places versus coming to America.
Speaker 4: Looking good, Jason feeling good.
Speaker 2: D Let's do this, all right? Remember to follow us
on Twitter at Shirley Podcast.
Speaker 3: Right or follow us on Facebook at Shirley Podcast. If
you want to, you can email us Shirleypodcast at gmail
dot com.
Speaker 2: That's right. We'd love to hear from you. So interact
with us. Tell us how we're doing, tell us what
you agree with, tell us what you disagree with, tell
us where we're way off.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I we had somebody say something once and it made
me think of my history professor in high school. He
started the whole class first day of class. He's like,
I might tell you something that's not accurate, but you
have to figure that out. I was like, wow, Okay,
we researched these things. We're not experts in anything that
we do, anything that we're talking about, but we do
research them.
Speaker 4: We do. Yeah. So but if we get something wrong,
call us out.
Speaker 2: We like it, that's right, let's hear from you.
Speaker 4: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we're going to talk about Eddie Murphy who
I was listening to Delirious on the way over here today,
and my gosh, the man is so freaking funny.
Speaker 4: I wish he would do stand up some more. It's
been I think.
Speaker 2: It's been almost thirty years.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think with Raw was the last actual stand up
he did, right, and it was only three big show
stand up that he did. The first Eddie Murphy, then
Delirious and then Raw Wow. But he that's where he
got his start. You know, he started off in stand up.
He was the kid who didn't want to go outside
and play. He wants to stay in and watch TV,
which is kind of me too. He started doing stand
up when he was fifteen years old. It's incredible, my
son is fifteen. Yeah, to imagine them up on stage,
although Brock I could actually see him up on stage
delivered some friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get it together, man, he start working.
Speaker 4: He's hilarious.
Speaker 2: So he starts that and then somebody says, hey.
Speaker 3: You know, they're they're looking for a black guy over
Saturday Night Live. You should give audition for that, and
he's he didn't even I mean, he didn't really watch
Saturday Night Live that much and just thought it was whatever, right,
But then he thought, oh, maybe it'll be good for my.
Speaker 4: Stand up.
Speaker 1: For him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get me out there and I'll get some better,
get some better stand up gigs. And then as it
turned out, it was opened a whole lot more doors.
Speaker 2: When he was on Saturday Early Live, it was clear
right away that this guy is going to be a.
Speaker 4: Star, absolutely well.
Speaker 3: And I mean I can understand his reaction to Saturday
Night Live at that point because Lauren Michaels had left
the show and Saturday Night Live sucked, right, I mean,
this is the early eighties and they were awful.
Speaker 2: Well, they had lost Chevy Chase, they had lost all
all these people had left.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so when he comes in to do the audition,
he does the audition is an old bit from the
seventies with Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor where they do
the word association game and you know, we're a family
friendly podcast, so.
Speaker 4: He can't do it.
Speaker 3: But Chevy Chase is using these racial slurs, and Richard
Pryor is supposed to respond with you know, the word response,
and all he could do is say honky honky and
dead honky. Yes, he throws out the end word Richard
Bridle like a home game. And so Eddie does that
with Joe Piscopo is his audition piece, and he just
he knew the bit because he loved Richard Pryor, and
of course he nailed it and he saved the show.
I mean, yeah, he really wasn't for him. I don't
know that Saturday Night Live would still be a thing.
Speaker 2: It definitely got that boost it needed at that early
stage when it could have died.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, right. It was the reason people started watching again.
Speaker 2: I think fun so cool. So we're going to talk
about Trading Places from nineteen eighty three, yes, which is
an Eddie Murphy dan Aykroyd movie, right and coming to America,
which came out in July fourth of nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 4: YEP.
Speaker 2: This is interesting because Trading Places is Eddie Murphy's second movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his first movie was forty eight Hours with Nick
Nolty he had gotten that piece because his agent was
dating the guy who was going to make the movie.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the rumor was that they had just seen him
on Saturday Night Live and got him from that.
Speaker 4: But it is actually like he had a really inside.
Speaker 2: Nice yeah deal on that one. You know, the scene
that stands out in forty eight hours to me, Eddie
Murphy wise, if you'll remember, he takes the cops badge.
Eddie Murphy is a con, you know. They get him
out of jail for this, right, and he goes and
he said, I'm gonna take care of this problem. He
takes the badge, gets his cowboy hat and goes into
a honky tonk.
Speaker 1: You start running a respectable business and I don't have
to come in here and hassle you every.
Speaker 2: Night, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: And that scene is unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: At the point that at the point that that scene
finishes up, like people in the audience were standing up
and cheer him because it was a straight I mean
it was it was still funny. You can't be Eddie
Murphy in the early eighties and not be funny, right,
But that was more of a straight piece for him,
right straight.
Speaker 4: Actor.
Speaker 2: You know who wrote that scene, Our friend Steven Desusa.
Speaker 4: Oh, right, from Diehard.
Speaker 2: He wrote Diehard. That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean a thousand movies, but yeah, that's right, right.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's our course favorite of his movies.
Speaker 2: We can get into that a little bit later. Sure, yeah, okay,
So Trading Places are released June eighth, nineteen eighty three.
Just take those old all right. So okay, so current
events right for me, just kind of a little fashion thing.
