Speaker 1: Meaning a light Man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wan big down in the forest.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause the tree fold, letting five thousand
Speaker 2: miles away.
Speaker 1: Man, nobody seen nobody else. You don't need no man.
Speaker 3: They liked you, followed another story and.
Speaker 1: You got back in like that. That's when man got
Speaker 1: blackly dag on the Panama Man.
Speaker 3: Man, you don't don't matter. Man, all right, the Prudentialist.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Jay Burden Show.
Speaker 1: How you doing, Man, I'm doing good.
Speaker 2: You know. It's we're just we're off the heels of
Speaker 2: a of a certain conference. So it's good to talk
Speaker 2: to friends. I was just talking to in person again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny not to be too modeling about it. Uh,
Speaker 3: but I just hit episode five hundred, and you know,
Speaker 3: so I've been reminiscing a little bit. And very very
Speaker 3: early in my pot casting career, you gave me some
Speaker 3: phenomenal advice. This is like single digit episodes. And you
Speaker 3: and I were talking and I had sent you an
Speaker 3: outline for the show, and you were like, man, that's
Speaker 3: great and all, but if you consider just talking and
Speaker 3: not being weird and autistic and following an outline, and
Speaker 3: genuinely I hadn't, and so, honoring your advice, I haven't
Speaker 3: planned really a damn thing about the show ever since,
Speaker 3: and so I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad that the advice I gave you led
Speaker 2: to your meteoritic rise and success that I should have
Speaker 2: followed myself. So I'm glad I can help others but
Speaker 2: not me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh yes, that's the what is it, you know,
Speaker 3: a profit in their own land and all that. That's
Speaker 3: right here, not to talk about really anything serious at all,
Speaker 3: but we're here for a movie review, the nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: classic Airplane, which this this is me kind of exposing
Speaker 3: my I zoom her self. I'd actually never seen this
Speaker 3: before today. Matt just completely missed it.
Speaker 1: Oh man, well, I hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: So I had the great pleasure of about I want
Speaker 2: to say, two weeks ago, I told we were going
Speaker 2: through the TV just scrolling, I think, because I think
Speaker 2: every married couple at some point just becomes someone who
Speaker 2: just likes to scroll through what's available on their television.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, Airplane, I haven't seen that forever.
Speaker 2: This will be great. She's like, I've never seen it
Speaker 2: before and I was like, oh, well, then you're in
Speaker 2: for a royal treat. So I subjected my wife to
Speaker 2: watching this for the first time and she was like,
Speaker 2: that was great, but why are there a pair of
Speaker 2: tits in like the middle of the film. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: why are you complaining?
Speaker 3: I mean, to be fair, uh valid question, although it
Speaker 3: is far from the only uh non sequitur joke right,
Speaker 3: just kind of out of nothing.
Speaker 1: All of them.
Speaker 3: I was so a couple of things. One not to
Speaker 3: get two chin stroking, because let's be honest, this is
Speaker 3: a fun movie and it's fun to talk.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: But I was struck by how they genuinely don't make
Speaker 3: movies like this anymore, and not in the like, oh
Speaker 3: they make the joke folks that you can't get away
Speaker 3: with in Whoe Hollywood, but just like the actual structure
Speaker 3: of the movie, like a ninety minute comedy movie, just
Speaker 3: does not exist anymore. They're practically extinct, especially a sincere one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think everyone's trying to relive that because I
Speaker 2: know that there's the what is it Scary?
Speaker 1: Movie?
Speaker 2: Six is still in movie theaters right now, and they're
Speaker 2: still banking, of course off nostalgia from the early two
Speaker 2: thousands comedies that they were obviously making fun of, and
Speaker 2: those were parody movies, which we only really get those
Speaker 2: because of you know, Zucker Abrams and Zuckers. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: Airplane is their first directorial debut. They have like a
Speaker 2: shoe string budget of like three and a half, like
Speaker 2: million dollars, and this thing just it sells like hotcakes,
Speaker 2: Like this is one of the funniest movies that's kind
Speaker 2: of brought on into pop culture history. It kind of
Speaker 2: brought Leslie Nielsen's career away from being a dramatic, more
Speaker 2: serious actor who's done like science fiction and television to
Speaker 2: now just sort of being the straight man who plays
Speaker 2: a completely dead pan in a comedy. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: we don't get scary movie and all those other things
Speaker 2: without airplay and Sucker Abrams and Sucker.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it is interesting. I can't remember if you
Speaker 3: were at the table for this conversation or not, Prude,
Speaker 3: but at the conference, one of the things that came
Speaker 3: up was the sort of bizarre situation Hollywood has found
Speaker 3: itself in where they can't seem to make money back
Speaker 3: with big tent poles. Obviously, exceptions to the rule. But
Speaker 3: if you look at the Juggernauts of ten years ago,
Speaker 3: they're flounder. Look at the suite of Disney products. But also,
Speaker 3: you know, the recent spat of remakes. Funny enough, I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't think the Naked Gun remake did particularly well,
Speaker 3: but Hollywood Inc. Is flounder, and so there's been a move.
Speaker 3: And I know friends who are on the receiving end
Speaker 3: of this right who've been approached. But also just look
Speaker 3: at the box office sort of a return to we
Speaker 3: would call kind of micro budget films, you know, five
Speaker 3: million dollars in down basically just as a financial decision,
Speaker 3: like a chase man, like we can't keep losing, you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred and eighty two hundred million dollars every film.
Speaker 3: We got to have something, and so you know what,
Speaker 3: even if it only makes five million dollars back, at
Speaker 3: least we broke even. But also they're pushing young talent,
Speaker 3: you know, guys who aren't established screenwriters, who aren't established properties.
Speaker 3: Really I think, in an attempt to regain some sort
Speaker 3: of authenticity and relevance, and so that kind of chin
Speaker 3: stroking aside prude, It is interesting to see a very
Speaker 3: much kind of before times film obviously just in the
Speaker 3: kind of construction and funding of it, but also it's
Speaker 3: a silly movie, but it's pretty sincere. There's none of
Speaker 3: that kind of like you know, would get the camera.
Speaker 3: Like all of the actors are playing their silly roles seriously,
Speaker 3: like they're they're selling out, which I think makes it
Speaker 3: really refreshing. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like the closest equivalent I can think of is
Speaker 2: the I want to say it's the mid nineties, you know,
Speaker 2: Muppet Christmas Carol, where Michael Caine plays a Benezer Scrooge
Speaker 2: completely straight despite being surrounded by you know, the Jim
Speaker 2: Henson Companies Muppets and just you know he's He gives
Speaker 2: one of the best performances. It is one of my
Speaker 2: top like three favorite Christmas Carol adaptations, so I always
Speaker 2: recommend it to people. But it is nice to see
Speaker 2: something like this exists, because you're right, there is so
Speaker 2: much meta commentary in a lot of comedy these days.
Speaker 2: Like even when they were trying to market the Naked
Speaker 2: Gun remake with Liam Neeson, you know, Liam Neeson is
Speaker 2: basically parodying an ASPCA commercial saying like, you know, comedy
Speaker 2: films in Hollywood are dying, but like you can save
Speaker 2: them by like going to our film and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: it sounds like a pity party at this point, because
Speaker 2: you know, we've gone through such a tumultuous you know,
Speaker 2: culture of what wokeness, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 2: just like where comedy is not something that's acceptable unless
Speaker 2: you're somewhat being brash and edgy, which has led to
Speaker 2: I think the uh rye of people like Shane Gillis
Speaker 2: and others for being funny. But I mean that's really
Speaker 2: in stand up that's not so much in film.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think it's such a refreshing change. You know,
Speaker 3: really in the last two years we've witnessed the birth
Speaker 3: of this term millennial writing. The examples would be like that, well,
Speaker 3: that was awkward, you know, the kind of like deliberate
Speaker 3: release of tension through kind of you know, undercutting the
Speaker 3: core premise of the scene. And look like, I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna pretend this is an Oscar winning film. It's a comedy.
