Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
1995 - Billy Madison; Mallrats
39 Plays2 years ago
Two seminal classics!
Recommended
Transcript
What is a Flash Drought?
00:00:20
Speaker
God, just reaching out and being like, stop reading the weather on your podcast, please. Well, people want to know, what is a flash drought? Well, apparently it has something to do with like the depth of soil moisture. Moisture.
00:00:38
Speaker
So we haven't seen decent amounts of rain since April, which is very unusual for Chicago in the springtime. Yeah. I used to work for a company that sold soil moisture readers to people or gauges, moisture gauge. And people would always call us and be like, how do I
00:00:59
Speaker
use this thing to gauge the moisture of my soil. Like what's the baseline? And we're like, Oh, the baseline is like whatever you want it to be. You just have to set it to that. And then that's what you are gauging, which is very like open-ended and not very satisfying answer. Yeah. Like you, like if your plant needs to have like a certain level of moisture all the time, then you set that as a baseline and anything below that means you need to water it. Exactly. Yeah.
Generalist vs Specialist Career Paths
00:01:28
Speaker
I used to work for a thermometer company, do you remember those days? Was that in San Diego? Yep, exactly. You are one of those people who have had, you're like me, you've had so many jobs. And when you try to explain to people, they just think,
00:01:49
Speaker
about how that's possible. Like when I'm like, oh yeah, I have experience in that. How? Well, I had that job. Oh, I have experience in that. It's the great thing about being a generalist. Yeah, exactly. I'm like a big fan of being a generalist. I am, I think that they are undervalued in our society. They are. And you're not supposed to be a generalist. You're supposed to pick something when you're 22 years old and you're supposed to do that for, you know,
00:02:17
Speaker
or at least our parents' generation was like, pick something when you're 23 and then do that for the next 40 years. And that's it. I feel like there's some crazy statistic about how many times people change their careers in their life. It's like 11 times or something. I'm very curious about it now.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah. My friend, my friend Joe's dad, I was over there for New Year's Eve. You know, there's a classic like, Oh, what do you do for, or I think I mentioned, which is my favorite thing to mention that I used to be a massage therapist and they're like, Oh, is that what you do now? I'm like, Oh no, I'm like, I'm in a, um, I'm like a field service engineer. And they're like, I like to tell those two things because people can't really connect the dots. And it seems very confusing. I'm like, well, I can lay it out for you. Yeah. But it's going to, it's going to take a while.
00:03:06
Speaker
The average person will switch careers three to seven times over their working lives with 30% of the workforce changing vocations or jobs every 12 months. Whoa.
Stories of Career Change
00:03:24
Speaker
My favorite career thing to tell is Treven's career story about how he was a very successful, very good bartender for almost 20 years and then went back to school to become an aerospace engineer with a minor in astrophysics. If that's not a pivot.
00:03:50
Speaker
No, it's awesome. Go ahead. I love these questions that people also ask on Google. What are the statistics? So I wrote statistics about career changes. That was my prompt. And then now it's saying, what do people also ask?
00:04:07
Speaker
What are the statistics on job switching? How many years does the average person change jobs? How many times will millennials change careers? And then lastly, is changing careers stressful? Changing careers is not stressful if you habitually do it every like two to three years. Right. And then then it's just a thing. Yeah. And then at that point, like keeping a career is stressful at that point.
00:04:36
Speaker
Oh my God, I know staying interested. Yeah, that's impossible. I mean, hi, welcome to an entire generation with severe ADHD.
Balancing Work and Leisure
00:04:46
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, the only reason I'm like interested in staying with my current job is like for the first time I paid a living wage. So that's like the only reason I would stick with this job. Yep. That's pretty cool.
00:04:57
Speaker
Also like for three weeks in a row for no reason, I just haven't had any work. And so I'm just been at home going surfing, going through runs. But then like in like a month, you're going to be like at a job site for like 23 days, like in Kansas or something.
00:05:18
Speaker
I always go home on the weekends, but yeah, I mean, I spoke to the director of my department and he was like, well, you shouldn't feel bad about all this time off because we don't feel bad about sticking you out in the field for like 18 weeks at a time. So just go for it. I was telling my manager, I was like, it's kind of like.
00:05:35
Speaker
You know, if you don't win the lottery, like the huge lottery, but when like a lesser lottery and you're just chilling and you're just getting like a getting like paid like a thousand bucks every week. It's like, it's like that's tuition. That's what it feels like. Yep. Yep. Yep. But it, but it's true that I will have to go back to work and it's going to suck. And then I'll be ready to get a new career. Moral of the story, everybody, work sucks.
00:06:04
Speaker
Works like she's keep moving on. Yeah. I was going to say, speaking of moving on, should we do this? Should we do this movie thing? Let's fucking do this
Exploring 1995 Films
00:06:14
Speaker
shit.
00:06:14
Speaker
Uh, for anybody who isn't already aware, which is everyone, we have tried to record this episode. This is now, I would say time 2.5 because we had an immediate failure. Thanks to my, um, weird webcam set up. So, um, this would be 3.5 actually. Cause the last time we met there was like two, we tried twice and then we tried, this is our third time. Well, and then it crashed, but we're here.
00:06:43
Speaker
We're here, we're here, we're out here. Here we are. And we, what are we talking about today?
00:06:49
Speaker
Well, this is a podcast called We're Spanning Time. And in this podcast, we're two old friends who've known each other for a million years. And we like to bullshit about books and movies and stuff. But we are exploring films of a particular year. And this season's year is 1995. My name is Bud Catino. Your name is Beth Martini. It is indeed. I just did it for you this time. Yeah, you did. Let's go. That's OK. Cool. Today's episode is Billy Madison and Mallrats.
00:07:20
Speaker
Real quick, I've been wanting to do this, but we've, we've kind of been blowing past it. Are you reading or watching or listening to anything fun or making anything cool? Just like, let's do this for like a couple of minutes. Yeah, absolutely. So it is fun to talk about, especially now that it's summer break, right? Cause it's not just like the mundane, boring stuff of academia, even though my academia is pretty cool, it still can get a little tedious. I don't think neither of us have mundane lives.
00:07:50
Speaker
You're, you're a late thirties academic person going through like a design career. And I'm, uh, you could describe me as a Philip K Dick style, sci-fi assassin maintenance guy.
00:08:06
Speaker
Uh-huh, exactly. Precisely. So I actually feel like I have a bajillion things going on right now. I got an internship, which is super awesome. I'm going to be working with the Polish Museum of America.
00:08:22
Speaker
doing archival work for their poster collection. That is something that we could actually probably devote an entire episode to is talking about Polish movie posters because they are epic. They're so rad. And like maybe we can do like a like maybe that would be like a fun YouTube episode is to like go through Polish movie posters and talk about them.
Creative Projects and Hobbies
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So that's really exciting. I am just trying to get back into the habit of reading for leisure. So I decided to start rereading The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, which is absolutely fantastic. I think I talked about it in a different episode. So I'm really excited to be getting back into that.
00:09:08
Speaker
Um, I am also, I, I have a love of Halloween that Trevin does not share. And every year I'm like, I'm going to build us like the coolest costumes and then you're going to dress up with me and then you're going to love Halloween. And you don't have to do anything. I will do all the shit. And that's literally the arrangement is like, he's like, okay, well, if I don't have to do anything, I'll do it. So, but this year,
00:09:34
Speaker
This year, I am actually doing it. And I'm building us custom Mandalorian armor out of EPS foam. So I started my first prototype helmet this week. And I'm going to work on that after we're done recording. So I'm working out some of the kinks and how the foam works and all that stuff. And it's really exciting.
00:10:04
Speaker
Are you shaping this stuff with like a hot wire like that? No, so EBS foam is like...
00:10:14
Speaker
kind of the same stuff as yoga mats. It's like a little bit stiffer than yoga mat material. Oh, I know. I know from EPS that you can make surfboards out of it. Oh, really? That's crazy. So I'm actually using like I'm only I'm using six mils. So it's already pretty flexy, but then I'm I'm pushing it into shape using heat gun.
00:10:34
Speaker
So heat it up, get it into the shape, and then I'm using contact cement to get it to actually be a whole unit. And armor is just another type of outerwear. So there's the kind of classic clothing techniques involved with it. You have to understand.
00:10:59
Speaker
darts and curves and forms and stuff like that. So that's been pretty fun. I also do a lot of casual Pinteresting just for mood boards and design ideas and stuff. And one day over the winter, I came across this idea of a
00:11:19
Speaker
no waste jacket. So it's like you take one big square and then you cut it strategically. And so it's strategically and you make this kind of cool sort of shapeless, it's called a bog coat, a bog jacket. So when we went to Wisconsin this last weekend, I went to the thrift store and found a bunch of really cool old vintage blankets.
Adventures and Sports
00:11:43
Speaker
So I'm going to make some coats out of these old vintage blankets.
00:11:48
Speaker
And then I'm going to Mexico on Sunday. So like life went from being really dull and boring for me to actually being pretty cool and fun right now.
00:11:59
Speaker
That's super exciting. Yeah. How about you? Yes. Like I said before, I think surf is up this week here in New York City. So I surfed a couple times. The first time was on Monday. I just woke up and checked the surf report and it looked really good. And I went and it was fucking fantastic. Awesome. It was perfect. Like three, four foot peeling lefts. And I just paddle out there and surf for like.
00:12:22
Speaker
I think last time I was in San Diego, I served at one of those. It wasn't even very good. So it's been like a few months. And, uh, yeah, it was fantastic. It was great. Just like, I, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a long border more or less. And I just, it was the sort of ways where you could just like pop up, get into trim, which is like the proper balance on your surfboard or just like stand like.
00:12:41
Speaker
contrapposto pose like a statue and just fucking like stand there and fucking like cruise down the line. Yeah, that was great. It was really great. And yeah, the surfers in New York City seem to be nice right there at Rockaway. People are nice. And I don't know. I was so excited. I'm just like middle age guy surfing. And like I saw dolphins, dolphins with dolphins was very exciting.
00:13:02
Speaker
That's so tight. Yeah, dolphins was fucking sick. Yeah, that was really, really good. And then the next day I came back, and it wasn't that good. But I have a newfound thing, which is this thing called skateboarding. Yeah. That I'm learning how to do. I decided recently. Actually, I was in San Diego, and I just saw a skateboard deck at the thrift store, and I said, I'm going to do this. I've always wanted to, and I've always regretted not learning how to skateboard. And I'm sworn enough to just wear all the pads. Yeah.
00:13:30
Speaker
And I eat shit every time. Amazing. But I'm good at falling from surfing and from rock climbing that I do. So yeah, did a bunch of skateboarding. I am not very good. But you don't have to be like doesn't matter. You don't have to be good at it if it's fun.
00:13:47
Speaker
That's right. That's right. And I'll get I'll get good at it. I can I can tell that like once I unlock like a handful of tricks, like it'll just pick up exponentially. Oh, for sure. And the thing is, is your surfing
Book Discussions and Critiques
00:14:00
Speaker
and rock climbing experience just like lends you to it already, because like you already understand your your center of gravity, you understand like moving
00:14:11
Speaker
on something rather than moving through your own propulsion. Walking is way different than standing on a moving object and going forward. That's the part my body is like, wait, what?
00:14:27
Speaker
like it does not compute like at all my body is like no but you're an object in an object at rest stays at rest so my body tries to stay in the position it was in when you start and then the board just keeps going from underneath me
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't work. It's like my it's like when I try to do, you know, I don't know, geometry, the same thing happens. Like I cannot play pool very well at all because my brain just doesn't.
00:15:00
Speaker
It like has some sort of, I think it's probably a symptom of some sort of undiagnosed dyslexia or something in that same sort of processing center. But like angles, translating angles is something that is so hard. So like the fact that you surf, which is really cool, but the fact that you're just like, fuck it. I'm in my early 40s and you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to fucking learn how to skateboard like that rules. That's so cool. Yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for saying that. You're welcome. I'm very excited about it. I'm super excited and it's annoying because now I just like watch board building tutorials online and also just watching skateboarding teenagers online and also in person. So I'm a little bit of a lurker, but I'm just, I'm sorry for you kids out there that I'm staring at, but I'm just trying to figure out how to do it. I love a skateboarding video. I'm not going to lie. That's that San Diego roots coming through hot.