Swatch introduces their first watches.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love I had a Swatch for years years. Really,
I'm still wearing Swatches into the nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to hear my Swatch story. I bought
with my own money what I thought was a really
cool Swatch watch. Yeah, I didn't really know. My friends
are like, hey, Swatch is the way to go. I
go to the store, buy a Swatch. I like it
looks cool. Bring it to school the next day, Hey, guys,
check out my Swatch. They're like, why'd you buy a
girls one? Like, what are you talking about? The little
ones where girls? The big ones were boys? You only
do the plot overview of Trading Places, all right? So
Lewis Winthorpe the third is a successful commodity broker in Philadelphia.
He's got a great job, beautiful fiance in a wonderful
home that includes a butler Coleman. Billy Ray Valentine is
a con man and a hustler who pretends to be
a legless Vietnam Vet, begging and bugging people for money.
Winthorpe's employers, the Duke Brothers, make a bet that if
they switched and took Billy Ray Valentine from the streets,
put him in a job, and if they somehow disgraced Winthorpe,
he would turn to a life of crap. And so
they make this bet, and they set it up in
such a way that they bring Billy Ray in for
his job, and they cast out Winthorpe to the streets,
and some hilarity ensues. But Winthorpe and Valentine figure this out.
They join up, and they're going to take down the
Duke Brothers with the help of Ophelia played by Jamie
Lee Curtis, who is the piger with the Heart of Gold,
and they're going to take down the Duke brothers. Okay,
so nineteen eighty eight, that year.
Speaker 4: I can remember so clearly. We went.
Speaker 3: We were so excited because Mike Tyson was redefining what
it meant to be a boxer.
Speaker 4: I mean, he was just unbeatable.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: And I played plenty of hours of Mike Tyson's punch.
Speaker 4: Out on my name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we went to we had a big event.
It was I think maybe pay per view was coming
out the first time, or maybe this was on HBO
and we didn't get it at the time. But he
had a fight with Michael Spinks. And I can remember
going there where it's a big party.
Speaker 4: There are several people.
Speaker 3: There were all guys ready to go that I'm going
with my dad, you know, and the fight's about to start.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking, okay, I'm gonna grab a coke real quick.
Speaker 3: I grab a coke, I see some chips, I come
back in and the fight is over. He had knocked
Michael Spinks out in ninety one seconds.
Speaker 2: I remember that too. That was amazing. This is a
time with Mike Tyson. I mean, this was a huge match.
I mean I thought at the time, man, these are
two big boys gonna duke it out.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: Turns out there's only one big boy. And he was
big and bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was all right.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if you know this, d but
on Christmas Eve was nineteen eighty eight, terrorists take over
the knock Tommy Plaza Tower.
Speaker 4: Oh I was. I was get wrenched at that.
Speaker 3: I was watching the news, kidding.
Speaker 2: Shots fired.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the other movie that we're going to talk
is Eddie Murphy's second movie with John Landis. We talked
about big stars of the eighties. Eddie Murphy was one,
but John Landis was also one. I mean, without question,
you had five directors that were killing the eighties. He's
got to be on that list, that's right. So they
do the second movie together. The premise, I'll do the
blot outline for Coming to America, a wealthy African nation
of Zamunda, the crown Prince a Keen Joffer grows weary
of his hampered lifestyle. Whybus and he wakes up on
his twenty first birthday.
Speaker 4: I tell you, I want to.
Speaker 3: Get I know I'm supposed to be running through the
plot here, but I want to get the music. I
don't need the band. I don't need the orchestra, you know,
because that'd be a little expensive.
Speaker 4: But that music.
Speaker 3: If I could just wake up to that music every morning,
oh every day would be better.
Speaker 2: Good morning, your highness.
Speaker 4: So it's his twenty first birthday.
Speaker 3: It's the day he is supposed to meet his bride
to be, who he's never met before. But this is
an arranged marriage, and despite the fact that he lives
without any want in the world that goes unmet, he
is unhappy that he has to marry this woman who
he has never met, and then, after meeting her, though
she is beautiful, she is completely complicit to every whim
that he wants. So he decides to go find himself
a bride in a place where people don't know who
he is.
Speaker 5: And where to go to do that is America. Where
better than Queen's Queens, And so he and his best
friend Simmy go to Queen's. They pose as poor African students.
They get a job at the local knockoff of McDonald's
called McDowell's. Because Prince Akim has grown enamored with the
McDowell's owner's daughter, Lisa.
Speaker 4: Hilarity ensues.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, the King comes and tries to put an end
to this crazy idea that he would marry some American
girl and ultimately they are reunited at the end of
the movie.
Speaker 2: Great, great movie. Two great movies, very very enjoyable movies.
The budget, let's just talk about that. They were both
big hits, right okay. Trading Places was the fourth highest
grossing film in nineteen eighty three, behind Return of the
Jedi Flash Dance in terms of a dearmant. So it's
a big, big movie. The budget was twenty eight million
and it made ninety million. Similarly, Coming to America a
big hit from nineteen eighty eight. The budget was thirty
nine million and it made worldwide two hundred and eighty
eight million plus. Huge, huge movie for Eddie mun We
want to go through the actors actresses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's start talking about the actors. Obviously, Eddie Murphy
is in both of these movies.
Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy for a Moment, he made forty eight hours. Yep,
he made Trading Places. He made Coming to America. Our
younger viewers and listeners may recognize his voice from Shrek,
right he plays Donkey and Shrek.
Speaker 1: I like that bold. That is a ninth bold.
Speaker 2: He was in The Nutty Professor Norbit, The Adventures of
Pluto Nash. Have you ever seen that.
Speaker 4: I have not seen that one. I can tell you
that he received a Golden Globe nomination.