Speaker 3: It's genuinely funny, and as we've said, there are a
Speaker 3: lot of it's sort of non sequitors, right, just throw
Speaker 3: away jokes that aren't essential to the pot. It's a
Speaker 3: comedy movie, but there's none of that sort of obnoxious
Speaker 3: millennial smirking going on like that. You know, A large
Speaker 3: portion of this is a romance. It is a classic
Speaker 3: comedy in that sense. And of course there are jokes
Speaker 3: in it, you know. There there's sort of these like
Speaker 3: you know, I guess you would say, sort of cutaways,
Speaker 3: you know, where each party to the romance is, you know,
Speaker 3: imagining how they met each other moments from their relationship.
Speaker 3: And of course they're ridiculous, but it is sincere yeh,
Speaker 3: and I've found that to be just like a very
Speaker 3: refreshing tonic. So the other thing this movie does very
Speaker 3: very well is that there are a number of repeat
Speaker 3: gags that just genuinely made me laugh and again brutal
Speaker 3: I'll throw it back to you in a second, But
Speaker 3: as someone who's been on the Internet for a while,
Speaker 3: I was astonished by how many memes and famous like
Speaker 3: you know, images or gifts or whatever were from this movie.
Speaker 3: So there were certain parts where like, oh, I remember that,
Speaker 3: you know, like I've seen that before, and so I
Speaker 3: feel like I finally have context for a lot of
Speaker 3: these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that modern meme culture has certainly made
Speaker 2: a lot of previous movies either unwatchable or ten times
Speaker 2: more enjoyable because of the meme culture around it. Last
Speaker 2: year in twenty five in May, a friend of mine
Speaker 2: sort of dragged me to the twentieth anniversary like re
Speaker 2: release into theaters of Star Wars Episode three, Revenge of
Speaker 2: the Sith. And I was ten years old when that
Speaker 2: movie came out. I remember going to the like late
Speaker 2: night premiere with my dad on bass and we did
Speaker 2: like a trivia contest and everything, and so like now
Speaker 2: it's twenty years later, and like Hayne Christiansen's like doing
Speaker 2: the memes when he gets his little clip off before
Speaker 2: the film begins. But it was kind of funny for
Speaker 2: me because I'm sitting there and then I'm watching people
Speaker 2: who are clearly younger than me, who probably grew up
Speaker 2: with like are slash the prequel memes, and like they're
Speaker 2: just like scrolling through the phone during every scene and
Speaker 2: like pointing to the phone when like a meme moment
Speaker 2: gets quoted. So for me, I did you know, I
Speaker 2: watched this movie probably a little too early in life
Speaker 2: before I was like really an overly online person, maybe
Speaker 2: when I was just beginning to become on the Internet.
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, there's a lot of quotable, memeable moments
Speaker 2: in there, and I think people forget that, Like before
Speaker 2: social media, there would just be like those three or
Speaker 2: four movies that you and your friends would quote in
Speaker 2: reference to each other because they were such a universal
Speaker 2: Everyone's seen this and everyone knows that this is funny moment,
Speaker 2: regardless of the context. And Airplane is certainly one of
Speaker 2: those movies.
Speaker 3: I'm actually I'm curious to get what those movies were
Speaker 3: for you, because for me, it was Napoleon Dynamite. This
Speaker 3: sounds really stupid listing about Napoleon Dynamite, MONI just all
Speaker 3: of Monty Python and then Shrek, which it kind of
Speaker 3: neatly places exactly what culture I was in. But what
Speaker 3: were those movies for you, prude?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Shrek was definitely one of them, absolutely for sure.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was always I didn't wash a lot of this
Speaker 2: stuff when I was when they came out, in part
Speaker 2: because I just my parents. So it's like I have
Speaker 2: the honor that I only know of the Simpsons through
Speaker 2: cultural osmosis because I've never seen a full Simpsons episode.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm one of the weird people I guess
Speaker 2: who's not completely exposed to culture. I think it also
Speaker 2: has to do with like growing up overseas, so I
Speaker 2: have a lot more of British television references I can.
Speaker 2: I do a lot of Faulty like Faulty Towers was
Speaker 2: something I would reference a lot, as well as Father
Speaker 2: Ted and things like that. But I mean for my
Speaker 2: friend group and those around me, it would definitely be
Speaker 2: things almost any Will Ferrell movie that came out in
Speaker 2: the early two thousands, whether you know, quoting Talladegan Knights
Speaker 2: or step Brothers. Those were always really popular. And then
Speaker 2: like you had said, like Monty Python and the Holy
Speaker 2: Grail I think was the one that was cited almost
Speaker 2: all of the time. But for me, yeah, that's sort
Speaker 2: of how it was. And then TV shows I think
Speaker 2: really started taking off once you found something to do that.
Speaker 2: But now it's kind of been relegated to like a
Speaker 2: woman thing where they'll they'll quote TV shows all the time,
Speaker 2: especially with a certain generation like I work with a
Speaker 2: lot of gen X women and for them it's friends
Speaker 2: that they quote constantly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it does sort of and I can
Speaker 3: even think of, you know, the kind of video game equivalent, right, obviously,
Speaker 3: like the early Valve games. Like honestly, I sort of
Speaker 3: instinctually cringe anytime I hear a portal reference because it
Speaker 3: just sort of takes me back to being eleven.
Speaker 1: Right you remember the cake being a lie?
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yes I do, And just hearing those words
Speaker 3: the song starts to go through my head and I
Speaker 3: just feel this kind of like sense of self revulsion.
Speaker 3: You know, it's probably.
Speaker 2: Relatively universal, but at the Halo theme where you'd get
Speaker 2: a bunch of guys to like it in a choral
Speaker 2: arrangement in a bathroom or a gym. And people are
Speaker 2: still doing that because I know that they're making the
Speaker 2: second remake of Halo Combat of all that comes out
Speaker 2: next month.
Speaker 3: Time is a flat circle. And somehow this is even
Speaker 3: more grim than true to Decative. But to return to
Speaker 3: the film again, one of the sort of repeat, I
Speaker 3: guess kind of gags that really got me in this
Speaker 3: is the running into the airport being waylaid by random
Speaker 3: religious groups and political activists asking for like to pin
Speaker 3: a flower on you, And of course you know it's
Speaker 3: ridiculous at first, and then there's a scene kind of
Speaker 3: two thirds of the way through whereas you know this
Speaker 3: airplane disasters continued, this kind of weathered you know, like
Speaker 3: war veteran turned airline pilot has to storm into the
Speaker 3: airport right to go to air traffic control and land
Speaker 3: the plane, and there's just a John Wicks style fight scene,
Speaker 3: which was so far from what I expected, even seeing
Speaker 3: the joke run again. And this movie does a very
Speaker 3: good job of repeating a joke but amplifying it so
Speaker 3: it becomes funnier. Another example is the you know, the
Speaker 3: air traffic controller. He starts off with the classic eyecots
Speaker 3: the wrong you know, I picks the wrong week to
Speaker 3: quit coffee, and basically every ten minutes that gag is repeated,
Speaker 3: but whatever substance he's recently quit gets more and more extreme.