00:15:51
Speaker
It truly is, it truly is. In other news, I picked up this book called Mordu. Oh, I'll show you the thing. Oh, I like that cover a lot. Everybody is showing a cool cover right now. Yeah, by Alex Phoebe, Mordu. Amazing. The first blurb, the first sentence in the blurb on the back says, God is dead. His corpse is hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordu. And it's like,
00:16:17
Speaker
So it's like Nietzschean, but fantasy sci-fi vibes. Just much more entertaining and well-written than Nietzsche, I would say. Yeah. No, it's really fucking fun. It's like a grimy, creepy, wet, dirty underworld. And there's all these fucking very richly concocted characters. And I was trying to tell Rachel about it, but Rachel's not a reader, so she just gets really bored looking. But I was saying, like,
00:16:43
Speaker
Even though the characters are outlandish and unrealistic, their interactions are very real. I just fucking love a sci-fi or fantasy book where you can tell that unlike a lot of sci-fi writers and fantasy writers, you can tell that this author has had interactions with real human beings before.
00:17:10
Speaker
So I really appreciate that as opposed to I just read some desperate, some desperate glory by Emily Tesh, which was billed as a queer sci fi space opera. Mm hmm. And.
00:17:28
Speaker
It was interesting, but there was a literal deus ex machina, like an actual God, like AI God thing that transported the characters at, spoiler alert, transports the characters out of danger at the end. And it's like a literal God-like AI. That's a computer thing. And I was like, I can't tell if she's doing this for fun.
00:17:51
Speaker
or not. It's a very serious book, but there's a lot of wacky time jumping hijinks. It's too wacky. It's very wacky in the way that it's created. It's like a little too Doctor Who. Yeah, but it's not funny. It takes itself very seriously. That's Some Desperate Glory by Emily Chech. Those are the two books I have read recently. Sorry, Emily. Bud gives you a meh.
00:18:16
Speaker
She wrote like a couple of novellas previously that were quite good. Yeah. I can't think of the ones that come to mind, but also with like queer characters. Yeah. I don't know.
Challenges in Creative Writing
00:18:29
Speaker
I have a really good, I have a very close friend who got into, who just graduated actually from Notre Dame's Masters of Creative Writing program, which is like a feat in and of itself. And he won like a really crazy fellowship that Notre Dame gives out that basically like funds
00:18:54
Speaker
the next year of his writing. And he's like going to Ireland in three days to like go do like a writer's fellowship situation moment. But he's like, he is a gay writer who writes very like, it's like, like, what is it when it's like semi, semi autobiographical fiction?
00:19:19
Speaker
So there's a lot of his own experience in it. And his sort of specialty, the classes that he taught at Notre Dame were all about creative nonfiction.
00:19:35
Speaker
really diving into what where the line between reality and fiction starts to blur. And he you know he submitted just like literally like a treatment of his novella or novel that he's working on and like won this crazy award and I
00:19:57
Speaker
I swear to God, Lance, when this comes out, you'd better be fucking writing your book or I'm going to find you and yell at you. He's just so, so talented, but he struggles. We all struggle with this. Like, it's just like when you're creative and you're excited about creative things.
00:20:15
Speaker
you often wrap your success up in your creativity and it becomes less about being creative and more about producing. And so like, how does that narrative influence the way that we make things? And so something I'm trying to practice right now is not doing things well, but doing them anyway, right? Oh yeah. Just to keep that creativity flowing and like really truly be creative rather than just trying to be productive, right?
00:20:45
Speaker
So that's that's amazing. Well, it sounds like we've got some really cool shit going on right now. I love it. Wait, I've got another plug. Oh, I recently saw the author Samantha Irby. OK. In person. And she has written such books as.
00:21:02
Speaker
meaty, we are never meaty in her life. Wow. No, thank you. She just sort of writes also like sort of like queer memoirish funny shit. I actually have never read anything she's ever written, but my wife Rachel is a fan of her stuff. And then we saw her. Gosh, I can't remember the theater, but at a place in in New York and.
00:21:22
Speaker
She had multiple people reading parts from her new book, which is called Quietly Hostile. And it was famous people were reading it, but off the top of my head, I can't remember who it was. We can put links in the show notes for anybody who's actually curious about this stuff with our really shitty descriptions of it. Oh, man, I did this really cool thing that I can't really remember. But if I look it up, I could probably figure it out.
00:21:49
Speaker
OK, one of them was a logic laser. So kind of like Gia Tolentino is another one. And then another lady who is like, gosh, I should just call on Rachel to say who it was. But she another a third lady who has a podcast that she's had for like 10 years. And so she's probably a famous person that I should know. Amazing. But yeah, it was it was great. That rules.
00:22:13
Speaker
I think we got our plugs out of the way. Oh, yeah. Oh, OK. I have one other thing that I know you're going to be like, you're going to feel the pain the same as me. So and this is probably true for most of our sci-fi fantasy reading friends out there in the world. But
00:22:32
Speaker
You know, that thing where you fall in love with a series that's written by an author and then the author's first few books of the series get fucking wildly popular, which creates a level of overwhelming like grotesque pressure that prevents them from ever writing the final book or books of the series. Hmm.
00:22:55
Speaker
We've never done that before. But, you know, one of my favorites, possibly my favorite fantasy book that's been written in the last, Jesus Christ, 12 years now, not just 10 anymore, Name of the Wind, written by Patrick Rothfuss.
00:23:14
Speaker
I was going to say, is this Lynch? Is this Raphos? Who is this Raphos? Yep, yep. So much to the chagrin of many readers on Twitter, I'm not so sad about it. He's releasing a novella that is about one of the main characters, Bast, and he did the same thing in between Name of the Wind and what's the middle one?
00:23:40
Speaker
Oh, fuck me. I can never remember the names of all the books. It's called...
00:23:50
Speaker
Uh, the wise man sphere. So in between name of the wind and the wise man sphere, he released a little novella about one of the like sort of sub characters. And that was called, um, the, I keep wanting to call it the girl who lives in the attic slash sewer or wherever she lives. That was really fun. It was so good. Um, okay.
00:24:13
Speaker
The, you know, it's just like and so he's releasing one call. The title, I don't think has been released yet. So the slow regard of silent things. There it is. Yes. The prior the prior one. Right. Yes. And so the next one is called The Narrow Road Between Desires, and it's about Bast.
00:24:32
Speaker
who is Kvothe's fae familiar friend person. And we don't really know a lot about Bast. And there have been rumors that once the Kingkiller Chronicles are finished, the story is going to continue eventually around Bast, right? So this might be that first step. But people are fucking furious because only what everyone wants is the doors of stone.
00:25:01
Speaker
That is all that people want. They want to know what King got killed. They want to know what happens with Kvothe. They want to know why he lives in a silence of three parts and why he knows he's waiting to die. Everybody wants to know.
00:25:18
Speaker
So that's like some hot that just happened. He just announced this. He did a live stream about it on Twitch. He, you know, posted about it on his blog and put it on Twitter and all this stuff. And people are just the worst. He even is like, you know what, man, like.
00:25:37
Speaker
I had out something that I'm really excited about and then all you guys can talk about is how like you're want this other thing that I am like, I have been very vocal about struggling with like none of you like no one's taking into account that like I had to put my dad in hospice. Nobody's taking into account that I as like a 40 year old father of two was diagnosed with ADHD and crippling anxiety and now I'm learning how to live with that.
00:26:03
Speaker
I just really hope that he finishes the fucking book. I don't care what he does in between. I mean, you can release 17 novellas, 16 comic books, play Dungeons and Dragons on the internet. I just hope before, you know, before I'm an old, I get to read that book.
00:26:28
Speaker
That's that's all. All right. Enough of our science fiction fantasy part of the podcast. OK, we got we got 40 minutes to do Billy Madison and more. I don't think it's going to take that long. All right. There's a lot to say. I mean, I literally wrote like six pages of handwritten notes for both of these movies. But we can we can we can do one of these roundtables where we just run through our notes and read read our notes.
00:26:57
Speaker
There's a lot of okay, there's a lot of fucking fun quotes, but you want to do Billy Madison first. Sure. Okay. I'm going to be perfectly honest. I definitely tuned out. I did the thing where I was like trying to watch both of these movies and then found myself repeatedly just on my phone.
00:27:15
Speaker
So this is going to be a lot of like you're going to say something. I'm going to react to it. I don't know if I have like a lot of original material to contribute. Just complete honesty. There are a few little things, especially about, you know, mall rats that I thought were hilarious. But let's go.
00:27:33
Speaker
Let's start with this quote from Christina Lane from her book, Feminist Hollywood, from Born in Flames to Point Break, that as a person who is knowledgeable towards feminist politics, Tamara Davis, who's the director of Billy Madison, wanted to empower young women to feel good about their sexuality. Lane also mentioned that Davis used her platform to voice feminist ideas and empower girls. That's a quote about the director of Billy Madison. Pretty good, right? That's pretty good.
00:28:03
Speaker
I think that may be the case. So Tamara Davis, she's done her earlier movie is gun crazy. She did Half Baked. She did CB4. She did hella videos for like NWA, Sonic Youth, ton of TV. We see her working with Jason Lee, who is a mall rat. And my name is Earl. And she was married to Mike D of the Beastie Boys. So that's pretty cool. Fucking person. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
00:28:28
Speaker
I think that she didn't, she wanted to do it, but then they had another director and then that wasn't really working out. So they tagged her in. Um, this, this movie was written by Tim Hurley and Adam Sandler. Hurley and Sandler lived together in college at NYU. Um, and he's like a fucking finance lawyer, I want to say.
00:28:49
Speaker
Kind of a, yeah, like in a way he's like the Eric character. He's like, seems like a business douche. But he wrote, he was like Sandler's writing partner throughout like Sandler's rise of becoming a standup and also all throughout SNL. So he's kind of got like writing credits with SNL and then he helped write this one and then lots of like the early, you know, happy Madison movies. I kind of get the impression that Adam Sandler definitely needs like,
00:29:17
Speaker
some level of, like, grounded real world.
00:29:24
Speaker
I think that's right. I mean, so this movie, we should have done a trifecta with this Tommy boy and mall rats, but who's got time? Um, cause cause Chris Farley and Sandler are both fired from SNL in 1994. And partly it's because like the show ratings were just in the shitter. And I think that sort of cast at that time was just like,
00:29:47
Speaker
They were sort of sitting on their laurels. Yeah. And didn't really give a fuck, it seems. And I think Sandler extra didn't give a fuck and all his character sounded the same. And they're just like and he would just like fuck around and drink at work. And like, I don't know, they were just like sick of him. So Billy Madison and Tommy Boy were the movies that these guys both jumped into after them leaving SNL for some interesting background.
00:30:16
Speaker
prank calls, drinking, kind of doing the same stick for every character, mooning people, just like fucking shenanigans. Right. Like literal teenagers, even though they were not exactly just being kind of toxic. Sandler wanted Bob Odenkirk and they're like, no, and then he really wanted none other than a good old Philip Seymour Hoffman for the villain character. I.
00:30:42
Speaker
I saw that note and then I was like trying to imagine it and I just like literally cannot.
00:30:48
Speaker
I just want it so bad, but I think that the guy who did Eric did a great job because he's such a classic SNL movie villain archetype where he's tiny and torpy and horny and just annoying. I'm thinking David Spade and PCU sort of characters. I was just going to ask, what is the one where David Spade is that same character? Yeah.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like, it's, it would be, I feel like, like, Philip Seymour Hoffman has too much gravitas to be in this movie. Like, Bob Odenkirk could have been really funny, for sure, you know, what he was doing Mr. Show, I think, around the same time.
00:31:39
Speaker
Has Mr. Show been around for that long, like 25 years? I'm pretty sure Mr. Show was the 90s. Let me look. Interesting. I don't know, Mr. Show. Yeah, 1995. David Cross and Bob Odenkirk were doing Mr. Show from 95 to 98. He was obviously doing standup. He was obviously doing goofy ass shit.
00:32:03
Speaker
you know, Brian Posein was in that family, Paul if Tompkins was in that same family, John Ennis. And these are all dudes that like have like a loose connection to that SNL world. I feel like, you know, Brian Posein was in
00:32:23
Speaker
What is that show? Got Mail? No, that's a movie. Where he's like the mailroom dude at the magazine that David Spade is running. Do you remember this show?
