Speaker 1: Tis the season. We are deep in Christmas season, but
Speaker 1: I want to take us back a few months. I
Speaker 1: want to take us back to Halloween, which is where
Speaker 1: we are right now, which is where in reality you
Speaker 1: and I actually are right now. My brother told me
Speaker 1: the craziest story the other day, and he was kind
Speaker 1: of just telling it like it was nothing, and I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, I'm sorry what happened? And he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're right, that is crazy. Apparently my brother was in
Speaker 1: junior high the year that the film Colors came out,
Speaker 1: which was the nineteen eighty eighty is Oh, you know Colors.
Speaker 1: I don't let me read you the synopsis of the
Speaker 1: film Colors.
Speaker 2: I'm already frightened they've given the name.
Speaker 1: In this gritty police drama from director Dennis Hopper, Oh,
Speaker 1: street wise cop played by Robert Duval and hothead Rookie
Speaker 1: played by Sean Penn grapple with their new partnership on
Speaker 1: the gang written streets of Los Angeles beautifully. So that
Speaker 1: movie came out, and apparently the kids at my brother's school,
Speaker 1: which eventually became my middle school, thought it would be
Speaker 1: an amazing idea to tress up as either a crip
Speaker 1: or a blood or Halloween. So my brother painted the
Speaker 1: scene of my dad dropping him off at school in
Speaker 1: the morning and my dad suddenly seeing a school filled
Speaker 1: with crips and bloods, and my dad's like, what the
Speaker 1: fuck is going on here?
Speaker 2: Where are you going? What are you doing?
Speaker 1: And my brother had to explain this is because of
Speaker 1: that movie. Yeah, And suddenly they these children and their parents.
Speaker 1: To be clear, parents had to get involved. These are young.
Speaker 1: These people aren't buying their own costumes. They're fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: Then a person went to the store and bought their
Speaker 1: kid quote unquote the crip or the blood Halloween costume
Speaker 1: and then pushed them out.
Speaker 2: The world and go and everything seems fine.
Speaker 1: This is not problematic at all. This will age be beautifully.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm Paul America, and this is that aged well
Speaker 2: yesterday's pop culture. Today we were in the heart of
Speaker 2: holiday season, holiday movies. Very I was waiting for that to.
Speaker 1: Keep going, and yeah, I realized it was like I
Speaker 1: don't have it in me. Right, I'm done, I'm done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're good here everyone. We're recording this on November three.
Speaker 1: So if you're wondering where we are, if we see
Speaker 1: the little.
Speaker 2: Edgy today you'll know more than we know now in
Speaker 2: any case, Erica. Before we get to the Holiday movie,
Speaker 2: we do have a couple of five star Apple podcast reviews.
Speaker 2: Shall I read the first one?
Speaker 1: I think you should?
Speaker 2: Yes, Okay, So this is from Heart to Paul. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that means they love me or
Speaker 2: maybe their name is Paul.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's both, Maybe it's both, Maybe it's both both.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's still hug from through the interwebsit or is
Speaker 2: this you?
Speaker 1: Are you writing five star reviews for us? Now?
Speaker 2: I just keep changing my username. Heart Paul writes love
Speaker 2: this podcast heard about your podcast from movies that made
Speaker 2: us gay, and started with episodes covering movies I love,
Speaker 2: such as Troop, Beverly Hills, Monster Squad, Beetlejuice, and Back
Speaker 2: to the Future. I always appreciate hearing people say I
Speaker 2: started the movies I love and they still like us afterwards.
Speaker 1: It's always like it it's really well. I feel like
Speaker 1: we were nice to all of these movies, except for
Speaker 1: perhaps Monster Squad.
Speaker 2: But even that we appreciated. Yeah, we appreciated it for
Speaker 2: what was gil Man will live forever on in this
Speaker 2: podcast's canon, Heart Paul goes on, if you haven't seen
Speaker 2: the peanut butter Solution from nineteen eighty five, you might
Speaker 2: want to check it out. I grew up with it
Speaker 2: and it lives in my brain. Thank you from Paul
Speaker 2: or polyester in Provincetown. A little rainbow emoji.
Speaker 1: Love it. Yeah, I have not seen the peanut butter solution,
Speaker 1: and I would love to.
Speaker 2: I'm intrigued because look, peanut butter throughout the years has
Speaker 2: solved a great many in my problems. Yeah, like just
Speaker 2: a spoonful of.
Speaker 1: Peanut butter helps the medicine go down.
Speaker 2: It sure does, it sure does. I'm like a dog.
Speaker 2: You have to bury the pill of the peanut butter.
Speaker 2: I just't lick it off the spoon.
Speaker 1: Shall I read our second review?
Speaker 2: Please do?
Speaker 1: Our second review comes from Jena seventy four. They spell
Speaker 1: it j e n n a y. I. I have
Speaker 1: to believe this.
Speaker 2: Has to be.
Speaker 1: It has to be a forest comfort, It has to
Speaker 1: be Jeni bye, JENNI bhye Jeni. My wife had been
Speaker 1: telling me for months to listen to this podcast, and
Speaker 1: I kept saying I will, I will. Then I started,
Speaker 1: and now I can't stop. This is a fantastic show.
Speaker 1: It's funny, smart, it has me rethinking so many of
Speaker 1: my favorite movies. I love this show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jenni.
Speaker 1: Jeni, you are not stupid as stupid does Jenni.
Speaker 2: I don't think you could have died of AIDS in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one, Jenniya.
Speaker 1: This review is like a box of chocolates, all.
Speaker 2: Right, Hart Paul Jenny seventy four. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for these Apple podcast reviews. If you would like a
Speaker 2: tote bag, let me know this is you. I will
Speaker 2: send it off for you. Erica, what is the movie
Speaker 2: that we are talking about on this the third Monday
Speaker 2: of December.
Speaker 1: Today's film is the nineteen eighty eight fen to See
Speaker 1: comedy Scrooged.
Speaker 2: M M all right, So this was requested by Nicole Sidney, Jackie, Megan, Rebecca, Laurie,
Speaker 2: Karen Sojo, Another Megan, Sonny, Melissa, Amber, Miggie, Julia, Ariel, Ariella, Jessica, Justine, Marissa, Gina, Libby,
Speaker 2: Kenzie Morgan, another Nicole, and still more of those people
Speaker 2: whose names could not be determined from their social media profiles.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, yeah, this was the top.
Speaker 2: This is a big film.
Speaker 1: This was the top film. For this month, right like
Speaker 1: when you put out the ass.
Speaker 2: This is the first film that lost in a Patreon
Speaker 2: poll to come back on its own. Oh shit, because
Speaker 2: we pulled this against up at Christmas Carol last December
Speaker 2: and it lost.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I forgot about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yep. So Scrooge made it the very next year.
Speaker 2: No promises on the other losers, we don't know, and
Speaker 2: we'll get to them. But Scrooged was was a clear winner.
Speaker 1: Here's looking at you, Mildred Pierce next year.
Speaker 2: Good luck fingers crossed luck Queen. So Scrooge was written
Speaker 2: by Mitch Glazer and Michael o'dona hugh. It was directed
Speaker 2: by Richard Donner and stars Bill Murray, Karen Allen, Alfrey Woodard,
Speaker 2: bobcat Goldthwaite, David Johansson, and Carol Kane.
Speaker 1: Scrooged was nominated for one Academy Award Best Makeup, which
Speaker 1: it lost to Beetlejuice. That is actually a horse race,
Speaker 1: because the makeup in this movie is excellent.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The The Ghost of Christmas, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's makeup for special effects, but when the Grost of
Speaker 1: Christmas Future opens up, his robe. Yeah, and it's like
Speaker 1: the Lost Souls in there. I was like, that's really
Speaker 1: well done.
Speaker 2: That's well done. Yeah yeah, yeah, And like the makeup
Speaker 2: on the Jacob Marley characters name is not Jacob Martin.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, his name is lou Blue Hayward.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, very well done. But I think I
Speaker 2: would give it to be do you just.
Speaker 1: Had more makeup in it, like just more stuff, more
Speaker 1: ghouls more.
Speaker 2: So like sometimes the acting races go whoever does the
Speaker 2: most acting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this went to the most makeup fair, which was
Speaker 1: a fair win, to be clear.
Speaker 2: Erica Scrooged was a difficult production, with a lot of
Speaker 2: conflict between Bill Murray and director Richard Donner over their
Speaker 2: different visions for the film. Since the film's release, writer
Speaker 2: Michael o'donna hugh has said he didn't think that Donner
Speaker 2: understood comedy, that maybe only forty percent of the original
Speaker 2: script is in the finished product, and what did remain
Speaker 2: was quote unquote twisted. He said, we wrote a fucking masterpiece.
Speaker 2: The finished film is a piece of unadulterated, unmitigated shit.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, bold statement, We wrote a fucking master I know. Yeah, baby,
Speaker 1: you copy this off of Charles Dickens.
Speaker 2: Baby, this is an adaptation.
Speaker 1: Baby. To be clear, I like this movie, but like,
Speaker 1: you can't call something this derivative a masterpiece. That's not
Speaker 1: how masterpieces work. Let's be some more Christmas Carol is
Speaker 1: a fucking masterpiece.
Speaker 2: Yours is a is an imitation.
Speaker 1: Of a master Yeah, yours is a satire of said
Speaker 1: master piece. Do you understand? You know what, sir, call me,
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna discuss the nuances.
Speaker 2: Okay, so a satire of the word masterpiece. I think
Speaker 2: calling it a piece of unmitigated, undultraated shit is a
Speaker 2: touch harsh, A touch harsh. It's a little bit much.
Speaker 1: I like this movie more than you did. We were
Speaker 1: talking off Mike about it earlier. I totally understand where
Speaker 1: Bill Murray is coming from. It is a lot of
Speaker 1: like the easiest joke wins in this movie. But you
Speaker 1: gotta remember, I saw this like young, and it like
Speaker 1: imprinted on me, and so I will I will love
Speaker 1: this movie forever as a result.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so, When did you first see Scrooged?
Speaker 1: This was like a big, like heavy rotation around the
Speaker 1: holidays in our house. It was this, It was home alone.
Speaker 1: It was a Christmas story like these are. Those are
Speaker 1: like the top three I think Christmas movies we watched.
Speaker 1: I had quite a bit of this memorize when I
Speaker 1: watched it again yesterday.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know the last time I saw it
Speaker 1: before I saw it yesterday. To be honest, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've seen it as an adult, Like maybe
Speaker 1: I saw it in my twenties at some point, but
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in a while. Okay, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like other films have taken its place.
Speaker 3: Elf.
Speaker 1: Elf has worked its way in Yeah, yeah, how about you.
Speaker 2: I did see this as a kid. If you had
Speaker 2: asked me this a week ago, I would have had
Speaker 2: exactly one memory of this movie, and that is Carol
Speaker 2: Caine hitting Bill Murray in the face of the toastra.
Speaker 2: That is literally the only thing I remember.
Speaker 1: Like where your comedy heartless?
Speaker 2: Yeah it really is. And having watched it again, okay,
Speaker 2: let me put it this way. You know how in
Speaker 2: Sex and the City, when Burger breaks up with Carrie
Speaker 2: on the post it note yeah and he writes, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I can't don't hate me. I want you and all
Speaker 2: the listeners never requested this to picture that be with
Speaker 2: that post it note on my forehead. I didn't. I
Speaker 2: did not hate the movie. I really didn't. It peaked
Speaker 2: incredibly early, the first three minutes of this movie.
Speaker 1: It's so good, it's.
Speaker 2: So funny, the hit joke ratio is so strong that
Speaker 2: I think, also combined with how many people I know
Speaker 2: love this movie, I went in with sky high expectations. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they simply were not met. And like, and I
Speaker 2: knew you loved this movie, and I knew a lot
Speaker 2: of our listeners love this movie. And despite what people
Speaker 2: may think having this of this podcast, I don't love
Speaker 2: hating things other people.
Speaker 1: Like, that's not true. He does. He told me off
Speaker 1: my earlier. He's like, I want to break hearts today.
Speaker 2: I actually, well, if it's a movie I think is bad,
Speaker 2: then sure I'm fine hating it. But like, I don't
Speaker 2: think this movie's bad. I just I think it's one
Speaker 2: of those things. You know, we hit those eighties comedies
Speaker 2: where I'm like, I'm not laughing and everyone else seems
Speaker 2: to be laughing.
Speaker 1: We also have had this conversation in Caddyshack and again
Speaker 1: in Ghostbusters. Yeah, I like Bill Murray's whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am all in on Bill Murray being an asshole.
Speaker 1: I find him being so mean, so funny. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a lot, like a lot of the things, I'm sure
Speaker 1: great on you. I love when he plays a dick,
Speaker 1: sure like he's so good at it. He's not afraid
Speaker 1: to be like ugly in movies. Your mileage may vary
Speaker 1: depending on your relationship to Bill Murray totally, which is
Speaker 1: basically every Bill Murray performance from the eighties, Like it's
Speaker 1: either you're in or you're out, because they're all basically
Speaker 1: the same performance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he became a much better actor as he aged.
Speaker 1: It's really I can't remember if Broken Flowers came out
Speaker 1: before Lost in Translation, but one of those two movies,
Speaker 1: those are the two movies. I feel like we're like
Speaker 1: a real director. Like I'm not to say Richard Dnder'
Speaker 1: is not a real director or Ivan Wrightman or anyone else,
Speaker 1: but like like a quote unquote real director like went
Speaker 1: up to him and was like, I think you could
Speaker 1: do this. And I think that's when Bill Murray started
Speaker 1: to believe that he could do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there's there's something with the Bill Murray performance
Speaker 2: in me in this movie that reminds me a little
Speaker 2: bit of Mike Myers in So I Married an axe murderer.
Speaker 2: I think it's because I know now, I know he
Speaker 2: can do it. So when he plays everything with this
Speaker 2: like sarcastic aloof remove, it really greats on me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think he's very good in this movie.
Speaker 1: I just don't disagree.
Speaker 2: I think that when he starts shouting, I don't think
Speaker 2: he's actually like, he doesn't make me believe any of
Speaker 2: the emotion and I performance.
Speaker 1: I totally disagree because that ending gets me. The ending
Speaker 1: of this movie fucking gets me. I felt nothing when
Speaker 1: his voice cracks and he gets Really I think he's
Speaker 1: really good at the end of this movie.
Speaker 2: I think maybe just lost me by that time.
Speaker 1: I think the first ninety percent of the movie he's
Speaker 1: playing kind of the same note over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, which is believe I believe why he's so
Speaker 1: frustrated with this performance in this film because the director
Speaker 1: is just like maybe directing him in a certain way
Speaker 1: that he's like, this isn't this isn't what I want
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, But the last ten minutes of this movie,
Speaker 1: or the last ten percent of this movie, I mean,
Speaker 1: I am all in on Bill.
Speaker 2: Murray even outside of that, And you're right, maybe it
Speaker 2: is the director, but like, because the first ninety percent
Speaker 2: of the movie is the same note over and over.
Speaker 2: He's the only character with an arc. This is a
Speaker 2: Christmas Carol. There is one character with an arc in
Speaker 2: the Christmas Carol, in a Christmas Carol, and he doesn't
Speaker 2: have one. I think the movie had Like I kind
Speaker 2: of believe the writer to the extent of like this
Speaker 2: might this was almost a good movie. Like maybe Richard
Speaker 2: Donners he was the wrong director for this, Like like
Speaker 2: he didn't get the humor that they enjoy. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: like I really don't want to come off too harsh.
Speaker 2: I didn't hate it. I wasn't angry at it while
Speaker 2: I was watching it or anything like that. I was
Speaker 2: I think it was. I'm not angry. I'm disappointed.
Speaker 1: That's so much worse, Dad, I want.
Speaker 2: So much more for this movie. From this movie, Paul.
Speaker 1: The critics disagree with you.
Speaker 2: They do.
Speaker 1: Scrooged has a seventy one percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes,
Speaker 1: a seventy one percent audience score, and an eighty percent
Speaker 1: on cherry Picks. Saw do you Like Them? Apples?
Speaker 2: I wouldn't give this movie critically much lower than that.
Speaker 2: I would probably give it like a sixty percent. Like
Speaker 2: there's great performers in it.
Speaker 1: It's so many great.
Speaker 2: Performance there's so many cameos from people who I no
Speaker 2: longer know who they are. But I'm like, I think
Speaker 2: that person's famous or was famous forty years ago. I
Speaker 2: would probably give it a sixty percent. My enjoyment of
Speaker 2: it was probably a little lower than that, but I
Speaker 2: think that just again, it's just like it's Greek. To me,
Speaker 2: some of this eighties comedy. It's just Greek. I don't
Speaker 2: get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2: Eighty feels high. I'll tell you that, Ladies, eighty feels
Speaker 2: quite high.
Speaker 1: Paul, thanks. Women are wrong. Women are bad at judging films.
Speaker 2: Paul said, So, women don't understand Scrooge.
Speaker 1: Women don't understand comedy. Well, we all know women aren't funny. Well,
Speaker 1: so how dare they try to understand comedy.
Speaker 2: If we can't take women aren't funny as just a
Speaker 2: starting place for an open conversation and an open dialogue. Erica,
Speaker 2: I don't know what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: I think seventy percent is right. I think seventy I.
Speaker 2: Mean, it's like, I'm not angry at it.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. Now I didn't know this this backstory
Speaker 1: of like the writer and the star and the director
Speaker 1: all being at loggerheads about this. So I can't tell
Speaker 1: if that's putting things in a different like I'm seeing
Speaker 1: things differently now than I was five minutes ago.
Speaker 2: Okay, sure to be.
Speaker 1: Honest, because five minutes ago, it's like it's a pretty
Speaker 1: good movie. Yeah, it's a little one note, but it's
Speaker 1: also like it's a holiday movie for family, Like it's
Speaker 1: not supposed to be it's not supposed to be this
Speaker 1: like great masterpiece, although apparently it is. It was at
Speaker 1: one point, it was at some point. But now that
Speaker 1: I know that, that is sort of coloring my like
Speaker 1: version like what I see when I see this movie,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I do see like Bill Murray is
Speaker 1: sort of playing the same thing kind of over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. But also the script supports it.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, like the script. The script supports it. It's
Speaker 1: not like he's could have more pathos and like it's
Speaker 1: and is choosing not to do it.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, because there's unlike in like a Christmas
Speaker 2: Carol where it's just like ghost ghost ghost in this
Speaker 2: movie that's ghost and then return to the real world,
Speaker 2: interact with people. Ghost returned to the real world, interact
Speaker 2: with people. So I'm like those two sections where he's
Speaker 2: we want to see something different. Yeah, and I agree.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's I mean, I think Bill Marie
Speaker 2: might actually be trying. I think he's trying, but like
Speaker 2: the script isn't telling him to do that, like he
Speaker 2: winds up being a dick again, and like backsliding's okay,
Speaker 2: but it should be like two steps forward, one step back,
Speaker 2: as opposed to two steps forward two steps back, because
Speaker 2: then we don't have progression. Like I know, I'm being nitpicky.