Speaker 3: Untiled by the climax of the movie, he's just huffing
Speaker 3: glue in the corner and I don't know, maybe I'm
Speaker 3: a child prood, but that made me laugh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's always consistency, escalation and follow through and the
Speaker 2: glutt The gags throughout this film are so viscerally physical.
Speaker 2: One of my favorites that never fails to get a
Speaker 2: chuckle out of me, despite the time I've seen this
Speaker 2: movie probably like five or six times. Is Shit's gonna
Speaker 2: hit the fan? And then just it immediately cuts to
Speaker 2: just like a fake pile of fece he's slamming into
Speaker 2: like one of those little tiny office fans that oscillates,
Speaker 2: and it's just like, this is exactly what I expect
Speaker 2: out of this movie. It consistently sets up, it delivers.
Speaker 2: I think my favorite repeating gag is that every time,
Speaker 2: you know, Striker is trying to talk about Elaine and
Speaker 2: how he met her and how they fell in love,
Speaker 2: like whoever's listening to him just kills themselves. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: it finally stops right before like the the the Buddhist
Speaker 2: prepares for self immolation.
Speaker 3: It's it's incredibly unexpected the first time because he's talking
Speaker 3: to this like nice old lady, and then when the
Speaker 3: flashback is done, the camera pulls back and it's just
Speaker 3: her feet dangling. Such a simple joke, but it genuinely
Speaker 3: got me. One are the other elements of this, which
Speaker 3: is very much of another time, is uh the racial humor,
Speaker 3: Like there are multiple elements to this. Uh you know,
Speaker 3: of course you have you know, the two black guys
Speaker 3: on the on the plane and they're speaking in Jive
Speaker 3: and the film translates it for you. They have subtitles
Speaker 3: and like very proper Queen's English decoding what they're saying,
Speaker 3: which that made me laugh. And then of course the
Speaker 3: follow up is, you know when another one of these
Speaker 3: kind of you know, uh, you know, floral hat wearing
Speaker 3: old ladies comes forward to translate and drops into perfect
Speaker 3: aa ve and uh yeah, man, it got me. What
Speaker 3: can I say?
Speaker 1: It's a funny appreciated that she was speaking.
Speaker 2: There were no subtitles and it was just left entirely
Speaker 2: up to the imagination of the viewer to understand. And
Speaker 2: I mean it was played out so perfectly because of
Speaker 2: their tone and facial expression.
Speaker 1: I mean, it worked out great. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny.
Speaker 2: We were talking about remakes and reboots, you know, just
Speaker 2: a few minutes earlier, and it's like, this is the
Speaker 2: one time. You know, so many shows get adapted from
Speaker 2: say the Greater Anglo sphere into America, and they usually
Speaker 2: are not as good, but this is one of the
Speaker 2: few times where a Canadian film is adapted for American
Speaker 2: audiences and it just blows it away. Airplane is sort
Speaker 2: of a plot for plot remake slash parody of Zero
Speaker 2: Hour or you know, Striker as a Canadian fighter pilot
Speaker 2: and here Striker's American.
Speaker 3: Well that's one of the other things that's just completely
Speaker 3: nonsensical is the relative timeline of this, right, because of
Speaker 3: course this is a film in the eighties, but most
Speaker 3: of the callback are sort of dripping with like like
Speaker 3: World War two Americana, you know, like the kind of
Speaker 3: c D bar that he meets his uh, you know,
Speaker 3: the love interest in right, it's sort of you can
Speaker 3: imagine it out of something like South Pacific, you know,
Speaker 3: the kind of you know bar in the Pacific where
Speaker 3: you know, all the sailors and pilots are you know,
Speaker 3: enjoying sort of a you know, beer and some music.
Speaker 3: And then of course it's completely ridiculous, right, the people
Speaker 3: fighting in the back, it's basically like two women mud wrestling.
Speaker 3: The one joke I will say that and maybe this
Speaker 3: is just my zoomer attention span that didn't age great
Speaker 3: was the disco number just because of how long it
Speaker 3: went on, Like it was still funny, but you know,
Speaker 3: look like I can't watch a film with up subway
Speaker 3: surfer at the bottom. That's a very tepid point of criticism.
Speaker 2: I did appreciate that it's like there it's two girl scouts,
Speaker 2: or at least they look like girl scouts that are
Speaker 2: like cheating at cards, and they just keep fighting the
Speaker 2: remainder of the scene. But I mean, like, this is
Speaker 2: what makes it to me, what I appreciate abut it
Speaker 2: is is that like this is clearly riffing off of
Speaker 2: a World War two, you know, kind of like flashbackstory,
Speaker 2: but you know, this is disco and we're in the
Speaker 2: sixties now over an unknown and it's just as the war,
Speaker 2: which of course, you know, we're thinking World War two,
Speaker 2: the big one, and then of course there's like you know,
Speaker 2: Kennedy's Peace Corps, and I don't know, just the whole
Speaker 2: thing is fine with me because it's just like this
Speaker 2: is so out of place and out of time despite
Speaker 2: the fact that this is nineteen eighty that it kind
Speaker 2: of has a strange sense of timelessness for a film.
Speaker 2: Now that's what forty six years old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, plus or minus. I mean, the there's another it's
Speaker 3: this tiny, little like throwaway gag, but you know, obviously
Speaker 3: the drama is that our main character was forced to
Speaker 3: land the plane dude to you know incapacitation of the crew,
Speaker 3: and he's got it, you know, a bad experience from
Speaker 3: the war and when he's having this sort of dramatic flash.
Speaker 3: It starts out first with kind of you know World
Speaker 3: War two combat footage, you know, playing over his you know,
Speaker 3: sweating face, and then over the course of it, it
Speaker 3: gets to more and more primitive airplanes, until it's the
Speaker 3: kind of like multi winged bicycles falling off clips. And
Speaker 3: I don't know why, but for some reason I found
Speaker 3: that incredibly amusing. What are the other, if we're talking
Speaker 3: about kind of gags in this that you see constantly
Speaker 3: is the brief aside when he and his girlfriend are
Speaker 3: in the Peace Corps and they go to a tribe
Speaker 3: in Africa, which is an image I've seen, prude, Do
Speaker 3: you remember that part? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're doing the whole well, we're trying trying
Speaker 2: to teach them American culture and they have no sense
Speaker 2: of calisthenics and they're just naturals in basketball.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, it's funny. The uh. There's also a bunch
Speaker 3: of you know, cultural references. Some of which I got,
Speaker 3: some of which I didn't, you know obviously, just you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not familiar with h you know, the specifics of
Speaker 3: whatever basketball team Kareem Kareem abdul Jabbar was playing with
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty. But the cutaway gag to you know,
Speaker 3: the heroin in this movie trying to sell tribesmen tupperware.