00:32:34
Speaker
No, that was a show. Yes. So it was a TV show and it was on like, just shoot me. So David Spade was like a like a photographer for a fashion magazine. And Brian Posein was the like male guy on that show. In fact, actually fun, not related to either of these movies. But I met David Posein at Comic Con.
00:33:00
Speaker
What? Yeah, sorry. Brian Posein at Comic Con. And I was like, and this was like in the 90s. And I was like, you look like that guy from that show. And he's like, that's because I am that guy from that show. And he was actually like pushing like a silver cart through the San Diego Comic Con floor. And I was like, wow. And then he was like, you look like Kirsten Dunst. And I was like, yeah, I know everybody tells me that. And he's like, you should go upstairs to one of the empty conference rooms with a bunch of her pictures and sign fake autographs. And
00:33:30
Speaker
get the money and run. He's like, you could definitely, I had really, really red hair and this was like very much height of like Superman moment. And so like, he's like, you could absolutely pull it off because they never look like they do in the movies in real life.
00:33:46
Speaker
I was like, I don't think I could do that. And he's like, you're lost. And then he just walks away. It's like it was like too weird of a moment. And I was like, what the fuck just happened? And I think I was like 16 at the time or something. Like, yeah, just so weird. Anyway, so, yeah, I mean, definitely not David Seymour Hoffman. Couldn't imagine it. Can I can't imagine it with Bob Odenkirk for sure. Yeah. But that's wild.
00:34:14
Speaker
So, OK, Billy Madison, it's the stupidest plot in the world. It's literally it's like this. I would call him a codependent rich man, kind of like lets his adult son just fuck around and live in a tent in the backyard of their mansion and drink all the time with his friend, one of whom is like Norma Donald in his first feature length film role.
00:34:40
Speaker
And he's like, I'm going to hand over the the hotel company. Yeah, he's like is like the he's like a mogul of like the of like the hotel industry. He's like he's like Paris Hilton. He's like the Hilton dad. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yes. He's pretty much like Paris Hilton. Yeah. Billy Madison. Yeah. And and and for some reason, Billy is like, no, I he really wants
00:35:07
Speaker
to run the company for some reason. Like he just really he doesn't. OK, so like so he his dad's like, I'm going to like I'm going to retire. I'm going to give over control of the company to this douchebag, this like absolute douche canoe and.
00:35:28
Speaker
That dude is like I'm gonna cut you out Billy Madison like I'm gonna fucking make you be an adult and you're not gonna be able to like suck off the tea of Like your father's empire anymore or whatever and Billy Madison's like I can't like be a real person like that's impossible and so then he like is like I'm I'm gonna and then he goes to his dad and is like dad and
00:35:53
Speaker
let me be in charge of the company. So I was like, you didn't even finish fucking high school. My dude, you didn't even like, you never finished school. He's like, all right, here's the deal. And this is the entire plot of the story right here. I'm going to go back to school. I'm going to redo grades K through 12 in 24 weeks.
00:36:16
Speaker
And I'm going to prove to you that I have the dedication to run the company. First of all, I'm pretty sure you have to have more than a fucking 12th grade education to be the CEO of a fucking like multimillion dollar hotel dynasty. Just just saying. But well, my thought was that any publicly run company like the board of directors would never let this fly. Like, like where?
00:36:44
Speaker
Where on earth is this? How on earth is this possible? I mean, it's possible because the 90s in movies. I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, so that's the entire that's the entire plot of the film right there. Yeah. So he just goes through each grade and then he he's doing great until like the fifth grade or something when like kids learn how to bully.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And he meets Ron Kavan, who is like his third grade teacher. Yeah. Mm hmm. And she's really hot. And that's where the movie gets real male gazey in a way that I don't appreciate, which is why I read just for juxtapositions purposes that quote about the director being such a strong feminist. Right. And so it's like it's like that might be true. But how did this like how does how does that
00:37:34
Speaker
thesis of a career went its way into this movie. I don't see it. I mean, there's there's some interesting aspects to that. There's a point. I don't know. It's so weird. Like I have a note that says, like, if you find anything super deep in this movie, there's deep aspects to it. But I think they're just there on accident. There is an interesting part where
00:38:02
Speaker
Um, like Billy's friend who is a child is like, go, or like he's hanging out with some kids in the back of the bus and he's like, they're like, go touch the teacher's boobs. And he's like, uh, he literally says, uh, my dude, that's assault. And you're like, Oh, that's pretty good. And he's like, wait, but do you dare me though? And then he goes and like sexually assaults the teacher. And, and, but it's just like, ha ha ha. And she's like, I dare you like joking around with him. And it's like the fact they get together, they're like a couple.
00:38:31
Speaker
Just the fact that everyone wants to fuck Billy Madison for some reason, which I get it. That's kind of a funny. It's a ridiculous trope. Right. Something stuck out to me that I never realized when I was younger, which is like the.
00:38:46
Speaker
I'm going to call her the maid, but she's she's constructed to be the maid, but she's like, you know, the maid. Yeah. She's like an older, older black woman. Yes. And she's always flirting with Billy Madison. And she's always like, oh, like that boy is a fine piece of ass. And like he acts all awkward. And it kind of occurred to me like, Beth, do you think that Billy Madison fucked the maid at some point, maybe when he was blacked out? Probably.
00:39:11
Speaker
Cause like she's, she's speaking like knowledgeably. And she's always like, and like, like every, yes, I absolutely think that that's true. Also, you know, sometimes narcissistic man babies can be good in bed. And that is effectively what Billy Madison is at the beginning of the film is a narcissistic man, baby.
00:39:40
Speaker
Are you hypothesizing that Billy Madison's good in bed right now? Well, if everybody wants to fuck him, like there has to be a reason. Everyone wants to fuck him, which is sort of like. That's another interesting thing that I thought of is like.
00:39:57
Speaker
I kind of wonder if there's there's some like gay panic in this movie, which I don't like. Oh, always. There are always. I mean, it's that's just it's a product of its time. Yeah. And those are that was real low hanging fruit for stupid shitty comedies like male driven comedies of the time. Also like the like, you know, the just general intelligence aspects of it, you know, like
00:40:23
Speaker
The R word is used at least one time, if not more times by littler kids. Like, you know, just like and it's it's it is it's just like, I don't know that that's the part of this that like I'm just like, God, whatever. This is so fucking dumb. Yeah, I will say, though, that
00:40:46
Speaker
Everyone wants to fuck Billy and there's some gay panic and stuff like that, but he is at his most adult and responsible when inappropriate people are trying to have sex with him. There's that Valentine scene where it's all these little girls and they're so Twitter painted over Billy Madison.
00:41:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And like times like that. And then like the time when the principal also gives him it's a principal. It's a principal. Yeah. The principal also gives him a Valentine card that says like, I'm horny for you. And and he's always like kind of hugging him and hitting on him. And like those moments is when Billy Madison is at his best as a character at his most like
00:41:36
Speaker
believable or not believable, but most like relatable because he's he's it's the best acting that Sandler does in the whole movie, in my opinion. I think that also he's the most compassionate. He's the most compassionate as a character. I would say that those moments also the moments where he realizes that he was a bully because now he's getting bullied.
00:42:02
Speaker
Like that's like the character, that's like some of the character growth that he gets to have, you know, is like realizing that like, oh, actions have consequences. The things that we say change the way that people grow up, you know, like, and it can make people more compassionate or less compassionate, you know, like people who are ruthlessly bullied often become bullies themselves, you know,
00:42:31
Speaker
And, but of course, like we get to look back at this with like the, the like compassion of grown ass adults in 2023 and put our values onto it. So it's like, it's, you know, you have to kind of like look at it. Like, was that the intention? Was that the commentary that was being made? I don't necessarily know. You know, like, are we able to get that read off of it because we're looking at it through this lens?
00:43:01
Speaker
Right. Yeah, that's what I'm saying is like any kind of deep shit that we're finding, like I think is I mean, whatever. I had like two smart people writing it and and as a legit director directing it. So who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think like standout performances were Steve Buscemi. Great. Loved it.
00:43:22
Speaker
Uh, just so vulnerable. Like he didn't have much to do, but he just, he was so good. Just his, the nuances of getting that phone call from Billy Madison and Billy Madison apologizing for bullying him. And he's just like all alone and he's like very thoughtful and considerate. And then he puts lipstick on, which is also just like, okay, whatever.
00:43:40
Speaker
That's that's annoying. It's funny. It was funny at the time, but kind of annoying now to look back at it. But and then in the end, when he shoots Eric at the end of the movie and he just waves in this like really vulnerable, silly way. Yeah. It's a definite stand out performance there. Chris Farley also like fantastic. Chris Farley drank six shots of espresso so he can act like a total freak on the bus. I mean, I don't know if Chris Farley needed that.
00:44:09
Speaker
He that's what he did. He just fucking went for it. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, no, I I mean, it's entertaining. It was, you know, it was like very much of his era. It did. It looks like it did a reasonable profit. It wasn't like a smash out hit or anything.
00:44:36
Speaker
But like, I mean, it's it's set them up for Happy Gilmore. Yeah, which is like ridiculous, like that. But I kind of have this memory that like all of these, all these like.
00:44:52
Speaker
Adam Sandler quote moments came from Billy Madison, but I'm now realizing that the, that a lot of them came from happy Gilmore and from like, he's like still had an unrelenting influence on pop culture, like all of his dumb Adam Sandler movies. Absolutely.
00:45:16
Speaker
Should we talk about really quickly the Jeopardy style test that they had to do to prove that Adam Sandler was like prepared to take over like he had succeeded or whatever? It's like a academic decathlon of sorts. Right. Did you ever do one of those?
00:45:42
Speaker
No, I didn't do one of those. Are you insane? I actually did when I was in middle school. I did. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So some of the on the jeopardy, some of the topics are my spouse is sleeping around. Another one is I married common street trash and my wife, the tramp. Wow. Yeah. Real, real feminist there. Some real feminist things there. Yeah. I think that the thing that is like
00:46:12
Speaker
very hilarious to me, like truly hilarious is that the question that causes Eric to lose is about business ethics. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just supposed to be like a very on the nose joke. Right. Exactly. And it's just like so like it's so like, hey, you're you're you're a bad guy, you know, like, I don't know. I just think it's so funny. And then
00:46:40
Speaker
I think it's kind of cute that Billy decides through all of this that learning is important and that he actually maybe wants to even become a teacher. He sees the value in it and it's cool, but I don't know.
00:46:58
Speaker
Uh, you know, with this one, I'm all rats, uh, going into them, you're like, Oh, this is so fucking stupid. Like what? Right. But they do pull you in. Yep. And by the end of it, you do your, you find yourself immersed in the fucking world. And yeah, it's, it's worth a watch. You want to do the ratings? Let's do the ratings. I said 300.
00:47:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'll, I would say like 289. It's enjoyable. I remember it being much more enjoyable, which I think influenced my ability to enjoy it as an adult. Um, veracity, like fucking 11, man. Like there's literally on what planet? On what fucking planet?
00:47:46
Speaker
I wrote 42, so yeah, 11 is good. Immersiveness, like I said, I, and maybe this is because I had seen it a bunch when I was younger. I was like literally like on my phone through both of them. So like 99. Like I, yeah, like I just was like, it just didn't, they, I thought for sure that I was going to be like, oh, these are so funny and dumb. Nah, it just didn't, I don't know. It just didn't, it didn't sink in for whatever reason. I mean,
00:48:14
Speaker
I have also had kind of a stressful week, so perhaps that has something to do with it. I had to do a lot of like going out of the house and being on my A game, like 17 doctor's appointments, fucking job interviews, shit like that. So like maybe I was just like already in kind of like a not totally present state of mind anyway. But yeah, when I watched it again.
00:48:37
Speaker
I agree with your revival theater commentary, and I agree that it would have to be some kind of like fest moment, like the Q&A, other films, you know, something like what we're doing where we're like, not talking necessarily about the movie, but we're like talking about the role that it played in pop culture or something like this, like, yeah.
00:49:01
Speaker
What what score? A score. I don't know. Do we even need to have a score or is that just like a score for this? I feel like this is like the score is the weight, the like the conditions. OK. Yeah. Copy. Cool. So, yeah, I mean, it would have to be like a Q&A with like, yeah, I don't know, Tamara Davis or like fucking Sandler or, you know, someone like that. But totally. OK, grand total of three ninety nine for Beth.
