‘Hardcore’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey
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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find... What's that podcast called that you do, Chris? The Watch. The Watch. Yeah. With Andy Greenwald. America's premier adult entertainment podcast. How's porn month been going on the show? You've been prepping for this episode. It would do so... It would do numbers. Porn month. Sean Fennessey, the big picture. Yeah, still going as well. My name is Bill Simmons.

This is the last episode of Rock Bottom Month. We're ending in a week early, even though it's April 22nd. We could have squeezed in one more Rock Bottom, but I think we're good. We're going to go back to feel-good movies. Anything you say, General. Rock Bottom. The listeners have been loving it. Really loving it. Rock Bottom Month could only end in one way, with Hardcore, with George C. Scott. Turn it off. What's next? A controversial subject. A brilliant actor.

A powerful and touching film. A movie which will take you into a world never dealt with in a major motion picture. A father searches for his missing daughter, only to find she has been used in a sordid and shocking way. George C. Scott. Hardcore. Rated R. Coming soon to a selected theater near you. Alright, hardcore. We've circled this movie for how many years? Two, three...

We always joked we would never do it. Now we're doing it. Paul Schrader, your guy. It is my guy. Yeah. P.S. Yeah, this is his second movie on the rewatchables, and I want to say I'm proud of him. What was the first one? American Gigolo. Oh, right. Only two? I think so. Well, he's written movies we've done. We did Taxi Driver, of course, which is connected to this movie, but this is his second directed feature. I test drove about an hour of autofocus in preparation of this. Did you? Yeah.

Not that fun of a movie. Respectable. Well done. But I wouldn't call it a rewatchable. Probably not. Probably not blue collar, but we're doing hardcore. Um, CR, I'll start here. The tough beat dad pantheon for movies. Yeah. Tough beat dad. Are we going to make a pyramid? No pyramid. Interesting idea though. I didn't really press.

Shoemaker, I'm going to need you to put George C. Scott's face watching his daughter watch porn. Can you put some bummed out dance? It's Death Wish and Hardcore as the kind of bird and magic. Death Wish, it just spawns five different movies of him just becoming a vigilante because of what happened to his family.

Taken, I think, is up there. Good one. Yeah. Liam Neeson was one I showed my daughter when she was maybe seven or eight. Like, this is what happens when you don't listen to dad. You showed your daughter the film Taken? I sure did. Yeah, this is what happens. All right. Listen to your father. You'll show your daughter when she's like eight. No, I won't. No, I won't. You will. No, I don't think. At seven years old? No, Zoe saw it. Zoe was like nine. And was she like, I got the message, the lesson is learned? Notice how...

She didn't tell her father that she was in Paris, like, going to this U2 concert. Remember? Like, the lack of communication and Ashley's being kidnapped by both Gurren and Paris. And would it have taken impacted U2 tour sales? I suspect no. I think the sphere, everything went perfectly well there. But in both of those cases that you just cited, though, the father does a lot of tough beating. You know, really. Yeah.

Charles Bronson and Liam Neeson in those movies. Like, they really take a kind of revenge on the world because of what's happened. So is our guy George in Hardcore. Sort of. He immediately becomes a porn producer in five minutes. Seamlessly. Buys a couple jackets and some pants. He's ready to roll. Ransom, I have in the Tough Beat. Dad Pantheon. Yeah. And then it gets a little grim with Monsters Ball and Mystic River.

Those are in there. But the movies around a dad having some sort of traumatic event. I mean, I think Mr. Griver qualifies. Yeah, I would say it qualifies. But yeah, this is... Every once in a while, they'll make a movie like this where you watch and you go, what would I do if this was my kid? It seems like all the...

All the possibilities are taken off the table because people lose their minds if their kids are threatened in some way or something happened. Chris is smiling. Oh, it's just because I don't have this problem. What could be taken from you? He just says it with Joel Embiid. Yeah, what is it that could be taken from you? Bryce Harper.

So if Bryce Harper was kidnapped by Romanian terrorists, it would be like watching my daughter do porn. That's what it's going to be like when Embiid suits up for the Knicks next year. So it's all good. We also have that late 70s kind of grimy underworld scene, which so many of these movies do well, that gets set in New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles, where you're just... I don't know what was going on from 76 on.

So it's like... There's a lawlessness. As we discussed with the combat zone in Boston once upon a time, there was just some sort of lawlessness just happening. It's like a 10-year hangover from the 60s that just gets increasingly grimier. The drugs get worse and harder. I think the politics get weirder. And I think that the lessons people take from...

Free love and all the social upheaval of the 60s are now like being adapted to these really like Bacchanalian, just debaucherous kind of behaviors. And this is one of my favorite kind of movies, the going underground movie where a square has to get hip somehow is just is one of my favorite subgenres. Would you call it like a cousin, like a second cousin of cruising?

Yeah, I think this, Cruisin' Taxi Driver, like, there's so many films in this. And, you know, all the way up through 8mm is, like, kind of, this is, like, the father of that. 8mm basically rewrote this movie. And by the way, I'm fine with it. But it's the same kind of premise.

Yeah, it's, I mean, even Easy Rider has that element of, like, Jack Nicholson being pulled into this world of these drug dealers and bikers and, you know, all the new Hollywood stuff in the 60s and early 70s is kind of leading towards this end-of-the-decade feeling, like, okay, what has free love wrought, basically? Which is this society that is honestly just more comfortable and more open to a sexualized world of entertainment. Like, this movie is a little bit, I think it kind of overstates the seediness. Like,

porn in major cities and strip clubs and this kind of... It was just accessible. If you just went to Times Square in 1977, that was culture at that time. Or 1992. Yeah. I mean, as recently... Right up until Giuliani, it was just much more present. I think in most major cities now, that's the weird thing about... I think we all grew up in cities where...

you would be like, right, that's where all the porn theaters are. Or like the porn theater is down the street from an actual regular movie theater or something. And now that's been kind of wiped off. Like you don't find like that kind of stuff. In cities, you don't see it as much. I mean, even growing up in the suburbs, there were just adult bookstores that were in strip malls that were next to the pharmacy. Like that was not really that weird. You know, as a kid, I never totally understood what those stores were, but it was just a part of American life. Yeah, it was like marital AIDS. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, think about late 70s. We don't really have VHS yet. We don't have pay-per-view. We play by magazine. And then if you're, you know, a super horny person or you just...

wanted to be around sex and couldn't figure out how to get there, you would go to these places in these cities. You would go, you'd bring a roll of quarters and be like, I'm just going to pump in quarters and this girl, the curtain's going to go up and I'm going to just watch her be naked for two minutes. Or you go sit in a movie theater with a bunch of whoever. Yeah. And it was just different. And now, now the paradigm's completely shifted where all of it's private.

Right? It's like even strip joints. Like I think some people would even be afraid to go in there because of the cell phone era. Yeah, you won't go during summer. Chris will still go. You stopped going to the Spearman Rhino after years. You were a VIP class member. Well, I get too many TMZ cameras coming up to me being like, Chris, Chris, what do you think is going to happen in game two? How's Embiid's knee? Yeah, when I moved to LA, it was just ending.

whatever like the last vestiges of whatever had happened. There was one also transitional thing that happened in the 80s where you started getting in the independent video stores

The private section with the swinging saloon doors where you could rent the four movies. I'm not too serious about myself to not admit that I used to do the slow walk-by and just try to get the ankle in to see some of the video boxes to see what was going on in there. What's Jenna Jameson up to this week? How old did you have to be where you just felt comfortable just wandering through the doors? They were gone by the time I was old enough. Yeah, I looked too young.

I wasn't going to be like, it's just me. It's just me. We were like seniors in high school. Just like, let's go. Let's go in the. Did you ever actually rent anything out of that section? I think we probably did a couple of times. It's different air. We talked about this in other pods. They had terrible names in them. Schrader loved this world. Ebert, our guy Raj wrote about Schrader.

his movies are about people with values in conflict with society he wrote taxi driver and rolling thunder and run directed blue collar all three are about people prepared to defend with violence if necessary their steadfast beliefs ebert loved this movie which we'll get to in a second but what walk us through the shader piece of hardcore

What's going on with him? Well, it's like a deeply autobiographical movie in a way that I can't think of any other filmmaker having done, which is it's very much about his exit from this world of Grand Rapids and Calvinist, you know, Dutch Reformation religion.

but the main character is his dad i mean he's basically written a film about what happens if his dad had chased him when he left michigan to go find a career and a sleazy lifestyle in los angeles you know schrader's very open about his interest in the world of sexuality and guns and drugs and you know he's somebody who's looking to reject

the way that he was brought up. But the frame of the movie is so interesting because his dad famously never watched any of his movies. He never engaged really with these worlds that he created. This being a second film and making it so personal,

but also so gimmicky with the oh my god that's my daughter you know marketing tagline is is fascinating he's like a master of high and low so like you know if you read his film criticism and he's written a lot of really amazing film criticism he obviously has like a complete understanding of cinema and cinema history and especially japanese cinema and this movie is basically a beat for beat remake of the searchers so he obviously has like a really great understanding of classical storytelling but is not afraid to get

really dirty and really exploitative and also very spiritual. And it's a kind of mixture that's very hard to do right, but when he does it right, it's just incredible. I like that there's a book called Schrader on Schrader. Made me think like- What are you going to do Simmons on Simmons? Simmons on Simmons. I feel like I need to think about, right?

Simmons on Simmons just like some photo of me on the cover you are doing it every week with a smoking jacket you know like you have got Simmons on Simmons yeah can't wait I mean he's like one of those new Hollywood guys though who's obsessed with other filmmakers too and thinking about like well this is my movie about this and this is my movie about this and

his recent stuff is like they're all kind of about the same thing. They're all kind of about a Schrader-esque guy who's really lonely and sad and feels like the world is ending. This movie is not like those movies. There's no scene in the movie where there's like a guy journaling about his pain inside of his heart. The George C. Scott character is a real outlier in his filmography.