Speaker 3: For his work on forty eight Hours, Beverly Hills, Cop
Trading Places, Nutty Professor, and for Dolomite.
Speaker 4: He ultimately won the Golden Globe for dream Girls.
Speaker 2: Dream Girls, right, you know, the only movie that he
turned down that turned out to be a hit that
he regrets not taking the role. I thought this was
really interesting.
Speaker 4: Who Framed Roger rabbits y? You never even knew that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the guy who went on to do Shrek had
proposed it to him before and said, hey, you should
do this movie. He's like, hey, cartoons, I don't want
to do that, right, And when Who Framed Roger Rabbit
became the success that it did, he was like, oh
ooop's not going to refuse one of those offers again.
Speaker 2: And that's how he got Donkey Nice. Roger Rabbit came
out summer of eight eight as well. All Right. Dan Aykroyd,
who you'll remember from Saturday Night Live, right, Blues Brothers, Yep, Ghostbusters, YEP,
Spies Like Us with John Landis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, another eighties icon.
Speaker 2: He was in Conheads in one of the worst movies
in the nineteen eighties, maybe the worst movie of the
nineteen eighties, Ishtar, I don't see his star. He was
in Caddy Shack too.
Speaker 4: Oh, I don't think I hated Caddy Shack too. Oh.
Speaker 3: It was terrible with the guy from the Jerk in it, right,
Jackie Mason, Thank you Jackie Mason.
Speaker 4: It wasn't good.
Speaker 2: It was awful, all right. And so Dannikward was in
maybe the worst movie the nineteen eighties. He was also
in maybe the worst movie the nineteen nineties, called Nothing
but Trouble. No.
Speaker 4: I liked that one too. Oh my god, No, that's hilarious. Okay, right, No,
that's a great one.
Speaker 3: Demmy Moore and Chevy Chack was And if he plays
the judge, doesn't he doesn't with the judge.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, it's a lot. That's awesome, like.
Speaker 2: That movie last time you saw that you were five?
Come on, all right? Also starring this is really cool
Doni Miichi and Ralph Bellamy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Duke brothers. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Doni Miichi hadn't done a movie in thirteen years.
Speaker 4: Thirteen years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's some interesting thing about this one. You know,
when he started he didn't know who these guys were.
They didn't know who he was. But he comes in
and I mean the eighties are very different than the
movies that Dono Michi was making. I mean, you've, especially
with John Landis, You're gonna have lots of F bombs.
You're gonna have lots of movies.
Speaker 2: It's just the way that John Reist did his movies.
Speaker 3: And so Donamichi's got two like Big, you know, drops
the F on f him about his brother. And then
I mean in the bathroom I was when rewatching, I was.
Speaker 4: Like, whoa, oh, he.
Speaker 2: Just dropped the N bomb there, Big, that's right. And
so he was. He was adamantly I mean he's a
conservative religious guy.
Speaker 3: He was adamantly opposed. I'm not doing that. And they're like,
you've you've got to do it. I mean, it's just
part of the role. And he was like, Okay, I'm
gonna do it. I'm gonna do it once and you
better get it on the first take. And he went
before this, before the filming, before the scenes started, he
went early to go apologize to everybody about what was
about to happen, but he didn't hold any punches on it.
Speaker 4: Man he delivers it hard. He does he just like
holy smokes.
Speaker 2: I love that about him, the fact that he's so
gentlemanly to show up and he apologizes to all the
cast and crew. All Right, everyone, guess what I'm getting
ready to drop a major f BO and I'm very
sorry about that.
Speaker 3: I realized that you've been listening to Eddie Murphy.
Speaker 2: All right everyone. I know that there are young people
who like to cuss, but that is not me, so.
Speaker 4: DONOMICI then you know this is this is kind of
a comeback role for him.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The next movie that he did was Cocoon and he
won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar from the Miss So cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah for him.
Speaker 2: You know, Ralph Bellmy kind of got a boost off
of this too. He ended up doing Pretty Woman.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know he's not related to Bill Bellamy. Thanks to
clear that up for Okay, So here's here's that secret
thing I was going to throw. And if you have
any idea who Bill Bellamy is, which you should tell me,
post a picture of Bill Bellamy on our Twitter feed,
say at Tuirley Podcast on Twitter post a picture of him,
or if you're into Facebook, post a picture of Bill
Bellamy on Facebook, and we'll give you a shout out.
Speaker 2: I want to run. That dude has gone away. I
don't know what he's doing.
Speaker 4: He was a big thing there for five minutes. Yep.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: And also in trading places, you have Jamie Lee Curtis.
Speaker 4: Okay, so you know dan Aykroyd.
Speaker 3: They were hesitant about having him come in and do
the show because they weren't sure whether he could be
funny without John Belushi.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: And they were also hesitant about Jamie Lee Curtis because
they didn't know that she could be funny at all.
I mean because the only thing that she had really
done at that point were the horror flick she was.
Speaker 4: Like with screenplaying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she'd done Halloween, she had done Promnite and The
Fog and some of these horror movies. So they didn't
know if she could be funny.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: One thing they did know though, yeah, she was beautiful.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Okay, So here's the story. You know,
you've told your Booby story from Airplane. I'm gonna go
ahead and tell this story now. So this movie came
out in nineteen eighty three, the summer of nineteen eighty three. Yes,
my birthday is in October. I was still seven years
old than nineteen when this movie came out. Okay, we're
in California and this is where this is where I
found out that what rated are really ment Okay, so
I had, you know, at that point at seven years old,
I know, I had asked to see the other John
Landis big hit American were Wolf in London.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and my dad was like, no, you can't say
it's rated R. And I said, what does that mean?