00:49:29
Speaker
I don't think, I mean, mine, we, we differed quite vastly on certain things. The immersiveness very much so. Like you were like, we're like, yeah, this is like fun and funny. And I was just like, I kind of felt like slog-ish, but like, again, you know, I might not be able to give it a completely unbiased
00:49:52
Speaker
divorced from whatever else was going on in my whole brain at the time. So yeah, you were, you were having a week grain of salt. I will take it. Yeah. So yours was like 400 or something to, yeah, literally like 399. Yeah. That's what it was. Yeah.
00:50:10
Speaker
I mean, it was eight 22. So, okay. Rare that we would, we would differ so much, but yeah, I think we just hadn't been having different weeks, but yeah. Um, I watched this in Milwaukee, I think my hotel room, Milwaukee. I was going to come up and hang out with you. And then that just didn't materialize cause my week went insane. It like went upside down so fast. In other news, there's this movie it's called mall rats. Indeed it is.
00:50:35
Speaker
Directed by Kevin Smith, written by Kevin Smith also. Also, Kevin Smith is in it. Kevin Smith is also in it. It's pretty good. Yeah. So I did some good acting in between Clerks and Chasing Amy. Dogma follows after Chasing Amy. So there again, this is like just right in that strong section for a lot of these guys that we're talking about for Kevin Smith.
00:50:57
Speaker
starring Shannon Doherty, Jeremy London, Jason Lee, Claire Forlani, Ben Affleck, a young hunky Ben Affleck, Priscilla Barnes, Michael Rooker. Michael Rooker's always fun. Yes, yes, yes. I know that we've been looking at Guardians of the Galaxy, where he plays an excellent part in recently, you and I? Yes.
00:51:18
Speaker
Um, uh, I don't know if you saw this stupid note, but do you remember Matt Elman? He was like our buddy from, he was around back then. You probably had interactions with him. Yeah. Yeah. This one time Matt Elman met JC Muse in rehab, apparently. So fucking fun, funny. And then like, I just was thinking about that. And I just was like, Jason Muse is amazing. And did you ever see Zach and Mary make a porno? I did not.
00:51:45
Speaker
Oh, my God, I just have to feel like I need to like read the quote. Yeah, it didn't really exist. And like it's with. Isn't it Seth Rogen and what is her name? It's not Chelsea Handler. I fucking wish I would love to see them do a movie together. It's a.
00:52:10
Speaker
Elizabeth something or other. Oh, thanks. It's like early Elizabeth Banks. And I think that it didn't do well because it had the word porno in it and it doesn't exist. And that's a real shame because it's pretty fucking fun.
00:52:27
Speaker
I feel like I've seen almost all of it, though. I might have actually seen it all the way through at one point. It's like they live in like a shitty, snowy ass, like North Dakota, Montana ass town or like Wisconsin, like some upper Midwest, cold, dark place. And Elizabeth Banks is fucking broke and
00:52:51
Speaker
And they live together. They're buddies from high school. It's like Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks are friends from high school. And he's secretly in love with her and she dates shitty dudes, right? My favorite scene is at the end when it's like I think they kind of figured out like Seth and Elizabeth figure out that they're in love with each other. Right. And then they don't see each other for a long time. And then he comes over to like be like, we got to work it out. And she's living with Jason Muse, who is like one of the porn models that they had hired to make their porn. Yes.
00:53:20
Speaker
Also, I worked for porn briefly. I worked at here we go again. I've had real fucking jobs, but I worked for a gay porn company when I first moved to San Francisco. I knew that. Yes. And porno is not the preferred nomenclature. People in the industry prefer the word porn or pornography, but not porno. Interesting. But it's kind of like when people call tattoos tats. Yeah.
00:53:49
Speaker
Nice tats. Says a lot about the person using the word, honestly. Yeah. It says that they've always wanted a tattoo, but just never brave enough to just go for it, I think. Absolutely.
00:54:02
Speaker
So Seth Rogen goes over to his friend Mary's house and Jason Muse is naked and he opens the door and Seth just assumes that they're like living together, that they're sleeping together. And he's like, and Jason Muse was like, no, like she wouldn't even give me a Dutch rudder. And so they were like, what's a Dutch rudder? And he's like,
00:54:20
Speaker
You don't know a Dutch rudder? All right, you grab your dick, and then you have someone else work your arm. Here, let me show you. Grab my arm. I'm grabbing my dick. You're grabbing my arm. Now work it. Work my arm. See that shit? Now work it up and down. See that? See, it's like somebody else is jerking you off. And of course, there's a double Dutch rudder, which I grab my dick. You grab your dick. You work my arm. I work your arm. Same time. Same time. It's like jerking off together, but not gay.
00:54:44
Speaker
We're not touching dicks. Each other sticks anyways. I'm touching my own dick. You're working it. I'm loving it. Feels good, sir. Try me. Come on.
00:54:54
Speaker
That's the Dutch rudder scene. I don't know if I can recall it, but I can fucking picture it perfectly. You got to watch it like Jason Muse is a good fucking actor. I don't know anything else he's done. I mean, I'm sure all the Kevin Smith stuff. Fucking Kevin Smith stuff. Yeah. But he's a good fucking actor. Like he's got another great fucking quote.
00:55:18
Speaker
that I'm going to read at the end of the conclusion of this episode. That's really fun, too. Like, he's just a good fucking actor. And yeah, I love it. He's very fucking funny. Like, very fucking funny. He's very fun. Yeah. Should we do the synopsis of the do a quick plot outline and then get into it? Or how do you want to? Just a couple of more notes. Jason Lee is a pro skateboarder at this point. Yes, he is. Oh, I definitely knew this about him.
00:55:45
Speaker
And since I'm getting to skateboarding into my early 40s, I was watching someone's videos and he's good. He's fucking light on his feet. Like I was very impressed. He's like floated that full floated. He definitely floated and he did. He was skating for. Who was he? Was he was he DC?
00:56:05
Speaker
I have no idea. OK, I have to I have to look this up because back in the day, I knew a lot about skateboarding because I really liked hanging out with skateboarders when I was in high school. That was like my other secret life that none of my punk friends knew about. And I went to like the zero compound and like met all of the like fucking pro skateboarders from
00:56:34
Speaker
That shit, it was a weird, that was a weird time in my life. That's weird. Yeah. Okay, so he founded Stereo Skateboards. That's what it is. And then he, oh, he was, he, he spoke, he skated for blind.
00:56:55
Speaker
And then, of course, he did a bunch of stuff for Stereo. And then he's the same age and was friends with Tony Hawk. So I'm pretty sure he was actually in Tony Hawk Pro Skater. He was like a character you could play. And he had really cool taste in music. He was in a Sonic Youth music video.
00:57:22
Speaker
And, you know, fucking mall rats is really like his breakout. Right. And like he was in all of them, you know, he was in so much shit, like vanilla sky, almost famous. It's really. Yeah. Enemy of the state, a very minor role. He also was a voice actor.
00:57:53
Speaker
And then was like the main character in My Name is Earl, which came out in 2005 and then. Which is directed by the same director, Tamara Davis of Billy Madison. Yeah. And he won.
00:58:12
Speaker
He was nominated for a Golden Globe for My Name is Earl, also some SAG Awards, but it was canceled and that cancellation may or may not have coincided with the 2007 writer's strike. Interesting. Yes, which is all very prevalent and active in a lot of
00:58:37
Speaker
media digesters minds right now because the Writers Guild of America is on strike again right now. Interesting thing I learned today about that is that every single time that the Writers Guild has gone on strike, their strikes have never ended.
00:58:54
Speaker
except once in a period of less than 100 days. And the only other time it was less than 100 was 97 days. So I don't even know if it counts. So we're about to see potentially the longest strike in the Screenwriter Guild of America's history. I'm willing to wager.
00:59:19
Speaker
Yeah, so that's nuts. So even shittier TV for the next couple of years or you know, we're going to probably see like a massive uptick in reality TV, which is what happened with 2007.
00:59:35
Speaker
And then, you know, who knows? Maybe we'll actually get some, like, good fucking shit out of this because I do remember, like, once writing and production kicked back up in, like, really, like, the seasons really started kicking back up in 2008, I feel like there was, like, a fucking Hollywood renaissance in, like, the early 2010s. Like, films and movies just got so good because, like, you know, they were...
01:00:02
Speaker
Writers want to write. They want to write, but they also want to be able to, like, pay their heating bills and feed their fucking kids. Right. So, like, if this episode comes out and the Writers Guild strike is still happening, uh, fucking keep going. A.I. is bullshit. It'll never replace creative talent. And we here at We're Spending Time support you guys. That's right.
01:00:31
Speaker
Uh, you heard it here first commies on the internet. Um, yeah. Oh, the only other thing I was shocked by was Jeremy London, who's the other main character, uh, in mall rats is that kid from a party of five and seven seventh heaven. I just like dinner. Wait, she was in both of those.
01:00:51
Speaker
Yeah. But which, like, I don't know. Those are two shows that I would never fucking watch. But those are the movie. Those are the shows that he had done kind of leading up to this. Like Shannon Doherty is also in mall rats. She's she's like someone's girl. I know to one of fame, which there's actually a hilarious joke about that in mall rats, which I would. Yes. Oh, I didn't. Yeah. I didn't catch that actually. Oh, yeah. I will. I will. We'll definitely talk about that.
01:01:21
Speaker
So what happens in this movie exactly? Okay, so what happens exactly in this movie? The movie is loosely basically about two degenerate best friends who both get dumped by their girlfriends going to the mall and everything that ensues in said mall trip.
01:01:43
Speaker
as a adult who grew up going to the mall where a bunch of bullshit just happened all the time because that was all we had to do in a lot of respects. And none of us had cell phones, so we just met at the mall. This one was highly relatable when I watched it as a teenager. But basically, you know,
01:02:04
Speaker
Jason Lee's girlfriend is played by Shannon Daugherty, and she breaks up with him because he won't introduce her to his mom. And then fucking Jeremy London's girlfriend breaks up with him. Mind you, their names in the show in the film are Brody and T.S. Brody being Jason Lee, T.S. being Jeremy London.
01:02:33
Speaker
So I had to write that down in my notes because I just could not keep track of the names. Yes. So Brody is the arguably the mall rat, like the mall is his sort of like church effectively. He's obsessed with comic books. Interesting side note about that is that the comic book collection that Brody has in the opening of the
01:02:58
Speaker
most common version of Mallrats, which I will talk about in a little in a second, in the most common version, that comic book collection is actually Kevin Smith's comic book collection that he was able to rebuild after he sold his original comic book collection to make clerks.
01:03:20
Speaker
Right. So that's a very real comic book collection. So anyway, he sold all his comic books and like maxed out 12 credit cards or something just to make that just to make clerks. Yeah. So, you know, TS is going to he's he's planning on proposing to his girlfriend, Brandy, and then they break up because her dad
01:03:49
Speaker
thinks that TS is like a fucking D-gen and she's pissed at TS because he's like being a dick about her dad and being on her dad's TV show. Well, he inadvertently shamed a woman into killing herself.
01:04:08
Speaker
Oh, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I forget what he said, but he said I forget exactly what he says. But there's some woman in the community and he says something that makes her feel fat. And so she and then she has an aneurysm because she was swimming so many laps. And so now Brandi has to go on the show because she was supposed to be the contestant on her dad's dating show.
01:04:31
Speaker
Correct. Yes. Which when the dating show comes around, did you even think it was being filmed? Like they made no pretense at like they didn't show any cameras. It was just like them all on a stage at the mall. Yeah. Not even in like a sand stage. I thought that there was a camera. So I'll be I will be totally 100 percent honest. I have seen all three versions of maurats.
01:04:59
Speaker
Okay, please explain this to me. I don't know about this. Okay, so there's the main version.
01:05:07
Speaker
that was like released I think on VHS. Then there was the theatrical version and then there was the extended version and the extended, hold on, I have to find the exact thing. So the extended cut has a different opening. The opening takes place at Brandy Svenning's dad's house where they're hosting a ball for the governor of New Jersey.
01:05:36
Speaker
Um, and he, uh, accidentally shoots at the governor because he's dressed up as a colonial musket man for the event for some reason. And then, uh, is this, is this TS that does this? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So then TS, uh, gets.