Speaker 2: People are annoyed at me. I'm sorry, uh, Erica. The
Speaker 2: tagline for Scrooged was the spirits will move you in
Speaker 2: odd and hysterical ways.
Speaker 1: Is that a line from a Christmas Carol? I haven't
Speaker 1: read a Christmas Carol since I was thirteen.
Speaker 2: I never read a Christmas Carol. But that does not
Speaker 2: sound like Dickens.
Speaker 1: He was the one Dickens book I liked growing up.
Speaker 1: Oh one that I read that I had that I
Speaker 1: was like, oh yeah, And unfortunately it's the first one
Speaker 1: I read, so that when I was when I encountered
Speaker 1: other Dickens later, I was like, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Your experience of Dickens is my experience with Scrooge peaked
Speaker 2: very early.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I was like, go back to a
Speaker 1: Christmas Carol, bro These other books are long, there's slugs.
Speaker 1: If it is a line from the original, then I
Speaker 1: like it. If it is not, then I don't like it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go on a limb and say that
Speaker 2: Dickens didn't use the phrase odd and hysterical. That just
Speaker 2: does not sound like Charles Dickens to me at all.
Speaker 2: But I could be wrong. Prove me wrong.
Speaker 1: It was the best of times, It was the worst
Speaker 1: of times. Should I read the synopsis?
Speaker 2: Please do.
Speaker 1: Frank Cross is a mean TV executive with perfect qualities
Speaker 1: of a modern day Scrooge. Before the night is over,
Speaker 1: he'll be visited by three ghosts from the past, present,
Speaker 1: and future. This person is like, guys, you know this story?
Speaker 2: Why not? Just right? It's an adaptation of a Christmas Carols, Yes,
Speaker 2: with Bill.
Speaker 1: Murray with like it's a comedy version of a Christmas Carol.
Speaker 1: H You're welcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If you want the actual comedy version, watch them
Speaker 2: up at Christmas Carol burn burn Yep.
Speaker 1: Burt actual synopsis for this film. A film so overstuffed
Speaker 1: with cameos that you will not even notice Miles fucking
Speaker 1: Davis is in this movie until the forty fifth time
Speaker 1: you've watched it.
Speaker 2: Wait. I actually didn't notice Miles fucking Davis in this movie.
Speaker 1: And I had to be I have to be honest.
Speaker 1: It's after I read the like Wikipedia for this movie,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wait, where's Miles Davis in this movie?
Speaker 1: And then I watched it last night. Yeah, he is
Speaker 1: one of the street musicians when Bill and John Murray
Speaker 1: are walking down the street. Yeah, and Bill Murray's yelling
Speaker 1: at the street musicians for playing to the tourists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking Miles Davis, isn't that he's one of the musicians.
Speaker 2: Bill Murray just knew everybody, or Richard Donner knew everybody,
Speaker 2: Like they're like, when it can be in this movie?
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I bet it's Bill Murray.
Speaker 2: Probably Bill Murray. Yeah, yeah, all right, everyone, Uh, we're
Speaker 2: gonna play some commercials now. If you don't want to
Speaker 2: listen to commercials. You can go to our Patreon Patreon
Speaker 2: dot com slash that Age Weel podcast sign up on
Speaker 2: any paid tier. You will get ad free episodes future
Speaker 2: Paul here list. I just want to let you know
Speaker 2: that Patreon now allows for gifting. So if you are
Speaker 2: looking for a gift for your spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, best friend, sister, aunt,
Speaker 2: and they are a fan of this podcast, you can
Speaker 2: go there and you can buy them a year long
Speaker 2: subscription for like thirty six dollars. They'll get add free
Speaker 2: episodes of this podcast. So if you're looking for something
Speaker 2: that's an idea and if they like it, you can
Speaker 2: just give it to them again next year. It's the
Speaker 2: gift that you can keep on giving. Now, that's the dream.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do that, that's cool too.
Speaker 2: We're just gonna play a couple of commercials and then
Speaker 2: we're to come back and we're gonna take you through
Speaker 2: Scrooged and we're back.
Speaker 1: We open with a jaunty chorus singing la la la la, la,
Speaker 1: la la la, as the camera zooms overhead and focuses
Speaker 1: on a wintry Christmas village. We go inside one of
Speaker 1: the sweet candy looking houses. And see Santa's workshop. Santa
Speaker 1: and missus Claus are encouraging the elves to finish making
Speaker 1: toys for all the good girls and boys.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have to interrupt you for one second because
Speaker 2: you will appreciate this. Remember, all I knew was Carol
Speaker 2: Kane hits Bill Murray in the Face of the Toaster,
Speaker 2: and canonically, a Christmas Carol is a is a story
Speaker 2: in which like some form of magic or like exists
Speaker 2: right like other worlds whatever. So I was like, I
Speaker 2: really did not remember that Santa was a character in Scrooged,
Speaker 2: and I this was about to happen work so well
Speaker 2: on me because I bought it. I just went with it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really fucking good. Suddenly, Santa
Speaker 1: looks out the window and sees what appears to be
Speaker 1: a missile heading straight for them. He screams, didn't come in,
Speaker 1: and the workshop is besieged by fire and bullets from
Speaker 1: an arm to militia. Dressed in black, Missus Claus goes
Speaker 1: to the gun cupboard and grabs her AK forty seven
Speaker 1: and start shooting back as Lee Majors played by Lee
Speaker 1: Majors skis in through the front door. And exclaims that
Speaker 1: he's here to save the day.
Speaker 2: Has has a more American phrase ever been uttered on
Speaker 2: this podcast than gun cupboard?
Speaker 1: You know, the the gun cupboard.
Speaker 2: The thing we all have in our house, the cupboard
Speaker 2: that you where you have your china in the cupboard,
Speaker 2: we have your gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two different cupboards.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Santa tells Lee Majors that he's been a very good boy,
Speaker 1: and we hear a voiceover proclaim that Lee Majors is
Speaker 1: starring in the Night the Reindeer Died. We cut to
Speaker 1: another commercial for another show. This one's called Robert Gulay's
Speaker 1: Old Fashioned Cajun Christmas and it is actually Robert Gulay
Speaker 1: on like a raft in the swamp, singing jingle bells
Speaker 1: while alligators circle him.
Speaker 2: I want to be guess, I wrote down, Is it
Speaker 2: Bob Gulay's old fashions the better?
Speaker 1: And then another commercial for an updated classic, a remake
Speaker 1: of Leave It to Beaver call, or like a Christmas
Speaker 1: special reunion special of Leave It to Beaver called Father
Speaker 1: Loves Beaver.
Speaker 2: Okay, so these three things happened in like ninety seconds,
Speaker 2: said I am soaring above the clouds.
Speaker 1: I'm like this is the best movie I've ever This.
Speaker 2: Is the greatest thing I've ever seen. More Please, yes,
Speaker 2: I am sat.
Speaker 1: All these programs and more are available on IBC's holiday schedule.
Speaker 1: Youle love it if mule, of course is spelled y
Speaker 1: U l E.
Speaker 2: I do also want to point out that in the
Speaker 2: commercial for Father Loves Beaver, June Cleaver, you know that
Speaker 2: the kid comes in and asks for data is June
Speaker 2: Cleaver says, always probably out chasing Beaver. I was like, yes,
Speaker 2: thank you. All right, So the promo package ends and
Speaker 2: we're in the dark, foreboding office of Frank Cross, played
Speaker 2: by Bill Murray, the president of IBC, which is the
Speaker 2: television channel that we're watching. Frank demands to see the
Speaker 2: Scrooge promo. Okay, this will bother me the whole time.
Speaker 2: A Christmas Carol has got to be in the public
Speaker 2: domain at this point. Why do they keep calling it Scrooge?
Speaker 1: I kind of love that actually, because it's like, these
Speaker 1: are not these are not like intellectuals. Yeah, these are
Speaker 1: not artists. Yeah, they don't give a fuck. It's called
Speaker 1: a Christmas carol. They're calling it.
Speaker 2: Scrooge like it's Charles Dickens Scrooge I'm like, no, it's not.
Speaker 2: It can't be.
Speaker 1: That's part of the joke.
Speaker 2: So we see a promo for a live Christmas Eve
Speaker 2: production of Scrooge with all the bells and whistles, including
Speaker 2: Mary lou Reddin as Tiny.
Speaker 1: Tim excellent no notes.
Speaker 2: The solid gold dancer excellent no notes, which is a
Speaker 2: phrase I cannot hear without hearing Darthy's bornac go, I
Speaker 2: look like the mother of a solid gold dancer.
Speaker 1: Every time they cut to the solid gold dancers in
Speaker 1: their string bikinis, I was so happy. It's such a dumb,
Speaker 1: funny joke and it works on me every time.
Speaker 2: And it's hosted by Sir John Houseman's and they.
Speaker 1: Actually got fucking John Houseman to be in this movie.
Speaker 2: Frank's nervous employees expectantly turned to him, hoping for the best,
Speaker 2: and they do not get it. Frank caustically declares that
Speaker 2: it sucks, it's toothless, and worst of all, it's boring.
Speaker 1: The worst thing you can be is boring.
Speaker 2: I mean, is Frank a co host on this podcast?
Speaker 1: Yes he is?
Speaker 2: Maybe really, he says, now I have to kill all
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 1: See that works on me, okay, because the way he goes, well,
Speaker 1: now I have to kill all of you. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: to me is Bill Murray being the best version of
Speaker 1: Bill Murray.
Speaker 2: One of the executives Mousey and Sweet Elliott Loudermilk played
Speaker 2: by Bobcat Goldthwaite, which I fully expected to be a cameo,
Speaker 2: but this character will track throughout the movie.
Speaker 1: I took him out of the most of the recap.
Speaker 1: He only appears basically out and then at the end
Speaker 1: because it does not work. And I love Bob Kat Gulfwaite,
Speaker 1: but this doesn't work.
Speaker 2: So Elliott informs Frank that they've already been running the
Speaker 2: ad for a month and it's getting a strong response.
Speaker 2: People want to see the show, and Frank screams at
Speaker 2: Elliott that wanting to see it isn't enough. They have
Speaker 2: to be terrified of missing it.
Speaker 1: So Frank has his bleakered assistant Grace played by the
Speaker 1: excellent Alfre Woodard Unimpeachable, Unimpeachable, queue up the new promo
Speaker 1: that he has cut for this program for this holiday classic.
Speaker 2: Just a note for everyone, Paul is still fully on
Speaker 2: board with this movie at this.
Speaker 1: Because this promo is fucking funny.
Speaker 2: This whole sequence in the office.
Speaker 1: So the promo starts with acid rain and ends with
Speaker 1: nuclear holocaust. It is bleak as hell, and it claims
Speaker 1: that you can't miss IBC Scrooge because quote, your life
Speaker 1: might just depend on it. Everyone in the room is stunned,
Speaker 1: and not in a good way. Yeah, grown men are
Speaker 1: physically like ill as they're leaving the room, like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe I just saw that.
Speaker 2: I have to say, I, for me is a personal experience.
Speaker 2: This like, like, I enjoyed, I got the joke. I
Speaker 2: did get the joke. I thought it was funny. I've
Speaker 2: watched them baseball over the last couple of weeks because
Speaker 2: the met's actually went so, I saw a lot of
Speaker 2: political ads and as a result, this joke did not
Speaker 2: age well for me because it was like, oh, it's
Speaker 2: I mean, it's obviously not I haven't seen any political adds.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you something. It's not this, But it's
Speaker 2: not not this, Like.
Speaker 1: Why are we getting political ads here? What a waste
Speaker 1: of money?
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of house races?
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, fair enough. I was like, I think everyone
Speaker 1: knows where New York City is going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is not the movie's fault. It's one of
Speaker 2: those situations where we did not age well and the
Speaker 2: movie it's a perfectly good joke to make.
Speaker 1: Oh because okay, so I because I have a blackout,
Speaker 1: I have not watched any political ads as everyone show,
Speaker 1: and this joke lands extremely well on me. Perfect So
Speaker 1: Elliott walks up to Frank and meekly suggests, hey, this
Speaker 1: ad will not only frighten children, but might actually turn
Speaker 1: some viewers away because it's so graphically violent, and Frank
Speaker 1: pretends to be grateful for Elliott's on his feedback, thank you.
Speaker 1: You know, I did not see that point of view
Speaker 1: until you pointed it out to me, and Elliott's like,
Speaker 1: you're welcome, sir. I'm so glad I could help. And
Speaker 1: then the moment Elliot walks away, Frank turns to Grace
Speaker 1: and says fire him. Grace protests it's Christmas, and Frank goes,
Speaker 1: thank you, call accounting and have them cancel his bonus.
Speaker 2: Once Elliott is dispatched, Frank and Grace going to his
Speaker 2: office and they go through his holiday gift list, in
Speaker 2: which most people, including Grace, Frank's brother, and Colonel Tom
Speaker 2: Parker that made me laugh, are getting towels, while a
Speaker 2: very select few are getting top of the line VC.
Speaker 1: Okay, So for those of you under forty who are
Speaker 1: listening to this, i'd have to explain what this what
Speaker 1: this meant. In nineteen eighty seven, when this film was made,
Speaker 1: a VCR was like a DVD player. Let me go back.
Speaker 1: A DVD player is like a DVR. God, do you
Speaker 1: even remember DVRs?
Speaker 2: I think we have to go to Netflix.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Prior to Netflix, I actually had that literal conversation with
Speaker 2: my youngest nephew because he was watching some sitcom that's
Speaker 2: actually airing on like linear television, and he was like,
Speaker 2: have you watched the latest season of Abbot Elementary or
Speaker 2: whatever it is? And I was like yeah, and I
Speaker 2: was like, it's airing now. He's like, well, I've seen
Speaker 2: all of it. And I'm like you can't have it
Speaker 2: hasn't aired. He's like, no, I saw of it on Netflix.
Speaker 2: I was like, no, you saw last season. There's a
Speaker 2: new season that's airing on TV. He didn't understand. He
Speaker 2: was like, no, I'm up to date. I'm like, you.
Speaker 1: Aren't, because TV still exists.
Speaker 2: Y TV does exist.
Speaker 1: That's funny. Yeah, that's funny that kids genuinely are like
Speaker 1: but what's TV. Yeah, so I don't even know how
Speaker 1: to explain a VCR to people.
Speaker 2: I'd also like to point out the in Frank's office,
Speaker 2: we will have a tab sighting. I like to I
Speaker 2: like to spot tab so much tab vodka.
Speaker 1: Tabs vodka as a drink.
Speaker 2: That tastes like heartburn to me. Okay, So, company CEO
Speaker 2: Preston Rhinelander played by Robert Mitcham, enters and tells Frank
Speaker 2: that they should start creating programming for cats and dogs
Speaker 2: because he read somewhere that cats are starting to pay
Speaker 2: attention to what they see on TV.
Speaker 1: Look, I worked in television for a while. This is
Speaker 1: not this is not an insane conversation to have. There
Speaker 1: are TV executives who are having this thought. We're having
Speaker 1: this thought ten years ago already.
Speaker 2: Well, and you know what, there there are channels for
Speaker 2: them now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, like like this this came true.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Can I tell you I was once watching like
Speaker 1: like Animal Planet in my house and my cat wandered
Speaker 1: in just as a lion was walking across the screen,
Speaker 1: and my cat wigged out that it's one of the
Speaker 1: funniest things I've ever seen in my life. My cat
Speaker 1: he jumped so high he hit the ceiling and then
Speaker 1: it was like he was a ghost. He was in
Speaker 1: the kitchen before I even knew what it happened.
Speaker 2: The fuck is that? Okay? So Frank Usher's Presston away
Speaker 2: with a promise of including some mice and Scrooge to
Speaker 2: entertain the cats. And then just as Preston leaves, Bryce
Speaker 2: coming an la slimeball who calls the elevator operator Pops
Speaker 2: played by John Glover. I love John Glover this Like.
Speaker 1: I didn't get this performance when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't understand what he was parodying. This is
Speaker 1: maybe my favorite performance in the movie. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know that until yesterday. Yeah, I was like, he is
Speaker 1: so so funny.
Speaker 2: I saw John Glover and I was like, oh, John Glover,
Speaker 2: I love him, and I clicked on his Wikipedia link.
Speaker 2: I want to share a little tidbit of trivia from
Speaker 2: his Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: For Yah, I love John Glover.
Speaker 2: Please, no, no, this is good. This is a celebration
Speaker 2: of John Glover.
Speaker 1: Oh thank god.
Speaker 2: Kay. He slept with Freddie Mercury. Oh yes, he is
Speaker 2: the champion, my friends. He will rock you. He felt
Speaker 2: Bohemian Rhapsody.
Speaker 1: He slept with Freddie Mercury. Good for you, Jungle John
Speaker 1: Glover is still with us, right, yeah, okay, good, good
Speaker 1: for you John Glover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. So Bryce enters and casually mentions to
Speaker 2: Frank that he's here to meet with Preston and that
Speaker 2: he went to college with Preston's son.
Speaker 1: Everything about Bryce screams entitled like yuppie scumbag asshole. It
Speaker 1: is such a good performance.
Speaker 2: It is. I'm confused at the dramaturgical decision to write
Speaker 2: an adaptation of a Christmas Carol and then put a
Speaker 2: character in the story that you're supposed to dislike more
Speaker 2: than you dislike the Ebenezer Scrooge analogue.
Speaker 1: I think that's in a Christmas Carol. Though there are
Speaker 1: awful awful people in a Christmas Carol.
Speaker 2: Okay, My Christmas Carol is the Muppet.
Speaker 1: One, and Mike Christmas Carol is the immortal Charles Dickens classic.
Speaker 2: Scrooge, the masterpiece.
Speaker 1: I I don't care. I just don't care because his
Speaker 1: performance is so goddamn funny. Yeah, and and I don't
Speaker 1: mind him having another antagonist to work off of.
Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough, So Frank panics and orders Grace to
Speaker 2: work late with him that night so they can get
Speaker 2: ahead of Bryce trying to take Frank's job, and Grace
Speaker 2: protests that she has to take her son to the doctor,
Speaker 2: and Frank's screams, I care like a petulant child.