It's too scary? You can't see it because it's too scary, right,
I didn't mention the porn.
Speaker 3: Scene, and so and so we you know, we're in California,
were visiting my cousins. My brother and my cousins are
all fifteen years old. I'm seven. The parents are about
to go out and they're going to go see Doctor Detroit.
Speaker 4: Detroit.
Speaker 3: Yes, that has dan Ekrod in it, which was a
big bomb for him. Fortunately, yeah, fortunately these movies came
out at the same time or he might have been shot.
But the they're going to go see it, and I
was like, oh, I want to go, and you can't go.
Speaker 4: It's it's rated R. And I was like I won't
be scared.
Speaker 2: It doesn't look scary at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure how this movie is scary,
but okay.
Speaker 3: And so then a couple of days later, my cousins,
my brother and I go to the big multiplex, the
in California and we buy tickets for Snow White, and
then we proceed to go in and watch Trading Places
when National Lampoon vacation when and risky business. Okay, like
I got no parent put their hand over my eyes,
nobody's saying don't look. And so all of a sudden,
in one day, I am exposed to Jamie Lee Curtis's boobies,
Rebecca de Mornay's boobies, and Beverly DeAngelo's boobies.
Speaker 4: And it was quite a day for me.
Speaker 2: That's a glorious day.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Yes, dude, those are three big time girls from the
from the eighties.
Speaker 4: Man, I was a changed kid.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's awesome, all right. So switch over to Coming
to America. Okay, sounds good, all right, So we covered
Eddie Murphy, the co star with him was our sending
a hall right, who really hadn't done a whole lot.
Speaker 3: He had been in a little bit of John Landis's
movie Amazon, Women from the Moon.
Speaker 4: Have you seen that?
Speaker 2: I love this movie and I haven't seen it a
long time, but I know it's a It's like a
Kentucky Fried movie, right, it's different skits, and his skit
opens the movie, Our Senior Hall does and it's hilarious.
Speaker 3: Okay, So he and Eddie Murphy come to meet in
kind of a weird way. I haven't gotten a good
story on this, but it's kind of the way Eddie
tells it is he's flipped through the channels and he
sees himself and he's like, well, I don't remember doing that,
and he goes back and it's like, oh, that's not me,
that's our Senial Hall. And in our Senior Hall, not
having done anything. It's really surprising how big his part
was in this movie. I mean, he's he is the
other star of the movie.
Speaker 2: All without a doubt. And John Lanis actually commented that
the studio had known how large this part was, they
never would have gone for our Santa Hall.
Speaker 3: And so both he and Eddie have this thing where
they play multiple parts in the movie, okay, And so
that actually was a way that Eddie got the studio
to buy in on his script was, Hey, I'm going
to play these multiple parts. He had done all of
these characters when he was on Saturday Night Live, but
all of his movies up until that point had just
been like him playing one character and that was it.
And so he does all these parts, and he and
Landis are tossing around ideas for different parts, and they
come up with the old Jewish Man saw. John Landis
tells it like this, He said, back in the early,
you know, nineteen hundreds, the a lot of Jews did
get their famous by doing blackface. So this would be
like the flip of that that you are going to
go and play this old Jewish man. Eddie Murphy's like, yeah,
except look at me, you know how how am I
going to be a white man?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And so at that point John Landis says, well, I
know Rick Baker, Rick Baker. So here's a little history
on John Landis and Rick Baker. John Landis was the
first one to use Rick Baker and anything at all.
And for those of you listening who don't know, Rick
Baker is the guy who did all of the makeup
for American, we'reworth in London, for the Star Wars movies.
For I mean, he's the Michael Jordan of Yeah, he dominated.
So John Landis had had worked on Planet of the
Ape stuff first go around back in the sixties, had
worked on it and went to the guy who had
done the stuff for that for this idea he had
for a movie called Schlock. Schlock was supposed to be
like a parody almost of this movie called trog which
had come out a little while which was short for
Trogolodite and which was absolutely terrible. And he wanted an
actual bad ape costume to wear. And so he goes
to his friend who had done Planet of the Apes
and they're like, yeah, I can do one of those
for one hundred thousand dollars for you. Well, okay, the
budget for the movie sixty thousand dollars I don't remember right,
And they're like, oh, okay. We go to Don Pope
and so he got here's another big name, and he
goes to him and he's like, oh, yeah, I could
do it for you for only eighty thousand dollars. I think, okay,
I guess I don't know what to do. I'm going
to have to figure this out on my own. But
as he's walking out the door, the Don Pope Junior
comes to him, hands him a card and said, hey,
this kid was in just a little while ago. He's
really good. Give him a try. And he has this card.
It's Rick Baker's business card and it says Rick Baker,
Monster Maker.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 2: Man, that's so cool.
Speaker 4: So he's so he.
Speaker 3: Calls Rick Baker up to come do the makeup for
Coming to America. And you know, obviously Eddie Murphy plays
several characters, but the one with the most detailed makeup
is Saul, this old man and this old white Jewish man. Yeah,
so Eddie can do the voice, right, And so the
thing is, can we sell a look? And Rick Baker
actually models him after his father in law.
Speaker 2: Who is a double in the movie. You can actually
see him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on the scenes where Eddie Murphy is the barber,
you still have Saul that you can see behind his shoulder.