Speaker 3: It's just such a ridiculous idea, and the gag goes
Speaker 3: on for long enough to make it much funnier than
Speaker 3: that is any right to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm not you and I are both
Speaker 2: well past the time of I think the original Tupperware
Speaker 2: and the emergence of multi level marketing, But I think
Speaker 2: there is still sort of this timeless quality of just
Speaker 2: like now, remember you know, like if you get like,
Speaker 2: if you sell X number of things, that's you you're
Speaker 2: going to get to hear because I like, when I
Speaker 2: was in college, like, there were certain MLMs that were
Speaker 2: incredibly predatory to guys that needed extra cash, and they
Speaker 2: always kind of just got burdened realizing that they were
Speaker 2: basically screwed no matter what they did trying to get out,
Speaker 2: whether they were selling knives or working for like a
Speaker 2: shifty insurance company or something thing like that. So that
Speaker 2: part was funny, Like this is this is I guess
Speaker 2: what you would call like white woman culture circa nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nineteen seventy nine. It's it's it's something that's a
Speaker 2: little beyond our time, but it still works, honestly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mentioned the Kareem Abdul Jabbar joke. The
Speaker 3: joke is, of course that he is the co pilot
Speaker 3: of this plane and he is actually Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Speaker 3: just trying to make extra cash. And he's not in
Speaker 3: much of the movie. But that is a very funny
Speaker 3: idea for a you know, at the time kind of
Speaker 3: like top level sports star to play that role. It's
Speaker 3: oddly self deprecating, right from like the guy on the
Speaker 3: Ladies box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean he's played I think in everything
Speaker 2: I have ever seen him in on television, because I
Speaker 2: mean he'll do guest cameo appearances and for as long
Speaker 2: as he's had a he had a film career, TV career,
Speaker 2: he's always played himself. So it's like, oh, that's Kareem
Speaker 2: Abdul Jabbar, I say pointing out because I think he
Speaker 2: made an appearance on I think Seinfeld. I think he
Speaker 2: made an appearance on Scrubs at one point in time.
Speaker 2: So my millennial brain is like, oh, I know who
Speaker 2: this is by the TV aspect of his celebrity, not
Speaker 2: whatever basketball career he may or may not have had,
Speaker 2: but just does not totally apply to me.
Speaker 3: Well, and really the the moment that it's revealed, because again,
Speaker 3: like I know who that is, and I know what
Speaker 3: he looks like, again primarily as an older actor, but
Speaker 3: I'm not familiar enough with him to instantly have picked
Speaker 3: out the celebrity cameo. And uh. One of the chores
Speaker 3: of the most shocking source of comedy in this is
Speaker 3: uh is the children in this because there are multiple
Speaker 3: seeds with kids that of course, you know, Jabbar's identity
Speaker 3: is revealed when a kid comes up into the cockpit,
Speaker 3: which okay, you know what, let's just take an aside
Speaker 3: as someone who just had a relatively hellish airline experience
Speaker 3: pre nine to eleven, air travel looks magical. Like that
Speaker 3: is the most outlandish aspect of this.
Speaker 1: The world grow up no longer exists.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, of course, it's like
Speaker 3: a stupid movie but the idea that it was not
Speaker 3: completely improbable for a kid to just ask to go
Speaker 3: see the cockpit, or that someone could just walk in
Speaker 3: and buy an airline ticket, you know, minutes before a
Speaker 3: flight left off, or that you would get I don't know,
Speaker 3: something recognizable as food on an airline. It's like, again,
Speaker 3: stupid movie. You know, this isn't exactly like an insightful
Speaker 3: bit of cultural analysis, but you look at it, here's like,
Speaker 3: what why did we have to stop living like this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's really bad when a nineteen eighties disaster
Speaker 2: film parody is showing you how good you had it
Speaker 2: back then without knowing it. I was surprised by just
Speaker 2: the seating arrangements and the leg room and the spaciousness
Speaker 2: of it all. It's just like, oh wow, this was
Speaker 2: a much nicer time to fly. And my recent flight
Speaker 2: experience have not been pleasant at all. Like, I will
Speaker 2: never tell anyone to fly United just because of the
Speaker 2: terrible flight experiences I had when going to Tim Poole's studio.
Speaker 2: It was just not a good time, and it's just yeah,
Speaker 2: airports would become completely hellish. And although the one time
Speaker 2: I've seen anyone schill religion. At an airport was a
Speaker 2: group of Black Jehovah's witnesses having a little stand and
Speaker 2: talking to me about true worship and true God. And
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, it's just like airplane, not you know,
Speaker 2: weird bizarre heretical sex trying to shill me their bizarre
Speaker 2: backwards idea of so teiology.
Speaker 3: That's actually a really great response to when the LDS
Speaker 3: guys come knocking on your door is just to open door. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's just like airplane.
Speaker 2: And then immediately it's actually really nice to the LDS
Speaker 2: guys that come knocking on my door because I know
Speaker 2: that like, Okay, you're nineteen, You've known this thing your
Speaker 2: entire life. You barely have any diem money, your partner
Speaker 2: or whoever you're with like changes every six weeks, and
Speaker 2: you have little contact with anybody outside of the world.
Speaker 2: And they kind of like encourage you to like report
Speaker 2: on each other. So I just let them in and
Speaker 2: I let them give their spiel for twenty minutes because
Speaker 2: I'm like, you guys can take a break, would you
Speaker 2: like something to drink? And then I always just ask
Speaker 2: towards the end, I'm like, so, who is Jesus And
Speaker 2: sometimes I get wildly different answers, Like I had someone
Speaker 2: confess that Jesus was God, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're on the right track.
Speaker 1: But I just let them have a good time.
Speaker 2: But the next time someone knocks on my door because
Speaker 2: I've had Jehovah's witnesses, I'm just gonna say, oh, this
Speaker 2: is just like airplane. That's a great I'm doing that
Speaker 2: from now on.
Speaker 1: Jay. End of discussion.
Speaker 3: Well, prude, are you aware that, uh one of the
Speaker 3: people you met at the conference is a deeply committed Mormon?
Speaker 1: Did I?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Thomas Wayne Riley is the most serious Mormon I've
Speaker 3: ever met. Now, putting that aside.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a chance. I didn't talk religion with anybody,
Speaker 2: which was kind of nice. But that's that's good to know.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll let me tell you Thomas Wayne Riley, he
Speaker 3: is incredibly serious about the whole thing, the magic underwear,
Speaker 3: all of it. He may deny this, but deep in
Speaker 3: his heart he is bring him young, strongest soldier. The
Speaker 3: children in this again, like I've said, produce some of
Speaker 3: the most shocking moments in this The pilot of our
Speaker 3: plane is just a gay pedophile. There's really no way
Speaker 3: to sugarcoat that. And when this kid comes up to
Speaker 3: the cockpit, the questions he asks him are so completely
Speaker 3: over the top that I could barely control myself, like
Speaker 3: he The first thing he asks him is if he's
Speaker 3: ever been to a changing room in a gym? And
Speaker 3: then the conversation moves on. He pulls him aside. He goes,
Speaker 3: you ever been to a Turkish prison before? Why? That
Speaker 3: line made me laugh so hard again, just so like direct,
Speaker 3: She asked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like, have you ever been in a
Speaker 2: cockpit before? No, I've started ever been in a plane before?
Speaker 2: See this is how bad it is because I'm just
Speaker 2: quoting it now. Verbain is like, well, have you ever
Speaker 2: seen a grown man naked?
Speaker 1: Do you like Fladiator movies? Have you ever been to
Speaker 1: a Turkish bath house?
Speaker 2: And it's just like, oh, you know, obviously like just
Speaker 2: gay pedophile, but for some reason it's played completely straight
Speaker 2: for laughs.
Speaker 1: And not I got total reality.
Speaker 3: It's the Turkish bathhouse. And then another one he goes,
Speaker 3: do you know what happens in prison? The conversation just
Speaker 3: moves on, and uh, you know, I'm not gonna pretend
Speaker 3: to be a high brow figure. Matt but there's something
Speaker 3: about the suggestion of prison r H being explained to
Speaker 3: a child that I find amusing. I mean, there's another
Speaker 3: one where it's two you know, very well dressed children
Speaker 3: and one offers the other coffee and this little like
Speaker 3: eight year old girl very seriously you know, looks at
Speaker 3: the guy offering her coffee when you know, you ask
Speaker 3: if she wants any sugar for cream, and she just goes, no,
Speaker 3: I like my coffee, like I like my one men black.