Speaker 1: I feel for Grace, Grace girl, and Bezel and Bezel money.
Speaker 1: Now what are you doing? Why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: Frank goes back into his office to find his younger brother, James,
Speaker 1: played by actual younger brother John Murray. All four of
Speaker 1: the Murray brothers are in this film, so James is
Speaker 1: waiting for Frank in his office and James invites Frank
Speaker 1: over for Christmas dinner with the rest of the family,
Speaker 1: and before he can even finish the offer, Frank's like no,
Speaker 1: turns him down cold. He shakes his brother's hand and
Speaker 1: he's sincerely says, I hope you and your family have
Speaker 1: a nice New Year's There's genuine affection between the brothers,
Speaker 1: to be clear. He says, I love you, James, I
Speaker 1: really do, but I could not stomach Christmas at your house.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: James looks disappointed, but not at all surprised. He's like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: the door is always open to you should you want to.
Speaker 2: Why do you think they chose to have this relationship suite,
Speaker 2: because like in the in The Muppet One, like.
Speaker 1: It is, it is only frame of reference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I haven't read it. I'll be honest, I've
Speaker 2: not read.
Speaker 1: A Nephew was really nice in the book.
Speaker 2: Nephew's really nice, but Scrooge is a dick. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think I wonder. I'm working this out in my head
Speaker 2: as I say it, so this may not be accurate.
Speaker 2: But like, I wonder if part of the reason that
Speaker 2: he's playing a similar note the whole time is because
Speaker 2: they're starting him in this already somewhat mitigated place of
Speaker 2: like he's gonna be nice to his brother and we're
Speaker 2: gonna have La Slimeball. Come on, it's actually even worse
Speaker 2: than him. It's taking some of the teeth out of
Speaker 2: how horrible he is in early on.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because he's he's already screamed at like
Speaker 1: four people and be like a rage monster at the office,
Speaker 1: So I don't know that he's not not terrible. We're
Speaker 1: gonna find out later that they come from a really shitty,
Speaker 1: broken household. I think the implication is that these two
Speaker 1: sort of like Frank kind of raised James, like he
Speaker 1: did his best to like protect James totally and so
Speaker 1: and I think that so. I think bringing that, like that,
Speaker 1: that backstory into it makes this make a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe that was included in the masterpiece version of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I like it. I like that he and
Speaker 1: his brother are like close.
Speaker 2: I don't dislike it, to be clear, I just dramaturgically
Speaker 2: like questioning.
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense. I again haven't read the book
Speaker 1: in a minute, but I think this is closer to
Speaker 1: the relationship and he has with his nephew in the book.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, So we cut to Frank stealing an old
Speaker 2: woman's cab and flipping her off excellently.
Speaker 1: She's like, sir, please don't take my cab, and he
Speaker 1: just gives her the middle finger through the window and
Speaker 1: she goes, you set up a bit.
Speaker 2: I hope you're rotten now. He takes the cab to
Speaker 2: a charity dinner where he's receiving the Humanitarian of the
Speaker 2: Year award, and then he goes back to the office
Speaker 2: and he leaves the award in the cab. Once he's
Speaker 2: back to the office, he fixes himself another vodka tab.
Speaker 2: Is there something that would be grosser than a vodka tab?
Speaker 1: I've never had a tab? What does tab taste like?
Speaker 2: Worst diet coke?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Or does it have like a Doctor peppery kind of
Speaker 1: what the fuck is? Oh?
Speaker 2: There's not, there's no there's no enigma to it.
Speaker 1: Okay, because doctor I've had doctor Pepper once and it
Speaker 1: rewired my brain. I was like, I don't wait, what
Speaker 1: what's happening? What is this taste?
Speaker 2: I actually like doctor Pepper tab from my memory. They
Speaker 2: discontinued it. It just can't get in twenty.
Speaker 1: Twenty, bud if you can find it twenty twenty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it lasted that long.
Speaker 2: It did, holy shit, because I looked it up because
Speaker 2: I was like, can I get a tab to try to?
Speaker 1: I have not seen a tab in the wild since
Speaker 1: fucking Reagan was president.
Speaker 2: You want to what if we go to like a
Speaker 2: bodega in Deep Queens.
Speaker 1: There's still a tab in the back.
Speaker 2: There's a tab something? Yeah, yeah, there is all right.
Speaker 2: So he's he's drinking his vodka tab and he hears
Speaker 2: a knock at his office door and that quickly becomes
Speaker 2: a pounding and then an explosion as the door flies
Speaker 2: open and half the wall breaks down with it. He
Speaker 2: reaches into his desk to grab a gun that he
Speaker 2: keeps in his desk at work and his gun drawer.
Speaker 2: His gun draw doesn't have a gun covered.
Speaker 1: At least he has a gun drawer.
Speaker 2: He's a gun drawer, and he hides behind his desk
Speaker 2: and the dust settles, and the decaying, walking talking corpse
Speaker 2: of Lou Hayward played by John Forsyth cheerfully enters the
Speaker 2: office and starts to fix himself a drink. Why in
Speaker 2: these stories? Why does Ebenezer Scrooge or Frank Cross in
Speaker 2: this case? Why did they qualify for like the Final Warning?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Did did Lou Some or Jacob Marley make some deal
Speaker 2: with some underworld figure to be like, look, I I
Speaker 2: know I will be burning forever, but can I have
Speaker 2: one night to try to send a couple of ghosts
Speaker 2: to my friend Emmy's or to try to save him
Speaker 2: from eternal torment?
Speaker 1: That's a good question, actually, Like I think because deep
Speaker 1: down the character is just so deeply lonely, and that's
Speaker 1: where the anger and the like the greed comes from,
Speaker 1: and that they're fundamentally good people, I guess, but you're right,
Speaker 1: that is a weir like of why this asshole, all
Speaker 1: the assholes. There's so many assholes.
Speaker 2: Maybe just because he's rich, and like the powers that
Speaker 2: be are like, all right, well, if we're gonna put
Speaker 2: out this effort, we need to know he's going to
Speaker 2: be actually able to make change.
Speaker 1: I mean, then send the ghost to Preston. Yeah, send
Speaker 1: the ghost to the man who writes Frank's checks, not
Speaker 1: to Frank.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that he's not the top of the totem
Speaker 2: pole in this telling of it. Yeah, Like in the
Speaker 2: original he owns his own business and he's, you know,
Speaker 2: just a money lender, right, So like it's interesting that
Speaker 2: he has that he's beholden to someone else.
Speaker 1: Yes, So while he's worried about his job, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: genuinely has to worry that, like, while he's having these misadventures,
Speaker 1: his job is being taken by Bryce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's obviously incredibly rich, but he's it's not fuck
Speaker 2: you money like he's working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we never see his home. I just realize he
Speaker 1: only ever goes to the office.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's where he lives.
Speaker 1: That is where he lives.
Speaker 2: He does have a gun there.
Speaker 1: I always keep my gun in my toothbrush wherever.
Speaker 2: He's saying, it's the American way, all right. So the
Speaker 2: mummified corpse of Lou, he's not really mumified, he's kind
Speaker 2: of decaying.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But by the way, when this guy entered, I was like,
Speaker 2: I bet this is why young Paul doesn't remember a
Speaker 2: single thing about this because the makeup is quite good,
Speaker 2: and there's a scene so he appears to have died
Speaker 2: in the golf course. He's dressed for golf, he's dragging
Speaker 2: a bag of clubs with him, and Frank shoots him
Speaker 2: a couple of times. Obviously doesn't hurt him, but he
Speaker 2: shoots a hole in the back of his head, out
Speaker 2: of which a golf ball falls, and then a mouse
Speaker 2: crawls out of the hole in his head and then
Speaker 2: back into it. Yeah, And I was like, this is
Speaker 2: why I don't remember this movie. There's some legitimately not
Speaker 2: scary but gross, like spooky. I think is fair to say, yeah,
Speaker 2: stuff that happens in this movie. And I'm sure Young
Speaker 2: Paul was like, shut it down, shut it down.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Frank is like freaking out. He shot Lou. Lou
Speaker 1: turns around, turns to Frank and says cheers before and
Speaker 1: downs his drink, which starts to seep out of the
Speaker 1: now bullet hole ridden corpse because he's now got holes
Speaker 1: in himself. Frank starts to actually recognize him, and he
Speaker 1: turns to him and he's like, oh my god, you're Lou,
Speaker 1: and like this is when we find out that Lou
Speaker 1: is his former boss, his best friend, and currently been
Speaker 1: dead for seven years. Frank immediately assumes he's having a
Speaker 1: hallucination brought on by vodka poisoned from Chernobyl.
Speaker 2: More likely brought on by the tab.
Speaker 1: To be fair, actually made me laugh this time. That's
Speaker 1: another joke that when I was a kid, I would
Speaker 1: not have understood. And now I was like, Okay, that's funny.
Speaker 2: Vodka will kill bacteria, but tab won't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not Chernobyl, but vodka. We don't know what those
Speaker 1: Russians are putting in our drinks. Lou warns Frank not
Speaker 1: to waste his life like he did. My one kind
Speaker 1: of thing about this is because we do see, like
Speaker 1: even in the original Christmas Carol, we do see like
Speaker 1: Jacob Marley and then Lou Hayward in like their heyday,
Speaker 1: and they seem like pretty okay guys. Yeah, like a
Speaker 1: little scuzzy, definitely cheats on his wife, but like he's
Speaker 1: fun and he seems really nice. So he tells Frank,
Speaker 1: it's not too late. You have to get involved, help
Speaker 1: your fellow man before it too late. Do not waste
Speaker 1: your life. He says, you will be visited by three ghosts.
Speaker 1: And at this point Frank starts to really believe this
Speaker 1: is all just a hallucination. So he reverts back to
Speaker 1: his sarcastic asshole self and he's like, twelve o'clock's not
Speaker 1: really good for me tomorrow. Can they come at three instead?
Speaker 1: Or how about after the holidays. I'm really swamped right now.
Speaker 1: And in order to drive the point home of what
Speaker 1: this is fucking real, Lou picks Frank up by the
Speaker 1: neck and dangles him out of an unopened window. So
Speaker 1: like Frank's office is like Florida ceiling windows. It's like
Speaker 1: big Manhattan skyscraper, and he just the special effects are
Speaker 1: a little cheesy in eighties, but it's still pretty cool.
Speaker 1: He just like puts him outside the window, like through
Speaker 1: the window and holds him and starts laughing at him
Speaker 1: as Frank dangles over the street and Frank starts to
Speaker 1: grab it Lou's arm to be like no, no, no, please,
Speaker 1: please please, I don't want to die. I don't want
Speaker 1: to die. And because Lou is decaying, the arm breaks off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: while Frank is grabbing it, and Frank's starts to drop
Speaker 1: fifty floors down to certain death. He is begging for
Speaker 1: his life the entire way as he screams in terror.
Speaker 2: Of course, he doesn't die short movie if he did.
Speaker 2: He wakes up in his office, which shows no evidence
Speaker 2: of the explosion or gunfire, and he sees the phone
Speaker 2: on his desk dialing a number all by itself. It
Speaker 2: calls Frank's old flame, Claire Phillips and gets her answering machine.
Speaker 2: And as soon as Frank here's the answering machine, he
Speaker 2: picks up and he starts to leave an urgent message.
Speaker 2: He asks her to call him back, even though they
Speaker 2: haven't spoken in fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we cut to Grace aka bob Cratchit Alfre.
Speaker 1: Woodard totally bob Cratchit.
Speaker 2: Yep. She's in her humble apartment which she shares with
Speaker 2: her large but loving family. This includes her sweet little son, Calvin.
Speaker 2: Calvin's the only kid that we have to be aware of.
Speaker 1: He's the only one who's named the movie Jesus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know any of the other kid's names.
Speaker 2: Calvin doesn't speak. Grace's mother and oldest daughter asked her
Speaker 2: if she got her bonus for Christmas, and she shows
Speaker 2: them the towel Frank Gaffer, which, by the way, isn't
Speaker 2: even like a full bath towel. This is like a
Speaker 2: hand towel.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it was a big ugly logo company logo
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: Lost opportunity here, Sorry, And I'm not trying to pick
Speaker 2: on the movie. But again I don't understand, like it'll
Speaker 2: matter more later when he visits her with the ghost
Speaker 2: of Christmas present, but no one bad mouths Frank. All
Speaker 2: the people he visit aren't like fuck Frank. He sucks, oh,
Speaker 2: which is which is what affects him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, well, although doesn't this work a little better
Speaker 1: then actually that It's not like people are like I
Speaker 1: hate that guy. It's more like, oh shit, I see
Speaker 1: my what my actions have wrought without it being like
Speaker 1: I don't want people not to like me, kin.
Speaker 2: I think it needs both. I'm okay with your right
Speaker 2: effective I don't. Maybe I'm too maybe I'm too expecting
Speaker 2: it to follow the beats of Christmas Carol closely.
Speaker 1: You mean it's Christmas Carol version.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: You don't know what you don't understand. Guys, there's so
Speaker 1: few books that I have read that Paul hasn't that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lord this over him. You didn't read a
Speaker 1: Christmas Carol, but can you even read?
Speaker 2: Don't think. I don't think that this character would get that.
Speaker 2: I don't buy this character having the self awareness of
Speaker 2: looking at someone and feeling for them. He doesn't feel
Speaker 2: for other people. Why does he suddenly start feeling for people?
Speaker 2: For me to buy it, I need like a kickstarter,
Speaker 2: and then this can be also part of it, because
Speaker 2: like this is what I have wrought, It's always part
Speaker 2: of it. But he kind of needs the other part too,
Speaker 2: I think. So.
Speaker 1: The next day at the office, Frank finds out that
Speaker 1: the dark Scrooge ad that he greenlit frightened an eighty
Speaker 1: year old woman to death. The head of marketing puts
Speaker 1: like a newspaper in front of his face. It says
Speaker 1: something like eighty year old woman scared to death. She
Speaker 1: is played by the way by Mary Ellen trainor Yeah,
Speaker 1: the excellent actress from the eighties.
Speaker 2: I kept expecting her to be in more. I guess
Speaker 2: maybe she was almost a cameoll.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a smaller role. I wonder if there was
Speaker 1: a version where they're having an affair, because there's clearly
Speaker 1: something there that, like, I think got cut out of
Speaker 1: the movie because in the Masterpiece, she's the only executive
Speaker 1: that seems to like, really actually like him agreed. So
Speaker 1: she shows his paper and Frank puts his face in
Speaker 1: his hands for a few seconds, and you think he's
Speaker 1: really upset, and then he goes, yeah, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: You can't buy this kind of publicity. He's so excited
Speaker 1: that he has murdered an old woman. He then goes
Speaker 1: to the screwge set and starts to argue with the
Speaker 1: censor over the risk nipple bearing costume of the solid
Speaker 1: gold dancers. This is such a small thing in the movie,
Speaker 1: Like there's a censor it goes She's in through the
Speaker 1: rest of the film. I cut her out of the
Speaker 1: recap from here on out, but like, and she keeps
Speaker 1: getting more and more injured as the film goes on.
Speaker 1: It's a silly like throw away choke this I have
Speaker 1: to bring up because this scene really made me laugh.
Speaker 1: And they show the dancer and you really can't see
Speaker 1: her nipples the area the top, and he's arguing with
Speaker 1: the censor. He's like, She's like, this is a family show,
Speaker 1: and he's like, what you can You know people want
Speaker 1: to see her nipples. Charles Dickens would want to see
Speaker 1: her nipples. To be fair, the dancer looks proud, So
Speaker 1: the movie does not make me feel in any way
Speaker 1: like she's being used or objectified or objectified in a
Speaker 1: way that she does that she objects too. To be clear,
Speaker 1: these two teamsters come in and they're just staring right
Speaker 1: at her boots. The sensor holds firm and then the
Speaker 1: teamsters turn away and one of them accidentally clocks her
Speaker 1: in the head with a prop lamp that they're carrying.
Speaker 1: She falls to the ground. Frank just looks at her
Speaker 1: dispassionately because he is associopathy, and calmly tells the teamsters
Speaker 1: to call a nurse, and then he hears someone call
Speaker 1: out Lumpy from across the room and his face lights up.
Speaker 2: Frank turns around and he comes face to face with Claire,
Speaker 2: played by the genuinely luminous Karen Allen, the Woman Gloves.
Speaker 1: She is so good in this movie. I don't think
Speaker 1: I noticed it until I was until this time, because
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I didn't really pay attention.
Speaker 1: But like, she fucking sells the shit out of this character,
Speaker 1: and it's a hard character to sell.
Speaker 2: I agree, she's very good in it. I think the
Speaker 2: script script really does her dirty, but she's very good
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 1: I mean that the source material, though, Bell is a
Speaker 1: fucking nothing character, so it's really it's hard. It's hard
Speaker 1: to make this into something, but.
Speaker 2: I think they did, okay.
Speaker 1: I mean it does her dirty in that, Like does
Speaker 1: she not have anyone else in her life?
Speaker 2: For the last year, you look like, Karen Allen, You've
Speaker 2: been pining after this guy for fifteen years. This guy
Speaker 2: that That is my big objection to it. That, like
Speaker 2: you expect me to believe that this guy was ever
Speaker 2: charming enough to make Karen fucking Allen pine after him
Speaker 2: fifteen years. I had difficulty. Claire got Frank's frantic voicemail
Speaker 2: message answering machine message not a voicemail back then, it
Speaker 2: was an answering right. She came to check up on him.
Speaker 2: Frank tries to play off the message is nothing, but
Speaker 2: Claire says she knows him, and she knows me really frightened,
Speaker 2: and you were frightened on that voicemail. What are you
Speaker 2: talking about? And despite their massive personality differences and the
Speaker 2: situation that brought Claire here, these two can't stop smiling
Speaker 2: at each other like two love struck teenagers. She says,
Speaker 2: I've never seen your hair this short, to which Paul
Speaker 2: says short. Oh, and then you see it later and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, okay, never mind, got it, because got it.
Speaker 2: This is pushing mullet. But we will have a flashback
Speaker 2: which we get a full mullet.
Speaker 1: This is a business mullet, this business.
Speaker 2: We'll get a fullet. Claire keeps trying to have a
Speaker 2: real conversation with Frank, but he's interrupted every few seconds
Speaker 2: by someone on set needing something from him. So there's
Speaker 2: an animal handler that comes by and tells Frank he
Speaker 2: wasn't able to glue the tiny antlers on the head
Speaker 2: of the mouse, and Frank suggest he's staple the antlers
Speaker 2: to the mouse's head. This horrifies both the animal handler
Speaker 2: and Claire, who threatens to call the Humane Society on, Frank,
Speaker 2: Why does the.