You can tell it's not the same guy. Well, it's
the guy that they modeled Saul after.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So other people in coming to America
James Earl Jones, who you may recognized as the voice
of Darth Vader, Yes, who actually has a line in
the movie. Yeah, I'll deal with him myself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a throwback to leave them to me. I
will be with them myself.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I love it. He's been He was in
ConA and The Barbarian and the Sandlot. I mean, he's
been tons of things. But really he's known because he
has this great voice.
Speaker 3: Right well, yeah, I mean he's a fantastic actor all around,
but everybody knows that voice.
Speaker 4: It's unmistakable for sure.
Speaker 3: His dad was actually in Trading Places, Robert Earl Jones what, Yeah,
he was. He has a small role as one of
the attendants in Trading Places.
Speaker 2: So James Earl Jones. Then you have John Amos, who
is well known for his role in Good Times, right yeah,
TV show from the seventies. Yeah, and then also really
well known for his role in Roots. Yeah, he plays adult.
Speaker 4: You're right, which comes up in the movie of course.
Speaker 2: Good du Yeah, it's you know, that's right. He's one
of the best guys in die Hard too.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, Yeah, that's right. He was one of the
army guys I Forart. He's the leader of the cuts
Reels Special Forces. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interestingly, with John Amos, he had done a bunch of stuff.
He was a Golden Gloves boxer, he was a football player,
had played for the Canadian League and eventually got dismissed
from that. And he's kind of figuring out what to do,
but has an agent and they say, hey, you want
to go do a singing McDonald's commercial, and he's like, sure, whatever,
yeah really, So he goes does this singing dancing, get
your get a Mop, get a Bucket commercial with Potsy
before he's Potsy Happy Days, and it ends up being
one of the best McDonald's commercials ever.
Speaker 2: And then of course, you know, he goes on to
own his own mcdonnllas that's so awesome. A year or two,
I make assistant manager and that's where the big bucks
start rolling in, all right. Both of these were directed
by John Landis, who is well known for Uh we
touched on this briefly, but Schlock, Blues Brothers, Animal House,
Spies Like Us, Three Amigos, the Thriller video, which, if
you'll go back to episode one, we talked at length
about the Thriller video and then American WIRELF in London,
and then we need to talk a little bit about
the Twilight.
Speaker 3: Zone movie Okay, so just before Trading Places happened. John
Landis was one of a handful of directors that was
involved with the Twilight Zone movie.
Speaker 4: His segment was a segment with.
Speaker 3: Vic Morrow or Vic Morrow is this racist, bigot who
goes to different places and is in the body of
the people that he's got prejudices against.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: But in the.
Speaker 3: Production of the movie, there's an accident that occurs and
Vic Morrow and two child actors are killed by a
helicopter that crashes after an explosion, kills them both or
kills all three of them, sorry.
Speaker 2: Not just kills them, but horribly decascitates them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so at that, I mean, he's dealing with that
while he's making some of the best movies.
Speaker 4: Anybody seeing this is kind of crazy.
Speaker 3: He doesn't end up doing the trial on it until
later on, like nineteen eighty seven, I think, is when
the trial happens, And so I can't imagine going through
the experience itself alone, going for years as you're waiting
and then we're talking about not a civil suit, we're
talking about criminal action. Like he and a few of
the other people who were involved were charged with manslaughter and.
Speaker 2: So he was really close to going to jail.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, yeah, that had been a long prison term.
Speaker 3: And as it turns out, Eddie says, this is the
reason that we didn't get along.
Speaker 4: I'm coming to America now.
Speaker 3: John Lennis gives a different reason why they didn't get along,
but Eddie says, you know, he was mad because I didn't.
I wasn't there and supporting him during his trial. And
so he tries to, you know, treat me like a
little kid, like I was back in trading places, and
I'm not a little kid anymore. And so eventually comes
down to John land Is saying something and Eddie kind
of angrily but playfully puts him in a choke hold.
Speaker 4: And then when John.
Speaker 3: Landis tries to playfully you know, grab his crotch, Eddie
titens and cuts off his air and he runs off.
Speaker 2: It escalated really quick, right, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was bad and it turned ugly.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean they were not happy with each
other as human beings. After the show, they're both very
happy with the movie, obviously, but Landis, on the flip
side of that, said, yeah, he went from being this
you know, super kid to this pig headed jerk ahole
is the.
Speaker 4: Word that he used. It just wasn't fun to work
with him anymore. But eventually they reconciled.
Speaker 2: It did reconcile. But here's the interesting thing to me.
In nineteen ninety, Playboy magazine interviewed Eddie Murphy. Yeah, and
his quote was, this is how harsh this is. Yeah,
Vick Morrow has a better shot of working with John
Landis than I do.
Speaker 4: Ouch, that's rough.
Speaker 2: And then Beverly Hills Cop Three comes out in ninety four,
So yeah, they buried the hatchet apparently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe it's unfortunate if you've seen Beverly Hillstop three.
Speaker 4: Not good. Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 3: You know, we talk about John landisbying this huge rock
star of the eighties. You know, he's got several hits before,
but Trading Place was a huge hit to catapult his career.
Does a bunch of great movies, then does Coming to America.
Speaker 2: And then none of anything that he's done after that,
have I thought it's good?
Speaker 1: Nothing?
Speaker 2: All right? So composers real quick. Trading Places has Elmer Bernstein,
our big buddy Elmer Bernstein, Olmer Bernstein, Kevin Bacon game,
that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Olmer Bernstein had done all of these great
movies back in the sixties and had been out of
it for a while, and then John Landis brings it
back in with Animal House, and then he starts doing
all of these other great movies again, including Ghostbusters.