01:06:00
Speaker
like becomes hated by Brandi's dad because it cost him his reputation and a giant pay raise. And that that's the reason why Brandi was breaking up with TS. And then there's no mention of Julie Dwyer's death. And the and they
01:06:25
Speaker
cut a subplot referencing in the final cut where the TV execs mentioned it to Svenning that they didn't want to repeat of the governor's ball because that was like an unaddressed plot line that they had to cut out if they weren't going to do the extended opening. That didn't make any sense.
01:06:45
Speaker
They also had to remove a bunch of lines about T.S.'s attempted assassination of the governor, which is in the extended version. And then there's a whole extended sequence of Brody being hounded by the media.
01:07:11
Speaker
And then it also, this is the one where TS talks about proposing to Brandy, but that made it into the final, like the main cut that everybody has seen where they're walking in the mall and he's telling Birdie what happened. And he was like, I was going to propose to her at Universal Studios on Jaws. There's, you know, like,
01:07:36
Speaker
There's this scene with Miss Ivanov when they go to get their fortune told. It's longer in that part. But the problem is, is that because I've seen all of these different versions,
01:07:51
Speaker
Even though I've recently watched just like a regular version, I have the memory of all these other ones. So I always get like the plots all mixed up. You know, like there's like a much more extended explanation of Trisha and Ben Affleck's character and like the shit that went down between them and the extended.
01:08:13
Speaker
See, this is the exact plot of Emily Tush's Some Desperate Glory, exactly what you just described. If you really want to know what it's about, it's like different parallel narratives and people traveling back and forth between them and no one can remember who knows what.
01:08:30
Speaker
And yeah, sorry, I had to make that call back. Incredible. And then lastly, they show like the like one of the ways that they distracted lifeors in the extended cut. And this is what got one of the things that got cut out.
01:08:48
Speaker
because like it wasn't very, for the theatrical release were that Trisha fucked LaFours in order to distract him from catching Jane Silent Bob from bringing down the stage. And that's why he's kissing her at the book signing in the like, where are they now section. But yeah, so that makes it a little confusing for me.
01:09:17
Speaker
Okay. So my, the plot as I understand it is yeah. Like both of these two dudes, their girlfriends break up with both of them in the same morning. Brody because like he doesn't like his, he won't focus smoking hot girlfriend and he just wants to play video games and he's afraid to introduce her to his mom. So she dumps him and then she climbs out the window.
01:09:38
Speaker
of the basement that he lives in. And then, yeah, TS we just described. So these guys are just like, oh no, but they're like hanging out. And from the very beginning, it's like very palpable that like Kevin Smith is playing with that like, oh, should these guys be fucking each other sort of idea, right? Because they have much better charisma with each other than they do with their girlfriends. Absolutely. I think that there's even a comment about that at some point in the film.
01:10:07
Speaker
I believe there is. I think it's Renee Zellweger's character. Who? Is Renee Zellweger in this movie? Isn't? Yeah. Oh, yes. Isn't she? Hold on. No. OK, so I always get Joey Lauren Adams confused with Renee Zellweger.
01:10:35
Speaker
who is Amy in Chasing Amy. Or not Amy. She's not Amy. But she is the one that's getting chased. Chasing Amy is the story that Kevin Smith tells. No, it's Joey Lauren Adams in both movies. That's what I'm saying. Joey Lauren Adams is in Chasing Amy, but I always get her confused with Renee Zellweger, who is not in Chasing Amy. Joey Lauren Adams is. That's what I was trying to say. I did a bad spoken conjunction.
01:11:06
Speaker
But yes. Joey Lauren Adams, it has the same smile and the same voice pitch as Renee Zellweger. She's a more bubbly Renee Zellweger, in my opinion. Oh, absolutely. OK, so. Basically, the whole movie takes place in the mall and it's except for a brief stint in the in the flea market.
01:11:35
Speaker
Yeah. So they, oh yeah, I love it. I love the shittier mall at one point they're banned from the mall. They keep, so they go to the mall and they're like, what's going on? You have to fill this in for me. And then it's like, Oh, uh, my ex-girlfriend is going on her dad's show and it's being filmed here. And also there's this douchebag played by Ben Affleck who manages the like fashionable male, fashionable male, all of the, um,
01:12:01
Speaker
store names are like kooky 90s aerogenics, like wacky names, which I just found kind of annoying. But that was similar to Billy Madison. It's like this movie is clunky to get into from the modern perspective. Yeah. But towards the end, similar similar to Billy Madison, I was there. I was sucked into it. Yeah. It was immersive. It was immersive, so to speak.
01:12:28
Speaker
I definitely, I agree. It's so funny because basically the main driving force of this film is not necessarily to get back with their girlfriends, but definitely to sort of
01:12:50
Speaker
rebalance the social order of the mall by destroying the game show stage, which would incidentally ruin Brandi's dad's life, who TS blames for them breaking up. And, you know, and then Brody gets in his idea that maybe he does still want to date his like,
01:13:19
Speaker
He still wants to date Renee because he finds out that she's in a relationship with Shannon, who's played by Ben Affleck. And so there's just all of these
01:13:30
Speaker
things that are happening around really the destruction of this game show stage. So Brody and TS enlist the like merry makers of destruction who are Jay and Silent Bob. And one of my favorite bits in that whole scene
01:13:53
Speaker
is Silent Bob holding the cigarette and trying to Jedi mind trick that shit and like Jason Mewes just like going like there's like all this music like happening and then he looks over at Silent Bob and he goes
01:14:08
Speaker
I told you to stop that shit and just knocks the cigarette out of his hand. And like the cut that they do for that is so fucking funny because like all of the like vibrato and like vibe that Jay is putting forth, Jason Muse is like doing like, and then Wolverine, X-Men style, boom, boom. And then he just turns his like, knock that shit off. Like it's just like this hilarious like break moment.
01:14:38
Speaker
And, you know, like they do the classic heist, like blueprints going through like, and then we're going to do this. And then my man here discovered that there's a fucking like, what is it? He says something like that. There's a there's a.
01:14:54
Speaker
Death Star level weak point and we're gonna get in there like Luke and just a bunch of fucking Star Wars references and X-Men references and just really shows like how fucking nerdy these dudes are all like they're trying to front like they're so fucking cool but at the end of the day they're just like
01:15:18
Speaker
hardcore nerds. Right, right. Well, like at some point Stanley shows up and Stanley is doing like a reading and that's like a big focal point. Yes. And there's like a whole thing with like, you know,
01:15:31
Speaker
Brody being pissed that he can't go to the fucking comic book store and is like talking a bunch of shit to everybody in line and then finds out it's Stan Lee and then like he's all bummed that he can't get in line and it's just like they're fucking nerds is what they are. They're just a bunch of fucking nerds who happen to be like pretty good looking and therefore that they can score chicks. That's really the difference.
01:15:57
Speaker
Yeah, like is this is this movie kind of misogynistic? I can't can't really decide. Like, what does it say about women? What does it say about men? What are your what are your thoughts, Beth Martini? Well, I mean, OK, feminist authority, Beth Martini. So, like, what it what it's like sort of speaks to is like
01:16:25
Speaker
the failure to me on a societal level of encouraging men to connect with their vulnerability, because that's really what everything sort of comes down to, is that all of this bravado, all of this bullshit, all the reasons why
01:16:49
Speaker
these two dudes make bad decisions in their relationships is because they don't know how to be emotionally vulnerable, right? Right. Right. And so it's like, you know, it's like,
01:17:08
Speaker
It has very much like it definitely perpetuates that sort of narrative that men are less emotionally mature than women, and that they don't know how to deal with their feelings and that women are emotional creatures who want
01:17:28
Speaker
like meaningful interactions and relationships. And it kind of does, I mean, that quote that you read about the director of, um, Billy Madison, to me speaks more to the women portrayed in mall rats.
01:17:48
Speaker
than it does to the women from Billy Madison. Because like all of those, all of the like, I mean, granted they're like all teenage girls or whatever, but every single one of them is pretty fucking like presence and sort of like
01:18:06
Speaker
knows what they want and isn't gonna like doesn't want to put up with a bunch of immature fucking high school dude bullshit which that kind of just perpetuates the stereotype but still you know even even Trisha who's like she's the youngest of them all she's also the smartest of them all she's like done this like
01:18:30
Speaker
Sexual sexuality of women in their in high school in the 90s book that she got like $50,000 to write And she like literally just has a bunch of sex with dudes and documents it all very scientifically Which is how she has the video of Shannon Fucking her in a very uncomfortable place, which is like, you know the taboo of like
01:18:57
Speaker
But stuff. So I mentioned that there was a good 90210 burn in Moritz. And so one of like the most hilarious, like sort of three lines of this of this like whole movie is Willem and his desperate desire to see the sailboat in the Magic Eye poster. Right. Right.
01:19:27
Speaker
And so it's this gag of people being like, Willem, what are you doing?
01:19:34
Speaker
I'm trying to see, and they're like, relax your eyes, blah, blah, blah, this, that, and the other thing. And periodically throughout the movie, different characters walk up and go, oh, a sailboat. And in this moment, Renee walks up to him, and the main characters have walked away, and it's just her. And she goes, huh.
01:19:58
Speaker
a sailboat, and he turns and looks at her and he goes, Brenda, and she goes dick and just walks away. Oh, I didn't get that. Brenda is Shannon Doherty's character from 90210. Got it. Which is like. Kind of like a hilarious sign of eating crackers. It's like sort of like this hilarious. Fourth wall break, that's not really a fourth wall break, but it is.
01:20:29
Speaker
It's just like like a three and a half wall break. Yeah. Do you see how hunky Ethan Suppley is now? Have you seen these pictures? What? No. I mean, he lost like a ton of weight. Which is not to say that he's any more attractive now because he lost weight. But yeah, he lost a ton of weight.
01:20:53
Speaker
Right, he's just like not, he's not like the, he's not Chris Farley Light anymore. He's like, he's kind of looks like now, like a younger buffer version of the dude who plays the dad on Stranger Things.
01:21:15
Speaker
Not the not the dad. Oh, yeah, the not the dad. Yeah, the sheriff. Yeah. Yeah. But like, doesn't he kind of look like that a little? He's got he's definitely got David Harbor vibes. He's got that. Yeah. A heavier dude who gets kind of buff, which I think David Harbor is in that same that same lane. Yeah, for sure.
01:21:39
Speaker
I like that he's rocking his muscular bod with his leftover skin. Look, that's hot. Yeah, that is really cool. I mean, that's like real shit though. That's like, yo, I wanted to do this thing, but I am not going to fucking lie about it.
01:21:58
Speaker
Yep. Which honestly, mad fucking respect. Like he's like, he's like, I'm shaving my armpits, but I'm also going to show you all this skin that's leftover. Yeah. And like, honestly, sometimes armpit hair is a little chafey. So I really support like everyone who wants to shave their armpits or not shave their armpits. I don't fucking shave my armpits. Fuck it. Um,
01:22:27
Speaker
No shade my armpits. I kind of think the armpit hair and well hair in weird places is probably just like I think it's a mechanical lubricant in my opinion. Interesting.
01:22:39
Speaker
And it's like, this is why I have hair in my butt crack is cause like I'm supposed to be running and there's supposed to be like a better, you know, a better way to keep your, your cheeks. My cheeks gotta glide against each other. Yeah. I mean, same thing with pit hair, you know, you definitely don't want to get cheek rub that is wildly uncomfortable. Yeah. Um, yeah, no, that's really interesting. I definitely.
01:23:07
Speaker
I definitely stopped shaving my armpits because my skin is really, really sensitive and they're specifically sensitive to abrasion and just general friction, discomfort.
01:23:26
Speaker
I went to a really sweaty, gross show in Seattle once to see the fucking Noise Rock band Hella play, and there was just this kid in a wool jacket.
01:23:43
Speaker
right next to me. And we were all sardines. And just the constant movement of the wool jacket on my arm, it just felt like fucking sandpaper by the end of it. Yeah, that's horrible.
Workplace Discrimination and Feminism
01:23:57
Speaker
That's horrible. So when my armpit hair would grow back or I'd get any ingrown hair or something, it would just hurt. And so I was finally just like, fuck this. It's not worth it. I actually
01:24:10
Speaker
I almost like I really almost filed like a major complaint with one of my jobs because they were like, you can't wear tank tops without shaving your armpits. Oh, fuck that. And I was like, what job was that? It was this fucking shitty restaurant. It's a restaurant that's still open and it's here in Chicago. And I don't want to like put it on blast that bad because I'm not a complete fucking asshole. And the manager who said it to me doesn't work there anymore. He got fired.