When did you reject Calvinism? I can't remember. What year was that? In your 20s? When you were working for Newberry Comics? Yeah, 83. Right after you upsold somebody at South Park. Yeah, my first Camel Light. I was just like, I've fallen away from the church. Wikipedia, which I rarely read actual excerpts from Wikipedia, but I thought this was just great.

This is how it described hardcore. Hardcore is a 1979 American neo-noir thriller crime drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader. Its plot follows a conservative Midwestern businessman whose teenage daughter goes missing in California. Beat. With the help of a prostitute, his search leads him into the illicit subculture of pornography, including snuff films. That's pretty much the movie. It is the movie. That's what happens. That's the movie. Um,

There's a... So obviously we do research of this stuff, and there was stuff I knew about this movie and stuff I didn't know. And one of the things I didn't know was that he wanted the ending to be totally different. This is written about at length in Tarantino's Cinema Speculation book. He's got a whole chapter dedicated to hardcore, which he's like, the first hour of this movie is excellent. It's like an excellently rendered adult drama about this world. And then he has a lot of notes about how it goes off the rails and includes the snuff film stuff. And then the ending...

Which is a pretty bad ending, honestly, relative to what the movie has been all the way up until this point. Like, it feels like it kind of, like, rejects. It just turns into a 70s action movie out of nowhere for eight minutes. And just, like, tonally, it just shifts to just, like, a movie that isn't as hard-bitten as you think it's supposed to be. It races to the end. Yeah, yeah. Is it okay that I still kind of like it?

I know it doesn't fit with the rest of the movie. Do you want to tell people what the alternative is? Yeah, let's talk about the alternate, though. Yeah, the alternative ending is, you know, his daughter has disappeared. She's become involved in the world of porn, and she dies unrelated to the porn work in a car accident. And this woman that George C. Scott's character has befriended, who is a prostitute,

He sort of like adopts her as his daughter's surrogate and brings her back to Grand Rapids, Michigan with him. And that it feels, you know, very similar to, it's like very much in the vein of The Searchers in that way. And it probably would have been like a more emotionally realized version of the story, but maybe doesn't satisfy our impulses as audiences when you sit down for a movie where you're like, God, I just want this guy to save his daughter, you know? And that's what he does in the real ending. It's a much funnier ending than the original ending.

Nikki going back to Grand Rapids. Nikki going back to Grand Rapids. Hey guys, this is Nikki. She's wearing one of her outfits. Hey everybody. But she's just such a great character. I mean, she's like, the movie really works in a lot of ways because of her. Yeah, it's weird because Susan Hutley

Who plays Nikki. Yeah, she did soaps after this, right? Yeah, she was in Escape from New York. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she's in Vice Squad. Yeah, it never totally happened for her, but she's great in this movie. Like, if you would have said what happens to her, you would have guessed, oh, she must have become a star, right? And she just really didn't. It is strange, but she also kind of got typecast as characters like this. I tried to figure out what happened to her. She was married to Kurt Russell. They had a kid, and then she basically stopped acting in the 90s. And

It just said she just kind of went off the grid. And one of the notes was she stopped accepting autograph requests in 2002. That's an actual thing about her on the internet. So I was like, I don't know what happened. People were coming up to her and being like, I have this hardcore poster. How many autograph requests could she have even gotten? Well, she's got some complicated roles in her past. What was it, 2004 when you stopped requesting autograph requests? Yeah, that's going to be after game two of the Sixers series. And then our guy, George C. Scott,

Wow. Boy, is there some good research about him. The man. I actually did a full deep dive on what a fucking wacko George C. Scott was. But won an Oscar in 1970 for Pat and refused it. Nominated three other times. Won two Emmys. How many times do you think he was married, Chris? Five. Five. Five marriages.

His biography that somebody wrote about him, the title is Rage and Glory. Is that the alt title for Simmons on Simmons? Rage and Glory. Sean, like...

legendary drunk asshole? The biggest drunk, yeah. Like, is there a more legendary drunk asshole than George C. Scott? It's Oliver Reed. You know, there's a couple of guys from England and the 60s. Well, the British guys were different. The British guys were always tanked and just like blood type gin. Yeah. They had built into George C. Scott's contract days for him to basically be on a bender. To wander off. Yeah. I mean, he is...

He's the human volcano. That's what he is in his performance style and seemingly as a person in every movie, you're waiting for him to explode. And he explodes once in every movie he makes in the 70s. And it is fucking awesome when he explodes. He is the best at blowing his top. But he seemed like a tough guy to work with.

One of my first favorite movies ever was Day of the Dolphin, which he was in. I think it was like one of the first three movies I probably ever saw in a theater. Mike Nichols. It's like Mike Nichols' boondoggle. I said it was like What's Up, Doc? Day of the Dolphin. And I can't remember the third one. What a start to your movie watching experience. But I always knew him as the guy from that movie. And then as you get older and you start seeing more movies, and then you're like, oh, I'm really interested in this guy. And then you find out more about him. Do you have a favorite George C. Scott performance? I mean, it's probably Hardcore.

I liked him in The Changeling. I liked Hospital. The Hospital is my favorite. The Hospital and this movie I feel like are yeah Patty they're paired because they're basically both playing impotent guys and he's really good at his rage is because he just can't get it out. Like that's really what's

that's the second for a guy who drinks all the time can't get it up and is married five times you know like read into why he's very good at these characters George C. he catches some strange stuff yeah tough one he's a genius but also Strangelove obviously Dr. Strangelove he's so funny in that movie there's a Time Magazine article about him from 1971 that's

Basically, the 70s, the big magazine features back then are like one of my true delights in life where people just gave quotes and just assumed, oh, this will come out and nobody will ever see it again. It's also like they hung out with the subject for 11 days. Yeah, and the subject just said crazy shit. They'd hang out for five hours and then the guy would just say something insane. I'm just going to read you a couple excerpts.

Yeah. Yeah.

And he says, this sort of thing happens to actors who have a reputation for being tough guys. He says in a defensive rationale, there's always some guy who wants to take you apart. I'm not Marciano and I can't keep this stuff up all my life. I should stay at a bar rooms, I suppose, but I happen to like them. Then he has also violently struck at least one woman in rage and twice has injured himself by ramming his fist against the wall and a mirror.

There's a gentleness and mundaneness in Scott's life as well. What an amazing follow-up sentence. Yeah, quite a transition. I'm going to read that one again. There's a gentleness and mundaneness in Scott's life as well. This is after we've thrown domestic violence and self-mutilation. Yeah, but you know what? I'll just say, putting aside his character as a person, like, that...

gentle mundanity is very evident in the first 20 minutes of this movie. Right. Where he's just like going to his furniture shop and being like, these specs look good. And if you're watching this for the first time, you might be like, how much fucking furniture making in Grand Rapids? Right. Very still, repressed guy for a long period of time in the film. The patent producer, Frank McCarthy, in this Time Magazine piece says...

He rewrote several scenes to make Pat more sympathetic, but the rewrites were not as good as what we already had. Scott missed eight days of work, some because of her current problem with the retina in his left eye, two because he was drinking hard and feeling mean. Quote, I got fed up, exhausted, and frustrated, so I'd go out and get loaded. And then McCarthy said, he's difficult to deal with, but always for a purpose. I wish I had a picture with Scott started tomorrow. That was like the recurring theme of these guys. They're like, hey, he's a fucking pain in the ass, but great actor.

I mean, we don't make them like that anymore for better or for worse. You definitely cannot strike a woman and then go to set the next day. Or just punch a mirror repeatedly. Austin Butler missed seven days of work. We don't really do that. Schrader tells a great story about how halfway through filming the movie, Scott turned to him and said, Hey, man, you're a heck of a writer, but you're an awful director. And you're doing a terrible job. In the middle of the movie. Like, he's an asshole.

John Huston, the director, said, quote, Scott is one of the best actors alive, but my opinion of him as an actor is much higher than my opinion of him as a man. George C. Scott. Tough one. Anyway, you can read more in his biography, Raging Glory.

So it really seems like he was the number one asshole of that whole era. I think he is. I'm sure there were guys from the 50s and 60s who were just like alcohol maniacs. It's just great. You'll read stories. These guys are all also like those who are still alive. It's like

Freakin' was like really recently before he died, Freak was just like, Pacino's an asshole. Like, Pacino was an absolute jerk off. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, to be generous to some of these people, making movies like this is really intense and stressful and like having to channel what he's doing in this movie, it

probably makes you a little insane. Yeah. I think all actors have to be like kind of 10% insane when you get somebody who's susceptible to alcohol or drugs or already... Like he clearly... Psychologically, like I'm sure he had a lot of shit going on. He clearly had some problems as a person. And this... I think this work tends to exacerbate it. And in fact...

producers like seize on this. Like they see a guy like him and they're like, we need that, that George C. Scott energy, that craziness that he brings to a movie. And then, so it keeps feeding itself. That's not excusing the behavior. It sounds like he's, he was not a good guy, but we don't, I can't think of anybody who can, who brings this to movies right now. There's nothing like this going on in movies. Yeah. Who is this now?

I mean, Nick Cage is like the closest thing of like that volcanic. But it's so performative. I love Nick Cage, but it's not the same thing where you feel like George C. Scott like actually is having a meltdown in some of these movies. Remember the old Kevin Clark game show? Great hang, bad hang? Uh-huh. Where you had to decide whether somebody was a great hang or a bad hang. George C. Scott, probably bad hang. Bad, bad hang. Gets worse. Seem tough. I think more drinks go down. The first shot in beer and it's just like, what do you think of the socks this year, George? And it's like, okay. And then it's like,

Two hours later. Next thing you know, he's swinging a pool cue around. Yeah, fifth inning. He's like, is that guy side-eyeing me over there? George C. Scott. Well, he didn't get along with Paul Schrader, as Sean alluded to, and there's a moment when he refused to come out of his trailer. He threatened to quit the film. He tried to force Schrader to promise he would never direct again. Paul Schrader directed again. One of your favorite cinematographers is involved in this one, CR. Yeah. Your guy, Chappie. How about the score?