Speaker 2: Katy Shack, Spies Like Us, to Kill a Mockingbird, Ten Commandments. Yeah,
he's all over, all over the place.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the movie Trading Places starts off with this music
from the Marriage of Figure Out Yes, which is fantastic
because it not only does it kind of set the stage,
it's kind of the you know, masterpiece theater type of
sound where you're seeing the regal dan Aykroyd getting ready
and then his butler who's played by m Eliott right
who you'll remember from and there's a lost start another
throwback who by the way on this one, and the
scenes that he's in he's always funny, like he's just
quietly funny. And the second a director on this thing,
you know, they would do a take where he would
have to walk through a door, and he said, every
single time he would do something different, he had some
other business, some other thing that he was doing different,
and it was funny. Every single time. So he goes
to him after the takes and he's he says, mister Elliott,
you know how are you funny? Over and over with
different stuff every time? And he says, my boy, when
you have parts as small as these, you learn to
make something out of them.
Speaker 4: That's awesome. He's great, he's great, He's great.
Speaker 2: It is Marcus Brodian Raiders.
Speaker 3: So I've completely derailed the conversation about the soundtrack.
Speaker 2: No, it's fun, it's fun coming to America's composer is
a guy named Nile Rogers. Does that ring a bell
with you? So he's you may recognize his face. He's
kind of a familiar, familiar looking person. But if you
listen to eighties music at all, you know who this
guy is.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: He did the Reflex by Derandrean Oh Wow, like produced
it right. He produced Let's Dance by David Bowie. He
was in the pop band Chic and their song good
Times Good Times. And he produced Madonna's first album Lucky
Star Borderline Holiday, and he does a fantastic job with
his soundtrack. They wanted a somebody who could do the
African style music, which he does kind of long the
Lions sleep Tonight in the opening credits, which is great, right.
Speaker 3: It's by the group Lady Smith Black Mambazo, who you
will remember if you listen to any of the Paul
Simon songs from that era. Grace Land. Yeah, they're they're
a great musical group. And I noticed I don't know
if this is right. I haven't researched at all, but
as you're listening to that opening, the opening version of
The Lions Sleeps Tonight, there's a little part where it
sounds like they've inserted one of Eddie's laughs in there.
Speaker 4: I will play it for you here.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: That's Eddie's laugh. I really do.
Speaker 3: And I think a little bit later on you hear
Arsenia Hall's laugh as well. But anyway, all right, cool.
So on the soundtrack side of things, you've got Lady
Smith Black Mumbazo singing moombe. I'm sorry, I don't it's
a Lion sleeps Tonight. But then you've got other songs
that come throughout, a few of them sang by Eddie Murphy.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh, the greatest love of all. That's yeah, Randy.
Speaker 4: I believe you, children, I thank.
Speaker 3: You, okay, And we can't leave the actors and actresses
in Coming to America without mentioning MATG. Sinclair, she was
the Queen of course, and then interestingly later on she
is again the Queen, but the lion Queen to the
Lion King because she again is with James Earl Jones.
Speaker 4: In the movie The Lion King. She plays the voice
of Saribe, who is.
Speaker 2: Sims mom, Simba's mom.
Speaker 4: But what's the name of James Earl Jones.
Speaker 2: Is Mufassa Mufassa.
Speaker 3: Yes, so Mufasa Saribe. And then also she plays the
wife of Kuntikine in Roots.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then James Earl Jones was not in the original Roots,
but was in the second version of Roots the couple
of years later. I can't remember what this I thought
it was, but he was in Roots, you know, part two.
Speaker 2: Roothe Harder right, Roots with a Vengeance. I do think
it's interesting, as we're diving into these movies that we
find out how many movies are sort of related, right,
trading places and coming to America. We would say they're brothers.
I mean they are Eddie Murphy and John Lands. They're brothers, right,
but sort of cousins to these movies. Are you know
the Blues Brothers or Roots, the Roots, the nutty Professor, right, right?
I do want to mention Sherry Headley plays Lisa from
Coming to America. Yes, and she does a great job.
She's just a sweetheart and has a great smile. She's
very sort of regal, even though she lives in Queen's right.
You know who finished second for the part of Lisa,
tell me Vanessa Williams.
Speaker 4: Vanessa Williams who as the singer.
Speaker 2: She's a singer, a very successful singer.
Speaker 3: She was the one who was stripped of her crown
for mis Samaricans America for this penthouse spread. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
for sure. Yeah, that was an interesting bit there for
the eighties.
Speaker 4: I remember that.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's dive in. I got some tidbits that I
want to bounce off. Yeah, okay, So Trading Places was
originally to star Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.
Speaker 4: Right, They had done Stir Crazy, which was a huge.
Speaker 2: Hit in nineteen eighty. Yeah, and it was originally supposed
to be called Black and White.
Speaker 4: It's not very creative.
Speaker 2: That name's terrible. Yeah, but Richard Pryor had to back out.
Did you hear why he had to back out. I
heard it had something to do with him setting himself
on fire. He set himself on fire after freebasing cocaine. Oh,
he was freebasing cocaine and went into this dragon deuce psychosist,
poured rum all over himself and.
Speaker 4: Tell you how many times I've done the same?
Speaker 2: I mean, who hasn't done that? Oh? Man?