01:24:41
Speaker
Yeah. But basically I was like, OK, cool. So are you going to tell every single male bodied person that's currently wearing a tank top right now to shave their armpits and shave their legs when they wear shorts? Or are you going to say that nobody can wear tank tops and nobody can wear shorts? Which one's it going to be? Because it can't be both.
01:25:01
Speaker
Like you can't be like, oh guys don't have to shave their legs or their armpits and they can wear tank tops and shorts, but girls have to shave their, this is the same fucker who tried to argue to me that being a stripper was not a feminist action. He tried to tell me that there's nothing feminist about being a sex worker. And I was like,
01:25:25
Speaker
You antiquated, pseudo-fucking-woke, liberal-ass piece of shit. You can get fucked all the way to hell. That's the feminist version of I'm colorblind, right? Oh my God. I don't fucking know what it is. He's like, how can that be? Because I'm like, it's seizing the means of production, my man.
01:25:55
Speaker
And it's like, it's like the same thing with like, to bring it back to the fucking movie, like young, young Trisha being like,
01:26:05
Speaker
Yeah, I have this sex tape of this dude fucking me in the ass in a fucking VW bug. And sure, I don't give a shit if you put it on all the TV cameras in the mall and like get him charged with statutory rape, like fucking whatever. Like, it's like she wasn't victimized, but she was perfectly happy telling that story to fuck some piece of shit dude over. You know what I mean?
01:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, she made a choice and her choice was informed and she fucking made hot scratch off of it like Anyway, so like kind of what I was talking about before I found out that my landlord was in the building And my partner doesn't want to have a conversation with her which I don't really blame him basically, like I think that you know part of the commentary that Kevin Smith is always having in these films is that
01:26:59
Speaker
This typical male stereotype of the sex-obsessed, socially incompetent, emotionally immature dude is ineffectual and there's no room for it.
Analyzing Kevin Smith's Movies
01:27:17
Speaker
Because, like, at the end of the day, like, I think, you know, Kevin Smith and Jason Muse are fucking smart dudes. Like, Kevin Smith is definitely a smart dude. You know, like, the choices that he made with Dogma were very smart choices. Chasing Amy, very smart. He knows how to, like, characterize the flaws of these 90s dudes.
01:27:46
Speaker
in a way that seems sincere, but is also very tongue in cheek. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Like they are sincerely dipshits, but very intentionally so, as a means of being like, you don't have to be like this. And that's kind of like my 2023 hot take takeaway is that like,
01:28:15
Speaker
That's why Brody gets redeemed in the end.
01:28:23
Speaker
because he actually takes a second and is like, oh, Renee, I was a dick to you. He actually realizes that. He actually realizes that this dude, Shannon, is an actual piece of shit who is a womanizer, who is just in it to get some. And that was never his deal. He was just emotionally immature,
01:28:48
Speaker
didn't know how to connect with his feelings, isn't entirely confident in his relationship to his own masculinity, all of these things, right? And then it's told through this absolutely absurd story of the mall and ruining a dating show and all of this shit, you know?
01:29:14
Speaker
And that and plenty of farcical hijinks. Yeah, that happened. So, yeah, there it is. That's it. OK, case closed. I have a note that just says boobs, boobs. Oh, the three. Well, we're just in general.
01:29:32
Speaker
There's just, yeah, there's, there are some, I think the boobs in this movie, you know, speaking to what you just said, there's boobs in this movie, but I think, I almost feel like they're a nerdy homage to 80s movies, to 80s hijinks movies.
01:29:47
Speaker
because like you said, Kevin Smith makes good choices. And if he's gonna put more than one pair of tits in this movie, it's like, you know, on purpose. And like, yeah, the fortune teller with the fake third nipple that's edible. And then Gwen Turner. Did you watch the episode with her, the version with her where she's naked in the dressing room? Or did you see the version where she's dressed in the dressing room? Because there's two.
01:30:16
Speaker
No, there's those are two separate scenes. Because because Kevin Smith keeps on crashing into her when she's in the dressing room happens twice. And the first one she's dressed in the second one, you see boobs, which is when I wrote boobs with an exclamation mark. The one that you see tits in isn't in one of the releases. Oh, interesting. She's fully dressed in both of them. Oh, yeah, I saw the one boobs.
01:30:42
Speaker
Yeah. No. And she's like, what the fuck? It's real. It's actually hilarious. And this and Billy Madison, the style is fucking awesome, especially right now. It's very.
01:30:57
Speaker
Modern at this point, right? Like very super contemporary. The hair is fantastic in both. I just like I saw a note that says Ben Affleck suit is sick. And he's wearing an he's wearing a baggy suit with an extreme Henley. Like he's wearing a Henley, but like the button part is like 10, 11 inches long.
01:31:18
Speaker
And I mean, I think at the time it was supposed to be like him looking dumb, like him looking foolish, right? Yeah. Like, I don't think he was supposed to look cool at the time. No, he's supposed to look like a douchebag. Right. And it's just like, I don't know. I think it's so funny. And like one of the notes that I made about costuming was La Forge's fucking hat.
01:31:45
Speaker
He's wearing a straw boater, right? Yes, and he never talks. Like, he always is like, mm, mm, mm. And does this really great gag of also never talking. So we have two completely silent characters who are used in this very comical way, but they're also antithetical to each other. Interesting, interesting.
01:32:15
Speaker
It's just I don't know. I think it's just I think it's pretty fucking funny and like also just like, you know, the way the way that they like film him running, it's like he's it's like so sound stagey and it's so like just like hilarious and
01:32:35
Speaker
you know, Stan Lee to throw it back to Marvel, he has a cameo or had a cameo in every single Marvel movie that came out. Like that was his thing. Yeah. And so like his cameo, he continues to have cameos, even though he's been dead for like 10 years or whatever. Yeah, they're definitely like inserting him into stuff still, which is weird. But yeah, I just like. And then the the the the fucking
01:33:04
Speaker
shit-palm of the chocolate pretzels that Brettie pulls. That's such a weird scene. And like the fucking dad being like so into it and like licking all of his fingers and shit.
01:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, he's it's he's doing incredible physical acting. Michael Rooker in that scene. Yeah. And he just is like so into it and he just keeps on having more and he's like, who don't mind if I do in this weird, like kind of sext up like horny for chocolate sort of way. Yeah.
Nostalgia for Malls and Youth Culture
01:33:39
Speaker
Yeah. And then he's blowing chunks like the horrors of the movie, of course.
01:33:42
Speaker
Did you know that in 2015, they announced that they were gonna do a sequel, like a follow-up of Mallrats 2? Yeah, it looks like Kevin Smith keeps on sort of wanting to do it and hinting at it, but maybe studios are not super stoked on it. Then it sounded like there's gonna maybe be a TV show, but I'm not exactly sure where it's at with development at this point.
01:34:09
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's fucking a 28 year old movie, which is very insane to say. Yeah. Um, I did you low key? I just low key wanted to go to the other mall. The other mall was very intriguing to me. Oh, the fucking yes.
01:34:28
Speaker
Having grown up going to thrift stores and shit, did you ever go to this thrift store on university out by my place? That was like, you know, east of college. That was like a three level thrift store. Oh, probably university. Probably. And it's like you like walk in on street level university and it just goes down the hill and it's like three fucking levels of stuff. I will never forget. But the building is still there. It's over by Jolar. If you ever went to not that you ever went to Jolar, but you would know it.
01:34:58
Speaker
It was like on university. So I'm like literally going to pull up a map of San Diego right now because I need to know what you're talking about. Uh, let's see here. It's like, yeah, it's in between Rolando and college on university in between Rolando and college on university. There's okay. University Heights.
01:35:29
Speaker
We're a little bit further east. That's where I used to live. This is riveting content. Two. No, not far enough. OK, that's 54th. College does some crazy shit over here. Well, we're just like scrolling out of El Cajon. I'm on El Cajon and 70th. I got to go. Yeah, I'm at college in El Cajon right now.
01:35:59
Speaker
Okay. So you got to go south. Okay. College Avenue. First go down to, yeah, go, go down college, take a left-wing university. Oh, I miss university. I'm a little confused. Oh, okay. There we go. I'm there. And then it's Helix. I went too far. Yeah. It's, it's closer than Helix, right? Like closer to downtown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's further west. It's west of Helix for sure. I'm at the food for less at college and Cholas Parkway.
01:36:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's on the same side. University is Food for Less. Oh, wait. No, because Food for Less is west of college, if I'm not. No. Yeah, it is. Oh, so it's further east than. OK, further. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, University. Oh, the Salvin. No, that's the Croc Center. Fuck that place.
01:36:50
Speaker
My mom goes there. That crazy jack in the box. I don't know if you I don't know if you can see it. It's like closer to Jolar. Oh, it's I just passed Britta, Santana. It's kind of like. There's Lamesa Dale. No, it's like past the croc center. Is it like if you hit the lawn that you've gone too far. Hey, oh, 70th. Fuck. I don't know if I can really. Are you sure it's on?
01:37:18
Speaker
Caught on University. Oh, definitely. Definitely. What the fuck? This is so dumb. I mean, this is really fun, but this is so dumb. OK, so there's that Motel six on University and the Wiener Schnitzel. Yo, and you know what? It hasn't been a fucking hasn't been a thrift store for years, but anyways.
01:37:38
Speaker
What fucking thing is it? I should go street view. It's totally nondescript. But yeah, you see it from the street and I think it's like a bike store or something now, but you see it from the street and you're like, oh, that's just a building. But it was an amazing thrift store that I grew up going out and you would like have three levels. It was fantastic. Damn. So my thrifting experience in San Diego was negligible because I was fucking broke all the time. I didn't really start thrifting. That broke, dude.
01:38:06
Speaker
I mean, like did your mom not get like all your clothes from the first store? That's like where I got all my clothes from. No, because my mom was fucking insane and she would blow all of the money that she ever had on new shit only because part of her mental illness was living in the past of when she was not poor and she was like an upper middle class teenager living in the Chicago suburbs. Oh, interesting.
01:38:33
Speaker
So like that's how her mental illness manifested. It was one of the ways was that she refused to want to let anybody know that she was poor. So she rarely, at least when I was like, when she was still buying me shit, she like rarely ever bought anything secondhand.
01:38:54
Speaker
Oh, interesting. And then my grandmother would take me shopping and like, you know, and then I would like get clothes from friends or my mom would go to the thrift store and then like bring stuff back. But I never really went thrifting.
01:39:08
Speaker
I did a lot of shoplifting, too. Oh, yeah. See, the only time I really shoplifted was from the thrift store because it was easier. Sure. It was like lower stakes. But yeah, my mom, I mean, my mom definitely grew up very poor. And so I'm fairly certain my mom wore a thrift-shopped, thrifted dress to my wedding, I'm fairly certain.
01:39:30
Speaker
like that's how great at your wedding though. So that's a hardcore or no, I don't think my mom even wore a dress. Actually I can't remember what my mom looked like, but yeah. Um, she was just a thrift store hardcore, like till she, till the day she dies. Yeah. Um, well, yeah. So, so the, yeah. So they, they get, they, um,
01:39:54
Speaker
Uh, fucking Brody's girlfriend's dad keeps thinking of being them arrested and kicked out of the mall. Um, they do some shenanigans to get away. Like they actually get like arrested by the police and we're going to get dragged to jail, but they pull some shenanigans and they run away and they, but, and they have to go to a mall. So they go to like this shitty, janky little mall, which looked fucking awesome. Looked fucking awesome. So cool. I would have rather gone there. Honestly.
01:40:22
Speaker
Exactly. Also, like indoor malls are like sort of we're always sort of weird to me because like, you know, San Diego, the two biggest malls were Horton Plaza and Grossmont. And yeah, we spent a lot of time at Grossmont Mall. I mean, I guess there was the one in Elkhorn, but.
01:40:46
Speaker
I mean, yeah, Parkway Plaza is the only indoor mall around in San Diego. I can't think of any other indoor malls.
01:40:56
Speaker
My my understanding of like SD County south of 94 is really suspect suspicious though. Like I don't I'm I'm not very familiar. Yeah, no, I mean, there isn't even a mall in Lemon Grove or at least there wasn't when we were kids. And then you have the Grove, the Grove is the closest thing. But that was completely defunct, like completely defunct by the time we were teenagers.