Speaker 3: You see the kid do the sort of like Kevin
Speaker 3: McAllister Grimace, but uh, just a throwaway gag somehow, you know,
Speaker 3: still shocking to me when children say things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something that uh where children are the ones
Speaker 2: that offer the delivery line that that one.
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm not really a big fan of things where like, oh,
Speaker 2: the kid says something completely inappropriate at a left field
Speaker 2: for gags like so I went on a weird My
Speaker 2: YouTube algorithm was like, hey, Matt, you like celebrities, don't you,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, actually, no, YouTube, I don't. It's like,
Speaker 2: would you like to watch a YouTube channel called Hollywood
Speaker 2: Babylon where we discuss the life and times and the
Speaker 2: career of Randy Quaid, and I'm like, well, I've got
Speaker 2: a long drive YouTube, so why not. So I listened
Speaker 2: to like two and a half hours of this guy
Speaker 2: explaining Randy Quaid's kind of obsession with star whackers and
Speaker 2: his wife and everything like that. And the last film
Speaker 2: he ever did was called The Tennis Coach. We're showing
Speaker 2: clips from it where the children are just saying the
Speaker 2: most obscene, horrendous stuff imaginable, and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is this is an early two thousands comedy. And
Speaker 2: then for some reason, I just find the coffee gag
Speaker 2: because they're both so professionally and nicely dressed, like the
Speaker 2: kids in a little suit, like it's a Sunday best
Speaker 2: and this woman is just like, actually, no, I don't
Speaker 2: like you at all, so don't even attempt anything because
Speaker 2: I like black guys. And it's like, for some reason,
Speaker 2: this is way more of a good gag than some
Speaker 2: little girl saying the F word a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the reason it works is because it's
Speaker 3: only done once. And you know the other gag, right,
Speaker 3: both you know, featuring children is the exact opposite, right,
Speaker 3: It's treading on the taboo of adults saying the most
Speaker 3: depraved things to children. You know, this is obviously the
Speaker 3: vice versa, and I think where it becomes irritating, Like
Speaker 3: I think of that film like like Bad Grandpa, right
Speaker 3: from the guys who did Jackass, which is not particularly
Speaker 3: funny because it only has one joke and it sticks
Speaker 3: on it for the full run time, whereas this is
Speaker 3: it It was a twenty second gag in an hour
Speaker 3: and a half long film, right, just kind of a
Speaker 3: quick little throw away, and you know, yeah, it does
Speaker 3: get grading quickly, but especially out of left field, right,
Speaker 3: this isn't a major focal point of the movie. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's particularly effective. One of the the other things is that,
Speaker 3: and I've noticed this in all of the this kind
Speaker 3: of run from you know of kind of Comedies featuring
Speaker 3: Leslie Nielsen, is that the imitation parody movies were so
Speaker 3: much worse because the gags themselves are both funny and referential.
Speaker 3: The joke is not don't you remember when you know?
Speaker 3: It's sort of a nod to something else, and also
Speaker 3: it is far from the only humor in it. Like
Speaker 3: I think of you know that obviously you had like
Speaker 3: you know, scary movie and all of those, but there
Speaker 3: were just dozens and dozens and dozens of kind of
Speaker 3: low budget derivations, like I think of a parody of
Speaker 3: the Hunger Games that came out, you know when when
Speaker 3: that movie did, and it was one of those like
Speaker 3: you know, shot on video, like horrible direct to Netflix
Speaker 3: style films, and obviously the quality is much lower, just
Speaker 3: fidelity wise, the quality is much lower on a writing
Speaker 3: and technical level, but it is also basically the whole
Speaker 3: joke is don't you remember this thing? And it's a
Speaker 3: shocking contrast to kind of like the originator of that pattern,
Speaker 3: if you see what I'm getting at, Brude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those films were terrible, especially because they never
Speaker 2: cribbed from said source material accurately. Because I think one
Speaker 2: of the first ones that I mean, outside a scary movie,
Speaker 2: I distinctly remember Superhero movie and I think this was
Speaker 2: like right after Leslie Nielsen had died, because they had
Speaker 2: found someone who looks just like him, and they were
Speaker 2: doing the obvious like Sam Raimi Spider Man parody from
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, and they're playing it completely straight,
Speaker 2: but like the one at least had a plot to
Speaker 2: play off of whereas a lot of those later films
Speaker 2: that they were they would literally just pull stuff from
Speaker 2: movie trailers and never from the films themselves, because they
Speaker 2: were trying that desperately to be relevant and to get
Speaker 2: in on the.
Speaker 1: Cash grab before it got stale.
Speaker 2: Because like I think everything from Kung Fu Panda to
Speaker 2: like the First Pirates of the Caribbean film were there
Speaker 2: were countless of those that were made in the early
Speaker 2: two thousands that are just absolute trash. Whereas this is,
Speaker 2: you know, a gag every twenty seconds. There are callbacks
Speaker 2: and references to those who pay attention. There are those
Speaker 2: freeze frame gags where if you pause the film or
Speaker 2: the VHS, like you're really going to appreciate all the
Speaker 2: insanity in there. Like there's one where like a nun
Speaker 2: is reading you know, boys Life of course, like the
Speaker 2: classic boy Scott's American magazine, and then like we go
Speaker 2: back to the boy who was giving away the coffee
Speaker 2: to the little girl and he's reading like nuns Life,
Speaker 2: and I think there's like a point where he's like
Speaker 2: folding it out, like there's a centerfold somewhere inside. It's
Speaker 2: just like this is something that I wouldn't expect from anything,
Speaker 2: and it's I guess the proper use of, you know,
Speaker 2: my subversion of my expectations, because what is comedy other
Speaker 2: than the subversion of my expectations with something well timed
Speaker 2: and executed in comparison to things played seriously. So, I
Speaker 2: mean an Airplane on a technical level, for just its
Speaker 2: writing is so tight because it never focuses on one
Speaker 2: gag forever, and when it does a callback, it continues
Speaker 2: to play off of it, and they know when to
Speaker 2: stop it. Like I mentioned earlier, like there's the Japanese
Speaker 2: guy he talks to who's like a Japanese World War
Speaker 2: two officer, and as he's talking about the war in
Speaker 2: a lane, he like kills himself, you know, the traditional
Speaker 2: seppuku style, and it's just like well, and then it stops,
Speaker 2: of course with the Buddhists when Striker gets called up
Speaker 2: to pilot the airplane and he just looks at the
Speaker 2: match and himself, you know, dows in gasoline and he's
Speaker 2: just like, oh, thank God, I don't have to go
Speaker 2: through with this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's there's a lot to that. You know,
Speaker 3: the pace of this movie is incredibly quick. When I
Speaker 3: first started watching it. As often when I watch films
Speaker 3: for podcasts, I'll put them on you know, one point
Speaker 3: twenty five or one point five speed, just because you know,
Speaker 3: to make an hour long podcast. If you spend two
Speaker 3: and a half hours watching a movie, you know, the
Speaker 3: production time can add up when you put out as
Speaker 3: much slop as I do. But that said, I almost
Speaker 3: immediately had to turn this down because you miss things constantly.