Jack Nietzsche? Nietzsche. Nietzsche? Yeah. Just all hitters. Like, everybody worked on this movie. It was just like... Paul Silbert did the production design. Like, just a great assemblage of talent behind the scenes. It's Tom Rolfe who cut the right stuff. Like, it's some of the very best people. But a lot of it is casting off of what Scorsese had done. You know, like, it's a lot of people that Schrader got to meet from working on Taxi Driver. And then Peter Boyle's in this as well. Yes. It's just...

Some actors just belong in a decade. Pete Boyle. Like Anthony Michael Hall is just like, you should only have existed in the 80s. Peter Boyle is like, you should only have existed in the 70s. Yeah, David Schwimmer, full 90s. Full 90s, that's it. Peter Boyle, you just see him and you're like, oh man.

This is going to go sideways somehow. This guy's going to be drinking Budweiser out of a glass. Yeah, he had a surprisingly good career for a pretty strange-looking guy. Yeah, I mean, he went on to be a big sitcom star, but this, Taxi Driver, Joe, and Young Frankenstein, you're in the Hall of Fame. There's more, too. Wasn't he in Eddie Coyle? Eddie Coyle? He was. He's good in Eddie Coyle. He's hilarious in this movie. He's great. Andy Mast, the private dick, is so funny. One of the things I love about this movie is there's...

like five different directions it goes where you're like, oh, I could also spend time in that movie. That could also, like the Andy Mass PI easily could have been a movie. It could have been a great TV show. Wouldn't you watch every week him like picking up scumbags in LA on the porn sets? That would be a great show. It's like porn Spencer for hire. Yeah.

Nikki the Hooker easily could have been her own show. It's a great idea. The two porn guys. We could have gotten Bill Ramada still in there. Bill Ramada was absolutely a movie. I was so interested in his role. That made 5.3 million. Bill Ramada. Bill Ramada. What a legend. That's one of the things that the trailer is amazing at creating these people who feel real. A lot of the characters in this movie feel real. And there's so much. Yeah, well, we'll get into it. Our guy Raj. Raj.

Four stars. Yeah. He says he didn't love the ending. He said in bringing his story to a satisfactory conclusion, Schrader doesn't speak to the deeper and more human themes he's introduced. Too bad. But hardcore, flawed and uneven contains moments of pure revelation. And his guy Siskel gave it three and a half stars. Thought it was both a rich film of ideas and of strikingly real characters.

George C. Scott gave a great performance. This movie was critically loved except by Pauline Kael who made her mad for some reason. For some reason? Yeah. Because she's had some issues with the set with the sexuality and the sexuality stuff. I think she's but she was actually like it's just not electrifying at all right? Like it's just She wanted yeah she wanted it to be more erotic for some reason. Yeah. But that's not the

That's not the point of the movie. The movie's flaw is also its strength, which is that the movie is like the lead character in the movie is shocked and horrified by what's going on, but you can't make the movie without showing us what happens in the world. So you're seeing it through the eyes of a character. And at a certain point, the character stops being shocked and horrified by it, and you don't totally understand why. So it gets a little bit confusing. There's a certain point when he is the porn producer

And one of the guys like really wants to pull his pants down and he to show him his dick and he pulls his pants down and he's just like yeah okay and he's like completely burnt out like it's as if he is no longer scandalized by all this stuff. What's it like to get burnt out? I wouldn't know. On that one Chris. How many hours in the combat zone?

It was like a... A CR. Yeah, let's do CR in the combat zone. We never stopped in, but it was adjacent to bars down there. You would walk through it, and you would just say a hearty hello to anybody who was just putting in work down there. A quarter at a time, a hearty hello. What about you? Well, when we were in college, Worcester had kind of like half a street with bad stuff, and then a couple strip joints spread around. But there was this...

This like porn, like the classic like porn book movie shop that we would go to for comedy's sake every once in a while and just go through like, you know, they'd have stuff split by genres. Yeah. And the people that were in there were some of the darkest, weirdest people you're going to find in America. I don't want to get ahead of, uh,

Best needle drop, but that's by far the funniest point in this movie. When he goes in and the helpless is playing in the jungle and there's just like one guy reading. It's amazing. All right. Today's most rewatchable scene is brought to you by Nissan SUV. If you ever wonder what's around the next corner, what happens when you push further, what's over the horizon, then you need a Nissan SUV. The 2024 range includes the Nissan Rogue with class exclusive built-in Google, the Pathfinder and the Armada.

Go find your next adventure with a Nissan SUV. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. Most rewatchable scene. So I do like Peter Boyle's first scene in the diner as Andy Mast when we meet him and he's like, it's $750 a week minimum. I was trying to think like that's like a crazy amount of money for 1979. Yeah. I mean, what's that now? Like three grand a week? He's the best at what he does, right?

It's got to be more than three grand. Four grand? What's the inflation conversion there? Six times as much? Seven? Also, he worked for four months. So how much was that? That's $12,000. He's basically scamming it to some extent. 12 grand in 1979. How much furniture is our guy Jake selling? Yeah.

Seemed like he had a nice little business. Yeah, and he also had the celery thing. I think it was like maybe some family money in operation. Yeah, sure. His wife blew town. I wouldn't put anything before this scene rewatchable, but I really like how he did it, where he just takes us into Grand Rapids. I like when the whole family's together and it's like they're showing them and he's like cutting the turkey and then it cuts to all of them watching TV and they're just, you could tell the kids are just completely bummed out. That scene is super important though because you hear that guy say...

Oh, Uncle Joe. What are you doing? You know who makes it? All the kids who couldn't get along here, they go out to California and make television. I didn't like them when they were here, and I don't like them out there. If you don't buy one yourself, the kids go someplace else and watch. Give the kids a break. It's Christmas. What? What?

And that's like the signal. There's also the really good scene of, of, of Kristen with her friend when the friend is playing chicken with her. Yeah. It's like, oh man. Yeah. Yeah. And you never think Kristen would be the one who would become a snare. You know, they wrong foot you into thinking it's the blonde who's going to disappear. Next scene. Uh, Andy Bass rents out a theater. Have you ever seen any pornographic movies, Jake? What? You know, stag films. Now, what? Have you ever seen any pornographic movies, Jake? No. Oh,

You know what a hardcore movie is? Yeah, it's like a stag film, huh? Yeah. Have you ever seen one of those? No. They're legal now. All over. So I got it. Even here in Grand Rapids. Huh? There's a little, uh, stall theater up here. It's closed now, but, uh, I got the use of it for an hour. It's something you ought to see.

What do you think that cost to rent out that theater in 1979? It's a lot of theatricality for making a point. You could just be like, your daughter's in a porno, but I'm going to try and figure out where she is. Yeah. I had this as a nitpick so we can do it now. One of the reasons I like this scene is he's almost like sneak attacking with them. It's like it's in football. He's running a double reverse on him. Just like, just tell him. Yeah.

Yo, this is bad. Andy Mast is the shanty of private investigators. He's got so many guys in motion. All this stuff happening pre-snap. He's standing behind with his arms crossed, like, watching them. It's really kind of fucked up. It's such a weird way to do it. The related nitpick, which the whole movie hinges on, is how did he find this 8mm reel? Well, that's the other nitpick. I mean...

That's like a needle in a stack of needles. I think the only thing... He watched every 8mm reel made in the previous three months? I was going to answer this later, but I don't think there was as much porn back then, I think, is the answer. I don't think... I think by the time we get into the 80s, this is impossible. Yeah, 77, 78, 79, especially with newer stuff, there probably wasn't that much. Do you think with your Danny Kelly's draft board mind for porn history, you would be able to find it today? Yeah.

This is a hard movie to Google. Let me put it that way. On a work computer. Well, it's tough because even if you Google it and you type in hardcore with anything, then a whole bunch of searches come up that you want. It is hard. Listen, this is the best scene in the movie. It's unbelievable watching George C. Scott sit down and be like, oh, what's this? Wait a second. And then it cuts back and forth. It cuts to the movie. A second guy comes in.

And then we kind of just land on George for a minute. Yeah. Just getting more and more and he's sinking. Turn it off. And just does the George C. Scott thing. Turn it off. Do you think that Andy Mass told the projectionist wait until three turn it offs before you turn it off? What are they waiting for there? There's also something creepy about the fact

it's obvious what it is immediately. He could just be like, got it. I got it. Yes. As soon as she takes her shirt off, I'd be like, I'm out of here. The second guy coming in, you're like, okay, good, good, good. I'm good. No more. His relationship to his daughter, I think is somewhat ambiguous over the course of the film and especially the end. Yeah. And the fact that he is like, let's just stay for the end credits on this one is pretty intense. You know, I don't know if there's ever been another movie scene like this.

This is also like what was happening in the world where a big movie star was like, yeah, we're going to do this scene in a Hollywood movie. That's crazy. Well, then Peter Boyle says, as Andy says, nobody makes it. Nobody shows it. Nobody sees it. Love it. It's like it doesn't exist. That's the line of the movie. And then he says, when I find her, you might not want her back.

Which is the other kind of secret piece of this movie. Like, what's happened to her and how much damage is there? And are you... What daughter are you even getting back? Are you getting back a version of her that's sustainable? And that's why the ending kind of doesn't work because there is this whole big question of can you be forgiven in these communities when you do things like this? Or is it because all of his ideology is, like, that they're already evil? Like, that man is already, like, complete trash until they find, like, salvation. Right.