Speaker 3: So yeah, when when Richard Pryor was out, I mean
he didn't. He didn't, like only a thirty percent shot
of making it through that.
Speaker 2: They didn't know if he was gonna live, cause he's
a little twitchy.
Speaker 4: After that, I could too, I can remember. I mean,
I don't know if it was the free basing, the
cocaine or the being on fire, but he wasn't the
same guy after that.
Speaker 2: No, And but he actually references that in one of
his comedy stand up routines, which oh yeah, make fun
of yourself, and people laughed and they kind of endeared
him to him.
Speaker 3: It's one of my favorite lines from Scrooge, where Bill
Murray thinks that the waiter is on fire and he's
not actually on fire, and everybody else is confused, and
he grabs the bucket of water and throws it on
the waiter and the waiters looking at him like what,
and he goes, I'm sorry, I thought you were Richard Pryor.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's awesome. There is a restaurant in Philadelphia
in the Western Hotel called Winthorpe and Valentine Fantastic after
the movie. How cool is that?
Speaker 3: So I'm sure you're getting to the you're talking about
them being brothers these two movies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you of course have the connection that happens.
Speaker 3: Eddie Murphy, in frustration with Simmy making the craphole apartment
look nice, grabs his money and takes it away from
him and sticks it in a McDowell's bag. And then
as he and Lisa are walking, you know, romantically together,
he hands the bag full of money.
Speaker 4: To a couple of bums. Well, a couple of bums
turn out to be the Duke brothers.
Speaker 2: I love that scene. That is my favorite scene in
coming to America. I and partially because I love trading
places so much. But yeah, Donomichi's like, Randolph, leave me alone,
more of our Randolf. And there he says, we're back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, brother, thank you. Okay, So I'm gonna again. I'm
going to derail this.
Speaker 3: So this is you know, people talk about movies that
are important in black history, and this movie just doesn't
come up, but it should. I mean, this is a
movie that there are only three speaking parts for white actors.
Speaker 2: He's coming to America.
Speaker 4: I'm talking about coming to America.
Speaker 3: Got only three speaking parts in this movie. One is
Randolph Duke, the other one is Mortimer Duke, and those
parts are obviously pretty small. And the other one is
Louie Anderson, who is hysterical in this movie, but he's
also not got to hunt.
Speaker 2: They let us now, Yes, pretty soon, I'll be on fries.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a couple of years, I'll make assistant manager. That's
when the big buck start.
Speaker 2: When they were preparing for this movie, and I think
they were in costumes. They're hanging out together anyway. Ralph
Bellamy who had done ninety nine films, Don Amichi had
done forty nine films.
Speaker 4: This is trading Places.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, we're back on trade blank, Yes, trading places.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And Eddie Murphy joked that between the three of them
they had made one hundred and fifty films. One more
thing on trading places before we kind of bounce around
this movie is more than likely based on what's known
as Silver Thursday Day.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're familiar with this, but March
twenty seventh, nineteen eighty, the Hunt Brothers from Texas tried
unsuccessfully to corner the market in Silver Oh, okay, And
when the time came and they were they had to
come up with one hundred million to bucks, they didn't have.
Speaker 3: It right, kicked off the market. So that's the end
scene of trading places. And so obviously, you know, this
movie is based on a couple of old storylines. The
Pygmalion My Fair Lady storyline where you take somebody from
the gutter, the Cinderella story you take somebody from the
gutter and you pass them off as a sophisticated elite
type of persons done in that one, and that it's
also based on the Mark Twain the Prince and the Popper,
whereas the Prince trades place with the pauper and the
Popper takes over as prince, and it's that whole same storyline,
even a.
Speaker 4: Line in the movie.
Speaker 3: It's very original, but you know, they do an entirely
different thing with it.
Speaker 2: The same story is covered in three stooges. If you've
ever seen Hoi POLOI, Hoi POLOI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, starts out with a couple of rich guys talking
about how they can take people from the gutter and
pass them off as rich people.
Speaker 2: Yes, they turn the stooges into gentlemen or try.
Speaker 3: Actually, yes, let's talk real quick before we get into
the plots, you know, get into the details of the movie.
There are a couple of actors that appear in these
movies in very small, non speaking or one or two
line parts in trading places. You get gian Carlo Esposito,
who if you've seen Breaking Bad, he was the guy
from Breaking the bad guy from Breaking Bad. If you've
seen The Mandalorian, he's the guy who shows up at
the end, who's kind of dressed like Darth Vader, who's
the bad guy there. There's been a ton of Spike
Lee movies. Do the Right Thing is all over the
place now, but this was like his first major movie role.
But he's just a guy standing on the leaning against
the bars and the jail spell.
Speaker 4: And then also.
Speaker 3: In that same scene, next to Eddie Murphy is the
guy they called do Rag Lenny Lay by Clint Smith
who's a friend of Eddie Murphy's. He's been in a
couple of Saturday Night lives.
Speaker 2: Really okay?
Speaker 3: And then Clint Smith, of course, also appears as the
third barber in Coming to America.
Speaker 4: Who's that Boy's good?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Good and terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That scene in the jail cell is hilarious though,
because Eddie Murphy is blowing all this bs to a
few guys who are listening to him, and a couple
of big guys like, hey, man, if you've been in
all these fights, how come you don't look messed up?
Mandy man brus on the inside, so we don't show
our weaknesses. But you too dumb? Remember?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, finished that line? Family friendly, family.
Speaker 2: Friendly scene is so funny. And then that Clint's bed bags.
Yeah you do dumb? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know who was originally supposed to be the King
in Coming to America?