Speaker 3: It goes so quickly and in a way that sort
Speaker 3: of like creates this sort of like mad cat pace
Speaker 3: through the whole thing that really lends to the sort
Speaker 3: of like silliness of it. Like, yeah, sure there's clever writing,
Speaker 3: but a lot of it is also just sort of
Speaker 3: looney tuned style physical comedy. And you know, the quick
Speaker 3: quick pace of this, I mean really lends to it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's functionally like an hour and
Speaker 3: twenty five minutes maybe of screen time, which I think
Speaker 3: really helps because there is a tendency, particularly in films
Speaker 3: the last like fifteen to twenty years to hit that
Speaker 3: like two and a half three hour mark. And look,
Speaker 3: some films need that, and some films can fill that
Speaker 3: much space. But I'd much rather have a tight ninety
Speaker 3: minutes than something that feels like there's forty five minutes
Speaker 3: of wasted time. You start looking at your watch, and
Speaker 3: really it's a credit to the writer certainly, but also
Speaker 3: the cinematography that it just pulls you through the movie,
Speaker 3: like there's really no moment of quiet in the whole film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, there is. There's no lull at all, and
Speaker 2: I mean, like really the only lull there might be,
Speaker 2: of course, is used as a gag from the very beginning,
Speaker 2: because of course Striker is a taxi driver, and then
Speaker 2: he's just like, hey, I'll be right back, and there's
Speaker 2: a guy inside and he's been letting the rate the
Speaker 2: meter run the entire time, and I think that's the
Speaker 2: only like quiet callback to anything where else. Everything else
Speaker 2: is building up to one another, and the time is height.
Speaker 2: It's used appropriately, they use the budget that they had,
Speaker 2: and I mean this is really one of the classics
Speaker 2: that I think anyone should go to and say, well, like,
Speaker 2: what makes a good comedy movie and it's this, And
Speaker 2: obviously there's the running gag where it's like, we don't
Speaker 2: know how to make this anymore in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: and I think that the current state of comedy makes
Speaker 2: this absolutely true that you could not make this film
Speaker 2: today even if you tried without making severe you know,
Speaker 2: either concessions on you know, progressive pieties, or just you'd
Speaker 2: have to make it completely independent and on your own,
Speaker 2: because this just couldn't be made by a major studio.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean obviously, you know, we've mentioned, you know,
Speaker 3: the racial context along several lines, but there are a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of jokes that you probably couldn't make. You know.
Speaker 3: For instance, one of the ones that got me is,
Speaker 3: you know, when the stewardess is walking around passing out
Speaker 3: magazines again we used to be a country, and you know,
Speaker 3: the old woman who later hangs herself, asks for some
Speaker 3: thing light and the stewardess pulls out an incredibly tiny
Speaker 3: piece of paper titled Jewish professional Athletes. That's pretty funny.
Speaker 3: There's also the infamous Air Israel cutaway, you know, or
Speaker 3: it's a it is a plane with sidelocks and traditional
Speaker 3: Jewish headwear. If that makes you laugh, I pity you.
Speaker 3: I did not laugh. But honestly, also just the constant
Speaker 3: what we would consider kind of like homophobia quote unquote.
Speaker 3: Obviously we mentioned, you know, the predatory pilot. But you
Speaker 3: know there is a background gay character and air traffic
Speaker 3: control that is just playing the most like over the
Speaker 3: top kind of lisping queen. I'm sure you remember it, prude.
Speaker 2: I do, and I just my my my wife is
Speaker 2: much cleaner with her language than I am. But I
Speaker 2: think when we were in the film, and like towards
Speaker 2: the end, when he keeps making all these like gags
Speaker 2: and reference is clearly playing up the flamboyant homosexual character
Speaker 2: and she's just like, can that like insert your favorite
Speaker 2: f slur here?
Speaker 1: Like can he just stop?
Speaker 2: And just that was funnier for me as just someone
Speaker 2: who's seen this film a dozen times more than anything else.
Speaker 2: But like, I think it's really the only character besides
Speaker 2: the obvious peederist pilot where anything like that is played.
Speaker 2: But you're right, the racial stereotypes and humor gets played up.
Speaker 2: This is definitely from a different time. And it's of course,
Speaker 2: like there are cultural things that are in there at
Speaker 2: the beginning, of course, like you have the where the
Speaker 2: the what is it like? The church for religious consciousness
Speaker 2: and would you like to give a donation? You have
Speaker 2: the Moonies in there, and then of course a dear
Speaker 2: reference to our friend Stephen Carson Jews for Jesus or
Speaker 2: mentioned at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Well, if I can make a direct statement to missus
Speaker 3: the Prudentialist, clearly they cannot stop. They can't.
Speaker 1: I will tell her this when we're done recording.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean obviously I noticed that as well. And
Speaker 3: it's funny, you know, I've been aware of that organization.
Speaker 3: It is funny that they get kind of a throwaway gag,
Speaker 3: a throwaway gag in this the uh, the random I
Speaker 3: guess they're Buddhist monks that just happened to be on
Speaker 3: the plane are continually funny because they're obviously like notable.
Speaker 3: You see them a lot, but you constantly see them
Speaker 3: behaving just the most venial way possible, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: like scratching and biting, you know, for for kind of
Speaker 3: like the good seats as this plane goes down. One
Speaker 3: of the kind of gags, of course, is the you know,
Speaker 3: sort of aping the classic moment from you know, kind
Speaker 3: of like the golden age of cinema or you've seen
Speaker 3: it in you know, Gone with the Wind Right, the
Speaker 3: hysterical woman who gets slapped, you know, by the man
Speaker 3: who tells her to regain herself. And the version in
Speaker 3: this one, you know, it starts, you know, in kind
Speaker 3: of the typical way, and then with each subsequent person
Speaker 3: saying no, no, let me handle this, just start beating
Speaker 3: and rattling this woman. And again I realized, laughing at
Speaker 3: a woman being hit probably says something about me that
Speaker 3: you know, I may want to examine. But it did
Speaker 3: get me to laugh. So there's something for that, you know.
Speaker 2: I for some reason that one always gets played I
Speaker 2: think during trailers for the film or for best of clips,
Speaker 2: and I think that there's just something relatable because I mean, like, again,
Speaker 2: you are right, this is a callback to sort of
Speaker 2: the golden age of cinema, where it's usually like John
Speaker 2: Wayne spanking a woman or something like that happening, and
Speaker 2: it's just played completely straight, like this is just how
Speaker 2: we took care of things back then. And then of
Speaker 2: course there's the famous like Sean Connery interview where I
Speaker 2: think it's been meaned to death about like giving a
Speaker 2: woman a slap or something like that, Like it just
Speaker 2: kind of indicates of what a separate time, and obviously
Speaker 2: people make fun of that even in the milleni writing today,
Speaker 2: where it's just like, if you're gonna make fun of
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties or any time where women obviously were
Speaker 2: not experiencing the you know, female you know, happiness paradox
Speaker 2: that they do today, then it's just like, listen, ma'am,
Speaker 2: you've had a rough night, you know, take take yourself
Speaker 2: another strong drink to you know, calm your nerves, and
Speaker 2: go drive you and your small child home. And for them,
Speaker 2: it's just like, you know, really the only way to
Speaker 2: contain female hysteria is with physical repression. And it's just like, well,
Speaker 2: there might be something to do that, but now we're
Speaker 2: well past that. Now everyone's just on SSRIs and I
Speaker 2: think we're worse off. But you're right, Jay, that may
Speaker 2: say more about us than it does them.
Speaker 3: So prude. I know, I said earlier that this is,
Speaker 3: you know, a comedy movie, you know that may not
Speaker 3: have cultural insights, But I think you and I are
Speaker 3: are pulling out the kind of threat of truth in
Speaker 3: this which is all gay men or pedophiles, and things
Speaker 3: work better if we hit wimp. Now, these are not
Speaker 3: my conclusions. These are simply the logical conclusions. The lesson,
Speaker 3: if you will.
Speaker 1: This is a very strauss An interpretation of the film.