I don't want to step on CR's great shot Gordo corner. Cause you know, it's funny. It's one of your things. Um, I really liked the fun house mirror shot of him at the tail end of the scene of George C. Scott. It goes like sideways up high.

It just starts to get a little blurry and he's just kind of like losing his mind. It's like he'll never be the same. I also like the way they shoot everything in general. Like when they're talking outside the theater after like what's behind him and you can just see like different like 70s porn stuff. And it's just we go from like he doesn't know what a porn thing is. Now he's in it and it's he's surrounded by it and all the shots. I think it's just really good filmmaking. The porn scene in the motel is hilarious. It's amazing.

I could have gone another three, four minutes. The movie is at least 40% a comedy on purpose. I fully believe. I don't think that it's like a mistake. Ramada is like hilarious. The filmmaker, the guy, the UCLA guy is, is, and him looking basically like Spielberg is amazing. Like,

There's a lot of very biting humor. And this is the thing with every Schrader movie. It's the most serious or disgusting subject matter imaginable, but there are at least five moments that are laugh-out-loud funny. And the funniest moment is George C. Scott sitting on the couch wearing a tie-dye shirt, a fake mustache, and a terrible wig, and auditioning young men to come in for his porn movie that doesn't exist. You can imagine how influential this was for the Tarantino generation and Paul Thomas Anderson, all these dudes. You can see how much they just grabbed left and right from...

And the same fun and humor that they're having in otherwise like serious genre movies, the same way that this movie is. Nikki, Nikki, come on sweetheart. Now you're lying back. You feel like a fucking, you're so good at that. You're setting your mind free. You're thinking about your dad. Your mind is open. It's just, she's a good director. UCLA. The kid's a good director. UCLA. Um,

There was a real porn star in the scene with our girl Susan Hubway, Serena. She's in the credits.

She did some Googling on her that probably almost shut down my iPad. Was married to Jamie Gillis in the 70s, porn legend. Whoa. Yeah. A lot of credits for Serena. Interesting. They were volume shooters, you know, back then. Yeah. Sort of buddy heels. Yeah, that's right. They need to get warmed up. What does he say? The kid's got a big schlong, great talent? It's like, because he gets it up finally. He's like, that kid's got a great schlong. He's like, great talent. That seems awesome. I also love the hotel scene.

Those 70s hotels, like I just don't know if those exist in the same way anymore. It's so funny too because they're not obscuring it. It's just like they're just shooting a porno in that. Totally. Imagine being next to them. So many TV and movies from like 75 to 82 had scenes like that. That's why even in, what's the Slater one on Black and the True Romance? Like that hotel they set some of it in, it almost feels like an homage to like this era of whatever. Next one.

I'm doing the score. Jake takes a drive through Hollywood. Yeah. Oh, there's some hookers. Yeah. I think I'll stop at a porn shop. It's great. What happens in here? It's just great to have a sonic.

sting or for every time you hear that sound. Something awful or illicit is happening in the movie. You know, it's just a really funny idea. I don't think it's ever not worked when somebody is driving through LA, the old version of LA like that. And then it's just like shots of. I know it's always like in a fucking cutlass. You know what I mean? It's like in some boat going down sunset. Yeah. 50 cent admission is really funny.

Then he gives the token back. I love the one guy just kind of reading the magazine. I like how Schrader shoots it high. Almost like it's a security camera. It's one of his moves. The kid cut is obviously helpless by CSNY. It's so funny. It's such a great choice. Also them clearing it for that is also amazing. I want to be in that meeting. Next rewatchable.

I just wrote, casting Big Dick Black and Jizzum Jim. Yeah. This is one of the greatest five minutes of the 70s. I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Black, but I'm afraid you're not exactly the type we're looking for. You mean because I'm black? No, you're just not the type. What do you mean, not the type? Man, don't you know who I am? I'm Big Dick Black. I've done more porno movies than you ever saw. I've worked with Harry Reams, Johnny Y. Not the type!

All I could think about was busting Billy and coming Chris the whole time I was watching this. I was like, who picks their names like this? You know, like there's got to be...

I can come 10 times a day, keep it hard for two hours at a time. Throw in the, throw in the, play the race card. He's a little mad at George. Yeah. He came in mad. He came in like he knew he wasn't getting it. Do you think, okay, this is kind of an unanswerable question, but do you think big Dick Black's claims that he had worked with Harry Reams and Johnny Watt, you think he was being honest or do you think he was lying to get a gig?

No, I think Big Dick Black was a name. He was a name. Yeah, he was a guy. He was a dude. He was a guy back then. Yeah, yeah. They would have thrown him the car keys. Jim Sloan, not as big of a name, which is why he had to go by Jism Jim. Yeah. Jism Jim. I'm Jim Sloan. You might know me by real names. Oh, Jism Jim. Oh, Jism Jim. For a second, I was like, Jim Sloan. Jism Jim. Jism Jim. Now there's an M at the end. Is that a J or a G?

That seems unbelievable. I love, I love that George C. Scott reaches for the lamp before the guys even finished his story. He's like, yeah, good for sure. For sure. Craig made a good point. He texted us. So he was watching it. How fast George C. Scott is at Jake just goes all of a sudden he's got the comb over to pay wig with

With the cool shirt and he looks like the guy in Body Double. Yeah. The guy who's the bad guy in Body Double. I understand why he feels the need to have a disguise, but it's not like he was going to like... It's not like these guys were going to be like, aren't you Jake Van Doren, the furniture guy? I saw you on Facebook. That's true. A lot of Grand Rapids people out there.

I really like when Nikki and Jake are hanging out in San Diego. Yeah. Having a life talk. And she's telling him she's like their therapist for the clients. Their conversations in the airport when he's explaining Tulip. And then when they're outside. Such an awesome part of the movie. And he's like, you couldn't possibly fathom my life. And she's talking. That stuff is so well written. They're so good together. It really changes the energy of the movie. How important do you think sex is?

Not very. Well, then we're just alike. I mean, you think it's so unimportant that you don't even do it. I think it's so unimportant that I don't care who I do it with. No, we're not alike. You can never understand a person like me. I'm a mystery to you. Middle-class person, Midwesterner, goes to church, believes in God.

Good points, Nikki the hooker. I really like how you're thinking when you're watching the actress. Yeah. Yeah. Like, why is this woman not Jessica Lange? Like, she's such a good actor. Yeah, she really is comfortable and up against this clearly insane George C's like Oscar winning maniac. But he's actually somewhat soft in that. He's like pretty patient. He doesn't seem dismissive of her. It's it's actually it's it's so unique.

Jake goes to the bondage place I wrote down just because I like how when he goes through the walls. Yeah. This might have been the reshot ending. I don't know. But it's just pretty memorable how they shoot all of that. Yeah, the film is slowed down. So it's moving at a different pace. And then the colors, like the green neon light that's on him. And then like the neon stuff recurs in all the Schrader movies. You see that over and over again. But it looks really cool. And it's funny to imagine...

you know, a makeshift bondage emporium that is built with cardboard and styrofoam, you know? Just to section it off so you have a separate room to go to. It's a good idea. Good fight scene on the hill, too. Oh, actually really effective. George C. Scott, who's like, hey, I'm not going to pull punches. Also, great San Francisco hill stuff. Yeah, really, like, 45-degree angle hill. And they're, I mean, he's doing those stunts. Like, that's him in those scenes. He's probably like, I just had three Millers and I'm ready to rock. Oh, yeah. George was fucking plowed. Yeah.

He's like, wait, I get to hit somebody?

Come here, Todd. He throws Todd into the telephone pole and I was like, damn, he took a shot there. He really did. What do you got for most of the watchables here? I think it's probably that he has to watch the scene because it starts off and you're just like, oh, Mast has an update. And he's like, well, no, this is the worst thing that could ever happen. Yeah, for some reason, I thought there was a scene between him at the diner with Mast and then him showing the thing, but no, they get right to it.

I think that that has to be because it's become a meme and a kind of legendary image and they sold the movie on that. But I still get such a kick out of that first scene with Mast when they're meeting and he's like, I'm a practitioner of mind science myself. You know, everything that Mast says in the first meeting is unbelievable. Actually, I'm going to go back. It's when Jake goes to meet Ramada in his office. Oh, why didn't I have that down? And Ramada's just like, what a mistake. I love Detroit.

I had an all-time box office smash there. Little Oral Annie. Did you see it? And Jake goes, No, I'm afraid I missed it. Little Oral Annie. Little Oral Annie. She's going to be a big star.

I also, in that scene, that's where he's telling his crony, he's like, you're my right man. You only say right to me. Tell me, what do I think about this right boss? It's great. Bill Ramada. I really love this movie. Ben Gazzara just does this in Big Lebowski. He's just Ramada. Yeah, that's true. That's a great call. Is it wrong to think that this movie actually is a rewatchable?

It's really funny. It's like, I think it's like, I was like thoroughly entertained. And I'd seen it a bunch of times, but I was like, this movie is just good. There's something very, very, very sad at the core of it. Yeah. No, no question. You have to accept that. But if you can just enjoy, I mean, from the guys that just did Manchester by the sea, it's rewatchable. True. But even like the, the auditioning, the young guys too, that seems super funny. Yeah.

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What's aged the best? You mentioned this, but Schrader said in the DVD commentary that George C. Scott had five break days written in to handle his alcoholism. I don't even really understand that. So it's five floating days? How does he choose them? How does Embiid choose when he plays for the Sixers? It's probably similar, right? It's quarter by quarter, really. Five break days per round? Yeah.

That's right. CR is like George C. Scott energy. You're upset. You're upset. No, I was just trying to think of, I was going to try and think of a Celtics comeback and I just couldn't. You guys just got it all sewn up. We're taping this two hours before game two of Sixers-Knicks. So CR is like George C. sitting in the theater seat right now. And Sean's like Andy Matt standing behind him. He's like, watch, this is Tyrese Max's COVID test came back. Oh my God, that's my Tyrese. Oh,

What's aged the best? The score is awesome. It doesn't kick in until he goes in that first drive. They wait 50 minutes.