Speaker 1: Mouse need to have antlers in the first place?
Speaker 2: That is an excellent question.
Speaker 1: Why And it does not get resolved that you do
Speaker 1: see antler laden mice later in the film, in the
Speaker 1: version of Scrooge that they are producing. Okay, does not
Speaker 1: need they do not need to have antlers.
Speaker 2: Let's let's answer this question. So if they have antlers
Speaker 2: on their head, that means the mice must be on
Speaker 2: some playing reindeer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're reindeer mice.
Speaker 2: They're reindeer mice, some kind of mutant hybrid.
Speaker 1: But there's no Santa Claus in Scrooge. Screech does not
Speaker 1: have Santa Claus in it as as a character.
Speaker 2: But perhaps perhaps they are. They're part of a diorama. Perhaps, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Know what, Paul, this is their art. I shouldn't should
Speaker 1: just let it wash over me. I shouldn't try to
Speaker 1: analyze everything to death. What am I?
Speaker 2: Who are you me?
Speaker 1: But like, honestly, I was staring at it. I was like,
Speaker 1: but wait, why does the why does the mouse meat?
Speaker 2: That did not occur to me? You're so right?
Speaker 1: Is there a tiny Santa Claus in this version of Scrooge?
Speaker 2: A tiny Santa Claus is played by.
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know a pigeon, and then I google
Speaker 1: dormouse because they always refer to it as a dormouse,
Speaker 1: and I was like, do dormice have antlers? And I
Speaker 1: could hear Google laughing at me. So Frank smiles oring
Speaker 1: Leah Claire and asks, hey, are you still trying to
Speaker 1: save the world? And she smiles back at him and
Speaker 1: say it and says, are you still trying to run it?
Speaker 1: It seems like there is now about to have a
Speaker 1: real conversation when Frank spies a small child hiding on
Speaker 1: set and gets furious. He grabs the kid while screaming
Speaker 1: that he's gonna call the cops and have this kid
Speaker 1: ejected from set. Who are you? Are you some kind
Speaker 1: of corporate spy? Turns out the child is Calvin Grace's
Speaker 1: mute son, and Grace scoops him up before Frank can
Speaker 1: terrify him any further, and she's like, it's my son.
Speaker 1: He goes good, you beat him. Then Claire asks Frank
Speaker 1: why are you so angry? What is happening? Why are
Speaker 1: you so angry? And he deflects the question again. She
Speaker 1: hands him her business card and we find out. She
Speaker 1: manages a shelter in Midtown called Operation Rescue. She is
Speaker 1: the do gooderiest of all the do gooders that ever
Speaker 1: do gooded, and she tells him to call her if
Speaker 1: he needs help.
Speaker 2: Frank goes to lunch with Preston. He seems nervous around Preston.
Speaker 2: Preston's his boss, remember Preston ryin lander, uh, and he
Speaker 2: mimics all of his mannerisms, including cleaning his silverware, which
Speaker 2: is it's like, it's like proto pretty woman, right. He
Speaker 2: doesn't know, he doesn't know how to act in this restaurant,
Speaker 2: which is an odd choice.
Speaker 1: Honestly, No, I think he does know how to act
Speaker 1: in a restaurant. He's just in Preston makes him nervous.
Speaker 2: Oh you think it's not okay? Okay, Yeah, this is not.
Speaker 1: A usual situation where Preston is like, why don't we
Speaker 1: go ahead and have lunch on Christmas Eve? And so
Speaker 1: Frank's like, what the fuck is about to happen?
Speaker 2: He updates Preston on the live Scrooge telecast. They're planning
Speaker 2: to cut from the telecast in New York City to
Speaker 2: someone painting the Berlin Wall and the Pope blessing the
Speaker 2: entire Zulu nation in history's largest mass baptism. What is
Speaker 2: this show? I don't care for that at.
Speaker 1: All, but is happening by the way earlier on, like
Speaker 1: when we first saw the first preview for for Scrooge,
Speaker 1: it says it starts at ten pm, first of all,
Speaker 1: Eastern Time, which what's what we're about to say makes
Speaker 1: no sense because that Berlin Wall thing is happening. It's
Speaker 1: at five in the morning. There are time and we'll
Speaker 1: we'll be simulcast from New York City, Bethlehem, hell Sinky.
Speaker 1: What are they doing in Helsinki, West Berlin, which now
Speaker 1: we find out is the Berlin Wall thing and the
Speaker 1: Great Barrier.
Speaker 2: Read Preston suggests that Frank is spreading himself a little
Speaker 2: thin and informs Frank that he's hired Bryce Cummings to
Speaker 2: work under him, and Frank is not thrilled. Doesn't help
Speaker 2: that Bryce bounds into the restaurant and barks Pellegrino rocks
Speaker 2: twist to the waiter before sitting at their table and
Speaker 2: telling Frank he should definitely, absolutely totally completely not be
Speaker 2: threatened by him at all. I'm just here to learn,
Speaker 2: I'm here to work under you here to how Preston
Speaker 2: doesn't want you to work too hard.
Speaker 1: We're here to work at the altar of worship with
Speaker 1: the altar of Frank. Yeah, oh my god. Frank heres
Speaker 1: a clock strike twelve pm and suddenly remembers lose warning
Speaker 1: that the first ghost would appear to him at noon today. Bryce, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: at this exact moment, pulls out an old timey pocket
Speaker 1: watch to check the time, and Frank sees the old
Speaker 1: timey watch and assumes that Bryce is the ghost, and
Speaker 1: he goes ah ha at a very bewildered Bryce and Preston,
Speaker 1: who are like, are you okay, and then immediately realizes
Speaker 1: his mistake when nothing happens. The waiter puts Frank's drink down,
Speaker 1: and Frank sees an eyeball in the glass instead of
Speaker 1: ice cubes and starts to scream until the waiter takes
Speaker 1: it away. The waiter asks Frank what he would like
Speaker 1: to order, and Frank is like sweating now, by the way,
Speaker 1: he asked everyone what they would like to order, and
Speaker 1: Bryce goes, I'll have the California Health plate. No dairy
Speaker 1: in that, right, yeah, everything about Bryce, So Frank is
Speaker 1: fully sweating At this point, he looks across the room
Speaker 1: and he sees another waiter lighting up a baked Alaska.
Speaker 1: What he sees is the waiter lighting himself on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one else sees what Frank is seeing. Everyone thinks
Speaker 1: he's having a meltdown at the table, which of course
Speaker 1: he is. And Frank is like, it's like the pointing
Speaker 1: at the man and pointing at the man, and the
Speaker 1: waiter's like, no, no, sir, that's a baked Alaska. It's
Speaker 1: a dessert. You wouldn't want that for. This waiter is
Speaker 1: so goddamn good at his job.
Speaker 2: That guy, the waiter's also a character actor. I don't
Speaker 2: know his name.
Speaker 1: I've seen him a million things, and he's doing his
Speaker 1: level best to like keep Frank calm. Frank excuses himself
Speaker 1: from the table. He runs across the restaurant, grabs an
Speaker 1: ice bucket from someone else's table, and throws it on
Speaker 1: the man that he thinks is on fire. At this point,
Speaker 1: it is a full special effect. The man is like
Speaker 1: an inferno head to toe flames. He throws the ice
Speaker 1: bucket on the man, which really would not have been
Speaker 1: enough to put the put that fire out, And at
Speaker 1: that moment he snaps out of his delusion and he
Speaker 1: sees what everyone else sees, which is just a waiter
Speaker 1: covered in water for no reason. The guy's like trying
Speaker 1: to count his tips.
Speaker 2: He's just looking up at Frank.
Speaker 1: This is a joke coming up that I absolutely did
Speaker 1: not understand when I was a kid, and it always
Speaker 1: show and it bothered me that I didn't understand it.
Speaker 1: Frank apologizes to the man and says, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: thought you were Richard Pryor and exits out of there
Speaker 1: very quickly. In the early eighties, Richard Pryor accidentally lit
Speaker 1: himself on fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all freebasing cocaine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I did not know that because I was seven when
Speaker 1: I first saw this movie or eight, and so, like
Speaker 1: my parents would not have turned to me and been like, so,
Speaker 1: just so you know what's happening here is this.
Speaker 2: Is a reference. Richard Pryor's a comedian.
Speaker 1: Richard Pryce. No I knew who Richard Pryor was.
Speaker 2: Oh what at seven?
Speaker 1: Yeah? See you no evil? Hear no evil right from
Speaker 1: his movies, not his stand up that is yet. No,
Speaker 1: I loved his stand up when I was seven. All
Speaker 1: in on Richard.
Speaker 2: Pryor there's a great fall here. It's a pratt fall
Speaker 2: as he's leaving the restaurant and I enod up and
Speaker 2: they said it was real. Look, if it is a pratfall,
Speaker 2: top notch fucking pratfall. And if it isn't, good job
Speaker 2: staying in the moment so they can keep it in
Speaker 2: the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Frank jumps into the first cab he sees, even though
Speaker 2: it just hit another cab. He's like, just get me
Speaker 2: the fuck out of here, and is confronted by the
Speaker 2: somewhat worse for where ghost of Chris Smith's past, played
Speaker 2: by David Johansson.
Speaker 1: I love this performance.
Speaker 2: I one hundred percent agree with you. We are on
Speaker 2: the same boat.
Speaker 1: He is the best of the ghosts, honestly. Yeah, honestly,
Speaker 1: in a film where Carol Kane is another one of
Speaker 1: the ghosts. Yeah, David Johansson still gets the most laughs
Speaker 1: out of me.
Speaker 2: I agree with that. He's kind of odd looking dude anyway,
Speaker 2: but like they're really like he has pointy eaters here,
Speaker 2: and like he looks like a satyr or something like that.
Speaker 2: Like he's otherworldly.
Speaker 1: Good actor, right, he's for those of you who don't
Speaker 1: know he's a musician. He's in the New York Dolls.
Speaker 1: He's a punk legend.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It always shocks me when when a musician is just
Speaker 1: a good.
Speaker 2: Actor, there's good they could just also act.
Speaker 1: Yeah they can also remember Tom Waits, Oh yeah in
Speaker 1: Dracula being fucking great. Collect Tom Waits can act, so
Speaker 1: can David Johansson.
Speaker 2: So he's driving the cab and the Ghost of Christmas
Speaker 2: Past doesn't care about traffic lights, or speed limits or
Speaker 2: general safety at all, and Frank is a terrifying ride
Speaker 2: through the streets of Manhattan until they go through a
Speaker 2: cloud of smoke and up on a festive suburban street
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 1: So, okay, we are in nineteen fifty five. They pull
Speaker 1: up to Frank's childhood home and we see that it's
Speaker 1: the only one on the street that isn't decorated for Christmas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Frank insists he's not going to get all blubbery and
Speaker 1: sentimental just because he's about to see his parents. And
Speaker 1: David Johanson again as the Ghost to Christmas Pass, is like,
Speaker 1: you say that now, but when Attila the Hunt saw
Speaker 1: his mother na yahgro Foles, he points to his eyes the.
Speaker 2: Accent really is I presume it's just his accent, but
Speaker 2: it is perfect, so.
Speaker 1: So fucking Brooklyn, deep Gravelly Brooklyn. They go inside and
Speaker 1: Frank is confronted by his very sad and lonely childhood,
Speaker 1: with a silently suffering mother and a very cruel father.
Speaker 1: Little Frank's only enjoyment comes from watching television, and when
Speaker 1: Frank sees his mother wishing four year old him Merry Christmas,
Speaker 1: Frankie Angel and then going to bed, Big Frank starts
Speaker 1: to weep. He can't, he can't control it. As they
Speaker 1: exit the house, he tells the ghost of Christmas Past
Speaker 1: that he looked it wasn't all sadness. You're just showing
Speaker 1: me one sad event. I had a great childhood. I
Speaker 1: scored the winning home one in the Big Game once,
Speaker 1: and there was another time where this beautiful girl was
Speaker 1: running across a field of flowers to me and we
Speaker 1: were deeply in love. And the Ghost of Christmas Past
Speaker 1: is like, you are pathetic. Those are things that happened
Speaker 1: on television. You are remembering scenes from TV shows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of them was the Little House in the Prairie.
Speaker 1: He goes, give me the homecoming episode of Little home
Speaker 1: Coming episode of Little House, and Frank realizes, oh shit,
Speaker 1: my childhood really was dog shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Frank demands that the ghosts take him to his office,
Speaker 2: and the ghost obliges. We cut to IBC headquarters in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, so we have jumped ahead thirteen years.
Speaker 2: Frank is now, I guess eighteen.
Speaker 1: That will make me laugh every time.
Speaker 2: I did not realize that.
Speaker 1: Do the math. Frank is eighteen looks like Bill Murray
Speaker 1: and also, weirdly, Bill Mury just looks old in this
Speaker 1: scene anyway.
Speaker 2: Because he has They should have given him a wig.
Speaker 2: A wig probably would have. It would have looked stupid anyway,
Speaker 2: But like he has a widow's peak yeah, like and
Speaker 2: a full mullet like. Uh. It is a swinging office
Speaker 2: holiday party, despite the fact that his coworkers are drinking
Speaker 2: and dancing and getting up to all kinds of sixtyes shenanigans.
Speaker 1: There's a lady xeroxing her button then handing it out
Speaker 1: like Christmas cards to the rest of the queen. I
Speaker 1: fucking love this woman.
Speaker 2: Frank doesn't stop working long enough to join the party
Speaker 2: and lou the Jacob Marley analog form earlier he's alive,
Speaker 2: he's young. He pulls young Frank aside and he tells
Speaker 2: him to enjoy himself. Very odd to make the Jacob
Speaker 2: Marley analog and the fs A wig like those are
Speaker 2: different characters in the Christmas Carol and they've they have
Speaker 2: married them here, which speak to your point of like this.
Speaker 1: Guy seems like he was fine, yes, really sweet.
Speaker 2: Actually why not just make that different person anyway, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. Frank boils in the party, and he even
Speaker 2: turns down the advances of a very friendly coworker.
Speaker 1: Was this the one, Tina? It's the same woman butt
Speaker 1: seroxing her button and like being like, here, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: Xeroxing your butt was how you could tell someone you
Speaker 2: were DTF in nineteen sixteen, it was.
Speaker 1: It's so excellent. Yeah, present day Frank follows young Frank
Speaker 1: eighteen year old.
Speaker 2: Frank eighteen year old. That actually is the funniest thing
Speaker 2: in the now that I know he's supposed to be eighteen,
Speaker 2: because in my head I was like, oh, he's twenty five,
Speaker 2: which is already which is still ridiculous. But you're like, okay,
Speaker 2: he's an adults whatever, Like you're not going to date
Speaker 2: they couldn't d agent back then, and fine, but eighteen.
Speaker 1: He should have leaned into it and just had Frank
Speaker 1: like like Bill Murray be like, but I'm.
Speaker 2: Eighteen, I couldn't have any drink anything to drink. I'm
Speaker 2: not a of age yet.
Speaker 1: So young Frank has his first encounter with Claire. She
Speaker 1: accidentally hits him with the door as she's exiting a
Speaker 1: shop and he falls to the sidewalk and she's like,
Speaker 1: are you okay? And they have a meet cute and
Speaker 1: she nicknames him Lumpy because he's gonna have a big
Speaker 1: lump on his head the next day from where he
Speaker 1: hit the sidewalk, and the two of them basically fall
Speaker 1: in love at first sight.
Speaker 2: This scene has a line that I love in this movie.
Speaker 2: She's walking away and like, you know, they're doing the
Speaker 2: doing the meat Joe Black thing where you're hoping one
Speaker 2: of them get hit by a car, but they don't.
Speaker 2: And he goes, would you like to go to a
Speaker 2: Christmas party that's going on right now? And she looks
Speaker 2: back with the big caroen Alan smile and she goes
Speaker 2: not really relatable, very relatable.
Speaker 1: So the Ghost of Christmas Pass takes Frank to Christmas Eve,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. One year later, nineteen year old Frank
Speaker 1: now Clara and Frank are living together in a tiny
Speaker 1: apartment in the village, and they are very happy and
Speaker 1: in love. These are the salad days, the halcyon days
Speaker 1: of your They open presents and he gives her a
Speaker 1: set of knives, which is I think that I didn't
Speaker 1: get this when I was a kid, but I'm getting
Speaker 1: it now. In the scene with his parents, his dad
Speaker 1: never gave him presents. Yeah, he brought home like five
Speaker 1: pounds of for the family and was like, there's your
Speaker 1: Christmas present, kid, Yeah, you get to eat. And so like,
Speaker 1: I think he thinks this is an incredibly romantic gift
Speaker 1: because his idea of what a gift should be is
Speaker 1: so based and like it has to be functional. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so he's he's like, I hope you like it,
Speaker 1: and she's so sweet because.
Speaker 2: She's like, I love it.
Speaker 1: It's nice.
Speaker 2: That does make it. I didn't get because I that
Speaker 2: was a moment where I was like, I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm missing something. But now that you say it makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's not made explicit in the movie. I'm doing a
Speaker 1: little bit of work and I've seen the movie a lot,
Speaker 1: and I was like, actually, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: He's bad at giving gifts, even in the future.
Speaker 2: Fucking towels come on, right, VCR is a good gift
Speaker 2: in ninet eighty eight.
Speaker 1: That's a great gift. But like even for a cheap gift,
Speaker 1: like just flowers, Just send flowers. Man, if you're not like,
Speaker 1: what are you.
Speaker 2: Doing, send me the twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a gift card. So he gives her
Speaker 1: a set of knives, and she gives him a copy
Speaker 1: of the Kama Sutra. It's very cute, and he starts
Speaker 1: looking through it and he goes, done that, done that,
Speaker 1: done that, did that twice, and she's laughing, and then
Speaker 1: he goes, look, it says here that if you touch
Speaker 1: a woman behind her neck a certain way, she'll start
Speaker 1: to bark like a dog. And she plays along and
Speaker 1: she's like, she starts to pant, and the camera pans
Speaker 1: out of the apartments. You don't see anymore. But he's like,
Speaker 1: good doggie. So they engage in some fun dog themed
Speaker 1: for play. Who has it this is important because of
Speaker 1: what's coming up next, more.
Speaker 2: Or less weird than the Donald Duck themed for play.
Speaker 2: We're pretty sure Gilda Radner and Gen Wilder.
Speaker 1: Ha way less weird. I was into this. He used
Speaker 1: to look like they're having a good time. I get
Speaker 1: I followed them on the journey of where they got
Speaker 1: to where they're going, and donkey style is a thing. Sure,
Speaker 1: So yes, this all.