Speaker 4: No, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm trying. I'm bouncing all over. They wanted Sydney Potier
to be the King.
Speaker 4: Oh I didn't know that, and that would have been wrong,
that would have been.
Speaker 3: He's too serious, like James Earl Jones can pull off
the comedy somehow, but I've never seen Sidney Potier be
funny in my life.
Speaker 2: Sydney Pade definitely could do the regal, but not the
funny out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and James Earl Jones actually wanted the part of McDowell.
He loved the John mcleanal McDowell. He wanted the John
Amos one. So here's an interesting bit. We're just gonna
we're alse this. This scattershot showed at let's do it. So
the interesting bit about McDowell's is, you know, they went
to McDonald's to say, hey, you know, is it okay
if we do this for the movie, because they didn't
want to get sued, of course, and so McDonald's actually said, yeah,
I think this is a good idea.
Speaker 4: They were they were like, yeah, go for it, you
can do it.
Speaker 3: We actually want you to kind of emphasize how hard
we're going to be on anybody who tries to steal
our trademark ideas. So that was kind of a theme
of the show. But then the corporate office forgot to
tell the local franchisee and so when they show up
to the you know, the old Wendy's that's getting renovated
to make it into McDowell's. The local franchisee shows up
with his lawyer and they're taking pictures, just like the
guy in the movie.
Speaker 4: That's right, we're gonna sue your sack off.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they got the Golden arches minus the Golden arcs.
I see, they got the big mac, I got the
big make.
Speaker 2: We both got two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles,
and onions. But they use a sesame seed punch. My
buns have no seats.
Speaker 4: Our bunds have no seeds.
Speaker 3: But as he delivers that line, which is already funny,
he smacks the door into Louis Anderson, who spills the
coke all over the floor.
Speaker 4: It's hysterical.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's super funny. On coming to America. We're bouncing
back now.
Speaker 4: But we're still on coming to America.
Speaker 2: America. The dance scene at the beginning during the wedding, Yes, okay,
you have this big, magnificent thing the wedding. Here comes cheese. Right.
That had this big dance routine.
Speaker 1: You know who.
Speaker 2: That was choreographed by I Do Paula Abdul, who had
yet become the big name that she was. In the
later part of the eighties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she was. She had not released straight Up.
Speaker 2: Straight Up came out after coming to America in eighty eight.
Speaker 4: Right, and you know who plays a prominent part in
the straight Up.
Speaker 2: Video, Arsenio Hall Right, otherwise known as Semi right Man.
Speaker 4: And what a what a career launch. Did you watch
the Arsenial Hall Show when you're a kid?
Speaker 3: I watched it all the wah, I watched that all
the time.
Speaker 4: I mean that part alone is iconic.
Speaker 2: Right, it was a big, big deal in the early nineties. Yeah,
there is an interesting Arsenio Hall clip. I'm gonna bring
us down for just a second. Jim Henson was on
the Arsenio Hall Show, interviewed by Arsenio Hall, and he
wasn't feeling good and talking about his career and talking
about some things. But he was on the show and hey,
I'm here, I'm you're feeling a little sick. It's like,
I'm all right. Two days later dead he had pneumonia
or whatever it was, and.
Speaker 4: Such a loss. Jim Henson was such a critical part
of our childhood. So you did all these.
Speaker 3: Things, and you know, Frank Oz was a big part
of the Jim Henson line. Absolutely, he did the voice
for Miss Piggy.
Speaker 2: Fozzie Bear, he did Sam the Eagle, Yeah, he did Yoda.
Speaker 3: And frank Oz of course, is also a big player
in all of John Landis's movies. Yes, well almost all.
He's not in coming to America. But if you get
the scene where they just arrive in America and they're
still in the airport, there's an announcement that comes over
the PA system, Frank Oskowitz, please go to the white
courtesy phone. That happens, and that's actually frank Oz's real name.
John land has still found a way to put him.
Speaker 2: That's really cool. And he's the cop in Trading Places.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the cop and Blues Brothers too. There's another connection.
Speaker 3: He's the cop at the beginning of Blues Brothers when
Jake Blues is getting out of prison and he hands
them all of his stuff. By the way, another connection,
the number that Dan Aykroyd holds up whenever he's getting
his mugshots done is the same number that John Belushi
had as his prison number in Blues Brothers.
Speaker 2: That's really cool. Yeah, okay, you mentioned the Muppets. Yeah,
and Frank oz is in Trading Places. Let's put back
to trading place.
Speaker 4: Trading places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's back to trading place.
Speaker 4: He's the police officer, are there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's the one who's like he plants the
He's like this is angel does right BCB you know
what the stuff does to kids?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he's the cop that's sort of in collusion with
Clarence Peaks. Right, but do you know who the trader
is for the Duke brothers when they send him in
and say go buy orange juice? Wilson, Yeah, Wilson By Yeah, No,
I don't know, just get in there. Let us worry
about that, right, you know that is His name is
Richard Hunt.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: He did the voice of Scooter from the Muppet movie
of the Muppets. Janis Oh girl, Jannas is so cool. Okay, guys,
I told him mom, if I want to run around
the beach naked.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: He did Baker and he did Statler. So he was
a very prominent muppeteer.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So pretty cool connection there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someday we'll find the Lorraine.
Speaker 4: A longer.
Speaker 3: And so join us next week four, Part two of
the debate. Thank you so much for your support of
the Shirley. You can't be serious. Podcast, Don't Forget.
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