We mentioned that. I love when Jake pretends to be a porn producer. To me, that's a whole separate movie that just could have kept going. What do you have for what stage is the best? Because I have a bunch. Well, one of the things that's hilarious is that like, if somebody told me that my daughter was in a porno movie called Slave of Love, I just wouldn't need to see it. I'd be like, I got it. Good. Sounds bad. And it's rated X? Yeah. The idea of, you know,

of Jake as this avenging angel, there's this sticker. I hadn't noticed this before, but it's such a great little detail. It's on Mast's fridge in his apartment. There's a sticker that said, Jesus is coming and he's mad as hell, which is just the movie. And I thought that was just like, Schrader's just got...

3D vision, man. He's really good at stuff like that. Sean's beaming right now. You love Schrader. He's... Yeah. He's like the super angry, sad guy who actually is creative. Most angry, sad guys are... You're like scared of them or you never hear from them. And he actually makes great shit. Also, what's aged the best is the poster. Poster's great. I also love just Ed Begley Jr. getting a shot up really early in his career. That's aged so well. Him in that part as that guy is so funny. I had a...

Three 70s things that's aged the best for me. 70s Hollywood hotel apartments, which we mentioned. I loved Andy Mass' apartment. It was great. Could have spent three more minutes in there just looking around. Middle America, 70s kitchens, living room, and wallpaper when we're in Grand Rapids. And they go to his sister-in-law's. And it's just the single ugliest wallpaper you've ever seen in your life. But that was everybody's house. And then, I got to be honest. I've said this before. It's a little creepy, but...

The late 1970s for kidnapping and runaway stuff from movie premises was just fertile ground. People just disappeared in the late 70s. The shot of the missing corkboard, like of all the missing kids. And it's just like, let's just hope like,

Let's hope she just ran away. That would be the best case scenario here. It's super effective. I mean, there are other versions of this. I got switched on to a movie last year called Trackdown, which was like a really kind of sleazy version of a movie like this that I think came out in the same year. The sleazy version of Hardcore? Trackdown? But this was like, yeah. Look this up. Throw this to the queue. Sounds great. Thanks.

Looks like me and Tubi have a date tonight. It might honestly be on Tubi right now. Of course it's on Tubi. It's James Mitchum, Robert Mitchum's son. Oh my God. And a young Ann Archer. What? In 1976. I'd never seen this movie before. Eric Estrada's in it.

And it's often paired with hardcore because they're very, very similar. A Montana rancher comes to LA searching for his runaway sister who's become entangled in a world of crime, drugs, and prostitution. I've not seen this movie. The poster says, what if it was your sister? Huh? Wow. And this predates hardcore.

And Schrader got a little grabsy? I don't know. But it speaks to your point, though, which is that this idea of your Midwestern young woman going to a big city and getting ensnared in sexual slavery. Welcome to the jungle, man. Exactly. Well, this was a bunch of after-school specials back then, too. And I remember there was, I think I've talked about this before, there was a Hitchhiker movie that was on in the late 70s about...

these female hitchhikers just getting taken. And the commercial was so effective, it made me scared to hitchhike. It's a lot of fear stuff in the 70s of like, if you get taken, you'll never be seen again. If you move to LA and you leave your parents, you're going to get involved in porn and drugs. It was just... And that was a lot of the content that was coming out. But then find my iPhone solved all that. Well, but it goes back to my basic point for what's aged the best, like kidnapping...

and runaways, it was never more prevalent than it was during this run, right before hitchhiking became don't do this anymore. And then also, we never had a worst infrastructure for finding people. We had no internet, no computers. Well, it was basically word of mouth. And a generation of parents who were like,

Yeah, get on the bus and go to Bellflower, California. Talk to you in two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. It was tough, though, in like 1820 to find people who went west. You know, like that was a little challenging. Good point. But in the second half of the 20th century, absolutely. Great point, Sean. Great point, Sean. What stage is the best? Where's Jim? Where's Jism Jim? Ah, he moved to Oklahoma in 1825. We'll never see him again. He's either in cholera or he's a land baron. Yeah.

Here's what they did best. Schrader was working on this at the exact same time he was

finishing up taxi driver what kind of mental state are you in oh my god going from one move to the other lightened up he's talked about it sleep all day and then just get incredibly high and switch between uppers and downers for 12 hours from midnight till noon that was how he would write and then he would go to bed and then he would wake up the next day and have to look at what he's written be like hmm does this all make sense some of it does let's keep what works

I was like having maybe three Marlboro Lights finishing a column feeling like I was like fucking riding the edge of danger. You're fucking Hemingway. Oh my God, I'm having a Marlboro Light at 1.15 a.m. Yeah, he had a loaded revolver and eight lines of coke. Yeah.

Just as that Andy Mass scene near the end when he goes, you know you can buy anything on this earth. You can buy a child horse, have people raped, killed. One of those people is Rattan. That's how he explains who Rattan is. It's like, whew. Okay. But that's another theme of this movie is that people will pay for anything. And that's what 8mm steals that more than anything. A movie that we both love. So apparently...

Schrader did a lot of research in the world of adult entertainment to write this movie. Of course he did. Got to know a lot of people who work on this stuff. Yeah. And then all those people were incredibly mad at him after he made the movie because he insinuated that Britann type figures and snuff films were very closely correlated to adult entertainment. Which like, by 1979, you know, this is when... No, that was a legitimate industry. You know, X-rated movies are big hits. It was more like a part of the entertainment industry. And...

So I think that those people kind of hate this movie because it was a misrepresentation. The church hated it and the adult film industry hated it. Two for two. Yeah. I did it again. This is just a what's aged the best for Schrader talking about George C. Scott, who he said wasn't in a great place. George at this time was not a terribly happy man. This is eight years after the Time Magazine piece. That's like 5,000 words about this guy's fucking on the edge. So I don't know how he became unhappier.

After that. Did he ever level out? Like in Exorcist 3, is he like in a happier place? It seems like he's better. So this movie is the, I think the second to last movie he makes where he is the lead of the movie. And then almost everything he does into the 80s and 90s, he's really more of just a supporting character. And when you see him in like Angus, like the 90s movie, Angus or Malice, where he's playing, it seems like he's maybe cooled down a little bit. But I think the world was really on his shoulders. He's also in the Brimley zone where he looks 68,

For like 35 years. From 39 on. So you can't ever tell when things are happening for him. What do you have for Great Shot Gordo, Chris? Oh, this is so easy. It's Jake standing in front of the billboard that says, for those who think pink, it's the Hustler billboard. And it's just that introduction of this guy's life in Grand Rapids was all gray and brown and muted. And now he's in Los Angeles and his life has gone technicolor because he's being introduced to all this stuff. And also just a great billboard.

It's a great call. Good call. The Big Kahuna Burger Award. We don't always give up for best use of food and drink. I was really impressed by those big, heavy Calvinist dinners. Oh, yeah. In Grand Rapids. That big turkey on the table. Just big, a lot of like...

stuffing and vegetables and just there's cake and just like just big portions all over the place. So we're all East Coasters. Yeah. We never really got to experience that Midwest just like just pilot on. Yeah. I feel like I missed out. If you order in Chicago or the Midwest the way we order here where it's like I'll try a little bit of everything. Yeah. I'll try all of the brands, you know? It's like when they bring you the food in Chicago you're like I've just ordered a pure heart attack. Yeah.

Butch's girlfriend word weak link in the film we talked about at the ending. Yeah. I agree. What's aged worst? I got one. What do you got? Chaperones. No!

No accountability. Hey, we lost your daughter. Yeah. So you may want to do something about that. We're at a festival and I don't know. She was talking to some guy and she's gone. She went up to the great white knuckler and we couldn't find her after that. His reaction on getting that phone call is also like, if I got that phone call, I would probably just burst into tears. You know, like my daughter's gone in Los Angeles. I don't even need to know the circumstances. And he's just like, I see. Thank you very much. And he just hangs up the phone. What happened, Jake? He's like...

Kristen's missing. It's very calm. What? It's pretty strange. But again, I went on several school-sanctioned trips that were like the assistant gym teacher was in charge of 12 souls. Right. It's just like, you guys, we were camping at Valley Forge. Lots of stuff could happen. I have one related to the ending, too. What's aged the worst? What do you got? The casting of Ila Davis as Kristen. Oh, yeah. Where she's just really, you know, she's been cast for a reason. Okay, I don't want to step on it then.

What's aged the worst? First extended scene, there's a creepy vibe with Jake and the daughter. That's what you were saying. There's one specific thing where she's dressed up and he's kind of looking at her. It's like, what's going on here? Yeah. I don't know whether that's what Schrader was going for or not. I think given what we know about him, he was not putting too fine a point on it. I think that there's a little bit of this guy's wife has left him. His daughter has turned into a woman.

And he's he I don't think he's like sexually abusing or anything or creepy, although you could make a read of it like that. I think a lot of stuff's on the table. Yeah, a lot of stuff is on the table, much like a Midwestern feast, you know? And I think his repression and like the fact that he has no sexual life whatsoever is feeding into some of this stuff, too. Tinder was not big in Grand Rapids in 78. I researched this. It wasn't? It was not. They didn't have Riot either. Yeah.

It's a tough beat. So, what do you think Jake Van Doren's profile would be like? Like, likes Dutch Reformation. Furniture. The color blue needs to be more muted. Furniture. Sofa. No overpowering blues for dislikes. Celery. Yeah. Um,

That's all I got for What's Aged to Worst. Do you have any more? What do you got? Do you think that being the person who took alt-weekly personal ads in person was the worst job of all time?