Speaker 2: Makes Puppy play is a whole thing going on right now.
Speaker 1: Perfect fucking sense to me.
Speaker 2: So the Ghost takes Frank to Christmas Eve nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: where young Frank is playing a giant dog on a
Speaker 2: kid's TV show. What was Frank's career path to go
Speaker 2: from the.
Speaker 1: Dog themed foreplay to this is just what a perfect cut? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Frank's career is insane.
Speaker 2: It's insane.
Speaker 1: He goes from the mailroom co hosting a kid's.
Speaker 2: Show to president president of the IBC. Lou invites Frank
Speaker 2: and Claire out to dinner that night, and Frank accepts
Speaker 2: the invite without hesitation, And when Claire tells him they
Speaker 2: can't have dinner with Lou, they have a tradition of
Speaker 2: spending Christmas Eve with their best friends. Frank calls her
Speaker 2: selfish for not thinking about his career and putting her
Speaker 2: needs before his Okay.
Speaker 1: Frank is wrong. Frank is wrong, but Claire calls it
Speaker 1: a tradition. Yeah, two years ago they were not spending dinner,
Speaker 1: they were not spending Christmas Eve with those friends. They
Speaker 1: were having dog themed sets in their apartment. Good for them.
Speaker 1: So they spent last year with their best friends and
Speaker 1: now this year. Girl, that's not a tradition. It has
Speaker 1: to happen at least three years in a row for
Speaker 1: it to become a tradition.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: Frank's being a dick, but you can't call it a tradition.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just gonna put that out there.
Speaker 2: I'm not completely not on his side for this, honestly. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: I mean, don't be a dick about it, but just
Speaker 2: be like, this is a really important thing for me
Speaker 2: in my career. And it's funny because because the movie's
Speaker 2: jumping around, we obviously don't get to see if, like
Speaker 2: how their relationship is doing. But like it breaks up
Speaker 2: very quickly, right, because what's gonna happen in the scene
Speaker 2: is she's gonna be like, maybe she'd spend some time
Speaker 2: apart and he's like fine, like and you're like you
Speaker 2: were you were humping like Rottwilers, like literally ninety seconds ago,
Speaker 2: and now you're breaking up over this kind of not
Speaker 2: a low key art.
Speaker 1: Well, it is a low key argument's key argument. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you live together. Fine, she can go spend Christmas
Speaker 1: Eve with her friends, you go to dinner like it's
Speaker 1: not you're not going to see each other in three hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or also you could just say, you go ahead,
Speaker 2: I have to go to this meeting. This could be
Speaker 2: really big. I'll come as soon as I can. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that should be fine.
Speaker 1: It should be fine. There are little clues in this
Speaker 1: scene that Frank has changed, so like at one point
Speaker 1: some guy comes up to him like on the set
Speaker 1: like a pa and hands him a towel and Frank goes, thanks, babe.
Speaker 1: But I think you're right. There needs to have been
Speaker 1: one more step, yeah, in the middle between that last
Speaker 1: scene and this scene, because I'm like, this broke up
Speaker 1: for no reason.
Speaker 2: I think in the masterpiece that was there. Yeah, I think, well,
Speaker 2: I mean I think the movie to me, I think
Speaker 2: a lot of my issues in the movie, and a
Speaker 2: lot of the way you enjoy it, I think partially
Speaker 2: is because you've seen it so much you can track
Speaker 2: like those little bits and pieces where if you only
Speaker 2: watch it once, there's so much moving and changing that
Speaker 2: I'm like, I just feel like I'm running to try
Speaker 2: to keep up with the movie. And then the emotional
Speaker 2: art doesn't work because I'm like, but wait, where am I?
Speaker 2: When am I? What's happening kind of thing? Annie crap.
Speaker 2: Claire says we need to break up, and he basically
Speaker 2: is like fine, and he goes back to set, and
Speaker 2: as the door closes on Claire, she quietly says, Merry Christmas, lumpy,
Speaker 2: but he doesn't hear her.
Speaker 1: No, he's already doing the dog show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so fifteen years she will pine for this man
Speaker 2: who she last.
Speaker 1: Saw wearing a giant dog costume.
Speaker 2: I look, from what we know of their sex, maybe
Speaker 2: you know what, maybe maybe he pitched because the show
Speaker 2: is called Frisbee right, uh huh, maybe he pitched Frisbee
Speaker 2: based on their sexcapades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Frisbee Show is Frisbee Show, low key like like, yeah, uh.
Speaker 2: They've had some fun in that costume.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, in the early in the late seventies,
Speaker 1: it would have been very hard to find a man
Speaker 1: who's willing to dress up as a dog for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she found him and now she's losing him.
Speaker 2: She's losing him.
Speaker 1: So the ghost of Christmas past abandons Frank at the
Speaker 1: TV station, and Frank suddenly finds himself in the present day.
Speaker 1: He's at the rehearsal for Scrooge. It's the scene where
Speaker 1: Belle breaks up with Ebenezer and tells him that she
Speaker 1: hopes he'll be happy with the path that he has chosen,
Speaker 1: and Frank goes, I am happy with the path I've chosen,
Speaker 1: you little bitch. I couldn't be happier. Rehearsal screeches to
Speaker 1: a halt, and Frank loudly proclaims that no one could
Speaker 1: be as good and caring and wonderful as Claire seemed
Speaker 1: to be. He decides to check out her little homeless
Speaker 1: shelter and see for himself. He is cracking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not a good bet to be. Like, I'm going
Speaker 2: to go to that homeless shelter you say, you run,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna find all the selfish things that you're
Speaker 2: doing there. That's that's good. That's not gonna have a
Speaker 2: high success.
Speaker 1: Right then it's so like him and the actress turn
Speaker 1: to him and they're like, are you crazy, what are
Speaker 1: you doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Frank rants all the way to Operation Rescue,
Speaker 2: and he's ranting about how he's not lonely, and he's
Speaker 2: never been lonely, well except maybe on his birthdays and
Speaker 2: on the weekends, and maybe on sunsets. I'm lonely, but
Speaker 2: not usually. Usually I'm very not lonely. One of Claire's
Speaker 2: coworkers assumes that Frank is there for help and rushes
Speaker 2: over the foot of blanket.
Speaker 1: Around him walked in, ranting like a lunatic. She goes, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we got another one.
Speaker 2: We we got a live one. Frank is approached by
Speaker 2: three very friendly residents of Operation Rescue. One of them
Speaker 2: is from Goonies.
Speaker 1: Oh I forgot that actresses Mama Anne Ramsey. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: well I believe the person playing her the other the
Speaker 1: other man is her husband. Oh it's so it's a
Speaker 1: real life husband wife Parry.
Speaker 2: That's cute. And they tell him that he's Richard Burton.
Speaker 1: They think he looks like Richard Burton. And I had
Speaker 1: to pause the movie. And I didn't get any of
Speaker 1: this when I was a kid at all. I was
Speaker 1: this all went super over my head. I'm like, why
Speaker 1: are they calling him Dick. Why is he suddenly doing this.
Speaker 1: I don't understand who's Liz he keeps referring to. And now,
Speaker 1: as an adult watching this movie, I was like, oh.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, he doesn't look anything like
Speaker 1: Richard Burton. And then I really looked at him and
Speaker 1: I was like, actually, Bill Murray does look a little bit.
Speaker 2: There's not not a resemblance there.
Speaker 1: And then I realized, well, Richard Burton wasn't as good
Speaker 1: looking as I thought he was fair. Claire approaches and
Speaker 1: Frank hugs her and tells her that he's been thinking
Speaker 1: about the past and about some of the decisions that
Speaker 1: he has made and and some of his regrets. And
Speaker 1: Claire's eyes light up at that at that last.
Speaker 2: Word, and she's she's like gun, and she's.
Speaker 1: I brought the caller whip it whippod.
Speaker 2: That's about the name of a dog read and a
Speaker 2: sex act and.
Speaker 1: A sex act. It's perfect. And she tells him, look,
Speaker 1: it's the good thing about is it's never too late
Speaker 1: to change and fix the situation. And he tells her,
Speaker 1: I want to take you out to dinner tonight, and
Speaker 1: she says yes, and just as they're about to like
Speaker 1: run off into the sunset together. Two of her volunteers
Speaker 1: approach and there are some crisis at work. This is
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve. First of all, one of the fuses has blown. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's not a crisis. She'll show this woman where the
Speaker 1: other fuses are. The other woman comes up to her
Speaker 1: and it's like, none of the turkeys were delivered for
Speaker 1: dinner tonight from the amp, and Claire's like, whoa, they
Speaker 1: should have been delivered hours ago. Frank turns on a dime.
Speaker 1: He goes from thrilled to so angry that these two
Speaker 1: women are interrupting his reunion with his long lost love.
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, they can figure this out for themselves.
Speaker 1: They're big girls. And then he makes a weird fat
Speaker 1: joke about them about one of the body goes, they're
Speaker 1: really big girls, and one of them like does this
Speaker 1: thing where she like pounds his chest at It's like,
Speaker 1: fuck you man. She's like, just give me a few
Speaker 1: minutes to finish up. And he's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: for get it. If you're not gonna leave with me
Speaker 1: right now, then just forget it. And she's like, why
Speaker 1: does your attitude suck so much? What's going on with you,
Speaker 1: and he gives her this cruel piece of advice. He goes,
Speaker 1: scrape him off, Claire, if you want to save someone,
Speaker 1: save yourself, And then she's like, well, that's a really
Speaker 1: great attitude to have, and he goes ba humbug and
Speaker 1: storms out.
Speaker 2: Frank goes back to work, where they're rehearsing a scene
Speaker 2: in which Scrooge is cruel to a group of homeless children.
Speaker 2: In Frank's absence, Bryce has taken over running the production
Speaker 2: and uh, oh, he's good at.
Speaker 1: It, galling, how dare he? Hy dare he? He's actually
Speaker 1: very good at it.
Speaker 2: Bryce calls a dinner break and everyone leaves set. Frank
Speaker 2: is left alone, and then suddenly a spotlight appears and
Speaker 2: illuminates the very ditsy and sweet ghost of Christmas Present,
Speaker 2: played by Carol Caine, the Great Carol Cane. Yep, she's
Speaker 2: dressed like a ballerina in a sugar plum fairy costume,
Speaker 2: and the que card next to her reads the ball
Speaker 2: breaker sweet, I didn't see that que card. That's funny.
Speaker 2: Frank tries to get tough with her, but it turns
Speaker 2: out she's not easy to push around. She kicks him
Speaker 2: in the balls with a very metallic clank. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if the metal is in is in his
Speaker 2: jock or her foot.
Speaker 1: My guess is those those shoes.
Speaker 2: Have some metal in them. And then she slaps him
Speaker 2: in the face when he doesn't do as she says.
Speaker 2: I will say this every time Carol can hit Bill Murray.
Speaker 2: I left every single time.
Speaker 1: The joke that she is this like sweet little angel fairy,
Speaker 1: but then like when he fucks with her, she just
Speaker 1: hits it really hard. Excellent, excellent.
Speaker 2: She asks him to close your eyes, and once they're closed,
Speaker 2: she sprinkles fairy dust on him and then punches him
Speaker 2: in the face to bring him to their first destination,
Speaker 2: which is Harlem.
Speaker 1: The way she says it like always makes me smile.
Speaker 1: She goes Harlo. So the two of them stand on
Speaker 1: Grace's fire escape and watch as Grace comes home to
Speaker 1: pick up her oldest daughter and take the oldest who
Speaker 1: again just doesn't get named sorry Grace Junior and Calvin
Speaker 1: to the screwge set. That's how overworked Grace is. This
Speaker 1: is Christmas Eve. She's rushing from the office to home
Speaker 1: to pick up these two kids that then bring them
Speaker 1: back downtown Frank and the Ghost of Christmas Present watches
Speaker 1: Calvin moves off to the side the rest of the family.
Speaker 1: It's like a loud, boisterous, cheerful family, right, so loving.
Speaker 1: So Frank sees Calvin moving off to the side from
Speaker 1: the rest of the family, so he's not part of
Speaker 1: them in a way, and he solves this puzzle really
Speaker 1: fast and easy. He's a small kid, but he's like,
Speaker 1: he's obviously whip smart. And Frank is like, what's wrong
Speaker 1: with this kid? Why is he different? And the Ghost
Speaker 1: of Christmas Present informs him that Calvin hasn't spoken since
Speaker 1: he saw his father killed five years ago. And Frank
Speaker 1: is like, Grace is a widow.
Speaker 2: You remember her wearing black for a year.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, but I just thought it was fashion.
Speaker 1: Everyone was wearing black.
Speaker 2: Oh man, oh man. This guy is not great. So
Speaker 2: the Ghost of Christmas Present gives Frank a hard right
Speaker 2: hook and he lands in his brother's house and right
Speaker 2: into james Christmas Eve party where he was invited. The
Speaker 2: group is playing trivial Pursuit and James and his wife
Speaker 2: Wendy played by Wendy Malick, and she is.
Speaker 1: So good because she gets almost absolutely nothing to do
Speaker 1: in this film, and yet she elicited tears from me
Speaker 1: at one point, like that's how fucking good Wendy Malick is.
Speaker 2: There was there was this viral tweet going around this
Speaker 2: past month or something about like at least your top
Speaker 2: five MALEIX about the about Terrence Malick the filmmaker. I
Speaker 2: was like, the best Malick is Wendy.
Speaker 1: Wendy is a genius.
Speaker 2: Let's just let's just establish one thing right now. Okay,
Speaker 2: So James and Wendy keep missing TV questions like what
Speaker 2: was the name of the boat that took them to
Speaker 2: Gilligan's Island? Which I have to say, even I know that,
Speaker 2: and I have quite literally never seen an episode of
Speaker 2: Gilligan's Island, So people who are adults in xty eighty
Speaker 2: eight should definitely know the answer to this.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this again. I'm actually going a
Speaker 1: little too deep, much deeper than this movie needs me too.
Speaker 1: But I was like, the fact that James doesn't have
Speaker 1: the TV, like didn't watch Obsession that Frank does tells
Speaker 1: me that James had a better childhood. I think that's
Speaker 1: because of Frank. James is actually able to go outside
Speaker 1: and be a kid.
Speaker 2: This was all in the masterpiece.
Speaker 1: In the mastery, I honestly like, there's something there.
Speaker 2: Nothing, nothing, None of the connections that you have made
Speaker 2: once you had made them, because you've seen the movie
Speaker 2: fifteen times and tell me about them ring untrue to me.
Speaker 2: Like it's just like I couldn't catch that on one viewing. No,
Speaker 2: of course not. Okay, So when details James to open
Speaker 2: Frank's gift to see if it's as lame as the
Speaker 2: one he got the year before, which was an IBC shower.
Speaker 1: Curtain, good gravy, Frank, move out.
Speaker 2: Of the bathroom. Forgive what's actually gold plated toilet plunger.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, not the twelve piece knife set he
Speaker 1: gave he gave the girlfriend earlier, years earlier. That would
Speaker 1: be fine. Gives bad that I would I'd be very
Speaker 1: happy with a twelve piece knife set.
Speaker 2: Yep. It turns out that Grace went rogue and sent
Speaker 2: James a VCR instead of a towel, and James is
Speaker 2: clearly touched. Remember what we told you kids, VCR ninty
Speaker 2: eighty eight. That's a good gift.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of what the equivalent would be today,
Speaker 1: like a car an iPad. Yeah, an iPhone, an iPhone,
Speaker 1: that's that's the equivalent today, punting edge technology, the newest iPhone.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So James is clearly touched by this gift. He
Speaker 2: proposes a toast to his big brother, who he wishes
Speaker 2: was there that night, and Frank is so moved by
Speaker 2: this that he decides not to fire Grace for her
Speaker 2: in subordination. Ah. This is, by the way, right after
Speaker 2: in the previous scene he was like, oh, she might
Speaker 2: be due for a raise. Like he's still pingpong all
Speaker 2: over the place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Ghost of Christmas Present clocks Frank on the head
Speaker 1: with a toaster by one memory in Paul's favorite moment
Speaker 1: in the film, and sends him to a frozen gutter
Speaker 1: underneath the city streets like genuinely Frozener's icicles.
Speaker 2: Everywhere it looks it looks like a scene set from
Speaker 2: Batman Returns.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. So now she's disappeared. She's left him
Speaker 1: the way the ghosts of Chris's past left him, and
Speaker 1: Frank is left alone with the frozen corpse of one
Speaker 1: of the men that he met that day at Operation Rescue.
Speaker 1: How fast does it take for someone to freeze to
Speaker 1: say yep, well, because this I can't tell you enough.
Speaker 1: This is like frozen corpse, blue ice.
Speaker 2: This is corpsic.
Speaker 1: This is a corpsicle. Also, how cold is it in
Speaker 1: New York City? Because Frank doesn't even.
Speaker 2: Have a coat on and you can't see his breath.
Speaker 2: So what's going on?
Speaker 1: What's going on? I don't mean to make fun. This
Speaker 1: is actually a real bummer of a scene. So the
Speaker 1: man is his name is Herman and he's played by
Speaker 1: Michael J. Pollard in like truly excellent casting because Michael J.
Speaker 1: Pollard is one of those eighties character actors that when
Speaker 1: you see his face you just want to give him
Speaker 1: a hug. He has a kind, kind face, just the
Speaker 1: kindest face. And earlier in the film, when Frank was
Speaker 1: leaving Operation Rescue, this guy had asked him for two
Speaker 1: bucks to help help him stay warm, and Frank said no,
Speaker 1: but I know another sucker inside will help you. Like
Speaker 1: he just blew him off. So Frank sees Herman and
Speaker 1: he does that thing where he doesn't it doesn't compute.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, you're not dead, you're fucking with me, right,
Speaker 1: And he's like, wake up, come on, man, wake up.
Speaker 1: This is a great joke, and then he starts to panic,
Speaker 1: realizing that he is dead, and Frank screams at him,
Speaker 1: why didn't you stay with Claire. Desperate to get out
Speaker 1: of there and get out of the gutter with his
Speaker 1: frozen corpse, Frank slams his body against the door to
Speaker 1: the street until he finally breaks through and crashes through
Speaker 1: to the set of Scrooge at IBS or ibs the
Speaker 1: Iron Beard channel.
Speaker 2: IBZ, he's disoriented.
Speaker 1: Fair, Yeah, fair, He just saw a fucking corpse.