01:41:21
Speaker
It's coming back, I wanna say. There's like a Walmart and a Target there, I wanna say. I think it's coming back. They had a sick ass movie theater back in the theater. They did have a sick ass movie theater. And then I never really spent any time in like National City or Chula Vista really because like you had to have a car to go down there. But I think that there was like a mall in National City, but I think it was outdoors too. I don't think it was an indoor mall like Parkway Plaza.
01:41:49
Speaker
Yeah. Parkour Plaza is like the only one. Horton Plaza is like defunct too. Last time I went down there, it's like they bulldozed that shit. It's like not even doesn't even exist. Or they bulldozed like all the front area. Like Planet Hollywood does not exist. Planet Hollywood is done. All right. Fucking pee, man. I ran so many scams out of that mall.
01:42:13
Speaker
Okay. So you said like, so you just did something interesting, which is like, oh, the main malls in San Diego are Grossmont and Horton Plaza, which like Horton Plaza, I guess I would go to sometimes. Cause I was like a downtown Hillcrest kid, like in high school.
01:42:29
Speaker
So I would go to Planet Hollywood to use the bathroom. And then like, I'm sure you hung out in front of Planet Hollywood with all those punks back in the day. I know. So it was because of pokies. That's why we were always downtown. Me and Erica were like pokies kids.
01:42:45
Speaker
And so we would go and our deal was that we would go to Heart and Plaza and we would separate and one of us would take the lower three tiers and one of us would take the upper three tiers and we would just walk around asking people for change to use the payphone. And this was right after the payphone price was raised to 50 cents. So a lot of times people would just give us a dollar
01:43:17
Speaker
And they're like, cause you know, Hey, I'm really sorry. Like I hate to ask this, but like, I need to call my dad to come and pick me up. And like, I kind of accidentally spent all my money at like orange Julius or what the fuck ever bullshit excuse we had. And we would get money for
01:43:36
Speaker
the payphone and then we would go to pokies we would split a burrito then we would go to whatever show or party that we were going to and then we would get some fucking decrepit 21 year old to buy us beer and so we would get between us we would net like usually like close to 20 bucks dang and 20 bucks would get us a burrito and a 12r and then we'd go to a fucking show that we never had to pay for because like
01:44:01
Speaker
you girls didn't really have to pay for shows of the Che very often. And, you know, fucking smoke cigarettes and just be general degenerates, you know? How would you get to the Che back then? People would take the bus to the Che? Yeah, you could take the bus. Well, so.
01:44:21
Speaker
from Hillcrest, if you dressed like normal enough, you could just get on the Scripps bus from Scripps Hospital to La Jolla to like the UCSD campus because that was also Scripps. So we would often just take the free bus that goes straight there from one hospital to the other hospital. But like,
01:44:49
Speaker
You would give us rides. We like fucking, a bunch of like East County kids had cars. Like, do you remember that dude CJ who sold drugs? Yeah, that piece of shit. Yeah. He like drove a lot of people a lot of the time. There was another like, like small East, East County contingent that all had cars. Dane, Danny Munoz. Dane, David, Danny, all those guys. Yeah.
01:45:20
Speaker
but that's how. And then- Yeah, I think I always drove or got a ride. I don't think I ever took like the bus out there. You know, you would take like the trolley to Soma from Grossmont Mall or you'd take the 81, but- Yeah. Soma had already, Soma had pretty much already closed by the time I started going to shows. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so like there was that fucking,
01:45:46
Speaker
the scene up in Costa Mesa. Is that where it was? Mirror Mesa. And then there was the community center that had shows. Also, Danae had a car, so she did a lot of driving. If you could stand to hang out with Danae. Oh my god.
01:46:07
Speaker
I never caught into Denae. Everyone seemed to love her. And I was like, I don't know. This person seems like a huckster. She is a huckster. And she turned out to be a really fucking bad friend and talked a lot of talked about a lot of shit that I told her that she really had no business sharing. And yeah, she's she seemed fucking messy. Yeah. You know, we're all a little bit messy back then. But I was just I didn't feel comfortable around her.
01:46:37
Speaker
No, she was extra messy. And then I think Javi had a car. There were a bunch of people who had cars. And it's all very, that whole time in my life is very cloudy. I was drunk a lot. Oh yeah, yeah. Like a lot. While we're on the subject.
01:46:57
Speaker
we might as well, and since we're kind of slowing down on the mall rats, do you want to talk about your relationship as or your identity as a mall rat or like your relationship to the mall? Because I would say Grossmont Mall would be the important starting point. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, my first introduction to the like our crew of mall rats
01:47:22
Speaker
was Grossmont Mall. I think I was maybe in the seventh grade. Oh, dear. Yeah. Yeah. Erica and I went to Parkway Middle School.
01:47:37
Speaker
which was just on the other hill from Grossmont. And, you know, we started hanging out because she was hanging out with Alex Osterhout and Alex New Jeff. And no Vance Vance Osterhout Vance Osterhout. I thought his name was Alex, like my entire your
01:48:04
Speaker
I think you're conflating two different people, like first and last. Alex, that annoying straight-edge guy? Perhaps. There's Vance Osterhout, who I went to high school with at uni, but then he transferred to West, what is it? West Hills? West Hills, I don't know. Yeah. That was Vance Osterhout. Oh. And then he has a younger sister named Erica, who's like a bass player in a metal band. That's cool.
01:48:33
Speaker
Good for her. She grew up to be somebody cool ish. Yeah. That rules. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, at least that was her deal when I would look at her on social media, like 10 years ago or whatever, right? She's probably in data analytics hours. No. So actually, actually this is what happened. Jeff and Erica met because they both lived in spring Valley. Mm-hmm.
01:48:58
Speaker
Jeff introduced Erika to everyone, Vincent, Dane, Danny. You were hanging out, but I don't remember you being really around until we were already deeply embedded with that crew. I think I went to Portland and then I, no. No, because I met you on my 16th birthday. So I was like 19. Yeah.
01:49:23
Speaker
Uh, I went to Portland kind of a little bit after that, but I think I had already left high school by the time, or I was about to leave San Diego by the time you went to Portland. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I, all of a sudden there was just these girls who were like three years younger than us. And I was like, can't we hang out with women our own age? Like what? There weren't any.
01:49:49
Speaker
I was like, why are we hanging out with 16 year old girls? This is not, I mean, you guys are great. You're, you're been one of my best friends for like, you know, longer than you haven't at this point. Uh, and I'm glad to have met you and like, you know, Toby and Erica and all that, but I was like, why are we hanging out with like 16 year old people? Like this isn't, we got a, why we can't, we can't do this, you know, but, um,
01:50:13
Speaker
And I was like, why are you dating these 16-year-old girls? This is not even legal. What is going on here? Yeah, it was just not great. But then you and I actually became actual friends, which was nice. And then there was various bouts of drama with everyone. Yeah, so much drama.
01:50:34
Speaker
Uh, you know, and it was like we were mall rats, but we were also weirdly like kind of like valley rats because we would like because Erica's mom was like non existent. So her house just ended up becoming like the party house. So like, you know, we just threw like these massive ragers all the fucking time. And like, that's how I met like everybody that is still around, you know, Robbie, everybody.
01:51:05
Speaker
Like, and it was just this really weird, crazy thing, like in every group of people, every like sub genre of person. Came through the mall, basically like. There are there are like, you know, we would go to that stupid Rubio's with like a dollar thirty five and get like these large tortillas and then just raid their fucking salsa bar.
01:51:35
Speaker
Yeah, you would just get a tortilla and then you would just pour salsa in it and wrap that shit up and spicy carrots and eat it. Yeah.
01:51:44
Speaker
If you if you were like bawling out, you would get a side order of beans. Yep. Yeah. And then that was like, oh, fuck, like you had a little bit like you had some extra money left over. Yeah. Or like, yeah, some person you were spanking and some person like gave you extra money and you're like, oh, fuck, I could get beans. Yes. Or white sauce. Sometimes you get white sauce. That's really good, too. Yeah. And that's just like when I like when I think about that, it's like and the fucked up thing is, is like, you know,
01:52:11
Speaker
pretty much everyone except for me and Erica actually had like halfway decent home lives. Oh yeah. Like if I was doing this shit, it was like my fucking Catholic school uniform was tucked away in my book bag. Like if I was like out there spanking, right? Yeah. But like I was like legitimately poor and there were times where literally all I ate that day was one of those fucking tortillas.
01:52:38
Speaker
Yeah. But like, I didn't tell anybody about that because like, you know, I didn't want to be like. I didn't I don't know, I was like ashamed of my poverty because that's the house that I was raised in. Oh, yeah, I mean. I could see how you would be, obviously, but I don't I don't think it would have been necessary because a lot of people were I don't know, were people poor? Maybe I just assumed people were poor.
01:53:05
Speaker
I don't know, like fucking didn't Danny's parents live like on Mount Helix or something? No, Danny's parents were like are divorced and his mom, his mom, he had a very like middle class, like upbringing, I think.
01:53:19
Speaker
I don't know, last time I visited, last time I stayed at Danny's house, his mom had like an okay house, like in Santee or El Cajun or somewhere like that. Yeah. Wasn't anything that fancy. You might be thinking to my friend Mike Burke, whose house is low key on Mount Helix. Well, I remember, cause didn't Mike Burke have, we went to his house once and didn't his parents have like one of those garages that could fit an RV in it? It was like, no. So some, one of your friends lived in one of those crazy fucked up houses that was like super fancy.
01:53:49
Speaker
had like his house is like definitely super nice. Actually, his house and Rachel's parents house are like, I want to say they're like the same architect, just the same like McMansion. Yeah, like suburban.
01:54:02
Speaker
architecture with like a fucking giant foyer and like, you know, sort of weird Spanish architecture shit, but. Yeah. And then I had this. So like the mall was like the East County thing. Like all the East County kids did the mall. That was like where if you didn't know where anyone was, if nobody was home, when you made your calls before you left the house, you just went to the mall and waited for people to show up. Yeah.
01:54:27
Speaker
Like that was just like an instinctual thing that was built into our like, you know, growing up. And then when I moved to normal heights, I stopped doing that and I started hanging out with a bunch of like the normal heights punks. Right. And that was like a totally different crew and vibe and scene and everything. And it was like, I don't know, it was a growing up in San Diego was fucking weird.
01:54:57
Speaker
It was just really weird. I knew the North Park kids because because I went to uni and to Catholic school and a lot of those kids were like what we call peace punks from Poway. Punks who wear brown.
01:55:13
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Catholic school kids also, but like lived in Poway, but they they hung out downtown and they always posted up in front of Planet Hollywood downtown or they would hang out at like Old Town or Hillcrest. Yeah. And would go to like shows and like protests and shit. Yep.
01:55:32
Speaker
And we're talking like Jenny Winningham, Mikey. Yeah, John. Yeah, exactly. John Stewart was also of that crew. So, yeah, at one point, like I knew the East County kids from Grossmont and going to so many shit. But I also knew these other kids who were like, although they were more affluent, also were more underground in certain ways at the same time. Yes. Well, you threw that party. You threw that party when you got back from London.
01:56:01
Speaker
That's right. And that's what brought everyone together. That was the impetus for everyone becoming friends.
01:56:10
Speaker
That, yeah, that's right. You're welcome. That was that was like really the first time that I had met a bunch of North any of the North Park punks and like they all were like, you're one of us now, dude. Like, you're not a fucking East County kid anymore. Like you, you have to hang out with us now. And like we had that like weird pickup game of basketball. And then there was the fucking drunken boxing in the backyard. That was like,
01:56:38
Speaker
I hate like glory day shit, but that was a pretty good party. It was a fucking great party. It was wild. It was hectic. There was so much fucking drama. I might have almost or did break Toby's nose. Did you and Toby box? Yeah.
01:57:01
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if you broke their nose. There was blood and a lot of it. And I do remember that shit. I felt really bad. And I think you may have given Toby a taste for blood because like they I don't know if they still do it now. You know, we're a little bit older now, but like they would go around boxing fools. Oh, I also did. I think that that like unlocked a thing in me where I just would like start punching people in the face. Yeah, I went through a phase where I would literally just punch people in the face.