Do you think that's how they did it? I don't know, but guys coming in and being like, I would love to give oral sex to women. Yeah. And write me here. You're just like, okay. I'm tongue lashing Timmy. Is that a P.O. box or is that your address? Again, clearly written for comic effect. But just imagining that that gig must suck. Oh, I had one. So this is also a casting what if, but it's also a Wood Sage the Worst just because it's a Wood Sage the Worst for Warren Beatty.

He was supposed to be in it. This is a massive conversation topic. He ended up leaving pre-production. And the reason he left was he wanted Schrader to change the movie. So the character was searching for his missing girlfriend rather than the daughter because Beatty felt he was too young to portray a father of a teenager. And Schrader said he wouldn't take me as a director. No good. I held out. I turned down a very large sum of money. I went after Jersey Scott. I got him. Were Beatty trying to change this into a girlfriend is the dumbest...

I mean, there's some weird Warren Beatty stories in Hollywood history. This is way up there. Like, this is just a completely different movie. We all got what we wanted. Warren Beatty made Heaven Can Wait. Right. And George C. Scott's in Hardcore and Paul Schrader became a big filmmaker. Also, he's wrong. Warren Beatty was 40 at this time. Like, of course he could have had a 16-year-old daughter. He just didn't want to...

blow up his image as a heartthrob who was, you know, I didn't like that. Yeah. Um, I would take, I much, I love Warren Beatty and I wish we did more Warren Beatty movies on this show. I think he's such an interesting person, but he's all wrong for this. Like what they did was perfect. Another wrinkle to that story too, is that like one of the reasons he gave apparently was that he was also working on his Howard Hughes movie, which he didn't make until 2000. Rules don't apply. 2016. Yeah. Hmm.

Ruffalo Hannah Rubinick Partridge overacting award. They knew and they let it happen. Don't you call me lady. I come in here. I give these things to you. Give me all you got. Give me all you got. I treated you like a son. You fucking stabbed me in the heart. Fuck you. Fuck you. It's turn it off overacting because I feel like it's actually really good acting. I mean, I think it's dead on, but I think he's going for it. It's his one volcanic moment, really. I have for this the all the people who auditioned.

like jizz and jim all those guys they're just terrible actors but i think schrader was enjoying how bad actors they were that's supposed to be good i would put all those but the guy who's like do you want to see my stuff like that guy is really he's going to see my stuff uh we're gonna take a break and then uh we have some good ones coming up here this episode is supported by state farm think about your first reaction after you have an accident what do you do you scream oh no or man oh why did this happen on the flip side

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And one of the things I like about hardcore is it's the old double meaning title. Hardcore, world of hardcore, but also hardcore. He's getting into this hardcore. Yeah. It's a good one. Hardcore. I love that. I do think that we, I would like to have seen hardcore to Big Dick Black's Revenge. I think that would have been a good film. Just some Jim and Big Dick Black on the road. They team up. Yeah. It's a buddy comedy. Smokey and the Bandit. This,

This movie was originally called The Pilgrim when they were filming in Grand Rapids. I think that's a good title. That's a good title. I agree. And that's obviously what Mast calls him throughout the movie, Pilgrim.

Would you have gone Pilgrim? I think hardcore is, while hard to Google, incredible. Like, you know what you're getting. Because the trailer for this, there's a TV trailer and then there's a movie trailer. And hardcore just works better as we're going through. And then the guy's like, hardcore. Coming to a theater near you. Just works better than Pilgrim. You should get that guy to do the Bill Simmons intro now. I'm going to have him do Simmons on Simmons.

The audio book? Yeah, the audio book. Simmons on Simmons. Wah, wah, wah, wah. Wah, wah, wah, wah. The can you dig it a word for most memorable quote is obviously turn it off. All right, it's time. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take a word.

What do you got, CR? I just think Jake Van Doren left a lot on the table as a porn producer. He immediately takes to the world. For a guy who spent his whole life in Michigan making furniture and denying himself earthly pleasure, he goes Canadian tuxedo. He's got a way with actors, you know? And I think he's got a lot of liquidity to fund some interesting work. And I think porn is worse for it.

I was thinking they could have had him film at least one scene of the movie starting because he thinks he has a chance. We could have had him actually running a set. It's a whole separate movie, but I would have loved it. I think it would have worked. It's very different from my hottest take, though, which is I think Calvinism gets a bad rap. I feel like they got a lot of interesting ideas. You are a Calvinist, though. I feel like repressing all of your feelings, thinking about how you are bad and the world made you bad and you need to be redeemed.

is something I really relate to. Jets fans? Yeah, yeah. I think they're onto something in the Dutch Reformation. Jets fans are Calvinists? My hottest take. So 8mm clearly ripped off this movie. Yep. I'm okay with it.

I mean, I think we're doing for a new hardcore 8mm. You want the next, so 79 and then what was, that was 99. Yeah. We're due for the internet. We missed 2019. The internet, I have to find my daughter. And no, gender swap it. Mom looking for son. Yeah, great. Wow, it's very progressive. I know I've changed my opinion on this a lot where it's like you can't touch this, it's an untouchable thing.

In this case, I do think it's touchable because this movie is so rooted in the late 70s that you can redo it and modernize it, which is what 8mm basically did. We actually do have it. It actually did happen because this is what Searching is. Searching is the movie where the kid disappeared, John Cho, and it's all on the computer. And that's actually a pretty well-done movie.

And that is kind of what this is. It just doesn't have the sense of adventure that these films have. It's not funny. 8mm was funny and Hardcore was funny. But it is. And there was kind of like a spiritual sequel to it a couple of years ago where it was about a young girl trying to find her mom who disappeared too. I saw that one too. Did the mom do porn or was it? No. No. It's complicated what happened to her.

Casting what ifs. Mention Beatty. Beatty. Beatty. Can't speak. I know. Schrader originally cast Diana Scarwood. Yeah, from Inside Moves. Inside Moves, a movie CR still hasn't seen. When are we doing Inside Moves? Because CR hasn't seen it. You're staring me down. I'm going to watch it on the plane. You promised me you would see it. I will. This has been a recurring theme. Good film. Richard Donner. I gave you like four soccer podcasts in the ringer. You won't see Inside Moves.

Great point. What the fuck? I totally agree. The studio said she wasn't attractive enough, which is weird. So, uh, Gila Davis, first time actress, cast as Kristen. Schrader felt she was not a conventionally beautiful sort of person who could be lured by flattery. I just disagree. She's a bad actress. It's kind of not her fault that scene, especially at the end, gets written in. I think she's fine in the beginning of the movie. I think that

That that's all she has to do. And then at the end, they tack on this, like her being like, I never wanted, you know, I want, I ran away from you stuff. And it's like, okay. It's also a scene that should be eight minutes long and it's one minute long. Yeah. And you, the whole movie has been about this. Then he's like, you ready to go? She's like, yeah, let's go. Yeah. Yeah. I said my piece.

Schrader insinuated that she was cast because she was comfortable basically doing the porn like the scene where she shot the stag film you know that that was part of why she was there would you put Melanie so recasting couch quickly would you put Melanie Griffith in that part

she'd be really young at this time, but not as young as she is in Night Moves, which is like three years earlier. And she's doing also stuff in that movie. But she's like 15 in that movie. Yeah. I think she's old enough to be in this one. But yeah, I think it's somebody like that who at least you feel like she could pull off the scene. But again, he didn't know he was going to have the scene. But Melanie Griffith, the one thing that this girl has that Melanie Griffith doesn't have is that

this girl seems innocent in the beginning of the movie. Melanie Griffith, she's like sun-kissed and, you know, so beautiful. And she just seems like... Kind of world... She's savvy. She's wise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. Wasn't Marilyn Chambers cast in this film briefly or talked about? She was going to be the porn actress. She was going to be Nikki.

Yeah. Interesting. And she had just been in a Cronenberg movie at this point. Had she? Is it Shivers? I think she was in Shivers like a year earlier. So she could have, I mean, she was actually not a bad actress, Marilyn Chambers. Susan Hubley, though, I really like. I'm just going to have Jack cut that out when you're like, she's actually not a bad actress, that Marilyn Chambers. Just put that on the radar. She's an exceptional performer. Yeah. She has a lot of talent. A lot of her work. Best that guy, Ed Begley.

It's got to be Tracy Walter. He's Ed Begley. Who do you have? Tracy Walter, the bookstore guy. I have a better one. Okay. Well, Hal Williams is Big Dick Black, who I think is Hal Williams. I don't think he's... I actually knew what his name was. He has a great career. I don't know if people know his name, though. He's very recognizable. No, I mean, this is one of my favorite ones we've had in a while. Reb Brown is the bouncer. Yeah. Who was also...

In one of my favorite movies ever, the most politically incorrect sports movie ever made, Fast Break. He played Bull. I just want to read you Red Brown, his IMDb from the late 70s on. I have this queued up. Basically from, let's go to 75. Two episodes of Six Million Dollar Man. Rockford Files. Chico and the Man.

Hardy Boys, Chips, Happy Days, Fantasy Island, Ted Night Show, Hardcore and Fast Break, Back to Back, Three's Company, Alice, Facts of Life, Love Boat, Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood with OJ Simpson.

Bosom buddies Quincy I bet that What a fucking run That guy would have Literally was in everything Did he write a memoir? Cause he should Red Brown Not in Vegas somehow He's also in this movie I think Because he was in Big Wednesday In 78 Which John Milius directed And Milius was Schrader's Guru and EP On this movie Red Brown What a legend So who did you have Tracy Is Dick Sargent Dick Sargent Yeah he's Dick Sargent Cause he was in a big sitcom Just off Bewitched? Yeah Okay He was Alright

He's the second Darren. I mean, he wasn't Dick York. Pretty famous. He was also one of the first actors to come out as gay when that was happening. I feel like he was pretty famous. Apparently that was after this, right? Yeah. It was like in the 80s. Dion Waiters Award. Jim Gism is in here. I got Leonard Gaines as Ramada. Bill Ramada or George Harper, the fastest tongue in the West. Short. Comes in hot. Incredible.