Speaker 3: Strassian analysis of Airplane.
Speaker 2: That's how you're gonna title this episode is a Straussian
Speaker 2: analysis of nineteen eighties airplane.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's exactly how I will title that.
Speaker 1: We're not saying.
Speaker 2: This but Sucker abrams and Sucker is saying you should
Speaker 2: hit women.
Speaker 3: Some have said scholars scholars disagree on the interpretation. Uh,
Speaker 3: the obviously one of the other. And a lot of
Speaker 3: this is you're sort of making fun of kind of
Speaker 3: traditional Hollywood motifs. And there's one where, you know, our
Speaker 3: our heroine, who's I am awful at names, and let's
Speaker 3: be honest, the names are not particularly important.
Speaker 1: In this Ela is her name Elaine?
Speaker 3: Right, our leading lady h is reminiscing about a you know,
Speaker 3: a romantic kind of walk on the beach with the
Speaker 3: striker her man and they're kissing in the surf, and
Speaker 3: of course, right it's there, you know, on a beach,
Speaker 3: and so the waves are just pounding them like absolutely,
Speaker 3: like completely submerging them. They're covered in like sand and
Speaker 3: seaweed while doing this kind of like over the top
Speaker 3: romantic Hollywood dialogue. And again, because there's never a moment
Speaker 3: where they you know, address it or kind of like
Speaker 3: wink at the camera like you know, a haha, we're
Speaker 3: in on the joke too. It makes it so much better.
Speaker 3: And I mentioned millennial writing and obviously people have talked
Speaker 3: about it in dramatic movies though like you know, I
Speaker 3: can't believe this is happening. Oh that was awkward, kind
Speaker 3: of you know, tension deflating, but also right it it
Speaker 3: sort of cheapens the joke in a comedic sense because
Speaker 3: you're basically it's low time preference comedy. Brute if you
Speaker 3: see where I'm going with this, where you're taking a
Speaker 3: cheap early laugh at the expense of the joke actually
Speaker 3: playing out. And you know that in half a dozen
Speaker 3: other examples we've already mentioned, like they give the joke
Speaker 3: enough time to be funny. Again, it's a fast paced movie,
Speaker 3: but there's none of that sort of cheapening that you
Speaker 3: see a lot in kind of modern not even necessarily comedies,
Speaker 3: but sort of comedic tone. You see what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, we have we there's the fourth wall breaking
Speaker 2: concept where there's obvious winks and nods to the audience
Speaker 2: or you know, we have to break the tension instantly.
Speaker 2: That we have to deprive the character of everything. I
Speaker 2: think it was real life fake Wizard. He's a YouTuber
Speaker 2: who does a lot of like film and sort of
Speaker 2: like media commentary, and he was talking about the new
Speaker 2: he Man movie that they couldn't allow Adam to play,
Speaker 2: you know, the he Man character completely straight, without like
Speaker 2: taking away the character development, with that sort of millennial
Speaker 2: Marvel esque writing where it's just like, well, I guess
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be he Man, and you know, then they like, well,
Speaker 2: that's a terrible name, and like they have to play
Speaker 2: it up that way. And of course the MCU, I
Speaker 2: think is the most directly responsible for this, but it's
Speaker 2: got everywhere to it's now defined an entire generation of writers,
Speaker 2: and of course Airplane is from nineteen eighty that obviously
Speaker 2: doesn't apply here, which is something that I greatly appreciate
Speaker 2: where everything is played completely straight, that there is confidence
Speaker 2: in the gag that you're seeing and even if you
Speaker 2: don't like that, we know that in thirty seconds there's
Speaker 2: going to be a whole new part of the plot
Speaker 2: where it doesn't really matter because you're probably gonna laugh
Speaker 2: at this. And it reminds me of like very early
Speaker 2: what Lauren Michaels said, when Esnel came on to the
Speaker 2: air had said, you know, we're gonna have like eight skits,
Speaker 2: and we hope that two of them are funny and
Speaker 2: at least, you know, for airplane, I think almost every
Speaker 2: gag more or less lands. I mean, like the disco
Speaker 2: thing does go on for a little while, but there
Speaker 2: isn't anything here that particularly, you know, is overstays. It's
Speaker 2: welcome and you don't have to be so self referential
Speaker 2: to tell the audience about it. And even then, like
Speaker 2: at the end of the film, right like where the
Speaker 2: the autopilot takes off and he winks at everybody, like,
Speaker 2: it's more that he's winking at the characters and he's
Speaker 2: not winking at me. It's not as a deliberate of
Speaker 2: a fourth wall break as I think if they were
Speaker 2: to remake this movie they obviously would. And then of
Speaker 2: course there's always the wonderful RoadHead reference with the automatic
Speaker 2: pilot and the and the tube just below the belt
Speaker 2: buckle that you have to inflate manually. So thank you
Speaker 2: Elaine for doing that.
Speaker 1: Good job.
Speaker 2: It's a job for a reason, so you know it works.
Speaker 2: There's to be like Bethesta.
Speaker 3: It just works well. And if we can take this
Speaker 3: in a slightly more serious direction, I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 3: Looking through this, you can tell that the writers and
Speaker 3: the directors have seen a lot of serious classic cinema, right,
Speaker 3: They are students of art and culture outside of just
Speaker 3: their one art for and you mentioned Halo earlier, although
Speaker 3: you've seen this in kind of every one of the
Speaker 3: big legacy properties that at the moment where you have
Speaker 3: people who are Star Wars fans writing Star Wars, or
Speaker 3: you know, D and D fans writing D and D,
Speaker 3: paradoxically the quality gets much much worse. That's all they
Speaker 3: have to pull from for reference. Warhammer is another great
Speaker 3: example where the guys that created that were interested in history,
Speaker 3: interested in fantasy, interested in any number of things, and
Speaker 3: they could pull that into their work. Whereas you know,
Speaker 3: and we'll beat up on millennials because it's fun and easy,
Speaker 3: but like part of the scourge of millennial writing is this,
Speaker 3: you get the idea that the person writing isn't particularly
Speaker 3: intelligent and doesn't have a lot to pull off, right,
Speaker 3: They're sort of just referencing the thing in and of itself.
Speaker 3: And I thought that was interesting because look, like, clearly
Speaker 3: the writers are intelligent. Look that they're doing a stupid movie.
Speaker 3: You know, it's got stupid gags in it, but it
Speaker 3: speaks to a sort of media diet outside of simply
Speaker 3: the exact form of art they made. And I think
Speaker 3: looking back on it from as you said, you know,
Speaker 3: nearly fifty years later, you can see that decline in quality,
Speaker 3: and I think a large part of that has to
Speaker 3: do with the sort of like ororo boros nature of culture,
Speaker 3: culture built on reference to itself. Look, maybe that's too
Speaker 3: chin stroking, but I'm curious to get no.
Speaker 2: I think there's a real good point to that, Jay,
Speaker 2: where you know, we have a lot of data and
Speaker 2: a lot of papers that are being published about how
Speaker 2: a lot of like large language learning models and a
Speaker 2: lot of AI research has been poisoning itself with synthetic
Speaker 2: data or data generated by AI that's not actually real
Speaker 2: in sense that it was like an actual published paper
Speaker 2: that's being cited, and so you have AI hallucinations, you
Speaker 2: have a I think there was one case already where
Speaker 2: a lawyer has been disbarred or put on some sort
Speaker 2: of disciplinary review by the state bar for writing a
Speaker 2: brief with AI, and it was just citing phantom cases
Speaker 2: that do not exist. And so when you were built
Speaker 2: on a reference culture, you're like an AI or an
Speaker 2: LM that's just building its training data off of more
Speaker 2: synthetic data. So the more referential you get, you the
Speaker 2: more you lose the formula that made the original good.