01:57:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think like, I think that Danny just like straight laid someone out. Like one punch laid someone out that you'd like, I would, do you remember this? It was Ryan Elrod laid out Dane. That's what it was. Oh my God. And dude, have you kept up with Ryan Elrod at all?
01:57:56
Speaker
No. He fucking moved to Italy. Oh, wow. And became a like heirloom shoemaker. No, Reed Elrod. Reed did it. It was Reed. OK, it's a little brother. That's right. One of the Elrods. Yeah.
01:58:16
Speaker
So that's, that's my, that's my, that's, that's, that was mall rats for me. Like, that's why it was so fucking relatable. Yeah. Yeah. Just showing that feeling in the movie where you're like, you show up and you see like the one dude and you're like, Hey, what's going on over there? And they just like give you the information. Uh-huh.
01:58:37
Speaker
and shit spirals out of control. Like you would show up and get the lay of the land and you're like, all right, where's Metalhead Mike? Oh, Metalhead Mike did meth for three days and he's passed out in the chair of Barnes and Nobles. So like, don't be around when he wakes up because he'll be on a warpath. Who's getting fucked up in the tunnels?
01:58:56
Speaker
Yep. You know, who's doing a belly button piercing over by the statue? Huh? Who's got money? Who's got beer? Yep. You know, which show are you going to later? What cars are here? Who can fit into which ones? Yeah. Yeah. Like, didn't Dane drive like some like piece of shit like red?
01:59:17
Speaker
fucking like Corolla or something that was like Dane. Dane had a a Camry that was passed down to him from his mom. Yep. A blue Camry. And then he sold that to Jeff. Yeah. It sold that to Jeff. And then it promptly broke down. And then because his mom had bought him like a Nissan Sentra. I don't know. I remember all this shit like a two door manual red Nissan Sentra. Yeah. And then you had the Volvo. I had a sick as Volvo are fucking ruled.
01:59:45
Speaker
Many, many a time we spent in that driving around in that fucking car. R.I.P. Yeah, it was just a weird time, a weird place. It's like because we have that we are of that weird middling general generation that grew up without the Internet and without cell phones and then got them very quickly into our 20s. Mm hmm.
02:00:14
Speaker
And that kind of changed the way that people fucking hung out, you know, like it. Absolutely. Yeah. So like we had this very like analog childhood or teenage years. And then have like. Like calling someone collect and just laying out all the information in the in the message. Yeah. Yeah. Or like.
02:00:44
Speaker
I don't know, Orion or someone would do some weird shit in the early internet where they'd get like a credit card number online or something, or like a phone card number. And then so there would be like a phone card number that if you could memorize it, you could always use it. Some fucking weird shit like that. Those punks were so sketchy.
02:01:05
Speaker
Like there's a lot of greasy Joe and his fake IDs, just like weird, really fucking weird shit. And it was kind of like this. Like it was like a weird little like criminal gang. We were a gang like we had somebody. We had somebody who could we we had a guy for everything. Oh, like, you know,
02:01:30
Speaker
One time somebody brought a keg without a tap to Erika's mom's first apartment in Spring Valley and they tried to tap it with a hammer and it fucking exploded everywhere. We might have to beep out everybody's names since we didn't get everybody's permission to be in our fucking pod.
02:01:57
Speaker
Just like wild ass shit, there was a party that she threw where
02:02:02
Speaker
Jeff was like very much on his like anarchist bent, like very, very hard on that. And the cops showed up and he's like screaming shit at them about our rights through the door at the cops. But like kids are like fleeing in every direction, jumping over the fences through walls and then the cops leave and everyone has just been hiding in the neighborhood and just comes back.
02:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, just absolutely acidine. I love a teenager scramble. Oh, my God. Just so good. So many teens scrambling everywhere all the time. Yeah, I got really good at talking to the cops, I think, from those experiences because I've never had a party get broken up. Oh, yeah, really? Yeah, never. I've been told to keep it down, but I've never been. I've never gotten a ticket and I've never had a party be broken up.
02:02:58
Speaker
That's pretty good. Yeah. I never got a ticket from a party either. I never understood it. You know, my joke is always like, you're going to take away my house license. That's a dumb joke. I don't know. I'm just going to bleep that out. I'm just going to cut that out. But yeah, um, that's good. But yeah, the mall, Grossmont mall, very formative. Absolutely. We're really, we're really belaboring the point, but yeah. Uh, anything else to say?
02:03:25
Speaker
about Oh, there's a red thing where they reference the comic book code. Oh, like how like how the comic books are graded. So I can't remember because I saw this movie like a week ago. So I already can't remember with this references, but I have a good note about it. What does it say?
02:03:47
Speaker
Um, I think Stan Lee, Stan Lee is talking to Brody about something about relationships and he makes like a reference to something and Brody's like, I don't know what you mean. And he's like, Oh, that was like a comic book code thing. And the comic book code was, I believe, and if anyone who's listening, if anyone will ever listen and they know about comic books, probably screaming at their steering wheel right now, but, um, it was like Batman and Robin were too gay.
02:04:17
Speaker
And they really had to like butch it up and make it like, because they would like sleep in the same bed and stuff. And I think Batman and Robin were kind of gay coded. And it was like, no, this is too gay. You have to like not do it. And it's a very smart reference to the fact that Brody and TS are kind of gay for each other. Oh, absolutely. They are each other's most successful relationship.
02:04:40
Speaker
Pretty much. Exactly. You know, yeah, they they have the most charisma, the most charisma sexually and like intimately is between them. There's a lot of like that's a lot of that in these movies from the from 1995 that I'm noticing is like shitty young men can only be intimate with other shitty young men and and don't know how to have intimate relationships with women. Right. And then it was normalized through the bromance. Hmm.
02:05:10
Speaker
You know, the bromance genre. Right. But yeah, I mean, that is very true. Like the idea of being intimate and fragile and vulnerable with women was like so appalling that the only people that they could they felt like they could do that with was guys. But it was also super coded as like, I'm not gay, but, you know, like that whole fucking shtick.
02:05:38
Speaker
Right. No homo. Yeah. I mean, you see like TS and Brody sitting next to each other and smiling at each other.
Themes in Mallrats and Sequel Hopes
02:05:47
Speaker
And you see Brody when Brody when we first meet Jay and Silent Bob Brody is like butting heads with Jason Muse. They're talking to each other face to face with their foreheads pressed against each other. And they're smiling. Also weirdly aggressive.
02:06:05
Speaker
It is, but it's like so intimate. Yeah, yeah.
02:06:09
Speaker
And, and then like, yeah, Jay keeps on like slapping shit out of Bob's hands, but when they walk away, like Jason has like his arm around Bob's waist and it's just like lots of, lots of homoeroticism. Yeah. So good job, Kevin Smith for pointing that out. I think he's, I think he's definitely kind of like sending that aspect of, of, of society. He's sort of like uncovering that aspect of society at the time. Yeah.
02:06:36
Speaker
Who knew that we would find so much philosophical contemplation in a fucking movie about a bunch of dipshits hanging out at the mall? Absolutely. Maybe it's easier for us because of our own experience with the mall and being like in a group of ne'er-do-wells.
02:06:56
Speaker
in that range. Yeah. Uh, general dipshits. I thought that I found the language, uh, Shakespearean at times. Did you ever happen to notice that? Like lots of, uh, definitely like weird turns of phrase felt Shakespearean. There's definitely like a delivery sort of thing about it. Like, you know, there's like the, like Brody
02:07:24
Speaker
plays the like, he plays like, if we're gonna tie it into Shakespeare, he very much plays like the sort of Mercutio of the story, like from Romeo and Juliet, like Mercutio's role is very explanatory, but it's also very like, like, it's very like, tender. And the love that he has for Romeo is like very, very like,
02:07:52
Speaker
very protective and like, you know, he wants to like, he like always wants, there's like a, there's a type, it's a type of role that Shakespeare was really famous for that everyone has, that every single one of his plays had, particularly the comedies, but some of the tragedies as well. Like Taming of the Shrew has one in like,
02:08:19
Speaker
much ado about nothing, they all have this one character who interacts with everyone and is sort of liked by everyone, but then also has this role of like sort of exposition going, that is to the audience, but it's exposition of what's happening to characters. And that's sort of like the role that Brody has. Almost like a fool of sorts. Yeah, yeah.
02:08:47
Speaker
Yeah. Anyway, let's wrap up this fucking movie. It's been almost three hours. Let's get the shit over with. We're never gonna make a short one. No, never. OK, you gave it a 260 of enjoyability.
02:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I'm going to be a little bit more generous, I think. I think I'm going to be right around that like 350 range because like it's funny. Like there are gags in this movie that are like hilarious. Yeah. You know, the like.
02:09:22
Speaker
The the wall, the head through the wall gag, hilarious. The fucking getting chased by lifeors throughout the mall is hilarious. Like, you know, there are moments where it's like really fucking funny. Yeah, veracity.
02:09:43
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think we've talked. Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing we've talked about in this film is its veracity is like, you know, it's it's taken on modern life and gender dynamics and man, child's and toxic masculinity and shit. Right. Yeah. I mean, it nails all that stuff. The only stuff it doesn't nail is like the hijinks. Right. Like none of that's actually realistic. But like all of the interpersonal shit is like super realistic. I'm going to give it I'm going to give it a
02:10:09
Speaker
A three. I'm going to go 350 again. I'm going to give it like a 350. Right. Immersiveness. I would argue that for me today, it's not nearly as immersive as it was for me when I was a teenager. But like. I'm going to go for twelve. OK.
02:10:37
Speaker
Cool. Not quite 450, not quite 350. We're going to go 412. 412. OK, for a grand total of 1,112 points from Beth. In what arena would you watch it again, do you think?
02:11:01
Speaker
I would say definitely the revival theater. That would be like fucking like super fun. I think it would be really fun to do like if there was like a a clerk small rats chasing Amy. Yeah. Thing. I think that would be even if there wasn't like
02:11:21
Speaker
anybody talking about it. I think that that would be super fucking fun. But I think it would be way, way more fun if there was like people talking about it because I honestly would love to hear about
02:11:36
Speaker
how they, what they were thinking when they were filming it and like how they reflect back on it. That's why like, I kind of really secretly hope that maybe a mall rat's two will happen. Cause like maybe it will be reflective of some of the things that we talked about, you know? Yeah, expanding on some of those things for sure. Well, all right. We were much closer this time in our opinions.
02:12:02
Speaker
Uh, you think so? Let me look back. Yes. Oh, as opposed to last time. Yeah. And I, I, I scored it 9 95. You scored it 11 12. Um, as opposed to last time where there was like a fucking 700 point gap or something. 400 point gap. Yeah. Yeah.
02:12:20
Speaker
Uh, yeah, same, same here. I would definitely watch it, um, at a revival theater. I don't think I would stream. Actually, I might stream this movie. Maybe I drunk at a party, I would say. Yep. Yep. Put it on would be fun. That would be fun. Uh, maybe on TV with commercials, like if I'm like cleaning the house, I hate commercials. I would, I mean, I would, I would stream it like in that same regard.
02:12:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't even own a television. So I don't know when I would ever watch commercials. But yeah, revival theater for sure. Like.
02:12:58
Speaker
in a marathon with other those other like that core group of Kevin Smith movies and specifically like if Kevin Smith or Jason Muse were talking. Oh, yeah, 100% would be. Yeah. Awesome. Well, this has been we're spanning time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening. Please do all the things you're supposed to do to a podcast, which as a listener, I certainly never do. And I assume Beth does not either. But I do rate rate. I really rarely review them, but I do rate them.
02:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, I can't be bothered, but I should, because it's like an apology. It doesn't cost you anything. Indeed. And in case you need to be reminded, I'll tell you what you need is a fatty boom, baddy, blunt. Then I guarantee you see a sailboat, an ocean, and maybe even some of them big-titted mermaids doing some of that lesbian shit. Look at me. Look at me, you sloppy bitch. Outstanding.
02:13:54
Speaker
Outstanding. All right. Beth Martini, thank you. Thanks. But, you know, I'm glad we do this. It really fills my heart with a lot of joy. I'm glad we do this, too. And I feel like, yeah, this is fun. Do you enjoy it? I really do.
02:14:44
Speaker
I'm missing tonight I want to leave tonight
02:15:25
Speaker
Bye.
02:16:20
Speaker
Such a minute where the fill goes Darling strings to make a sound You will sing it too You will sing it too