Bill Ramada's our winner. But George Harper, shout out. What's happening with Larry Block, the detective with the red eye? Oh, who had like the thing in his head? Yeah, he had like a massive head injury. Yeah. But still held the part? Yeah. Really, that was kind of strange. He was like, hey, I don't know if I, you know, if you don't want to film me. Yeah, he probably did. He probably hit him with a pool cue. Yeah, yeah.

Tony Romo or Chris Collinsworth, the director's commentary. Oh, Mike. That's his daughter up there. I hate to see that. Can you imagine the sad injury jazz playing as he watches? I feel like it's so much better with Romo, though. Yeah, Romo. There's a second schlong coming in, Jim. Oh, my God, Jim. He's coming up right behind her. He's going to play the band. It's making its bid for the mainstream, Jim.

He's going to play the movie, Jim. Paying his pleasure, Jim. And he's playing it, Jim. Half-assed internet research, Jim. What an empire you've built here. I got to say. It's amazing. Appreciate it. John Milius was the producer and...

Schrader said it was a wonderful script that turned out to be a lousy movie. I blame Paul's Direction for that. People are just taking shots at Paul's Direction. Paul's Direction's good. I really miss this era of just people just shooting their shots and quotes in newspapers and magazines. Schrader said the shoot in Grand Rapids was unpleasant. Locals weren't happy.

Can you imagine the nights at the Cracker Barrel when they're like, "Wow, so you guys are making a movie here. What's it about?" It's like, "Well, it's about a guy." Yeah, dad. Yeah. It's a father. It's about a dad and daughter. Yeah. He's going through some things. Schrader came up with this idea because he heard about a local teenage girl in Grand Rapids who went missing and then was eventually found to have made a porn movie. His wheels got turning probably after eight lines of cocaine.

the uh everything was filmed in actual sex shops strip clubs porno theaters that was apparently very difficult to negotiate yeah yep uh season hubbley said her porn scene they were um real adult stars so there's a theory

Need Sean's take on this, that this season, Hubby character, Nikki, was actually older Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. Yeah, I've seen that. You down with this? In the Schraderverse? It clocks, right? I mean, they have the same energy as women. It's almost like he has a type or something. I mean, like he knows how to write that person. He knows that person so well. I buy it. Just that world weariness, that casual comfort with sex, sense of humor. She's like bright,

The same way that Jodie Foster is kind of like, you know, Taxi Driver's really alive when she's on screen. The poster has, oh my God, that's my daughter. He never actually says that in the movie. They took some liberties. Apex Mountain. George C. Scott, I'm going to say no. What is his Apex Mountain? I think it's got to be Patton, right? Yeah, it's Patton. It's amazing in that movie. Schrader, no, but what is it? I mean, this and Taxi Driver and I think this moment I think it's American Gigolo. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's a marriage. But I don't know. You don't think it's first reformed? It could be first reformed. Because that was like one of the biggest comebacks for a filmmaker in years. And that movie holds up. That's probably my favorite. Well, when we did Gigolo, we decided it was, I think, his apex. It was Gigolo, yeah. Peter Boyle, it's not, but it's probably like within a couple years of when he had it.

He was just grabbing all the weird guy parts in the 70s. Yeah. Vincent Schiavelli tried to make a run and he just swatted him away. Let's get the fuck out of here. He makes a big comeback in Ghost, though. Schiavelli, he really tries to take the crown. Get off my train. I mean, isn't it Every Loves Raymond, though, for him? For Boyle? I mean, that's probably his most, like... Yeah, you're probably right. I mean, that's like one of the biggest TV shows the last 25 years. Seasoned Hubby, definitely. Running out of theater to ruin a dad's life. Apex Mountain. Absolutely. Yeah. 70s fake movie porn.

No boogie nights. Yeah. Yeah. Bellflower, California. It's either this or when they have youth soccer tournaments and it's super windy and everyone's like, why the fuck are we here? Super windy? Yeah. Okay. Where is Bellflower? It's in the middle of nowhere and it's super windy and it's like, oh cool. The 30 mile an hour wind is against us this half. You should listen to some of Chris's soccer pods. Maybe they have some solves for that. Yeah. Keep it on the ground.

What about explaining Calvinism to a hooker? Apex Mountain? Absolutely. I would say, actually, Apex Mountain for Tulip. For Calvinism? Yeah. Calvinism itself. This has got to be its pinnacle in modern entertainment. I had not heard of Tulip before watching Hardcore. And now you have subscribed. Now it's what I apply to my own life. How about the seedy side of 70s San Diego?

captured in a movie or a TV show. I'm going to say 100%. We never saw this side of anything. San Diego is always super happy as a location for Hollywood stuff. I love it there too. Isn't it just the best? Yeah. This movie kind of makes it a little darker. All right. This is America's favorite category now. Cruise or Hanks? Cruise is leading 3-1. 100% cruise. So when we launched the... Oh, I disagree. When we launched our channel...

Is that spoiler alert? Ringer Movies? The Ringer Movies channel. You want to get into it? Well, we might. We might launch a Ringer Movies YouTube channel soon. We will. We're going to do live. We're going to go over all 330 rewatchables movies and just blink test Cruiser Hanks. And we're going to just do it until we're done. Is that the entire...

That's the actual scoreboard. Yeah, the three of us. We're just going Cruiser, Hanks, starting with episode one. Boom. We off to the side. I love it. Second one. We'll see how many we can do. It might be a four-parter. Are there bonus points if Cruise takes a Hanks movie or Hanks takes a Cruise movie? What if it's like Devil Wears Prada? Cruiser, Hanks. From Miranda Priestly? No, it'd have to be the Stanley Tucci. What about Adrian? No. Is Adrian Grenier? Yeah, Adrian Grenier.

Who's better in Devil Wears Prada as the Stanley Tucci character? It's probably Cruise. It's definitely Cruise. It's Cruise, yeah. We're stepping on this pod. I think Cruise might win most of these. Of course he might win, Bill! But I think in this case, I think it's Hanks. I think Hanks as the father would be the better part. Because imagine Hanks having his morality destroyed. He never made his eyes wide shut, man. Cruise is in this place. That's true. What do you think?

I wanted to talk it out because my instinct was better movie for Hanks. I think it makes more sense for him. It's the kind of movie I always wanted him to make. But a such funnier movie with Cruise. With Cruise, Cruise being a porn producer for a half hour is like one of the funniest 30 minutes of my life. I personally think there's got to be a little bit of a layer to this is which guy would be more likely to do this movie and it's definitely Cruise. Cruise in the turn it off scene.

Just ratcheting it up. Cruising the wig? Yeah. Like him going to the Magnolia place where he's like, it becomes cocktail set in the 70s hardcore world. It just goes completely off the rails. Him fake laughing in the room with Bill Ramada would be incredible. But I think it's a better movie with Hanks. So I'm,

I would personally want the Cruise movie, but it's a better movie with Hanks. It makes more sense. I think Hanks is more believable as the furniture salesman in Grand Rapids. Cruise can't live in Grand Rapids. He would want to be like the guy in Grand Rapids who's like, hey, Bill, hey, Bob, how's it going, Jim? Instead, it's got to be like, I'm just here looking at my paperwork and then I'm going to go home and eat cake. Right, right. All right, Cruise loses this one. So now it's Hanks 3-2.

I'm honest. Wait, how did we arrive at that? I thought you and I were both like, it's Cruise. Oh, you think it's... No, I think it's Hanks. Cruise is the more fun, but if we're just trying to make... I think the rule should be best movie possible, not what we would want. Because Cruise is going to be the answer for almost every movie if it's just Cruise. Because if we want unintentional comedy...

Cruise is usually going to win. There's not a lot of unintentional comedy with Tom Hanks. I promise I will always be honest about this. And if Hanks wins, he wins. But it will never change my opinion that I would rather have Cruise in my movies. This movie with Cruise is one of the funniest movies ever made. Cruise auditioning Jizzum Jim and Big Dick Black. I really need him to get back into stuff like this. Oh, no, I'm a huge fan of your work. Oh, yeah, I know you, Jim Jizzum.

Picking, oh, one more category. Racehorse rock band wrestling or wrestler fantasy team name. Jim Jism works all the way across the board. Isn't it Jism Jim? Yeah, Jism Jim. Are you sure? Jim Jism Jim Sloan. It's Jism Jim. That's why you're busting Billy and you're coming crazy. I think he says it's Jim Jism because I had this down later. I'm going to call it up right here. Yeah, and Crank and Craig isn't here, unfortunately. I had this last...

Oh, jism jim. You're right. Yeah. God, how did I screw that up? Jism jim dance. Here we go. Jism jim. Oh my God. Jim jism's funny too. When is the last time you made s'mores? Crunchy, gooey, and with everyone's favorite Hershey's milk chocolate. Whether you're making new memories with your friends beside a campfire or

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We covered how to find Kristen's film so easily. My other one there, which I just want to mention because it's a nitpick. It's also an answerable question is...

Was Mast conning Van Dorn just to keep the money coming in and just slow rolling it? Or was he actually a really good detective? I think it was both. Because he has the headshot of every porn actor in California, seemingly. Well, I think the insinuation is that he clearly is a good private detective. He found this fucking movie, which is an amazing act of work. Now he's milking it. Yeah, now he's milking it. But also, we watch him in real time

get drawn into the world of porn when he sits down to watch the sex scene and then you see that he's like he's caught up in it now and he lives in that world needed like two more scenes with him this is my biggest nitpick it really bugs me why did Jake and Nikki why didn't they just drive from Los Angeles to San Diego well is this around the gas shortage

Is that what it was? Well, you think it was OPEC? I think it was Jimmy Carter. I mean, that's an hour, 45-minute drive. Yeah. They are at an airport, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's weird. Super weird. Well, don't they do San Diego to San Francisco? No, they go LA to San Diego, then they go San Diego to San Francisco. Yes, exactly. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. That's weird. At the end, could Peter Boyle's character really have just shot a guy in the street in a crowded...