Speaker 2: I mean, the thing that made Star Wars so effective
Speaker 2: is of course the Hero's Journey or The Hero of
Speaker 2: a Thousand facis by Joseph Campbell, to a point where,
Speaker 2: you know, Lucas loved the book so much that not
Speaker 2: only did it become something that he wrote the forward for,
Speaker 2: but also it became the de facto formula in which
Speaker 2: all sort of Hollywood blockbuster you know, films and epics
Speaker 2: were using. And we've basically lost the ability to do
Speaker 2: that because for a lot of people, you don't have
Speaker 2: that sort of repertoire to understand other cultures or the
Speaker 2: writers and references of your day. Like my I don't
Speaker 2: watch a lot of modern televisions. So for instance, for
Speaker 2: a comedy or a feel good thing to put on
Speaker 2: when I'm eating dinner, I'll watch Cheers.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Again, another you know, piece of media from the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: and there are countless references to Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Heidegger. Like
Speaker 2: of course, sometimes they're played for gags, like there's one
Speaker 2: where Diane says, you know, I spent like three and
Speaker 2: a half hours finishing off like kerekad Guard, and you
Speaker 2: know Ted Danson's characters like, well, I hope he thanked
Speaker 2: you for it, you know, like obviously a sex joke.
Speaker 2: But the fact that you can like pull off a
Speaker 2: lot of these like sort of well written references or
Speaker 2: reference the HMS Pinafore with Kelsey Grammar just as he
Speaker 2: does in The Simpsons, like that kind of stuff doesn't
Speaker 2: really happen anymore because the American cultural zeitgeist is either
Speaker 2: built off references or it's become completely dare I say
Speaker 2: one shotted by short form content where you don't have
Speaker 2: that kind of cultural depth, oh one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: And it's it's one of those things where look like
Speaker 3: we on the right side of things tend to have
Speaker 3: a fairly dim view of modern culture, to put it mildly,
Speaker 3: and so often get get accused of being these sort
Speaker 3: of you know, dumer esque figures right always predicting disaster.
Speaker 3: There's a classical reference there, but it's fallen out of
Speaker 3: my head, so we'll go with Dumer and uh, yep, no,
Speaker 3: definitely not there. But I feel like you can objectively
Speaker 3: look at a comedy movie, right, something made for laughs,
Speaker 3: and say, well, look like, look at the talent in
Speaker 3: the room, even that you know, a cheap movie, something
Speaker 3: that wasn't kind of top line, and see that there
Speaker 3: was real human effort. There was a lot of IQ
Speaker 3: put into this. And then you know, you look at
Speaker 3: you know, tent pole productions or you know, certainly even
Speaker 3: academian politics, and you're like, what is this just passed us?
Speaker 3: I mean, I know there are reasons why, right, I'm
Speaker 3: very much familiar with the misallocation problem, but uh, it's
Speaker 3: particularly stark, even in a kind of you know, lighthearted example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that that's just something that doesn't
Speaker 2: really get to exist anymore outside of I think smaller
Speaker 2: budget or independent creators who can build off of older
Speaker 2: stories or things that in their childhood imagination were seemed
Speaker 2: cool and we we don't really get to see that
Speaker 2: be made nowadays. And I think that's what's led to
Speaker 2: all this discourse. As you mentioned the beginning, where like
Speaker 2: smaller budget films with independent, younger creatives really seems to
Speaker 2: be the way going forward. I mean, you know, he
Speaker 2: is his own guy. I'm sure you know he has
Speaker 2: an agent and everything like that. But I mean, like
Speaker 2: markt Plier made a bunch of money doing the Iron
Speaker 2: Lung movie, which of course based off of an indie
Speaker 2: video game project, some other guy is doing an animated
Speaker 2: Bloodborne film, and then, of course the two biggest films
Speaker 2: in recent weeks has been Obsession in the back rooms
Speaker 2: made by younger gen Z creatives that you know, we're
Speaker 2: big on YouTube, making short films and things before getting
Speaker 2: on there. And while those aren't comedies, although you could
Speaker 2: certainly play Obsessions straight as a comedy, Like I kind
Speaker 2: of want someone to do a spin or a take
Speaker 2: on Obsession where it's played completely straight as a comedy.
Speaker 2: And the closest thing we have to that is Mike
Speaker 2: Myers's film So I Married an Axe Murderer, which is
Speaker 2: another great comedy film that I think that you should
Speaker 2: definitely have someone on to review.
Speaker 1: It's a good time.
Speaker 3: See I've actually I have seen that it's been years. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's okay. There there are two memory for you, Yes,
Speaker 3: yes you did. There are two buyers films. I want
Speaker 3: someone to record an episode with me, so I made
Speaker 3: an Axe Murder. That's one of them. The other one
Speaker 3: is Love Guru, which is such a wretched, wretched film,
Speaker 3: especially uh oddly enough.
Speaker 1: Give it comedy.
Speaker 3: No, No, that's the thing that sank Meyer's career, where
Speaker 3: he plays like an Indian love Guru trying to get
Speaker 3: Jennifer Lawrence and Justin Timberlake back together. Justin Timberlake is
Speaker 3: the only actually good thing about that movie. You can
Speaker 3: tell he's just having a blast, and he's charismatic enough
Speaker 3: that you enjoy him. But that movie is genuinely wretched.
Speaker 3: It might be one of the worst things I've ever seen,
Speaker 3: and I wish to inflict it upon people. Other people
Speaker 3: need to suffer what I have suffered. Are honestly pretty
Speaker 3: close to the motivations of the pilot in this movie, right,
Speaker 3: someone who went through trauma at an early age and
Speaker 3: wants to kind of externalize that by forcing other people through.
Speaker 1: Of course, uh, and honestly I would.
Speaker 3: I would basically.
Speaker 1: Want someone to watch a Love in a in a
Speaker 1: Turkish prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, I do. The experience is roughly it's roughly analogous,
Speaker 3: to be honest, But the other one is I married
Speaker 3: ANX Murder, which is kind of a fun film. Well, Matt,
Speaker 3: we are are fast approaching time. This has been a
Speaker 3: ton of fun. I appreciate both making time to talk
Speaker 3: with me, and honestly also the recommendation. I can't believe
Speaker 3: I hadn't seen it, and I'm glad that I did.
Speaker 3: But uh, where can people find your work? Man?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Jay, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that the advice I gave you all those
Speaker 2: years ago, you know, worked out for you. It's amazing
Speaker 2: to see where you are now all these years later.
Speaker 2: It's one of those things where it's like, well, he
Speaker 2: can help others, but he cannot help himself.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: You can find my work on YouTube and sub stack.
Speaker 2: I'm most known by many people as the Prudentialists. You
Speaker 2: can find me on Twitter at mister Prudentialists or just
Speaker 2: find look up Matthew Williams on Twitter and I'll be there.
Speaker 2: I am the host or co host of the programs
Speaker 2: Do You Even Read? And The Digital Archipelago, trying to
Speaker 2: make sure that you know we're the only pro literacy
Speaker 2: podcast and the Side of things so we can continue
Speaker 2: to read and review books so you don't have to.
Speaker 2: But as always, you know, Jay, just thanks for having
Speaker 2: me on. This was a lot of fun and I
Speaker 2: hope that you do get the chance to inflict the
Speaker 2: Love Guru on someone that you know you truly enjoy
Speaker 2: talking to.
Speaker 3: And everyone at home, keep your head up like it
Speaker 3: last forever. Good Night,