Speaker 2: And has been hit in the face or the balls
Speaker 2: seven to ten times by a mystical being. He's ushered
Speaker 2: off the set by Grace and Bryce, who suggests that
Speaker 2: maybe Frank should steer clear of the set for the
Speaker 2: rest of the night, and Grace is about to take
Speaker 2: Frank to his office when he encounters the actor dressed
Speaker 2: as the Ghost of Christmas Future for Scrooge. Yeah right,
Speaker 2: so this is not the Scrooged Ghost of Christmas Future.
Speaker 2: This is the Scrooge Ghost of Christmas Future. He freaks out,
Speaker 2: He gets on his knees. He tells the ghost to
Speaker 2: do its worst, and he calls the ghost up Pussy,
Speaker 2: which I'm surprising he got away with him this.
Speaker 1: We must be our right, it's peachy thirteen.
Speaker 2: Wow. Is there no other curse? No, he curses.
Speaker 1: There is no other cursing.
Speaker 2: Really, this is it.
Speaker 1: There might be like a shit at some point, but
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 2: Wow, all right. Bryce ushers the actor playing the ghost
Speaker 2: away from Frank and tells Grace to take this lunatic
Speaker 2: to his office.
Speaker 1: Back on set, they are three minutes to air, and
Speaker 1: we see Mary lou Retton in her Tiny Tim costume,
Speaker 1: toss away her crutches, practice her tumbling pass and pronouncing
Speaker 1: God bless us everyone. Calvin watches her. Earlier in the movie,
Speaker 1: we saw Calvin watch an original version of a Christmas Carol,
Speaker 1: like the one from the fifties, and he saw the
Speaker 1: moment where Tiny Tim says God bless us everyone. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of in Calvin's head this line.
Speaker 2: Frank goes to his office. He fixes himself an extra
Speaker 2: large vodka tab. Yep, it's clear there's so little tab
Speaker 2: and it's just vodka on ice with a splash of tab. Yeap.
Speaker 2: He opens his Christmas present from James and it's a
Speaker 2: handmade photo frame with a picture of them as kids
Speaker 2: in it, and the inscription reads to Frank the best
Speaker 2: brother a guy ever had, and Frank can barely contain
Speaker 2: tears as he downs his drink. He sits with it. Now,
Speaker 2: as I was watching this, this came back to me.
Speaker 1: This is the only other thing in the movie, I
Speaker 1: bet because this is scary that I was like.
Speaker 2: Wait, I remember that, which I think this is probably
Speaker 2: the moment that I was really like, because I did
Speaker 2: watch the whole movie, because I saw Carol Kane's at
Speaker 2: that point, you're not going to watch Kenny. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: I remembered as soon as it started. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: this scared the shit of me as a kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually have a memory of seeing this as
Speaker 1: a kid and being like, oh, that's spooky.
Speaker 2: Frank is sitting with his back to the tower of
Speaker 2: TV screens in his office and he doesn't see the
Speaker 2: real Ghost of Christmas Future take over every TV and
Speaker 2: it starts to reach its bony hand out, and then
Speaker 2: we cut to the Ghost of Christmas Futures perspective and
Speaker 2: we see its hand reaching out to grab Frank. So
Speaker 2: an actual, like physical prop is reaching out to someundly
Speaker 2: grab Frank. Yeah, just as it's about to grab him.
Speaker 2: A very drunk elliot, remember Elliott, Bobcat Golden Wait, Bob.
Speaker 1: I have cut him out. The movie has been returning
Speaker 1: to Elliott periodically. He has been getting progressively more and
Speaker 1: more drunk.
Speaker 2: Elliott bursts into his office. He's very drunk. He has
Speaker 2: a shotgun and he says, Honey, I'm home. I'm not
Speaker 2: even gonna attempt to try to do the Bobcat Goldwate
Speaker 2: for us. I can't do it hard voice, and he
Speaker 2: tries to kill Frank. Frank underreacts.
Speaker 1: They do this like they genuinely do like a bugs
Speaker 1: Bunny moment here. Yeah, Like he's like the elliot is
Speaker 1: bugs Bunny, and he's he's doing like a voice, and
Speaker 1: there's there's I feel like there's like a sound cue
Speaker 1: here that's like the patter of feet, like as Frank
Speaker 1: runs away. Really I'm making that up.
Speaker 2: I didn't notice it.
Speaker 1: If I might be there, I know the gunshot sound
Speaker 1: like pew. It's straight out of Looney Tunes. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna tell you right now, this does not
Speaker 1: age well. It doesn't and it does not work. I
Speaker 1: hate this part of the movie.
Speaker 2: This was my biggest problem with the movie.
Speaker 1: Why Paul this just like you said, I can't I
Speaker 1: can't understand why it's so funny. It's so funny to
Speaker 1: watch someone run around in office with a shotgun.
Speaker 2: Frank runs through the office. He tries to convince Elliott
Speaker 2: that he's had a very bad day. Not the tactic
Speaker 2: you want to use. Not when when the drunk man
Speaker 2: that you fired, who we find out in the rest
Speaker 2: of the movie, like got his wife threw out of
Speaker 2: the house, he's been on the street the whole night,
Speaker 2: and like when he comes in, don't be like I've
Speaker 2: had a worse day than you. I don't have time
Speaker 2: try to try to empathize anyway.
Speaker 1: Money at the problem.
Speaker 2: Elliott counters with his own bad day. He lost his job,
Speaker 2: his wife left him, he took their daughter with her,
Speaker 2: and Frank manages to escape into the elevator where the
Speaker 2: real ghost of Christmas Future is and finally has Frank
Speaker 2: all to himself.
Speaker 1: The ghost of Christmas Future in this film, the real
Speaker 1: one has a screen for a face. It is a
Speaker 1: television screen, and it's wearing this long black cloak. And
Speaker 1: I think I said this earlier, but like the cloak
Speaker 1: opens up and a torso is made of tortured souls
Speaker 1: screaming to get out. It is so creepy.
Speaker 2: It's creepy.
Speaker 1: It's excellent. And Frank still isn't sure it's the real ghost.
Speaker 1: He still thinks maybe is part of the production. And
Speaker 1: he goes he looks at the tortured souls and he
Speaker 1: goes like, yeah, we're gonna get letters about that.
Speaker 2: That was funny.
Speaker 1: That's this is a lot, This is too much. Maybe,
Speaker 1: so the ghost takes Frank. All the other flashbacks had
Speaker 1: like a veneer of realism to them. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: what's happening with the future. The future is this expressionistic,
Speaker 1: dystopian place. Suddenly Frank is in like a hallway that's tilted.
Speaker 1: It's a totally different visual language from the rest of
Speaker 1: this film, right, and this one almost looks sci fi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like sci fi.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he sees this dystopian future where Calvin is
Speaker 1: locked in a padded cell forever and Grace comes to
Speaker 1: visit him and Calvin doesn't even acknowledge her. And Claire
Speaker 1: has decided to take Frank's advice and is now this
Speaker 1: like awful cruel unfeeling person, and like she's sitting with
Speaker 1: her girlfriends in this high society cafe and there's like
Speaker 1: a group of kids begging for money and food and
Speaker 1: she goes, oh, look at those urchins. Send them away.
Speaker 1: And her friends are like Claire, They're just children, and
Speaker 1: Claire's like, I decided to take some advice from a
Speaker 1: friend scrape them off.
Speaker 2: Karen Allen looks amazing in this.
Speaker 1: So creepy in this scene because like all her friends
Speaker 1: sitting around the table are it all. It's all done
Speaker 1: in like black and white, and all of her friends
Speaker 1: are like in normal makeup for a black and white scene,
Speaker 1: and she is in like pancake white makeup and like
Speaker 1: deep eyeliner. And then he sees James and Wendy putting
Speaker 1: his own body in a crematate because there's no funeral
Speaker 1: for someone as unloved as Frank. It's just James and
Speaker 1: Wendy burning Frank's body.
Speaker 2: This is not a criticism, This is a genuine question.
Speaker 2: The movie seems to propose that, like being cremated is
Speaker 2: in some way like worse than being buried. I didn't
Speaker 2: get that, Like, is it just because it's like no
Speaker 2: one's spending the money on you to actually bury it.
Speaker 2: No one wants to even Oh.
Speaker 1: I didn't think anything of that. I genuinely thought it
Speaker 1: was just a cool visual effect of like what's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: Like cooler than being buried alive.
Speaker 2: Sure, okay, yes I was. I was trying to parse
Speaker 2: what was going on because it's.
Speaker 1: Also burning in hell, like you're now going to burn
Speaker 1: in the fires of hell, right, Like that's the that's.
Speaker 2: What they're trying to do. But what made me laugh
Speaker 2: about it was the fact that he's still in a coffin,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, famously expensive. You don't want to buy
Speaker 2: the cough if you're going to be cremated, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: just going going nude.
Speaker 1: I don't think they would put a coffin in a crematorium.
Speaker 2: That's seems like wasted energy.
Speaker 1: You're gonna melt a lot of steel there. That's not good.
Speaker 1: This is so silly, But like the my my other
Speaker 1: favorite Christmas Carol is the Disney one. I love the
Speaker 1: Disney one with Scrooge McDuck and there is a burning
Speaker 1: in Hell like sequence in that one where the ghost
Speaker 1: of Christmas Future grabs him and throws him in his
Speaker 1: grave and then he's like covered in flames. I think
Speaker 1: that's what it is. It's the visual of him literally
Speaker 1: burning in hell for eternity.
Speaker 2: Now, no, no, I totally agree, like I got that
Speaker 2: that that because his reaction is a little I mean,
Speaker 2: he's like, I died. I died. I'm like spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: everybody's gonna die.
Speaker 1: Because he walks in and he only sees Wendy first,
Speaker 1: and he goes, oh, no, James's funeral. He's so sad.
Speaker 1: And then James walks up and he's like, oh okay,
Speaker 1: so wait a minute, wait a minute. If James is here,
Speaker 1: who the fuck is in the box?
Speaker 2: What's the box?
Speaker 1: What's is the box? So Frank tries to stop the cremation,
Speaker 1: screaming at his brother that he's still alive. These two
Speaker 1: actors are nailing it. John Murray and Wendy Mallick are
Speaker 1: weeping at Frank's cremation, and this is when when Wendy
Speaker 1: Malick gets me, I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna cry.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cry. And suddenly Frank is inside the coffin
Speaker 1: and he's banging at the coffin door like let me out.
Speaker 1: Let me out. I want to live. I want to live,
Speaker 1: and the flames start to hit his feet and he
Speaker 1: starts to beg and scream for his life. And the
Speaker 1: last thing he says is I want to live. And
Speaker 1: then just as suddenly, Frank finds himself back in the office,
Speaker 1: the elevator doors open and he goes, I'm alive, and
Speaker 1: the Hallelujah chorus starts playing. Frank starts to happily run
Speaker 1: through his office. He kisses the ib ips and now
Speaker 1: I could That's all I hate think about is IBS.
Speaker 2: The IBS logo is just it. It's just it's just
Speaker 2: a toilet, but it's like reaching out to hug you
Speaker 2: circular part like you're home.
Speaker 1: You're homegirl, You're safe here, just sit down, You're safe.
Speaker 1: It's actually a logo of the sun. And he goes
Speaker 1: up to the wall and kiss it and he goes,
Speaker 1: I never thought i'd see the sun again. Excellent.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm thinking about toilets in the eighties. Now
Speaker 2: do you remember the toilets that had like the shag,
Speaker 2: the padded the padded toilets.
Speaker 1: Wait, it was there, like shag, wasn't there? I kind
Speaker 1: of as soon as you said that that felt so
Speaker 1: correct to me.
Speaker 2: Maybe I could be having a fugue state member.
Speaker 1: Both remembering it like shag carpeting.
Speaker 2: On the toilet, see the toilets, which must have been.
Speaker 1: The most disgusting thing thing. I do remember the padded
Speaker 1: toilet seats, The padded.
Speaker 2: Toilet seats, I remember. But the padded toilet seats are clean.
Speaker 2: You can wipe them down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not.
Speaker 2: It's not fabric just.
Speaker 1: It literally was like shag carpeting on a toilet. I
Speaker 1: have a vivid memory. I think. I don't think this
Speaker 1: is a mass delusion that you and I are having.
Speaker 1: I think this is to look it up. Pause, pause
Speaker 1: here for a moment. Hallelujah chorus. Okay, we're back. Not
Speaker 1: only was it a thing in the eighties, but Paul, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could currently buy it right now at Walmart.
Speaker 2: No, we were stupid in the eighties. We didn't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like there are other stores where they only sell
Speaker 1: the cover is shag like a bed bath and Beyond
Speaker 1: will have that shag cover, yeah, which is already I
Speaker 1: don't like it. I don't like it at all.
Speaker 2: But but my flesh is not going.
Speaker 1: On there, but on it at Walmart and it's it's
Speaker 1: on sale clearance.
Speaker 2: You guys, I can't imagine why.
Speaker 1: You can buy machine washable, thank god God, toilet covers
Speaker 1: that are basically shag carpeting.
Speaker 2: So what do you buy like twenty of them? After
Speaker 2: every bathroom use, you have to you have to put
Speaker 2: it in the in.
Speaker 1: The in the washer. I should dishwasher iw.
Speaker 2: Thing to get soap on it. Frankly, you have deep.
Speaker 1: Fucking burn it. Fuzzy toilet seat covers apparently a huge
Speaker 1: thing in the seventies and eighties. Pinterest has a whole
Speaker 1: story about it.
Speaker 2: Oh God, we were discussing. I had forgotten them until
Speaker 2: I started thinking about a warm, comforting toilet seat.
Speaker 1: I had totally and Okay, the fact that we both
Speaker 1: remember it means at some point in our lives.
Speaker 2: We both used them.
Speaker 1: We parked our asses on someone's fuzzy, shag carpeted toilet.
Speaker 1: Truly outdated bathroom decor. Shag carpeting toilet seat covers, and
Speaker 1: then a whole Reddit thing that's like what sort of
Speaker 1: monster put a shack crpet? Gross? Now I'm just going
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole of like fur toilet lid cover
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, excuse me. Fur Paul Paul, currently on sale
Speaker 1: Walmart once again, because this is a dystopian version of America.
Speaker 1: For six dollars and fifty three cents, you could buy
Speaker 1: a toilet seat cover that warms the toilet seat and
Speaker 1: looks like it's made of perhaps wool. Paul. Look at it,
Speaker 1: Look at it.
Speaker 2: Look at it.
Speaker 1: The fact that it's seven dollars less than seven dollars,
Speaker 1: and it's got like maybe a cat on it. There's
Speaker 1: a picture of a cat. Burn it down, burn it,
Speaker 1: just burn it down. Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: There's a checkerboard, one with a dog's keboard, one with
Speaker 1: a dog.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Frank is running through his office. He's sounding
Speaker 2: I never thought i'd see the sun again. I'm alive,
Speaker 2: I'm alive, and Elliott points his gun right at Frank.
Speaker 2: He actually gets the barrel in Frank's mouth, and he
Speaker 2: says not for long, but Frank is too jazzed up
Speaker 2: to care. He embraces Elliott, and Elliott is so freaked
Speaker 2: out by Frank's turn around that he lets Frank take
Speaker 2: the gun and drop it on the floor. Another shot
Speaker 2: fires off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the one that sounds like Looney Tunes.
Speaker 2: Frank grabs Elliott and spins him around while telling him
Speaker 2: that he's promoting him to VP of Programming at double
Speaker 2: his former salary. It's the same shot of Kate and
Speaker 2: Leo and when they're dancing in Titanic. Elliott asks what
Speaker 2: happened to Frank, and Frank says that the Jews taught
Speaker 2: him a great word, schmuck. I was a schmuck, but
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna be one any longer. And Frank swings
Speaker 2: Elliott into the elevator. He grabs the shotgun and he says,
Speaker 2: we're gonna have some fun.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, right, this is right. Buckle up, kids, because
Speaker 1: there's some stuff. If you haven't seen this movie in
Speaker 1: a while, you probably have forgotten this plotline like I did.
Speaker 1: Does not age well. Yes, trigger warning in all senses.
Speaker 1: Cut to the final act in Scrooge in Charles Dickens
Speaker 1: Immortal Classic Scrooge. I really wish we'd cut to the
Speaker 1: Great Barrier.
Speaker 2: Reef for a moment, but oh well would I would
Speaker 2: just love to know why?
Speaker 3: What? What? Like?
Speaker 1: Like is it a shark wearing a the Santa hat
Speaker 1: was happening? So we cut to the final act of Scrooge.
Speaker 1: Ebenezer is tossing a coin to a lad on the street.
Speaker 1: The camera follows the coin as it falls, but instead
Speaker 1: of the actor playing the lad catching it, Frank runs
Speaker 1: onto the set and grabs it before the actor can.
Speaker 1: We cut to the control booth, where everyone is in
Speaker 1: shock that Frank has disrupted the show. What the fuck
Speaker 1: is happening? This is live everyone, of course, except for Bryce,
Speaker 1: who is thrilled at Frank's impending downfall. He's like, this
Speaker 1: is great. Elliott enters the control booth with his shotgun
Speaker 1: and he takes the crew hostage. So they'll keep the
Speaker 1: camera on Frank and not cut to commercial. I'll just
Speaker 1: stop here. None of this is necessary. Yeah, you already
Speaker 1: have Bryce going this is great. So if you needed,
Speaker 1: like dramaturgically a reason for them to not just cut
Speaker 1: to commercial or not just stop the show, you can
Speaker 1: have Bryce being like, uh no, no, no, keep the
Speaker 1: camera on him while he's having his big, very public meltdown.
Speaker 1: This is this is great for my career. Like, you
Speaker 1: absolutely do not need what is about to happen, which
Speaker 1: is bobcat Goldthwaye, who up until this was such a
Speaker 1: sweet character in the movie, honestly, and I was even
Speaker 1: okay with him, like menacing Frank around the office with
Speaker 1: his chocoy. He now points a gun at people and
Speaker 1: then they'll keep cutting back to him and he'll be like,
Speaker 1: He'll be.
Speaker 2: Like, party, I have fun.
Speaker 1: We told you to have fun. And you'll see people
Speaker 1: crying in the in the country Hill. Amy Hill is
Speaker 1: an actor in the scene she's she's an extra in
Speaker 1: this movie, and there's a moment where they cut to
Speaker 1: Amy Hill and she's weeping and pretending to dance because
Speaker 1: she's being told to dance by a man holding a shotgun.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what part of this do you think
Speaker 1: is funny? Yeah, it's not funny. It's not even just
Speaker 1: like the world is aged poorly kind of way, which
Speaker 1: of course it has, but it's I don't even think
Speaker 1: this was funny In nineteen.