I think this is the era of like you did us a favor. You know, like when that, like the cops don't care. We do a favor. He bullet misses and takes out some mom in her car. I love how that scene works too where he pulls the gun from his ankle holster but drops it on the ground and still picks it up and fires. Do you think there's a lot of moms hanging outside of Rutan and Todd's house of snuff films? Could have been a mom coming home from work after a double shift just taking a bullet from Andy. Do you think Rutan is misunderstood?

We don't really get a lot of time with him. What do you think it was his trauma, his backstory? Why is he stabbing people on camera? Yeah, the other pick and knit is, you know, because 8mm did this too. Was it a fake snuff film or was it an actual snuffer? I don't think it was a snuffer.

I don't think... Because Kristen is obviously still working. No, but she wasn't when they showed the snuff film. Oh. That's not her in the snuff film. They pull the mask off and it's not his daughter. And then she gets her throat slit. But do you think the people were being killed in that scene? That's movie magic, man. Because they kind of cut away. I was surprised Schrader didn't linger on that one. You think they got ILM in there for that one? Yeah. Any other nitpicks? Hey, George, can you come in and just do one... Um...

It's not a nitpick, but it's related, which is the reason why he won't give this up, which is the motivating force of the movie. Like, I think many people would...

Forget about not the porn producing, but just like staying on the West Coast and continuing to pursue this. Is it saying something about his obsession with her that goes beyond it just being his daughter? Or is it connected to his spirituality? And he's like, this is, I am in hell, which is where I deserve to be. Right. I think it's more that and that he's just a broken dude. What's it going back to?

It's like Grand Rapids. He's got no family and he's got the furniture. And the wife left because? He's got the guy from Bewitched. Well, to me, the insinuation there is that he's not like a sexually realized person. And maybe there is a kind of impotence to the way that he lives his life. And she didn't want any part of that. And also that obviously she's given birth to someone that is probably like her and that she's like wants to experience the world in a real way and he can't give it to her. So she goes back to the East Coast. Sounds like she's not from Grand Rapids.

You know what happened? The key party they had in Grand Rapids that night. The Ice Storm party. Ice Storm 2. Yeah. She just went off and... Yeah. Yeah. Rattan's revenge. Who was the guy who lasted for one second in the Ice Storm? Oh, yeah. Who had sex with Joan Allen in the car? Two second Bob? Yeah. Maybe the key party just went badly. Yeah.

Um, sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast are untouchable. So they basically remade this as a millimeter, which I think is the answer, but there's another world where he just stays in LA and battles Bill Ramada. And that's, I was going to say my, it would be the prequel with of Ramada's move from running a dairy queen to moving into porn production.

And we call it Dairy King. Yep. It's milk in the porn scene for all it's worth. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, Byron Mayo, Harley Mays, evil laughing Ramon Raymond, or Philip Baker Hall? It's got to be Byron Mayo. Goddamn, Jism Jim! I didn't know I was working with Supercock!

You came back in the game with a chewed up pecker like you're some kind of pornographic Willis Reed. You better help me find my wayward daughter. You're going away a long fucking time, people. I can't overstate just how loud it is. Goddamn, just a jib. I just wanted to say I didn't know I was working with Supergothic.

I wasn't even a very good Wayne. It wasn't even in Baltimore. I just had to get it out. I can't look at you anymore. Oh, my God. I agree, though. I feel like it's Byron. It's definitely Byron. Byron should be directing those films. Yeah, Byron's trying to convince Jake to stay out there. Jake, you got something special here. You got a great touch. I got Joanne on one arm and Nikki on the other. You got a good eye for talent, Jake. Just one Oscar. Who gets it?

Probably George C. Scott. I mean, he's good in this movie. Honestly, yeah. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't nominated, but I think that was a pretty deep Oscar year. I don't know if he's getting a nomination for Hardcore. Rattan? Probably unanswerable questions. Is this a better movie if he never finds her? I think we all think yes.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't like a big hit, so it's not like they made a move and it worked, you know? Then $100 million later, you know, everybody got to live off of this movie. I mean, it is the searcher's ending. He's been looking for her the whole time, and it turns out she's exactly where she wants to be. I couldn't... Did you find... What did they make on this movie? I couldn't find it. I don't know what the box office was. Yeah, they didn't have it. Yeah, I mean, it was not a big hit. Another unanswerable... He does blame the studio specifically on changing that ending, though. The producer of the movie from the studio is the one who made him change it. So...

So you like Jism Jim over Jim Jism. Let's talk it out. Let's have the phone call. I really want to do... Because Jism Jim is the easy way to go, but Jim Jism is really funny that that would be his last name. It's a family name. Mr. Jism.

Yeah. It's scotch. It's scotch driving. I think the jisms came over on the Mayflower, actually. Yeah. It's my friend, Jim Jism. Poor guy. That's his little son, Jimmy Jism. Yeah, Conrad Jism and, you know. I don't know. I like Jim Jism more. Great Uncle Elliot Jism and Steve Jism.

Best double feature choice. Ebenezer Gism didn't work his hands to the bone. 1700s. John Quincy Gism didn't write the Declaration of Independence so that you could make porn in Los Angeles. The Gisms. Good cartoon idea. Gives us more flexibility.

Best double feature choice is clearly 8mm. I think it's gotta be. Either that or Taxi Driver. Yeah. I don't know if I want a second movie after Taxi Driver. I think you could do, I think Cat People would be an interesting one if you're looking for a Schrader team up. Kinski. Yeah. Kinski. Yeah. The Indian Reds want an air word for what happened the next day. She leaves within what, two weeks?

I was wondering whether or not like he's like we can stay in LA if you want like we like we can just leave it all behind so I can constantly see you coming home after a long night of shooting pornography I don't know if he's supporting that part of her career I think he brings her back and she disappears does she stay is he just like in the cell for the rest of his life

No, I think he starts really... Because it says Van Doren's Celery on the outside of the building. He probably calls Bill Ramada like a month later just to see what's up. Hey, Bill. Hey. Got anything in the slate that I'd be interested in? Does he do like a Grand Rapids kind of porn scene, bringing porn to the Midwest?

How much do you think Bill Ramada was worth? If they clocked 5.4 million? I mean, he's like in the fucking Die Hard. He's in Nakatomi Tower. Yeah. He's legit. Those three, four years when they were releasing the porn movies in the theaters, they made crazy money. But I always thought the Mafia took at least like half of everything, right? Yeah. The Mafia basically made all of it. That should have been Godfather 3. Oh, yeah.

Oh, porn. Wow. Michael Corleone. Yeah. Vincent running. Yeah. The, uh, Michael Corleone versus Jim Jism. Yeah. International pornography. Michael Corleone creates vivid video. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? It's fine. If the answer is nothing. Cause the slave to love video would be the obvious. Oh my God. But who would want that?

I would do the fake mustache and wig that he has. Oh, so you could dress up like George C. Scott. Yeah, that's fine. What about that cutlass you referred to? Yeah. He always gets mad when I pick the car. The Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson. Don't let your daughter go on a Calvinist trip to Bellflower, California with one chaperone who's like Uncle George. What's the Z1 Neo for the chaperone on the next trip?

Like when the Calvinist youth group is like, so just some learnings we had from the last time. We're going to skip the Knott's Berry Farm. I think you can make the case the life lessons don't have a daughter. You know, this one hits a little different. You watch it when you've got a daughter. Not ideal. And we didn't talk about Knott's Berry Farm mentioned in this movie. No, it's where people go to get lost. Yeah. Who won the movie? Schrader?

I think it's George C. Scott. Really? Make the case. Well, I think it is now, even though he won an Oscar for Patton and he's in Dr. Strangelove and he's an incredible part of the story of American movies in the 20th century. I think to young people, this is where they would know his face from because of the meme. And it has lived on. And the bit is we've been joking about it on the show for five years. So, you know, he's excellent in the movie. It doesn't really work without someone with his power.

I think it's George C. Scott. Can I say Seedy's late 70s cities? Can that be the winner of the movie? I mean, it can. No, I'm going to go, I'll go Schrader because I just think it's like he's uniquely like, this is like his world. I think it's Schrader too, but I like the George C. Scott thing. He just like has disavowed the ending of the movie and regrets it. And you can imagine that he would be like, this isn't one of my 10 best movies. Turn it off. Turn it off. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just great acting. Will that be you tonight? Would you have given that the Rick Dalton, the greatest fucking acting I've ever seen in my life? That's the greatest fucking acting, yeah. All right. Yeah. All right, see ya. That's it for Rock Bottom Month. Apologies to Sex, Lies, and Videotape, American History X, and a couple other ones. All films that could show up at other times on the rewatchables feed. Definitely. You've never done American History X. I would just do it for the basketball scene. There'd really be no other reason. Okay.

What about Guy Torrey? 40 minutes. Nah, I just really want to break down the basketball scene. I think it's one of the most important scenes ever filmed. That would be actually a worthwhile thing to do on the YouTube page if you were to start one. Like if hypothetically we're all going to do a YouTube channel? What if we did like a LeBron JJ video but about the basketball? I love it. With the decanter and yeah, yeah. No, but we'd have to do like for 15 minutes at the top like

You know, there's been a lot of bad discourse about sports movie basketball scenes. Neo-Nazis deserve a voice in basketball too. We're here to save it. Basketball realism. That's it for Rock Bottom Month. Thanks, Sean. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, JR. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks to Craig Horlbeck for producing. And we will see you next week with a normal movie.