Speaker 2: Eighty eight, Yeah, I don't. I'm like, because I was
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what the what the gag was
Speaker 2: supposed to be, and I was like, is it just
Speaker 2: supposed to be so ludicrous.
Speaker 1: Because it's Bob cackles that squird voice that he does,
Speaker 1: and he's like four feet eight tall tall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no one can think Bobcat Goldthwait is actually scary
Speaker 2: or anything. But and look, I think it's obviously made
Speaker 2: worse by what has happened in the forty years since
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 1: But if they hadn't had her crying and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: being genuinely frightened, that's that's the unforced error.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. The reactions of the people around him in
Speaker 2: the booth are taking it seriously as opposed to being like, ugh, fine.
Speaker 1: We keep the camera on him. Yeah, it does not
Speaker 1: age well. It is so unappealing. It is so not funny.
Speaker 1: I wish they'd cut all of this out of the movie.
Speaker 1: You can also cut all of Elliott's other stuff out.
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but like it is like
Speaker 1: old timey, like hobo imagery with Elliott. Throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of the movie, they keep cutting to him and he's
Speaker 1: like drinking a bottle of scotch out of a bag
Speaker 1: on a street corner and he's got like fingerless gloves
Speaker 1: on all of a sudden, and you're like he got
Speaker 1: fired six hours ago. Yeah, Like why is why is
Speaker 1: this happening? Like why is this escalating so quickly?
Speaker 2: And I would have loved it if they had taken
Speaker 2: the time given to him and given it to Grace
Speaker 2: instead and built up that side of the story so
Speaker 2: we can have a better like not necessarily a better
Speaker 2: like happier relationship, but like a stronger feel of the
Speaker 2: relationship between Grace and Frank, like yeah, you know, like
Speaker 2: or see him grow closer to Calvin. All of this
Speaker 2: stuff could have been layered in. Maybe she's the one
Speaker 2: who comes in when he gets back and is not
Speaker 2: not with a gun with the grip, but he's gonna
Speaker 2: quit and and and she's yet like she's had it
Speaker 2: with him, Like yeah, for whatever something happened, she's she's
Speaker 2: done and like and then he gets to sweep her
Speaker 2: along with it. Yeah, that makes so much more sense
Speaker 2: and likes so much more affecting, I think. So Frank
Speaker 2: looks at the camera and he starts out by saying
Speaker 2: that he's a rat bastard for making all these people
Speaker 2: work on Christmas Eve instead of letting them spend time
Speaker 2: with their loved ones. I just want to say, for
Speaker 2: the reck, I get I get it, I get it,
Speaker 2: but like, literally, like every job I've ever had has
Speaker 2: has made me work on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: Those people.
Speaker 2: Every hotel I worked at, every restaurant I worked at,
Speaker 2: they were all open on Christmas Eve. Every every play
Speaker 2: on broad it has a Christmas Eve performance. Like it's
Speaker 2: fine but anyway, he pulls the photo that James gave
Speaker 2: him and tells the audience at home that he has
Speaker 2: the best brother in the world. And we see James
Speaker 2: and his friend watching on TV and they're touched by
Speaker 2: Frank's speech, and Frank then confesses to James that he
Speaker 2: gave him a towel, not a VCR. Grace did that.
Speaker 2: It wasn't me, But I'm sorry for the way that
Speaker 2: I've treated you. You were right about everything except that
Speaker 2: the boat that took them to Gilligan's Island was the
Speaker 2: s S Minnow And James and his friends are shocked.
Speaker 2: How did he know? How did he know that? Ye
Speaker 2: know that? Then this really weird moment happens where Frank
Speaker 2: says Hello Wendy, and we get this mode of Wendy
Speaker 2: Mallet going oh, smiling, smiling, and then just cuts away
Speaker 2: and I'm like, what, why does she care that he
Speaker 2: said Hello Wendy because the.
Speaker 1: Guy who wrote the movie is her husband. Again, like
Speaker 1: I want to give her a moment here.
Speaker 2: But dramaturgically, I have no idea like she should she'd
Speaker 2: be like, oh yeah, or like I mean, potentially she's
Speaker 2: she's the one in that scene earlier who's like harsher
Speaker 2: on him right, like it's not that bad. But she's like, oh,
Speaker 2: he gave you a shower curtain last year, which is
Speaker 2: fair fair criticism.
Speaker 1: And like, I hope my family likes their fuzzy toilet
Speaker 1: sea covers they're all getting for Christmas this year.
Speaker 2: What a great stocking stuff.
Speaker 1: The IBS logo getting that for all of my nephews,
Speaker 1: all of my colleagues enjoy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, hello, Wendy, I'm also sorry that I'd never
Speaker 2: gotten a chance to spend time with you. You seem
Speaker 2: lovely or something something like that.
Speaker 1: This is how good Wendy Malick is, though oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because you feel it. I actually think Bill Murray is
Speaker 1: great in this moment too. I think this, to me
Speaker 1: is the part of the movie where Bill Murray is
Speaker 1: a very very effective actor.
Speaker 2: Here's my thing. Actually, having gone through this movie with
Speaker 2: you as much as we have at this point, I
Speaker 2: think if I watched it a couple more times, I
Speaker 2: think I would get to the point you're at with it,
Speaker 2: because I think the story is better and more arced
Speaker 2: than I gave it credit for upon my viewing of it,
Speaker 2: because you've pointed out things that I missed. So I
Speaker 2: think if I watched it again, I would actually find
Speaker 2: this scene much more affecting than I did when I
Speaker 2: watched it, because when I watched it, I was at
Speaker 2: the point of like, all right, just come on.
Speaker 1: I was like getting teary eyed watching I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I was not. We cut back to the control room Boo.
Speaker 1: Preston calls and demands to speak to the idiot who
Speaker 1: allowed Frank to hijack the show. Elliott answers the call
Speaker 1: and says Bryce is responsible, but he can't come to
Speaker 1: the phone right now because he's tied up, and the
Speaker 1: camera pans over to Bryce, who was literally tied to
Speaker 1: a chair with a holiday wreath around his neck. That
Speaker 1: is the one good part of this whole scene, m h.
Speaker 1: Elliott goes on to tell Preston that Bryce called him
Speaker 1: a butt head and also confess to having romantic feelings
Speaker 1: towards Preston, which is so unnecessary. Yeah, like, what the
Speaker 1: fuck is this joke? And then Preston gets so angry
Speaker 1: that he kicks one of his cats in his apartment.
Speaker 1: Remove all this, all this, all this, I do like
Speaker 1: the joke of someone tied up and then they're actually
Speaker 1: tied up. But you know what, we've seen it before.
Speaker 1: We don't have to see it in this movie.
Speaker 2: And I doubt that this was the case. But it's
Speaker 2: weird that you've made the joke about the one actually
Speaker 2: gay actor in the cast.
Speaker 1: Is he the only gay actor?
Speaker 2: Well, the only I guess only actor I know of
Speaker 2: in the cast. It's gad Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I'm like panning through the cast.
Speaker 2: I think I bet Karen Allen's bisexual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know what what Michael J.
Speaker 1: Pollard told you is. Back on set, Frank orders champagne
Speaker 1: for everyone. Buddy, it is eleven five on Christmas Eve?
Speaker 1: What shop is open? He's like, everyone relaxed, it's a party,
Speaker 1: and they y'all just start to kind of vibe.
Speaker 2: On the set.
Speaker 1: He kisses one of the solid gold dancers because she's
Speaker 1: standing under a missletoe. And that's just the rules, that's
Speaker 1: the laws, the federal law. Federal law declares, I must
Speaker 1: kiss this woman. And to be clear, the solid gold
Speaker 1: dancer is into it. She grabs it, She grabs Frank's tie,
Speaker 1: She pulls him to her and like gives him a
Speaker 1: good one.
Speaker 2: Right, yep. Look, if you're a solid gold dancer and
Speaker 2: a TV executive starts doing that, and he's not he's
Speaker 2: not being gross, to be clear, he's being actually kind
Speaker 2: of sweet. Go for it, see what you can get
Speaker 2: so we can get out of it.
Speaker 1: This according to this movie, this guy is irresistible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Karen Allen waited for him for fifteen years for.
Speaker 1: That irresistible Bill Murray Dick.
Speaker 2: No one else would do the German shepherd with her.
Speaker 2: That's when he gets into a shepherd's outfit and he
Speaker 2: talks like he talks in a German accent, and he
Speaker 2: crooks her with a crook.
Speaker 1: Oh, the shepherd's crook. The shepherd st no what no
Speaker 1: one else would do? The docks and bigger what's that?
Speaker 1: That's when you go down to the docks.
Speaker 2: And fuck, no one else would do the hot dog
Speaker 2: with her?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the hot dog? What's that?
Speaker 2: Poll? That's that's when that's when you take hot dog fingers.
Speaker 2: Remember from everywhere to all it was hot dog fingers
Speaker 2: and you just do what comes naturally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't have to if we have to describe it.
Speaker 1: You you're doing not understand, you're doing hot fingers wrong.
Speaker 1: No one else is going to do the toy poodle
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 2: Oh of course, but what is the toy poodle again?
Speaker 1: The toy poodle is when you the toy poodles when
Speaker 1: you dress up like Sherry from Lamb Chop and prance
Speaker 1: around the living room. Okay, So anyway, he kisses one
Speaker 1: of the solid Gold dancers and then he declares to
Speaker 1: the world, but that kiss was good, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: great Burns Gold Dancer. She's standing right there.
Speaker 2: Someone isn't on the Terry gar and Goldie Hawn track.
Speaker 2: Son of a Bitch, Jennifer Lopez.
Speaker 1: He doesn't mean it as a burn, but it does
Speaker 1: come across as a burn. He says, it really was
Speaker 1: only one great kiss in my life, only one great
Speaker 1: and that was Claire. And he tells Claire that he
Speaker 1: still loves her and he wants her back. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's hoping that they could continue their work through the
Speaker 1: Kama Sutra that they started years ago. He starts to
Speaker 1: describe a move where they twine around each other like snakes,
Speaker 1: and everyone's.
Speaker 2: Like, wooooooo, we see Claire and all the folks at
Speaker 2: Operation Rescue watching on TV.
Speaker 1: Zero chance that would happen, Yeah, zero chance. The people
Speaker 1: at this shelter are like, can we watch Scrooge? Also,
Speaker 1: just imagine your ex boyfriend's whole thing.
Speaker 2: Your ex boyfriend is on TV, and this is when
Speaker 2: TV was big, so.
Speaker 1: Like literally, like, you know, this is the super Bowl.
Speaker 2: Two hundred million people are watching your boyfriend describe sex
Speaker 2: acts that you did with him fifteen years ago when
Speaker 2: you were young in limber. You can't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: You can't do the Doberman pincher anymore, which is well,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of pinching, and you bruise like a peach.
Speaker 2: You bruise like a peach now, So everyone else applauds.
Speaker 2: When Frank declares his love for her and Claire rushes outside.
Speaker 2: She takes the first taxi she can find, and who's
Speaker 2: driving it but the ghost of Christmas Past. And she
Speaker 2: asks if you can to the IBC building in three minutes,
Speaker 2: and he replies, which flaw excellent.
Speaker 1: Frank leads the casting crew of Scrooge in a singalong
Speaker 1: of Deck the Halls and then tells the audience at home,
Speaker 1: now this is this is kind of a crazy moment
Speaker 1: in this movie. He starts to like give a speech
Speaker 1: to the audience at home. Bill Murray gets really worked
Speaker 1: up while while giving this speech. He gets he gets
Speaker 1: really choked up. His voice cracks, and I fully believe him.
Speaker 1: I think he's really good. He tells the audience at
Speaker 1: home to embrace the spirit of Christmas and to be
Speaker 1: the people they always hoped they would be, because the
Speaker 1: Christmas spirit is a miracle, and it's a miracle that
Speaker 1: you can have every single day. In fact, you gotta
Speaker 1: be greedy for it, you gotta want it. And he
Speaker 1: proclaims that not only does he truly believe in Christmas now,
Speaker 1: but he's ready for it. He's finally ready for it.
Speaker 1: And he wishes everyone at home a merry Christmas. And
Speaker 1: then Calvin, like who's holding on to Alfrey Woodard breaks
Speaker 1: free and walks up to him and kind of like
Speaker 1: tugs at his pants, and he goes, what's little man?
Speaker 1: And he goes, God, bless us everyone, if you're not
Speaker 1: a little teary eyed, that sweet, sweet little kid, they
Speaker 1: could not have cast a cuter child. Horrible this kit
Speaker 1: and like, I'm gonna cry just thinking about it, and
Speaker 1: everyone is stunned. Grace is overcome with joy and she
Speaker 1: scoops Calvin up in her arms and she's so happy.
Speaker 2: Claire makes it to the set and Frank picks her
Speaker 2: up and drags her in front of the camera and says,
Speaker 2: the whole world, Claire, Claire, the whole world, and he
Speaker 2: kisses her and says and they lived happily ever after,
Speaker 2: and Claire smiles and kisses him back, and then Erica
Speaker 2: writes here and she's not wrong. The movie remembers that
Speaker 2: it has Alfre Woodard in it, and she starts to
Speaker 2: sing along and put a little Love in your Heart
Speaker 2: so good, which was a we heard it on a
Speaker 2: radio in an earlier.
Speaker 1: Scene and in her apartment, yeah earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Frank looks up. He sees all three ghosts and
Speaker 2: lou plus the ghost of herman, singing and clapping along
Speaker 2: with everyone else, and we see everyone in the trol
Speaker 2: booth and Grace's family and the folks Operation Rescue and
Speaker 2: Preston and his wife all sing along to the song.
Speaker 2: My favorite was the cut to John Houseman who's not
Speaker 2: clapping on the beach.
Speaker 1: Who's like, I've never heard this before.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 1: What's happening? So everyone is singing along? And then I
Speaker 1: don't think I said this earlier. Actually, when you asked
Speaker 1: me when I first saw this film, I think I
Speaker 1: said I saw it young. Yeah, I saw this movie
Speaker 1: in the theater. Oh, like, I have a very vivid
Speaker 1: memory of seeing this movie in the theater with my
Speaker 1: parents and my brother because of what is about to
Speaker 1: happen next. Gotcha Bill Murray, not Frank Cross, Bill Murray.
Speaker 2: It's totally Bill Murray. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Walks over to the camera and breaks the fourth wall
Speaker 1: and tells the audience in the movie theater sing along
Speaker 1: as well. He's like, put a little love in your heart.
Speaker 1: Come on, everybody's saying. And then he's like, how about
Speaker 1: just this side of the theater And then he points
Speaker 1: to the left side and he goes, okay, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that was terrible. Now this side of the theater and
Speaker 1: the right side, and he goes, okay, the men and
Speaker 1: then anticipating, which is exactly what happened in my theater,
Speaker 1: that none of the guys wanted to sing and the
Speaker 1: men are like, he goes, no, no, no, the real men.
Speaker 1: And what happened I remember this in the theater is
Speaker 1: people in my audience started singing, like the men actually
Speaker 1: started singing a lot and clapping and put a little
Speaker 1: love in your heart. And then he goes the women
Speaker 1: and he makes the same joke again, no, no, the
Speaker 1: real women. And honestly, he didn't have to because the
Speaker 1: women in my audience were in and my mom and
Speaker 1: I were.
Speaker 2: Like, it's so funny that like, because to be clear,
Speaker 2: I knew this is not what was happening, but because
Speaker 2: of the world today, when he said no, the real men,
Speaker 2: I went, I like recoiled. No, that sucks, but it's
Speaker 2: not his fault.
Speaker 1: It was a perfect gag because I'm telling you it
Speaker 1: happened in my theater where he goes, okay, just the
Speaker 1: men and no one sang, and then when he was
Speaker 1: like the real men, and then then yeah, some of
Speaker 1: the men were like, okay, we'll sing and I and and.
Speaker 2: I was like I literally had the thought of like, well,
Speaker 2: what's I don't get the joke because those words have
Speaker 2: been so weaponized, weaponized again against like the trans communter.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows what I'm talking about but like, that's such
Speaker 2: a great story to hear.
Speaker 1: It's so it was. I have this strong memory, and
Speaker 1: again I do remember all the women in my he
Speaker 1: was like no, no, the real women, and all the
Speaker 1: women were like yeah. So Bill Murray is doing this
Speaker 1: sing along with the people watching this movie in real
Speaker 1: time in the movie theaters. And then we cut to
Speaker 1: James and his friends right back to that, to that
Speaker 1: that Christmas Eve and John Murray, remember Bill Murray's real
Speaker 1: life little brother, turns to the camera and says, my
Speaker 1: brother the King of Christmas. End of movie.
Speaker 2: End of movie.
Speaker 1: I love this ending. Yeah, it is so weird. If
Speaker 1: you are listening to this and you have that experience,
Speaker 1: I would love to know what happened in your theater.
Speaker 1: Yeah when you watch this movie, like, do you remember
Speaker 1: people singing along or people already like shuffling for their
Speaker 1: for their keys.
Speaker 2: All right, everyone, so that is Scrooge. Stick around after
Speaker 2: a couple of messages and we will give you our
Speaker 2: random observations and final rankings, and we're back Erica. Do
Speaker 2: you have any other little little little little bits that
Speaker 2: we're still on the same We're still in the same turkey. Well,
Speaker 2: it didn't last very long. Yeah, yeah, what do you
Speaker 2: got for me?
Speaker 1: At Frank's Jim at his office, the wallpaper just has
Speaker 1: like a big sign and it says cross.
Speaker 2: Like it's like it's like a like a dictionary definition, yes,
Speaker 2: and it.
Speaker 1: Says cross a thing. They nail people too.
Speaker 2: I saw that.
Speaker 1: I was like, what the hell is that? That's his
Speaker 1: inspirational thing that he looks at while he's working out.
Speaker 2: I guess there's there is a moment he skipped over
Speaker 2: that definitely does not age well in the in the past,
Speaker 2: they're talking about Chinese food at the party. Yeah, he says, Oh,
Speaker 2: you don't don't eat Chinese food. They cut up alley
Speaker 2: cats and put it in chop suey and then they
Speaker 2: double down because when he meets Karen, she's like, I
Speaker 2: don't want to go to the party. Then she's like,
Speaker 2: but do you want to go get some Chinese food?
Speaker 2: And he's like okay, And they get in the cab
Speaker 2: and they drive off and you hear rare.
Speaker 1: It's like, damn it, gross, damn it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another line I Love Frank is with Ghost of Christmas
Speaker 1: Present with Carol Caine and he threatens to pull her
Speaker 1: wings off because she's so mad at her. He's like,
Speaker 1: if you do that one more time, I'll pull your
Speaker 1: fucking wings off, and she just smiles and goes, oh, Frank,
Speaker 1: you know I like the rough stuff. Wow, you'll love it.
Speaker 2: Pretty good, Carol Cane. It's a hard, des hard voice
Speaker 2: to do. All that can be Schmidt watching.
Speaker 1: All that ghost of Christmas present having.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I only have one more. It's just the fashion
Speaker 2: in this movie is overall pretty good. I think he's
Speaker 2: getting a lot of outerwear because every a lot of
Speaker 2: people are outside. Poor Alfred Woodard is having to deal
Speaker 2: with a couple of outfits.
Speaker 1: She's not like power suits on yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very long coats. Yeah, but you know, good for her.
Speaker 2: She's she's making it work overall. Wendy Malik in the
Speaker 2: scene the first scene where she's celebrating Christmas Eve, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the red shirt red. It's like a red shirt with
Speaker 2: white polka dots. But it's eighties. It's fine, like it's
Speaker 2: it's not actually the little shoulder pad action she has
Speaker 2: on her ears these two large silver like bear silhouette
Speaker 2: earrings and then at the at the top button of
Speaker 2: her shirt it's clasped by a large silver horse brooch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know you're thinking, Paul, I like it.
Speaker 2: I knew you were gonna like it.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 1: Here's because here's the story that they're telling us with
Speaker 1: Wendy and James without telling us anything, because he gets
Speaker 1: into their house and it's under renovation. These two are
Speaker 1: your artsy couples. I think she's supposed to be like
Speaker 1: an artist.
Speaker 2: Oh totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would like my full credit for managing to say
Speaker 2: b R O c HS brooch and not brooches gratulation.
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking, and it is. It is weird,
Speaker 1: but I like it in this very nineteen eighties downtown
Speaker 1: artsy dealer kind of way.
Speaker 2: I don't hate it. I just couldn't let it go
Speaker 2: past unremarked.
Speaker 1: Fair no, no, no, fair. It's and again it's also
Speaker 1: Wendy Mallick, who used to be a model and really
Speaker 1: can't carry anything off.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I only have one more two and it's a small
Speaker 1: thing that I only noticed this time, and I'd never
Speaker 1: seen it before. When they cut to Operation Rescue at
Speaker 1: the end of the movie, after he's like declares his
Speaker 1: love for Claire right and everyone's watching the TV, the
Speaker 1: box that's holding up the TV is a top of
Speaker 1: the line pioneer VCR box, the same one that James
Speaker 1: gets earlier in the movie, which posits that Grace went
Speaker 1: fully rogue and sent every single person Frank knows the
Speaker 1: top of the line.
Speaker 2: VC to work list.
Speaker 1: I think, because honestly, I was like, this brings up
Speaker 1: more questions and answers. Is it a coincidence? Is it
Speaker 1: just the box and there's no VCR? Was this a
Speaker 1: gift from Frank? Was this a gift from Grace?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why is this there? It's such an odd Maybe.
Speaker 2: Colonel Tom Parker donated his to the shelter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like, Elvis is just gonna shoot at it anyway,
Speaker 1: may as well give it to the shelter.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Erica, how are we gonna rank? How are we
Speaker 2: gonna rank scrooged?
Speaker 1: One to ten masterpieces that are derivative as fuck?
Speaker 2: One to ten masterpieces that make you go, I think
Speaker 2: I know this story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not a master master implies first of
Speaker 1: Yeah it.
Speaker 2: Did, yeah, number yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a peak. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can't call yourself a masterpiece if you are a
Speaker 1: copy of another person's work.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have made very good copies of
Speaker 2: the Mona Lisa, but theirs aren't masterpieces. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 2: original Mona Lisa.
Speaker 1: The original Dogs playing Poker is the only one that
Speaker 1: could call itself a masterpiece. Of the rest of you
Speaker 1: are garbage.
Speaker 2: That's right. The whole nine was a masterpiece, but the
Speaker 2: whole ten yards was derivative.
Speaker 1: It was derivative. That's not a masterpiece, to be clear.
Speaker 2: How about one to ten vodka.
Speaker 1: Tabs the most delicious drinks.
Speaker 2: Delicious drink a second only to a Tea Maria and
Speaker 2: orange slice, third only to.
Speaker 1: A vodka tab that actually does have chernobyl tainted that
Speaker 1: makes you hallucinate wildly.
Speaker 2: The chernobyl tainted stuff makes me reminds me of like
Speaker 2: the lithium from Back to the Future. Uh huh where
Speaker 2: It's like the eighties were a whole different world, man.
Speaker 1: Wild What was nuclear holocaust on everyone's mind? Like that
Speaker 1: must have been terrible. One to ten furry toilet covers.
Speaker 1: One to ten absorbent toilet covers, furry fucking toilet covers,
Speaker 1: shag carpeting seventies nightmare toilet covers. I would love to
Speaker 1: step into a situation right now where I have to
Speaker 1: pee in in someone's house and they have one, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, im paying in your sink. I'm just paying
Speaker 1: in your there's That's that's the only thing I can think.
Speaker 2: To do, right. I do not think that's what you
Speaker 2: would do. You would leave the house. I can trust
Speaker 2: nothing in this house.
Speaker 1: I would call a swat team first, and then I
Speaker 1: would leave that house. Yeah, honestly, truly, I would disinfect
Speaker 1: my entire body. Was like, I touched things? What did
Speaker 1: I touch in that house? If this is their standard
Speaker 1: of cleanliness.
Speaker 2: To ten sex acts named for dog breathes, this one
Speaker 2: should be one.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, like a multi pooh?
Speaker 2: What is a multipoo?
Speaker 1: This is when you take multiple poos on someone?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's it's it's an advanced one. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah yeah. She couldn't find anyone else to do
Speaker 2: the lassie with her.
Speaker 1: What's a lassie?
Speaker 2: A lassie's when one of you, one of you has
Speaker 2: to jump down a well, the other one gets to
Speaker 2: do whatever they want before they hoist you up.
Speaker 1: She couldn't find anyone else to do the bull mastiff
Speaker 1: with her?
Speaker 2: Oh, what's a bull mastiff?
Speaker 1: Just giant Schlong just huge, just a human something enormous.
Speaker 2: P yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. You know what she loves.
Speaker 2: She loved the great Dane.
Speaker 1: Ooh, what's a great day.
Speaker 2: That's just when you ask Eric Dane to be your third.
Speaker 1: Yes, yep, yep. Or a Saint Bernard, what's that? That's
Speaker 1: when one of you dresses left like George Bernard.
Speaker 2: Show and you fucking a hallowed place. You fuck it
Speaker 2: in a religious religious institution?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this one, this one, this one, Okay, do
Speaker 2: you want to go first?
Speaker 1: You want me to go first, I'll go first. Since
Speaker 1: this was my doing, it does not age well, you guys.
Speaker 1: I love this movie and I will defend it. And
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna give a palate cleanser, although that
Speaker 1: Disney Christmas Carol is fucking legit. Yeah here, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do the bad first and then I'll do the good.
Speaker 1: Bad Bobcat goothways whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Bad.
Speaker 1: The movie has a mean spiritedness that's just part of
Speaker 1: like comedy from that era. I don't really know why.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of anger. I think in the eighties,
Speaker 1: the stuff with the censor constantly getting hit I thought that,
Speaker 1: which was not that funny, like the return on investment
Speaker 1: isn't enough for it to be Like, well, then why
Speaker 1: is this even in there? Ycause she just keeps getting
Speaker 1: like smacked in the head and like run over by something.
Speaker 1: And then at the end she she sits on Bryce's
Speaker 1: lap when he's tied up and can't like say no,
Speaker 1: and she starts making out with him during the end.
Speaker 2: I'm like, all of that just is kind of You
Speaker 2: have someone that you wants to hate, why not have
Speaker 2: Bryce keep getting hit like, I mean not so badly
Speaker 2: that he can't keep directing, but every time you see him,
Speaker 2: he's he has like a new cast or a new bandagiant,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Not this random person. There's like a acousticness to it
Speaker 1: that like maybe feels refreshing to you in a Christmas movie,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of people maybe enjoy that
Speaker 1: part of it because Christmas movies are so triakily generally
Speaker 1: and like it's like this or bad Santa?
Speaker 2: Are your options?
Speaker 1: Are your options?
Speaker 3: For?
Speaker 1: Like, if you want a Christmas movie with like a
Speaker 1: fucking edge to it, It's fine, It's not like the
Speaker 1: worst I've ever seen, but there is like a meanness
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, there's a lot of like eighty eighties
Speaker 1: jokes in here that don't that don't feel great, Like
Speaker 1: the the gay joke at the end, when he's like,
Speaker 1: he says he feels about you romantically, and then the
Speaker 1: other guy gets furious and it's like he's trying to
Speaker 1: humiliate Bryce by insinuating that an openly gay actor who's
Speaker 1: playing Grace would be attracted to Robert Mitcham. Hello, it's
Speaker 1: Robert fucking Mitcham. We're all attracted to him. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Chinese food joke, yeah, doesn't age well, which, honestly, that
Speaker 1: would not even have remotely dinged my radar. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's only very in my thirties where I was like,
Speaker 1: huh so, Yeah, it's very very eighties in some bad ways.
Speaker 1: Here's where it's good, especially for eighties. It's very diverse.
Speaker 1: Is it's very diverse. I'm not just talking about Alfrey
Speaker 1: Woodard and her family, like Karen Allen's colleagues, people who
Speaker 1: work at the station. Lots of women in the movie.
Speaker 1: Not lots, because there's not really that many people in
Speaker 1: the movie, but like the Ghost of Christmas Present is
Speaker 1: a woman.
Speaker 2: But A swapped the gender of Bob Cratchitt, so that
Speaker 2: that is an active choice. Yeah, they swapped. They made
Speaker 2: that character person of color, and they made that character woman.
Speaker 1: Yep. And then they put Alfred Wooden in their movie,
Speaker 1: which is only which only can only improve it only
Speaker 1: improves everything. So I will say, like, for that era,
Speaker 1: that's all very progressive. That was not That's not anything
Speaker 1: anyone would have in the room been like, we really
Speaker 1: should think about diversifying. Like no one had that conversation.
Speaker 1: So kudos to them for that. Honestly, very diverse. I
Speaker 1: think pretty decent roles for women. Let's see, what should
Speaker 1: I give this movie that I like very much but
Speaker 1: I don't love because of these some of these some
Speaker 1: of these issues. I'm gonna get it a four. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give it a four out of ten. Dog breeds,
Speaker 1: sex acts like the Siberian husky.
Speaker 2: Oh what is that?
Speaker 1: That's why you have sex with a with a chubby
Speaker 1: person in the snow? How about you, Paul?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you. I really this happens every
Speaker 2: once in a while this year podcast. But like talking
Speaker 2: this through with you, I like it more than I
Speaker 2: did in the beginning. A lot of the connections that
Speaker 2: you're getting as soon as you got as soon as
Speaker 2: you said them, I was like, oh, right, that did happen.
Speaker 2: But they go by so quickly, and the movie really
Speaker 2: doesn't underline them, which is not a bad thing. I
Speaker 2: maybe it's just because it's also like it's a Christmas Carol,
Speaker 2: so maybe my full brain wasn't trained on trying to
Speaker 2: like draw the connections, like I know where this is going,
Speaker 2: so I wasn't working hard enough to get all of them.
Speaker 1: I don't know, honestly, I think that's part of the
Speaker 1: complacency too of the filmmaker. Yeah, is like, well, everyone
Speaker 1: knows where this is going, so it can be sloppy.
Speaker 2: But like everything you said, I think it's a for
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty eight very diverse cast. Alfred Woodard's character
Speaker 2: is a fully fleshed out character. I would have loved
Speaker 2: more of her, but like grading slightly on a curve here, Yeah,
Speaker 2: a good job there.
Speaker 1: And Carol Kane gets to be so eccentric and.
Speaker 2: Weird and weird, just so weird.
Speaker 1: Let her go off.
Speaker 2: It so fun. That doesn't age. Well, it's it's the
Speaker 2: guy in the office of the shotgun like at one
Speaker 2: point he has the shotgun in Bill Murray, like before
Speaker 2: he brings the down, he's like, you're hired back, And
Speaker 2: I'm like, do you think any of your coworkers might
Speaker 2: have something to say about hiring this guy back right now?
Speaker 2: Like that's not great? But then the terrorizing, the booth
Speaker 2: of the shotgun, it just whatever. However it was meant
Speaker 2: to play in nineteen eighty eight, it no longer plays
Speaker 2: now because I'm I'm sure it's not playing to me
Speaker 2: the way they intended it to. The gay joke, like
Speaker 2: we got so far, I was I was prepared for
Speaker 2: gay jokes in this movie, just because it just seems
Speaker 2: ripe for it. Like he's gonna be mean, he's gonna
Speaker 2: call people names the whole movie. It seems like that
Speaker 2: would happen. And then I was like, wow, we actually nope,
Speaker 2: last fucking five.
Speaker 1: Minutes we did that fumbled on the one yard line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Chinese food joke is not great. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's got a lot of eightiesism's in it. I'll agree
Speaker 2: with you. I'll give it a four. I was considering
Speaker 2: a five, but I don't think. I don't think it
Speaker 2: quite rates for five.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm honestly I think four is reaching. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: some of these some of these problems are bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I was trying to offer like credit for
Speaker 2: the fact of putting consciously putting outfree Wood in that
Speaker 2: role and Cane and Carol Caine, but it just doesn't
Speaker 2: quite rise. I think I think it was a better
Speaker 2: movie with these drawbacks and that then I could do
Speaker 2: a five. But it's also just really shaggy, even even
Speaker 2: like though I like it, more like it's it's very
Speaker 2: very shaggy. So I will give it a four, a
Speaker 2: four out of ten sex acts coated as dog breeds
Speaker 2: like the Golden Retriever.
Speaker 1: Oh dear, what's that that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a game of hide and seek,
Speaker 2: where like you say go and then you run, and
Speaker 2: the first person to return back to the bedroom, the
Speaker 2: boudoir or wherever you're staging your your sex act returns
Speaker 2: something that's actually gold gets to bottom.
Speaker 1: Nice. I kudos to you for not going where I
Speaker 1: thought that joke was going. Well done, Sirtain.
Speaker 2: I didn't bring up urine one, not even once. So
Speaker 2: do you want to offer a palate cleanser for scrooged?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, because, look, it is problematic. There are a million
Speaker 1: other versions of a Christmas Carol out there for whatever
Speaker 1: flavor you like, if you want one for kids, if
Speaker 1: you want like an old, tiny one. This at least
Speaker 1: I have to say, is like, it's interesting because it's
Speaker 1: a comedy and it's kind of a caustic comedy version.
Speaker 2: And it's a different it's probably the furthest from the
Speaker 2: original text that I've seen it.
Speaker 1: This is they just do one of these with Will
Speaker 1: Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. I feel like they just did.
Speaker 2: They did a musical. I don't think it's a Christmas Carol.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I think it's an original story. Got it?
Speaker 1: Think what could be wrong googling? Now, Paul, are you
Speaker 1: offering any palate clunchers? While I google the.
Speaker 2: Muppet Christmas Carol? That is my favorite Christmas Carol. I
Speaker 2: think it is.
Speaker 1: Perfect and better than the book. Apparently that he did
Speaker 1: not feel.
Speaker 2: The need to read better than the novelette.
Speaker 4: You know what?
Speaker 1: So I googled it and it is in fact. Spirited
Speaker 1: is the name of the movie with Ryan Reynolds and
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell, And it is based on a Christmas Oh
Speaker 1: it is. It's a remake of a Christmas Carol and
Speaker 1: it's a satire. Oh, it's a satire of the various adaptations. Since, okay,
Speaker 1: that's interesting.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. That sounds like it could either be great
Speaker 2: or just become a mishmash of stuff of stuff.
Speaker 1: I did not see it. I couldn't I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 2: All right, So that is the end of our show.
Speaker 2: Everyone listening. You can follow us on social media. We
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Speaker 1: Christmas, Paul give me. Does Paul's gift to you to
Speaker 1: give to him? That Aged Well is produced and edited
Speaker 1: by Paul Kola. We would like to thank Nicole, Sydney, Jackie, Meghan, Rebecca, Laurie,
Speaker 1: Karen Sojo, Another Megan, Sonny, Melissa, Amber, Miggey, Julia, Ariel, Ariela, Jessica, Justine, Marissa, Gina, Libby,
Speaker 1: Kenzie Morgan, another Nicole, and still more people of whose
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Speaker 2: it and we will arrange it for you. But enough
Speaker 2: of that. Today we are hearing from Oh oh no,
Speaker 2: it's Mary Fisher from She Devil.
Speaker 4: Hello, my name is Mary Fisher, but you can just
Speaker 4: call me Mary. I'm so pleased to offer thanks for
Speaker 4: my dearest darling friend Hannah from Scotland for listening to
Speaker 4: That Aged Well. I've actually written several best sellers set
Speaker 4: in the Scottish Highlands, Who Could Forget He Neaped Her
Speaker 4: Taddies or My luck Ness trilogy Bound by His Bagpipe,
Speaker 4: Under Killian's Kilt and the Highwayman's Heaving hagis So thank
Speaker 4: you Hannah for listening to Fat aged Well.
Speaker 1: With your hot, throbbing ears.
Speaker 4: May your days be filled with champagne and your nights
Speaker 4: with quivering erotic activities.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize she wrote for different countries.
Speaker 1: That is a big thing in the romance genre. It
Speaker 1: is Scotland set romance novels. For some reason, women are
Speaker 1: horny for Scottish men. I don't know when that happened.
Speaker 2: I think we learned about that in Sex and the City.
Speaker 2: If their tongues can do that to a little letter R, yes,
Speaker 2: imagine what they could do to me.
Speaker 1: Right, I am sweating after all?
Speaker 2: Right, Erica, any final thoughts on screw Ruge.
Speaker 4: Merry Christmas everyone, from the ghost of Christmas present and.
Speaker 2: A happy New Year from the ghost that Christmas passed.
Speaker 1: And then just the sound of death. That's the ghost
Speaker 1: of Christmas future. Merry Christmas everyone, put a little.
Speaker 3: Love in your heart, and the world and the world
Speaker 3: would be a bed a place, and the world and
Speaker 3: the world we'd be a bed a place for you,
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 2: And me and me. Just wait and see, wait and see.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, You're welcome. Everyone. Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's ar Records. They're calling a sinus